Opera, maintains the author of this comprehensive and provocative volume, finds itself in an artistic predicament that goes beyond previous generational disruptions and "is our own, and special." Arguing that we cannot solve the problem unless we recognize and define it, and that we cannot hope to envision the artform's future unless we first come to terms with its past, he examines all elements of recent operatic practice as revealed in performance--"Performance," he declares, "is our text." He asserts that with (...) renewal of the repertory long at a virtual standstill, we have tried to substitute auteurial production methods and cultural revisionism in its place, with disastrous results. Accordingly, Opera as Opera draws on performances encountered over an eighteen-year period to first analyze styles and techniques of production (direction and design), and then to trace, in copious detail, the developments in the performing disciplines of conducting, singing, and acting that have loosened our connection to the canon. "The masterworks," it flatly states, "are not before us." In a central section, it also surveys the more general cultural background of this situation, in particular the influence of modern and postmodern philosophy and literary criticism, and the turn away from the master narrative which in the author's view was the principal generating force behind opera's greatest era. Whether the reader's primary interest is musical or theatrical, whether it lies with intellectual and aesthetic matters or with into-the-weeds discussion of the work of the performers who bring opera to life, he or she will find much that will stimulate and challenge in this deeply informed, incisively written book."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

The charge of treason and the judgment of insanity have left questions that invariably intrude on an assessment of Pound’s life and work. Critics frequently adopt a strategy of separating the life and the work, but tactical review is often necessary. There is a lightness in Pound’s writing that speaks of a being detached from the concerns of the world. Yet with his economic theory of social credit, his political and racial views, as well as his concern for other writers, (...) he is of the world—in the world and part of it. He was decidedly not tied to geography. He had no region or period, and he was as comfortable in Confucian China as in Dante’s Florence or twentieth-century Rome. He could work anywhere. He wrote The Pisan Cantos while jailed in Italy. The Cantos were published while he was in a mental wart at St. Elizabeths, yet a court found that he could not understand the charges against him. Can such an impairment and such achievement occur at the same time? If you say no, then what of the treason? Did he feign madness to escape punishment? Could Pound have been convicted of treason?In this paper, I intend to examine what has been loosely referred to as “the trial of Ezra Pound” and to show that Pound’s case should have been brought to trial within one or two years after his commitment to St. Elizabeths because he had a reasonable chance of being found not guilty of treason; even if found guilty, the circumstances in mitigation of a long prison term would have been so evident that he would have likely spent considerably less time in prison than he spent locked up at the mental institution. I will do this, in part, by reviewing the similarities and differences between Pound’s case and three other treason cases that came to trial within the first years after World War II. The English case, Rex v. Joyce, was tried shortly after the close of the war and well before Pound’s competency hearing on 13 February 1945.3 The law applied in Joyce would have led Pound’s lawyer to seek some postponement of trial until the American courts decided whether to follow the English lead. The other two cases involve the Americans, Douglas Chandler and Robert Best, employees of German radio, who were indicted with Pound in 1943. 3. William Joyce was an American who came to be known as “Lord Haw Haw.” He was hanged at Wandsworth, England, 3 Jan. 1946. He was the best known of the “radio traitors.” He began his programs, “This is Jairmany calling,” and would then prophesy the destruction of English towns and cities. The name “Lord Haw Haw” was created by the English journalist, Jonah Barrington, to ridicule Joyce and to make him appear idiotic. Conrad L. Rushing is a Superior Court Judge in California and an occasional lecturer in law at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches a course in law and literature at the California Judges College and is a founder of the Sane Jose Poetry Center. (shrink)

Background: Clinical genomic implementation studies pose challenges for informed consent. Consent forms often include complex language and concepts, which can be a barrier to diverse enrollment, and these studies often blur traditional research-clinical boundaries. There is a move toward self-directed, web-based research enrollment, but more evidence is needed about how these enrollment approaches work in practice. In this study, we developed and evaluated a literacy-focused, web-based consent approach to support enrollment of diverse participants in an ongoing clinical genomic implementation study. (...) Methods: As part of the Cancer Health Assessments Reaching Many (CHARM) study, we developed a web-based consent approach that featured plain language, multimedia, and separate descriptions of clinical care and research activities. CHARM offered clinical exome sequencing to individuals at high risk of hereditary cancer. We interviewed CHARM participants about their reactions to the consent approach. We audio recorded, transcribed, and coded interviews using a deductively and inductively derived codebook. We reviewed coded excerpts as a team to identify overarching themes. Results: We conducted 32 interviews, including 12 (38%) in Spanish. Most (69%) enrolled without assistance from study staff, usually on a mobile phone. Those who completed enrollment in one day spent an average of 12 minutes on the consent portion. Interviewees found the information simple to read but comprehensive, were neutral to positive about the multimedia support, and identified increased access to testing in the study as the key difference from clinical care. Conclusions: This study showed that interviewees found our literacy-focused, web-based consent approach acceptable; did not distinguish the consent materials from other online study processes; and valued getting access to testing in the study. Overall, conducting empirical bioethics research in an ongoing clinical trial was useful to demonstrate the acceptability of our novel consent approach but posed practical challenges. (shrink)

This paper, Study II, is the second in a series of papers investigating the relative importance of social responsibility criteria in determining organizational effectiveness, using student samples. A revised version of the Organizational Effectiveness Menu was used as a questionnaire with a sample of 182 senior undergraduate and the MBA students from three universities. Each respondent was asked to rate the importance of the criteria from a manager's perspective. The results support the earlier findings that students responding as managers rate (...) social responsibility criteria, individually and collectively, among the least important of the potential determinants of organizational effectiveness. (shrink)

This paper correlates community service goals from 82 business firms with various organizational characteristics, including goals, niches, structure, context, and performance. The results demonstrate that community-service goals are positively correlated with prestige goals, assets goals, superior-design niche, net assets size, and performance on income to net assets. Community-service goals, however, were not significantly correlated with profit goals, low-price niche, multiplicity of outputs, workflow continuity, qualifications, or centralization, as expected.

Attentional control has grown in importance within theoretical and predictive models of psychopathology over past decades. The Attentional Style Questionnaire is a novel measure of internal a...

Gaze following is the ability to use others’ gaze to obtain information about the environment. As such, it may be highly adaptive in a variety of socio-ecological contexts, and thus be widespread across animal taxa. To date, gaze following has been mostly studied in primates, and partially in birds, but little is known on the gaze following abilities of other taxa and, especially, on the evolutionary pressures that led to their emergence. In this study, we used an experimental approach to (...) test gaze following skills in a still understudied taxon, ungulates. Across four species, we assessed the individual ability to spontaneously follow the gaze of both conspecifics and human experimenters in different conditions. In line with our predictions, species followed the model’s gaze both with human and conspecific models, but more likely with the latter. Except for guanacos, all species showed gaze following significantly more in the experimental conditions. Despite the relative low number of study subjects, our study provides the first experimental evidence of gaze following skills in non-domesticated ungulates, and contributes to understanding how gaze following skills are distributed in another taxon—an essential endeavor to identify the evolutionary pressures leading to the emergence of gaze following skills across taxa. (shrink)

Patients with psychiatric illness feel the brunt of the intersection of many of our society's and our health care system's disparities, and the vulnerability of this population during the Covid‐19 pandemic cannot be overstated. Patients with psychiatric illness often suffer from the stigma of mental illness and receive poor medical care. Many patients with severe and persistent mental illness face additional barriers, including poverty, marginal housing, and food insecurity. Patients who require psychiatric hospitalization now face the risk of transmission of (...) Covid‐19 due to the inherent difficulties of social distancing within a psychiatric hospital. Patients whose freedom and self‐determination have been temporarily overruled as they receive involuntary psychiatric treatment deserve a setting that maintains their health and safety. While tele‐mental health has been rapidly expanded to provide new ways to access psychiatric treatment, some patients may have limitations in technological literacy or access to devices. The social isolation, economic fallout, and potential traumatization related to the current pandemic will disproportionately affect this vulnerable population, and society's duties to them must be considered. (shrink)

This paper investigates the differences in perceptions between business students and service-sector managers regarding the role that ethics and social responsibility serve in determining organizational effectiveness. An organizational effectiveness instrument containing business ethics and social responsibility items served as a questionnaire for a sample of 151 senior business undergraduates and 53 service-sector managers. The results indicated that while students acting as managers rate some social responsibility issues as more important than do managers, they also rate ethical conduct and a few (...) dimensions of social responsibility lower than do managers. The findings have direct implications for both business practitioners and educators. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relative importance of social responsibility criteria in determining organizational effectiveness. The organizational effectiveness menu was used as a questionnaire with a sample of 151 senior undergraduates. Each respondent was asked to rate the importance of the criteria from three constituent perspectives within a service organization: (1) as a manager, (2) as an investor, (3) as an employee. Later, a subsample of students (n=61) responded to the same questionnaire acting as a manager in an assigned case study. (...) The results indicated that students acting as managers, investors, or employees rate social responsibility criteria among the least important of the determinants of organizational effectiveness. Moreover, while specific situations may call for changes in the relative importance of these criteria, social responsibility criteria were not viewed, generally, as the most important determinants of organizational effectiveness. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relative importance of social responsibility criteria in determining organizational effectiveness as seen by managers of two service industries. The Organizational Effectiveness Menu (Kraft and Jauch, 1988) was used as a questionnaire with a sample of 53 firms. The conclusion is that while managers view ethical conduct as among the most important determinants of organizational effectiveness, numerous other social responsibility criteria are assigned relatively low priority. A question remains as to what managers will actually do when (...) faced with limited resources. (shrink)

The first issue of Artificial Intelligence and Law journal was published in 1992. This paper offers some commentaries on papers drawn from the Journal’s third decade. They indicate a major shift within Artificial Intelligence, both generally and in AI and Law: away from symbolic techniques to those based on Machine Learning approaches, especially those based on Natural Language texts rather than feature sets. Eight papers are discussed: two concern the management and use of documents available on the World Wide Web, (...) and six apply machine learning techniques to a variety of legal applications. (shrink)

Reading is not only “cold” information processing, but involves affective and aesthetic processes that go far beyond what current models of word recognition, sentence processing, or text comprehension can explain. To investigate such “hot” reading processes, standardized instruments that quantify both psycholinguistic and emotional variables at the sublexical, lexical, inter-, and supralexical levels (e.g., phonological iconicity, word valence, arousal-span, or passage suspense) are necessary. One such instrument, the Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL) has been used in over 50 published studies (...) demonstrating effects of lexical emotional variables on all relevant processing levels (experiential, behavioral, neuronal). In this paper, we first present new data from several BAWL studies. Together, these studies examine various views on affective effects in reading arising from dimensional (e.g., valence ) and discrete emotion features (e.g., happiness ), or embodied cognition features like smelling. Second, we extend our investigation of the complex issue of affective word processing to words characterized by a mixture of affects. These words entail positive and negative valence, and/or features making them beautiful or ugly. Finally, we discuss tentative neurocognitive models of affective word processing in the light of the present results, raising new issues for future studies. (shrink)

Schober et al. describe two studies on how survey interview respondents misunderstand interview questions. After answering a survey, participants are given standardized definitions of the questions they have just answered. Even apparently simple questions such as “Have you smoked more than 100 cigarettes?” are interpreted very differently by participants. Moreover, clarifying the meaning of the definitions with the interviewer does not always help resolve the miscommunication.

Academic programs in the medical/health humanities have proliferated widely in recent years, and the professional, academic, and cultural drivers of this growth promise sustained new program development. In this article, we present the results of a survey sent to representatives of one hundred twenty-four baccalaureate and ten graduate programs in the medical/health humanities to assess the experiences and needs of existing programs. Survey results confirm the interest in and need for a descriptive toolkit as opposed to a prescriptive manual; indicate (...) what data and materials are most needed to support the successful development of new academic programs in the field; and identify areas for future research. Recognizing a need for program development resources, the Health Humanities Consortium has initiated the creation of a comprehensive online toolkit. We discuss survey results and the toolkit in relation to the drivers of new program growth. Finally, we describe resources now available through the HHC’s new online program toolkit, including existing programs; sample syllabi; sample curricula templates; program rationale; proposal templates; and graduation data. (shrink)

« La disproportion de la violence anti-spéciste par rapport à ses objets pose la question des motifs de cette violence. Loin d’être l’expression d’une compassion instruite par une morale hédoniste, par une écologie et une éthologie, cette violence joue dans l’idéologie générale de l’indifférenciation, un rôle capital et manifeste le ressentiment propre à la post-modernité. On ne peut retrouver la place privilégiée de l’homme qu’en répondant à la crise cosmologique de la modernité par une cosmologie panpsychiste, celle, par exemple, de (...) Raymond Ruyer. La dignité centrale de l’homme y est fondée sur la nature de son cerveau, embryon continué, renversant le rapport de subordination à l’organisme, pour offrir à la personne humaine un don de relation avec le Monde comme totalité. La pluralité des espèces est ainsi dépassée par l’accès à un monde des valeurs, unifié par un Sens des sens. Ne pas vouloir occuper la place centrale, c’est déroger aux exigences fondatrices de la personne. La violence anti-spéciste n’est donc ni altruisme étendu à tout être sentant ni humilité mais ressentiment contre une situation qui n’est pas une situation de pouvoir mais de responsabilité. ». (shrink)

This essay employs strategies drawn from the emergent field of everyday aesthetics to explore the pleasures of reading Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison. As a fictional paradigm, Crusoe has been a paradoxical inspiration, inviting critique as a seductive representative of colonial power, on the one hand, and eliciting admiration for his ability to provoke meaningful artistic and intellectual engagement from a diverse group of writers and thinkers, on the other hand. To many ordinary readers, he (...) has proved company worth keeping as a source of inspiration and personal pleasure primarily through his aesthetic approach to the structuring of everyday life. The fiction of Samuel Richardson continues the focus on the everyday, placing even greater emphasis on the relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic. In his final novel, Sir Charles Grandison, pleasure can scarce be felt without some commentary outlining the contours of moral significance, and the very act of moral reasoning is demonstrably affective for characters and readers alike. The essay ends with consideration of the power of literature, especially the realistic novel, to shape the ordinary lives of everyday readers. (shrink)

La physique panpsychiste de Ruyer est fondée sur deux arguments : la science, par méthode, ne peut que méconnaître les formes, ne connaît que les structures, et toute réalité ne peut être qu'en se possédant activement, c'est-à-dire comme domaine, ou subjectivité, ou présence. La critique décisive du parallélisme psycho-physique montre que la philosophie de l'esprit, ou le fameux mind-body problem, n'est qu'un catalogue de faux problèmes . Mais, s'agissant de la personne humaine, le spiritualisme ruyérien continue la tradition empiriste en (...) faisant du « je » un point de perspective mythique et provisoire. Le « je » émerge pragmatiquement de la présence, ne la constitue pas et disparaît avec elle. Peut-on opposer à ce spiritualisme sans sujet personnel un « je » distant et séparé de la seule présence ? À distance par là même de l'activité qui, au lieu de la substance, est la catégorie fondamentale de l'ontologie ruyérienne. Ruyer's panpsychical physics is based on two arguments: science, by its method, can only underestimate the forms, can only know the structures, and any reality can exist only by controlling itself actively, that is as a domain, a subjectivity, or a presence. The crucial criticism of psycho-physical parallelism shows that the philosophy of mind, or the famous mind-body problem, is only a catalog of non-problems . However, with respect to the human person, Ruyerian spiritualism continues the empiricist tradition by turning the « I » into a mythical and temporary focal point. The « I » pragmatically emerges from the presence, it does not constitute it and it disappears with it. Can we oppose to this spiritualism deprived of any personal subject an « I » far more distant and separated from presence only? Does is exist severed from activity, which, replacing substance, is the fundamental category of Ruyerian ontology? (shrink)

The article entitled “Ruyer and the lessons of Instinct” focuses on the problem of the anthropological difference. André Conrad first shows that for any comprehensive ethology (Fabre, von Uexküll, Buytendijk) instinct depends neither on the mechanism of “autonomous sequences” (Lorenz, Tinbergen) nor on “regulated behaviours”: it is an embryology organised and developed accordingly to a “thematic action” (Ruyer). Thus, if human being is separated from animality by the originality of the symbolic function (Cassirer and Langer), the thematic action does (...) not separate social embryology –both cultural and political– from the mystery of Life. That is this precise “Thematism” (Ruyer) that allows us to understand both the difference and community between living beings. (shrink)

Marketers must first perceive ethics and social responsibility to be important before their behaviors are likely to become more ethical and reflect greater social responsibility. However, little research has been conducted concerning marketers' perceptions regarding the importance of ethics and social responsibility as components of business decisions. The purpose of this study is to develop a reliable and valid scale for measuring marketers' perceptions regarding the importance of ethics and social responsibility. The authors develop an instrument for the measurement of (...) the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility (PRESOR). Evidence that the scale is valid is presented through the assessment of scale reliability, as well as content and predictive validity. Finally, future research needs and the value of this construct to marketing are discussed. (shrink)

La profondeur, la précision et la vivacité de l'écriture fiedlerienne se révèlent pleinement dans ces pensées toujours subtiles, parfois fulgurantes, qui reprennent et prolongent la réflexion conduite dans l'ouvrage Sur l'origine de l'activité artistique, édité par D Cohn dans la même collection. La pensée de Fiedler est plus qu'un moment majeur de l'esthétique néo-kantienne : elle élève l'art à la dignité d'une théorie de la connaissance. Son refus d'une esthétique vouée au bon goût, l'affirmation qu'un jugement artistique objectif est possible (...) servent une conception de l'oeuvre comme révélation des conditions de la visibilité. L'art devient, avec lui et pour la modernité qui s'annonce, une exploration de la perception humaine en tant que telle. Aussi Fiedler est-il aujourd'hui redécouvert et son influence sur Georg Simmel ou Ernst Cassirer, autant que sur Wölfflin ou Panofsky réévaluée à sa juste mesure. (shrink)

Ruyer démontre qu’une finalité-harmonie œuvre dans la formation des êtres physiques. Cette finalité contredit le mécanisme, et se distingue de la finalité-intention qui est la finalité parlée. Cette dernière est seconde et dépend d’une illusion d’un sujet de l’activité, posé devant celle-ci, illusion inévitable pour la raison pragmatique d’une mise en scène de l’activité. Contre Hume, Ruyer montre que les êtres s’organisent en effet, mais en tant qu’ils sont des subjectivités, des « domaines absolus » constamment actifs, prenant forme selon (...) des types, des essences ou des thèmes, selon un dynamisme harmonique dont l’analogue est donné dans la formation d’une improvisation musicale ou dans la création d’un tableau. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

As understanding of the human microbiome improves, novel therapeutic targets to improve human health with microbial therapeutics will continue to expand. We outline key considerations of balancing risks and benefits, optimising access, returning key results to research participants, and potential conflicts of interest.

L’état présent de la philosophie est la contre-partie vivante de la recherche cartésienne de la vérité : la philosophie actuelle cherche а éliminer la notion de vérité. Afin d’éviter ce scepticisme, on déteгmine d’abord la notion de vérité d’après la formule classique : adaequatio rei et intellectus. Puis on introduit le probleme des fondements de la connaissanec en distinguant la notion de vérité et le critère de la vérité, en montrant que la confusion entre les deux amène à la mystique (...) de la connaissance ou au relativisme. On limite l’exigence d’un critère de la vérité aux «aperceptions réductibles», et l'оп montre comment les « aperceptions irréductibles»s’ordonnent en rapport aux aperceptions réductibles. (shrink)

We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into (...) a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go. (shrink)

El nuevo libro de Xavier de Planhol, L'Islam et la mer es el primer intento, por parte de un especialista occidental, de evaluar el papel del mar en el mundo islámico. No es un libro que se dedique a describir acontecimientos sino a establecer paradigmas culturales e intelectuales, llegando a la conclusión de que «el islam es incompatible con el mar». En consecuencia, explora las implicaciones de esta antipatía a lo largo de la historia islámica desde tiempos pre-islámicos hasta el (...) presente. Su tesis, sin embargo, puede ser cuestionada desde diversas perspectivas, y este artículo, a la vez reseña y estado de la cuestión, sugiere aspectos en los que, tanto las fuentes que él cita, como otras no utilizadas en el libro, pueden ser interpretadas para llegar a conclusiones muy diferentes. (shrink)

Ruyer partage avec Bergson la négation d’un stockage des souvenirs dans le cerveau mais non l’affirmation qu’ils sont dans l’esprit, car ils ne sont jamais « déjà là », tout en étant disponibles. Comparables aux formations organiques de l’embryogenèse, ils sont recréés, formés à nouveau par un détour par des sens ou des expressivités, régénérés à partir de leurs racines sémantiques. L’activité prime ici sur la substance et sur le lieu, quel qu’il soit. Mais le sens prime sur toute activité. (...) S’agissant de la mémoire du vécu personnel, biographique ou anecdotique, de quel enracinement sémantique dépend, comme fondement de notre permanence morale, la recréation de « nos » souvenirs? (shrink)

La thèse soutenue ici affirme que par la liberté humaine nous faisons l’expérience de Dieu autant que Dieu fait l’expérience de l’homme. Ce faisant, nous tentons d’exposer et d’examiner la réponse de Ruyer à une question classique de théologie rationnelle : comment concilier la liberté humaine et l’existence de Dieu ? Cette réponse montre que l’une n’est pas sans l’autre, la liberté requiert Dieu comme océan des possibles, et réciproquement, il est certains actes où Dieu touche notre existence, sans la (...) déposséder de ce qu’elle a en propre, faute de quoi l’activité humaine ne resterait qu’apparente. Une première partie examine le statut de la métaphysique comme fiction et la conscience comme fascination. Un second moment expose et défend contre plusieurs objections une preuve de la liberté humaine : le « cogito axiologique ». La thèse elle-même, en troisième partie, développe et discute un aspect de la théodicée ruyérienne qui lui est liée.The thesis here defended asserts that by human liberty we make experience of God as much as God makes experience of man. So Ruyer gives his answer to a vexed theological question : we must conciliate human freedom and existence of God. Human freedom requires God as a sea of possibility from where it finds its nourishment, and, on the other hand, God can reach, in some peculiar actions, human existence without depriving that existence of its own, or reducing it to a mere appearance. Understanding such an answer requires, in a first part, explanations about metaphysics as fiction, and about conscience as fascination. In a second part human liberty will be proved by an argument so called « axiological cogito », and that proof defended against several objections. The conciliation of human liberty with the existence of God, as a Person, in the third part, develops Ruyerian answers to the theological question of « théodicée ». (shrink)

In contrast to the views put forth by Stein & Glasier, we support the use of inbred strains of rodents in studies of the immunobiology of neural transplants. Inbred strains demonstrate homology of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Virtually all experimental work in transplantation immunology is performed using inbred strains, yet very few published studies of immune rejection in intracerebral grafts have used inbred animals.