A review of Andrew Slade‘s Lyotard, Beckett, Duras, and the Postmodern Sublime (New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2007, 136 pp. ISBN 0820478628).

In this short paper, I examine the notion of everyday heritage as developed by Lisa Giombini in her article Everyday Heritage and Place-Making. While I argue that the article’s main contribution is to combine the literature on place-making with current debates in everyday aesthetics, I also highlight some of the issues that I think should be addressed to further refine the notion of ‘everyday heritage’ and make it more resistant to criticism.

In this short paper, I examine the notion of everyday heritage as developed by Lisa Giombini in her article Everyday Heritage and Place-Making. While I argue that the article’s main contribution is to combine the literature on place-making with current debates in everyday aesthetics, I also highlight some of the issues that I think should be addressed to further refine the notion of ‘everyday heritage’ and make it more resistant to criticism.

The contribution have several aims. In addition to the discussion that follows variability of the concept of landscape and its relationship to the category of environment the contibution focuses on the specific problem of the current aesthetics: transformation of aesthetic reflection of the city as a whole, which is realized by the contemporary aesthetics and philosophy through the Kantian aesthetics in Critique of Aesthetics Judgement. Elaboration of opinions of Marie Rubene and Miroslav Marcelli leads us not only to summarize the (...) conclusions of recent theses, but further to reflect the transformation of city to a country, specific environment free from original effectiveness, where "human returns to natural and becomes a sort of huge subject, which is fluid in its inside..."). Reflection is primarily guided by the category of sublime as an explanatory framework. (shrink)

Title of the paper is the allusion to an article by Richard Shusterman. In the text, I trying to explore in the similar strategy the current state of aesthetic experience. Starting from The End of Aesthetic Experience I follow the notion of aesthetic experience which "will be strengthened and preserved the more it is experienced; it will be more experienced the more we are directed to such experience; and one good way of directing us to such experience is fuller recognition (...) of its importance and richness through greater attention to the concept of aesthetic experience". Is the somaesthetics became the answer to the loss of interest in aesthetic experience? The answer lies partly in examining the relationship between aesthetic experience and aesthetics of environment and everyday aesthetics, which further analysis of the notion pointed Shusterman himself. Result of research leads us to renewed role of aesthetic experience in contemporary aesthetics beyond the aesthetics of art. (shrink)

This paper pursues transformation of Kant's definition of the category sublime in post-Kantian aesthetic reflexion. Finding this line of thinking allows not only present relevant approaches to the whole history of the aesthetic category, but also to show the platform for new thinking not only in aesthetic discourse, but wherever the sublime enter today at the core of interest.

To elaborate the intention of previous contribution, this paper opens again the problem of reception of Kant's definition of the category sublime. Variations which perform Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Adorno represent some innovative approaches. Bridging the history of this aesthetic category in the 20th century in theirs thinking, represents functionality of the sublime, which we observe through the transformations in artistic and aesthetic discourse and which encourages us to an contemporary revaluation of this concept.

In this paper, I address the relationship between Lyotard’s account of the sublime in art and Kant’s own attempt at considering sublime art as a possible counterpart to fine art. Lyotard recognises the roots of modern art - and avant-garde particularly -in Kant’s account of the sublime. This is interesting, forit is generally assumed that Kant didn’t devise the notion to be applied to art as such. In the lack of any explicit consideration of artistic sublime in Kant’s text, what (...) could be the background for Lyotard’s analysis? My contention is that this reading of the Third Critique is only partially correct. Unlike what is commonly believed, much room is left in Kant’s text for consideration of the sublime in art. Kant himself envisages the possibility that the sublime be found in art and considers artistic representations of the sublime possible for art-forms. How can twentieth-century art be sublime in a Kantian way? And what role does Kant’s notion of aesthetic ideas play in Lyotard’s own account? (shrink)

Globalization trends of culture, the idea of multiculturalism, bringing and acceptance of foreign elements into the culture, open coquetry of the "West" with culture and arts of the "East", eclecticism, but also paradoxical what happened to be the fate of modern art after postmodern deconstruction of the meaning and the reduction of his function to ability to serve in variable updating roles towards individual and society, is 46 years after the release of books Asphyxiating Culture repeatedly bringing me to read (...) and review it. The topic, therefore, is to examine the validity of Dubuffet appeal, its insertion into the broader context of the forms of "dehumanization" of art, but also review of the reference just in the context of relations culture - art. New search respectively the determination of periphery in arts and culture should besides unfinished theme energizing academic debate of last years, if not decades, thus defining theme of Art, can and should briefly look at the issue of the institutionalization of art; the relationship of artistic production and its cultural context, which is not transferable; "foucaultian" power of discourse established by culture; extremely interesting affinity of art and advertising; aestheticism of culture; enforcement of discontinuity issues and pluralism as in the thought also within the artistic creation, namely for topics that Dubuffet advises and argumentations plays. Nearly half a century after his call and its final words -"therefore, our artistic production, which is not subjected to a thorough critique of culture and effectively not reveals the futility and absurdity, is no refuge for us" - we need to talk about our accountability. Dubuffet today. (shrink)

Applying Aesthetics to Everyday Life surveys current debates in the field of everyday aesthetics, examining its history, methodology and intersections with cognate research areas. Lisa Giombini and Adrián Kvokacka bring together an international team of renowned scholars who are shaping the present and future of the discipline. They demonstrate how the historical origins of everyday aesthetics emerges across the history of Western aesthetic thought, from Renaissance thinkers to the modern German philosophers Baumgarten, Kant and Heidegger. Chapters shed light on the (...) field's methodological underpinnings, tracing its theoretical foundations back to epistemology and ethics and assess the potential of everyday aesthetics as a theoretical tool. They reveal its interdisciplinary nature and how it assists various fields of inquiry, including environmental and urban aesthetics, conservation ethics and the philosophy of art. Through fresh explorations of its origins, background and contemporary developments, this collection advances a new definition of everyday aesthetics and provides a cutting edge reflection on the world we inhabit today. (shrink)

In this short paper, I examine the notion of everyday heritage as developed by Lisa Giombini in her article Everyday Heritage and Place-Making. While I argue that the article’s main contribution is to combine the literature on place-making with current debates in everyday aesthetics, I also highlight some of the issues that I think should be addressed to further refine the notion of ‘everyday heritage’ and make it more resistant to criticism.

Book review: Lisa Giombini, Adrián Kvokačka (eds.), Everydayness. Contemporary Aesthetic Approaches. Roma Tre-Press, 2022, 287 s.

Recent epistemology has reflected a growing interest in issues about the value of knowledge and the values informing epistemic appraisal. Is knowledge more valuable that merely true belief or even justified true belief? Is truth the central value informing epistemic appraisal or do other values enter the picture? Epistemic Value is a collection of previously unpublished articles on such issues by leading philosophers in the field. It will stimulate discussion of the nature of knowledge and of directions that might be (...) taken by the theory of knowledge. The contributors are Jason Baehr, Michael Brady, Berit Brogaard, Michael DePaul, Pascal Engel, Catherine Elgin, Alvin Goldman, John Greco, Stephen Grimm, Ward Jones, Martin Kusch, Jonathan Kvanvig, Michael Lynch, Erik Olsson, Wayne Riggs and Matthew Weiner. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, by combining eliminativist and fictionalist approaches toward the sub-personal representational posits of predictive processing, we arrive at an empirically robust and yet metaphysically innocuous cognitive scientific framework. I begin the paper by providing a non-representational account of the five key posits of predictive processing. Then, I motivate a fictionalist approach toward the remaining indispensable representational posits of predictive processing, and explain how representation can play an epistemologically indispensable role within predictive processing explanations without thereby (...) requiring that representation metaphysically exists. Finally, I outline four consequences of accepting this approach and explain why they are beneficial: we arrive at a victory for metaphysical eliminativism in the ‘representation wars’; my account fits with extant empirical practice; my account provides guidance for future research; and, my account provides the beginnings of a response to Mark Sprevak’s IBE problem for fictionalist approaches toward sub-personal representation. (shrink)

In a recent reply to our article, “What is Interpretability?,” Prasetya argues against our position that artificial neural networks are explainable. It is claimed that our indefeasibility thesis—that adding complexity to an explanation of a phenomenon does not make the phenomenon any less explainable—is false. More precisely, Prasetya argues that unificationist explanations are defeasible to increasing complexity, and thus, we may not be able to provide such explanations of highly complex AI models. The reply highlights an important lacuna in our (...) original paper, the omission of the unificationist account of explanation, and affords us the opportunity to respond. Here, we argue that artificial neural networks are explainable in a way that should satisfy unificationists and that interpretability methods present ways in which ML theories can achieve unification. (shrink)

One of the insights of dynamic semantics in its various guises (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982, Groenendijk & Stokhof 1991, Kamp & Reyle 1993 among many others) is that interpretation is sensitive to left-to-right order. Is order sensitivity, particularly the default left-to-right order of evaluation, a property of particular meanings of certain lexical items (e.g., dynamically interpreted conjunction) or is it a more general feature of meaning composition? If it is a more general feature of meaning composition, is it a processing (...) ‘preference’ or should it be captured as a ‘harder’ constraint on the type of meanings and operations over meanings involved in natural language interpretation? This squib draws attention to the symmetrical A-too B-too construction (found in a variety of languages, e.g., Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, Russian) in this context. It argues that any semantic analysis of its main ‘symmetrical-meaning’ characteristic should also allow for subtler interactions between this construction and items that are clearly sensitive to evaluation-order effects, e.g., anaphoric adjectives like next and other. We suggest that the notion of postsupposition embedded in a broader dynamic framework is better able to account for both the symmetric nature of this construction, its non-symmetric variant A-too, and its interaction with items that are evaluation-order sensitive. We briefly compare this proposal with a couple of possible alternative accounts. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that split-brain syndrome is best understood within an extended mind framework and, therefore, that its very existence provides support for an externalist account of conscious perception. I begin by outlining the experimental aberration model of split-brain syndrome and explain both: why this model provides the best account of split-brain syndrome; and, why it is commonly rejected. Then, I summarise Susan Hurley’s argument that split-brain subjects could unify their conscious perceptual field by using external factors to (...) stand-in for the missing corpus callosum. I next provide an argument that split-brain subjects do unify their perceptual fields via external factors. Finally, I explain why my account provides one with an experimental aberration model which avoids the problems typically levelled at such views, and highlight some empirical predictions made by the account. The nature of split-brain syndrome has long been considered mysterious by proponents of internalist accounts of consciousness. However, in this paper I argue that externalist theories can provide a straightforward explanation of the condition. I therefore conclude that the ability of externalist accounts to explain split-brain syndrome gives us strong reason to prefer them over internalist rivals. (shrink)

Combining sociological evidence with the analytical tools of philosophy, Ethics, Money and Sport articulates and explores the main concerns about the way money has changed our experience of sports. Clearly written and illustrated by examples from major sports around the world, Ethics, Money and Sport enables students, researchers and policymakers - as well as anyone with an interest in the future of sport - to engage with this crucial debate.

The paper proposes an account of the contrast (noticed in Karttunen 1976) between the interpretations of the following two discourses: Harvey courts a girl at every convention. {She is very pretty. vs. She always comes to the banquet with him.}. The initial sentence is ambiguous between two quantifier scopings, but the first discourse as a whole allows only for the wide-scope indefinite reading, while the second allows for both. This cross-sentential interaction between quantifier scope and anaphora is captured by means (...) of a new dynamic system couched in classical type logic, which extends Compositional DRT (Muskens 1996) with plural information states (modeled, following van den Berg 1996, as sets of variable assignments). Given the underlying type logic, compositionality at sub-clausal level follows automatically and standard techniques from Montague semantics become available. The paper also shows that modal subordination (A wolf might come in. It would eat Harvey first) can be analyzed in a parallel way, i.e. the system captures the anaphoric and quantificational parallels between the individual and modal domains argued for in Stone (1999) (among others). In the process, we see that modal / individual-level quantifiers enter anaphoric connections as a matter of course, usually functioning simultaneously as both indefinites and pronouns. (shrink)

Thought experiments have played a pivotal role in many debates within ethics—and in particular within applied ethics—over the past 30 years. Nonetheless, despite their having become a commonly used philosophical tool, there is something odd about the extensive reliance upon thought experiments in areas of philosophy, such as applied ethics, that are so obviously oriented towards practical life. Herein I provide a moderate defence of their use in applied philosophy against those three objections. I do not defend all possible uses (...) of thought experiments but suggest that we should distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses. Their legitimate uses are determined not so much by the modal content of any actual thought experiment itself, but by the extent to which the argument in which it is nested follows basic tenets of informal logic and respects the fundamental contingency of applied ethical problems. In pursuing these ideas, I do not so much provide a set of criteria for their legitimate use, but more modestly present two significant ways in which their use can go awry. (shrink)

This essay was written for a special issue of Philosophical Topics on the links between Kant and analytic philosophy. It explores these links through consideration of: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus; the logical positivism endorsed by Ayer; and the (very different) variation on that theme endorsed by Quine. It is argued that in all three cases we see analytic philosophers trying to attain and express a general philosophical understanding of why the bounds of sense should be drawn where they should—but thereby confronting the (...) aporia, which Kant too confronted, that it is impossible to do this without transgressing those very bounds. It is suggested in conclusion that the problem is in trying to attain and express such an understanding; in other words, that such an understanding is attainable, but not expressible. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the parameters that come into play when assessing the truth conditions of say reports and contrast them with belief attributions. We argue that these conditions are sensitive in intricate ways to the connection between the interpretation of the complement of say and the properties of the reported speech act. There are three general areas this exercise is relevant to, besides the immediate issue of understanding the meaning of say: (i) the discussion shows the need to (...) go beyond the simplest view of propositional attitudes, which treats them as restricted quantifiers over worlds; (ii) the complex connections that must exist between the say report and its source speech act show that one has to be able to differentiate between various layers of meaning for the antecedent sentences; (iii) finally, this paper is a small step towards a typology of propositional attitudes that allows us to uncover the complex web of relationships that grammatical mood is sensitive to. (shrink)

Some logical properties of modal languages in which actuality is expressible are investigated. It is argued that, if a sentence like 'Actually, Quine is a distinguished philosopher' is understood as a special case of world-indexed sentences (the index being the actual world), then actuality can be expressed only under strong modal assumptions. Some rival rigid and indexical approaches to actuality are discussed.

This article outlines procedures for the feedback of individual research data to participants. This feedback framework was developed in the context of a personalized medicine research project in Canada. Researchers in this domain have an ethical obligation to return individual research results and/or material incidental findings that are clinically significant, valid and actionable to participants. Communication of individual research data must proceed in an ethical and efficient manner. Feedback involves three procedural steps: assessing the health relevance of a finding, re-identifying (...) the affected participant, and communicating the finding. Re-identification requires researchers to break the code in place to protect participant identities. Coding systems replace personal identifiers with a numerical code. Double coding systems provide added privacy protection by separating research data from personal identifying data with a third "linkage" database. A trusted and independent intermediary, the "keyholder", controls access to this linkage database. (shrink)

Providing a compositional interpretation procedure for discourses in which descriptions of complex dependencies between interrelated objects are incrementally built is a key challenge for formal theories of natural language interpretation. This paper examines several quantificational phenomena and argues that to account for these phenomena, we need richly structured contexts of interpretation that are passed on between different parts of the same sentence and also across sentential boundaries. The main contribution of the paper is showing how we can add structure to (...) contexts in an incremental way, starting with the basic notion of context in classical first-order logic, i.e., interpretation contexts formalized as single total variable assignments. (shrink)

Altered state theories of hypnosis posit that a qualitatively distinct state of mental processing, which emerges in those with high hypnotic susceptibility following a hypnotic induction, enables the generation of anomalous experiences in response to specific hypnotic suggestions. If so then such a state should be observable as a discrete pattern of changes to functional connectivity (shared information) between brain regions following a hypnotic induction in high but not low hypnotically susceptible participants. Twenty-eight channel EEG was recorded from 12 high (...) susceptible (highs) and 11 low susceptible (lows) participants with their eyes closed prior to and following a standard hypnotic induction. The EEG was used to provide a measure of functional connectivity using both coherence (COH) and the imaginary component of coherence (iCOH), which is insensitive to the effects of volume conduction. COH and iCOH were calculated between all electrode pairs for the frequency bands: delta (0.1–3.9Hz), theta (4–7.9Hz) alpha (8–12.9Hz), beta1 (13–19.9Hz), beta2 (20–29.9Hz) and gamma (30–45Hz). The results showed that there was an increase in theta iCOH from the pre-hypnosis to hypnosis condition in highs but not lows with a large proportion of significant links being focused on a central-parietal hub. There was also a decrease in beta1 iCOH from the pre-hypnosis to hypnosis condition with a focus on a fronto-central and an occipital hub that was greater in high compared to low susceptibles. There were no significant differences for COH or for spectral band amplitude in any frequency band. The results are interpreted as indicating that the hypnotic induction elicited a qualitative change in the organization of specific control systems within the brain for high as compared to low susceptible participants. This change in the functional organization of neural networks is a plausible indicator of the much theorized “hypnotic-state”. (shrink)

The ‘scaling up’ objection says non-representational ecological-enactive accounts will be unable to explain ‘representation hungry’ cognition. Obsessive-compulsive disorder presents a paradigmatic instance of this objection, marked as it is by ‘representation hungry’ obsessive thoughts and compulsive behavior organized around them. In this paper I provide an ecological-enactive account of OCD, thereby demonstrating non-representational frameworks can ‘scale up’ to explain ‘representation hungry’ cognition. First, I outline a non-representational account of mind— a predictive processing operationalization of Sean Kelly’s theory of perception. This (...) account explains the ‘tensions’ and ‘pulls’ which guide and constrain our action-oriented and affect-laden perceptual ‘grip’ upon the world to be underwritten by an imperative to minimize prediction error. I then argue that OCD is best understood as ‘grip gone awry’— malformed predictive models signal inappropriately high error, and this results in extremely strong ‘tensions’ and ‘pulls’ which prescribe actions. Thus, I arrive at the idea that OCD is primarily constituted by ‘not just right’ feelings caused by high error signaling. Finally, I explain that this account provides a causal explanation of the non-representational existential feeling fundamental to OCD. Compulsions are considered manifestations of non-representational grip responsive to this feeling, whilst obsessions are explained to play a meta-role in the condition, being formulated by subjects in a bid to make their ‘not just right’ feeling intelligible. I explain that the meta-role obsessions play makes their representational status largely irrelevant to OCD, and so leave this an open question. Consequently, I provide a non-representational account of OCD, thereby demonstrating that ecological-enactive approaches can respond to the ‘scaling up’ objection. (shrink)

This study is an analysis of the relationship between homo religiosus and the Christian man, as it emerges from Mircea Eliade’s work. His ideas concerning the dialectics sacred-profane are related to homo religiosus, the man of the traditional societies. According to Eliade’s vision, one can use the term homo religiosus only within the context of his universe. Many mythical themes are present in the modern world, but it is difficult to identify them, going through the process of desacralization. The “mythical” (...) elements became Christian from the very beginnings and they are still significant for Christianity which characterizes itself by rendering value to history. The issue that Eliade analyses is whether Christianity can develop the sacred horizon of the archaic societies. As a conclusion of this research, one cannot say that there is a separation of homo religious from Christian man. The reader’s impression is that the scientist refers to Christianity as having lost the real meaning, as it was discovered in its early beginnings. Although the modern man still keeps the Christian elements, is far from what represented the Christian man from his early centuries. However, there are many common points of homo religiosus with the archaic societies. The critics treat the issue from some perspectives which are different from the ideas of the scientist from Chicago: either as being based on the protestant theology of “God’s Death” as the cases of Kenneth Hamilton and J. J. Altizer, either from partial position, the accusations not having a real basis. Dubuisson’s case is this way. This work was meant to be a step of an approach that attempts to discover correspondence between the scientist’s ideas and Christianity. (shrink)

Between Mircea Eliade and Rudolf Otto many connections can be made concerning the idea of sacred. Even though, the scientist of Romanian origin perceives the sacred reality differently from the German theologian. If the latter puts an emphasis on the irrational side of the divine, the former argues that the sacred has to be perceived twofold: as irrational and rational in the same time, the concept of coincidentia oppositorum best embodying the sacred reality. The sacred’s materializations are the hierophanies, the (...) history of religion being nothing else than a sum of hierophanies. Finally, for Eliade, the ascred is connected to the life of homo religiosus. (shrink)

Nowadays, in the context of the growing migration of the Muslim population in Europe, caused by the wars in Syria and other areas, the question is increasingly being asked whether there is a danger of „Islamization of Europe” following the „clash of civilizations”. The last formula is not new. It created a real dispute in the past. But the discussions must also take into account other questions that are currently being asked: is there still a Christian Europe? Is it possible (...) to speak of an intrinsic conflict between Christianity and Islam, which erupts at certain periods of time? In this study we will focus on the topic of „clash of civilizations”, the impact that this formula had in the world at the end of the twentieth century and the connotations it has for our times. The topic of research starts from the realities that no one can dispute, globally emphasizing the problems that affect people: conflicts in various territories, difficult economic situations in certain regions of the world, reaching financial crises and important social changes, in which the majority populations have to live with minorities that, most of the time, they do not know and do not accept. (shrink)

Este artículo estudia la estructura lógico-matemática ligada a la mereo-topología de la teoría de conjuntos (MTTC), en cuanto esta estructura es el núcleo gnoseológico del neoliberalismo. En este contexto, analizamos los componentes lógico-matemáticos de tal estructura, a saber, la mereología, la topología y la teoría de conjuntos en oposición a la noción dialéctica de totalidad, como un medio para superar las consecuencias políticas y gnoseológicas derivadas de la asunción de tal aparato lógico-matemático. Asimismo, establecemos una relación entre la MTTC y (...) la fenomenología, lo cual permite analizar algunas inconsistencias relacionadas no solo con la estructura lógico-matemática de la MTTC, sino también con la implementación de la intencionalidad fenomenológica y la subsecuente ley eidética de dependencia. (shrink)

Kant, in his third Critique, confronts the issue of how rule-governed objective judgement is possible. He argues that it requires a particular kind of aesthetic response to one's experience. I dub this response 'the Feeling of Unity', and I raise the question whether it is a type of inexpressible knowledge. Using David Bell's account of these matters as a touchstone, I argue that it is.

One gains the impression from occasional remarks in the psychiatric literature that there is a feeling of dissatisfaction with the state of flux of the various concepts, serving as tools to help us understand our patients. This paper is submitted as an attempt to point out some of the reasons why psychiatric notions suffer from certain deficiencies. If, for the time being, we set aside the specific psychiatric problems confronting us in our daily work and muse over the structure of (...) our psychological and psychiatric methods of explanation, we might come to the startling conclusion that these methods are quite inadequate. We medical people think in terms of the mechanistic natural sciences, particularly in terms of physics, chemistry and biochemistry. The importance of these auxiliary sciences to our art of healing the sick increases year after year and the outstanding results of chemotherapy, for instance, show how heavily our profession leans on chemistry. Beyond a doubt, the natural sciences are essential to the pursuit and the development of the practice of medicine, nevertheless, the question arises whether psychiatry should be based upon mechanistic methods in approaching our specific material, the human mind. Posed in this fashion, the question implies that psychiatric thinking is basically mechanistic in its general characteristics. I believe that one can prove this thesis on the premise that descriptions and explanations of human behavior are based upon neurological facts and theories. Since the purpose of neurology lies in a different direction than the goal of psychiatry, it was necessary to alter neurological concepts so that they would be more appropriate and fitting to psychic material, and this elaboration upon neurological principles when applied to mental phenomena leads to psychiatric conceptions with inherent deficiencies. (shrink)

May I suggest that there is an angle to the problem of purposeful and non-purposeful behavior which has been overlooked in the recent discussions in this journal, namely, the psychological side of the problem.

In a previous paper it was suggested that specific concepts are needed in the psychological sciences and the basic mental triad was described as a useful tool to further our understanding of mentation. It was stated that the sensori-motor reflex principle cannot describe and explain mental phenomena, because the reflex is basically a mechanistic occurrence, while mental phenomena differ in essence from mechanisms. Since conditioned reflexes can be conceived as sensori-motor reflexes with another, non-mechanistic factor superimposed, similarities and contrasts between (...) reflexes and conditioned reflexes were taken as the material from which one can develop new thoughts about mentation. Reflex shutting of the eyelid, caused by direct contact between cornea and a small, invisible foreign body was compared with and contrasted to shutting the eye before a large, visible object thrusting toward the eye. It was shown that reflexes occur in response to a stimulus after the stimulus has been applied, while conditioned reflexes seem to anticipate the stimulus. This was taken as evidence that conditioned reflexes have a protensive character, have a relationship to the future, which sensori-motor reflexes lack. This difference in time relationship was developed into the statement that the difference between mechanisms and mental phenomena lies in their different relationship to the future. The need for specific concepts to describe mental phenomena stems from the inability of the reflex principle to deal with the protensive tendency of mental phenomena and to fill this need the concept of the basic mental triad was offered. This principle consists of three interdependent, interwoven phases: the triad connects with the past through condensation of some of the subject's past experience into a vaguely formed conglomerate; it connects with the future by projecting the condensed past into the future; the central phase of the triad is the act within the present instant, where a synthesis of past, present and future is accomplished. (shrink)