Shape and slant judgments of rotated or frontoparallel ellipses were elicited from three groups of 10 subjects. A masking stimulus was introduced to control processing time. Backward masking trials were presented with interstimulus intervals of 0, 25, and 50 msec, Reduction of processing time altered shape judgments in the direction of projective shape and slant judgments in the direction of frontoparallelness. This finding is consistent with the shape-slant invariance hypothesis. In order to study (...) the effects of processing load, one group of subjects was given prior knowledge of the kind of judgment to be made on each trial, one group had no prior knowledge, and a third group made both judgments on each trial. The effects of the processing load manipulation were interpreted in terms of the role of attention in perceptual encoding. Consistent with previous findings, allocation of attention did not affect perceptual encoding. (shrink)

Twelve subjects provided shape and orientation judgments for a set of projectively equivalent, variously rotated rectangles under three viewing conditions—monoptic, dichoptic, and binocular—with and without the presence of a pattern mask. In the absence of the mask, partial constancy was exhibited under the first two conditions and near perfect constancy under the binocular condition. Orientation was discriminated. Presence of the mask produced projective shape matching and diminished orientation discrimination. It is argued that the site of masking was postchiasmal, (...) and the results are related to previous work with pattern masking of projectively equivalent ellipses. (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)

This paper develops an appearance view of perception (focusing on vision). When we see an object, we see it by having it appear some way to us. We see the object, not the appearance; but we see the object via the appearance. The appearance is subjectively conditioned: aspects of it depend on attributes of the subject. We mentally have the appearance and can reflect on it as an appearance. But in the primary instance, of veridical perception, it is the object (...) that we focus on and experience. I contrast this view with naive realism (sometimes called disjunctivism) (Brewer, Campbell, Noe) and with intentionalist or representationalist views, which I call the physical content view (Dretske, Tye, Crane, Hill, Burge). I agree with these views in rejecting sense-data intermediaries and in affirming direct perception, but I argue that direct perception occurs via appearances, making mine a critical direct realism. The other views attempt to explain the spatial content of perception (shape, size, distance) entirely through the physical properties of objects and their physical relation to the perceiver (viewing position). I argue instead that there are ineliminably subjective aspects of normal spatial perception, which are systematically manifested as a lack of full phenomenal constancy. This systematic underconstancy can’t be accounted for at all by a consistent naive realism; for the physical content view, it requires that most of our ordinary perception is classified as illusory, violating the spirit of that view. Accepting phenomenal underconstancy as pervasive, I suggest that our ability to perceive the mind-independent properties of objects depends on developed conceptual abilities. In the final section, I compare my appearance view with the adverbialism of Chisholm and the critical direct realism of Roy Wood Sellars. (shrink)

Background: Islam and Muslims are underrepresented in the medical literature and the influence of physician’s cultural beliefs and religious values upon the clinical encounter has been understudied. Objective: To elicit the perceived influence of Islam upon the practice patterns of immigrant Muslim physicians in the USA. Design: Ten face-to-face, in-depth, semistructured interviews with Muslim physicians from various backgrounds and specialties trained outside the USA and practising within the the country. Data were analysed according to the conventions of qualitative research (...) using a modified grounded-theory approach. Results: There were a variety of views on the role of Islam in medical practice. Several themes emerged from our interviews: (1) a trend to view Islam as enhancing virtuous professional behaviour; (2) the perception of Islam as influencing the scope of medical practice through setting boundaries on career choices, defining acceptable medical procedures and shaping social interactions with physician peers; (3) a perceived need for Islamic religious experts within Islamic medical ethical deliberation. Limitations: This is a pilot study intended to yield themes and hypotheses for further investigation and is not meant to fully characterise Muslim physicians at large. Conclusions: Immigrant Muslim physicians practising within the USA perceive Islam to play a variable role within their clinical practice, from influencing interpersonal relations and character development to affecting specialty choice and procedures performed. Areas of ethical challenges identified include catering to populations with lifestyles at odds with Islamic teachings, end-of-life care and maintaining a faith identity within the culture of medicine. Further study of the interplay between Islam and Muslim medical practice and the manner and degree to which Islamic values and law inform ethical decision-making is needed. (shrink)

The Pythagorean tradition dominates the understanding of beauty up until the end of the 18th Century. According to this tradition, the experience of beauty is stimulated by certain relations perceived to be between an object/construct's elements. As such, the object of the experience of beauty is indeterminate: it has neither a determinate perceptual analogue (one cannot simply identify beauty as you can a straight line or a particular shape) nor a determinate concept (there are no necessary and sufficient (...) conditions for beauty at the semantic level). By the 13th Century in the West, the pleasure experienced in beauty is characterized as disinterested. Yet, on the basis that all cultural manifestations of the pythagorean theory of beauty recognize that judgments of beauty are genuine judgments, we would want to say that judgments of beauty are lawful. In addition, from ancient times, up until after Kant, philosophers of beauty within this tradition recognize two kinds of beauty: a universal, unchanging beauty coexisting with a relative, dynamic beauty. These two kinds of beauty and the tensions discussed above, are reconciled and dissolved respectively, according to the metaphysical/religious commitments of the particular author. As yet, however, these features of beauty have not been reconciled within a physicalist worldview. This is what I set out to do. (shrink)

Learning to perceive is faced with a classical paradox: if understanding is required for perception, how can we learn to perceive something new, something we do not yet understand? According to the sensorimotor approach, perception involves mastery of regular sensorimotor co-variations that depend on the agent and the environment, also known as the “laws” of sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs). In this sense, perception involves enacting relevant sensorimotor skills in each situation. It is important for this proposal that such skills can be (...) learned and refined with experience and yet up to this date, the sensorimotor approach has had no explicit theory of perceptual learning. The situation is made more complex if we acknowledge the open-ended nature of human learning. In this paper we propose Piaget’s theory of equilibration as a potential candidate to fulfill this role. This theory highlights the importance of intrinsic sensorimotor norms, in terms of the closure of sensorimotor schemes. It also explains how the equilibration of a sensorimotor organization faced with novelty or breakdowns proceeds by re-shaping pre-existing structures in coupling with dynamical regularities of the world. This way learning to perceive is guided by the equilibration of emerging forms of skillful coping with the world. We demonstrate the compatibility between Piaget’s theory and the sensorimotor approach by providing a dynamical formalization of equilibration to give an explicit micro-genetic account of sensorimotor learning and, by extension, of how we learn to perceive. This allows us to draw important lessons in the form of general principles for open-ended sensorimotor learning, including the need for an intrinsic normative evaluation by the agent itself. We also explore implications of our micro-genetic account at the personal level. (shrink)

This article focuses on the question of how we perceive and represent ourselves at the most minimal, pre-reflective level. We first review recent work emphasizing the multisensory basis of our perceptual experiences and the embodied nature of self-awareness. We then focus on interoceptive and tactile signals, as key components of bodily self-consciousness, and discuss one crucial yet overlooked aspect of our embodiment, namely the fact that bodily self-consciousness emerges from the outset within the body of another experiencing subject. Next, we (...) review empirical findings highlighting the developmental primacy of tactile and interoceptive over visual experiences, in shaping the foundations of perceptual awareness. Building upon the influential predictive processing framework in philosophy and theoretical neuroscience, we argue that self-awareness is not only embodied, but also that perceptual experiences are fundamentally 'selfish', that is, imperatively driven by basic constraints of physiological regulation that subserve self-preservation. We then evaluate. (shrink)

Summary Although the changing role of high-level educational leaders has received increasing attention in recent years, few studies have targeted concerted culture change attempts by such important players. The data discussed in this article were drawn from the perceptions of one Australia state-level chief executive officer (CEO) and a group of administrators within his department during the first 18 months of his appointment. The study sought to describe briefly the leader, identify the shape of the culture he set out (...) consciously to develop, the reasons behind the change attempt, the methods utilised to lead to change and the initial impressions of change success and blockages to acceptance. The rationale driving the attempt at change stemmed from the perceived failure of devolution, negative work attitudes, the CEO's own style and a system driven by micropolitical agendas. The culture change attempts utilised cultural and bureaucratic strategies. The blockages to culture change were related to the strengths of the previous culture, personal political networks and perceived contradictions between the values, actions and politics. A number of issues relating to the findings are discussed, including an examination of the culture change process, its success to date and the confusing role of the leader in the process. (shrink)

The ability to perceive the shapes of things as enduring through changes in how they stimulate our sense organs is vital to our sense of stability in the world. But what sort of capacity is shape constancy, and how is it reflected in perceptual experience? This paper defends a pluralist account of shape constancy: There are multiple kinds of shape constancy centered on geometrical properties at various levels of abstraction, and properties at these various levels feature in (...) the content of perceptual experience, governing patterns of apparent shape similarity. I propose that the varieties of shape constancy are subserved by the syntactic complexity of perceptual shape representations. By assigning discrete constituents to various abstract shape parameters, these representations attune us to the preservation of certain abstract shape properties through changes in more determinate shape properties. Finally, I draw broader lessons concerning the nature and function of perceptual constancy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionLori A. Custodero and Anna NeumannIn this symposium, three scholars present the genesis, meaning, and artfulness of creative work and its realization as aesthetic experience within three educational fields. Lori A. Custodero, working out of music education, provides a perspective emanating from an aesthetic of childhood wonder and playfulness; David T. Hansen, writing out of philosophy of education, discusses how being fully present in the teaching moment leads to (...) meaningful experience; and Anna Neumann, who writes out of the field of higher education studies, represents scholars as engaged in intellectual pursuits, often framed aesthetically, and as struggling to hold on to precious time for creation. Aware of the inherent tensions in learning environments from child care centers to graduate schools, we address ways in which our research has revealed people's sustained pursuit of imagined possibilities, oftentimes amidst perceived impediments.Creative work involves imagining possibilities whereby individuals, alone and together, pose personally relevant questions and pursue fluent pathways of inquiry within the shared meanings of cultural context. At its finest, such work is artful, simultaneously responding to and emanating from immediate circumstance and past experience. It is malleable and vulnerable and compelling, fusing familiar images and surprising perceptions into new "equilibria... stable, even though moving" whereby "changes interlock and sustain one another."1 As scholars and teachers committed to learning, we strive to create and discern meaning between established understandings and emerging ideas and images. As we dance between reception and action, between insight and "onsight,"2 fully attentive to the perceived potentials in our work, we move toward synchrony, experiencing the aesthetic. The realizations that arise from experiences such as these — new or newly reconfigured words, sounds, images, movement, and ideas — express new balances of sense and feeling and, sometimes, beauty. Whether in the shared, artfully expressive vocalizations between the newborn infant and mother or in the scientist's finessing patience with elegant mathematical imagery, creative work invites a drawing together of what we know and what we struggle to know. Over time, the interplay of this work and its realization, [End Page 33] what Dewey refers to as "movement and culmination,"3 creates a momentum that serves to define lives as aesthetic.We have created this symposium as a space for considering the meanings of the aesthetic in lives — from its earliest instantiations in the experiences of infants and young children, to its developed expression in the professional (in this case, intellectual) efforts of adults pursuing scholarly careers, to its representation in teaching as intergenerational fusions of knowledge, learning, and lives. We see the aesthetic as both native and learned; as individually held and formed and felt, and as collectively created and voiced, the product of lives in intersection; as marking bounded moments in time (those instants of compelling "present-ness") and as spreading through years, well beyond bounded present-ness, perhaps as memory. Yet while striving to define the aesthetic in lives, we also strive to understand lives, individually and interactively, as lodgings for the aesthetic, as locations that give shape, form, and voice to beauty and insight, to creativity and learning. As we explore the lives in which the aesthetic finds its home, and within which it forms, we wonder about the extent to which the aesthetic may, in its turn, illuminate the strivings of those lives, including human desires to create, know, learn, understand, sense. We are then collectively concerned with the meanings of the aesthetic in lives and about the lives themselves as "moving spaces" within which the aesthetic can grow.We pursue this theme, centered on the power of the aesthetic to illuminate human lives, out of a realization that current understandings of what it means to be human — and especially what it means to learn and create — have been framed within the rubrics of the social sciences, certainly in productive ways. And yet we suggest that the artful, though powerful in its abilities to voice emotion and beauty, has not been employed as intensively as it might in efforts to understand what it means to create and learn as virtues of human existence, as perhaps the ultimate of human strivings. We hope that these symposium papers will help invigorate such... (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to take a closer look at medieval discussions concerning the phenomenon of ‘perceiving as,’ and the psychological mechanisms that lie behind it. In contemporary philosophical literature this notion is usually used to refer to conceptual aspects of perception. For instance, when I perceive a black birdlike shape as a crow, I may be said to perceive the particular sensible thing x as an instance of a universal crowness φ, that is, as belonging to (...) a natural kind and falling under the concept of ‘crow’. In this sense, perceiving x as φ requires mastering the concept φ. However, I use the term ‘perceiving as’ in a wider sense and concentrate on various kinds of non-conceptual sensory processes, which can be understood as forms of ‘perceiving as’. Even though conceptual perception requires intellectual powers, medieval discussions on cognitive psychology can be understood properly only by taking into account the complex forms of perception that fall short of being truly intellectual, but are nevertheless over and above the simple sensation of sensible qualities of external things. The borderline between simple sensation and conceptual perception is unclear, and quite a lot is going on in the grey area between the two. Instead of presupposing any modern notion of ‘perceiving as’ and applying it to medieval discussions, my purpose is the opposite: to look at medieval discussions and see if they can be used to broaden modern discussions by including also non-conceptual varieties of perception. I shall begin the analysis in section two by specifying various types of cogni- tive processes that were discussed by medieval authors and can be considered as forms of ‘perceiving as’. The bulk of the historical work will be done in sec- tion three, where I focus on medieval discussions on three interrelated cogni- tive functions – perceiving different sensible qualities as a synthetic whole, incidental perception of one sensible quality through another, and the possi- bility of perceiving substances and recognising individuals. The reader should bear in mind that I shall use ideas from several medieval authors without pay- ing much attention to the differences between their theories of perception. Although occasionally radical, these differences are not highly relevant in the context of the present chapter. In section four, I propose two theoretical mod- els that can be used for analysing medieval views concerning these psychologi- cal phenomena. Finally, I conclude the chapter by making some remarks on the potential impacts of reading medieval views in relation to the concept of ‘perceiving as’. (shrink)

It has been proposed that inferring personal authorship for an event gives rise to intentional binding, a perceptual illusion in which one’s action and inferred effect seem closer in time than they otherwise would . Using a novel, naturalistic paradigm, we conducted two experiments to test this hypothesis and examine the relationship between binding and self-reported authorship. In both experiments, an important authorship indicator – consistency between one’s action and a subsequent event – was manipulated, and its effects on binding (...) and self-reported authorship were measured. Results showed that action-event consistency enhanced both binding and self-reported authorship, supporting the hypothesis that binding arises from an inference of authorship. At the same time, evidence for a dissociation emerged, with consistency having a more robust effect on self-reports than on binding. Taken together, these results suggest that binding and self-reports reveal different aspects of the sense of authorship. (shrink)

This study is situated within the newly emerging interest in the concept of grace as a legitimate topic for empirical enquiry, and draws on the theoretical framework provided by the SIFT approach to biblical hermeneutics, an approach rooted in reader-perspective hermeneutical theory and in Jungian psychological type theory. Data were draw from two one-day workshops with Anglican Readers (lay ministers). On each occasion the participants were invited to divide into three separate groups according to their preferences for sensing or intuition (...) (the two perceiving functions) and within these groups to explore the messages of grace in Matthew 6: 25–30 (Jesus’ invitation to look at the birds and to consider the lilies). The rich data gathered from these workshops generated insights into contemporary theologies of grace and also confirmed the hypothesis that biblical interpretation is shaped by the reader’s psychological type preference for sensing or for intuition. (shrink)

In the philosophy of perception, direct realism has come into vogue. Philosophical authors assert and assume that what their readers want, and what anyone should want, is some form of direct realism. There are disagreements over precisely what form this direct realism should take. The majority of positions in favor now offer a direct realism in which objects and their material or physical properties constitute the contents of perception, either because we have an immediate or intuitive acquaintance with those objects (...) and properties, or because our perceptual states have informational content that represents the properties of those objects (and which is not itself an object of perception and has no specifically subjective aspect). This paper considers various forms of perceptual realism, including, for purposes of comparison, the largely abandoned indirect or representative realism. After surveying the variety of perceptual realisms and considering their various commitments, I introduce some considerations concerning the phenomenology of visual space that cause trouble for most forms of direct realism. These considerations pertain to the perception of objects in the distance and, secondarily, to the perception of shapes at a slant. I argue that one of the lesser known varieties of perceptual realism, critical direct realism, can meet the challenges offered by the facts of spatial perception. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:26. DAVID HUME ON REASON, PASSIONS AND MORALS Perhaps the most notorious passage in Hume's Treatise is the one that concerns the relative roles of reason and passions, where he says: Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions (T 415). This psychology of action is the foundation of Hume's moral theory, wherein we find his two other notorious dicta, one being!.¡oral distinctions cannot be (...) derived from reason, and the other, Ought cannot be derived from is. Many commentators have interpreted Hume as saying that reason plays no role in the making of moral judgments, and, while not taking the rationalistic line, criticized him for not giving reason its proper due. The aim of this paper is to show that Hume's primary concern is to argue against the rationalist position which takes reason to be sufficient (always or sometimes) to move one to act, and to give rise to moral judgments. I wish to show that Hume is only concerned with dismissing the claim that reason could be a sufficient condition, not that it is a necessary one. Indeed, Hume could be interpreted as saying that reason is no less important than passions in shaping human conduct, anc in the area of inorai conduct, there can be no moral judgments without the work of reason. At the same time, however, passions remain the prime mover; reason does not move us to act (generally, hence morally). 1 shall try to show that the dictum '¿¡oral distinctions cannot be derived from reason' is essentially correct, but its being correct in no way shows that reason is not a necessary element of moral distinctions. 27. Before discussing the views of some critics of Hume's moral theory, it is important to clear up one source of misunderstanding that lies in Hume's discussion of the psychology of action. When Hume says that reason is the slave of passions, he does not say thereby that reason is unimportant. He is saying merely that reason alone does not move one to act. The force that propels one to action is the passion, whether it be love, or anger, or pride, or envy, or fear, or desire. Reason alone does not provide the motive. However, it is reason that does the groundwork, analyzing facts, perceiving relations, and drawing conclusions, all of which go to determine which action to perform, but the action will not be performed unless one of the passions is also present. Just because reason is the slave does not indicate that its work is not relevant. To extend the slavery metaphor, we may observe that slave owners supported slavery for the very reason that the slave's work was found indispensable; analogously, it must be observed that Hume is most unlikely to hole that reason plays no part in human action. To complete the analogy, we should say that while much could be achieved with slaves, it was the masters who conceived the plan, and the masters must rank higher in the causal order. We may observe further that greater achievement could be had by treating slaves properly, not overworking them, and not ill-treating them. If reason is the slave, it will be in our interest to cultivate it, sharpen it, and use it always and to the full. This could be inferred from HuTr.e's discussion of the understanding in Book 1 of the Treatise. indeed, in the conclusion of Book I, Hume points out forcefully that we contradict ourselves if we hold that no refin'd or elaborate reasoning is ever to be 28. receiv'd (T 268). For it is only through reasoning that we arrive at any such conclusion. He goes on to say: Very refin'd reflections have little or no influence upon us; and yet we do not, and cannot establish it for a rule, that they ought not to have any influence; which implies a manifest contradiction (T268). There cannot be a clearer demonstration that it is not the case that Hume fails to give reason its proper due. Later, I shall cite further evidence for this in relation specifically to the role of reason in... (shrink)

Over the last decade, the increased use of work teams within organizations has been one of the most influential and far-reaching trends to shape the business world. At the same time, corporations have continued to struggle with increased unethical employee behavior. Very little research has been conducted that specifically examines the developmental aspects of employee ethical decision-making in a team environment. This study examines the impact of a team leader’s perceived integrity on his or her subordinates’ behavior. The (...) results, which came from a survey of 245 MBA students functioning for 2 years in a work team environment, indicate an interaction between leader integrity and team member ethical intentions. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 230—233. A word about the quotation marks. People ask about them, in the beginning; in the process of giving themselves up to reading the poem, they become comfortable with them, without necessarily thinking precisely about why they’re there. But they’re there, mostly to measure the poem. The phrases they enclose are poetic feet. If I had simply left white spaces between the phrases, the phrases would be read too fast for my musical intention. The quotation marks make (...) the reader slow down and silently articulate—not slur over mentally—the phrases at the pace, and with the stresses, I intend. They also distance the narrative form myself. I am not Alette. Finally they may remind the reader that each phrase is a thing said by a voice: this is not a thought, or a record of thought process, this is a story, told.(1) We read (reread) the poems that keep the discourse with ourselves going. —Wallace Stevens We have to break open words or sentences, too, and find what’s uttered in them. —Gilles Deleuze “The Descent of Alette” “is an allegorical poem” “in four books” “first published” “in 1992” “by Alice Notley.” “In the Descent of Alette,” “the double quotation mark” “is wrapped around” “words, phrases, sometimes whole sentences, and utilized as bones for structure and tonality.” “The winged” “dbl quotation” “like angels or devils” “descending from elsewhere” “function as” “poetic feet.” “Distance” “in the text through the use of dbl quotes,” “according to Notley,” “was a way to distance” “her self” “from the narrative.” I know someone who tattooed double quotes on her shoulder blades. In other words, the body is quotable. To be able to say that one is quotable. A body filled with other’s sayings. I never asked her what for, what is the double quote tattoo for and why on the shoulder blades? I prefer my own interpretation that keeps shifting every time I see her. First words of every poem in every book: Book One One ... On ... A ... There ... I ... We ... An ... A ... A ... I ... At ... A ... When ... When ... There ... I ... In ... At ... I ... Once ... A ... A ... In ... A ... A ... Two ... I ... I ... Eyeball ... In ... I... A ... I ... I ... On ... I ... There ... What ... As ... As Book Two I ... When ... I ... I ... As ... I ... I ... There ... I ... There ... I ... A ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I Book Three The ... Presently ... I ... I’m ... I ... We ... What ... My ... I ... Who ... But ... Lay ... My ... I ... The ... Your ... The ... I ... It’s ... As ... The ... Talon’s ... When ... We ... I ... Slowly ... I ... I ... The ... How ... The Book Four I ... I ... You ... The ... Now ... She ... The ... There ... As ... Then ... The ... All ... Let’s I ... You ... The ... Thus ... The ... I ... The ... I ... There ... Have ... The ... As ... The Defamiliar Object “Poetry is a defamiliarized language, whose formations, so far from being simply formations of meaning, are aesthetic structures...”(2) “The same can be” “irresponsibly associated” “with the use of punctuation.” “The dbl quotation as a measure” “of poetic feet” “is treated as such” “because the author” “injects artfulness into it.” “The dbl quote is an object—” “a joystick” “to control breadth” “(of breath.)” “To de-familiarize” “said sign” “is also to” “impart the sensation of [it] as [it is] perceived and not as they are known.”(3) “The dbl quote” “nests previous words, phrasings and sayings.” “How many have come and gone” “through the doorway of this punctuation sign.” “There are also air quotes and virtual quotes.” “There is emphasis and there’s irony.” “It would be aggravating” “or interesting” “to watch a reading of” “The Descent of Alette” “with someone” “raising and curling” “fingers” “bent out of shape” “in what could be used as” “peace signs.” “I am trying to avoid” “scare quotes.” “I looked up” “what they are” “and supposedly they arose” “in the early 20th century.” “The scare quote” “is a mark around a word or phrase to indicate that it doesn’t signify conventional or literal meaning.” “This isn’t how Notley” “intended to use them” “in The Descent of Alette.” “The characters, places, and things” “signify nothing” “beyond” “their literal meaning” “ within the allegory .” “I’d like to stress” “within the allegory;” “that’s why its” “italicized.” “It is told through” “the main character/voice of” “Alette.” “The author reminds us she is not Alette.” “The author marvelously found a way” “to distance” “her self” “from the narrative.” “This was attempted” “by tonal and intimate” “affect of the dbl quote” “used as poetic feet.” “Its as though” “punctuation in this regard” “becomes a magical toy.” “Arguably, punctuation” “(as perceived)” “undergoes a kind of” “ defamiliar ” “make-over.” “The text” gently forces the reader” “to slow down,” “read slowly.” “At some point” “one begins to sense” “lines of text” “moving on its own.” “Broken words, phrases, and sentences” “shuttling left to right” “like a subway” “that stops” “from station to station;” “open quote to end quote.” Double Quote Occupied “There are two worlds; one above ground” “and one underground.” “The world above ground is where,” “the tyrant” “with a capital t” “lives.” “(The “T” gets tangled in the claws of the dbl quote.)” “Alette becomes an owl and kills him.” “In the last book the tyrant dies.” “ “...the tyrant” “a man in charge of” “the fact” “that we were” “below the ground” “endlessly riding” “our trains, never surfacing” “A man who” “would make you pay” “so much” “to leave the subway” “that you don’t” “ever ask” “how much it is” “It is, in effect,” “all of you & more” “Most of which you already” “pay to live below” “But he would literally” “take your soul” “Which is what you are” “below the ground” “Your soul” “your soul rides” “this subway” “I saw” “on the subway a” “world of souls” ”(4) “New York;” “the city of cities” “and its subways—” “worlds underground,” “above ground,” “& above the above ground.” “Skyscrapers,” “Wall Street,” “old money,” “new money,” “and falling further down a cleavage;” “the middle class” “slipping away.” “Contemporary artist ” “Ligorano Reece” “recently made” “a sculpture of ice ” “a block of ice” “carved to read” “middle class” “(in all upper case letters)” “and let it melt” “naturally” “for however long—” “hours,” “days.” “It didn’t take very long to melt.” A global uprise of mass demonstrations; a cacophony of bodies on the street, in parks and universities, on City Hall lawns, coastal ports, neighborhoods, etc., and for what? The reasons are endless and finite. Not a single body is unaffected by the movement even when not “occupying.” “Occupiers” “stormed into a Sotheby’s auction” “protesting” “via human microphone” “that the CEO takes home” “about” “six thousand dollars” “a day.” “(The a/Art market” “is not a reflection” “of a desire” “for a/Art” “but a reflection” “of a desire” “for money” “confused with a/Art.)” What could it mean to occupy that which has been written or said? Someone with double quotes tattooed on both shoulders attempts to reclaim the sign; re-invent it privately-publicly since the body is always split between both spheres. A genre of hide-and-seek; the speaking and silent body which can never mean what it says even while it so desires to mean something. To nest (and hold hostage) someone in double quotes is an act of violence; a gesture of displacement where one is arrested, dislocated, and scrutinized under a distant gaze. “The air quote” “also known as” “finger quote or ersatz quote” “supposedly” “harks back to” “1927.” “The brevity of this gesture” “ as something invisible” “like virtual money or credit” “doesn’t really exist” “though it take up space;” “its the ghostliest of all punctuation signs” “and one that requires the presence and appearance of a body.” “ “she made a form” “in her mind” “an imaginary” “form” “to settle” “in her arms where” “the baby” “had been” “We saw her fiery arms” “cradle air” “She cradled air...” ”(5) “The air” “gets occupied” “by one or two hands” “with thumb, forefinger, and middle finger” “which alternately could be used” “to shoot rubber bullets,” “pepper spray,” “tear gas.” “How three fingers” “could be responsible for so much:” “satire, sarcasm, irony” “and ultimately” “bruises, blood, death.” (“The violence of the dbl quote is to eagerly to place oneself inside a tornado.)” “The violence of this” “embodied punctuation mark” “stems from a discordance with others.” “Is the name, word, or phrase” “placed in dbl quotes” “heroic” “ or brave?” “An act of displacement;” “must there always be” “bright or negative lights—” “a leaderless act” “to inhabit, to occupy” “space removed” “from normative use.” “Of course” “I’m also wondering” “what it means to re-occupy” “public/private space—the street, neighborhood or page” “policed” “by laws, limits, and” “to some extent” “punctuation.” Echo, Mirror “There are first, second, and third voices interwoven.” “ “Braid of voices,”(6) ” “Some lines read as internal thoughts,” “dialogues,” “and scene descriptions,” “all of which make up the allegory.” “It seems appropriate” “for the word” “allegory” “to nest in dbl quotes” “for perhaps it might be” “a gesture to echo on and on” “eternally referencing” “whatever came before.” I notice the first tooth of the double quote, when paying too close attention, gets caught in the hook of the “f”. I space bar to untangle them; the f does not resist the closed bite of “deaf” and I resist to know what it could mean, because it could doubly mean nothing. “ “He looked” “so familiar” “to me...”(7) ” “The second-person” “echoes in one of two directions:” “further into” “or farther from” “me.” “Its as though” “the second-person amplifies” “or else the opposite” “in which he,” “who looks so familiar,” “retreats further” “like stars in a telescope.” “The dbl quote” “has this kind of affect” “concerning distance and dimension” “as also illusory” “as something twice removed” “and unreal” “in a similar way” “movie stars are unreal and far away.” “ “I entered” “a car” “in which I seemed” “to see double” “Each person I” “looked at seemed” “spread out” “as if doubled” “Gradually” “I perceived that” “each person” “was surrounded by a ghostly” “second image” “was encased in it” “& each” / “of those images,” “those encasings,” “was exactly the same” “each was in fact” “the tyrant...” ”(8) A daydream of a mirror-less world while staring through window blinds; a palm tree behind. It was dark with nothing there. A world with no mirrors “in my mind,” though my mind could only reflect what it knew: a palm tree. Naturally then, palm trees multiplied; a world of palm trees reflected the daydream with no mirror in sight. “The mirror” “(prior to obsidian manufacturing ca. 6000 B.C)” “was wherever water” “could be found.” “Its interesting” “mirrors have been around” “before humans—its funny” “animals and humans” “get born into” “a world of mirrors,” “therefore, simulation” “is always already” “a given—” “a sparkly consequence to be born with a dbl.” NOTES 1. Notley, Alice. “Author’s Note” in The Descent of Alette (New York, 1996) 2. Bruns, Gerald L. “ From Intransitive Speech to the Universe of Discourse” in Modern Poetry And The Idea of Language (New Haven & London, 1974), p.75 3. Ibid. p.77 4. Notley, Alice. The Descent of Alette (New York, 1996). p.3 5. Ibid. p.10 6. Ibid i. p.9 7. Ibid ii. p.16 8. Ibid iii. p.12. (shrink)

Four experiments investigated the extent to which abstract quantitative information can be conveyed by basic visual features. This was done by asking observers to estimate and discriminate Pearson correlation in graphical representations where the first data dimension of each element was encoded by its horizontal position, and the second by the value of one of its visual features; perceiving correlation then requires combining the information in the two encodings via a common abstract representation. Four visual features were examined: luminance, color, (...) orientation, and size. All were able to support the perception of correlation. Indeed, despite the strikingly different appearances of the associated stimuli, all gave rise to performance that was much the same: just noticeable difference was a linear function of distance from complete correlation, and estimated correlation a logarithmic function of this distance. Performance differed only in regards to the level of noise in the feature, with these values compatible with estimates of channel capacity encountered in classic experiments on absolute perceptual magnitudes. These results suggest that quantitative information can be conveyed by visual features that are abstracted at relatively low levels of visual processing, with little representation of the original sensory property. It is proposed that this is achieved via an abstract parameter space in which the values in each perceptual dimension are normalized to have the same means and variances, with perceived correlation based on the shape of the joint probability density function of the resultant elements. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Meaning and Non-Existence: Kumārila’s Refutation of Dignāga’s Theory of Exclusion by Kei Kataoka and John TaberCharles A. Goodman (bio)Meaning and Non-Existence: Kumārila’s Refutation of Dignāga’s Theory of Exclusion. By Kei Kataoka and John Taber. Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2021. Pp. 268. Paper $44.00, ISBN 978-3-7001-8641-0.Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (seventh century CE) was a brilliant and highly original thinker, a master of Sanskrit style, and perhaps the most formidable philosophical (...) critic the Buddhist tradition has ever faced. Yet among philosophers trained in Western traditions, his work is today almost unknown. One key cause of this unmerited neglect may be that very little of Kumārila’s oeuvre has been available in Western languages. The present work, by two prominent experts on Mīmāṃsā, presents one of the most influential and difficult chapters of Kumārila’s most important work, the Commentary in Verses, in a clear and accurate English translation.As one of the greatest philosophical authors to have appeared in the traditions we now call Hinduism, Kumārila’s works in general are of considerable interest to specialists in Hindu thought. The particular chapter translated in this volume, however, may well be of broader significance than most of his writings. In that chapter, the Apohavāda, Kumārila offers a thorough and wide-ranging critique of the philosophy of language advocated by Dignāga, a key figure in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. Many scholars maintain that it was this critique in particular that motivated Dharmakīrti, another major Buddhist epistemologist, to formulate a new version of this understanding of language, one that would be widely accepted and influential among Buddhists in India and Tibet. Thus, anyone interested in the history of Buddhist philosophy may also find much to ponder in this volume.Several traditions of South Asian philosophy, including the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Kumārila’s own Mīmāṃsā school, were realists about universals. They held that universals were permanent, mind-independent entities and that our understanding of the world was dependent on them. Kumārila’s views on the topic are especially uncompromising, as he holds that we can directly perceive universals in the ordinary things we encounter.These views were, however, rejected by Buddhist epistemologists, who sought to develop nominalist or conceptualist understandings of thought and language that could dispense with real universals. Their most important attempts to do so take the form of theories of apoha, a Sanskrit word literally meaning “exclusion.” In its most basic form, a doctrine of apoha maintains that a general [End Page 1] term such as “cow” manages to be meaningful by excluding all non-cows. But this deceptively simple formulation leads to a variety of interpretations, each facing its own difficulties. In his chapter, Kumārila is unstinting in pointing out a wide variety of objections that can be raised against the apoha view as expressed in the works of Dignāga.One way to think about the apoha theory is that it is fundamentally ontological in nature, seeking to avoid the problems with postulating real universals by arguing that the meanings of words, being exclusions, are negations or absences, not positive entities. Many scholars understand the theory in this way, but Kumārila points out fundamental flaws with this approach. One of the gravest of these flaws is that if absences are non-entities, it is unclear how they can be, at the level of ontology, any different from each other. As a result, the theory is in danger of entailing that all words are synonyms.Another possible way to understand the apoha theory is that it seeks mainly to offer an account of the psychological process by which human minds construct the meanings of words, understanding this process as fundamentally contrastive in nature. A form of this psychological interpretation also briefly comes in for critique by Kumārila, in the guise of the view that our ideas of distinct exclusions are produced by vāsanā-s, a difficult Sanskrit word referring to underlying psychological processes or tendencies that, according to Buddhists, shape our... (shrink)

Working within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, a series of empirical studies have tested the theory that the readers' psychological type preference between sensing and intuition shapes distinctive readings of biblical narratives. More recently, closer attention has also been given to differentiation within these two perceiving functions of sensing and intuition with regard to their introverted and extraverted orientation. Against this background, the present study examines the distinctive reading of the Johannine narrative of the wedding at Cana, a (...) passage rich in materials to engage the perceiving functions, by two groups whose dominant or auxiliary functions were introverted sensing and introverted intuition.CONTRIBUTION: Situated within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the sensing, intuition, feeling, thinking method is concerned with identifying the influence of the psychological type of the reader in shaping the interpretation of text. The foundations of the SIFT approach distinguish amongst the four functions of sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking. The present study builds on this foundation by introducing the nuance of the orientation in which the function is expressed, in this case focusing specifically on introverted sensing and introverted intuition. (shrink)

Nonhuman animals always have played a significant role in people's lives. Lately, the technological and market economy has anthropomorphized dogs to human-like behavior, particularly to status of family member or child. This qualitative study expands upon the current studies on consumption and animals and society by exploring how human-canine relationships are anthropomorphized at the family excursion to "Yappy Hour" at Fido's Barkery. The type of person who attends Yappy Hour on a weekly basis has a unique and special type of (...) connection with their dog that goes beyond most people's relationships with dogs. Most of the dog lovers interviewed do not perceive their dogs as dogs; they are family members, best friends, and "fur babies." These dog lovers also do not perceive themselves as dog owners; they see themselves as mothers and fathers. The social and market environment of Fido's Barkery not only reinforces their relationship with their dog, it shapes community, friendships, and personal identity. (shrink)

Introducing and implementing corporate sustainability poses many challenges to business organizations. In this longitudinal, inductive study, we focus on how such challenges are handled in a Dutch bank that is developing its sustainability policies. We examine why there is such a high degree of tension and conflict within the organization and identify how the development of these policies is affected by the interplay between subcultures and institutional logics. We show how different subcultures affect the enactment of logics by infusing the (...) rational and mindful behavior coming from logics with (sub)cultural values, beliefs, and assumptions. In turn, conflicting logics amplify subcultural characteristics between groups by shaping different behavior and practices. Together, this leads to a magnification of subcultural differences while, at the same time, logics are increasingly being perceived as incompatible. (shrink)

Humans naturally perceive visual patterns in a global manner and are remarkably capable of extracting object shapes based on properties such as proximity, closure, symmetry, and good continuation. Notwithstanding the role of these properties in perceptual grouping, studies highlighted differences in disembedding performance across individuals, which are summarized by the field dependence dimension. Evidence suggests that age and educational attainment explain part of this variability, whereas the role of sex is still highly debated. Also, which stimulus features primarily influence inter-individual (...) variations in perceptual grouping has still to be fully determined. Building upon these premises, we assessed the role of age, education level, and sex on performance at the Leuven Embedded Figure Test—a proxy of disembedding abilities—in 391 cisgender individuals. We also investigated to what extent shape symmetry, closure, complexity, and continuation relate to task accuracy. Overall, target asymmetry, closure, and good continuation with the embedding context increase task difficulty. Simpler shapes are more difficult to detect than those with more lines, yet context complexity impairs the recognition of complex targets to a greater extent. Concerning demographic data, we confirm that age and educational attainment are significantly associated with disembedding abilities and reveal a perceptual advantage in males. In summary, our study further highlights the role of shape properties in disembedding performance and unveils sex differences not reported so far. (shrink)

Tournament-like promotion systems are the default in audit firms, which are generally internally owned professional partnerships. While awarding promotions in a contest-like fashion stimulates contestants’ motivation and productivity, it may also upset an organizations’ ethical climate and trigger ethically adverse behaviors. Since nearly all research on promotion tournaments in management has been conducted in public firms, little is known about how these incentive systems operate in professional partnerships. In this study, we analyze how the perception of the two controllable design (...) parameters of promotion tournaments—the relative pay spread between winners and losers and tournament breadth in terms of the number of contestants that compete for a prize—affects audit firm behavior. Survey results provide evidence that the tournament’s perceived breadth prompts adverse behavior, as it does in public firms. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the perceived pay spread has no significant effect on adverse behavior, but triggers desirable behaviors instead. Our study suggests that promotion tournaments indeed provide powerful incentives, but also that understanding the unintended consequences of these incentives on organizational ethical climates and behavior requires tournament theory to be contextualized when it is applied in new settings like internally owned professional partnerships. (shrink)

A myriad of sensations inform and direct us when we engage with the environment. To understand their influence on the development of our habitus it is important to focus on unifying processes in sensing. This approach allows us to include phenomena that elude a rather narrow view that focuses on each of the five discrete senses in isolation. One of the central questions addressed in this volume is whether there is something like a sensual habitus, and if there is, how (...) it can be defined. This is especially done by exploring the formation and habituation of the senses in and by a culturally shaped habitat. Two key concepts, Synaesthesia and Kinaesthetics, are addressed as essential components for an understanding of the interface of habitat and the rich and multisensory experience of a perceiving subject. At a Berlin-based conference Synaesthesia and Kinaesthetics, scholars from various disciplines gathered to discuss these issues. In bringing together the outcome of these discussions, this book gives new insights into the key phenomena of sensory integration and synaesthetic experiences, it enriches the perspectives on sensually embedded interaction and its habituation, and it expands this interdisciplinary inquiry to questions about the cultures of sensory habitus. (shrink)

Working within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, a series of empirical studies have tested the theory that the readers’ psychological type preference between sensing and intuition (the two Jungian perceiving functions) shapes distinctive readings of biblical narratives. More recently, closer attention has also been given to differentiation within these two perceiving functions of sensing and intuition with regard to their introverted and extraverted orientation. Against this background, the present study examines the distinctive reading of the Johannine narrative of (...) the wedding at Cana, a passage rich in materials to engage the perceiving functions, by two groups whose dominant or auxiliary functions were introverted sensing and introverted intuition. Contribution: Situated within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the sensing, intuition, feeling, thinking (SIFT) method is concerned with identifying the influence of the psychological type of the reader in shaping the interpretation of text. The foundations of the SIFT approach distinguish amongst the four functions of sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking. The present study builds on this foundation by introducing the nuance of the orientation in which the function is expressed, in this case focusing specifically on introverted sensing and introverted intuition. (shrink)

When experiencing personal distress, people usually expect their romantic partner to be supportive. However, when put in a situation to provide support, people may at times be struggling with issues of their own. This interdependent nature of dyadic coping interactions as well as potential spillover effects is mirrored in the state-of-the-art research method to behaviorally assess couple’s dyadic coping processes. This paradigm typically includes two videotaped 8-min dyadic coping conversations in which partners swap roles as sharer and support provider. Little (...) is known about how such dyadic coping interactions may feed back into one another, impacting the motivation and ability to be a responsive support provider. In three behavioral studies, we examined how sharers’ experiences may spill over to affect their own support provision in a subsequent dyadic coping interaction. We hypothesized that the extent to which sharers perceive their partner as responsive to their self-disclosure increases the quality of their own subsequent support provision, whereas sharers’ lingering negative affect reduces the quality of their own subsequent support provision. In line with our first hypothesis, perceived partner responsiveness predicted the provision of higher-quality support, though primarily as perceived by the partner. Sharers who perceived their partner to have been more responsive were somewhat more likely to subsequently engage in positive dyadic coping and were rated as more responsive by their partners. Negative dyadic coping behavior was unaffected. Evidence for our second hypothesis was mixed. While lingering negative affect did not affect positive dyadic coping behavior or perceived support, it did increase the chances of negative dyadic coping behavior. However, given the very low occurrences of negative affect and negative dyadic coping, these findings should be interpreted with caution. Taken together, these findings suggest that support interactions may feed back into one another, highlighting the complex and interdependent nature of dyadic coping. The strongest and most consistent findings concerned the spillover effect of perceived partner responsiveness on subsequent perceived support quality, speaking to the key role of believing that one’s partner is responsive to one’s needs in promoting healthy relationship functioning. (shrink)

In recent decades, many studies have examined gender-related differences in paid employment and the reconciliation of family and employment. Considering perceptions of time conflicts with regards to work at home and leisure activities, this article contributes to a more encompassing understanding of attitudes toward reconciliation problems. Special attention is given to the role of external child care services. The use of an original data set from 60 Swiss municipalities and hierarchical multiresponse regression models enable an analysis of the various aspects (...) of time conflicts simultaneously, and a consideration of how different policy contexts shape these attitudes. This study provides evidence that the communal provision of external child care is related to gender-specific perceptions of time conflicts. Most interestingly, men seem to be affected most strongly by communal policy conditions, whereby the provision of external child care is related to systematically higher levels of time conflicts. (shrink)

A prominent view holds that perception and memory are distinguished at least partly by their temporal orientation: Perception functions to represent the present, while memory functions to represent the past. Call this view perceptual presentism. This chapter critically examines perceptual presentism in light of contemporary perception science. I adduce evidence for three forms of perceptual sensitivity to the past: (i) shaping perception by past stimulus exposure, (ii) recruitment of mnemonic representations in perceptual processing, and (iii) perceptual representation of present objects (...) as possessing past properties. I argue that forms (i) and (ii) are consistent with perceptual presentism, while form (iii) poses a genuine threat to the view. While the empirical case for form (iii) remains inconclusive, I suggest that the most serious challenges to perceptual presentism derive from representations that integrate mnemonic and present-tensed elements in the performance of canonical perceptual functions, such as perceiving object continuity over time. (shrink)

Spiritual formation occurs in the routines of daily living. We are formed by choices made at the grocery store, as we reach for our medicine cabinet, as we consider whether to drive ten minutes or walk thirty. Such seemingly insignificant choices reflect assumptions held about who we are, and how we are supposed to live in the world. Spiritual formation, like notions of civic duty, develops from within a cultural context. Cultural environments give us largely unquestioned taken-for-granted assumptions about how (...) the world is and how we should live in it. This essay explores three of the many Western 21st century assumptions that affect spiritual formation. Knowing how we are seeing a thing helps us better interpret what we are seeing and how it influences decisions we make. The hope is that in knowing, we can make choices with more intention, understanding that our decisions shape and form our soul. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Parmenides: The Road to Reality A New Verse Translation RICHARD MCKIM introduction i. In the history of Presocratic Greek philosophy, the poetry of Parmenides seems to loom up suddenly out of the blue like a spectral mountain peak. Depicting a vision of ultimate reality that transcends the sensory world, his towering verse manifesto revolutionized both how philosophers thought and what they thought about, with profound repercussions that still reverberate (...) today. Parmenides has not, however, been well served by his English translators. He wrote poetry and yet is almost always translated into prose. His poem describes a divinely inspired revelation and yet is persistently translated as if it were an exercise in deductive logic. His Greek can be strange and difficult but is never unintelligible, which is more than can be said for the Anglo-gibberish his translators too often force him to speak. Too many subscribe to the misguided notion that a “literal” translation, as close as possible to word-forword, best represents the original. In fact, the painful English that results, so far from being faithful to the Greek, actually betrays it, creating the obscurities it purports to reflect. Parmenides ’ reputation for being hard to understand is largely his translators’ fault, not his. I’ve undertaken to make amends by translating his poem as a poem, in a loose English approximation of the same meter. My goal is to capture some of what gets lost in prose—to mirror, however dimly, the vital role of poetic form in shaping Parmenides’ vision. The demands of meter make literal translation impossible—not at all a bad thing— while paradoxically freeing the translator to be more faitharion 27.2 fall 2019 ful. I’ve tried to use this freedom to demonstrate that Parmenides is not the obscurantist would-be logician of so many other translations but a philosopher who thinks in poetry, and whose thought is as clear and accessible as it is astonishing. ii. parmenides was a citizen of Elea, a Greek colonial town on the west coast of the ankle of Italy’s boot. Born around 515 BCE, he was an older contemporary of Socrates, who was born in 470 (according to Plato, the two men met when Parmenides was sixty-five). Several other so-called Presocratics were active even later—Democritus for one was Socrates’ junior by a decade. But the label is still useful: while Socrates reoriented philosophy toward moral values and politics, the later Presocratics maintained their predecessors’ focus on physics and cosmology. Their project was to account for the physical workings of the universe—its origins, its elements, and the forces or laws that govern its behavior— without falling back on the gods of traditional myth. But Parmenides splits their story in two. Before him, Presocratics took the reality of the sensory world for granted— a world of multiplicity and variety, motion and change, becoming and passing away. Parmenides radically rejected this assumption. The sensory world, he declared, is an illusion. What really exists is what he calls “being,” whose true nature can be perceived only by the mind. And by clearly perceiving what being must be like, the mind perceives that it can’t be anything like the world as our senses perceive it. Being is the exact opposite of the sensory world in every respect. It is timeless, motionless, changeless and imperishable, an eternal and indivisible One. After Parmenides, the reality of the sensory world needed defending. Subsequent Presocratics had to explain, at a minimum, how it could circumvent his ban on multiplicity and motion. Most notably, he provoked Leucippus and Democri106 parmenides: the road to reality tus into developing their theory of atomism—that the universe consists entirely of atoms in a void. Atoms are microscopic Parmenidean beings insofar as they’re indivisible, indestructible and immutable, but they can be infinite in number, they can move, collide and combine, thanks to the roominess of the infinite void, defined as the absence of being. Never mind that Parmenides ruled out the existence of such an absence—by inspiring atomism, he became, in his otherworldly way, the unwitting godfather of modern physics. As for metaphysics, it may be debatable whether he arrived at the idea... (shrink)

We focus on the literature about UBI and the experiments developed all around the world to test it in order to address how UBI implementation could affect entrepreneurship. Building on these findings and various strands of entrepreneurial theory, we develop a theoretical framework to explain how the implementation of UBI would dramatically change the environment of entrepreneurial activity, shaping entrepreneurial action at three levels: (i) the desirability of becoming an entrepreneur; (ii) the perceived feasibility of becoming an entrepreneur; (iii) (...) the propensity to act. Consequently, UBI implementation would arguably facilitate the decision to become an entrepreneur. The contribution of the paper is threefold. It firstly provides a theoretical framework that opens new directions for further research on the relationship between UBI and entrepreneurship. Secondly, it offers new insights for policy makers by shedding light on potential effects of UBI implementation. Finally, it raises further questions that remains unsolved related to the role of non-pecuniary motivations and financial constraints. (shrink)

Ecological and social systems are complex and entwined. Complex social-ecological systems interact in a multitude of ways at many spatial scales across time. Their interactions can contribute both positive and negative consequences in terms of sustainability and the context in which they exist affecting future landscape change. Non-metropolitan landscapes are the major theatre of interactions where large-scale alteration occurs precipitated by local to global forces of economic, social, and environmental change. Such regional landscape effects are critical also to local natural (...) resource and social sustainability. The institutions contributing pressures and responses consequently shape future landscapes and in turn influence how social systems, resource users, governments, and policy makers perceive those landscapes and their future. Science and policy for "sustainable" futures need to be integrated at the applied "on-ground" level where products and effects of system interactions are fully included, even if unobserved. Government agencies and funding bodies often consider such research as "high-risk". This paper provides some examples of interdisciplinary research that has provided a level of holistic integration through close engagement with landholders and communities or through deliberately implementing integrative and innovative on-ground experimental models. In retrospect, such projects have to some degree integrated through spatial synthesis, policy analysis, and institutional arrangements that are relevant locally and acceptable in business, as well as at broader levels of government and geography. This has provided transferable outcomes that can contribute real options and adaptive capacity for suitable positive futures. (shrink)

Very few nineteenth-century works are unintelligible in terms of a dual structure. Consider a Chopin Ballade or Etude as an example. Such pieces, with their continuous chromatic mutation and rhapsodic form, make little sense in classical terms. Yet once one grasps that the process of chromatic alteration is their norm, not a mode of deviation, they become perfectly and immediately intelligible. Their autonomy is in no way compromised, nor do the pieces require extrinsic support from language; any competent listener will (...) recognize that their structural tensions derive from the contrast between a continual attack on the stability of their tonal centers and the continual resilience of those centers as sources of structure. Chopin, like Schumann after him, may go so far as to treat the major and minor modes of one key as interchangeable; but even that only emphasizes the simultaneity of tonal stability and tonal instability which informs their works and clarifies their structures. Similarly, one can find in Brahms a deliberate return to the "premise structure" of classical music, as filtered through Beethoven; and Brahms' music clearly attempts to mediate between this structure and the normative instability of nineteenth-century harmony. Subotnik, however, is pressed by her thesis to deny the autonomy and dual structure of Brahms' music. So she says of him that "Those of his instrumental works which achieved popularity allowed the majority of listeners to perceive nothing in them beyond the individuality of Brahms' themes, gestures, and instrumental colors; within his works the classical identity of subjectively designed gesture and objectively rigorous structure was no longer generally audible."1 Subotnik offers no evidence in support of this claim nor does she mention a single work of Brahms in connection with it. In view of such transparently "classical" structures as the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, the Passacaglia of the Fourth Symphony, the Rondo of the Violin Concerto, and dozens of others, the claim seems improbable at best. · 1. Rose Rosengard Subotnik, "The Cultural Message of Musical Semiology: Some Thoughts on Music, Language, and Criticism since the Enlightenment," Critical Inquiry 4 : 761. Lawrence Kramer has written various articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry and on the relation between poetry and music. An assistant professor of English at Fordham University, he has written a book on Wordsworth and Keats. (shrink)

A major theme in rap lyrics is that the only way to survive is to use your head, be aware, know whats going on around you. That simple idea packs a lot of background. The most obvious ideas about knowledge turn out if you look at them close up to be pretty questionable. For example: How do we get knowledge about the world? A natural and ancient answer to this question is that much if not all of our knowledge comes (...) from our senses. So for example the nose gives us knowledge of what things smell like, and if all goes well, also indicates whether the thing were smelling is healthy, tasty, or noxious. Likewise, the eyes tell us the color and shape of things, and thereby give us information about whether those things are useful, dangerous, and so on. Like everybody else, rappers know all this. Or do they? Maybe some rappers know that this isnt really so. (shrink)

Public speakers like politicians carefully craft their words to maximize the clarity, impact, and persuasiveness of their messages. However, these messages can be shaped by more than words. Gestures play an important role in how spoken arguments are perceived, conceptualized, and remembered by audiences. Studies of political speech have explored the ways spoken arguments are used to persuade audiences and cue applause. Studies of politicians’ gestures have explored the ways politicians illustrate different concepts with their hands, but have not (...) focused on gesture's potential as a tool of persuasion. Our paper combines these traditions to ask first, how politicians gesture when using spoken rhetorical devices aimed at persuading audiences, and second, whether these gestures influence the ways their arguments are perceived. Study 1 examined two rhetorical devices—contrasts and lists—used by three politicians during U.S. presidential debates and asked whether the gestures produced during contrasts and lists differ. Gestures produced during contrasts were more likely to involve changes in hand location, and gestures produced during lists were more likely to involve changes in trajectory. Study 2 used footage from the same debates in an experiment to ask whether gesture influenced the way people perceived the politicians’ arguments. When participants had access to gestural information, they perceived contrasted items as more different from one another and listed items as more similar to one another than they did when they only had access to speech. This was true even when participants had access to only gesture (in muted videos). We conclude that gesture is effective at communicating concepts of similarity and difference and that politicians (and likely other speakers) take advantage of gesture's persuasive potential. (shrink)

Some kinds are both socially constructed and perceptible, such as gender and race. However, this gives rise to a puzzle that has been largely neglected in social constructionist accounts: how does culture shape and bias what we perceive? I argue that perceptual learning is the best explanation of our ability to perceive social kinds, in comparison to accounts that require a person acquire beliefs, theories, or concepts of the kind. I show how relatively simple causal factors known to influence (...) perceptual learning in the laboratory can be extended to understand how culture shapes and biases perception. This account makes clear that the process of perceptual enculturation begins at a very early age, and does not in most cases require background beliefs on the part of the learner: the causal pathways by which perceptual learning occur suffice. It has significance for our understanding of how socially constructed kinds are culturally transmitted, as well as for how such kinds might be altered through interventions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:191 A PERSONAL ELEMENT IN MORALITY In his quest for the truth about moral life, Hume steers between the Scylla of Sentiment and the Charybdis of Reason. Sentiment operating alone, as a basis for morality, would threaten to engulf humanity with as many relativistic moral truths as there are individuals. Reason alone would produce objective, impersonal truths, but these would be powerless to move us. Hume's developed theory ingeniously (...) shows how Reason and Sentiment can operate together, to produce judgments based on feelings which are nonetheless impersonal and objective (T 581-584; E 227-229). Hume is acutely aware (as we shall see below) that there exists a considerable disparity between the impartiality required of us by moral theory and what in practice people think when it comes to moral matters. There would seem to be only two ways of accommodating this fact. One is to regard the disparity as a mark of the moral mediocrity of ordinary people; we are not as objective in our judgments as we could be. The other way is to treat the disparity as a token of failure and inadequacy in the theory; our best philosophical reasoning about morals fails to capture its subject matter without distortion. Our rational powers fall short, not only in Book I of the Treatise, where the task is to explain the foundation of our beliefs, but also in Book III, where Hume attempts to elucidate moral life. Certainly the first way would reduce the gap to some extent; some people, perhaps many, are moral truly low achievers. I want to show that Hume also suggests the second way; he is willing to deflate the 192 pretensions of philosophy, even when it comes to his own state-of-the-art efforts. I. The Objectivity of Certain Feeling-Based Judgments In the moral arena of life we make judgments which are based on feelings, on 'certain sentiments of pleasure or disgust' (T 581). "To have the sense of virtue, is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character" (T 471). Of course not just any feeling will do; it must be of a peculiar kind, which we can experience only under specific conditions. At first Hume characterizes the necessary condition as follows: 'Tis only when a character is considered in general, without reference to our particular interest, that it causes such a feeling or sentiment, as denominates it morally good or evil (T 472). Later on Hume provides a fuller account. Characteristically he elaborates in response to an anticipated objection. The objection is that our sympathetic feelings of pleasure and pain fluctuate wildly, depending mainly upon our distance, so to speak, from the character we assess, in space, time, and kind of relationship. Our moral judgments do not vary in this way; we give the same approbation to the same moral qualities in China as in England (T 581). So (it is concluded) our moral judgments do not rest upon sympathy. Hume's response is that, as a necessary condition for moral judgment and communication, we must "fix on some steady and general points of view" (T 581-2). He proceeds to employ an analogy with our situation regarding perception of (and communication about) the things which make up our common world. 193 Here a man obviously cannot consider things 'only as they appear from his peculiar point of view' (T 581). For instance I cannot describe my desk to a friend by reporting on how I perceive it at this moment — because at this moment the light is dim and I am standing across the room from the desk. If I were to do a painting of the scene before me, the desk would be black, its top a trapezoid shape on the canvas. What I say, however, is that I have a walnut desk of a medium brown color and it has a rectangular top. I say, in effect, how the desk would look under standard conditions of light and perspective. In the Enquiry version Hume spells out his analogy more fully. Again he addresses the case in which our sentiments, e.g., about two men, one distant and... (shrink)

Due to investments in interdisciplinary research endeavors, the number and variety of interdisciplinary research centers have grown exponentially during the past decades. While interdisciplinary research centers rely on varied organizational arrangements, we know little about the conditions and processes that mediate collaborative arrangements and interdisciplinary research outcomes. This study examines how different collaborative arrangements shape scholars’ experiences of interdisciplinary research and understandings of interdisciplinary knowledge culminations in the context of university-based research centers. We conducted three in-depth qualitative case studies (...) on different centers, which recruited researchers from natural sciences, medicine, and social sciences. We refer to them as the Biotech Center, the Environmental Center, and the Premature Birth Center. Our analysis of 53 interviews with interdisciplinary scholars across the three centers demonstrates that the scholars perceive particular features of the centers’ collaborative arrangements as meaningful for interdisciplinary collaboration. Specifically, the center’s mission, physical architecture, and leadership and task structure were seen as affecting scholars’ motivation, interaction, and inclusion in the centers, which then shaped the interdisciplinary knowledge culminations. At the Biotech Center, knowledge was translated towards concrete products, at the Environmental Center knowledge was pooled together from varied fields to create new problem framings, and at the Premature Birth Center, interdisciplinary collaboration was crafted through top-down knowledge brokerage. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Modern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900) by Scott W. Hahn and Jeffrey L. MorrowSteven C. SmithModern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900) by Scott W. Hahn and Jeffrey L. Morrow (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2020), 312 pp.Almost anyone who has suffered through a course in biblical studies at a secular (or, increasingly so, Christian) university, read a book, or heard a lecture from (...) one of its scholarly progenies is acquainted with the litany of hermeneutical absolutes. Among the factum historicum are the following certainties: the Enlightenment rescued the Bible from the Dark Ages; the Old Testament was shaped out of the mythical clay of Hellenism; Israel's priesthood was a lamentable development that hijacked an earlier, socially oriented love-of-neighbor religion, replacing it with its bloodthirsty, sacrificial cult; the Documentary Hypothesis is not merely a theory, but the scientific truth of how the Pentateuch emerged; one must separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith; Peter and Paul clashed over their dueling Christianities; and above all, historical criticism is the only reliable lens by which the Bible is to be studied.In Modern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900), Hahn and Morrow expose such positivisms as the outflow of Europe's secularized universities over these centuries. Not only did politically motivated institutions seek to diminish the theological truths of Scripture (and sadly, were often successful at it), but they eventually repurposed the Bible as "a work of historical fiction," such that the Sacred Page was "to be studied like other ancient myths and fairy tales; it is one fairy tale among many" (24). The authors present a thoroughly researched and meticulously detailed study of the period, and throughout the book amply demonstrate that the aforementioned tropes (and numerous others), no matter how often or how confidently recited, are merely one slant on "the story of biblical criticism" in the modern age.Taking their lead from the lead of Pope Benedict XVI, Hahn and Morrow provide a much-needed critique of historical biblical exegesis and its "appearance of quasi-scientific certainty."1 These salient words of the biblical-theologian Pope, articulated in a variety of contexts (e.g., Verbum Domini), provide the jumping-off point for this robust three-hundred-page voyage. And it is a journey through a divided and secularized Europe, with notable stops in England, France, and above all, Germany. This "divided" Europe, the authors explain, was not a result of the Protestant [End Page 985] Reformation, nor of the so-called "war of religions" that sprang from it—no. The divisions run much deeper still. Drawing upon Andrew Jones's important Before Church and State, Hahn and Morrow rightly lament the societal competition that developed within late medieval Christendom between church and state.2Building upon Jones's work, the authors rightly stress that there indeed existed "a unified medieval worldview wherein what we might think of as temporal authorities and spiritual authorities were united in a single purpose—the extension of the kingdom of God—and this was the background that unified Christendom" (3). As Jones point out, this earlier period of European history "was a world not of the religious and the secular, but of the New Testament and the Old, of virtue and vice, grace and law.... It was an integral vision which included all of societal reality."3 Sadly, the reality of "sacramental kingdoms," in which there lived a reciprocal respect and vision of unity between throne and alter, was torn asunder long before the 1700s, the time at which the present volume commences. Over time, this formerly unified European world gave way to the very complicated, deeply skeptical, and highly politicized world of nation-states. And biblical criticism (along with many other worthy and creative endeavors), became deeply mired in "statecraft."Here, it is worth mentioning that the book should be approached as the rightful heir to an earlier volume (which involved one of its authors, Hahn), Politicizing the Bible.4 While Modern Biblical Criticism may be intelligently read upon its own merits, the reader would do well to pick up the earlier... (shrink)

Due to the pressing environmental and social issues facing the global economic system, the role of organizations in promoting socially responsible behavior among employees warrants attention in research and practice. It has been suggested that the concept of socio-moral climate might be particularly useful for understanding how participative organizational structures and processes shape employees’ prosocial behaviors. While SMC has been shown to be positively related to employees’ prosocial behaviors within the work context, little is known about the potential spillover (...) effects of SMC. The present study aims to address this gap by investigating how and why SMC is related to employees’ socially responsible purchase intention. Drawing on the relational job design framework, we argue that employees’ perceptions of their social impact may explain why SMC is positively related to responsible purchase intentions. We collected data from 492 employees working in various industries at two measurement points with a time lag of 12 months. Hypotheses were tested using path analysis, in which we controlled for the temporal stability of the study variables. The results showed that SMC was positively related to perceived social impact and socially responsible purchase intention and that perceived social impact was positively related to socially responsible purchase intention. In addition, we found a significant indirect relationship between SMC and socially responsible purchase intention through perceived social impact. The findings provide initial support for the spillover of employees’ work-related experiences onto their responsible purchase intentions within the nonwork domain. This study contributes to the literature by extending the traditional focus of SMC research on the development of moral reasoning skills to suggest that perceived social impact is an important mechanism underlying the relationship between SMC and prosocial behaviors. In terms of practical implications, this study suggests that organizational interventions designed to increase SMC may enhance employees’ perceptions of their social impact. (shrink)

Hybrid techniques and perceptual technologies that merge the physical and the virtual dimensions of reality are generating a conceptual and experiential working space to reconfigure relationships between the perceiver and the perceived. We are entering a new perceptual paradigm where form, content, and context are merging, generating radical new types of spatial construction. Through the development of hybrid spatial technologies we can now hack the individual’s sense of space and relationship to the world (transforming the subject/object relationship). How can (...) we develop and use emerging spatial technologies to reconfigure spatial perception? Can we adapt and transform the dominant perceptive regimen, which is still based on the Cartesian split (subject-object separation)? We continue to see ourselves as separated from the environment and still need to digest the new changes brought about by hybrid techniques and methodologies that are shaping these new dimensions of space. How adaptable is our perception? The ability to alter our understanding of space provides us with a new form of spatial (self) control; sub-merging identities. What are the biological risks? What are the limits of stretching the perceptive range of the body? This article will examine these questions as an opportunity to humanise technology and create a ‘Human Centric Hybrid Literacy’. We will examine which technologies, techniques and navigation methodologies are being used by artists, technologists and designers to enable this new era of spatial augmentation and perceptual adaptation. Some examples include macroscopic navigation, 360 degree vision, new types of perspective (including third and fourth person perspectives) and reverse engineering. The role that hybrid space plays in the construction and transformation of perception through the practice of context engineering will be examined. Context engineering (Smith, 2013) is understood as an ‘intermediality’ practice for the engagement and augmentation of perception; giving us control over our senses, allowing us to adjust them in real time. Context engineering creates a new economy where we focus less on transforming content (as the primary activity), and more on how we can make our own perception the ‘content’. (shrink)

Philosophy at KUL seems to be omnipresent, for - similarly as at the medieval university - it fulfilled and still fulfils the propaedeutic functions. Students from all the faculties must gain philosophical culture much more thoroughly than at other Polish universities. Thereby we refer to the ancient ideal of philosophy as an alma mater of all other scientific disciplines, and express the fact that the university cares that the students of all the departments could better perceive the specific character of (...) their own discipline against a historical and methodological background. Now the most important thing is that at KUL one sees in philosophy an inspiring, ordering and integrating foundation of an outlook shaped by young people. They take up various studies and at the same time undertake the most beautiful effort to form themselves. In like manner, „unfortunately", the students of all the faculties from the very beginning had to and have to take an exam in the basic philosophical issues, including especially history of philosophy and ethics, and also the disciplines developing formal skills, like logic or methodology. (shrink)

The name of the third author was incorrect in the initial online publication. The original article has been corrected.

Response‐dispositional (RD) properties are standardly defined as those that involve an object's appearing thus or thus to some perceptually well‐equipped observer under specified epistemic conditions. The paradigm instance is that of colour or other such Lockean “secondary qualities”, as distinct from those—like shape and size—that pertain to the object itself, quite apart from anyone's perception. This idea has lately been thought to offer a promising alternative to the deadlocked dispute between hard‐line ‘metaphysical’ realists and subjectivists, projectivists, social constructivists, or (...) hard‐line anti‐realists. A chief source text is Plato's Euthyphro, where the issue is posed in ethical terms: do the gods infallibly approve virtuous acts on account of their divine moral omniscience or are virtuous acts just those the gods approve? Among the areas proposed as amenable to an RD approach are epistemology, ethics, political theory, and philosophy of mathematics. It is claimed that by making due allowance for the involvement of normalised or optimised human responses one can steer a course between the twin poles of an objectivist realism that places truth beyond our cognitive grasp and an epistemic conception that confines truth within the limits of humanly attainable proof, knowledge, or verification. Here I argue—on the contrary—that RD approaches can be shown to offer nothing more than a variant of the same old realist versus anti‐realist dilemma. That is, they work out either as a trivial (tautologous) claim that ‘truth’ simply equates with ‘best judgement’ in the ideal (quasi‐objective) limit or as the claim—advanced by anti‐realists like Michael Dummett—that we cannot form any adequate conception of objective (recognition‐transcendent) truths. After looking at this issue in various contexts of debate, I conclude that one useful (if pyrrhic) outcome is to demonstrate the non‐availability of any middle‐ground stance. We are left with the strictly unavoidable choice between a realist or objectivist approach and one that assimilates truth to the consensus of accredited best opinion. This latter amounts to a roundabout, elaborately qualified version of the anti‐realist case. (shrink)

A consideration of what are sometimes known as the reactive attitudes is useful to outline more positive conditions of ethical restoration. This paper focuses on the ways in which perceptions and experiences of guilt and shame are shaped by political conceptions of who belongs to the more guilty and shameful parties. I use the debate between Karl Jaspers and Arendt over guilt and responsibility, as well as Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Giorgio Agamben’s work on shame, to develop an account of the (...) political aspects of perceived and felt guilt and shame in people who are oppressed. I discuss how some philosophers, for example Cheshire Calhoun, have argued that the oppressed should accept the burdens of guilt and shame expected of them because of the social nature of our ethical experience; and then show how that view can be questioned. However, I argue that the view that members of oppressed groups should experience the guilt and shame expected of them by dominant groups ought to be challenged. In this paper, I demonstrate that the debate concerning shame and guilt has obscured emotions that are responses to the actions of others, such as humiliating treatment, thus leading to an inappropriate focus in philosophical discourses on the victims of wrongdoing rather than the perpetrators. This focus implicitly supports the dynamics of humiliation, as I will show. (shrink)