This commentary on the argument by Jablonka & Ginsburg ( 2022 ) that unlimited associative learning (UAL) provides an evolutionary marker for the transition to consciousness raises the question, “Transition to what?” The proposal that a level of consciousness required for UAL would embody eight specific criteria is credible, but can a limited degree of sentience still exist in animals that lack some of the criteria? The article makes a compelling case that UAL could serve as a marker for the (...) transition to an evolutionarily sustainable level of consciousness, but this may be different from _minimal_ consciousness. Nonetheless, the insight of these authors provides an exemplary roadmap for research on the evolutionary emergence of subjective experience in early animal evolution. (shrink)

This article seeks to define what is semiotic and what is Semiotics. Provided first is a brief presentation of various perspectives of Semiotics. Pursuant to this, we will seek to uncover Semiotics’ particulars by evaluating various approaches. We will commence by framing the definitions of the word “Semiotic” to consider then Semiotics via eight particular anthropic – human-related – levels. This partition, derived by the author from a Rastier typology, defines the following levels: noumenophysical, phenophysical, semiotic, representational (“mental images” and (...) concepts), sens (physical), felt (affects), cognitive other and transcendental. From here, we will consider the place of Semiotics among disciplines. Finally, the text presents a typology of relationship between disciplines, including semiotics: anadisciplinarity, disciplinarity, valodisciplinarity, intradisciplinary (such as intertheoricity), multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, metadisciplinarity). (shrink)

In 1790 Melchior Grimm wrote to Catherine II: “Two empires will share all the benefits of civilization, power, genius, letters, the arts, weaponry and industry: Russia in the East and America, which has recently become independent, in the West.” Eighty years later Bachofen made public the same strongly held conviction: “I am beginning to believe that the twentieth-century historian will have only to speak of America and Russia.” In the intervening period Tocqueville concluded the first volume of his work Democracy (...) in America thus: “There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. …The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”. (shrink)

The York Retreat is famous in the histor y of nineteenth-centur y psychiatr y because of its association with moral treatment. Although there exists a substantial historical literature on the evolution of moral treatment at the Retreat, several interpretive problems continue to obscure its unique therapeutic legacy. The nature of moral treatment as practised at the Retreat will be clarified and discussed in a historical perspective. It will be argued that moral treatment at the Retreat was pr imar ily a (...) matter of affective conditioning guided by `benevolent theory'. (shrink)

Reading and writing are fundamental skills students need to be successful in college, making literacy development an issue of education equity. The literacy skills can be content-specific, indicating faculty members across disciplines need to support student development of appropriate literacy skills. The extent to which faculty members support student literacy development is likely associated with their literacy-focused education equity mindset. The goal of our research was to document the mindset of faculty members across multiple disciplines. We gathered a combination of (...) quantitative and qualitative data from 345 college faculty members using a survey. We found variations in the mindset strength between disciplines, by the number of students taught, gender, and age. Overall the faculty members held a moderate literacy-focused education equity mindset. The findings have implications for student inclusion, retention, and completion. (shrink)

Old age is not normally associated with innovativeness and technical prowess. To the contrary, when treating age as a distinct category, policy makers, innovation scholars, and companies typically regard younger people as drivers of innovation, and the early adoption of new technology. In this paper, we critically investigate this link between age, ineptness, and technology adoption using a case study of the diffusion of electric bikes in the Netherlands. We demonstrate how, during the first wave of e-bike acceptance, old age (...) was constructed as an arena in which important learning processes took place, and where older persons became early adopters of e-bikes. Theoretically, this paper speaks critically to the prolific literature on innovation diffusion and its treatment of adopter categories as generic concepts. Using age as a central dimension, our research highlights the situated and constructed nature of adopter categories, and thus challenges age-based assumptions about innovation and technology use by younger and older persons. These insights about what we term the rejuvenation of e-bikes help us rectify existing biases of older persons as an inherently problematic group of technology users. (shrink)

Kyle Johannsen soutient que, pour être pleinement convaincante, la théorie de la justice de John Rawls doit incorporer la conception de l’équité associée avec l’égalitarisme des chances de G.A. Cohen. Il maintient également que, lorsqu’on modifie ainsi la théorie de Rawls, on voit que les principes choisis dans la position originelle doivent être ce que Cohen appelle des «règles de régulation». Je rétorque que la conception de l’équité qu’adopte Rawls est idéalement adaptée aux besoins de sa théorie, et que l’incorporation (...) de la conception de l’équité que défend Cohen rendrait indéterminé le résultat de la position originelle. (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 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 has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In "Delusion, Reality, and Intersubjectivity," Thomas Fuchs offers a superb presentation of an enactive/phenomenological approach to schizophrenic delusions—an approach that is clearly superior to the poor-reality-testing formula that has dominated thinking about delusion in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and cognitive-behavioral theory. As he convincingly argues, two key tendencies go a long way toward accounting for the distinctive features of delusion in schizophrenia: 1) withdrawal from practical, sensori-motoric interaction with the physical environment; and 2) failure to experience reality in intersubjective terms—as a realm (...) of "participatory... (shrink)

This Ph.D. thesis is, in large part, a deepening of my M. A. dissertation, entitled: "Différance Beyond Phenomenological Reduction (Epoché)?" - an edited version of which was published in The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 1989. The M. A. dissertation explores the development of the various phases of the movement of epoché in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and its relevance for Jacques Derrida's project of deconstruction. The analyses not only attend to the need for an effective propaedeutic to (...) an understanding of phenomenology as method, they also serve to demystify the logics of Derridean non-teleological strategy by explaining the sense of such a manoeuvre - as a kind of maieutic response to the Husserlian project - which operates within the horizon of a radical epoché. According to this orientation, Derrida's deconstruction of phenomenology is permitted to open itself up to a phenomenology of deconstruction. This doctoral thesis develops these analyses and utilizes a form of critique that points the way to the possibility of a phenomenological-deconstruction of the limits of Derrida's project of deconstruction through the themes of epoché, play, dialogue, spacing, and temporalization. In order to trace the resources from which he draws throughout the early development of deconstruction, this study confines itself to a discussion on the texts published between 1962 and 1968. This subjection of deconstruction to a historical de-sedimentation of its motivational, methodological, theoretical, and strategic moments, involves a certain kind of transformational return to the spacing between phenomenology and deconstruction that urgently puts into question the alleged supercession of phenomenology by deconstruction. The expression of such a 'beyond' is already deeply sedimented in contemporary deconstructive writing to the point at which it is now rarely even noticed, let alone thematized and brought into question. This conviction (regarding the transgression of phenomenology by deconstruction) traces itself out in the form of an attitude to reading which is, in fact and in principle, counter to D6rrida's own call for care. The meaning and limits of the very terms, transgression, beyond, supercession, etc., must be continually subjected to deconstruction. The notions of play, dissemination and supplementarity - with the concomitant sense of transformational repetition that defines them - do not function as a mere excuse for lack of scholarly rigour. Deconstruction is a movement of critical return, which must insert itself (with a sense of irony) within the margins and intersections of that which gives itself up to this practice of textual unbuilding. The strategy of play encourages the structural matrix of that with which it is engaged to turn in upon itself, exposing its limits and fissures in a kind of textual analogue to a psychoanalysis. To be sure, this does involve a certain kind of violence -a violation of the ( system's' own sense of propriety (what is proper [propre] and closest to itself) -but in no sense is this an anarchical celebration of pure destruction. We speak rather of irony, parody, satire, metaphor, double-reading and other tactical devices, which permit a reorganization of the deconstructed's (textual analysand's) self-relation and the possibility of playful speculation. Such play demands care and vigilance in regard to the appropriation of the logics of the system with which it is in a relation of negotiation. In order to play well, one must learn the game-rules. (shrink)