The concept of normal is so familiar that it can be hard to imagine contemporary life without it. Yet the term entered everyday speech only in the mid-twentieth century. Before that, it was solely a scientific term used primarily in medicine to refer to a general state of health and the orderly function of organs. But beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, normal broke out of scientific usage, becoming less precise and coming to mean a balanced condition to (...) be maintained and an ideal to be achieved. In Normality, Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens offer an intellectual and cultural history of what it means to be normal. They explore the history of how communities settle on any one definition of the norm, along the way analyzing a fascinating series of case studies in fields as remote as anatomy, statistics, criminal anthropology, sociology, and eugenics. Cryle and Stephens argue that since the idea of normality is so central to contemporary disability, gender, race, and sexuality studies, scholars in these fields must first have a better understanding of the context for normality. This pioneering book moves beyond binaries to explore for the first time what it does—and doesn’t—mean to be normal. (shrink)

The figure of Peter the Tomb, various aspects of his life and activity, as well as the era called by his name, have long been the subject of study by numerous scholars, comprehensive and meticulous research. It is enough to mention the works of M.Grushevsky, A.Zhukovsky, V.Klimov, A.Kolodny, V.Nichik, O.Sarapin, L.Filipovich and V.Shevchenko, in which the phenomenon of the metropolitan, his spiritual and religious dominant, is thoroughly and thoroughly explained, the influence of P. Mogila's heritage on the past and present. (...) And yet it is impossible to talk about the exhaustiveness of this topic, because such inexhaustibility is dictated by the very universe of its multidimensional activity. This is what determines the relevance of the proposed article. And this, in turn, gives rise to reflections on the need for scientific innovative understanding of religious philosophy as a constant basis of thinking of Petro Mohyla, which, in particular, was reflected in his "Notebook", which is still a little-studied phenomenon of Ukrainian spiritual culture, for the first time it saw the world only in 1995, more than 60 years after its invention by M. Grushevsky. This work, like all narratives on the spiritual and religious themes that make up it, is an integral part of the metropolitan's religious and philosophical heritage. (shrink)

Bronze Age Bureaucracy: Writing and the Practice of Government in Assyria. By Nicholas Postgate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 484, illus. $99.

The phenomenon of Petro Mohyla in the modern humanitarian university is most often viewed precisely from the point of view of understanding his figure not only as a building Church, its defender, in a sense as a Christian conservative, but also as a guardian and building national statehood, creator of religious-national transformation and state-renewal Khmelnytsky era and - later - Mazepa. As the History of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine rightly points out, "after 1632, when the Commonwealth entered into the (...) reign of Wladyslaw IV and was headed by Petro Mohyla of Kiev, the Orthodox Church also entered a new era of its existence. The government's new course in resolving the religious issue, increasing political activity of the Orthodox community gave the Kyiv Metropolitanate the opportunity to restore legal status, to regulate relations with the state and society… This authority … was conditioned by the ability of the church institution to be full-blooded… the inner life of the church became perhaps the overriding task of Petro Mohyla... Petro Mohyla justified the principles of its own jurisdiction... emphasized the legitimacy of its power. ". (shrink)

have recently provided a compelling demonstration of enhanced attentional control under post-hypnotic suggestion. Using the classic color-word interference paradigm, in which the task is to ignore a word and to name the color in which it is printed (e.g., RED in green, say ''green''), they gave a post-hypnotic instruction to participants that they would be unable to read. This eliminated Stroop interference in high suggestibility participants but did not alter interference in low suggestibility participants. replicated this pattern and further demonstrated (...) that it is not due to a visual strategy (such as blurring or looking at a different location). As a historical footnote, we describe a ''case study'' from 18 years ago in which we observed the same result using a hypnotic instruction to a single highly suggestible individual that he could not read. The elimination of Stroop interference has important implications for both the study of attention and the study of hypnosis. (shrink)

Les décisions politiques sur les risques environnementaux complexes font fréquemment intervenir des éléments scientifiques contestés. Il n’y a généralement pas de « faits » qui conduisent à une politique correcte unique. Les éléments de preuve qui sont intégrés dans les avis scientifiques destinés à une décision politique nécessitent une évaluation de leur qualité. En 2003, l’Agence néerlandaise d’évaluation environnementale a adopté une méthode standardisée, désignée sous le nom de « guide », dans le cadre de laquelle les principaux aspects de (...) la production et de l’utilisation des connaissances sont présentés grâce à une liste de contrôle visant à l’évaluation et à la communication des incertitudes. Dans cet article, nous présentons des résultats de l’application de ce guide à la controverse sur les risques des particules en suspension. La délibération active sur l’incertitude dans un contexte d’expertise entraîne un processus d’apprentissage commun entre les experts et les décideurs politiques, ce qui conduit à une meilleure prise de conscience du phénomène d’incertitude et de ses implications politiques.Policy decisions on complex environmental risks often involve disputed science. Typically, there are no “ facts” to support a single unequivocally correct policy. The evidence provided in scientific studies for policy-making decisions requires high-quality assessment. In 2003, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency adopted a standardized method, referred to as “guidelines”, whereby key quality aspects of knowledge production and use are presented in the form of a checklist for uncertainty assessments and communication. In this article, we present the outcomes of applying the guidelines in controversies on the risks of ambient particulate matter. In the policy–advisory context, active deliberation on uncertainty produces a common learning process for advisors and policy makers, which leads to a deeper understanding and increased awareness of the phenomenon of uncertainty and its policy implications. (shrink)

The equation of the world with 'life' and 'life' with consciousness ramified into the baffling account Wittgenstein gave of the 'philosophical self '. The physical world, as Descartes argued, is made of material substance, and the mental world 'is liable to be imagined as gaseous, or rather, aethereal'. Conceiving of consciousness as a private realm populated by private experiences, one is bound to be puzzled at its evolutionary emergence. Consciousness is attributable to an organism as a whole, not to its (...) parts, no matter how complex. And it is attributable to the organism on the grounds of the behaviour of the organism, its exercise of its perceptual faculties, its susceptibility to sensation, and its voluntary action. A venerable tradition going back at least as far as Descartes conceived of consciousness as the immovable rock against which the waves of scepticism break. (shrink)

The author clarifies the existential philosophy that is implicit in Kurt Goldstein's philosophy of organism (Goldstein, 1963; 1995). Situated in response to the growing trend that psychological phenomena are reducible to the nervous system, the author argues for the reverse: that the significance of nervous system activity can only be understood by viewing it as background to foreground performances. Like the organization of perception into meaningful figure-- ground Gestalts, the existential modes of embodiment, sociality, temporality, spatiality, and attunement are organized (...) together to accomplish foreground performances. It is only within this context that the activity of the nervous system may be understood as significant or insignificant. Speech is given as an example. The article concludes with a commentary on how the trend of reducing psychological phenomena to neurological phenomena has impaired our understanding of brain disorders and psychological disorders. (shrink)

The place of the emotions among the passions -- The analytic of the emotions I -- The analytic of the emotions II -- The dialectic of the emotions -- Pride, arrogance, and humility -- Shame, embarrassment, and guilt -- Envy -- Jealousy -- Anger -- Love -- Friendship -- Sympathy and empathy.

Throughout its long history metaphysics has been variously conceived. At its most sublime, it has been taken to be the study of the super‐sensible, in particular of the existence of a god, the nature of the soul, and the possibility of an afterlife. When the young Ludwig Wittgenstein entered the lists, it was entirely reasonable to conceive of metaphysics in this manner. Its subject matter was held to be the language‐independent and thought‐independent de re necessities of the world. The Tractatus (...) is dominated by three problems: first, the nature of logic and logical necessity; secondly, the essence of the proposition and hence the characterization of the general propositional form; and thirdly, the intentionality of the proposition. Logical propositions are combinations of elementary propositions by means of truth‐functional logical connectives. The metaphysics adumbrated in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein thought, was required for the possibility of representation and for the possibility of logic. (shrink)

Th e con fusion a nd b arren ness o f psycho logy is no t to be e xplain ed b y calling it a “yo ung science”; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the oth er case, con cep tual co nfusion and m ethod s of pro of.) (...) The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems that trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by. (PI p. 232). (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Subsystem Formation Driven by Double Contingency” by Bernd Porr & Paolo Di Prodi. Upshot: There is merit to the continuous-signal-space homeostatic viewpoint on subsystem formation presented by Bernd Porr and Paolo Di Prodi; many of their ideas also align well with a heterostatic constructivist perspective, and specifically developments in the field of reinforcement learning. This commentary therefore aims to identify and clarify some of the linkages made by the authors, and highlight ways in which (...) these interdisciplinary connections may be leveraged to enable future progress. (shrink)

Frege’s conceptions of sense, truth, and falsehood, assertion, thought, the logical connectives, the laws of thought, and the laws of logic is described as Wittgenstein understood them. Wittgenstein’s criticisms of Frege’s conceptions as elaborated in the Tractatus and associated early writings are described and analysed. The criticisms are shown to be powerful and to undermine Frege’s conception of logic and the primary supports of his philosophy of logic.

L'examen des diverses combinaisons des ordres des évangiles et des ordres bibliques des Quatre Vivants permet de montrer que l'identification des évangélistes avec les Vivants a visé d'abord à exprimer l'unité de l'Évangile un et quatre avant de caractériser leurs différences. Trois systèmes ont prévalu dans l'antiquité. Dans le plus ancien, Marc est identifié à l'Aigle ; dans un autre système, Marc est identifié à l'Homme ; dans le système reçu, finalement Marc est identifié au Lion . A l'origine, l'Apocalypse (...) est le lieu biblique fondamental, mais en Orient puis en Occident, Ézéchiel supplante l'Apocalypse. La conjonction de l'ordre reçu des évangiles et de la séquence des Vivants en Ez 1,10 a donné le système habituel depuis S. Jérôme: Mt = Homme; Mc = Lion; Lc = Taureau; Jn = Aigle. (shrink)