Zusammenfassung Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert die Bedeutung der Idee der umma in der „Muslimischen Jugend in Deutschland e. V.“ und der sie umgebenden pop-islamischen Szene entlang der Frage sozialer Grenzziehungsprozesse. Es soll gezeigt werden, dass soziale Grenzen nicht nur durch Zuschreibungs- und Exklusionsprozesse von außen konstruiert, sondern auch entlang von gemeinschaftsbildenden Identifikationsprozessen junger Musliminnen und Muslime hergestellt werden. Indem individuelle und kollektive Bedeutungen der Umma im Kontext des Untersuchungsfeldes erfasst werden, werden Prozesse der Vergemeinschaftung ebenso in den Blick genommen wie (...) damit verbundene soziale Distinktionen, Exklusionen und Abwertungen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass soziale Grenzziehungsprozesse der pop-islamischen Szene sowohl gegenüber der deutschen Mehrheitsgesellschaft als auch gegenüber verschiedenen islamischen Strömungen je situations- und kontextabhängig ausgehandelt werden und sich als gleichzeitige Suche nach Partizipation und Abgrenzung bzw. Inklusion und Exklusion beschreiben lassen. (shrink)

The necessity of wearing masks in response to the spread of the Covid-19 took Europe and the USA by surprise. Legislation needed to be enacted to enforce the obligation on citizens not used to such practices. The authors investigate the semiotic function of masks, legislations enacted to enforce their usage in public places, and the mask-related discourse with a view to seeing how societies reacted to this imposition. A broad semiotic perspective is provided to analyze different attitudes and (...) types of MRD that have emerged in Poland, France, and the USA. (shrink)

Masks, balaclavas, eye masks, and various accessories have been consistently used to hide the face, from Greek times through the grotesque of the Middle Ages to the Latin American theatre festivals of the 1980s. In the twenty-first century, technological advances such as facial recognition, which are being used for the biopolitical control of the face, caused activists to start developing different mechanisms to cover their faces in public spaces. In other words, the mask is not used solely as (...) a device that builds unique aesthetic-political senses but is also used to avoid being captured by surveillance cameras. The aim of this paper is to identify some of the masks used by activists in Latin American public protests, generating new signs that circulate widely in the semiosphere such as physiognomy, representation, and evocation. For this, we will return to Juri Lotman’s proposal on the semiosphere and the notion of facesphere developed by José Finol, concepts that operate as epistemological and heuristic frameworks that allow understanding the concrete meaning production processes as a global dimension and not only a particular one. What faces are hidden and what physiognomies are shown in the social protest? What borders are established? What political and aesthetic meanings do they build? These are the questions that this paper attempts to answer from a perspective of cultural semiotics. (shrink)

Masks, interferers, finks, reverse finks, and mimickers are troublesome for powers metaphysics insofar as the latter concedes that there are powers with essential stimuli/activation conditions. In this article, I aim at offering a novel approach for solving this problem. In Section 1, I shall present the problem; and in Section 2, I shall briefly show how it also arises within non‐reductive views of powers. Subsequently, in Section 3, I shall examine the failure of the ceteris paribus solution. The pars (...) construens will begin in Section 4, where I shall distinguish between the activation conditions, the background conditions, and the possession conditions of a power. Within each category, I shall draw further distinctions. In Section 5, I shall demonstrate how such distinctions may ground a solution to our problem. Finally, in Section 6, I shall anticipate and reply to four objections. (shrink)

This paper argues that a number of medical professionals, medical authorities, governments and the World Health Organization, have acted unethically during the COVID-19 epidemic and pandemic by advising members of the public not to wear masks to protect their own health and the health of those around them. Although by April 2020 most authorities have changed their advice to recommend or even compel citizens to wear face coverings and masks when in public, we need to examine the question (...) of failed moral responsibility and the accountability for this erroneous advice. (shrink)

Masking the Abject traces the beginnings of the malediction of play in Western metaphysics to Aristotle. Mechthild Nagel's innovative study demonstrates how play has served as a 'castaway' in western philosophical thinking: It is considered to be repulsive and loathsome, yet also fascinating and desirable. The book illustrates how play 'succeeds' and proliferates after Hegel—despite its denunciation by classical philosophers—entering Marxist, phenomenological, postmodern, and feminist discourses. This work provides the reader with a superb analyisis of how the distinction between the (...) serious and the playful has developed over time, charting play's changing ontological status, and ethical and aesthetic dimensions, from the logocentric to the bacchnalian. (shrink)

During emerging public health crises, both policymakers and members of the public are looking to scientific experts to provide guidance. Even in cases where there are significant uncertainties, there is pressure for experts to “speak with one voice” to avoid confusion, allow officials to make evidence-based decisions rapidly, and encourage public support for such decisions. This can lead experts to engage in masking of information about the state of the science or regarding assumptions involved in policy recommendations. Although experts might (...) have good reasons for masking disagreements, uncertainties, or assumptions when offering policy advice, we argue that this strategy can result in epistemic harms. Using the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that public health authorities masked two types of information necessary for laypersons to evaluate public health recommendations: (1) experts’ disagreements about the scientific evidence and (2) the role of values in making inferences from the science to policy positions. We contend that this resulted in epistemic harms against laypeople that provide a pro tanto case against masking information. We further argue that when the science is in flux and policies need to be implemented despite significant uncertainties, there is an all-things-considered case against masking the types of information discussed. (shrink)

In a backward masking paradigm Epstein, Hatfield, and Muise (1977) found that presentation of a frontoparallel pattern mask caused the perceived shape of elliptical figures which were rotated in depth to conform to a projective shape function. The current study extended the masking function by examining the effect of a mask which was partially or wholly cotemporal with the target. The study also assessed the functional equivalence of the masking treatment and the conventional treatment for minimizing depth information. Reports of (...) perceived shape and perceived orientation were obtained under three conditions: binocular without mask, binocular with mask, monocular without mask. Under the first condition, perceived shape conformed to objective shape and perceived orientation was proportional to objective orientation. Under the latter two conditions, perceived shape was in very close agreement to projective shape and the two functions did not differ. Orientation was underestimated greatly under both conditions. We concluded that the effect of the mask on perceived shape is mediated by its effect on encoding of orientation information, although an additional effect on the subsequent stage of shape-slant integration cannot be excluded. (shrink)

Covid-19, yeni koronavirüs salgını, insanoğlunun karşısına birdenbire çıkmış ve insan bu felaket karşısında yaşamını devam ettirebilmek için belli birtakım kurallara bağlı olmak zorunda olduğunu görmüştür. Pandeminin getirdiği yeni kurallara bağlı olarak kullanmaya başladığımız maske de bu şartlardan biridir. Tarih boyunca somut olarak maske kullanımı insana uzak ya da yabancı bir durum değildir. Maskenin sözlük anlamlarına baktığımızda tozdan ya da kimyasallardan korunmak için kullanılan bir araç olduğunu gördüğümüz gibi, bir de soyut anlamda kendini ötekine farklı bir şekilde yansıtma veya aktarma durumu (...) olarak ele alınabileceğini görmekteyiz. Biz bu çalışmamızda maskenin soyut kullanımından hareketle günümüzde kullandığımız bir araç olarak maskenin, ortak yönleri olup olamayacağını değerlendirmeye çalıştık. Öte yandan içinden geçmekte olduğumuz bu salgın hastalıkların tarihte ilk kez bizim başımıza gelen bir şey olmadığını görmezsek ve bu süreci değerlendirmezsek, geçiş döneminden sonra pandeminin birey, toplum, ekonomi, siyaset ve devlet görüşleri üzerinde ne tür değişiklikler yapacağını kontrol etmezsek, salgın günün birinde bitecek olsa bile olumsuz sonuçlarla karşılaşmayacağımızı söyleyemeyiz. Çünkü salgın insanın sadece biyolojik yönünü etkileyen bir felaket değildir, aynı zamanda insanın diğer yönü olan psikoloji tarafını da doğrudan ve dolaylı olarak etkilemektedir. İnsan psişik yönü de olan bir varlık olduğu için bu yönün de ele alınarak incelenmesi gerekir. Pandemi koşullarında birtakım kurallara uymayı alışkanlık haline getiren insan şu ana kadar getirmiş olduğu tüm değerlerinden hızlı bir şekilde kopma eğilimi göstermeye veya bu duruma gönüllü olmaya başlamıştır. Kurallara uymayan insanlar ise sorumluluk almadıkları için bir ahlak varlığı olmaktan uzak hale gelmişlerdir. Çalışmamız söz konusu salgının, insanın günlük hayatında kullandığı somut ve soyut maske tanımlarından hareketle, değerlerine nasıl yabancılaştığını ve öte yandan ahlaki sorumluluklarını ne şekilde göz ardı ettiği üzerine eğilmeye çalışmıştır. (shrink)

In a masked priming experimental paradigm, we studied a possible subliminal perception effect on a semantic selection task. To gauge the degree to which subjects solved the SST consciously, they subsequently reported their level of confidence of having made a correct response. This was done on each trial, and the subjects used individually constructed category rating scales to do so, in order to achieve a more sensitive measurement of which trials were influenced by conscious processes. During the construction of these (...) individual rating scales, subjects verbally reported their experiences after each trial. The present study failed to find evidence of performance above chance level when subjects themselves reported to be at chance level. In fact, performance closely covaried with subjects' confidence ratings. About half of the subjects reported they would sometimes experience a 'feeling of knowing' the correct response to the SST, despite being unaware of the specific identity of the prime. From this, we observe the methodological point that in order to demonstrate subliminal perception in a masked priming paradigm with a semantic selection task it is not enough to demonstrate a lack of conscious visual perception of the prime, since a vague, yet conscious, FOK experience can be used by subjects to solve the task. (shrink)

To date, COVID-19 has spread across the world, changing our way of life and forcing us to wear face masks. This report demonstrates that face masks influence the human ability to infer emotions by observing facial configurations. Specifically, a mask obstructing a face limits the ability of people of all ages to infer emotions expressed by facial features, but the difficulties associated with the mask’s use are significantly pronounced in children aged between 3 and 5 years old. These (...) findings are of essential importance, as they suggest that we live in a time that may potentially affect the development of social and emotion reasoning, and young children’s future social abilities should be monitored to assess the true impact of the use of masks. (shrink)

An object's disposition to A in circumstances C is masked if circumstances C obtain without the object Aing. This paper explores an analogous sense in which abilities can be masked, and it uses the results of this exploration to motivate an analysis of agents' abilities in terms of dispositions. This analysis is then shown to provide the resources to defend a version of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities against Frankfurt-style counterexamples. Although this principle is often taken to be congenial to (...) incompatibilism concerning free action and determinism, the paper concludes by using the dispositional analysis of abilities to argue for compatibilism, and to show why the 'master argument' for incompatibilism is unsound. (shrink)

The metaphysical center of Plato’s work has traditionally been taken to be his Doctrine of Forms; the epistemological center, the Doctrine of Recollection. The Symposium has been viewed as one of the clearest explanations of the first and Meno as one of the clearest explanations of the other. The Masks of Dionysos challenges these traditional interpretations.

The author takes the contemporary theatre performance of Mátohy [The Spooks] and maps out the use of original folk theatre masks in a new theatrical context. He describes and characterizes the changes that occur as a consequence of transposing folk masks from their traditional environment to the contemporary stage.

Our visual system can process information at both conscious and unconscious levels. Understanding the factors that control whether a stimulus reaches our awareness, and the fate of those stimuli that remain at an unconscious level, are the major challenges of brain science in the new millennium. Since its publication in 1984, Visual Masking has established itself as a classic text in the field of cognitive psychology. In the years since, there have been considerable advances in the cognitive neurosciences, and a (...) growth of interest in the topic of consciousness, and the time is ripe for a new edition of this text. Where most current approaches to the study of visual consciousness adopt a 'steady-state' view, the approach presented in this book explores its dynamic properties. This new edition uses the technique of visual masking to explore temporal aspects of conscious and unconscious processes down to a resolution in the millisecond range. The 'time slices' through conscious and unconscious vision revealed by the visual masking technique can shed light on both normal and abnormal operations in the brain. The main focus of this book is on the microgenesis of visual form and pattern perception - microgenesis referring to the processes occurring in the visual system from the time of stimulus presentation on the retinae to the time, a few hundred milliseconds later, of its registration at conscious or unconscious perceptual and behavioural levels. The book takes a highly integrative approach by presenting microgenesis within a broad context encompassing visuo-temporal phenomena, attention, and consciousness. (shrink)

The Mask of Enlightenment is the most detailed textual and thematic study of Nietzsche's most important but least understood works: Thus Spake Zarathustra. In this book Nietzsche was laying the groundwork for a fundamental philosophical and political revolution on a global scale. One of the difficulties that the text poses is Nietzsche's prophetic style; Stanley Rosen unweaves the complex threads that form the rhetorical voices of the work, and so explains the style in an accessible manner. He rejects recent sceptical, (...) deconstructionist interpretations of Nietzsche, and reveals a coherence underlying the multiple and apparently incompatible intentions embedded in the text. Nietzsche is a figure whose influence on contemporary thought in the humanities and social sciences continues to be enormous. This book is sure to become the definitive study of Zarathustra, and will have a broad appeal to philosophers and students of modern philosophy, intellectual historians, political scientists, and literary theorists. (shrink)

Reluctance to adopt mask-wearing as a preventive measure is widely observed in many Western societies since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemics. This reluctance toward mask adoption, like any other complex social phenomena, will have multiple causes. Plausible explanations have been identified, including political polarization, skepticism about media reports and the authority of public health agencies, and concerns over liberty, amongst others. In this paper, we propose potential explanations hitherto unnoticed, based on the framework of epistemic injustice. We show how (...) testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice may be at work to shape the reluctant mask adoption at both the societal and individual levels. We end by suggesting how overcoming these epistemic injustices can benefit the global community in this challenging situation and in the future. (shrink)

There are many reasons why scientific experts may mask disagreement and endorse a position publicly as “jointly accepted.” In this paper I consider the inner workings of a group of scientists charged with deciding not only a technically difficult issue, but also a matter of social and political importance: the maximum acceptable dose of radiation. I focus on how, in this real world situation, concerns with credibility, authority, and expertise shaped the process by which this group negotiated the competing virtues (...) of reaching consensus versus reporting accurately the nature and degree of disagreement among them. (shrink)

Reluctance to endorse mask wearing to slow transmission of SARS-Cov-2 has been rationalized by the failure of randomized control trials (RCTs) to provide supportive evidence. In contrast, a mechanism-based approach suggests that mask wearing should be expected to reduce transmission: so that contrary evidence from RCTs likely reflects the need to focus policy attention on addressing interacting or mediating factors that offset the basic positive effect. The differing conclusions that result from these two approaches reflect the limitations of RCT-based approaches (...) that are compounded in scenarios, such as pandemics, where urgent decisions are required with limited evidence. (shrink)

Cumming (2008) argues that his Masked Ball problem undermines Millianism, and that we must instead treat names as variables. However, although the Masked Ball does pose a problem for the Millian given a standard view about the meaning of `believes', that view faces difficulties for independent reasons. I develop a novel ``neo Kaplanian'' attitude semantics to address this problem, and go on to show that with this alternative semantics in hand, the Millian is quite capable of accounting for the Masked (...) Ball. (shrink)

According to the dispositional account of gender, to have a gender is to have some set of behavioral dispositions. Robin Dembroff (2020) levels a strong objection to Jennifer McKitrick’s (2015) dispositional view of gender, arguing that it can neither capture the extension of genderqueer identities nor treat them with the respect that they warrant. In this paper, I offer a defense of the dispositional view against these charges. I argue that accounts of dispositions tailored to deal with masks and (...) finks—phenomena that would prevent a disposition from manifesting or change a disposition if it were about to manifest—can avoid Dembroff’s extensional worry without reducing nonbinary identities to a matter of mere linguistic convention. I offer a revision to the dispositional account of genderqueer that incorporates Dembroff’s insights about the nature of destabilizing gender binaries. (shrink)

Unconscious stimuli can influence participants’ motor behavior but also more complex mental processes. Recent research has gradually extended the limits of effects of unconscious stimuli. One field of research where such limits have been proposed is spatial cueing, where exogenous automatic shifts of attention have been distinguished from endogenous controlled processes which govern voluntary shifts of attention. Previous evidence suggests unconscious effects on mechanisms of exogenous shifts of attention. Here, we applied a cue-priming paradigm to a spatial cueing task with (...) arbitrary cues by centrally presenting a masked symmetrical prime before every cue stimulus. We found priming effects on response times in target discrimination tasks with the typical dynamic of cue-priming effects indicating that central symmetrical stimuli which have been associated with endogenous orienting can modulate shifts of spatial attention even when they are masked. Prime–Cue Congruency effects of perceptual dissimilar prime and cue stimuli suggest that these effects cannot be entirely reduced to perceptual repetition priming of cue processing. In addition, priming effects did not differ between participants with good and poor prime recognition performance consistent with the view that unconscious stimulus features have access to processes of endogenous shifts of attention. (shrink)

Limited edition of 101 copies of the first printing of cloth-bound edition.

A number of recent legal cases in the United States have considered both disability‐based exceptions to Covid‐19‐related mask mandates and disability‐based claims to stronger masking rules in states restricting the abilities of local governments to enforce mask mandates. We argue that a proper legal and ethical analysis of such cases requires understanding the distinction between disability accommodations and disability modifications. Disability accommodations are individualized adjustments that enable qualified individuals to perform jobs or achieve access on terms comparable to those experienced (...) by others. Disability modifications are programmatic changes to structures or policies that increase accessibility. We contend that in the context of mask mandates, modifications rather than accommodations are ethically desirable because modification‐oriented policies promote disability access in a way that treats all individuals fairly, avoiding the risk of promoting misinformation and uncertainty about the health benefits of masking. (shrink)

By analyzing the discussion on a health forum, we examine how wearing sanitary masks during the Covid-19 pandemic changed people’s lives and what adjustments were required. During our review, we encountered theories referred to by participants as “conspiracy theories” that led to heated exchanges on the forum. Surprisingly, these interactions promoted, rather than prevented, collective exploration and resulted in a rich discussion of the issues related to wearing masks. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, we first (...) analyze the dynamics of the discussion, its progression, and the conditions under which it was maintained over time, even given the radical expression of irreconcilable positions. Second, we examine the results of the discussion in terms of describing the problems triggered by the mask and the different authorities on which these descriptions were based. We conclude that the boundaries between science and non-science were occasionally blurred because of the wavering of scientific authorities and the uncertainty of the questions related to the pandemic, rather than because of a generalized distrust of science. We recognize that paradoxically, “conspiracist” theories contribute to the production of knowledge and that the adherence to these theories may stem more from the personal experiences of the individuals who profess them, rather than from the contaminating power of conspiracy theories. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'masked man'. MM occurs due to our finite, limited knowledge of reality. It involves drawing unjustified conclusions about what is true based on intentional attitudes. MM is based on a failure to apply fully the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals. While the case of the masked man seems to be a clear fallacy, the case can be redescribed to offer a non‐fallacious inference. MM may be avoided to (...) the extent that we cultivate what many refer to as epistemic humility. We need to be aware of when our beliefs reflect our proper access to some state of affairs and when our beliefs are mediated through different lenses. We need to know our limitations when we make inferences based on partial information. (shrink)

A profile of teacher competences is described and interrogated in the light of inherent, language-based problematics. It is argued that such texts tend to constrain the modes and parameters within which to think about one's practice, in addition to masking possible deficiences in education systems through a pathologisation of the individual practitioner. The importance of keeping alive alternative discourses is stressed. Such discourses, it is argued, should recognise the complex idiosyncratic, contingent aspects of teaching and learning, and should include students' (...) reflections on their own in- and out-school experiences through dialogic, autobiographical writing. (shrink)

As humans, why do we walk such a fine line between depression and addiction, paranoia and recklessness, fatigue and burnout? Why are humans so prone to self-delusion and self-deception? Why do we have so many conflicting stories and versions of the truth? In this book, we learn, in simple language, about the neurochemical soups that make our brains prone to metabolic imbalance, self-delusion, addiction, broken feedback loops and unfettered quantitative growth targets that construct a world of winners, losers and barely (...) anyone in between. (shrink)

As in the case of his predecessor Machiavelli, Nietzsche presents his interpreter with the problem of how to understand his rhetorical calls to arms: are they stimulants to action or part of the action of an argument that is ultimately in the service of a cognitive end? In his study on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Stanley Rosen initially appears to wish to combine these two interpretive approaches. He understands the intention of the book to be both theoretical, as “a critical (...) commentary on the history of European culture,” and political or practical, as a rhetorical “incitement to revolution” or the creation of a radically new order of things. According to Rosen, however, in the interest of his practical intention Nietzsche adopts a rhetorical “mask” that is, as it were, Janus faced: he employs a “double rhetoric” that includes both a destructive and a creative moment. Within each of these distinct moments the same doctrines, namely, those of the will to power and the eternal return, are employed, but to contrary ends. In the former case they serve as the chief weapons in Nietzsche’s assault on the regnant tradition—“Platonism” in both its philosophical and popular guises—and in the latter, they are redeployed in an effort to found the new epoch of the Zarathustrian superman. Rosen argues, however, that these doctrines ultimately prove to be fatal not only to the old tradition, but also to the creation of any novel order as well. For, on the one hand, the historical and cosmological necessity of recurrence renders all so-called production merely reproduction and all apparent freedom of the will illusory and, on the other, what Rosen takes to be the truth behind the doctrines of the will to power and eternal recurrence—namely, nature as the random “accumulation and discharge of points of force” —reduces all life, human or superhuman, to the status of an insubstantial expression of this underlying and unintelligible ground: “chaos”. (shrink)

This paper combines considerations from ethics, medicine and public health policy to articulate and defend a systematic case for mask wearing mandates (MWM). The paper argues for two main claims of general interest in favour of MWM. First, MWM provide a more effective, just and fair way to tackle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic than policy alternatives such as laissez-faire approaches, mask wearing recommendations and physical distancing measures. And second, the proffered objections against MWM may justify some exemptions for specific categories (...) of individuals, but do not cast doubt on the justifiability of these mandates. Hence, unless some novel decisive objections are put forward against MWM, governments should adopt MWM. (shrink)

In masked priming tasks responses are usually faster when prime and target require identical rather than different responses. Previous research has extensively manipulated the nature and number of response-affording stimuli. However, little is known about the constraints of masked priming regarding the nature and number of response alternatives. The present study explored the limits of masked priming in a six-choice reaction time task, where responses from different fingers of both hands were required. We studied participants that were either experts for (...) the type of response or novices. Masked primes facilitated responding to targets that required the same response, responses with a different finger of the same hand, and with a homologous finger of the other hand. These effects were modulated by expertise. The results show that masked primes facilitate responding especially for experts in the S–R mapping and with increasing similarity of primed and required response. (shrink)

Juri Lotman. Mask in an artistic world of Gogol, and the masks of Anatoli Kaplan. The paper deals with an intersemiotic problem — how it is possible to represent a verbal image by the means of sculpture. It was written as an afterword for a German edition of N. Gogol’s Dead Souls (illustrated by photos on mask-sculpures by Anatoli Kaplan) thus using a style meant for general reader. However, it includes a deep analysis and several important conclusions about the (...) fancy worlds of Gogol and Kaplan, and about the possibilities to create connections between them. It is stressed that the very artistic illustration is possible only due to its independence, due to the subjective seeing of the author. (shrink)

Juri Lotman. Mask in an artistic world of Gogol, and the masks of Anatoli Kaplan. The paper deals with an intersemiotic problem — how it is possible to represent a verbal image by the means of sculpture. It was written as an afterword for a German edition of N. Gogol’s Dead Souls (illustrated by photos on mask-sculpures by Anatoli Kaplan) thus using a style meant for general reader. However, it includes a deep analysis and several important conclusions about the (...) fancy worlds of Gogol and Kaplan, and about the possibilities to create connections between them. It is stressed that the very artistic illustration is possible only due to its independence, due to the subjective seeing of the author. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 1, pp 119 - 146 Masks are devices and symbols. In the first instance, they are artifacts that allow opposite poles to take each other’s place. They split the world into appearance and reality, manifest and repressed, sacred and profane. In this sense, they are dualistic. But by so doing they invert these terms. In this sense, they are dialectical. In the second instance, they exemplify doubt about people’s identities and the veracity of their (...) words; they denote duplicity, inauthenticity, and hypocrisy. The conjunction of these two senses resides in the fact that masks are at the threshold between reality and fiction. Such a threshold makes possible the emergence of a space of play which asserts that the world does not express a determinate and final order but is infinitely open to the emergence of new, yet transient, forms of self-organization and open new spatiotemporal worlds. (shrink)

Dehaene et al. (2003) showed an absence of conscious, but not masked, conflict effects when patients with schizophrenia performed a number-categorisation priming task. We aimed to replicate these influential results using a different word-categorisation priming task. Counter to Dehaene et al.'s findings, 21 patients and 20 healthy controls showed similar congruence effects for both masked and visible primes. Within patients, a reduced congruence effect for visible primes associated with longer duration of illness and more severe behavioural disorganisation. Patients, unlike controls, (...) were no slower to respond to targets that followed visible compared to masked primes. Conscious conflict effects on priming tasks are not universally reduced in schizophrenia but may associate with chronicity and behavioural disorganisation. That patients were no slower when the preceding primes were clearly visible accords with evidence elsewhere that information processing in schizophrenia is driven more by immediate conscious experience and constrained less by prior events. (shrink)