The aim of the present research was to test whether involvement in a 14-days training program in the performing arts could reduce implicit biases. We asked healthy participants to complete an Implicit Association Test to assess biased attitudes to physical illness in two separate sessions, before and after the training program. Two separate control groups matched by age, gender and educational level completed the two IAT sessions, separated by same number of days, without being involved in the training program. Results (...) showed that participants who were involved in the training program reduced their implicit bias toward illness measured through IAT in the second session. This reduction in IAT measures was not observed in the control samples, despite the two IAT measures being matched in temporal delay with the experimental group. These findings suggest that an interventional program based on the performing arts could be effective in reducing levels of implicit biases among the general population. (shrink)

Although task-unrelated thinking has been increasingly investigated in recent years, the content and correlates of everyday off-task thought in clinical d...

Our self-concept is constantly faced with self-relevant information. Prevailing research suggests that information's valence plays a central role in shaping our self-views. However, the need for stability within the self-concept structure and the inherent alignment of positive feedback with the pre-existing self-views of healthy individuals might mask valence and congruence effects. In this study (N = 30, undergraduates), we orthogonalized feedback valence and self-congruence effects to examine the behavioral and electrophysiological signatures of self-relevant feedback processing and self-concept updating. We found (...) that participants had a preference for integrating self-congruent and dismissing self-incongruent feedback, regardless of its valence. Consistently, electroencephalography results revealed that feedback congruence, but not feedback valence, is rapidly detected during early processing stages. Our findings diverge from the accepted notion that self-concept updating is based on the selective incorporation of positive information. These findings offer novel insights into self-concept dynamics, with implications for the understanding of psychopathological conditions. (shrink)

Corrupt behavior presents major challenges for organizations in a wide range of settings. This article embraces a complexity theoretical perspective to elucidate the causal patterns of factors underlying consumers’ unethical judgments. This study examines how causal conditions of four distinct domains combine into configurational causes of unethical judgments of two frequent forms of corrupt consumer behavior: shoplifting and fare dodging. The findings of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analyses indicate alternative, consistently sufficient “recipes” for the outcomes of interest. This study extends prior (...) work on the topic by offering new insights into the interplay and the interconnected structures of multiple causal factors and by describing configurational causes of consumers’ ethical evaluations of corrupt behaviors. This knowledge may support practitioners and policy makers to develop education and control approaches to thwart corrupt consumer behaviors. (shrink)

This study presents a theory of causally complex configurations of antecedent conditions influencing the adoption versus non-adoption of international supplier ethical certification-standards. Using objective measures of antecedents and outcomes, a large-scale study of exporting firms in the cut-flower industry in two South American countries supports the theory. The theory includes the following and additional propositions. No single -antecedent condition is sufficient for accurately predicting a high membership score in outcome conditions; the outcome conditions include a firm’s adoption or rejection of (...) a product certification. No single -antecedent condition is necessary for accurately predicting high scores in the outcome condition. A few complex antecedent conditions are sufficient but the occurrence of each is not necessary for accurately predicting high scores in an outcome condition. Causal asymmetry of antecedent conditions indicating adoption versus non-adoption of specific ethical standards occurs—that is, causal conditions leading to rejection are not the mirror opposites of causal conditions leading to adoption. (shrink)

This paper aims to pay tribute to Figal’s comprehensive and innovative analysis of the artwork and beauty, while challenging both his realist position on the immediacy of meaning and his monist stance that reduces sublimity to beauty. To enquire into the origin of aesthetic feelings and sense, and thus, to break the hermeneutic circle, we first trace the origin of this reduction to the reception of Burke’s concept of the sublime by Mendelssohn and Kant. We then recur to Husserl and (...) Dufrenne to trace the origin of the sense of the feeling of sublimity in the realm of affectivity or sensuousness. This genesis takes place in passive experience, where we identify an excess of sensuous sense over categorial meaning that is constitutive of the affective sense that our bodily sensations give to hyletic material. It is argued that this sensuous excess evokes a sublime experience in the phenomenological sense, involving an affective and disruptive bodily experience and an endless process of sense formation. Affective or sensuous sense is thus an event that irreversibly affects the bodily surface. To elucidate this phenomenon, we draw on the theoretical framework of Breton and Bataille, positing it as a form-transgressive ‘convulsive’ sublime, which we then illustrate in the architectural works of Tschumi and Eisenman. In short, we have retrieved the origin of aesthetic experience and redefined the feeling of the sublime as a phenomenological ‘convulsive’ sublimity. (shrink)

The arche–arte dualism (concrete–abstract) is fundamental and basic, due to its universality and comprehensive generative function. This duality characterizes our actions in every dimension, and is thus necessarily involved in cognitive and creative acts. The “arteic” includes the categories of consciousness, consideration, calculation, ordering, knowledge, intellect, and artificiality. On the other hand, the “archeic” refers to that which is, in us, subconscious, eternal, primordial, innate, instinctive, and natural. When this basic duality is posited at the outset, it furnishes an analytical‑interpretative‑synthesizing (...) tool that can be applied to diverse facts. The omnipresence and explanatory potential of the arche‑arte dualism are illustrated through musical examples. The dual nature of sound is thereby revealed to be a structural model for the subconscious sensations that music evokes in us. (shrink)

Data production in experimental sciences depends on localised experimental systems, but the epistemic properties of data transcend the contingencies of the processes that produce them. Philosophers often believe that experimental systems instantiate but do not produce the epistemic properties of data. In this paper, we argue that experimental systems' local functioning entails intrinsic capacities to produce the epistemic properties of data. We develop this idea by applying Derrida's model of arche-writing to study a case of theory-oriented experimental practice. Derrida's model (...) relativises or dissolves the conceptual distinction between the moment of data production and a subsequent moment of data dissemination. It thus has consequences for understanding both data production (despite being intrinsically local, data production a priori generates transferrable and modellable information) and data dissemination (when modelling information, researchers needs to refer this information to the context of its production). We study a case of data production in a non-exploratory experimental system designed to test a pre-existing hypothesis in visual neuroscience. A case of theory-oriented experimental practice should allow us to identify the autonomous functioning of experimental systems in data production more clearly, insofar as it allows us to study the limits of pre-existing theory in the activities of these systems. We suggest that pre-existing concepts, hypotheses and theories condition the relevance but not the production of experimental data. (shrink)

This essay explores Giorgio Agamben’s engagement with Reiner Schürmann, focusing in particular on their ontological understanding of anarchy. Setting out from the lacuna in the literature on this issue, it gives a close reading of the passages where Agamben addresses Schürmann, interrogates the role of of arche in Agamben’s works and links his interest in Schürmann to his long-standing critique of Derrida. Tracing these issues through Agamben’s and Schürmann’s texts, it becomes apparent that both authors operate with a strikingly similar (...) approach, while adumbrating different understandings of the rapport between arche, anarchy and difference. Specifically, the essay argues that Schürmann’s work can be seen as an incisive reference point in Agamben’s recent theory of “destituent potential” by focusing on the epilogue of The Use of Bodies. Here, arche and anarchy are positioned as the basic operative categories of the entire Homo Sacer project, while the concept of “true anarchy,” developed in critical dialogue with Schürmann, turns into its philosophical vanishing point. With and against Schürmann’s attempt to think anarchy as an interruption of identity through difference, Agamben develops his notion of anarchy as as a suspension of difference, that is, as in-difference. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se inscribe en la crítica a la modernidad positivista e instrumental en la deriva de un capitalismo globalizador asfixiante. De la mano de Nietzsche, Deleuze, Heidegger y Schürmann, estudiaremos la problemática en torno al arché, con el objetivo de evitar el relativismo donde todo vale y el subjetivismo que puede campar a sus anchas guiñando un ojo de soslayo a sus intereses particulares.

O texto visa apresentar e explicar o papel desempenhado pelas noções de telos e arché na compreensão tanto do movimento dos animais quanto da ação humana realizada no âmbito ético-político. Além disso, pretende evidenciar a importância de estabelecer a distinção modal do tempo em passado, presente e futuro elaborada na Ética a Nicômacos, em oposiçãoà abordagem quantitativa do mesmo empreendida na Física, a fim de poder explicar o silogismo prático.

Unique in presenting a thoroughgoing examination of the mathematical aspects of the neo-logicist project (and the particular philosophical issues arising from these technical concerns).

The problems involved in understanding the Aristotelian notion of an ἀρχή arise from the widely accepted view that Aristotle’s theory of knowledge is torn between irreconcilable empiricist and rationalist tendencies. I argue that several puzzling features of the Aristotelian ἀρχή are clarified when it is understood as akin to the Urphänomen, which plays a central role in the scientific thought of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. More broadly, I argue that the apparent conflict in Aristotle’s theory of knowledge is resolved by (...) seeing that Aristotle is neither an empiricist, nor a rationalist, but a “rational empiricist” akin to Goethe. (shrink)

Pétra: Atlas archéologique et épigraphique, vol. 1: De Bãb as-Siq au Wãdi al-Farasah. By Laïla Nehmé. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2012. Pp. 266, 51 plts., maps. €50.

De Husserl à Patocka, en passant par Heidegger, la phénoménologie s’interroge sur le phénomène tel qu’il s’offre, se donne pour être saisi, recueilli, rassemblé en une proposition, un énoncé dit apophantique. Comment une telle ouverture à la phénoménalité, au donné, est-elle possible? Comment dire ce qui se donne, dans son caractère le plus originaire, sans le déformer ni l’écraser sous les schèmes ou les catégories hérités d’une longue tradition aristotélicienne? L’entreprise qui tend, avec Heidegger, à accéder à une strate « (...) archaïque », en deçà de la logique et de la grammaire de l’être, passe par une « destruction de la logique » et la ré-ouverture d’un rapport herméneutique aux choses et au monde. Herméneutique, non pas au sens d’une théorie de l’interprétation des textes ou documents lestés de sens, mais comme le trait fondamental qui rapporte l’homme au monde. Le propos de la phénoménologie ainsi radicalisé peut alors s’entendre comme « Weltlogik », logique-du-monde. (shrink)

Le temps est, pour la pensée qui s'y affronte, une énigme. Condition de toute réalité phénoménale comme de tout acte réflexif, il ne peut être saisi par l'esprit sans que l'esprit ne se trouve par lui déjà saisi. Que peut alors signifier l'entreprise consistant à penser le temps philosophiquement, s'il ne peut s'agir par là d'objectiver un phénomène pour s'en rendre le maître?