This study investigates the ability of individuals with psychopathy to perform passive avoidance learning and whether this ability is modulated by level of reinforcement/punishment. Nineteen psychopathic and 21 comparison individuals, as defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Hare, 1991), were given a passive avoidance task with a graded reinforcement schedule. Response to each rewarding number gained a point reward specific to that number (i.e., 1, 700, 1400 or 2000 points). Response to each punishing number lost a point (...) punishment specific to that number (i.e., the loss of 1, 700, 1400 or 2000 points). In line with predictions, individuals with psychopathy made more passive avoidance errors than the comparison individuals. In addition, while the performance of both groups was modulated by level of reward, only the performance of the comparison population was modulated by level of punishment. The results are interpreted with reference to a computational account of the emotional learning impairment in individuals with psychopathy. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Husserlian notion of “passive synthesis” can make a substantial contribution to the understanding of aesthetic experience. The argument is based on two empirical cases of qualitative interview material obtained from museum visitors and a world-renowned string quartet, which show that aesthetic experience contains an irreducible dimension of passive undergoing and surprise. Analyzing this material through the lens of passive syntheses helps explain these experiences, as well as the sense of subject–object fusion that (...) occurs in some of the most intense forms of aesthetic experience. These analyses are then contrasted with a potentially contradicting take on aesthetic experience from a recent trend in cognitive science, namely enactive aesthetics, which insists on the active subjective construction and sense-making of aesthetic experience. Finally we show that the two positions are in fact compatible. (shrink)

Passive frame theory attempts to illuminate what consciousnessis, in mechanistic and functional terms; it does not address the “implementation” level of analysis (how neurons instantiate conscious states), an enigma for various disciplines. However, in response to the commentaries, we discuss how our framework provides clues regarding this enigma. In the framework, consciousness is passive albeit essential. Without consciousness, there would not be adaptive skeletomotor action.

Verbs in the passive voice have been described as linguistic features which can exert ideological effects because they typically omit the agent, or ‘doer’ of an action. These missing agents are said to be potentially ‘mystified’ to readers. But to what extent are these agents actually mystified to readers, and can we predict when mystification is likely to occur? A text-based analytical framework for inference prediction focusing on agency mystification was applied to two corpora of US newspaper editorials. Eighty-four (...) percent of passive verbs were predicted not to mystify agency for casual readers. To test this method of inference prediction, a reader response study was carried out in which readers were asked to identify agents that had been deleted from texts via the addition of agentless passives. By a standard of 50% accuracy, 74% of passives were found to be non-mystifying. These results suggest that agents missing from texts are likely to be inferred correctly by readers in a majority of cases and that mystification may be predictable from text analysis. (shrink)

Is it always better to be active than passive? Is passivity a sign of cowardice - or prudence? Are people who keep their thoughts to themselves passive, or might they be actively preparing for well-considered future actions? Seemingly simple concepts turn out to be deeper and more significant than they first appear.

In 1981, Paris and Wilkie raised the open question about whether and to what extent the axiom system did satisfy the Second Incompleteness Theorem under Semantic Tableaux deduction. Our prior work showed that the semantic tableaux version of the Second Incompleteness Theorem did generalize for the most common definition of appearing in the standard textbooks.However, there was an alternate interesting definition of this axiom system in the Wilkie–Paris article in the Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 35 , pp. 261–302 (...) which we did not examine in our year-2002 article in the Journal of Symbolic Logic. Our first goal is to show that the incompleteness results of our prior paper can generalize in this alternate context. We will also develop a formal analysis, using a new technique called Passive Induction, that is simpler than the formalism we had used before.A further reason our results are of interest is that we have shown in a companion paper published in Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science 165 , pp. 213–226 that some very unorthodox axiomizations for are anti-thresholds for the Herbrandized version of the Second Incompleteness Theorem. Thus, different axiomizations for have nearly fully opposite incompleteness properties.This paper is self-contained. It will not require a knowledge of our earlier results. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish a distinction and relationship between two types of noise – active noise and passive noise – while giving emphasis to the latter. Active noise is the discourse of negativity and violence that some theorists associate with noise’s materiality, an association particularly pronounced in engagements with Japanoise. The problem with this discourse is that it relies on a culturally normative understanding of noise as well as novelty. This narrative inevitably leads to a dead end. Noise, (...) and artistic practices like Japanoise that draw on noise sounds, have a short lifespan if their entire purpose is one of shock and disturbance. However, Japanoise is not dead: it persists both as a genre and as a sonic idea/gesture. This article suggests that noise persists, and Japanoise remains relevant, because it comes from a region not exhausted by categories of negativity and violence. This article will show how underneath active noise there resounds a deeper, more profound a-cultural noise. Drawing on Maurice Blanchot’s account of passivity, which names the anarchic region of absence in his thought, this noise will be described as passive noise. In this context, passivity must be understood differently from the conventional sense as something opposed to activity. Likewise, passive noise does not refer to background noise. Instead, passive noise will be described as the interiority of excess that manifests as a breach in the closure of active noise. This breach will be shown to be consistent with Blanchot’s view of the inexhaustibility of art and will be described, specifically in the context of Japanoise, as the intimacy of excess that is the lifeblood of maximalist forms of noise-making. This will also amount to a reconsideration of the idea of transgression by reframing Japanoise in terms of inertia. (shrink)

To explain the phenomenon that certain English verbs resist passivization, Pinker proposed a semantic constraint on the passive in the adult grammar: The greater the extent to which a verb denotes an action where a patient is affected or acted upon, the greater the extent to which it is compatible with the passive. However, a number of comprehension and production priming studies have cast doubt upon this claim, finding no difference between highly affecting agent-patient/theme-experiencer passives and non-actional experiencer (...) theme passives. The present study provides evidence that a semantic constraint is psychologically real, and is readily observed when more fine-grained independent and dependent measures are used. We conclude that a semantic constraint on the passive must be incorporated into accounts of the adult grammar. (shrink)

This paper does not present an advocacy of a passive education as opposed to an active education nor does it propose that passive education is in any way ‘better’ or more important than active education. Through readings of Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida and B.S. Johnson, and gentle critiques of Jacques Rancière and John Dewey, passive education is instead described and outlined as an education which occurs whether we attempt it or not. As such, the object of critique (...) for this essay are forms of educational thought which, through fate or design, exclude the passive dimension, either within or outside of formal educational settings. An underlying component of this argument is therefore also that education does occur outside of formal educational settings and that, contra Gert Biesta and his critique of ‘learnification’, we may gain rather than lose something by attending to it as education. (shrink)

This article considers the simultaneously passive and active character of moods (Stimmungen) in Heidegger, focussing on two different periods of his thought: the end of the 1920s and the middle of the 1930s. Through the study of the language used by Heidegger, I show that the ideas of passivity and activity are expressed in three different levels of his description of moods: the more concrete level of one’s experience of a mood, the level of philosophical analysis insofar as it (...) is based on moods and deals with moods, and the transcendental or constitutive level of experience. Moreover, I show that in each of these levels passivity and activity are constitutively intertwined and that Heidegger’s conception of moods both in the 1920s and the 1930s can only be understood if we take into consideration the three levels and the way each of them is characterized by both passivity and activity. (shrink)

describes developments in passive solar technology that will save time, energy, and resources in planning for the buildings of the future.

In Passive Obedience Berkeley argues that we must always observe the prohibitions decreed by our sovereign rulers. He defends this thesis both by providing critiques against opposing views and, more interestingly, by presenting a moral theory that supports it. The theory contains elements of divine - command, natural - law, moral - sense, rule - based, and outcome - oriented ethics. Ultimately, however, it seems to rest on a notion of spiritual reason — a specific God - given faculty (...) that all rational human beings have. Berkeley’s work on immaterialism, for which he is better known, could thus perhaps best be seen as an attempt to find a scientific justification for his moral doctrine. (shrink)

Since its onset, scholars have characterized social media as a valuable source for data collection since it presents several benefits (e.g. exploring research questions with hard-to-reach populations). Nonetheless, methods of online data collection are riddled with ethical and methodological challenges that researchers must consider if they want to adopt good practices when collecting and analyzing online data. Drawing from our primary research project, where we collected passive online data on Reddit, we explore and detail the steps that researchers must (...) consider before collecting online data: (1) planning online data collection; (2) ethical considerations; and (3) data collection. We also discuss two atypical questions that researchers should also consider: (1) how to handle deleted user-generated content; and (2) how to quote user-generated content. Moving on from the dichotomous discussion between what is public and private data, we present recommendations for good practices when collecting and analyzing qualitative online data. (shrink)

This article frames the poetry of William Wordsworth and the philosophical writings of Spinoza as mutually illuminating works exploring the ethical and ontological questions raised by bodies in states of passivity and immobility. Both writers, it argues, revise our idea of what a “powerful” body might be by developing the concept of “dynamic passivity”—a passivity that does not stand in simple opposition to states of activity, and that ought to be cultivated rather than overcome in the process of empowering the (...) body. The article examines and contrasts the different ways in which Wordsworth and Spinoza conceive of this dynamic passivity, with particular attention paid to how the former embeds a cultivation of “wise passiveness” for the reader in the very form of his poems, through a variety of elements like syntax, metre, and acoustic effects. (shrink)

The Passive Eye is a revolutionary and historically rich account of Berkeley's theory of vision. In this formidable work, the author considers the theory of the embodied subject and its passions in light of a highly dynamic conception of infinity. Arsic shows the profound affinities between Berkeley and Spinoza, and offers a highly textual reading of Berkeley on the concept of an "exhausted subjectivity." The author begins by following the Renaissance universe of vision, particularly the paradoxical elusive nature of (...) mirrors, then shows how this conception of vision was translated into the optical devices and in what way the various ways of deception could be conceived. Reading Berkeley against the backdrop of competing theories, in relation to Leibniz, Spinoza, Newton, Malebranche, Hume, Locke, Molyneux and others, this book gives a meticulous historic reconstruction of Berkeley's theory. This excellent scholarly work presents Berkeley's theory in a new and radical light. The book, presented in three parts, begins by presenting the conceptions of vision prior to Berkeley's intervention. In the second part, the author moves through a careful study of Descartes' theory of vision to arrive at Berkeley. The third part addresses the author's version of Berkeley in which the eye and the image become inseparable due to the collapse of the universe of representation. The problem of vision becomes not that of representation, but of presentation. Through an erudite historic reading of Berkeley's theory and astute comparative assessments, the author uncovers Berkeley's place as a contemporary theoretician, corresponding with such thinkers as Deleuze, Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida. (shrink)

The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication.

The Passive Hand: Absence d’œuvre, Resistance and Désœuvrement. I question the rapport between the hand as an aesthetic notion and the value of passivity, in order to define the dynamic of the relationship between passivity and creation. I, first, examine the Blanchot’s metaphor regarding the act of creation as being a privative intervention of the left hand, passive, on the right hand, active, under the light of a critical reading of the Nietzschean concepts of active force—reactive force; then, (...) I analyse the passivity of the discourse under three types of rapport: the inspiration and the absence of the œuvre, the resistance and the œuvre, the disobedience and the désœuvrement. From the absence of the œuvre of the inspired artist to the resistance at the œuvre, which creates the œuvre, and lastly, to the reactive force which affirms the refusal of the œuvre and produces the absence of the œuvre, passivity makes a circular movement from the impossibility of the oeuvre towards the désœuvrement, from from its genesis to its heterogenesis. (shrink)

This article analyzes the status of passive potentiality of prime matter and sensible objects in Plotinus' Enneads. In particular, it will focus on Enneads II 5 [25] and confront it with other treatises, specifically Enneads III 6 [26]; II 6 [17]; VI 2 [43] and VI 3 [44]. It aims at offering a new interpretation of treatise 25 and at proposing a reconstruction of Plotinus' notion of change in the sensible realm that illustrates both his critique of Aristotle's notion (...) of substantial change and his acceptance of Aristotle's view of qualitative change. (shrink)

This article discusses passive and active aspects of consciousness as two equally justified roots of life experiencing the world. The passive domain involves the synthesis of internal time, association, habituality, bodily aspects, etc. The active domain includes strictly cognitive competences of consciousness: thinking, judging, etc. What has been actively constituted becomes passive as the basic level for higher form of understanding. The two domains interweave, influence each other, complement each other, and also remain in a certain tension (...) and discrepancy. In the broader perspective of the system of consciousness and its various layers, the passive-active differentiation must be treated functionally, and not as hierarchically arranged or constituted by separable concepts. It reflects the dynamics of the consciousness system at all its levels, and its meaning oscillates between the opposite and the overlapping. --------------------- Received: 26/01/2022. Reviewed: 28/03/2022. Accepted: 12/05/2022. (shrink)

The sensation-perception distinction did not appear before the seventeenth century, but since then various formulations of it have gained wide acceptance. This is not an historical accident and the article suggests an explanation for its appearance. Section 1 describes a basic assumption underlying the sensation-perception distinction, to wit, the postulation of a pure sensory stage--viz. sensation--devoid of active influence of the agent's cognitive, emotional, and evaluative frameworks. These frameworks are passive in that stage. I call this postulation the passivity (...) assumption. Section 2 suggests three major reasons for the emergence of this assumption in the seventeenth century: the mental-physical gap, the causal theory of perception, and epistemological considerations regarding the status of the sensory given. In the last section a critical discussion is presented. The passivity assumption is found to have serious empirical and theoretical flaws. (shrink)

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including a theory of consent, of political unity, of ‘anti-politics’, and of geopolitical competition. These interpretations are united in regarding hegemony as a general theory of political power and domination, and as deriving from a particular interpretation of the concept of passive revolution. Building upon the recent intense season of philological research on the Prison Notebooks, this article argues that the concept of hegemony is better understood (...) as a ‘dialectical chain’ composed of four integrally related ‘moments’: hegemony as social and political leadership, as a political project, as a hegemonic apparatus, and as the social and political hegemony of the workers’ movement. This alternative typology of hegemony provides both a sophisticated analysis of the emergence of modern state power and a theory of political organization of the subaltern social groups. This project is encapsulated in Gramsci’s notion of the formation of a ‘modern Prince’, conceived as both political party and civilizational process, which represents an emancipatory alternative to the dominant forms of political modernity. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung. In der Auseinandersetzung um die Frage, ob aktive Sterbehilfe mit dem ärztlichen Ethos vereinbar ist, werden häufig deskriptive Unterscheidungen wie Tun vs. Unterlassen, aktiv vs. passiv oder auch intendieren vs. in Kauf nehmen benutzt, um eine kategorische moralische Differenz zwischen Töten und Sterbenlassen auszuweisen. Als zusätzliche Schwierigkeit erweist sich dabei zum einen, daß zentrale Begriffe zwischen einer deskriptiven und einer ethischen Bedeutung changieren, und zum anderen, daß die Kennzeichnung des Problems (z.B. Sterbehilfe) selbst ethisch nicht neutral ist. Nach der (...) Entwicklung einer ethisch neutralen Problemstellung werden kategorische Argumente gegen die ethische Zulässigkeit aktiver Sterbehilfe diskutiert und verworfen. Anschließend werden Begründungen diskutiert, die mittels intrinsischer oder extrinsischer Situationsmerkmale eine ethische Unzulässigkeit aktiver Sterbehilfe aufzuweisen versuchen. Dabei zeigt sich, daß graduelle ethische Unterschiede zwischen passiver, indirekt und direkt aktiver Sterbehilfe begründbar sind, die ein jeweils höheres Maß an Rechtfertigungsgründen erfordern. (shrink)

Institution in personal and public history. Introduction -- Institution and life -- Institution of a feeling -- The institution of a work of art -- Institution of a domain of knowledge -- The field of culture -- Historical institution: particularity and universality -- Summary for Thursday's course: Institution in personal and public history -- The problem of passivity: sleep, the unconscious, memory. The philosophy and the phenomenon of passivity -- For an ontology of the perceived world -- Sleep -- Perceptual (...) consciousness and imagining consciousness -- Symbolism -- Dreams -- The Freudian unconscious -- Delusions: gradiva -- The case of Dora -- The problem of memory -- Appendix: three notes on the Freudian unconscious -- Summary for Monday's course: the problem of passivity: sleep, the unconscious, memory. (shrink)

I consider four recently suggested difference between killing and letting die as they apply to active and passive euthanasia : taking vs. taking no action; intending vs. not intending the death of the person; the certainty of the result vs. leaving the situation open to other possible alternative events; and dying from unnatural vs. natural causes. The first three fail to constitute clear differences between killing and letting die, and "ex posteriori" cannot constitute morally significant differences. The last constitutes (...) a difference but is not morally significant. (shrink)

In Zohar al Shir ha-Shirim, the Zohar’s reading of Song of Songs, Shekhinah, echoing themes associated with the Shulamite of the biblical text, consistently initiates cosmic union. Sexual desire in the zoharic texts is a form of capital necessary to facilitate sefirotic intercourse, although scholarly readings of the zoharic corpus often identify Shekhinah as a passive receptacle. This, however, is only true if the endemic contradictions within the texts are glossed over. In Song of Songs, the Shulamite’s sexual ‘initiative’ (...) is core. This was not lost on the author of Zohar al Shir ha-Shirim, who, in struggling to explain Shekhinah’s sefirotic role in line with the erotics of Song of Songs, inescapably echoed the ‘depatriarchalizing’ themes of the biblical text. As this article demonstrates, in Zohar al Shir ha-Shirim, Shekhinah is active and repeatedly encourages and frustrates cosmic sexual intercourse. Zohar al Shir ha-Shirim shows that it is possible to reread Shekhinah’s role beyond the androcentrism of the authors as well as scholarly assumptions about her passivity. (shrink)

Many philosophers maintain that there is a distinction between acts that the agent plays an active role in producing, and acts that issue from the agent in a more passive fashion. According to the standard account, we can make sense of this distinction by maintaining that reflective or deliberative acts are paradigmatic cases of an agent’s playing an active role in the production of action. This chapter argues that this standard account is mistaken. Reflective or deliberative actions will seem (...) to be active only if we conflate three claims: that choice causes action, that motives do not determine choice, and that reflection suspends the effects of motives. The chapter argues that while and are true, is false. Further, is needed to support the claim that reflective acts are active. Given the falsity of, the chapter shows that reflective acts are not necessarily more active than unreflective ones. The chapter closes by suggesting a new model of agential activity. (shrink)

The notion of passive revolution is nowadays recognised as one of Gramsci’s most important theoretical contributions. Not only has it been the subject of extensive work in foreign languages, this concept is also used to analyse various historical phenomena or present concrete situations. The aim of this article is to provide a synthetic study of the development and uses of the notion of passive revolution in the Prison Notebooks. To this end, we follow the notion through its various (...) phases of development, tracking the shifts in meaning according to the cases for which it is used (the Risorgimento, nineteenth-century Europe, Fascism, Americanism, etc.). For Gramsci, the contributions of this notion seem to be positioned on at least two levels, linked dialectically: To conceive a modality of historical change that cannot be reduced to revolutionary upheavals in the strict sense; and to critically highlight the dominant classes’ political strategies to advance the emancipation of subaltern autonomous activity. (shrink)

The idea of passive euthanasia has recently been attacked in a particularly clear and explicit way by an “Ethics Task Force” established by the European Association of Palliative Care in February 2001. It claims that the expression “passive euthanasia” is a contradiction in terms and hence that there can be no such thing. This paper critically assesses the main arguments for the Task Force’s view. Three arguments are considered. Firstly, an argument based on the wrongness of euthanasia and (...) the permissibility of what is often called passive euthanasia. Secondly, the claim that passive euthanasia cannot really be euthanasia because it does not cause death. And finally, a consequence based argument which appeals to the bad consequences of accepting the category of passive euthanasia.We conclude that although healthcare professionals’ nervousness about the concept of passive euthanasia is understandable, there is really no reason to abandon the category provided that it is properly and narrowly understand and provided that “euthanasia reasons” for withdrawing or withholding life-prolonging treatment are carefully distinguished from other reasons. (shrink)

Examines the notion of passivity in the work of Levinas, Blanchot, and Agamben.

“Passive fear” denotes a certain type of response to a perceived threat; what is distinctive about the state of passive fear is that its behavioral outlook appears to qualify the emotional experience. I distinguish between two cases of passive fear: one is that of freezing in fear; the other is that of fear-involved tonic immobility. I reconstruct the explanatory strategy that is commonly employed in the field of emotion science, and argue that it leaves certain questions about (...) the nature of passive fear unanswered. I subsequently propose an account of passive fear that builds upon a phenomenological theory of emotions, placing emphasis on the interpretation of current research into human tonic immobility. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to examine Giorgio Agamben’s important but underappreciated debts to the early German Romantics and to Hegel. While maintaining critical distance from these figures, Agamben develops crucial aspects of his approach to radical passivity with reference to them. The focus of this essay is on Agamben’s consideration of the early German Romantics’ notions of criticism and irony, Hegel’s notion of language, and the implications of this view of language for his notion of community.

Burnout has important ramifications for employees and organizations and preventing burnout forms an ethical issue for managers. However, the role of the leader and especially the role of ethical aspects of leadership have received relatively little attention in relation to burnout to date. We conducted a survey among employees (N = 386) of a Dutch retail organization, nested in 122 teams with a leader. Our first contribution is that we empirically show the hypothesized opposing relationships of ethical and passive (...) leadership behavior with follower burnout. Furthermore, we examined two job characteristics as mechanisms that link these forms of leadership and burnout. Lastly, we show that the positive relationship of ethical leadership with burnout via role clarity (but not overload) is dependent on the degree of passive leadership the leader is perceived to display. Our results suggest that organizations should promote ethical leadership behaviors and limit passive leadership behaviors by stimulating leaders to be active in their role and use their social influence to promote ethical conduct. (shrink)

This paper is a critical review of the most relevant studies about the Levinasian concept of passivity. The purpose is to follow the way in which Levinas’s scholars have dealt with the following aspects: the relation between ethical passivity and the possibility of effective ethical agency, the origin of passivity, and the validity of ethical passivity in the public sphere. As a starting point for future research, I finally argue that the best way to read Levinas’s passive ethics is (...) through the dynamism between maximums and minimums present within it. This means that without sacrificing the omni comprehensive view of divine revelation and Jewish tradition, Levinas presents ethics as rationally understandable by everyone and philosophically defensible. Despite being biblically based, Levinas does not appeal to authority in supporting his view, he is confident in arguing rationally. This account could place Levinas in the way of public ethics, which consists in an ethos shared by all members of democratic societies. These minimums of justice could be the way to universalize Levinas’s ethics. (shrink)

Virtual reality (VR) through a head-mounted display (HMD) can provide new experiences. However, it remains unclear how the characteristics of HMDs affect users’ memory. To use HMDs more effectively and appropriately in several applied fields, including education, it is necessary to clarify what characteristics of HMDs affect users’ memory. A head-tracking function mounted on an HMD helps to detect the user’s head direction to enable a simulation experience akin to the real world. When we experience a simulation on an HMD, (...) we actively perceive the visual world. In this study, we assessed how active/passive viewing affects users’ memory of VR content. We conducted a psychological experiment in which participants watched a movie on an HMD. In the active viewing condition, the presented view changed depending on the participant’s head direction. In the passive viewing condition, the presented view was a recorded movie that was shown to the participants in the active viewing condition. All participants took a memory test about the content presented in the movie on the day of viewing and two weeks later. The results showed that performance on the memory test in the active viewing condition was significantly lower than that in the passive viewing condition after two weeks. This result indicated that active viewing in VR inhibited users’ memory compared to passive viewing. The current study contributes to the development of new VR techniques, such as educational learning. (shrink)

According to sensorimotor theory perceiving is a bodily skill involving exercise of an implicit know-how of the systematic ways that sensations change as a result of potential movements, that is, of sensorimotor contingencies. The theory has been most successfully applied to vision and touch, while perceptual modalities that rely less on overt exploration of the environment have not received as much attention. In addition, most research has focused on philosophically grounding the theory and on psychologically elucidating sensorimotor laws, but the (...) theory’s ramifications for neuroscience still remain underexamined. Here we sketch the beginnings of a research program that could address these two outstanding challenges in terms of auditory perception. We review the neuroscience literature on passive listening, which is defined as listening without overt bodily movement, and conclude that sensorimotor theory provides a unique perspective on the consistent finding of motor system activation. In contrast to competing theories, this activation is predicted to be involved not only in the perception of speech- and action-related sounds, but in auditory perception in general. More specifically, we propose that the auditory processing associated with supplementary motor areas forms part of the neural basis of the exercise of sensorimotor know-how: these areas’ recognized role in facilitating spontaneous motor responses to sound and supporting flexible engagement of sensorimotor processes to guide auditory experience and enable auditory imagery, can be understood in terms of two key characteristics of sensorimotor interaction, its “alerting capacity” and “corporality”, respectively. We also highlight that there is more to the inside of the body than the brain: there is an opportunity to develop sensorimotor theory into new directions in terms of the still poorly understood active processes of the peripheral auditory system. (shrink)

This research investigates whether required employee green behavior can spill over to a proactive form of green behavior termed green advocacy. Drawing on self-perception theory, we theorize and test a moderated mediation model in which required employee green behavior is positively associated with green advocacy via the mediation of pro-environmental self-identity, with the strength of such association contingent upon employee moral identity. Data collected in three waves from 297 employees at a large manufacturing firm in China provide support for the (...) research model. Results show that pro-environmental self-identity explains the positive association between required employee green behavior and green advocacy and that its mediating role is stronger when moral identity is higher (vs. lower). This study advances workplace green behavior research by identifying a novel psychological path and extending knowledge about a boundary condition. (shrink)

A number of early modern philosophers deny that corporeal non-minded nature contains efficient or strict causes. For Berkeley the passivity of ideas (hence PI) expresses this view. My aim is to look at two possible arguments – I call them strategy 1, and strategy 2 – Berkeley makes, or others make in his behalf, for PI. I conclude that they are unsatisfactory. I’m particularly interested whether Berkeley’s distinctive doctrine that objects of sense are mind-dependent, i.e., that no corporeal object can (...) exist unperceived, supports PI. I argue it doesn’t. (shrink)

The article deals with the consideration that in spite of the fact that artistic creation is firstly an active work, the artist sometimes is not the only determinant factor of the value of the artwork, therefore some senses of the work that have not been predicted or consciously embodied by the artist might emerge. Creative inspiration, which creates the conditions for the appearance of something unpredicted, has been usually explained as the highest form of the creativity of the artist. We (...) reconstruct Heidegger’s innovative thought about the creativity as a partly passive attitude of the artist in the first chapter of the article. The second part deals with the development of the ideas of creation as a specific form of inactivity of the artist in the works of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Theodor Adorno and later French philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Alain Badiou. We look into their concepts that are formulated on purpose to explain the possibilities of the artistic creation, which might interrupt the standardized, stereotypical life, to promote the appearance of something unplanned and unforeseen. (shrink)

The first half of this paper is an attemptto conceptualize and understand the paradoxicalnotion of ``passive action''''. The strategy is toconstrue passive action in the context ofemotional behavior, with the purpose toestablish it as a conceivable and conceptuallycoherent category. In the second half of thispaper, the implications of passive action forcausal theories of action are examined. I arguethat Alfred Mele''s defense of causalism isunsuccessful and that causalism may lack theresource to account for passive action.Following Harry Frankfurt, (...) I suggest analternative way of understanding the nature ofaction that can accommodate passive action. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of ‘passivity’ is a key to his account of perception. For Merleau-Ponty, perception is the way in which we are involved in the world, and it is on perception that the functions of understanding, reason, and reflection ultimately rest. While in his Phenomenology of Perception it is already clear that passive and active are intertwined, from a series of lectures he gave in 1954–5 we learn that inauguration or ‘institution’ arises out of a passivity that is not (...) merely an absence of activity. I show how the thoroughly temporal status of the subject as ‘instituting’ distinguishes it from a certain model of the ‘constituting’ subject. Next, I argue that, to grasp the sense in which Merleau-Ponty intends ‘passivity’, we must recognize its mediating or transitional status. Specifically, I examine terms that arise repeatedly in his analysis of the Freudian account of the unconscious — namely, ‘pivot’ and ‘enjambment’ — to show how they reveal the peculiar status of a passivity that operates through a dialectic focused on its transitional terms rather than on opposing poles. Finally, I suggest the exchange between passivity and institution that Merleau-Ponty has in mind can be illuminated through consideration of late Palaeolithic cave paintings, where the rock itself seems to begin an expression that the artist completes. (shrink)

The first part of this paper explores the kinship in diagnosis of contemporaneity of Hugo Ball and Martin Heidegger. Both thinkers recognize leveling as an important trait of their age. In Ball?s terms, leveling is identified with the apocalyptic abolishment of humanity. That happens by equalizing all of human creation, which becomes possible only after the abolishment of the hierarchy of values, thanks to which it was previously possible to distinguish a work of art from an average work. With Heidegger, (...) leveling is equated with the perverted forms of curiosity. Unlike the former forms of curiosity, coupled by the common desire for deeper insight, modern curiosity is fairly superficial, let loose with no boundaries to all the impressions which supersede the expected and already seen. In the second part of the paper, Husserl?s term of passive synthesis is examined, so we can observe the intervention of phenomenology from the perspective of deconstruction of the effects of leveling. I conclude with a warning that we cannot protect ourselves from the world to which we are exposed by natural subjectivity and conventional forms of knowledge. Which insight leads us to revert to the sources of subjectivity, the idea common to both the avant-garde and the phenomenologists. (shrink)

The main problems faced by a conception of perception as passive will be introduced through a critical examination of John McDowell's account of 'empirical thinking'. Overcoming these difficulties will lead to a conception of perception as involving an active cognitive participation of the perceiver, and an account of how observational judgment is warranted that is focused on the conditions of experience. In both cases, analogies to inquiry in scientific experimental practice will be explored.

BackgroundEuthanasia can be thought of as being either active or passive; but the precise definition of “passive euthanasia” is not always clear. Though all passive euthanasia involves the withholding of life-sustaining treatment, there would appear to be some disagreement about whether all such withholding should be seen as passive euthanasia.Main textAt the core of the disagreement is the question of the importance of an intention to bring about death: must one intend to bring about the death (...) of the patient in order for withholding treatment to count as passive euthanasia, as some sources would indicate, or does withholding in which death is merely foreseen belong to that category? We may expect that this unclarity would be important in medical practice, in law, and in policy. The idea that withholding life-sustaining treatment is passive euthanasia is traced to James Rachels’s arguments, which lend themselves to the claim that passive euthanasia does not require intention to end life. Yet the argument here is that Rachels’s arguments are flawed, and we have good reasons to think that intention is important in understanding the moral nature of actions. As such, we should reject any understanding of passive euthanasia that does not pay attention to intent.Short conclusionJames Rachels’s work on active and passive euthanasia has been immensely influential; but this is an influence that we ought to resist. (shrink)

In the section ‘Unity and Objectivity’ of The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson argues for the thesis that unity of consciousness requires experience of an objective world. My aim in this essay is to evaluate this claim. In the first and second parts of the essay, I explicate Strawson's thesis, reconstruct his argument, and identify the point at which the argument fails. Strawson's discussion nevertheless raises an important question: are there ways in which we must think of our experiences (...) if we are to self-ascribe them? In the third part of the essay, I use Kant's remarks concerning the passivity of experience to suggest one answer to this question: in self-ascribing experiences, we must be capable of thinking of them as passive to their objects. This can be used to provide an alternative route from unity to objectivity. (shrink)

Among European states Nordic countries, including Finland, are often set as examples of countries with high social capital, in which citizens willingly engage into decision-making process. The aim of the article is to verify this assumption and to present diverse attitudes of citizens towards local engagement. The article is based on quantitative data (statistics on civic involvement) as well as qualitative research (interviews with councillors from selected Finnish municipalities). The conclusion points at transformation of Finnish democracy and the fact that (...) paradoxically developed institutions of representative democracy may have a negative influence on the wiliness to apply further, non-electoral mechanisms of civic involvement. (shrink)