The convergence of the Neoplatonic/Neopythagorean approach with the Aristotelian organization of the sciences is one of the most interesting features that characterizes the two influential mathematical treatises on On Arithmetics and On Music by Severinus Boethius. Basing his reasoning on Nicomachus and Ptolemy, Boethius follows the philosophical tradition that had tried to reconcile Plato’s and Aristotle’s views. This attitude is examined in the present paper as regards Boethius’ response concerning the relation between numbers, ethics and aesthetics. His view emerges as (...) coming out of a rather complex construction, which assigns the ethical scope of mathematics in indicating to the human mind how to correct the ratios that realize the best relationship in movements of the soul and the body. More precisely, its ethical aim is to correct the specific form of movement of human beings, that is their actions, exemplified in the way in which mathematical ratios represent the forms of government and musical ratios evoke and heal psychophysical affections. More complex, on the other hand, is the relationship between mathematics and beauty. In clear antithesis to the position taken by Augustine on the beauty of the rhythmic patterns that better represent the beauty of unity, Boethius does not relate the mathematical ratios of the consonances to an esthetical judgment by making use of the category of beauty. For him, the physical world is totally immersed in changes and movements, and this cannot but impede things from expressing the stable unity, which is required for contemplating the beautiful. (shrink)

La dimensione teorica della musica occidentale, nella sua evoluzione storica, ha inevitabilmente fatto uso di concetti essenziali alla definizione di come il suono è musicalmente organizzato o organizzabile. Fra questi, risultano imprescindibili le nozioni di materia, forma e ordine, che implicano rispettivamente, nei pur diversi ambiti linguistici e contesti storico-filosofici di riferimento, ciò di cui è fatta la musica, ciò a cui la materia sonora tende, e come tale tensione è realizzata. Scopo di questo contributo è una valutazione d’insieme sulla (...) valenza filosofica e l’uso di tali concetti nel pensiero musicale occidentale altomedievale e in quello del Novecento, che nonostante la distanza cronologica presentano convergenze significative. Nel Medioevo, un lungo processo di elaborazione teorico-pratica permise la matematizzazione dello spazio musicale, attraverso l’adattamento di moduli melodici, trasmessi oralmente, alle strutture scalari desunte dalla teoria greco-boeziana. La forma e l’ordo musicali furono quindi riferiti ai criteri fisico-matematici atti a distinguere nella materia sonora, in sé disorganica e indefinita, ciò che è musicale da ciò che non lo è. Tale concezione sparisce con l’affermarsi del sistema tonale, ove il suono fisico è concepito come “pre-formato” e “pre-ordinato” nella gamma scalare e nei vincoli attrattivi “naturali” degli armonici. In conseguenza, i concetti di forma e ordine abbandonano il contesto acustico, andando a definire i criteri teorici della composizione artistica, in linea con l’idea filosofica del loro esprimere la coerenza logico-sintattica dell’“insieme organico” . Nell’ambito del pensiero musicale del Novecento, la crisi del sistema tonale e la messa a punto di nuove modalità e tecniche di produzione del suono hanno riorientato la valenza significante e l’uso di questi tre concetti, implicando il loro tornare a imporsi sugli elementi primari della fisica del suono, non solo l’altezza, ma soprattutto il timbro, il volume e la durata. Già Schönberg, nel 1911, affermava come “l’ordine che chiamiamo forma artistica” è “un necessario espediente” elaborato “a causa della nostra incapacità a comprendere l’indistinto e il non-ordinato”, che è la condizione propria della materia sonora. In its historical development, the Western theory of music has inevitably made use of specific concepts to define how the sound is musically organized or organizable. Among these notions, those of matter, form and order signify – in spite of the different linguistic areas and the various historical and philosophical backgrounds – that from which music is made, that to which it tends and how such tendency is realized. This paper aims to evaluate the philosophical implications and the use of these three concepts in the musical theories of the high Middle Ages and of the twentieth century, since, in spite of their chronological distance, they present significant similarities. A long process of theoretical and practical adjustments of the melodic structures of liturgical chants to the scale-systems of the Greek and Boethian theory contributed to developing what would become a familiar notion throughout the Middle Ages: that musical intervals can be expressed in mathematical terms. According to this view, the words forma and ordo signify the mathematical measures that are applied to the “matter” of sound, which is considered as inorganic and indefinite in itself. This conception gradually disappears when the tonal system begins to emerge, since this new modality of composition implies that the physical sound is “pre-formed” and “pre-ordered” within the musical scale, according to the “natural” links of the harmonics. Consequently, the concepts of “form” and “order” do not refer any more to the context of sound generation, but are now used to define the theoretical criteria of the artistic composition, so to accomplish the new philosophic idea of their expressing the logical-syntactic coherence of the “organic-whole” . In the early twentieth century, when the tonal system starts to be replaced by new methods of composition and when new modalities and techniques of sound production emerge, those three concepts are used, again, to express the basic elements of the physics of sound: not only its height, but also its timbre, volume, and duration. In 1911, Schönberg argued that the order that we call “artistic form” is a necessary device, elaborated “because of our incapacity to comprehend the indistinct and unordered thing”, that is the own condition of the matter of sound. (shrink)

Robert Grosseteste’s utilization of Greek and Arabic Aristotelian commentators represents an intriguing aspect of his approach to Aristotle. This study centres on Grosseteste’s quotations from John Philoponus’ Commentary on Posterior Analytics, which Grosseteste employed to complement his own commentary on this Aristotelian work. After revisiting the debated medieval circulation of segments of Philoponus in connection with James of Venice’s Aristotelian translations, the article delves into the Renaissance Latin versions of Philoponus’ commentary. This includes the previously overlooked translation by Maurizio Zamberti (...) (1516, unpublished) and the initial Venetian editions (1534, 1539, 1542). The Venetian prints were derived from an anonymous and unfamiliar Latin version that followed James of Venice’s translation and terminology. This distinctive feature, along with the marginalia referencing Lincolniensis (i.e., Grosseteste) in Philippus Theodosius’ revised text (Venice 1542), allows for a comparison of passages from Grosseteste and Philoponus to validate their correspondences. The final segment of this study investigates Grosseteste’s sparse and elusive references to Aristotle’s On the Soul in light of the possibility that they may stem from fragments of Philoponus’ commentary accompanying James of Venice’s translation of that Aristotelian work. (shrink)

The volume collects twenty-eight original essays by colleagues and friends of Michela Pereira offered on the occasion of her seventieth birthday. As a pioneer of the re-evaluation of fundamental areas of the Western philosophical and scientific tradition, starting with alchemy, Michela Pereira has dedicated important studies to Hildegard of Bingen, Roger Bacon, Ramon Llull, in addition to being one of the most authoritative interpreters of the feminist movement in the modern world. «Seeing in the shadow», the title of this volume, (...) recalls a suggestive image coined by Hildegard to establish a connection between the work of creation, human nature and prophetic knowledge, three contexts around which the interests of Michela Pereira turn. The essays of the volume interpret these topics in many thought-provoking ways. Covering a wide temporal arc, from late Antiquity to Early Modern Times, and ranging from alchemy and medicine to spirituality, prophecy and myth, from the body-soul relation to performative arts, such as theatre and music, they also include brief editions of unedited medieval texts and an updated bibliography of Michela Pereira’s publications. (shrink)

This article presents a study and a critical edition of the short anonymous treatise on the rainbow starting with the incipit Inter omnes impressiones. The text was known to Nicole Oresme who engages with it twice: in his Questiones in Meteorologica de prima lectura and in Le livre du ciel et du monde. This Tractatus de iride, previously unknown to scholars, is transmitted in three late thirteenth-century manuscripts. It uses Robert Grosseteste’s theories of the rainbow as caused by the refraction (...) of sunlight and of colour as light incorporated in aereal particles. However, contrary to Grosseteste, the Tractatus de iride adopts the idea of different degrees of incorporation of light, which is also found in the scientific writings by Adam of Exeter, a Franciscan scholar belonging to the same Oxonian circle as Grosseteste. Moreover, the Tractatus de iride develops original propositions in regard to the role of individual raindrops, the importance of the angle from which the rainbow is observed, and the idea of the spirituality of the colours in the medium, which were central also for Roger Bacon’s and Nicole Oresme’s own theories of the rainbow. (shrink)

In this volume specialists of medieval music and philosophy put the medieval 'musica' into the context of ideas and institutions in which it existed. The significance of 'musica' cannot be understood from a modern point of view since 'music' does not match the medieval 'musica'.

Few figures of the Middle Ages command the attention of so many modern disciplines as Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253). Theology, Philosophy, History, and Science are all areas which his life and thought continue to have significance and to inspire re-interpretation. Accompanied by a series of original commentaries, this new edition of Grosseteste's work, with English translation, draws together the perspectives of modern scientists and medieval specialists. Volume I of a six volume series, Knowing and Speaking presents two of the earliest (...) of Grosseteste's works, the treatises On the Liberal Arts and On the Generation of Sounds. These are accompanied by a significant Middle English treatise on the Seven Liberal Arts whose anonymous fifteenth-century author translated and excerpted passages from Grosseteste's treatises in a re-imagining of their structure and function.0Each work is treated separately within the volume, which is constructed in three parts. On the Liberal Arts sets Grosseteste's thoughts on the arts subjects and emphasises moral concerns about the purpose of learning. On the Generation of Sounds builds on the theories and statements of On the Liberal Arts in connection to the production of sound, elaborating the earlier position, relating the generation of sounds to human vocal and speech production. (shrink)

Reseñado por LAURA CESCO-FRARE University of Salerno [email protected].

Reseñado por JOSÉ MEIRINHOS Universidade do Porto [email protected].

Up to equivalence, a substitution in propositional logic is an endomorphism of its free algebra. On the dual space, this results in a continuous function, and whenever the space carries a natural measure one may ask about the stochastic properties of the action. In classical logic there is a strong dichotomy: while over finitely many propositional variables everything is trivial, the study of the continuous transformations of the Cantor space is the subject of an extensive literature, and is far from (...) being a completed task. In many-valued logic this dichotomy disappears: already in the finite-variable case many interesting phenomena occur, and the present paper aims at displaying some of these. (shrink)

We give a self-contained geometric proof of the completeness theorem for the infinite-valued sentential calculus of Łukasiewicz.

ABSTRACT We characterize, for every subvariety V of the variety of all MV- algebras, the free objects in V. We use our results to compute coproducts in V and to provide simple single-axiom axiomatizations of all many-valued logics extending the Lukasiewicz one.

In this article, I argue that gender is a primary cultural frame for coordinating behavior and organizing social relations. I describe the implications for understanding how gender shapes social behavior and organizational structures. By my analysis, gender typically acts as a background identity that biases, in gendered directions, the performance of behaviors undertaken in the name of organizational roles and identities. I develop an account of how the background effects of the gender frame on behavior vary by the context that (...) different organizational and institutional structures set but can also infuse gendered meanings into organizational practices. Next, I apply this account to two empirical illustrations to demonstrate that we cannot understand the shape that the structure of gender inequality and gender difference takes in particular institutional or societal contexts without taking into account the background effects of the gender frame on behavior in these contexts. (shrink)

Si bien la cirugía es parte fundamental de la medicina y de gran relevancia en la sociedad actual, no ha sido tomada en cuenta por la filosofía de la medicina. Debido a la naturaleza eminentemente práctica de la cirugía, una indagación sistemática nos permitirá, entre otros aspectos, dilucidar rasgos generales de las prácticas científicas en las que el conocimiento tácito es esencial. Por lo que, con la finalidad de integrar a la cirugía dentro del marco general de la filosofía de (...) la medicina, se propone un primer corpus tentativo de problemas en los que puede centrarse la filosofía de la cirugía, que incluyen: cuestiones epistémicas acerca del aprendizaje de las habilidades quirúrgicas y su transformación; la evidencia utilizada en cirugía, así como la forma en la que los cirujanos validan sus intervenciones frente a otras especialidades médicas y si está justificada epistémicamente la falta de ensayos clínicos aleatorizados; finalmente se examina la forma de aprobación de los dispositivos médicos que son ampliamente utilizados en cirugía. Esto, mostrará que la filosofía de la cirugía tiene el potencial para establecerse como un área autónoma dentro de la filosofía de la medicina. (shrink)

René Descartes is often thought to have exerted a pernicious influence on our views concerning the relationship of humans to the environment. The view that because animals are machines, “thoughtless brutes,” they have no moral standing, and we thus have a right to use them to further our own interests, is attributed to him. A celebrated passage from the Discourse on Method adds fuel to the view that he subscribes to the “dominion” theory. I argue that this picture is misleading (...) and unfair. Descartes does not hold the dominion theory, and there is evidence that he accords animals (and plants) moral standing. Most importantly, Descartes holds that it is a human good to subordinate one’s interests to those of the larger universe. He can, in fact, be seen as a forerunner of modern ecocentrism. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology provides terms for and supports annotation of species-specific protein complexes in an ontology framework that relates them both to their components and to species-independent families of complexes. Comprehensive curation of experimentally known forms and annotations thereof is expected to expose discrepancies, differences, and gaps in our knowledge. We have annotated the early events of innate immune signaling mediated by Toll-Like Receptor 3 and 4 complexes in human, mouse, and chicken. The resulting ontology and annotation data set has (...) allowed us to identify species-specific gaps in experimental data and possible functional differences between species, and to employ inferred structural and functional relationships to suggest plausible resolutions of these discrepancies and gaps. (shrink)

1. Properties of mirror neurons in monkeys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (...) . . . 000 1.1. Action types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 1.2. Context effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 2. Is there a human ‘mirror neuron system’? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 2.1. Monkeys versus humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 2.2. Action understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 3. The development of mirroring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 3.1. Imitation in newborns? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 3.2. Effects of experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 3.3. Effects of sensorimotor experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. (shrink)

Background The ambulance service provides emergency care to meet the patient’s medical and nursing needs. Based on professional nursing values, this should be done within a caring relationship with a holistic approach as the opposite would risk suffering related to disengagement from the patient’s emotional and existential needs. However, knowledge is sparse on how ambulance personnel can meet caring needs and avoid suffering, particularly in conjunction with urgent and emergency situations. Aim The aim of the study was to explore ambulance (...) nurses’ experiences of relationships with patients in urgent and emergency situations. Methods Data collection was performed using individual open-ended interviews with six ambulance nurses. The data were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Results Relationships with patients during urgent and emergency assignments emerged as three themes: “ Ambiguous silence,” “ Professional competence” and “ Challenging inadequacy” comprising eight sub-themes in total. The result shows that the ambulance nurses found it difficult to prioritize between medical care and establishing a caring relationship with the patient. However, sometimes a wordless relationship was perceived sufficient and considered a first step towards a verbal relationship. Conclusions Ambulance nurses experience that a caring relationship cannot and does not need to be prioritized in the acute stage. This uncovers a dichotomy approach to medical care versus caring relationships that exclude a holistic approach. Thus, patients’ emotional, existential and physical needs are not considered as equally important. Clinical relevance: It is important to stimulate reflection on core ethical nursing values, in training and simulation exercises among clinically active ambulance nurses. (shrink)

Cognitive gadgets are distinctively human cognitive mechanisms – such as imitation, mind reading, and language – that have been shaped by cultural rather than genetic evolution. New gadgets emerge, not by genetic mutation, but by innovations in cognitive development; they are specialised cognitive mechanisms built by general cognitive mechanisms using information from the sociocultural environment. Innovations are passed on to subsequent generations, not by DNA replication, but through social learning: People with new cognitive mechanisms pass them on to others through (...) social interaction. Some of the new mechanisms, like literacy, have spread through human populations, while others have died out, because the holders had more students, not just more babies. The cognitive gadgets hypothesis is developed through four case studies, drawing on evidence from comparative and developmental psychology, experimental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. The framework employed – cultural evolutionary psychology, a descendant of evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory – addresses parallel issues across the cognitive and behavioural sciences. In common with evolutionary developmental biology and the extended evolutionary synthesis, cultural evolutionary psychology underlines the importance of developmental processes and environmental factors in the emergence of human cognition. In common with computational approaches, it emphasises the power of general-purpose mechanisms of learning. Cultural evolutionary psychology, however, also challenges use of the behavioural gambit in economics and behavioural ecology, and rejects the view that human minds are composed of “innate modules” or “cognitive instincts.”. (shrink)

Background: Previous studies have investigated the effects of dance interventions on Parkinson’s motor and non-motor symptoms in an effort to develop an integrated view of dance as a therapeutic intervention. This within-subject study questions whether dance can be simply considered a form of exercise by comparing a Dance for Parkinson’s class with a matched-intensity exercise session lacking dance elements like music, metaphorical language, and social reality of art-partaking.Methods: In this repeated-measure design, 7 adults with Parkinson’s were tested four times; before (...) and after a Dance for Parkinson’s class, as well as before and after a matched-intensity exercise session. Physiological measures included heart rate and electrodermal activity. Self-reported affect and body self-efficacy were collected. Gait symmetry and dual task cost were analyzed using the 6 min walking test and Timed-Up-and-Go test, respectively.Results: Average heart rate was the same for both conditions, while electrodermal activity was higher during Dance for Parkinson’s. Significant differences were found in body self-efficacy, beauty subscale, symmetry of gait, and dual task performance.Conclusion: Dance, compared to an exercise intervention of matched intensity, yields different outcomes through the means of intrinsic artistic elements, which may influence affective responses, the experience of beauty, self-efficacy, and gait performance. (shrink)

RESUMO Neste artigo, analiso um conjunto de seis cartões comerciais pertencentes a uma duradoura campanha de marketing da Liebig Extract of Meat Co. A análise crítica dos textos promocionais produzidos na virada do século XX oferece insights significativos sobre os mecanismos discursivos que contribuíram para a hegemonização do capitalismo burguês. Diferentemente de outras formas de publicidade, os cartões comerciais não são rapidamente descartados e esquecidos; pelo contrário, eles podem se distanciar dos produtos anunciados para se tornar parte dos discursos populares (...) de instrução em massa. Como produtos e produtores de ideologias capitalistas, os anúncios são um local privilegiado de inscrição do capitalismo e, portanto, se prestam a uma análise crítica. Minha análise mostra como os textos selecionados se baseiam e texturizam os discursos do progresso, impregnados como crenças colonialistas e desencadeando uma cadeia de ações pela qual, mesmo antes de realmente obterem os cartões, são promulgadas ações e crenças capitalistas. ABSTRACT In this paper, I analyze a set of six trading cards belonging to Liebig’s Extract of Meat Co. long-standing marketing campaign. The critical analysis of promotional texts produced at the turn of the 20th century offer meaningful insights on the discursive mechanisms that contributed to the hegemonization of bourgeois capitalism. Unlike other forms of advertising, trading cards are not rapidly discarded and forgotten; on the contrary, they can detach themselves from the advertised products to become part of popular discourses of mass instruction. As both products and producers of capitalist ideologies, ads are a privileged site of inscription of capitalism, and thus lend themselves to a critical analysis. My analysis shows how the selected texts draws on and textures the discourses of progress, inculcated as colonialist beliefs and triggering an actional chain whereby, even before they actually obtained the cards, capitalist actions and beliefs are enacted. (shrink)

In classical propositional logic, a theory T is prime iff it is complete. In Łukasiewicz infinite-valued logic the two notions split, completeness being stronger than primeness. Using toric desingularization algorithms and the fine structure of prime ideal spaces of free ℓ -groups, in this paper we shall characterize prime theories in infinite-valued logic. We will show that recursively enumerable prime theories over a finite number of variables are decidable, and we will exhibit an example of an undecidable r.e. prime theory (...) over countably many variables. (shrink)

Wolfgang Pauli referred to him as 'my discovery,' Robert Oppenheimer described him as 'one of the most gifted theorists' and Niels Bohr found him enormously stimulating. Who was the man in question, Gunnar Källén (1926-1968)? His appearance in the physics sky was like a shooting star. His contributions to the scientific debate caused excitement among young and old. Similar to his friend and mentor, Wolfgang Pauli, he demanded honesty and rigor in physics - a distinct dividing line between fact and (...) speculation. In his obituary, Arthur S. Wightman would write: 'Gunnar Källén was a proud continuer of the tradition in quantum field theory established by Wolfgang Pauli. His papers on quantum electrodynamics in the period 1950-1954 carried the non-perturbative approach to quantum electrodynamics forward to a point beyond which very little essential progress has been made up to the present day. At the time I was trying to puzzle out the grammar of the language of quantum field theory, and here was Källén already writing poetry in the language!'. In addition to being a remarkable scientist, Källén had a very interesting personality, well worth exploring. In her book, physicist Cecilia Jarlskog traces both the personal and scientific trajectory of this unsung hero of the early days of high-energy physics and quantum field theory. A number of invited contributions by members of the Källén family and distinguished researchers from the field, all of them personally acquainted with Källén, combine to form an authentic portrait of the researcher and the man. Last but not least, the reader will become acquainted with some aspects of the history of particle physics in those days, as related by Källén and those who corresponded with him. A commented selection of his most important and not easily accessible papers is included as an added bonus for specialists. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology (PRO) is designed as a formal and principled Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry ontology for proteins. The components of PRO extend from a classification of proteins on the basis of evolutionary relationships at the homeomorphic level to the representation of the multiple protein forms of a gene, including those resulting from alternative splicing, cleavage and/or posttranslational modifications. Focusing specifically on the TGF-beta signaling proteins, we describe the building, curation, usage and dissemination of PRO. PRO provides a framework (...) for the formal representation of protein classes and protein forms in the OBO Foundry. It is designed to enable data retrieval and integration and machine reasoning at the molecular level of proteins, thereby facilitating cross-species comparisons, pathway analysis, disease modeling and the generation of new hypotheses. (shrink)

What is the relationship between imitation and culture? This article charts how definitions of imitation have changed in the last century, distinguishes three senses of “culture” used by contemporary evolutionists (Culture1–Culture3), and summarises current disagreement about the relationship between imitation and culture. The disagreement arises from ambiguities in the distinction between imitation and emulation, and confusion between two explanatory projects—the anthropocentric project and the cultural selection project. I argue that imitation gives cultural evolution an inheritance mechanism for communicative and gestural (...) skills (but not technological skills), and cultural selection yields the cognitive mechanisms that make imitation possible. (shrink)

It seems trivial to identify sound sequences as music or speech, particularly when the sequences come from different sound sources, such as an orchestra and a human voice. Can we also easily distinguish these categories when the sequence comes from the same sound source? On the basis of which acoustic features? We investigated these questions by examining listeners’ classification of sound sequences performed by an instrument intertwining both speech and music: the dùndún talking drum. The dùndún is commonly used in (...) south-west Nigeria as a musical instrument but is also perfectly fit for linguistic usage in what has been described as speech surrogates in Africa. One hundred seven participants from diverse geographical locations (15 different mother tongues represented) took part in an online experiment. Fifty-one participants reported being familiar with the dùndún talking drum, 55% of those being speakers of Yorùbá. During the experiment, participants listened to 30 dùndún samples of about 7s long, performed either as music or Yorùbá speech surrogate (n= 15 each) by a professional musician, and were asked to classify each sample as music or speech-like. The classification task revealed the ability of the listeners to identify the samples as intended by the performer, particularly when they were familiar with the dùndún, though even unfamiliar participants performed above chance. A logistic regression predicting participants’ classification of the samples from several acoustic features confirmed the perceptual relevance of intensity, pitch, timbre, and timing measures and their interaction with listener familiarity. In all, this study provides empirical evidence supporting the discriminating role of acoustic features and the modulatory role of familiarity in teasing apart speech and music. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is a cutting-edge area of research that holds the promise of unprecedented health benefits. However, in tandem with these large prospective benefits, synthetic biology projects entail a risk of catastrophic consequences whose severity may exceed that of most ordinary human undertakings. This is due to the peculiar nature of synthetic biology as a ‘threshold technology’ which opens doors to opportunities and applications that are essentially unpredictable. Fears about these potentially unstoppable consequences have led to declarations from civil society (...) groups calling for the use of a precautionary principle to regulate the field. Moreover, the principle is prevalent in law and international agreements. Despite widespread political recognition of a need for caution, the precautionary principle has been extensively criticized as a guide for regulatory policy. We examine a central objection to the principle: that its application entails crippling inaction and incoherence, since whatever action one takes there is always a chance that some highly improbable cataclysm will occur. In response to this difficulty, which we call the ‘precautionary paradox,’ we outline a deliberative means for arriving at threshold of probability below which potential dangers can be disregarded. In addition, we describe a Bayesian mechanism with which to assign probabilities to harmful outcomes. We argue that these steps resolve the paradox. The rehabilitated PP can thus provide a viable policy option to confront the uncharted waters of synthetic biology research. (shrink)

Starting with Houtkoop and Mazeland’s study of discourse units, and touching upon recent studies aimed at detailing unit projection in interaction, this article argues that the drive toward abstract and discrete models for units and unit projection is potentially misleading. While it has been established that to engage in talk-in-interaction, as it unfolds in real time, participants rely on projectable units, research aimed at defining units unintentionally backgrounds the contingency inherent in interaction. A central function of language for collaborative action (...) is the management of simultaneously unfolding facets of action, sound production, gesture, and grammar – produced by multiple participants. This article draws upon classic and current data analyses foregrounding linguistic/interactional practices designed to manage local contingencies. It is argued that attention to participants’ regular methods for managing and exploiting contingencies be incorporated from the outset in our descriptions of language and the nature of unit building in interaction. (shrink)