Chater & Loewenstein argue that i-frame research has been coopted by private interests opposed to system-level reform, leading to ineffective interventions. They recommend that behavioural scientists refocus on system-level interventions. We suggest that the influence of private interests on research is problematic for wider normative and epistemic reasons. A system-level intervention to shield research from private influence is needed.

This paper describes differences in two perspectives on the idea of virtue as a theoretical foundation for positive organizational ethics (POE). The virtue ethics perspective is grounded in the philosophical tradition, has classical roots, and focuses attention on virtue as a property of character. The positive social science perspective is a recent movement (e.g., positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship) that has implications for POE. The positive social science movement operationalizes virtue through an empirical lens that emphasizes virtuous behaviors. From (...) a virtue ethics perspective, a behaviorally based account of virtue is a weak theory of virtue. Observations are suggested for integrating the two perspectives. First, virtue should always be understood as an excellence and is often an optimal point between extreme dysfunctions on continuum of potential states. Second, an empirical exploration of virtue needs to account for character and context. Finally, the properties of organization-level virtue need to be further specified and explored. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

I outline a defence of a naive group-level standpoint epistemology. According to this view then under conditions often met in real situations of oppression, it is the majority view on questions of import to those marginalised by oppression that ought to be treated as deference worthy. I further argue that this view is inspired by and coheres well with various doctrines laid out and defended by W.E.B. Du Bois, making this a recognisably Duboisian vision of standpoint epistemology. The central (...) conceptual move is to relate principles of social epistemology under conditions of oppression that were of great interest to Du Bois with the conditions for group accuracy that have been studied by social-choice theorists working on Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, as well as contemporary epistemological work on group polarisation. I argue that once these elements are brought together a surprisingly cogent case for deference to the simple majority view of the marginalised can often be made. (shrink)

Prepublication peer review should be abolished. We consider the effects that such a change will have on the social structure of science, paying particular attention to the changed incentive structure and the likely effects on the behaviour of individual scientists. We evaluate these changes from the perspective of epistemic consequentialism. We find that where the effects of abolishing prepublication peer review can be evaluated with a reasonable level of confidence based on presently available evidence, they are either positive or (...) neutral. We conclude that on present evidence abolishing peer review weakly dominates the status quo. (shrink)

How diverse is philosophy? In this paper we explore recent data on the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of philosophy students and faculty in the United States. We have found that women are underrepresented in philosophy at all levels from first-year intention to major through senior faculty. The past four years have seen an increase in the percentage of women philosophy majors at the undergraduate level, but it remains to be seen if this recent increase in the percentage of (...) women will eventually also show at more advanced stages. Temporal trends since 2000 also show substantial increases in the racial and ethnic diversity of philosophy majors at all levels of education from first-year undergraduate through PhD, with substantial declines in the percentage of non-Hispanic White philosophy majors and substantial increases in all other commonly measured racial/ethnic groups except for Native American / Alaska Native. Despite generally increasing diversity, people who identify as Hispanic (any race), or non-Hispanic Native American, Alaska Native, or Black remain substantially underrepresented in philosophy at all levels compared to their presence in the U.S. population, and in some cases also as compared to other majors. (shrink)

Our visual systems account for stimulus context in brightness perception, but whether such adjustments occur for stimuli that we are unaware of has not been established. We therefore assessed whether stimulus context influences brightness processing by measuring unconscious priming with metacontrast masking. When a middle-gray disk was presented on a darker background, such that it could be consciously perceived as brighter via simultaneous brightness contrast , reaction times were significantly faster to a bright annulus than to a (...) dark annulus. We further show that context-dependent brightness priming does not correlate with visibility using an objective measure of awareness and that context-dependent, but not context-independent brightness priming, occurs equally strongly for stimuli below or above the subjective threshold for awareness . These results suggest that SBC occurs at early levels of visual input and is not influenced by conscious perception. (shrink)

In the context of the mandated phaseout of methyl bromide, California’s strawberry industry has increased its use of chloropicrin, another soil fumigant that has long been on the market. However, due to its 2010 designation as a toxic air contaminant, the US Environmental Protection Agency and California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation have developed enhanced application protocols to mitigate exposures of the chemical to bystanders, nearby residents, and farmworkers. The central feature of these mitigation technologies are enhanced buffer zones between treated (...) fields and nearby buildings. Not only do buffer zones inherently privilege neighbors over farmworkers, but the determinations of the size of these buffer zones are also based on acceptable threshold levels and probabilities that allow significant exposures to those they are designed to protect. Moreover, these protocols require human monitors to detect sensory irritation. While the science and technology studies literature is highly useful for understanding the inextricability of science and politics in developing protective measures and is attentive to what counts as data in setting acceptable thresholds, it tends to overlook that social sorting is intrinsic to such regulation. We thus turn to Foucault’s biopolitics to make sense of regulations that are designed to protect but inherently allow some to become ill. Doing so illuminates how determinations of the bright line are at once technical–political as well as implicit decisions about whose bodies count. (shrink)

This book includes sections on brightness and light, eye movements and perception, and perception of orientation and self-motion.

This study sought to determine if hues overlayed on a video recording of a piano performance would systematically influence perception of its emotional arousal level. The hues were artificially added to a series of four short video excerpts of different performances using video editing software. Over two experiments 106 participants were sorted into 4 conditions, with each viewing different combinations of musical excerpts and hue combinations. Participants rated the emotional arousal depicted by each excerpt. Results indicated that the overall (...) arousal ratings were consistent with the nominal arousal of the selected excerpts. However, hues added to video produced no significant effect on arousal ratings, contrary to predictions. This could be due to the domination of the combined effects of other channels of information over the emotional effects of the hypothesized influence of hue on perceived performance. To our knowledge this is the first study to investigate the impact of these hues upon perceived arousal of music performance, and has implications for musical performers and stage lighting. Further research that investigates reactions during live performance and manipulation of a wider range of lighting hues, saturation and brightness levels, and editing techniques, is recommended to further scrutinize the veracity of the findings. (shrink)

Segmentation of the medical image plays a significant role when it comes to diagnosis using computer aided system. This article focuses on the human corneal endothelium’s health, which is one of the filed research interests, especially in the human cornea. Various pathological environments fasten the extermination of the endothelial cells, which in turn decreases the cell density in an abnormal manner. Dead cells worsen the hexagonal design. The mutilated endothelial cells can no longer revive back and that gives room for (...) neighbouring cells to migrate and expand so that they can fill in the space. The latter results in cell elongation that is unpredictable as well as increase in size and thinning. Cell density and shape are therefore considered major parameters when it comes to explaining the health condition attributed to corneal endothelium. In this study, medical feature extraction was obtained depending on the segmentation of the endothelial cell boundary, and the task of segmentation of such objects especially the thin, transparent, and unclear cell boundary is considered challenging due to the nature of the image capture during endothelium layer examination by ophthalmologists using confocal or specular microscopy. The resulting image suffers from various issues that affect the quality of the image. Low quality is due to non-uniformity of illumination and the presence of a lot of noise and artefacts resulting from high amounts of distortion, and most of these limitations are present because of the nature of the imaging modality. Usually, images contain certain kind of noise and also continuous shadow. Furthermore, the cells are separated by poor border, thereby leading to great difficulty in the segmentation of the images. The irregular shape of cell and also the contrast of such images seem to be low as they possess blurry boundaries with diverse objects existing in addition to the lack of homogeneity. The main aim of the study is to propose and develop a totally automatic, robust, and real-time model for the segmentation of endothelial cells of the human cornea obtained by in vivo microscopy and computation of different clinical features of endothelial cells. To achieve the aim of this study a new scheme of image enhancement was proposed such as the Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalisation technique to enhance contrast. After that, a new image denoising technique called Wavelet Transform Filter and Butterworth Bandpass for Segmentation is used. Subsequently, brightness level correction is applied by using the moving average filter and the CLAHE to reduce the effects of the non-uniform image lighting produced as a result of the previous step. The main aim of this article is the segmentation of endothelial cells, which involves precise detection of the endothelial contours. So a new segmentation model was proposed such that the shape of the cells will be extracted, and the contours were highlighted. This stage is followed by clinical feature extraction and uses the features for diagnosis. In this stage, several relevant clinical features such as pleomorphism mean cell perimeter, mean cell density, mean cell area, and polymegathism are extracted. The role of these clinical features is crucial for the early detection of corneal pathologies as well as the evaluation of the health of the corneal endothelium layer. The findings of this study were promising. (shrink)

In visual science the term filling-inis used in different ways, which often leads to confusion. This target article presents a taxonomy of perceptual completion phenomena to organize and clarify theoretical and empirical discussion. Examples of boundary completion (illusory contours) and featural completion (color, brightness, motion, texture, and depth) are examined, and single-cell studies relevant to filling-in are reviewed and assessed. Filling-in issues must be understood in relation to theoretical issues about neuralignoring an absencejumping to a conclusionanalytic isomorphismCartesian materialism, a (...) particular neural stage that forms the immediate substrate of perceptual experience enactiveanimatesubpersonal” considerations about internal processing, but rather by considerations about the task of vision at the level of the animal or person interacting with the world. (shrink)

The level of impairment shown by the 1.3 million residents of nursing homes in the United States varies significantly, and this raises considerable challenges for how to address the sexual and romantic interests and needs of these diverse individuals. Unfortunately, bright-line rules and a onesize- fits-all approach are often taken when addressing these challenges. This article proposes a novel taxonomy for classifying the potential sexual and romantic relationships of cognitively impaired nursing home residents that includes relationships between unmarried residents, (...) relationships between residents and their own spouses, and adulterous relationships. We explore the ethical and logistical challenges distinctive to each category of relationship. (shrink)

Since the discovery that the characteristics of dreaming sleep are far stronger in Stage 1 rapid eye movement sleep than in any other biological state, investigators have attempted to determine the relative responsibility of the tonic versus the phasic properties of REM sleep for the different characteristics of dreaming–features such as the amount of information in the dream report, the brightness and clarity of the visual images, shifts in thematic continuity, and incongruities of image and meaning. The present experiment (...) is designed to identify dream characteristics that are specifically associated with tonic changes in level of cortical activation within sleep. It samples reports of imagery and thought during spontaneous variations within one phase of the 24-h diurnal rhythm and across the REM-NREM sleep cycle in order to identify the independent and joint contributions of the two cycles to imagery and thought. The rising phase of the diurnal cycle in the late night and morning was estimated from clock time during the late night and early morning and was varied by delaying the sleep onset and waking time of the subjects. Considered together with other studies, the results suggest that the major determinant of vivid visual imagery and enhanced cognitive activity during sleep is a pattern of subcortical and cortical activation that is common to both the REM phase of the REM-NREM cycle and the activated phase of the 24-h diurnal wake-sleep cycle. (shrink)

This study explores the effect of a short ethics intervention—a chapter of business ethics in a business course—on perceptions of business courses and personal values toward making money and making ethical decisions and Monetary Intelligence. Since attitudes predict intentions and behaviors, Monetary Intelligence, a form of social intelligence, is defined as the extent to which individuals monitor their own monetary motive, behavior, and cognition; apply the information to evaluate critical concerns and options; select strategies to achieve financial goals; and reach (...) ultimate success and subjective well-being. I theorize that the affective aspect of MI is unrelated to perceptions of “course work,” yet it is positively related to their “personal values” toward making money, but negatively related to making ethical decisions. Individuals with high MI have low interests in making money, but high levels of intrinsic religiosity and recall of the Ten Commandments and high interests in making ethical decisions and making the grade. Based on data from multiple panels and multiple sources, this study provides the following discoveries. Contrary to expectations, there are no differences in students’ perceptions of course work and their personal values toward making money and making ethical decisions between two measures—before and after the ethics intervention. Results of this study not only provide empirical supports for the bright side of theory of Monetary Intelligence but also reveal a new paradox—recall of the Ten Commandments is positively related to making ethical decisions, but negatively related to making money. Results illustrate important theoretical, empirical, and practical implications to the literature of money attitudes, religiosity, intrinsic motivation, and business ethics. (shrink)

Rio de Janeiro, the opening of the carnival. On the Friday evening preceding Mardi Gras, the mayor of Rio hands over the keys to the city to King Momo, sovereign of the carnival. Immediately the samba breaks out in the brightly lit streets of the city. Newspapers, magazines and television feature big headlines describing the event and glorifying the holiday kingdom. They all report that the city is being shaken by winds of madness, that licence and inversions of every variety (...) are rampant, that the leveling of individuals and the abolition of social distances illustrate the resolutions of conflicts in a collective dream of joy and happiness…. (shrink)

\noindent\textbf{Introduction} Online interventions hold great potential for Therapeutic Change Process Research (TCPR), a field that aims to relate in-therapeutic change processes to the outcomes of interventions. Online a client is treated essentially through the language their counsellor uses, therefore the verbal interaction contains many important ingredients that bring about change. TCPR faces two challenges: how to derive meaningful change processes from texts, and secondly, how to assess these complex, varied and multi-layered processes? We advocate the use text mining and multi- (...) class='Hi'>level models (MLMs): the former offers tools and methods to discovers patterns in texts; the latter can analyse these change processes as outcomes that vary at multiple levels. \noindent\textbf{Method} We (re-)used the data from \cite{Lamers2015} because it includes outcomes and the complete online intervention for clients with mild depressive symptoms. We used text mining to obtain basic text-variables from e-mails, that we analysed through MLMs. \noindent\textbf{Results} We found that we could relate outcomes of interventions to variables containing text-information. We conclude that we can indeed bridge text mining and MLMs for TCPR as it was possible to relate text-information (obtained through text mining) to multi-levelled TCPR outcomes (using a MLM). \noindent\textbf{Discussion} Text mining can be helpful to obtain change processes, which is also the main challenge for TCPR. We showed how MLMs and text mining can be combined, but our proposition leaves open how to obtain the most relevant textual operationalization of TCPR concepts. That requires interdisciplinary collaboration and discussion. The future does look bright: based on our proof-of-concept study we conclude that MLMs and text mining can indeed advance TCPR. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 70-75. cartography of ghosts . . . And as a way to talk . . . of temporality the topography of imagination, this body whose dirty entry into the articulation of history as rapturous becoming & unbecoming, greeted with violence, i take permission to extend this grace —Akilah Oliver from “An Arriving Guard of Angels Thusly Coming To Greet” Our disappearance is already here. —Jacques Derrida, 117 I wrestled with death as a threshold, an aporia, a bandit, (...) a part of life. —Akilah Oliver Moraine in geological lingo is that which is left behind. Moraine- a euphemism for the de-stabilizing referent of the writer-ly body as a “troubled and troubling landscape marked by cultural and historical signifiers, the body as flesh memory [...] the body as transitory” (Oliver, Author Statement). Moraine— a geological metaphor of the poet as a holder of memory, as an accumulation of rocks and debris carried along the edge, terminal, dropped at the foot of language (in language). “Flesh Memory” according to Akilah Oliver is "that which my body recalls [...] everything has to do with the task of remembrance and its narrative reinvention [...] I was always translating an idea of the world as it presented itself at any given time. To write was a choice about how to be seen, how to enter the world as translator, actor, participant, in the dialogues that apparently made the real 'real'" (Levitsky). Flesh. Memory. The stuff some poems are made from. The stuff that gets abandoned, gleaned, and picked up by more flesh and memory. "My body, my life has always felt like a kaleidoscopic rip in the dominant fabric [...] has always been a dialogue with the impossible and the apparent” (Levitsky). The impossible-body or poet's body anticipates and performs (through language) an irretrievable death. IN APORIA I realized everything I must have been doing must have been Death. It was Christmas or Labor Day—a holiday—and every time you turned on the radio they said something like ‘four million’ or ‘going to die’.” — Andy Warhol I’m trying on egos, [a justification for the planet’s continuance]. Oh hello transgressor, you’ve come to collect utilitarian debts, humbling narrative space. Give me condition and wheatgrass, I his body disintegrating. I his body is ossification. Death my habit radius, yeah yeah. I his body can’t refuse this summons. I can’t get out this fucking room. Tell me something different about torture dear Trickster. Tell me about the lightness my mother told me to pick the one i love the best how it signals everything I ever wish to believe true just holy on my ship. I jump all over this house. this is it [what I thought is thought only, nothing more deceptive than]: I his body keeps thinking someone will come along, touch me. As like human or lima bean. I’m cradling you to my breast, you are looking out. A little wooden lion you & Peter carve on Bluff Street is quieting across your cheekbone. Not at all like the kind of terror found in sleep, on trembling grounds. It is yesterday now. I have not had a chance to dance in this century. Tonight I shall kill someone, a condition to remember Sunday morning. To think of lives as repetitions [rather than singular serial incarnations]. To understand your death is as exacerbating as trying to figure out why as schoolchildren in mid-nineteen-sixties Southern California we performed reflexive motions: cutting out lace snowflakes, reading Dick and Jane search for their missing mittens, imagining snow. Disintegrat ing . The -ing gerund catapults from the non-finite verb into past, present, future. The -ing as a tail pinned to death, a dog spinning to bite and never fully reaching itself, always shy of the end, circumreferential; a double copulative: deathing. Possessively AO calls it “habit radius” (a virtual fetish attribute) or an inescapable death presence that “confronts us with the paradox of an unattainable object [...] through it’s being unattainable” (Agamben, 27). A flirtation or dialogue with an unknowable thing and aporia utilized as investigative instrument to engage (death) while (in Southern California) we “perform reflexive motions,” cut lace snowflakes, imagine snow, and pay rent like “yeah, yeah” what else is new. And this too, fiction. The book I wish to right. The restored fallen, heroic. Did you expect a different grace from the world? Or upon exit? I’m working on “tough.” They think I am already. All ready. Who is the dead person? Is "I'm sorry" real to a dead person? Browning grass. My hands on this table. A contentious century. A place to pay rent. Redemptive moments. Am I now the dead person? Dead person, dead person, will you partake in my persimmon feast? The body inside the body astounds, confesses sins of the funhouse. I too have admired the people of this planet. Their frilly, orderly intellects. The use they’ve made of cardamom, radiation as well. How they’ve pasteurized milk, loaned surnames to stars, captured tribes, diseases, streets, and ideas too. The living-body as archive: is it possible to experience the living-body as archive without a (kind of) death? Sifting the rubble, rummaging through hoarded debris, skin sheds, memory-napping, and re-awoken (in flesh and) on terrain. “An investigative poetics seeks to unravel staid communities of thought and grasp at what might always be just beyond reach; a poetics of inquiry that lies between language as meaning, and language as rapturous entry into the world of posited ideas and idealism”( Levitsky). Something snaps. Lights blow out prior to embarking upon an investigative poetics. It begins with a question (often a sexy aporia) that leads to openings. "Every politics of memory [...] implies an intervention of the state. It's a state that legislates and acts with regard to the nonfinite mass of materials to be stored, materials which must be collected, preserved” (Derrida & Stiegler, 62). It seems poetic investigation already contains the potentiality of an (invisible) archive if the writer is “always writing” especially when not. Here’s my stupid digital romantic inclination: the living-body (of a poet) is a self-sustaining archive of non-finite memories. But not even I really believe that. AO innovated and sculpted an investigative poetic praxis. In a conversation with poet Rachel Levitsky, poetic-voice is viewed not as a precious identifier, but as a means to think through/about form, concluding that form is linked to framing. While poetic-voice may have tendency to precede form, it also erupts as a result of framing techniques. “They are frames that hold the shape of thinking (which is also to say of imagining) [...].”7 This reminds me of my rabbit who symmetrically chewed the corners of his hutch, which makes me wonder if it’s an expression of the shape of some animal anxiety tick I won’t ever have access to. Beyond the form/frame, death is an unoriginal yet unique limit; death is a damn deathless thing. It functions as a source of poetic investigation; that thing always “just beyond reach.” And how is death not a fetish (in this case an obsessive reverence for something non-material)? “Insofar as it [death] is a presence, a fetish [...] it is in fact something concrete and tangible; but insofar as it is the presence of an absence, it is, at the same time, immaterial and intangible, because it alludes continuously beyond itself to something that can never really be possessed [...] The fetish is [...] a sign of an absence, it is not an unrepeatable unique object; on the contrary, it is something infinitely capable of substitution, without any successive incarnations ever succeeding in exhausting the nullity of which it is the symbol” (Agamben, 33). AO utilized absence (the absent body [catapulted by the death of a beloved]) as an apparatus to investigate. In the process of conversing with absence or that which is absent, the absent body is affectionately objectified, incessantly summonsed back to a place of recognition, of objects, a desire for the absent body to remain intact while exiting the structural limits of grammar and syntax by moving into chant forms “to say what cannot be said” (Levitsky). from AN ARRIVING GUARD OF ANGELS THUSLY COMING TO GREET dear oluchi- the light is blinking rapidly on the black boxy machine. your room seems bigger than before and i am still planning to read some of those robert jordan books of yours. yesterday at the used bookstore where i was browsing the mysteries to “stall reality” (they are really not mysteries at all, they just employ death as the plot mistress but are unable to grasp its mystery at all)—well the point is, things were calm down here for a while and the world was little. i want to be big like you. or i want you not vast, not dead, not gone, but human small and here. i am so selfish. that is what i really want. to see you again. to oil your scalp. to hear you walk in the door, say ma i’m home . give me a chance to say welcome home son. or when leaving, don’t forget your hat . what do you wear out there? i wish you could have taken your new shoes with you. i’m so proud of you. i’m sorry for the way you died. i miss you all the time. even before, i missed you. out there, one time, some different men said: “shake for me girl, i wanna be your backdoor man.” who dat you love. 5/18/03 A letter-poem in sixteen lines “dear oluchi-” is safe-housed in epistolary form. Poetic voice is rendered as internal thought meanderings, a not-so-much confession, private/(pillow?) talk in the desire to be heard/witnessed by the referent and reader with an intent to absolve. The diminutive “i” bears a relation to poet Fanny Howe’s “little g God” in that “One of the (many) things I like about little g God is that you can have a vodka tonic while you talk to little g God, sing along to Bowie’s “I’m Afraid Of Americans,” and hum Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” though maybe not all at the same time” (Oliver, 2009). Towards the middle of the poem AO is at a used bookstore and remarks on the funny employment of death as a ‘plot mistress’ that ‘they’ (the dubious employed mystery authors) are ‘unable to grasp’, thereby giving death a mouthpiece, a modeling job, something to do to pass the time. from THE VISIBLE UNSEEN When I first saw graffiti, I recognized in it an ugly aesthetic, a dialectics of violence, a distortion of limbs, a hieroglyph. It was only later when I read the names of the dead that I then saw the path of ghosts charted there; its narrative of loss for the visible unseen whose place in history has been fictionalized and rendered unseen under the totalizing glare of history. Inscriptions, traces, specters. Graffiti begs a public face just as ghosts require non-ghosts (humans) to sense them. The “visible unseen” is a game of hide-and-seek between public viewer and graffiti-inscriber, an ephemeral-violent aesthetic on an ephemeral-policed canvas. Graffiti-inscribers already submit to being forgotten, expect to be washed away; perhaps it’s a holy urban mandala created by gangster-type monks without Buddhism. [...] in its refusal to disappear it forces a discourse in the public imagination we are forced to see what we would rather not, to make sense of an encoded language that we cannot read on the level of meaning. it irritates, forces its agency on us, speaks outside and beyond semiotic reach. An epic font-size pervading the public’s imagination, illegible, I could just close my eyes, remain passive, drive past, abandon it beyond reach, push it further away beyond death walls. In Barcelona I watched a clean up crew wash walls with an awesome water hose but I was more intrigued by their bodies; not a distortion of limbs, not hieroglyph but also not entirely legible; the laboring body permanently erasing specters of the city, and of course they knew it was also an invitation for the ghosts to return. Graffiti is death’s little sister, is also an aporia. [...] Graffiti (fr GK -graph(os), something drawn or written, to diagram or chart) attempts to stage the impossible: to erase the essence of its own subjectivity. Graffiti is a cartography of ghosts, a mapping of elegiac rapture (the transporting of a person from one place to another, as in heaven) and rupture (the state of being broken open.) Dwelling is a fiction stasis. [...] The notion of the past as being something done with, a look-back event, inhibits the possibility of reading graffiti as rapture, as rupture. If graffiti posits history as always in the process of becoming undone. [...] Because what is the body, if not also a complex temple, an unstable site through which to negotiate subjects, materiality, economies, gods, and modes of representations? The site where we are all already belated. Graphein meaning “to write.” “Derrida says every archive makes a law, and the law of genre is its own rupture” (Bloch, 39). However, graffiti is an (non/anti)-archive of erasure due to (the politics of) washing out its subjectivity, which only adds onto (or is symptomatic of) its character. The inhibition of “reading graffiti as rapture, as rupture” is partly due to it being a “look-back” event in that it’s process involves scratching through layers to reveal previous specters underneath. Graffiti (as an ancient genre) has always been a thing of ‘becoming undone’, and therefore ‘belated and always in arrival’ (Levitsky). It’s a Dionysian activity done at night with it’s back turned toward us. "The specter [...] is of the visible, but of the invisible visible, it is the visibility of a body which is not present in flesh and blood [...] appearing for vision, to the brightness of day [...] something becomes almost visible which is visible only insofar as it is not visible in flesh and blood. It is a night visibility. As soon as there is a technology of the image, visibility brings night. It incarnates in a night body, it radiates in a night light" (Derrida & Stiegler, 115). (shrink)

This paper critically reviews and discusses the concept of organizational virtuousness as presented in positive organizational scholarship. It identifies Kim S. Cameron, David S. Bright, and Arran Caza as the most influential researchers within this field and portrays commonalities, differences, and inconsistencies among the various notions of organizational virtuousness offered in positive organizational literature throughout the last 15 years. While the commonalities refer to attributes, levels of analyses, outcomes, and methodology, the variances concern the locus of residence, the priority of (...) outcomes, indicators, supporting features and the virtues included in positive organizational virtuousness. The analysis further discusses the strengths and weaknesses of these differences and stresses the challenges which the POS movement needs to face in order to clarify its definition of organizational virtuousness and, maybe, converge on one unified meaning. Finally, these challenges are summarized and linked to future research proposals which offer potential ideas on how to further develop the concept of positive organizational virtuousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for AquinasR. E. HouserI expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. Then his successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.—Francis Cardinal George (2010)Here I propose to (...) present a feature of the ethics of Thomas Aquinas, his ethical doctrine of virtue, concentrating on the four cardinal virtues—justice, prudence or good practical judgment, courage, and temperance. Plato first selected them as the four premier virtues, but they go back at least to Homer, for whom wily Odysseus exemplified prudence, warlike Achilles courage, old Nestor justice, Penelope and Telemachus, Odysseus' wife and son, temperance. And I offer them as central to living the morally good life required to "rebuild civilization" in an America that so fair and judicious a man as Cardinal George could call a "ruined society." To see the need for Thomas's solution, we must begin with the problem. Now, all societies depend upon the deep and fundamental ideas of the most important thinkers, prophets and sages, saints, and yes, even philosophers. Their ideas "trickle down" to influence regular folk, like you and me, those who whose hard work actually makes a society thrive, or die. And when those fundamental ideas change, the moral principles of those who embrace those ideas change, and consequently their actions change, and as a result the wider society in which they live changes, for better or worse. Such effects can now be felt across America [End Page 135] by all; but most of us are unaware of the primary intellectual agents of these changes, since they operate at the level of fundamental ideas, not politics or business or day-to-day life. And often their originators have died before the ideas reach full cultural force. So, ignorance of history makes it difficult to deal with present problems caused by those ideas.My first conclusion will be that a major cause of the current coarsening of our culture is the group of ideas of the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, even though most Americans have never heard of him, and most of those who recognize his name have not read his works carefully enough to see the connection. Why Sartre? In the honors program at my university, I had a bright young lady of Muslim heritage who had gone to a lycée, one of France's elite classical secondary schools. "Did you read the classics?" "Yes." Expecting Montaigne or Pascal, I asked, "Who?" Her answer: "Sartre." So let us begin with the theory and practice of Sartre and his long-time lover Simone Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex was an intellectual spark for the women's liberation movement. Then we turn to some real-life examples of Sartrean influence on ourselves and American culture. Finally, for the best remedy for non-Christian and Christian alike, I recommend Aquinas's doctrine of virtue, when taken in its full scope.Sartre's Ethics of Absolute FreedomIn 1946, the year I was born, Sartre gave a lecture to a meeting of French librarians, which became his most popular book, Existentialism is a Humanism. There he laid out the core of his thought about God, humans, and their ethical behavior. Here I arrange his main ideas in an order that facilitates comparison with Aquinas, beginning with his view of human ontology and proceeding to its impact on the four cardinal virtues.Human OntologySartre turned his back on the traditional metaphysical view that every creature is an individual substance defined by a nature or essence it has in common with all other things of that type. In his "first principle of existentialism," Sartre skips over other animate things, plants and animals, and compares humans to inanimate objects:Let us consider... a book or a paper-cutter: here is an object made by an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept.... One cannot postulate a man who makes a paper-cutter but does not know what it is... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 44, no. 2. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 491 Jennifer Anne Moses The Teacher It didn’t start percolating out until years—decades—later, and by that time even the youngest of what we’d soon be calling “the victims ” were in their early fifties, with husbands and children and grandchildren of their own, or not, with houses, careers, garages stuffed to the gills with lifetimes’ worth of patio (...) furniture and forgotten Halloween costumes and broken lamps and tools. Someone saw someone who knew someone, who’d remembered someone, and again the stories were abroad, the whisperings, only this time it was with heavy sighs of regret and anxious handwringing: How could we not have known better? How could our parents not have known? And if they, the parents, had known—and surely some of them had—they were too busy themselves, and perhaps too ashamed, too abashed to see it for what it was, and after all, busy and perplexed with their own lives, their own divorces or philandering husbands or careers that felt like prison, with alcoholism and dying parents, with inheritances and bright futures withered to nothing. All those bright promises of their bright and perfect childhoods curling like so many brown November leaves. His name was Mr. Bryce—Evan Bryce, as we later came to call him—and he was among the most popular, perhaps the most popular, of the upper-school teachers, with a yearly following of students lucky enough not only to have been enrolled in one of his classes, but allowed, as if by virtue of their own charmed stars, their own charming uniqueness, to lean against his desk during free time, or joke around with him as he walked, his battered book bag in hand, toward the lunchroom. He 492 Jennifer Anne Moses taught history and geography; his classroom was the first on the left as you rounded the corner from the art room to the open-air corridor that the upper school classrooms abutted. Beyond that strip of covered poured white concrete was a kind of rough lawn, made patchy by years of boys tackling each other there or throwing a Frisbee around, and beyond that, on the other side of a narrow gravel road used only, as far as we could tell, by the school’s groundskeepers whose names, despite their ubiquitous presence, we didn’t know, was the first of the playing fields, used for hockey and soccer. Beyond the playing field was a covered sports arena with a huge swooping roof like the wings of a swan, and beyond that, hills covered with mowed green grass—perfect for tumbling down on bright spring days—and others still wooded, watered with streams and crisscrossed with trails. We knew the trails of course— some of our natural science classes took place in the woods—and we knew each of the hills and fields as well, each tree, each row of boxwoods or pines, until finally, out there, beyond the school grounds, was where the residents of the town lived in red-brick development houses of two and sometimes one-and-a-half floors, in modified colonials and California-style split-levels, each on its own small patch of lawn, and a garage. We felt sorry for the people who lived in those developments (we always called them developments, never neighborhoods, which is where we lived), but we rarely wondered what their lives might be like, or where their children, if they had them, might go to school. Our houses weren’t like that, of course. Susie Bluestone’s house was old, tall and thin, in a neighborhood of other old, tall, thin houses, with Oriental carpets running up the stairways, and a laundry shoot that the children were forbidden to play in and played in anyway. My best friend Nan Jones lived in a farmhouse on the top of a hill and wasn’t allowed to use the guestroom bathroom, even though her room was right next to it; her mother kept horses and her father had once been some kind of fencing champion. There were black-and-white pictures of him, in black frames, on the walls... (shrink)

Humans have been exploring colors since ancient times, but relatively complete color systems appeared one after another in the twentieth century. Even without language and other information exchanges, colors can still convey information and stimulate emotions. Therefore, color can have both physical and psychological effects on people. In this context, this paper studies the visual representation of painting colors based on psychological factors. The article studies the theory of personality traits and introduces the related content of visual psychology. To explore (...) the relationship between each variable and color psychology and the visual representation of painting colors, a binary logistic regression analysis is performed. The colors in the post-impressionist paintings of Van Gogh and Gauguin is contrasted, and experiments on psychological factors and color research is conducted. The factors that affect the color tone of the picture and the influence of psychological factors on the judgment of color brightness are investigated. Finally, the correlation analysis of personality trait dimension and irrational behavior is carried out. The experimental results of the article show that after the analysis of variance, the significance levels of regression model 1 and model 2 both reach 0.000, and the adjusted R squares are 0.319 and 0.356, respectively. In this study, regression model 2 was selected as the final model. According to Model 2, the standardized regression coefficients of agreeableness and neuroticism are 0.438 and -0.251, respectively, and the significance of the regression coefficients are 0.000 and 0.021, respectively. The research on the visual performance of painting colors based on psychological factors has been well completed. (shrink)

: According to a consensus of psycho-physiological and philosophical theories, color sensations (or qualia) are generated in a cerebral "space" fed from photon-photoreceptor interaction (producing "metamers") in the retina of the eye. The resulting "space" has three dimensions: hue (or chroma), saturation (or "purity"), and brightness (lightness, value or intensity) and (in some versions) is further structured by primitive or landmark "colors"—usually four, or six (when white and black are added to red, yellow, green and blue). It has also (...) been proposed that there are eleven semantic universals—labeling the previous six plus the "intermediaries" of orange, pink, brown, purple, and gray. There are many versions of this consensus, but they all aim to provide ontological, epistemological and semantic blueprints for the brute fact of the reality of color ordained by Nature (evolution). In contrast to this consensus, we have argued that "seeing color" is not a matter of light waves impacting on our eyes, producing sensations to be categorized and labeled in the "color space" in the brain. While electrochemical events may unproblematically be regarded as the causal precondition for seeing color, the reception of sensations in "the color space" as semantically labeled natural categories, kinds, or information, is a "just so" story: it is Wittgenstein's beetle in a box. In contrast we consider that the authority of this consensus might better be regarded not as the result of the truth-tracking of nature, but as the sociohistorical outcome of philosophical presuppositions, scientific theories, experimental practices, technological apparatus, and their feed forward into the lifeworld. The question we shall therefore explore is whether, or to what extent, we ourselves are changed, as the conditions of production of color science change. Thus we are doing a kind of anthropology at two levels: of color science itself (and its effect on our own lifeworld), and of those studied by the "anthropology of color". As befits this stance we are agnostic about the theoretical entities of color science (cf. van Fraassen 2001), and within this new context, we propose to cross-cut object-and-subject, organism-and-environment (the bedrock of color science) in socio-historical ways. Our approach is in part inspired by, but not the same as, that of Gibson, in that we wish to pursue the notion of "social affordances" (Burmudez 1995). We suggest that color has become a naturalization through science-based technologies, which, through praxes and materializations, have become the perceptual and cultural entities that structure experience and understanding in the lifeworld. It is this naturalization that we shall refer to and characterize as "the historically inflected exosomatic organ". Consequently we shall explore the historical ontology of "color" without assuming an underlying biological constant (Dupré 2001). In part 1 we show the flimsiness of the evidence for the three dimensions of color, borrowed from physics, and fine-tuned to a "standard observer" (a "spectral creature" with a phenomenal "color space"). In part 2 we address the structuring of hue through the development of color circles and color spaces. This is followed by a review of the evidence for unique hues. Again the evidence is shown to be flimsy. We then show that an isolated domain of color is a particular kind of model, not a "natural given". In part 3, after reviewing what is referred to as "the isomorphy thesis," we discuss the exemplary case study of Berlin and Kay (1969). This illustrates the pull of stadial models presupposed by their evolutionary theory of color language. The Berlin and Kay paradigm proposes that American English color terms are incorrigible and can provide the universal metalanguage. We conclude by presenting an alternative account, namely that we ourselves are changed as the conditions of production of color science change. We argue that it is better to regard "seeing-color" as a historically inflected exosomatic organ that provides social affordances for those trained to grasp them. (shrink)

Nowadays, some of the things that are ḥarāmto be consumed, such as lard, its derivatives and alcohol are used as additives or additional nutrients in products, namely food and cosmetics that people use widely in daily life. The provision of these products, which are accepted as najis(impure), stands in front of us as one of the actual fiqh problems. In order to produce an accurate solution in this regard, the reaction condition and the level of dissolution in the product (...) must be determined. In this article, the level of mutanajjis (contamination) of the products that najisthings transforms through istihlāk(physical change) and the provision (hukm) of benefits from such things are examined. The research covers the discussions in the classical period regarding the provision of things, which included najāsah(impurity) and underwent physical change as well as the evaluations of contemporary Islamic jurists. The aim of this study is to contribute to the researches, which will be carried out to determine the provision of products containing ḥarāmelements. As the production is carried out on an industrial scale, such studies are important today in terms of the establishment of “ḥalāl” sensitivity and meeting the needs of people who have this sensitivity to learn the provision of such products.SummaryNowadays, in various sectors, especially food, feed, cosmetics, health and clothing industries, for the purposes of reducing the cost of the product, extending the shelf life, making the product more attractive in terms of color, consistency and aroma, many substances are added to the main material. The fact that some of the substances added are ḥarām(forbidden) such as blood, lard, pest, and ethyl alcohol require the subject to be considered in terms of fiqh. It is important to clarify two issues in order to reach a healthy result in the studies aiming to determine the provision (ḥukm) of the products that are mixed with najis(impure) substance. One of them is the determination of the level of istihlāk(physical change) in the mutanajjis(contamination) things. The second is the determination of the basic principles to be used in determining the provision of the things which najāsahhas undergone the physical change in. In this study conducted within the scope of this purpose and method, the hadīthsrelated to two different issues that are directly related to the subject have been evaluated as the basic textual basis. These are narrations about the cleanliness and pollution status of the contaminated water, and about the availability of fats and oils, which the dead mouse is seen in. It is stated in the narrations about the condition of the water that najāsah involved in, the water will not be najisunless its smell, taste or color changes because of the falling najāsahin it. According to this hadith, which shows the change of description as a measure, the fuqahāʾ(jurists) came to a consensus on the fact that water, which one of its characteristics changed because of najāsahwould be considered mutanajjis. When thishadithis evaluated together with the narrations that indicate the small amount of water is contaminated because of najāsah, in fact, it is seen that while the water is considered to be clean-najis, the situation of the water being affected from najāsahis taken as the basis and aimed to protect human health against the dirty water. At the time when there were not any one of today's microbiological analysis laboratories, the way to understand the pollution status of water was to see if the smell, color and taste of the water changed while taking the amount of the water into account. Since the rate of foreign matter in the water, the level of pollution and the health status of the water can be determined correctly in the laboratory today, operating the modern techniques as well as the measure of qualification change will be appropriate for the purpose of the hadīthsmentioned.In the narrations about the state of the fat, which the dead mouse is found in, it is seen that different operations are requested depending on the fat being solid or liquid. If the fat is liquid, different instructions have been made such as its being poured or used in lighting. Mālikīs, Shāfiʿīs, and Ḥanbalīfaqīhs (jurists) of the first period have ruled that liquids such as vinegar, milk and honey are mutanajjis, whether they are in little quantity or not, and whether their descriptions are changed or not, claiming that the amount of oil and the degree of impact on the dirt is not declared in the hadīths. The Ḥanafīs adopted the provision in the narrations mentioned pointing to a small amount of liquid oil and considered the measure of description change for a large amount of liquid valid. Ẓāhirīs, Ibn Taymiyyah and some of the faqīhsargued that the liquids which one cannot feel the color, taste or smell of the najāsahin are clean, regardless of the amount.These three approaches are open to criticism because the first is limited only to the literal meaning in the narrations and neglects the aims, and the second ignored the non-water fluids’ ability to hide the descriptions of the substance added to them, and the third evaluates the mustahlak substance (that has undergone a physical change) as if it had been istiḥālah(chemically changed). When the narrations related to the subject are examined, it is understood that while the usage of the liquid fat which the dead mouse was seen in as the food was prohibited, in fact, it was based on the foresight that all of the fat is affected by the mouse. It appears to have been ruled out that only the part polluted is the part affected by thenajāsahfor the fact that after the removal of the mouse and the environment from the solid oil exposed to the same contamination, the rest is allowed to be eaten. According to this, it is possible to say that the measure of mutanajjisin the things that affected by najāsahis in the degree of spreading of najāsah.Nowadays it is possible to determine the presence of najisthings in the main material, which is used as additive or addition, by the level of effect of these substances in the product, as well as by the assays. If the najissubstances used for purposes such as brightness, taste, consistency and extending shelf life, perform the expected functions, it means that they protect their presence in the product effectively. In fact, it should be acknowledged that these substances continue to exist effectively in the product, if they perform the targeted function without any chemical change, even the ratio in the product is low or the color, taste and odor are eliminated during the mixture.The faqīhswhile differed in opinion about the mutanajjisof things that the najāsahhad undergone physical changes in, they, in concert, considered the substances, which were not cleaned or could not be cleansed from which that they accept as mutanajjisby their own measurements, khabīs(disgusting), and have accepted the people’s eating of them as ḥarām. Likewise, they did not allow such things to be used in any way touching the body, clothing and containers. They have evaluated the narrations, which requires the spilth the fat that the dead mouse was seen in, as the main basis in this issue. On the other hand, about the use of the mutanajjisthings outside the human consumption area and in such a way that the clothes and body would not be contaminated; the majority of thefaqīhs preferred the mubāḥ provision. They have put forth the narrations as the basis that recommends the usage of the liquid oil in which the mouse was fallen in lighting. These approaches of the fuqahāʾabout the effect of the istihlākon the provision of making use of the things that affected by najāsahare of worth as the basic principles on the subject. It is possible to say that it is not permissible to consume food products containing lard or pork gelatin, and the chicken that has been torn apart while being left in hot water in order to pluck its feathers, and the egg which becomes mutanajjisfor it is boiled up with thenajāsahon, and the using of cosmetic products containing lard when today’s industrial products are evaluated in accordance with these principles. If taken the general opinion that defends that the ethyl alcohol is najis as the basis, the carbonated soft drinks, which are added to alcohol, can also be evaluated in this context. (shrink)

Based on sensory integration theory, six fabric samples containing tactile and visual stimuli were selected using the sensory perceptions of designers and combined with balls. Experiments involving these toys were implemented with 15 families with preschool-aged high-functioning autistic children. The results showed that loose sequin , which possessed equal tactile and visual intensities, was strongly correlated with frequent smiling/laughing and high enjoyment levels. The fabric provided a loose tactile sensation regarding surface interweave uniformity and a bright visual sensation regarding visually (...) perceived luster; suede exhibited a greater tactile intensity than visual intensity and was correlated with eye contact and activity response. This fabric possessed a smooth visual sensation regarding visually perceived smoothness; and loose sequin , which possessed equal tactile and visual intensities, was highly correlated with finger pointing and initiation. This fabric offered a thin tactile sensation regarding surface interweave thickness and a bright visual sensation regarding visually perceived luster. We suggest applying fabrics to composite toys. Specifically, loose sequin can be used initially to encourage autistic children to interact; subsequently, suede can enable sustained parent-child interaction. The experimental results provide a reference for establishing an innovative toy-design method for autistic children. Keywords: autism; sensory integration theory; parent-child interaction; toys. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Where the Journey BeginsJapmehr SandhuAs a fresh medical graduate in India, you are first required to go through a year of mandatory internship at your parent institute. Mine happened to start in 2021 at a government hospital in Northern India. There were a series of coincidences at that moment.To begin with, I started as a physician-in-training in the middle of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic whilst staying (...) with my 70-year-old grandmother. This coincided with my hospital being declared a "COVID only" hospital and requiring the transferring of all non-COVID patients—critical or non. The country was seeing a shortage of oxygen supplies in private hospitals and even saw incidents of oxygen cylinders being looted. For my first rotation, I was coincidently allotted the COVID ward, which meant that my very first patient was a COVID patient. This start also coincided with all the second-year residents coming back after recovering from COVID—the confidence and thrill of fresh immunity translated into a shirking of any PPE equipment. With these fortuitous series of occurrences, combined with the fact that I had not seen a single clinical rotation in 2020, being 'overwhelmed' would be an understatement.This story is about my first shift. The sentinel thing that struck me upon entry was how it seemed I had automatically jumped up an imaginary level across professional hierarchies. Being offered a chair and a cup of tea seemed so surreal, but I welcomed it. It was also a subtle way of making me realise the change in my prefix and the duties that come with it. Armed with this greater power and greater responsibility, I embraced my first job of getting the whole ward's vitals down. Following this, I was told to focus on the patients on ventilators since the hospital did not have enough monitors for all the patients at the moment.Feeling like a novice doesn't even begin to describe how I felt being the only professional in the ward wearing a bright white PPE kit, resembling a half-filled balloon in the middle of the April heat, walking down the halls making "swish-swish" sounds. I had never seen a working ventilator till that point. I had never led interactions with patient families, and I had certainly not been in a position where they solely looked up to me for information about their loved ones' well-being since the ward did not allow visitors. This sense of responsibility made my tongue feel heavier than usual—like any and all sounds and words made by it would acutely affect the mood and behaviour of many. [End Page E10]One of the people accompanying a patient on a ventilator asked to have us check on their patient. I was sent for the same. The patient was in the same position as the morning, the ventilator continuing its job—obvious from the way the air was rushing through the pipes and making his chest inflate and deflate. The patient, a thin man in his 30s, was sickly and cachexic—I started with the vitals. However, the BP monitor couldn't measure the same, so I started using a manual sphygmomanometer. I couldn't locate the radial pulse and moved to the carotid, but with the tracheal movement by air being pushed in and out by the ventilator, it was hard to ascertain any other pulsation in the area. I decided to call my senior after feeling the patient's hands and feet and finding them cold. When the resident arrived, he immediately concluded the patient had passed away and turned to me and said, "Why did it take you so long"? Followed by, "He was fine this morning. What happened"? He then just went back to the resident room and continued scrolling on his phone after sending a brief message to the hospital group, which read: "One from Ward 6".My first shift of 6 hours saw 17 deaths. After each death, there was a notification in the group and a continuation of the cycle. Apparently, these patients were too far along to be saved from a disease that did not... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Transformative Journey of TransplantationValen KeeferThe moisture from the ocean floated effortlessly through the air as it glided over the rocky cliff. The steady stream of mist covered my face and frizzy hair with beaded water droplets. I had been sitting on a bench alone for hours admiring the Northern California coast at a magnificent overlook featuring a bird’s-eye view of the endless sea and campground I called home (...) for the past month. The stunning mountain landscape behind me, the soothing colors of the coastal shrubbery, and the smell of eucalyptus made for a trifecta of surreal beauty. The ocean disappeared from my view and I became engulfed in the precipitation and felt like I was suspended in a cloud. I was soaking in every moment as it was the last day of my solo RV trip.The fog slowly separated and exposed bits and pieces of the ocean again and then a breathtaking rainbow came into sight. Each end appeared to be touching either side of the campground like it was giving it a hug. I was eye-level with the center and highest point of the rainbow, arching above our home on wheels. I stood on the bench with my arms wide open, embracing nature and the gift of life in all its glory. This moment would not have possessed such deep meaning if it wasn’t for the journey that came before it—the transformative journey of transplantation.Some may think of transplantation as a singular event when in reality, it’s a lifelong journey that can start with a diagnosis many years prior. My transplant journey began when I was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease (PKD) at 10-years-old. Being diagnosed with a hereditary disease that has deeply impacted multiple generations of our family and with no known treatment or cure was a lot to carry as a child.My youth was full of love from my parents and filled with illness and the limitations and long-term impacts of growing up with multiple chronic illnesses. My education on PKD was the brutal real-life experiences of enduring it firsthand—with no support groups, resources, or internet to seek answers. I always felt different during a time when you’d do anything to fit in. I couldn’t play sports and had to sit on the sidelines in gym class. I was often in the nurse’s office, hospital, or recovering from a surgery. I hid my scars and unattractive body while changing in gym class. Friendships were really hard. Relationships were even harder.Growing up with chronic illnesses takes away from the fun of dreaming. It’s like that bright future full of endless possibilities is blocked by a huge mountain you know you have to summit first with no supplies, no friends, and no paved path to follow.Complications from PKD followed me from high school right into college, when I spent almost a year in the hospital. Both of my kidneys were removed, I was on dialysis, had pancreatitis, received over 70 blood transfusions, survived an internal bleed, and was in dire need of a lifesaving kidney transplant.At 19-years-old, I was too sick to be placed on the transplant waiting list, but needed a kidney to survive. My parents were living at the Ronald McDonald House, wondering if they would be the next ones to lose their teenage daughter. A close family friend forever changed our lives when she restored my health by selflessly donating her kidney to me. While it was an arduous path to transplantation, in some ways, the journey was just beginning.Fifteen years following my kidney transplant and summiting what I thought was going to be the most challenging mountain of my health journey, I found myself back on death’s doorstep with another battle ahead. I was in need of a second miracle, this time a lifesaving liver transplant. It was PKD again. The bile ducts in my liver were so gnarly that they looked like limbs of an oak tree rather than the desired smooth straw-like appearance. Their malformations led to chronic liver infections and multiple sepsis... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:My Lost SurvivorVirginia HammondI can’t remember the exact words as I brought my 7–year–8–month–old daughter Ann to the university medical center late spring for a review of her brain surgery from March 1990, but the words were something like it was a remarkable 98% resection, then the team went on to say 75% was considered successful and they were surprised since the surgery was not done at a major (...) medical facility. I explained to the team we had three neurosurgeons in our town from major facilities out of state who were very well regarded so I opted to stay in town for her surgery, but valued the university medical center’s recommendation for radiation treatment. The next decision I had to make was where. I not only had to consider my daughter, but my toddler that I had to drag everywhere through all this as I had no family nearby to help me. I opted for a 75–mile drive.The radiation protocol was for eight weeks of hyperfractionated radiation. I would leave the house with the both kids by 7:30 a.m. and stay until 3:30 p.m. because there were two treatments a day around six hours apart. I had thoughts that I would be able to take the kids to the zoo or children’s museum in between treatments, but Ann was much too sick for that. We spent most of our day at the playroom in the cancer patient house next to the radiation facility. We eventually got a room at the cancer home.Even before the radiation therapy, Ann became sick and would wake up every morning vomiting very much like she would before the tumor resection. This vomiting went on for almost two years after her surgery and radiation. We were bounced around between doctors and specialist then finally a pediatric neurologist was concerned about how thin and frail she was and prescribed a medication that goes by the generic name Cyproheptadine hoping it would help her appetite. Within a couple of days, much to my surprise, the medicine stopped the morning vomiting and she began to eat and regain some strength as she approached the age of ten.Now that Ann was no longer showing the outward physical signs of being ill, her school didn’t think it was necessary to make accommodations for Special Education, or follow the recommendations made by a neuropsychologist’s report. I was told her educational performance was average for her age and grade level. The school did discover she could not hear in her left ear and sent home a note that demanded I seek medical attention. I explained to [End Page E4] them her doctors were well aware of her perforation in her ear and decided they wanted more time to pass from the brain surgery before performing ear surgery.There was one bright spot during her elementary school years. She had a teacher who went out of his way to make sure Ann was responding to what was being taught. Aware of her hearing deficit in her left ear and some of her cognitive deficits, he sat her in the classroom where she could hear at her best and placed her next to classmates who would not distract her. When she would forget to bring her homework home, he would stop by the house with it rather than write a disciplinary action against her. She responded so well to this teacher, she was one of a couple of students in her class that was sent to the countywide science competition. She thrived that year, but never again was she to have a professional teacher that made sure she got it!When Ann was 11, the ear doctor decided it was time for her left ear perforation to be repaired and that would restore her hearing in that ear. She had the surgery, but the hearing was never restored.Ann’s ability to learn was becoming more difficult. I pulled her out of traditional public school to home school her through public charter school. I wish I had another option as she didn’t always appreciate my... (shrink)

With the knowledge that team work is not always associated with high(er) performance, we draw from the Multi-Level Theory of Psychological Contracts, Person-Environment Fit Theory, and Optimal Distinctiveness Theory to study shared perceptions of psychological contract (PC) breach in relation to shared perceptions of complementary and supplementary fit to explain why some teams perform better than other teams. We collected three repeated survey measures in a sample of 128 respondents across 46 teams. After having made sure that we met (...) all statistical criteria, we aggregated our focal variables to the team-level and analysed our data by means of a longitudinal three-wave autoregressive moderated-mediation model in which each relationship was one-time lag apart. We found that shared perceptions of PC breach were directly negatively related to team output and negatively related to perceived team member effectiveness through a decrease in shared perceptions of supplementary fit. However, we also demonstrated a beneficial process in that shared perceptions of PC breach were positively related to shared perceptions of complementary fit, which in turn were positively related to team output. Moreover, best team output appeared in teams that could combine high shared perceptions of complementary fit with modest to high shared perceptions of supplementary fit. Overall, our findings seem to indicate that in terms of team output there may be a bright side to perceptions of PC breach and that perceived person-team fit may play an important role in this process. (shrink)

Learn to use the creative quality of natural lighting to create spectacular photos Lighting can be a challenge for professional and hobbyist photographers alike. Learning to work with natural light offers creative opportunities that can help you define your own personal photographic style as you create unique and memorable images. In this guide, Canon Explorer of Light Michele Celentano explores the possibilities and shows you how to use different types of natural light to best advantage. Covering techniques for working with (...) shadows, bright sunlight, candlelight, darkened areas, and many other challenges, the book also features stunning examples of Celentano's own work. You'll learn to choose the proper exposure to achieve creative effects in any situation. Using light effectively is a challenge as well as a creative opportunity for photographers; this guide shows how to use the many options offered by natural light Shows how to locate directional light, work with light from a window or doorway, and create "catch lights" in the eyes of the subject Each chapter discusses a particular type of natural light, the effect it creates, and how to use the appropriate camera specifications and metering options Explains how to work with a wide variety of lighting situations including varying degrees of sunlight, dimly lit areas, lamplight or candlelight, and more Illustrated with author Michele Celentano's own photos Natural Light Photography will help you achieve a new level of creative expression in your photographs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 571 Moving through Cancer: An Interview with Carol Collins Artist Carol Collins spoke with Feminist Studies editorial collective member Stephanie Gilmore about her experience of cancer, treatment, and recovery and how it gave rise to an art series that examines what nature means in the midst of unnatural treatments. SG: Carol, thank you for the opportunity to speak (...) with you about your artwork. Having just lost my sister to cancer, your work reminds me of much pain and loss, but also of love and the desire to survive. Before we discuss the work itself, I would like to hear about your journey through cancer, treatment, and recovery. CC: The breast cancer patient’s journey is complex and perilous. When I was healthy, I was ignorant about the magnitude of suffering many cancer patients undergo. And, although I am a private person, I’m now publicly sharing my cancer experience in order to be a voice for those who have suffered through similar treatments—and worse—and those who sadly are no longer with us to tell their story. Being bald and nauseated are not the most awful possible side effects of the treatments, although they are the most well known. Some women survive the cancer but can die from the treatments, or others suffer through the treatments and die anyway. Often, it seems many believe patients can overcome their 572 Carol Collins adversity solely with positive thinking and persistence. However, not discussing the array of physical and psychological damage that even those with good prognoses incur propagates ignorance about this malady. I hope that my artwork and story will promote a deeper understanding of a breast cancer patient’s plight and will encourage more support for research for individualized therapies and prevention. My cancer journey began when I received a breast cancer diagnosis in January 2014. Life just before that point was good; the future was bright. Tendon pain, caused by my flat feet and a lot of exercising, was my only known ailment. But one day a routine mammogram revealed three tumors in my right breast. The radiology oncologist said the masses were highly likely to be cancerous, so he immediately did painful core biopsies at the sites of my three tumors. The next day, it became clear that we needed to act quickly. The biopsy results revealed I had a very aggressive invasive breast cancer with estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors. Breast cancer in premenopausal women grows quickly due to the high level of hormones present. The oncologists and surgeons said I would, at a minimum, need a mastectomy and possibly lymph node resection, and they warned that I would likely need chemotherapy, which would destroy my eggs and ovaries. After learning of my limited options, I approved the removal of one breast and my sterilization. I knew I needed to think rationally and face the giant raven before me head on. However, I did not realize the magnitude and multitude of physical and psychological pains, illnesses, and losses that were soon to come. The first year of cancer treatments inflicted much physical pain. I received three extremely painful injections into my right breast with a radiolabeled colloid just prior to the mastectomy. The pain came from the injected dye, not from the needle. The modified radical mastectomy was more excruciatingly painful than I anticipated, even with painkillers and overnight hospitalization. Breast reconstruction was an option that added more pain and discomfort from weekly fillings of the installed “expander” and additional surgeries. Extreme pain after the mastectomy prevented me from lying down for months. Foolishly, I did not get an injection port installed in my chest. Instead, I endured numerous deep (and often unsuccessful) needle pricks into the seemingly few veins of my left arm (which still had its lymph nodes) that were appropriate for infusions over the period of a year. Shooting pains across my chest and arm were the norm. Carol Collins 573 In addition to the surgically induced physical pain, the chemotherapy quickly caused a myriad of undesirable physical side effects. It is scary to realize that the medical community does not often fully understand... (shrink)

White LEDs, which have been widely used in the urban street lighting, are increasingly applied to replace traditional HPS lamps with a lower CCT. Generally, studies on the CCT of street lighting focus on providing safe functional lighting for vehicle drivers. However, it is still unknown how the street light color can affect pedestrians’ perception and preferences with respect to lighting levels and ambient temperature.In this study, a wide range of CCTs was measured for urban street lighting in Beijing, China, (...) for example. And the transition from traditional HPS lamps to LEDs lacks a reference street lighting standard for CCT. The study aims to conduct a cross-sensory test to evaluate urban street lighting with multiple combinations of CCT values and illuminance levels according to pedestrians’ visual perception and psychological preferences.A total of 18 night street lighting scenes with six CCT values and three illuminance levels were first selected in Beijing city, and then HDR videos of these scenes were taken from the view of pedestrians to conduct psychological experiments in an indoor environment with three ambient temperatures. A total of 77 university students were invited to assess videos of the 18 lighting scenes in terms of seven factors, such as lighting brightness, color temperature sensation, light color preference, sense of safety, recognition, comfort, and overall preference. Several key findings were achieved as follows. The CCT of urban street lighting can have significant effects on the visual psychological perceptions of participants. There was a significant interaction between CCT, illuminance, and ambient temperature on the visual psychological performances of participants. The higher ambient temperature will deliver the higher level of overall preference for the street lighting with medium and high CCT, and the perception of warmer light color. There was a strong correlation found between participants’ light color preference, comfort, and overall preferences. (shrink)

The information received during work has led to set of the interesting, given reason and coherent remarks which are clearing up how cellular communication, long time existed separately from the Global Network, in a technological reality parallel to it, has turned to " the mobile Internet " on advantage, and became quintessence of human mobility as those in technological aspect. Important point of understanding of an event was the output from concrete market realities on a level of a philosophical (...) problematics, even the instruction of such output. Here again new formats of the communications brightly designate themselves as species of authority. First of all, the added value of services, additional to usual services of communication, proves in the form of special regulation of the social space, gravitating to various forms of the continuous control, over Z. Delez, alternative to disciplinary practice and the forms described by M. Fuko. Are also distinctly enough appreciable «dromocratical» aspects of wireless communications in P. Virilo's sense. All these aspects of management and compulsion are perfectly expressed in the form of extremely concrete technology, which is far not comprehended and not understood in it’s consequences. (shrink)

Following the pioneering studies of the receptive field (RF), the concept gained further significance for visual perception by the discovery of input effects from beyond the classical RF. These studies demonstrated that neuronal responses could be modulated by stimuli outside their RFs, consistent with the perception of induced brightness, color, orientation, and motion. Lesion scotomata are similarly modulated perceptually from the surround by RFs that have migrated from the interior to the outer edge of the scotoma and in this (...) way provide filling-in of the void. Large RFs are advantageous to this task. In higher visual areas, such as the middle temporal and inferotemporal lobe, RFs increase in size and lose most of their retinotopic organization while encoding increasingly complex features. Whereas lowerlevel RFs mediate perceptual filling-in, contour integration, and figure–ground segregation, RFs at higher levels serve the perception of grouping by common fate, biological motion, and other biologically relevant stimuli, such as faces. Studies in alert monkeys while freely viewing natural scenes showed that classical and nonclassical RFs cooperate in forming representations of the visual world. Today, our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the RF is undergoing a quantum leap. What had started out as a hierarchical feedforward concept for simple stimuli, such as spots, lines, and bars, now refers to mechanisms involving ascending, descending, and lateral signal flow. By extension of the bottom-up paradigm, RFs are nowadays understood as adaptive processors, enabling the predictive coding of complex scenes. Top-down effects guiding attention and tuned to task-relevant information complement the bottom-up analysis. (shrink)

There is no dispute over the existence of functions and processes that operate outside consciousness. No one knows what his or her liver is doing, and we all shed a tear when Lassie comes home, even though we know we are watching a movie with a dog who responds to off‐camera signals. Where matters become interesting (and contentious) is over such issues as whether unconscious processes are routinized and inflexible – in a word, stupid – or whether they can be (...) seen as sophisticated, flexible, and adaptive – in a word, intelligent. In the cognitive sciences, until recently, the former perspective dominated for reasons which are rooted not in any objective data base, but in philosophical considerations. The long‐standing presumption of a not‐very‐bright unconscious is, we suspect, the end product of a continuing adherence to Lockean and Cartesian epistemic traditions. While proponents of these two orientations didn't agree on much, they were of one mind with regard to the proposition that that which is mental is conscious. Contemporary psychologists and philosophers who feel comfortable with this position tend to view unconscious cognitive processes as low‐level, crude, primitively connectionistic, and rather stupid, since they equate sophisticated control operations with the functions of consciousness. (shrink)

Molecular interactions are at the origin of life. How molecules get at different locations in the cell and how they locate their partners is a major and partially unresolved question in biology that is paramount to signaling. Spatio‐temporal correlations of fluctuating fluorescently tagged molecules reveal how they move, interact, and bind in the different cellular compartments. Methods based on fluctuations represent a remarkable technical advancement in biological imaging. Here we discuss image analysis methods based on spatial and temporal correlation of (...) fluctuations, raster image correlation spectroscopy, number and brightness, and spatial cross‐correlations that give us information about how individual molecules move in cells and interact with partners at the single molecule level. These methods can be implemented with a standard laser scanning microscope and produce a cellular level spatio‐temporal map of molecular interactions. (shrink)

Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level and micro-level. We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay (...) satisfaction and quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness. Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index. In low GDP entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics. (shrink)

Revelation, or the view that the essence of phenomenal properties is presented to us, is as intuitively attractive as it is controversial. It is notably at the core of defences of anti-physicalism. I propose in this paper a new argument against Revelation. It is usually accepted that low-level sensory phenomenal properties, like phenomenal red, loudness or brightness, stand in relation of similarity and quantity. Furthermore, these similarity and quantitative relations are taken to be internal, that is, to be (...) fixed by what their relata are. I argue that, under some plausible additional premises, no account of what grounds these relations in the essence of their relata is consistent with Revelation, at least if we take common phenomenological descriptions for granted. As a result, the plausibility of Revelation is undermined. One might however resist this conclusion by weakening the epistemic relation postulated between subjects and their phenomenal properties. (shrink)

Praise be to Allah and peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah and his family and companions, and after: This research tagged with: "Family security is a legitimate purpose to achieve human security" aims to show the importance of family security, and how the Sharia paid great attention to it, and stressed the need to maintain it in all psychological, health, physical, economic and moral fields as the family is the first basic social unit and nucleus, which is (...) based on preserving it, the preservation of the human species, its security and stability, and thus the negligence of it is negligence of the human race and the human species as a whole. This research is supported by legal or Sharia ‘s texts that make it clear that achieving family security is a legitimate goal given great care by Islam, and there is no evidence of this clearer than the rotation of legal provisions either lawful or unlawful around the protection of the family: its religion, soul, mind, dignity and wealth, which preservation ot them represents the preservation of the highest levels of interests, and is called the five necessities. This research came after mentioning the legal texts supported by human studies and experiences as a source of knowledge that benefits the human race, and in support of what was stated in the legal texts of facts and results of interest that may increase the stability of the Muslim and his faith, and highlight the bright face of Sharia, away from other projects and trends that are imposed under the media noise and various pressures, despite the clarity of their destructive effects on the family and human society. The sufferings that were resulted of these devastating effects appered every where, that causes reluctance to show the truth and the beneficial and useful consequent of them, and therefore this research came as a contribution to the promotion and protection of family security as a legitimate purpose to achieve human security, where it included an introduction, seven investigations, results and conclusion. The first section included clarification of the truth of the purposes of Sharia, its sections and ranks, as the second section included confirmation that the role of women is large and important in the protection of family security and that their position in the family is responsible not hired, then the third and fourth sections indicated how Islam achieved health security and protected the family from physical and psychological diseases that may affect its members, then the fifth section showed how to achieve economic and living security, and the sixth section included a statement of how Islam achieved security for the family and protected it from extinction and weak reproduction, which endangers countries and the lack of renewal of generations resulting from the lack of births, while the seventh section dealt with the statement of how Islam achieved security for the family and protected it from crime that targets its foundation and entity. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and may Allah's prayers and peace be upon our Prophet Mohamed, his family and companions as a whole. (shrink)

The article focuses on Hryhorii Skovoroda’s philosophical dialogue dedicated to the nature of human and happiness as a bright example of a harmonious fusion of philosophical ideas and individual style. A comparative analysis based on a hermeneutic approach helped to assess the equivalency in representing the lexical, syntactical, and emotional levels of the reconstructed Ukrainian version of Skovoroda’s dialogue via English translation, and thus contribute to clarifying the reliable strategies of translating a chronologically remote text of philosophical discourse. The research (...) stresses the importance for a translator of philosophical works of Hryhorii Skovoroda to thoroughly consider the contextual meaning, inseparability of the concepts and style, and unique syntactic and emotive patterns of the source text conflating explicit and implicit semantics. In addition to deep understanding by translators of key philosophical terms, charged with contextual connotations, an equivalent translation of philosophic texts also demands sufficient knowledge of the related historical, cultural, and linguistic background to ensure a comprehensive perception of the intended senses and vectors of the mental activity by a reader. (shrink)

Depression is one of the most common psychological disorders and many people in the world suffer from this disorder. Every year, thousands of suicides occur because of depression. Whilst anxiety is considered a common phenomenon of our era, it has existed throughout human history. Nevertheless, there have always been signs of religion and religious beliefs in the study of human communities and the history of civilisations. Despite rapid advancements made in solving the physical problems of human beings, the science of (...) medicine has not taken an effective step toward solving humans' psychological issues, although they play a considerable role in the emergence of physical diseases. Religion can affect the mental health of individuals and society through various mechanisms. In general, the role of religion and religious beliefs on the health of the individual and society is very important. A great deal of peace of mind can be achieved based on faith and moral beliefs and practices. People with religious beliefs have an optimistic viewpoint towards life, and their religious beliefs turn a dark life into a bright one even when all hopes are lost in the battle of life. Given the importance of this issue, the present study aimed to evaluate the role of Islamic religious beliefs of Muslim students on depression during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Malaysia. A field study was performed on 3500 Muslim students of Kuala Lumpur in 2021 by simple random sampling method. Data were collected using standardised questionnaires, and data analysis was performed in SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). According to the results, people with a higher level of religious beliefs suffered less from depression, which confirmed the negative and significant relationship between Islamic religious beliefs and depression. According to the results of multiple regression analysis related to the components of the independent variable in SPSS, all components of Islamic beliefs had a significant role in reducing COVID-19-induced depression. Meanwhile, action required (t-value: 2.30; beta: 0.55) and religious activities (t-value: 2.24; beta: 0.54) had the most effect on reducing depression induced by COVID-19 disease. CONTRIBUTION: The findings of this study could be used to treat people's depression during the COVID-19 pandemic by taking their Islamic religious beliefs into account. (shrink)

"This is an exceedingly long short book, stretching at least fifty thousand years into the past and who knows how many into the future." So begins Visions of the Future, the prophetic new book by eminent economist Robert Heilbroner. Heilbroner's basic premise is stunning in its elegant simplicity. He contends that throughout all of human history, despite the huge gulf in social organization, technological development, and cultural achievement that divides us from the earliest known traces of homo sapiens, there have (...) really only been three distinct ways of looking at the future. During a period Heilbroner refers to simply as the Distant Past, stretching from prehistory to the appearance of modern nation-states in seventeenth century Europe, there was no notion of a future measurably and materially different from the present or the past. From the Stone Age to the Bronze, Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece and Rome, and throughout the Middle Ages, a continuum of cultures and civilizations shared one defining expectation--the absence of any expectation of material progress for the great masses of people. Heilbroner maintains that it was not until the first stirrings of the period he refers to as Yesterday, spanning from roughly 1700 to 1950, that the future entered into human consciousness as a great beckoning force. Capitalism, continually reinvigorated by the seemingly endless forward march of science and an evolving sense of democracy, appeared to promise all levels of society some expectation of a future at least somewhat better than the past. It was this unwavering faith in the superiority of the future that separated Yesterday from the age we have now entered, that of Today. While we are still driven towards tomorrow by the same forces that determined the recent past, the lessons of Hiroshima and Chernobyl, the chaos in the former Soviet Union, the stagnation of the West, and the anarchic rage unleashed in our inner cities and in hot spots around the globe have brought on a palpable anxiety that is quite apart from both the resignation of the Distant Past or the bright optimism of Yesterday. In a brilliant conclusion drawing together the threat of nuclear blackmail, global warming and the growing commodification of life represented by video games, voice mail, and VCRs, Visions of the Future issues a call to face the challenges of the twenty-first century with a new resolve strengthened by the inspiration of our collective past. (shrink)

Two successful digital wedding photography guides in one e-book set These two e-books offer wedding photographers a full-color reference that walks them through all the major and minor steps in planning and organizing a successful wedding day shoot. Digital Wedding Photographer?s Planner and Digital Wedding Photography Photo Workshop include a complete guide to wedding photography, covering the key concepts and skills necessary to create memorable wedding photos. From the first meeting with the bride to the final presentation of the completed (...) book, these two e-books are packed with important checklists, schedules, etiquette tips, and much more. Offers a step-by-step guide for all the major and minor steps in planning and organizing a successful wedding day shoot Gives tips for everything to the first meeting with the bride to the final presentation of the happy couple's commemorative book Contains checklists, schedules, etiquette tips, and much more Includes a complete resource for wedding photographers of any skill level Offers information on everything from brightly lit outdoor weddings to poorly lit evening ceremonies The Wedding Photographer?s Full Resource Guide offers one-stop shopping for all the information a wedding photographer needs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art and Evolution:Spiegelman's The Narrative CorpseBrian BoydIHas art evolved, like opposable thumbs and the whites of our eyes? If it has, will knowing so help us understand better not just art in general but particular works, even works of avant-garde art? Over recent decades many have come to accept that not only have humans evolved from other animals but that many features of their minds and behavior can be (...) explained by the deep past of evolution.1 Yet art remains a puzzle for biocultural analysis. How can we explain art in the hard-nosed terms of biological advantage, especially if it lacks analogies or precursors in other species and seems so pleasurably part of being distinctly human?2Nevertheless we have good reasons to examine whether art might be an adaptation. All cognitively normal individuals in all known societies engage in some form of art, actively or at least passively: music and dance, story, visual art. No one has to be pressured into listening to music on a radio or an iPod. And like language but unlike reading and writing, art develops reliably to a basic level without special training.Art could be what evolutionary biologists call a byproduct, a mere side-effect of our bigger brains or of culture. Yet that seems unlikely. Byproducts by definition do not offer advantages in terms of survival and reproduction: a bodily or behavioral feature whose design offers such advantages we classify as an adaptation. But if art were a byproduct, if it offered on average no advantage in terms of survival and reproduction, many generations of intense evolutionary competition would have eliminated it. If art offered no benefits but exacted the costs it does in time, [End Page 31] energy and resources, it would over many generations have been selected against through the superior fitness of those less inclined to pay such costs, those who preferred to devote their time and energy to securing material or social advantage or simply to save energy by resting.We can understand art in all its varieties, I suggest, as cognitive play with pattern, with multiple, high-intensity patterns. Play exists throughout much of the animal kingdom: in all mammals in which it has been looked for, in birds, and even in invertebrates like octopi. Play, like sleep and dreaming, puzzles and fascinates biologists because it is so widespread and so highly conserved (evolutionary lineages in which play has arisen do not lose it as they continue to evolve) that it must fulfill some function, because it has high costs in energy and risk, and because its functions are not as evident as those of "serious" behavior.3The amount of play in a species correlates highly with the flexibility of its behavior. In all species in which it occurs, play seems remarkably self-rewarding. Animals like pigs and rats play compulsively. In fact this seems the core of play: the self-rewarding nature of play makes animals engage in exuberant, intense behaviors that, under conditions of relative security, allow them to extend their capacities and improve their competence in situations of minimal risk. The skills honed will prove of advantage in real world situations where it is too late to learn on the job, in situations like fight or flight. Because play is compulsive, animals engage in it again and again, incrementally altering their neural wiring, strengthening and speeding up synaptic pathways, improving their capacity and performance.Humans uniquely inhabit what has been called "the cognitive niche":4 we gain most of our advantages from intelligence. We have an appetite for information, and especially for pattern, for information that falls into meaningful arrays from which we can make rich inferences. We therefore like bright, distinct colors, crisp outlines, complex shape or surface design: think of our special fondness for butterflies and flowers. And we have an appetite for open-ended pattern, new kinds of patterns, not only the patterns we have evolved to detect automatically. Vervet monkeys signal to one another in different ways when they see snakes, or leopards, or eagles, because they need to react in different ways to different threats, but they never learn to associate... (shrink)

In April 1994, two as-yet-unreleased letters by Sartre and one by Merleau-Ponty were published in the "Magazine Littéraire". Their publication sparked new interpretative hypotheses on the political and philosophical motivations behind the break of the relationship of mutual esteem, friendship, and fruitful intellectual collaboration between Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. The bright tone of their personal contrasts testified the profound theoretical differences between the two thinkers, both at philosophical level and political praxis. This volume covers the period between the launch of (...) the magazine "Les Temps Moderns" in 1945 and Sartre's decision to no longer accept Merleau-Ponty's contributions in 1953, offering a detailed analysis of the respective position of the two philosophers and of an irreducible intellectual distance between them. (shrink)

Adults and infants display a robust ability to perceive the unity of a center-occluded object when the visible ends of the object undergo common motion (e.g. Kellman, P.J., Spelke, E.S., 1983. Perception of partly occluded objects in infancy. Cognitive Psychology 15, 483±524). Ecologically oriented accounts of this ability focus on the primacy of motion in the perception of segregated objects, but Gestalt theory suggests a broader possibility: observers may perceive object unity by detecting patterns of synchronous change, of which common (...) motion is a special case. We investigated this possibility with observations of adults and 4-month-old infants. Participants viewed a center-occluded object whose visible surfaces were either misaligned or aligned, stationary or moving, and unchanging or synchronously changing in color or bright- ness in various temporal patterns (e.g. ¯ashing). Both alignment and common motion con- tributed to adults' perception of object unity, but synchronous color changes did not. For infants, motion was an important determinant of object unity, but other synchronous changes and edge alignment were not. When a stationary object with aligned edges underwent syn- chronous changes in color or brightness, infants showed high levels of attention to the object, but their perception of its unity appeared to be indeterminate. An inherent preference for fast over slow ¯ash rates, and a novelty preference elicited by a change in rate, both indicated that infants detected the synchronous changes, although they failed to use them as information for object unity. These ®ndings favor ecologically oriented accounts of object perception in which surface motion plays a privileged role. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 (2011): 60-67. At the beginning of Martin Heidegger’s lecture “Time and Being,” presented to the University of Freiburg in 1962, he cautions against, it would seem, the requirement that philosophy make sense, or be necessarily responsible (Stambaugh, 1972). At that time Heidegger's project focused on thinking as thinking and in order to elucidate his ideas he drew comparisons between his project and two paintings by Paul Klee as well with a poem by Georg Trakl. In front of Klee's (...) Saints from the Window and Death of Fire —though we wouldn’t absolutely understand what we were seeing—he writes, “we should want to stand…a long while.” In a similar manner, of Trakl’s poem “Septet of Death”—although it is likely we are unsure in what we hear—Heidegger states that, “we should want to hear…[it] often.” Heidegger further states that in appreciating these, “we “should abandon any claim that [they] be immediately intelligible” (1). So also we must we approach, Heidegger continues, the realm of theoretical physics, in which the difficult work of Werner Heisenberg, be listened to “without protest” and without “any claim that he be immediately understood.” These works, like his own project, merit the time they take to be originally (mis)understood. But this is not necessarily true for philosophy, Heidegger advises, because, “That thinking is supposed to offer ‘worldly wisdom’ and perhaps even a ‘way to a blessed life’” (1). Philosophy is in the unique position of being both abstract (what do we talk about when we talk?) and at the same moment, useful. There are demands that it make sense, that it be, grounded, immediate, and most importantly, rational. Heidegger draws these comparisons between the works of Klee and Trakl and Heisenberg not to claim that philosophy is totally irresponsible. He does not claim that the poet, the painter, nor the physicist have acted irresponsibly. Rather, he would say, they are rising to the highest levels of intelligibility, though it is perhaps an intelligibility that is commonly unavailable to us. In Trakl’s case, as we shall see, mastery is the end result of difficult words. Instead, Heidegger seems be making pleas: for a period of uninterrupted unintelligibility (pure unintelligibility); and that there is a time (that time is now) when, “thinking is…placed in a position which demands of it reflections that are far removed from any useful, practical wisdom” (1-2). Heidegger argues that philosophy requires a period of time in which, instead of focusing on the practical—or even on the worldly—the discipline draw its “determination” instead from the place of painting and poetry and physics. In doing so, “we should have to abandon any claims to immediate intelligibility” (2). But Heidegger doesn’t offer this as a way out. We still have to turn up, we “still have to listen, because we must think what is inevitable, but preliminary” (2). The point for Heidegger, is not to listen to a series of propositions, but instead to “follow the movement of showing” (2). I. … Maybe we're here only to say: house, bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window— at most: pillar, tower … but to say them, remember, oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves never dreamed of existing so intensely.… Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Ninth Elegy” There is little more fundamental, preliminary, in the world than language. We use language, in the form of speech, constantly, whether we are saying anything or not. “Man speaks,” Heidegger writes, and goes on to describe in his essay “Language” (2001) the constant speaking that we do. “We are always speaking, even when we do not utter a single word aloud, but merely listen or read, and even when we are not particularly speaking or listening but are attending to some work or taking a rest” (187). Speaking is expression, an utterance of something internal. It is a recognition of a world. It is a way of communicating thought and it is an activity that we all do, inevitably. Speaking separates the human from the animal world, and despite advances in primatology that seek to give ‘voice’ to primates and other non-human animals, it can safely be said that our form of communication—what we call speech and know as language—is the most advanced, the most complicated. We use it to present and represent the world around us; through actual utterances (vocalization) or through the written word or through ‘unvoiced thoughts’ and dreams. We use language, but more specifically speech—naming—to transmit moods, thoughts, desires, aversions, and feelings. These expressions, mere utterances, nearly always find a source in words, whether spoken or not. Heidegger writes that this common view of language means “that only speech enables man to be the living being he is as man. It is as the one who speaks that man is—man” (187). Speaking then—utterance—surrounds us constantly, whether in the form of careful thought—in the form of an academic paper, say—or in the half mutterings and forgotten thoughts of a nearly remembered dream. Like scaffolding, the apparatus of speech sustains and explains the world, making, in a sense, the world rational, making it apparent. When we speak, we describe, and in doing so, name the world. We use words, through this process of naming, to interpret and sustain the world we see, and the world we imagine. Like Rilke’s naming of jug, and bridge, and window, and stream, we describe—and inscribe upon—the world through an activity of naming. Are we here, perhaps, to name? Is it possible not to name? Is it possible to regard and to view and to look around without naming what we see? Is it possible to feel—to experience—world without giving utterance to that feeling, that process? Sadness, grief, joy, ecstasy, hunger, thirst. Desk, light, room, pen, book, world. White, black, tomorrow, today. Each of these words is a name given to a thing I see in front of me, or a concept that I imagine (in the case of tomorrow or world). What arises in my mind has already existed. If I imagine it, it is named. The word for ‘tomorrow’ and ‘desk’ and ‘light’ precedes me, and precedes my concept of it. The idea of it is already pre-informed, and I must, in a certain sense, bend my ideas to it. When I imagine a table, I imagine my own table (or I imagine an idea of table) but that imagining must follow certain general rules; while, perhaps, it might not always require four legs and a horizontal surface, it must, at least not be, say, a pool of water, or a pile of excrement. It must have some tableness to it to be a table. It must, with Heidegger, table. Otherwise, speech is reduced to gibberish. For Heidegger however, the discussion of language points to something deeper than its “scientific and analytic” study as a communicative device. Indeed, Heidegger seeks to understand language not in reference to man or woman, not as an utterance of humanity, but in reference to itself. In doing so he abandons the conversation—that is, he casts away the traditional arguments surrounding philosophy of language; that it is a means of expression; that it is a human activity; and that it is somehow a representation of something that is—in order to seek to understand language as language, on its own terms. Heidegger is not a philosopher of language, but a philosopher of world, of being. Despite these “correct ideas” holding sway “over the whole field of the varied scientific perspectives on language…they ignore completely the oldest natural cast of language” (191). What is this “oldest natural cast of language? It is the act of language itself. Language is language and language speaks. “Most often,” Heidegger writes, “and too often, we encounter what is spoken only as the residue of a speaking long past” (195). Speech, as we normally encounter it, is like Echo herself calling out to Narcissus, doomed to repeat what has already been said, a mere remnant of what was once language, a trace left behind in the gathering silence of becoming. In both the essay “Language” and in his three lecture course “The Nature of Language” (1982), Heidegger attempts to unpack the seeming tautology of language as language. In each, he focuses on poetry as a way out, or into, a true discussion of the oldest natural cast of language. Poetry is pure speech. In poetry, language is brought to language and language speaks ( Die Sprach spricht ). In the act of poetry, the act of pure speech, the poet names (on the surface not different from how I name this table, this computer) but in the poet naming, the naming does not “hand out titles,” “apply terms,” but rather the naming is a call, a calling forth of entities that bring them into their own, allow them to take their place purely, without compromise. This calling, Heidegger (2001) states, “here calls into a nearness. But even so the call does not wrest what it calls away from the remoteness, in which it is kept by the calling there. The calling calls into itself and therefor always here and there—here into presence, there into absence” (196). II. Window with falling snow is arrayed, Long tolls the vesper bell, The house is provided well, The table is for many laid. Wandering ones, more than a few, Come to the door on darksome courses. Golden blooms the tree of graces Drawing up the earth’s cool dew. Wanderer quietly steps within; Pain has turned the threshold to stone. There lie, in limpid brightness shown, Upon the table bread and wine. Georg Trakl “A Winter Evening” Heidegger is often given short shrift as an abysmally difficult writer, as one that makes no sense and is needlessly difficult. In doing this though, we forget sometimes his eloquence, his simple beauty in writing. Of the above opening stanza, “Window with falling snow is arrayed/ Long tolls the vesper bell.” he writes (2001), This speaking names the snow that soundlessly strikes the window late in the waning day, while the vesper bell rings. In such a snowfall, everything lasts longer. Therefore the vesper bell, which daily rings for a strictly fixed time, tolls long. The speaking names the winter evening time (197). The speaking names the winter evening time. It is almost impossible to comment on that one line by Heidegger. It is as though it must exist on its own completely, without elucidation—as though in front of it we must stand as we do in front of a painting by Klee, that is, we must abandon any claim . Silent and devoted. The speaking of the poem here is not clearly different from common speech ( rede ) yet there is, via Heidegger, an invitation to experience that auracular quality of light and stillness that a gentle, dusk tinged snowfall gives; words evoking a quality so clear, so poignant that, in a sense, Heidegger’s work, at this moment, has been done. But what does this naming accomplish? What does the call call? Remember, it is not the poet that calls, but the naming which calls. The poet has only brought the words forward; it is now the words— snow, vesper bell, window— that take new life in the pure language of the poem. Entities are called forth into presence, like the speaking that names the winter evening time. Not to be present amongst us now, however; naming ‘table’ in the poem does not place it in front of us in this room. Rather, the naming places entities into a gathering which is also a sheltering. The naming brings them to be. In an act of appropriation, things come to be purely as their own, unimpeded by a predetermined expectation. They are called to themselves into an arrival. In Being and Time (1962), Heidegger famously describes the movement between present-at-hand and ready-to-hand in his analysis of the hammer, and of equipment in general. This analysis is already known, if not always clear, to most readers of Heidegger. Briefly, a hammer is ordinarily zuhanden or ready-to-hand; it is part of the background of the world, equipment used and never thought about, like this desk, this sheet of paper, this room. Our interaction with it is temporary and it is historically different for each entity and each relation. We need a hammer, we use a hammer. If all goes according to plan, the hammer remains ready-to-hand; it remains, in a sense, undisclosed and certainly unobtrusive. Our world is undisturbed by the hammer. Only when the hammer or the car or the computer is broken (or sometimes unused or unrecognized or missing) does it intrude into our world, become conspicuous as an object present-at-hand, or vorhanden . In this case, we reach for the hammer, it is broken and we suddenly notice it’s being, broken though it is. The thing which was always ready to hand—handy—is suddenly abstract, something to be examined, if only in its absence or disfunction. This can be exhibited for all entities, and it is important to note that in this analysis the zuhanden / vorhanden split is not restricted to a specific form of constructed material; zuhanden does not refer to the car, and vorhanden the sunset. No entity is ever exclusively ready-to-hand or present-at-hand; they are instead, interpenetrated with each others mode of being, one informing the other in a way that both brings things forth into the world—discloses is the word Heidegger chooses—and at the same time conceals them. As one mode is coming to be so another mode is withdrawing. This flux and movement between modes is precisely what brings the world forward, and what makes it manifest. It exists beyond where we tread and before man took dubious control of the world. We go to find a book or turn on the computer and it is missing or broken and we become aware of the object, as though for the first time. We walk to the water to glimpse the sunset and miss it, or it is less than stellar; in the sunset’s grayness, we become aware of it’s being sunset. The thing is disclosed in its withdrawal. Echoing Heraclitus, we can say that as something is coming to be, it is already becoming something other. Of similar importance to the fact that things are never all of one, or all of the other, they are also never alone. The hammer is never a single object, but is in relation always to the whole. Heidegger (1962) states, Equipment—in accordance with its equipmentality—always is in terms of its belonging to other equipment: ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room. These ‘Things’ never show themselves proximally as they are for themselves…What we encounter as closest to us…is the room; and we encounter it not as something ‘between four walls’ in a geometrical, spatial sense, but as equipment for residing…it is in this that any ‘individual’ item of equipment shows itself. Before its does so, a totality of equipment has already been discovered (97). Equipment resides—dwells—in its relations, in its proximal being to other beings. Within the structure of totality, a series of relations is always occurring. The hammer is on the workbench in the carpenter’s hand in the workshop in the village under the sky and under the sun. It doesn’t stop there. Equipment surrounds us and the focus is not on what it does, or what one does with it—the carpenter with the hammer, the writer with laptop—but with the fact that it is. Equipment occurs in relation and is always occurring around us overhead, underfoot, by the stream and in the city. There is a constant exchange of relations happening, and as this occurs, so the world occurs, so the world both discloses and withdraws, into and out of itself. In a very real sense, language is also equipment. It is the thing that we use most often without thought, it is ready-to-hand (except when it’s not.) As we re- cognize the world around us, as we offer names for things and make lists, we are using language much like we might use a hammer, that is, bluntly. Most of the time it is invisible and we draw on it without wondering how we are going to say something. When language does intrude, it does so in an awkward moment, that moment when we can’t remember the right word, when we forget a phrase. At that second, it “speaks itself as language,” it reveals itself as malfunctioning equipment, and we “undergo” an experience with language, in Heidegger’s famous formulation. Language is not a tool anymore that we use to bludgeon an object, but something instead that we submit to, that we experience. In “The Nature of Language,” Heidegger (1982) writes, But when does language speak to us as language? Curiously enough, when we cannot find the right word for something that concerns us, carries us away, oppresses or encourages us. Then we leave unspoken what we have in mind and, without rightly giving it a thought, undergo moments in which language itself has distantly and fleetingly touched us with its essential being (59). The poet’s words become themselves, become appropriate, only when they no longer function in the prosaic world; they instead intrude as they come to be. Language itself brings itself to language. Names, like the entities they indicate, are always becoming something else. As noted above, language, through the poet, has brought forth entities from words previously “known.” I thought that I knew snow, but through Trakl’s re- presentation of the word, language calls forth a new image of snow, indeed calls forth snow itself. The vesper bell tolls longer, the table is for many laid. In bringing forth things , language has brought the world to presence. In everyday naming, word occludes world, preventing, in its everydayness, its coming forth, its disclosing. But what is this world that word has been brought forth into? In the same way that language speaks, world worlds. World, left alone, un-interfered with, comes into itself. It worlds. Again, this sounds like a tautology, but it is essential to Heidegger’s thought (and in my mind is more of a “god killer” than Nietzsche.) One of the most overlooked (and under-appreciated) aspects of Heidegger is his later examination and enthusiasm for the “fourfold,” or the system through which things come to be, through which things thing in a world worlding. The fourfold is the interaction of earth and sky, mortals and gods. Things come to be in the interstices and gathering of the fourfold. The fourfold provides both a place of being, and a sheltering, a place to dwell. Heidegger writes that “the things that were named, thus called, gather to themselves sky and earth, mortals and divinities. The four are united primally in being toward one another, a fourfold.” The poet has called, through the act of pure naming, things to come forth. In the purity of the fourfold—that is, when that is all that there is, when there are no other distractions, definitions, things—entities themselves can come to be. It is important to note that Heidegger is not saying that there are four formal things in the world, autonomous entities unto themselves. He is not evoking a pre-Socratic formula as to what makes up the world; instead, the four mirror each other constantly. (Heidegger calls this the ‘mirror-play.’) They interpenetrate in the same way that the modes of being of things interpenetrate themselves. There is no discrete exclusivity in being or the fourfold. What makes up things is not a precise recipe of the four main components; what makes up things is the action of the fourfold coming together, the movement of the fourfold which is a becoming. Heidegger (2001) writes that “this gathering, assembling, letting stay is the thinging of things.” And he later adds that “thinging, things are things. Thinging, they gesture—gestate—world” (197). Language brings the world to be. It works not again as a recipe added to things, but instead it is a bridge, or more precisely, a relation. Language relates world to thing, brings world to thing. In a sense, it does not say anything; rather it allows, or calls in its movement. Heidegger (2001) writes that, The intimacy of world and thing is not a fusion. Intimacy obtains only where the intimate—world and thing—divides itself cleanly and remains separated. In the midst of the two, in the between of world and thing, in their inter, division prevails: a dif-ference (199). It is in this inter that language prevails. Language is difference, it is the differential aspect between world and thing that brings world to thing. In the final stanza of Trakl’s poem “The Winter Evening,” Trakl evokes this difference in the second line when he writes, “Pain has turned the threshold to stone.” Christopher Fynsk, in his essay “Noise at the Threshold,” draws attention to this point when he writes “it is the figure of the threshold that is language itself, inasmuch as language is defined as the articulation of difference by which difference comes about” (25). Language, as used in the pure language of the poem, draws together world and thing, bridging relation between entity and world. The calling of language calls world to thing, world to being. Heidegger (2001) describes this difference as unique; “of itself, it holds apart the middle in and through which world and things are at one with each other” (200). III. Neither reading nor writing, nor speaking—and yet it is by those paths that we escape what has been said already, and knowledge, and reciprocity, and enter the unknown space, the space of distress where what is given is perhaps not received by anyone (99). Maurice Blanchot The Writing of Disaster So far, we have allowed Heidegger to put forward what language does, how it functions as a relation and how it operates as a threshold, as a bridge. What interests me is what happens beyond language, beyond the relation. What happens to the thing without the naming, without the poet, or even without the everyday chatter—Fynsk calls this ‘noise’—intruding on being? If language allows things to become by bringing thing to world, what happens when we remove this bringing, this threshold turned to pain? In “The Nature of Language,” Heidegger examines the work of the poet Stefan George, specifically “The Word”: Wonder or dream from distant land I carried to my county’s strand And waited till the twilight norn Had found the name within her bourn— Then I could grasp it close and strong It blooms and shines now the front along… Once I returned from happy sail, I had a prize so rich and frail, She sought for long and tidings told: “No like of these depths unfold.” And straight it vanished from my hand, The treasure never graced my land… So I renounced and sadly see: Where word breaks off no thing may be. That final line, “Where word breaks off no thing may be” is evoked on nearly every page of Heidegger’s essay. It is the line to which he returns over and over and bears repeating. Where word breaks off no thing may be. Where naming ends, no thing. We can interpret this in two ways (at least.) Where word—naming—breaks off, then there is nothing . Or, as I choose to read it, where word breaks off no thing may be. In this I see a hint forward, a marker left behind by Heidegger. What could this look like? What does no thing look like? Like a zen koan ( there is no mirror ) it is as thrilling and horrifying as contemplating what preceded the Big Bang. Because language as naming wasn’t always here; we weren’t always here. One or maybe two aspects of the fourfold (depending on your view of gods) were not always here, and there is no guarantee that we will always be around. What then? Heidegger (1982) describes the landscape that the poet finds, “It names the realm into which the renunciation must enter: it names the call to enter into that relation between thing and word which has now been experienced” (65). The poet, in renouncing, allows for the “may be” of “where word breaks off no thing may be.” This “may be” becomes “a kind of imperative, a command which the poet follows, to keep it from then on.” No thing is lacking. Where word breaks off, there may be, a totality, a completion. If we place the emphasis on may be , we make it affirmative, make it positive. One allows it. No thing is where the word, that is the name, is lacking. If we remove then (if we can remove) the word, the name, than that is where no thing is, that is where no thing may blossom, enrich, belong, become. What is no thing? Heidegger writes that “thing is anything that in any way is.” And just after this he writes that the “world alone gives being to the thing.” But what happens if there is no word? Word, in this formulation can be seen as an enframing, a challenging of language. By naming, by drawing a perimeter around an object, we hold it, by its definition (that is a brick) to an ordered future. If we borrow from Heidegger’s essay “The Question Concerning Technology” (1993) the idea of this standing-reserve of an ordered future, we see that “everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately on hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering” (322). What happens if there is no naming of the thing? Silence perhaps. Stillness. We can name—and do name—that which we know. We equate knowledge with knowing the name of something. A brick is a brick, a hammer is a hammer, the universe is the universe. By naming a thing, we create, and draw its parameters, the parameters of the thing, not as thing thinging in the fourfold, but as blunt object apparent. In the four dimensions relatively available to us, we observe (and name) that the brick takes up possibly six by four by two inches and is, in the sense that it currently occupies this time slot. It fulfills its destiny, its being, its brickness, it bricks . But what happens when we remove the name for this brick. We no longer know what to call this no-thing (if indeed we can even arrive at the point of uncalled calling.) In fact the it (this brick) is no longer a thing in the sense that by not naming—by removing the name—it still occupies the same dimension but is indiscernible from the world. It simply is , un-reliant, un- needed by me. By removing the subject (me) from it (the brick) do I not then also remove the object—or at least the duality objectifying it? Why is this important? Why does this matter? I have not really removed anything. I have not changed any thing , per se . The brick still occupies the same space in geographic and temporal dimensions. I have literally not even touched the brick sitting on my desk. But what I have done is removed the name, removed the word (the bridge, according to Heidegger) and in this (again, if this is even possible) there is something vertiginously liberating, not only for me (and my way of thinking) but also for the brick itself. Like the poet who calls the thing forward, by refusing to name, by avoiding any thing that demands me to name it, I release the thing into the fourfold. I am no longer challenging the thing to be there for me ; I do not en frame it through language. Rather I, in an act of extreme responsibility, am refusing the challenge. By refusing the name (refusing to name) one allows, (or no one allows no thing) the brick to be all things , to manifest its manifold being, to incorporate all things into its thinging . It becomes, quite literally, every thing . Because, in its infinite manifestness, it incorporates everything; the mud that gave it its current being, the water that formed the mud, the sun, the stars, the universe and it also allows it to become mud again, to become landfill, to become again, water and sun and stars and universe in an endless, infinite cycle of coming to be some thing (else). Perhaps this is what Heidegger is suggesting when he talks about the stillness at the end of his essay, “Language” (2001): The dif-ference stills particularly in two ways: it stills the things in thinging and the world in worlding. Thus stilled, thing and world never escape from the dif-ference. Rather, they rescue it in the stilling, where the dif-ference is itself the stillness (206). It is in this stillness that I can imagine a gellasenheit (here I mean both “releasement in the Heideggarean sense, as well as Meister Eckhart’s use of the term meaning “letting the world go and giving oneself to God”) of thing and world, a releasing into the stillness and silence of no thing beyond where word breaks off. It is here where I may no longer be, and yet no thing is, but may be. (shrink)

Like many others, I have resisted the idea that education, in general, is a form of training. We always talk about training for something, while an educated person is not educated for any one thing. But for this very reason, I do not wish to abandon the term ‘teacher training’ in favor of ‘teacher education’, although ideally I would prefer to speak of ‘teacher preparation’ because the term ‘training’ always reminds me of monkeys. I shall use the terms ‘training’ and (...) ‘preparation’ interchangeably, with both standing in contrast to ‘education’. All persons deserve to be educated; there is nothing specific to teachers here. Teacher training, whether general or specific to a subject or discipline, remains a contentious business. Some regard Pedagogy as a legitimate subject area and structure training around it; others prefer to see teacher training firmly in the context of the various disciplines that teachers will, in turn, be teaching: mathematics, literature, history and, in this case, philosophy. Indeed, when it comes to training teachers to teach philosophy, the problem is exacerbated by the plain fact that most teachers have no formal background in philosophy. So we are faced with the rather daunting prospect of providing such a background as well as providing whatever is needed in order to teach philosophy to others. Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp were well aware of this challenge when they set up the first training programs in Philosophy for Children at Montclair State College in the early 1970s; hence the requirement that if classroom teachers were not actually qualified in philosophy, at least those who trained them to do philosophy with children should be. However, this idealistic model was always going to be difficult to apply. The problem, as it developed in countries around the world, was two-fold: teachers with little or no philosophical background were, increasingly, being trained by other educators who were in the same boat ; and conversely, when professional philosophers did become involved in teacher training, it quickly became apparent that they lacked any real training in pedagogy, and so were inadequate to the task of modeling the role of the teacher in the classroom. To look on the bright side, some constructive attempts have been made to resolve these shortcomings. The one with which I am most familiar is the Australian model for what is termed ‘Level Two training’, that is, training those who will, in turn, train and work with classroom teachers. This model recognizes the complementary requirements of philosophical and pedagogic expertise, respectively, by awarding certificates of achievement based on whether those trained have come from the discipline of philosophy, the practice of teaching, or both. Ideally, then, training workshops for teachers would be directed by at least one person in the former category, and at least one in the latter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MetanoiaRichard G. T. Gipps, ClinPsyD, PhD (bio)A “honeysuckle on a broken fence”: Scrutton’s (2024) theologically potent image offers us a dignified vision of how a living faith and the experience of mental illness might intersect. Mental and physical illness, deprivation and bereavement sometimes provide a propitious structure on which faith’s bright strands may grow. Scrutton posits no simply causal relationship between faith and mental illness, and steers us helpfully (...) away from the narcissistic overvaluation of inner experience too often met with in (1) mysterium tremendum (meeting-God-blew-my-mind), and (3) mental openness (divine-light-pours-through-the-cracks), formulations. She helps us to avoid settling, too, for the clever-sounding but ultimately too-easy idea of (2) ‘mental illness’ and ‘religious experience’ as different descriptions under which identical experiences may sometimes be brought. For one thing, and to animadvert now in my own vein: can we really—as William James aspires to, say, when he takes it for granted that the “more personal branch [of] feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to... the divine” can be neatly hived off from the “institutional branch of religion... worship... theology... ceremony... ” and so on—even individuate the relevant experiential phenomena independently of their meaning-conferring contexts? For another, it seems to me that too often in the literature of (1) (2) and (3) do we meet with a fatal confusion that can be expressed in terms of a conflation of two meanings of “ego,” as when a) the dropping of the kinds of boundaries which it makes sense to talk of putting up (i.e., our ego’s defensive, prideful, shame-driven shirking of intimacy) is muddled together with b) the crumbling of such individuating ego boundaries as constitute us. Such a confusion gets readily promulgated by vague and tacitly polysemic talk not only of ‘ego’ but also of ‘non-duality,’ ’transpersonal,’ and ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ ‘levels’ of ‘self’ and ‘consciousness’ (e.g., see Kasprow & Scotton 1999). Sometimes driving this, one can’t help suspect, is the narcissistic gain of conflating the dismal dissolution of ego boundaries in illness (Conrad, 1958) with the epiphanic transcendence of a grasping and fearful ego. Spiritual pride and spiritual bypass (i.e. fleeing the relational tasks of adult development into a self-preoccupied ‘spiritualised’ inner journey) (Welwood, 2000) then abound, not only for the sufferer but also for the lowly therapist who now receives their shamanic guide/hierophant upgrade. By contrast with all of this, Scrutton’s (4) honeysuckle on a broken fence model stands out in its theological dignity and psychological sobriety.Even so I found myself, on reading Scrutton’s piece, wondering whether a more romantic conception of a growing faith’s possible relation [End Page 257] to psychological disturbance might yet be available and sometimes even find application. What particularly came to my mind was that notion of metanoia as offered us by the existential tradition in both theology and psychopathology.Mark’s gospel begins with John the Baptist heralding Christ’s arrival and preaching the “baptism of repentance [metanoia; μετανοίας] for the remission of sins” (Mark 1:4). Jesus’s first public words then proclaim the same message: “the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye [μετανοεῖτε], and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). ‘Repentance’ is today often understood as a sorrowful acknowledgement of one’s wrongdoings, but it has long been acknowledged that, if that be the meaning we give the term, it is an inapt translation of ‘metanoia’ (Walden, 1896). For what the gospel instead calls for is rather a wholesale turning about, or conversion, from ‘ego-dominance to surrender’ (Barron, 2021), i.e. from (a) defensive and illusory attempts to handle our vulnerability and dependency through self-reliance and self-affirmation to (b) an aliveness to grace (i.e. seeing our lives and their bounties under the aspect of the freely given gift) and a trusting surrender to the dominion of that God of love in which we anyway inexorably ‘live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). The ‘I’ in Paul’s “It is no longer I who... (shrink)