Leopold first discusses the conservation of natural resources in the southwestern United States in economic tenns, stressing, in particular, erosion and aridity. He then concludes his analysis with a discussion of the moral issues involved, developing his general position within the context of P. D. Ouspenky’s early philosophy of organism.

Gathers the pre-Sand Country Almanac writings of Aldo Leopold, showing that he was not born an ecologist, but evolved over time through experimentation and thought.

Consciousness and Qualia is a philosophical study of qualitative consciousness, characteristic examples of which are pains, experienced colors, sounds, etc.

Given the apparent nondisplaceability and noncancellability of the derogatory content of slurs, it may appear puzzling that non-derogatory uses of slurs exist. Moreover, these uses seem to be in general available only to in-group speakers, thereby exhibiting a peculiar kind of context-sensitivity. In this paper the author argues that to understand non-derogatory uses we should consider slurs in terms of the kind of social practice their uses instantiate. A suitable theory of social practices has been proposed by McMillan. In typical (...) uses the practice is one of bigotry and discrimination. Non-derogatory uses are only possible to the extent that they consitute acts of an alternative, non-derogatory practice. In the core cases it must be a subversive practice of satire or reappropriation. The social identity of speakers is not an ultimately decisive factor but it is an important constitutive condition: most non-derogatory practices of slur-use can only be performed by a member of the target group. (shrink)

Understanding how activity in the brain leads to a subjective percept is of great interest to philosophers and neuroscientists alike. In the last years, neurophysiological experiments have approached this problem directly by measuring neural signals in animals as they experience well-defined visual percepts. Stimuli in these studies are often inherently ambiguous, and thus rely upon the subjective report, generally from trained monkeys, to provide a measure of perception. By correlating activity levels in the brain to this report, one can speculate (...) on the role of individual neurons and groups of neurons in the formation and maintenance of a particular percept. However, in order to draw valid conclusions from such experiments, it is critical that the responses accurately and reliably reflect what is perceived. For this reason, a number of behavioural paradigms have been developed to control and evaluate the truthfulness of responses from behaving animals. Here we describe several approaches to optimizing the reliability of a monkey's perceptual report, and argue that their combination provides an invaluable approach in the study of subjective visual perception. (shrink)

In welchen gesellschaftlichen Räumen können sich zeitgenössische literarische Werke entwickeln, in welchen wirksam werden? Auf welche Weise sind sie gesellschaftlich noch verankert? Gesellschaftlich im weitesten Sinn: in literarischen, künstlerischen, wissenschaftlichen, kulturkritischen, sozialen, politischen Räumen. Diese Fragen bildeten den Ausgangspunkt von einer von der Wiener Alten Schmiede angezettelten Veranstaltung, die zur zentralen Fragestellung nach der Zukunft des Romans führte. Wobei Leopold Federmair und Olga Martynova, den Hauptakteur: innen dieses als Briefwechsel angelegten Dialogs, die doppelte Stossrichtung des Begriffs Zukunft wichtig war: (...) Welche Zukunft hat das Genre Roman? Und: Welche Rolle wird die Zukunft (auch im Sinne von Utopie) in dieser literarischen Gattung künftig spielen?Ausgehend von einem Memo-Zettel Italo Calvinos mit Vorschlägen für eine Literatur des 21. Jahrhunderts entwickelte sich ein spannender Gedankenaustausch durchaus entlang der grossen Themen und grossen Namen der Literaturgeschichte, ohne jedoch in ein Namedropping zu verfallen und ohne die zentrale Frage der Formsuche und -findung aus den Augen zu verlieren. Wenn hier einer Weltliteratur das Wort geredet wird, dann im Sinne von welthaltig. Dieser von Martynova und Federmair in Gang gesetzte Briefroman wurde in einer zweiten Phase des Projekts von Peter Henisch und zwei jüngeren Autor:innen kommentierend fortgeführt: Anna Weidenholzer und Robert Stripling. In einer dritten und letzten Phase trafen sich die Protagonisten mit dem Dichter Ferdinand Schmatz unter der Diskussionsleitung von Kurt Neumann, um diese Expedition in die Zukunft - nein, nicht abzuschliessen, sondern - in ihrer Mehrstimmigkeit offen zu halten. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Most accounts of the derogatory meaning of slurs are semantic. Recently, Nunberg proposed a purely pragmatic account offering a compelling picture of the relation between derogatory content and social context. Nunberg posits that the semantic content of slurs is identical to that of neutral counterparts, and that derogation is a result of the association of slur use with linguistic conventions of bigoted speakers. The mechanism responsible for it is a special kind of conversational implicature. However, this paper argues that Nunberg’s (...) proposal suffers from technical and conceptual problems regarding the application of the concepts of implicature and convention. It is proposed that the implicature mechanism should be replaced by expressive commitment attribution. The account advocated here preserves crucial insights of Nunberg’s analysis, 25–48, 2013a, Analytic Philosophy 54, 350–363, 2013b; Bolinger Nous, 51, 439–462, 2017), giving them a firmer conceptual basis. It supports a distinction between derogation and offensiveness of slurs that improves on the one proposed by Hom and May, 293–313 2013), and sheds light on puzzling borderline cases: the use of slurs by ignorant speakers and controversies surrounding the status of some words as potentially slurs. (shrink)

In Sino-Theology and the Philosophy of History Leopold Leeb presents the ideas of an influential Chinese intellectual, Liu Xiaofeng, whose approach to the question of a Christian theology for China is both controversial and inspiring.

Traditional explanations of multistable visual phenomena (e.g. ambiguous figures, perceptual rivalry) suggest that the basis for spontaneous reversals in perception lies in antagonistic connectivity within the visual system. In this review, we suggest an alternative, albeit speculative, explanation for visual multistability – that spontaneous alternations reflect responses to active, programmed events initiated by brain areas that integrate sensory and non-sensory information to coordinate a diversity of behaviors. Much evidence suggests that perceptual reversals are themselves more closely related to the expression (...) of a behavior than to passive sensory responses: (1) they are initiated spontaneously, often voluntarily, and are influenced by subjective variables such as attention and mood; (2) the alternation process is greatly facilitated with practice and compromised by lesions in non-visual cortical areas; (3) the alternation process has temporal dynamics similar to those of spontaneously initiated behaviors; (4) functional imaging reveals that brain areas associated with a variety of cognitive behaviors are specifically activated when vision becomes unstable. In this scheme, reorganizations of activity throughout the visual cortex, concurrent with perceptual reversals, are initiated by higher, largely non-sensory brain centers. Such direct intervention in the processing of the sensory input by brain structures associated with planning and motor programming might serve an important role in perceptual organization, particularly in aspects related to selective attention. (shrink)

In order to contribute to the consolidation in the field ofPositive Psychology, we reinvestigated the factor structure of top 10 positive emotions of Barbara Fredrickson. Former research in experimental settings resulted in a three-cluster solution, which we tested withexploratoryandconfirmatorymethodology against different factor models. Within our non-experimental data (N= 312), statistical evidence is presented, advocating for a single factor model of the 10 positive emotions. Different possible reasons for the deviating results are discussed, as well as the theoretical significance to various (...) subfields inPositive Psychology(e.g., therapeutical interventions). Furthermore, the special role ofawewithin the study and its implications for further research in the field are discussed. (shrink)

Correspondence should be addressed to David A. Leopold david.leopold@tuebingen.mpg.deDuring the viewing of certain patterns, widely known as ambiguous or puzzle figures, perception lapses into a sequence of spontaneous alternations, switching every few seconds between two or more visual interpretations of the stimulus. Although their nature and origin remain topics of debate, these stochastic switches are generally thought to be the automatic and inevitable consequence of viewing a pattern without a unique solution. We report here that in humans such (...) perceptual alternations can be slowed, and even brought to a standstill, if the visual stimulus is periodically removed from view. We also show, with a visual illusion, that this stabilizing effect hinges on perceptual disappearance rather than on actual removal of the stimulus. These findings indicate that uninterrupted subjective perception of an ambiguous pattern is required for the initiation of the brain-state changes underlying multistable vision.Visual perception involves coordination between sensory sampling of the world and active interpretation of the sensory data. Human perception of objects and scenes is normally stable and robust, but it falters when one is presented with patterns that are inherently ambiguous or contradictory. Under such conditions, vision lapses into a chain of continually alternating percepts, whereby a viable visual interpretation dominates for a few seconds and is then replaced by a rival interpretation. This multistable vision, or 'multistability', is thought to result from destabilization of fundamental visual mechanisms, and has offered valuable insights into how sensory patterns are actively organized and interpreted in the brain1, 2. Despite a great deal of recent research and interest in multistable perception, however, its neurophysiological underpinnings remain poorly understood. Physiological studies have suggested that disambiguation of ambiguous patterns. (shrink)

During the second half of the eighteenth century, the most powerful literary work in Britain was nonfictional: philosophy, history, biography, and political controversy. Leo Damrosch argues that this tendency is no accident; at the beginning of the modern age, writers were consciously aware of the role of cultural fictions, and they sought to ground those fictions in a real world beyond the text. Their political conservatism (often neglected by modern scholars) was an extensively thought out response to a world in (...) which meaning was inseparable from consensus, and in which consensus was increasingly under attack. Damrosch finds strong affinities between writers who are usually described as antagonists. The first chapter places Hume and Johnson in dialogue, showing that their responses to the challenge of their age have deep similarities, and that their thinking points forward in significant ways to twentieth-century pragmatism. Subsequent chapters explore the interrelationship of the fictive and the "real" in a wide range of works by Boswell, Gibbon, White, Burke, and Godwin. In its combination of literary, philosophical, and cultural criticism, this book will appeal to scholars in many fields as well as to nonacademic readers interested in intellectual history. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit benutzt anstatt der üblichen Peano-Russellschen Zeichen die Peirce-Schröderschen Zeichen. Ich bedaure es aus mehr als einem Grunde schwer, daß man von denselben abgewichen is...