The concept of the tragic is somehow connected with violence. The present enquiry has the purpose of establishing the essential relationship existing between institutional violence and the tragic situation, the latter being at the same time consequence and denouncement of the former. Understood that way, the tragic is first expressed under a poetical form which is precisely called tragedy in dramatic arts: then under a conceptual form, in the analysis of the historical reality itself, by derivation. The analysis of current (...) history may reveal all the potentiality of the tragic accumulated on the violence of power.O conceito do trágico está de algum modo liga do à violência. O presente estudo pretende estabelecer a relação essencial vigente entre violência institucional e situação trágica, a situação trágica sendo ao mesmo tempo conseqüência e denúncia da violência institucional. Assim entendido, o trágico é primeiramen te expresso sob forma poética, na arte dramática denominada precisamente tragédia; em seguida , por derivação, sob forma conceitual, na análise da própria realidade histórica. A análise da história atual poderá revelar todo o potencial trágico acumulado na violência do poder. (shrink)

The director of the National Gallery in London told me recently that the most popular pictures in his museum are Piero della Francesca's ‘Baptism of Christ’ and ‘Nativity’, and it is common knowledge that art-lovers sensitive to the present trends of taste nowadays go to Arezzo to see the frescoes in the Church of St. Francis rather than to Rome for the sake of Raphael's Loggias or Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Likert scales are useful for collecting data on attitudes and perceptions from large samples of people. In particular, they have become a well-established tool in soundscape studies for conducting in situ surveys to determine how people experience urban public spaces. However, it is still unclear whether the metrics of the scales are consistently interpreted during a typical assessment task. The current work aims at identifying some general trends in the interpretation of Likert scale metrics and introducing a procedure for the (...) derivation of metric corrections by analyzing a case study dataset of 984 soundscape assessments across 11 urban locations in London. According to ISO/TS 12913-2:2018, soundscapes can be assessed through the scaling of 8 dimensions: pleasant, annoying, vibrant, monotonous, eventful, uneventful, calm, and chaotic. The hypothesis underlying this study is that a link exists between correlations across the percentage of assessments falling in each Likert scale category and a dilation/compression factor affecting the interpretation of the scales metric. The outcome of this metric correction value derivation is introduced for soundscape, and a new projection of the London soundscapes according to the corrected circumplex space is compared with the initial ISO circumplex space. The overall results show a general non-equidistant interpretation of the scales, particularly on the vibrant-monotonous direction. The implications of this correction have been demonstrated through a Linear Ridge Classifier task for predicting the London soundscape responses using objective acoustic parameters, which shows significant improvement when applied to the corrected data. The results suggest that the corrected values account for the non-equidistant interpretation of the Likert metrics, thereby allowing mathematical operations to be viable when applied to the data. (shrink)

Television regulation is increasingly Europeanized. While the transposition of community law into national legislation in EU member states has been widely discussed, scholarly attention is less frequently devoted to the Europeanization of non-member states. This paper investigates how television regulation in non-EU members has been influenced by European audiovisual policy since the liberalization of broadcasting. Focusing on the case of Switzerland and putting it into a wider context, changes in television regulation and their connection to the European level were analyzed (...) by performing a qualitative document analysis. Results indicate that the degree of Europeanization in Switzerland differs remarkably from other non-member states like Norway. While advertising regulation was brought in line with less-strict EU directives, a public value test or compliance with state aid rules were not even discussed. Yet similar to other non-members, rules were adopted without having a say in their development. (shrink)

The concept of practice would recover the concept of the system of action, if it were not for the existence of systems of action without practice. It remains that a practice is a system of action. As a consequence, supposing the reciprocality of the terms system and theory and a close inspection of the terms in the propositions, there is a semantic equivalence between "theoretical practice" and "Practical system of action". In both cases, the contradiction between the pairs of concepts (...) are resolved dialectically. Thanks to the dialectics, they are melted into one unit of meaning - a synthesis of opposing tensions. Hence, the proposal for a dialectics of global practice, at the same time abstract and historic. Detotalized or along the border of this dialectics, the action without practice as exemplified in the drama may be highlighted. Dramatic is precisely an action which is not practical. The time and the place of the practice are the history and the world of man; the time and the place of drama are the cultural fiction and the symbolic substance. As the mimesis of practice, the drama reproduces not the features of the model but its production and thus it becomes a model of the model. Mimesis is not copying; it is an autonomous form of efficiency, paradoxically without practice, but of course "specular".O conceito de prática recobriria o de sistema de ação, não fosse a existência de sistemas de ação sem prática. Resta que uma prática é um sistema de ação. Como conseqüência, suposta a reciprocação de sistema com teoria e uma atenta inspeção nos termos da proposição, há equivalência semântica entre "prática teórica " e "sistema de ação prático". Num e noutro caso, a contradição interna aos pares de conceitos se resolve dialeticamente. Graças à dialética, são fundidos numa unidade de sentido, síntese de tensões opostas. Daí a proposta de uma dialética da prática global, conjuntamente abstrata e histórica. Destotalizada ou à margem dessa dialética, pode ser destacada a ação sem prática, exemplificada no drama. Dramática é precisamente uma ação que não é prática. O tempo e o lugar da prática são a história e o mundo do homem; o tempo e o lugar do drama são a ficção cultural e a substância simbólica. Mimese da prática, o drama, reproduz, não os traços do modelo, mas a sua produção, tornando-se por sua vez modelo do modelo. Mimese não é cópia, é forma autônoma de eficiência, paradoxalmente sem prática mas especular. (shrink)

Philosophy, especially in a critical phase such as the present one, poses itself as a question. But the current question of philosophy is at the same time the question of the tradition that produced philosophy. Being questioned from withim, philosophy perseveres, renewes itself; questioned from the outside, from a skeptical position, not only its existence but also all its problems are rejected. Nevertheless on the level of science, which has supposedly been turned into a supporter of skepticism, one can find (...) the urgency of the very same thing that is denied in its name. The history of philosophy is the place where the question of philosophy echoes and proliferates. In this context, and through its question, philosophy is always actual, it changes and pluralizes itself.A filosofia, particularmente em fase crítica como a atual, se apresenta como questão. Mas, a questão atual da filosofia é simultaneamente a questão da tradição que produziu a filosofia. Questionada a partir do seu interior, a filosofia persevera, renovando-se; questionada a partir de fora, de uma posição cética, não só sua existência, mas toda a problemática dela decorrente, são recusadas. No entanto, na instância da ciência, pretensamente erigida em bastião do ceticismo, descobre-se a urgência daquilo mesmo que em seu nome é negado. A história da filosofia é o espaço onde ecoa e prolifera a questão da filosofia. Em seu contexto, por meio desta, a filosofia é sempre atual, transforma-se, pluraliza-se. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the connections between the monadic second-order theory of one successor (MSO[<] for short) and the theories of ?-layered structures for time granularity. We first prove that the decision problem for MSO[<] and that for a suitable first-order theory of the upward unbounded layered structure are inter-reducible. Then, we show that a similar result holds for suitable chain variants of the MSO theory of the totally unbounded layered structure (this allows us to solve some decision problems (...) about theories of time granularity left open by Franceschet et al. [FRA 06]). (shrink)

The inner brow raiser is a muscle movement that increases the size of the orbital cavity, leading to the appearance of so-called ‘puppy dog eyes’. In domestic dogs, this expression was suggested to be enhanced by artificial selection and to play an important role in the dog-human relationship. Production of the inner brow raiser has been shown to be sensitive to the attentive stance of a human, suggesting a possible communicative function. However, it has not yet been examined whether it (...) is sensitive to human presence. In the current study, we aimed to test whether the inner brow raiser differs depending on the presence or absence of an observer. We used two versions of a paradigm in an equivalent experimental setting in which dogs were trained to expect a reward; however, the presence/absence of a person in the test apparatus was varied. In the social context, a human facing the dog delivered the reward; in the non-social context, reward delivery was automatized. If the inner brow raiser has a communicative function and dogs adjust its expression to an audience, we expect it to be shown more frequently in the social context than in the non-social context. The frequency of the inner brow raiser differed between the two contexts, but contrary to the prediction, it was shown more frequently in the non-social context. We further demonstrate that the inner brow raiser is strongly associated with eye movements and occurs independently in only 6% of cases. This result challenges the hypothesis that the inner brow raiser has a communicative function in dog-human interactions and suggests a lower-level explanation for its production, namely an association with eye movements. (shrink)

In a recent article (“The current state of the platelet supply in the US and proposed options to decrease the risk of critical shortages”) published in _Transfusion,_ Stubbs et al. have argued that platelet donors should be paid. Dodd et al. have argued against this proposal, supporting their response with survey data that shows that blood donors (and by extension platelet donors) and potential platelet donors are uninterested in receiving incentives to encourage them to donate. Instead, argue Dodd et al., (...) prospective platelet donors are motivated more by the ease of donation than the prospect of payment. This article defends Stubbs et al. from the criticisms of Dodd et al. It first argues that the preferences that persons state they have in response to survey questions might not reflect the preferences that their actions would reveal they have in actual rather than hypothetical situations. This hypothetical bias is especially likely when persons respond to surveys that ask them about the performance of morally commendable actions (such as platelet donation). This article then argues that the survey that Dodd et al. rely on exhibits serious selection bias with respect to the set of persons it considers to be potential platelet donors. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility has been linked with numerous organizational advantages, including recruitment, retention, productivity, and morale, which relate specifically to employees. However, despite specific benefits of CSR relating to employees and their importance as a stakeholder group, it is noteworthy that a lack of attention has been paid to the individual level of analysis with CSR primarily being studied at the organizational level. Both research and practice of CSR have largely treated the individual organization as a “black box,” failing to (...) account for individual differences amongst employees and the resulting variations in antecedents to CSR engagement or disengagement. This is further exacerbated by the tendency in stakeholder theory to homogenize priorities within a single stakeholder group. In response, utilizing case study data drawn from three multinational tourism and hospitality organizations, combined with extensive interview data collected from CSR leaders, industry professionals, engaged, and disengaged employees, this exploratory research produces a finer-grained understanding of employees as a stakeholder group, identifying a number of opportunities and barriers for individual employee engagement in CSR interventions. This research proposes that employees are situated along a spectrum of engagement from actively engaged to actively disengaged. While there are some common drivers of engagement across the entire spectrum of employees, differences also exist depending on the degree to which employees, rather than senior management, support corporate responsibility within their organizations. Key antecedents to CSR engagement that vary depending on employees’ existing level of broader engagement include organizational culture, CSR intervention design, employee CSR perceptions, and the observed benefits of participation. (shrink)

Thi Nguyen develops the view that games are, at least potentially, works of art that afford players the opportunity to experiment with agency and have aesthetically significant experiences. In this paper, I critically discuss this proposal. You can make art out of games, I argue, but only at the price of making bad games. I explore the significance of this rivalry between games and art.

This article examines the dog-like aspects and associations of two marine monsters of Graeco-Roman antiquity: Scylla and the κῆτος. Both harbour recognizably canine features in their depictions in ancient art, as well as being referenced as dogs or possessing dog-like attributes in ancient texts. The article argues that such distinctly canine elements are related to, and probably an extension of, the conceptualization of certain marine animals, most prominently sharks, as ‘sea dogs’. Accordingly, we should understand these two sea monsters and (...) the sea dogs as being interrelated in the ancient imagination. Such a canine resonance to certain sea creatures offers a valuable insight into the Graeco-Roman imagination of the marine element as being the abode of creatures reminiscent of terrestrial dogs. (shrink)

In his influential article on the ethics of eating animals, Alastair Norcross argues that consumers of factory raised meat and puppy torturers are equally condemnable because both knowingly cause serious harm to sentient creatures just for trivial pleasures. Against this claim, I argue that those who buy and consume factory raised meat, even those who do so knowing that they cause harm, have a partial excuse for their wrongdoings. Meat eaters act under social duress, which causes volitional impairment, and they (...) often act from deeply ingrained habits, which causes epistemic impairment. But puppy torturers act against cultural norms and habits, consciously choosing to perform wrongful acts. Consequently, the average consumer of factory raised meat has, while puppy torturers lack, a cultural excuse. But although consumers of factory raised meat aren’t blameworthy, they are partially morally responsible for their harmful behavior – and for this, they should feel regret. (shrink)

In “Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases,” Alastair Norcross (2004) uses a thought experiment he calls “Fred's Basement” to argue that consuming factory-farmed meat is morally equivalent to torturing and killing puppies in order to enjoy the taste of chocolate. Thus, he concludes that consuming factory-farmed meat is morally wrong. Although Norcross leaves open the possibility that consuming humanely raised meat is morally permissible, I contend that his basic argumentative approach rules it out. In this article, therefore, (...) I extend Norcross's thought experiment in hopes of convincing readers that consuming humanely raised meat is morally wrong. (shrink)

In his comprehensive survey of the work of William Herschel, published in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes for 1842, Dominique Arago argued that the life of the great astronomer ‘had the rare privilege of forming an epoch in an extended branch of astronomy’. Arago also noted, however, that Herschel's ideas were often taken as ‘the conceptions of a madman’, even if they were subsequently accepted. This fact, commented Arago, ‘seems to me one that deserves to appear in the history (...) of science’. From the time Herschel published his first paper in the Philosophical transactions in 1781, he was subjected to the suggestion of lunacy. His patron and friend William Watson, told him that after his claims for the extraordinary power of his telescopes, ‘your prognosis that some would think you fit for Bedlam has been verified’. On learning of Herschel's supremely accurate new micrometer, the astronomer Alexander Aubert exclaimed to Herschel that ‘we would go to Bedlam together’: Aubert wrote to Herschel in January 1782 that he should ‘mind not a few jealous barking puppies: a little time will clear up the matter, and if it lays in my power you would not be sent to Bedlam alone, for I incline much to be of the party’. (shrink)

Starting from common-sense notions of ‘furniture of the world’ a process ontology is developed in which prospective is an integral part. Technology as configurations that work (precariously) embodies expectations which structure further development. Examples (a cloned puppy, hotel keys, DC airplanes, stem cells, and overpasses on Long Island) are used to develop the notion of material narratives that are “written”, not just by engineers and designers/producers, but also by users: “reading” implies some further “writing”. In contrast to prevailing notions of (...) technological control (through manipulation of building blocks), the “writing” of nanotechnology is modulation of the invisible and impredictable - an extreme example of unruly technology and repair work after the fact, where in practice control is a gesture not so different from magic. Because ontology cannot be other than prospective, it is political throughout. Thus, prospective technology highlights ontological politics. (shrink)

A recalcitrant emotion is an emotion that we experience despite a judgment that seems to conflict with it. Having been bitten by a dog in her childhood, Jane cannot shake her fear of dogs, including Fido, the cute little puppy that she knows to be in no way dangerous. There is something puzzling about recalcitrant emotions, which appear to defy the putatively robust connection between emotions and judgments. If Jane really believes that Fido cannot harm her, what is she afraid (...) of? This article seeks to show how recalcitrant emotion is possible. I argue that reductive theories that identify emotions with judgments, desires, or some combination thereof, cannot explain the possibility of emotional irrationality without contradiction. I then show that the appeal to sui generis attitudes also fails to solve the puzzle of recalcitrant emotions, and diagnose this failure as stemming from a misleading analogy between emotions and perceptions, and in particular, between recalcitrant emotions and perceptual illusions. The solution can be found in a different analogy: between emotions and actions; more specifically, between recalcitrant emotions and weakness of the will, akrasia. Like akratic actions, recalcitrant emotions entail responding to reasons, but to inferior reasons. Irrational but non-contradictory emotions are possible just as weakness of will is possible. (shrink)

This paper challenges a widespread, if tacit, assumption of animal ethics, namely, that the only properties of entities that matter to their moral status are intrinsic, cross‐specific properties—typically psychological capacities. According to moral individualism (Rachels 1990; McMahan 2002; 2005), the moral status of an individual, and how to treat him or her, should only be a function of his or her individual properties. I focus on the fundamental assumption of moral individualism, which I call intrinsicalism. On the challenged view, pigs, (...) puppies and babies, insofar as they are intrinsically similar in morally relevant respects are equally deserving of having their interests satisfied (Norcross 2004). Moreover, relationships—merely agent-relative—are assumed to be irrelevant to moral status. I argue that, while some intrinsic properties are indeed fundamentally relevant, the principled exclusion of extrinsic properties (in virtue of extrinsicness) is unwarranted. From uncontroversial assumptions about supervenience, final value, and moral status, I argue for the relevance of extrinsic properties to moral status based on vulnerability and “reasonable partiality”, as illustrated by pet-keeping. (shrink)

This is the story of a class of painters, puppeteers, puppy trainers, poets, and so much more. It is the story of how a community of first- and second-grade students, wonderful parents and colleagues, and a very wise principal helped me to teach so that each child could pursue a broad range of passions. It is a story about how my students, in recognizing one another’s passions, created a community where everyone, including the teacher, was celebrated.It is a story that (...) I tell with a joy tinged with sadness. The joy comes from my fondness for the memory as well as a conviction that my teaching that year created an experience that honored my students. The sadness comes from the fact that I tell this story from the.. (shrink)

It appears that utilitarian arguments in favor of moral vegetarianism cannot justify a complete prohibition of eating meat. This is because, in certain circumstances, forgoing meat will prevent no pain, and so, on utilitarian grounds, we should be opportunistic carnivores rather than moral vegetarians. In his paper, ‘Puppies, pigs, and people: Eating meat and marginal cases,’ Alastair Norcross argues that causal impotence arguments like these are misguided. First, he presents an analogous situation, the case of chocolate mousse a-la-bama, in order (...) to argue that we, individually, are not causally impotent. Second, Norcross offers a threshold argument in which he argues that while we may individually be causally impotent, when we adopt moral vegetarianism in concert with others, we become causally potent in preventing harms by factory farming. We argue that Norcross's responses ultimately fail to address the causal impotence objection. The former argument fails because it vastly oversimplifies the world in which we find ourselves. Given the size of factory farming, the reasonable conclusion is that we are in fact powerless to prevent harms to animals in factory farms in many or most cases. The latter argument fails because even if collective action will have an impact on factory farming, this does not provide us with an argument against being carnivores in certain circumstances. (shrink)

A large literature suggests that the organization of words in semantic memory, reflecting meaningful relations among words and the concepts to which they refer, supports many cognitive processes, including memory encoding and retrieval, word learning, and inferential reasoning. The co‐activation of related items has been proposed as a mechanism by which semantic knowledge influences cognition, and contemporary accounts of semantic knowledge propose that this co‐activation is graded—that it depends on how strongly related the items are in semantic memory. Prior research (...) with adults yielded evidence supporting this prediction; however, there is currently no evidence of graded co‐activation early in development. This study provides the first evidence that in children the co‐activation of related items depends on their relational strength in semantic memory. Participants (N = 84, age range: 3–9 years) were asked to identify a target (e.g., bone) amid distractors. Children's responses were slowed down by the presence of a related distractor (e.g., puppy) relative to unrelated distractors (e.g., flower)—suggesting that children co‐activated related items upon hearing the name of the target. Importantly, the degree of this co‐activation was predicted by the strength of the target–distractor relation, such that distractors more strongly related to the targets slowed down children to a larger extent. These findings have important implications for understanding how organized semantic knowledge affects other cognitive processes across development. (shrink)

According to a now-standard theory, ‘Juliet is the sun’ is supposed to be a ‘pregnant’ metaphor, ready at any moment to beget a sprawling heap of adorable semantic puppies. Its two parts—‘Juliet’ and ‘the sun’—ostensibly meet at a virtually endless number of points, and it’s allegedly illuminating, enjoyable, or at least interesting to sit there all day spelling them out. But what if none of that is true? What if, instead, a successful creative comparison tends to offer exactly two points (...) of contact, the first of which makes it adequate, while the second gives it power? To put it metaphorically (as is only appropriate): such an image is neither an iceberg (à la Cavell) nor a simple triangle (à la Aristotle) but a tetrahedron, a muscle, a covalent bond. And the telos of such images isn’t to transmit additional information but intensify, or disorient, or even—surprisingly—make us feel at home in this miserable world. (shrink)