Appreciating human movement can be a powerful aesthetic experience. We have used apparent biological motion to investigate the aesthetic effects of three levels of movement representation: body postures, movement transitions and choreographic structure. Symmetrical and asymmetrical sequences of apparent movement were created from static postures, and were presented in an artificial grammar learning paradigm. Additionally, “good” continuation of apparent movements was manipulated by changing the number of movement path reversals within a sequence. In an initial exposure phase, one group of (...) participants saw only symmetrical sequences, while another group saw only asymmetrical sequences. In a subsequent test phase, both groups rated all sequences on an aesthetic evaluation scale. We found that posture, movement, and choreographic structure all influenced aesthetic ratings. Separate ratings for the static body postures presented individually showed that both groups preferred a posture that maximized spatial symmetry. Ratings for the experimental sequences showed that both groups gave higher ratings to symmetrical sequences with “good” continuation and lower ratings to sequences with many path reversals. Further, participants who had been initially familiarized with asymmetrical sequences showed increased liking for asymmetrical sequences, suggesting a structural mere exposure effect. Aesthetic preferences thus depend on body postures, apparent movement continuation and choreographic structure. We propose a hierarchical model of aesthetic perception of human movement with distinct processing levels for body postures, movements and choreographic structure. (shrink)

Cartesian skepticism requires scenarios of massive deception to make its case. The inability to rule out such possibilities in which our beliefs about the external world are massively mistaken motivates the conclusion that we lack everyday knowledge. Some authors have emphasized that such scenarios are implausible. Others have instead claimed that scenarios are irrelevant to skepticism. If skepticism can make its case, they argue that scenarios of massive deception are not the way to do it. This thesis possesses a distinct (...) anti-sceptical weight. Deprived of its scenario, epistemological skepticism must find a different reason for it to be taken seriously, which might be a tall order. This paper defends the idea that scenarios do not constitute the essential element of the skeptical threat. However, it takes this result in the opposite direction. We aim to show that skepticism without scenarios constitutes a bigger and more legitimate philosophical problem than otherwise. Additionally, it also offers the possibility of achieving a unified understanding of skepticism that is so far lacking in contemporary epistemology, allowing us to better understand what can constitute a satisfactory anti-skeptical strategy. (shrink)

Plena are the characteristic properties of material thing, of the thing we perceive in our daily experience. According to Husserl, the attempt to explain their features into the language of Physics is the core of the modern science of nature. Colours and smells are not directly reducible to geometrical forms and algebraic functions. In order to explain natural processes using mathematical terms, scientists need to find out how it is possible to measure them. Galileo claims that the world is made (...) up of mathematical formulae, Husserl instead tries to understand the limits of the validity of this claim. In order to do this, the role of subjective experience must be taken into account. (shrink)

The mystery of the images and an unknown book.

There are two main traditions in defining a semantics for agent communication languages, based either on mental attitudes or on social commitments. These traditions share speech acts as operators with preconditions and effects, and agents playing roles like speaker and hearer, but otherwise they rely on distinct ontologies. They refer not only to either belief and intention or various notions of social commitment, but also to distinct speech acts and distinct kinds of dialogue. In this paper, we propose a common (...) ontology for both approaches based on public mental attitudes attributed to role instances. Public mental attitudes avoid the unverifiability problem of private mental states, while reusing the logics and implementations developed for FIPA compliant approaches. Moreover, a common ontology of communication primitives allows for the construction of agents which do not need separate reasoning modules to participate in dialogues with both mental attitudes and social commitments compliant agents. Moreover, a common ontology of communication primitives allows for the construction of agents participating in and combining the full range of dialogues covered by the individual approaches without having to redefine the existing protocols to cope with new dialog types. We illustrate how to extend the ontology to a semantics for agent communication and how to define mappings from existing semantics to the new one. (shrink)

The philosopher and his passion for the “gentle sex”.

L’amore per i libri e le biblioteche di un grande filosofo.

Modern rationalism transformed the modern homeland to a discursive space and time by means of institutes governing the modern society in all its walks. Based on the Newtonian and Kantian conception of space and time the discursive field is just a scene wherein any human individual adopts stewardship to create progress by reducing landscape and non-human life to auxiliary items for human’s benefit. In contrast, Aldo Leopold considered humans, non human life and the landscape as mutually influencing participants and enlarged (...) ethical care to all living participants and the landscape, called ´the land´. Integrity and autonomy of the homeland are the central topics of Leopold’s land ethics. Baird Callicott suggested to complete it with new metaphysical conceptions of space and time. -/- We formulated a metaphysical background for Leopold’s land ethics by phenomenology of space and time based on the Leibnizian conception of space-time. The latter is constructed by particular places and events called ´ecotopois´ embracing all human participants, locals and foreigners in a varying symbolic temporal and spatial field of dynamic process of identification and self consciousness. Adopting Warwick Fox´ transpersonal identification idea non-human life and landscape enriches these processes. Finally, it is not a matter of conquering the land, it is matter of making a community. -/- Though landscape and participants are particular, integrity and autonomy of the homeland claim the universal status of the land. Adopting Gadamer hermeneutical way of understanding, we reject mutual and equally understanding. Only acceptance of mutual prejudice makes room for asymmetric praxis between locals and foreigners as well as between humans and non-humans. What is more, Gadamer´s hermeneutics makes an ontological status of the foreigner possible and recognizes the interest of homeland’s particularity. This universal status is guaranteed as a priori space-time that links subject’s tradition and that of the land to actual contact with the foreigner. Transpersonal identification is a consequence of converging hermeneutical understanding of foreigner’s particularity and that of the landscape. Ethics of the land evolves from the ethical status of any foreigner in the own homeland. -/- . (shrink)

The German phenomenologist Max Scheler, commonly considered one of the most important exponents of value objectivism, does not claim an “absolute” value objectivism, as often asserted. The values are objecttive towards the will of the subject, not towards the creative act of loving. This presupposes a radical new conception of the value. According to Scheler, in fact, the values are no qualities to be attributed to the perceived object but the very first thing grasped on a phenomenon, i.e. the “first (...) messenger” (erste Bote) of the phenomenon: the value is what orients the formation and development of the experience. This paper proposes to deal with the problem of the value objectivism in relation to the self-transcendence and to the self-realization of the person. The value objectivism should be measured by its faculty to orient the act through which a person detaches himself from the proper factual self. The “Good” isn‟t therefore related to an ideal transcendent object, but to the act to transcend the proper self in a creative way. The fundamental thesis is that the personal identity constitutes itself only in a critical distancing from the self. This concrete act of self-transcending cannot be understood merely in the sense of the self-interpretation – of the “strong evaluations” of Charles Taylor – but requires also the presence of the exemplarity of the other. (shrink)

Teniendo presente los antecedentes básicos de la constitución de la ciencia cognitiva, surgen una serie de problemas relacionados con una justificación racional de la constitución de dicha disciplina en tanto disciplina científica. Tales problemas se incluyen dentro del dominio de lo que podríam..

Se hace en este ensayo una propuesta de interpretación para la versión específica del pragmatismo propuesta por Peirce, ya que su conexión con el realismo tiene ciertas consecuencias que podrían llevar una revisión radical de la frecuente adscripción de Peirce o bien al holismo de la confirm..

The paper presents a new, intuitive formal language, L E , that fits in with a world view in which experiences are central entities. It is shown how classical logic and an "objective making" adaptive logic can be applied to formulas of L E . The latter logic sheds an interesting light on the creation of theories about "the objective world". The paper also contains a small comment on sentences that are not translatable in L E . In the last (...) section, I revise self-referring sentences by means of their translations in L E. (shrink)

Proof theory and semantics of an adaptive logic that deals adequately with change in individuals with or without a name are presented. New logical constants are introduced, viz. indicators. Within a given context they function as names, predicates and quantifiers at the same time. The thus extended language (of classical logic) has a big expressive power and solvespartly — the (classical) non-logical presuppositions with respect to ‘the existence of individuals’. Nevertheless, from a purely logical point of view, the here pre (...) - sented logic requires nothing but a very intuitive selection of classical models of the premises, viz. the minimally abnormal ones. (shrink)

‘Faith and knowledge’ in Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie. On the Role of Philosophy in Post-Secular Society This article focuses on three aspects that might clarify the quintessence of Habermas’ position regarding the relation between faith and knowledge in his book, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie. First, a concise overview is given of the role of this specific theme in Habermas’ oeuvre as a whole (from his earliest to his later writings), that may help to illuminate why his so-called shift (...) with regard to the relation between faith and knowledge is in need of modification. Subsequently, the question is raised as to the possible role philosophy may still play for Habermas in the contemporary climate of so-called post-secular thought. Finally, some critical remarks are formulated concerning his genealogical reconstruction, in particular his treatment of respectively the axial period, the double face of nominalism and the specific status of a philosophical, conceptual translation of religious contents. (shrink)

Emphasising the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of reason – aspects that were not considered neither by Kant nor by Garve – in his Metakritik über den Purismum der Vernunft , Johann Georg Hamann has not only become the ‘founding father’ of the romantic Sturm und Drang. He has inaugurated a specific kind of criticism as well that will gradually leave its mark upon the philosophical scene from the end of the nineteenth century up till now. In this article, I (...) would like to focus upon the influence that was exerted by Hamann’s metacritique on the Anglo-Saxon philosophy of culture, as it becomes obvious in the work of, among others, R.G. Collingwood, Isaiah Berlin and Charles Taylor. (shrink)

Abstract Is `History Man', Fred Inglis' biography on R.G. Collingwood a successful biography? Inglis' explicit ambition is to portray the concrete figure Collingwood by abducting him from what he calls the vacuum-packed academic world of scholars. But the best biographers look for a balanced equilibrium between rendering philosophical ideas and dramatizing a philosopher's life. Put another way, they evoke the interweaving of a philosopher's thought with the vicissitudes of his life. Despite the unmistakable qualities of this biography, Fred Inglis did (...) not fully succeed in finding that very balance, mainly due to a lack of philosophical background. While Oxford University Press with the new edition of his works and manuscripts is thoroughly reorienting the traditional view of Collingwood, Inglis' fluently written but rather biased portrayal does no full justice to the heart of his fascinating philosophy and personality. (shrink)

In On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche exposes christianity as the product of the slave morality and its resentment. Nietzsche’s exposure provoked different reactions. In Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen from 1913 Max Scheler shows, in contrast to Nietzsche, that the quintessence of christian ethics does not arise from resentment. More interesting than Scheler’s rebuttal of Nietzsche is the reaction from the French-American thinker René Girard . Girard does not only criticize Nietzsche’s analysis, but goes as well into the (...) both paradoxal and crucial point that resentment is, on the one hand, intertwined with christian culture and, on the other, is at odds with christian inspiration. I would like to present Girard’s rebuttal of Nietzsche in two steps. First, I outline the background of Girard’s view on the relation between myth and christianity, taking his interpretation of the function of the scapegoat mechanism in premodern mythical religions as a starting-point. According to Girard, christianity functions as the exposure of premodern mythical religions, rejecting as it does the foundational role of the scapegoat mechanism as a means of canalising violence, inherent to mimetic desire. It is not christianity’s intent to canalize violence by means of limited violence , but precisely to expose violence. By making obvious that christianity did not succeed in doing this – by giving a philosophical analysis of the role of christianity in Western culture Girard shows that christianity has succeeded only in wounding violence, not in eliminating it and, as a consequence, has cleared the way for resentment – he is able to demonstrate that resentment is the child of christianity, not its father. Subsequently I outline Girard’s view on the role of mimetic desire in modern culture. Instead of canalizing mimetic desire by means of the scapegoat mechanism, modern Western culture unchains mimetic desire by means of the free market principle of competition. External mediation, which is typical of premodern mythical-religious cultures, is now being replaced by internal mediation, which is guided by economic principles. As such, resentment is going to determine modern culture from within. Hence, christianity will, as an integral part of modern culture, be likely to fall a prey to this resentment. Finally, I conclude by going into the challenge christianity, squeezed as it were between religious claims on the one hand and modern presuppositions on the other, has to cope with: how can it overcome resentment, of which it undoubtedly bears the fruits and which it simultaneously radically rejects? (shrink)

Many critics observe a methodological flaw in Taylor’s work. They claim that there is an alleged discrepancy between Taylor’s historical approach on the one hand and his defense of fullness in term...

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Adopting an ecological perspective on children’s functioning and psychological well-being, we investigated the association between agency and life satisfaction, and its bearing on trauma symptoms and negative emotions in a group of Bedouin children living in the occupied Palestinian territories. Specifically, we hypothesized that the more children were agentic, the more they would be satisfied with their lives; and that greater life satisfaction would be associated with reduced trauma symptoms. A sample of 286 Bedouin children attending primary schools in four (...) different villages in the Jordan Valley completed the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS), Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale for Children (PANAS-C), Children’s Impact of Event Scale (CRIES-13), and the Children’s Hope Scale (CHS). Structural equation modelling was performed to evaluate the cumulative network of direct and indirect effects between children’s agency, life satisfaction, and trauma symptoms. The findings confirmed the key role of life satisfaction in mitigating traumatic reactions. Higher levels of life satisfaction were associated with reduced negative emotions and trauma symptoms, suggesting that agency may be viewed as a pre-determining factor with the potential to protect children from trauma symptoms. We discuss the implications for research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Bellarmino was not the actual executioner of the Nolan.

Time as the key to a theory of everything became recently a renewed topic in scientific literature. Social constructivism applied to physics abandons the inevitable essentials of nature. It adopts uncertainty in the scope of the existential activity of scientific research. We have enlightened the deep role of social constructivism of the predetermined Newtonian time and space notions in natural sciences. Despite its incompatibility with determinism governing the Newtonian mechanics, randomness and entropy are inevitable when negative localized energy is transformed (...) into spatially dissipative heat. In sharp contrast to the Newtonian notion, social constructivism makes room for the temporal twin of cyclic conservation and pseudo-linearly structural evolution both reconciling mechanical order and thermodynamic chaos in Leibnizian space-time. In the broad scope of natural sciences this triad nature of time produces a multiple reality and gives appropriate answers on virtual physical paradoxes. (shrink)

Il filosofo e la passione per il “gentil sesso”.

Niettegenstaande de tendens van het failliet van het multiculturalisme is multiculturele dialoog niet weg te denken in een zich globaliserende wereld. Taylor, Gadamer, Honneth en Kymlicka hebben een bijdrage geleverd op het vlak van de erkenning van identiteit, respect en waardering van verschil. Wij voeren het argument aan dat bovenstaande auteurs niet ontsnappen aan het postmodernistisch dilemma van zelfautonomie en slachtofferschap. Dit komt doordat zij in hun rationale vertrekken van het afzonderlijke subject en deze situeren in een ruimte-tijd waarin de (...) tijd slechts een historische rol heeft en de ruimte geen actieve rol speelt. Tegenover deze uitvloeisels van het postmodern denken stellen wij het eco-communau-tarisme. Vanuit de vaststelling dat het individu denkt, spreek en handelt in de context van zijn taal en cultuur en dus vanuit zijn gemeenschap, situeren wij dit subject en de gemeenschap tevens in een particulier territorium of het ecotoop. Door middel van Hacking’s sociaal constructivisme, het Leibniziaanse meerwereldenbeeld en het biologische paradigma als nieuw denkkader, structureren wij de gemeenschap volgens een cyclisch en een lineair tijdverloop. Het cyclische waarborgt de traditie van een gemeenschap, het lineaire doet de gemeenschap evolueren naar een moreel betere toekomst en heeft een transcendent statuut. Het eco-communautarisme biedt het kader voor een kwalitatieve evolutie van individuen en gemeenschappen. Het normerend aspect hiervan is de pluriforme en multiculturele dialoog. (shrink)

Non fu Bellarmino il vero carnefice del Nolano.