Statements such as “X is beautiful but I don’t like how it looks” or “I like how X looks but it is not beautiful” sound contradictory. How contradictory they sound might however depend on the object X and on the aesthetic adjective being used (“beautiful”, “elegant”, “dynamic”, etc.). In our study, the first sentence was estimated to be more contradictory than the latter: If we describe something as beautiful, we often intend to evaluate its appearance, whereas it is less counterintuitive (...) to appreciate an appearance without finding it beautiful. Furthermore, statements including “beautiful” appeared more contradictory than those including “elegant” and “dynamic”, pointing to its greater evaluative component. When related to artworks, sentences could appear less contradictory due to readers’ consideration of the divergence between conventional beauty and art-related sensory pleasures that can even include negative valence. Such ambivalence might be more frequent in art-objects than in other artefacts. Indeed, in our study, sentences referring to artworks were estimated to be less contradictory compared to sentences referring to other artefacts. Meanwhile, an additional small group of graphic design students showed a less clear difference between art-related and non-art-related sentences. We discuss the potential influence of art experience and interest as well as theoretical and methodological challenges like the conceptualization of beauty. (shrink)

This paper explores one organisation’s journey into non-financial reporting, initially motivated by a crisis in public confidence that threatened the organisation’s legitimacy to the present with the organisation embracing integrated reporting. The organisation’s journey is framed through a legitimation lens and is illustrated by aligning internal reflections with external outputs guided by predominant paradigms of good practice, such as the GRI guidelines and more recently integrated reporting 〈IR〉. We find that the organisation’s relationship with external guidelines has evolved from pragmatic (...) adoption as a means of seeking external legitimation to the present position where those that prepare external reports are informed by the organisation’s strategic positioning and not constrained by the promulgation of voluntary guidelines. From the case study, we suggest that the International Integrated Reporting Council may face two hurdles: First, organisations may define social norms based on a broader definition of stakeholders than the definition currently published by the IIRC. The second hurdle is to convince report preparers that adopting integrated reporting 〈IR〉 will positively impact on capital flows. (shrink)

This article presents a study of how co-present individuals work out the nature of embodied engagement and disengagement displays by individuals with dementia in a Danish public care facility. Research has found that moderate to severe dementia may result, for example, in a lack of social engagement, apathy and problems in maintaining conversations. Research has, however, also found that co-present individuals indicate their right to unavailability for social interaction. This is accomplished through details of embodied and multimodal conduct such as (...) gaze behavior, which includes practices of glancing and gazing at co-present individuals or practices of gazing into space. These practices may coincide with indications of ‘lack of social engagement’ and ‘apathy’. This study falls within the framework of ethnomethodology and employs multimodal conversation analytic methods to show how co-present individuals monitor residents’ displays of engagement and disengagement, primarily gaze behavior and how they respond to them. The study is based on 20 hours of video-recordings. (shrink)

This book describes the major changes in state relations which have occurred this century and the sources from which they emerged. An invaluable introduction to the structures of modern international relations.

The monograph is focused on the subjectivity of aesthetic experience and the problem of rational interpretation of emotionality. The text studies why does an aesthetic experience exist, what is its content and what is its informational role and structure? Has beauty any cognitive value? Can we analyse beauty? In what sense we can think about the information content of aesthetic experience? The second topic of the book is a cognitive role of emotionality and its research. Why we have emotions? What (...) can they tell us about yourself and about the world? The methodology of the study is designed as a phenomenological research of subjective experience that is combined with the newest results in Cognitive science research. --Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The book is a second volume of the project, which is focused on a systematic examination of aesthetic experience by the unification of philosophical and cognitive-scientific approaches to beauty and aesthetic experience. This volume is focused on the analysis of selected aspects of aesthetic experience, especially on methodological problems and aspects of philosophical and scientific research, the question of the complementarity and compatibility of methods, and needs to interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. Authors of the chapters are considering about diverse areas (...) of perception of beauty, e.g.: pleasure by face perception; the synchronicity by music; the problems of musical chills; the psychosomatic unity of dance; or the problem of development of aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

Powerful ultrastructural tools are providing new insights into neuronal circuits, revealing a wealth of anatomically‐defined synaptic connections. These wiring diagrams are incomplete, however, because functional connectivity is actively shaped by neuromodulators that modify neuronal dynamics, excitability, and synaptic function. Studies of defined neural circuits in crustaceans, C. elegans, Drosophila, and the vertebrate retina have revealed the ability of modulators and sensory context to reconfigure information processing by changing the composition and activity of functional circuits. Each ultrastructural connectivity map encodes multiple (...) circuits, some of which are active and some of which are latent at any given time. (shrink)

Inflammatory bowel disease is chronic and incurable. Imperious diarrhea, rectal bleeding, fatigue, and weight loss, the main manifestations, cause a decrease in the quality of the patient’s personal and professional life. The objectives of this study were to identify a possible relationship between early maladaptive schemas and disease activity status using logistic regression, to identify the prevalence of early maladaptive schemes in patients and to propose a psychotherapeutic intervention plan. The following were found in a sample of 46 patients aged (...) 16–76 years. An increase in the domain overvigilance and inhibition score had a significant effect, with an increase of 1.137 CI95% [1.031, 1.254] of the risk of the disease being diagnosed as active. High and very high scores were observed for the emotional deprivation scheme and dependence/incompetence, vulnerability to harm and illness and subjugation schemas. The results show that the proposed model could predict and reconfirm the diagnosis; patients have specific psychotherapeutic needs. The therapeutic goal would be to offer care, empathy and protection, to strengthen self-confidence, to make patients realize that they have the ability to cope, to provide permission, encourage the patient to experiment, and guide the patient to express their anger healthily. The therapy scheme’s intervention could lead to increased long-term disease management capacity and, consequently, reduce costs directly and indirectly caused by this condition. (shrink)

The first and most important impetus motivating a feminist engagement with the complex of art and aesthetics is – as has been the case in many other realms of social life – the exclusion of women from participation in the respective sphere of activity: the denial of women's entry into formal and institutional education, training, active practice in the profession, and the continuous discrimination and marginalization that women have had to endure even after the end of their formal exclusion. A (...) second stage in the feminist engagement with art and aesthetics is reached when the considerable accomplishments are made visible that women have attained despite all obstacles, although these achievements have so often been overlooked, forgotten, denied, or overtly suppressed. The discovery of the resistance women have always mounted to all hindrances placed in their way, the (re)discovery of “women worthies,” takes place in the fields of art, literary, and music history much in the same way as feminism has begun to dig up the lost memory of women's efforts in the fields of history, science, and so on. (shrink)

The goal of the article is to offer a framework against which relations between gesture and sign can be systematically explored beyond the current literature. It does so by a) reconstructing the history of the discussion in the field of gesture studies, focusing on three leading positions (Kendon, McNeill, Goldin-Meadow); and b) by formulating a position to illustrate how this can be achieved. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for systematic cross-linguistic research on multimodal use of language in its (...) signed and spoken forms. (shrink)

In the age of surveillance capitalism, the prevailing business model underlying the use of social media applications (“apps”) foresees the exchange of personal data for the allowance to use an online service. Such a data business model comes with many potential negative side effects ranging from violation of privacy issues to election manipulation. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to think of alternatives to the current data business model. The present study investigated how strong the support would be for a (...) monetary payment model among a sample of 210 participants. Participants were asked about their willingness to pay for social media, if in turn their data would be private and other problems concerning social media use would be tackled. Only one-fifth of participants (21.43%) supported such a model. From the Big Five Personality traits, Agreeableness was positively associated with support of such a model. Finally, data are also provided on how much participants would be willing to pay for social media on a monthly basis. The present study’s findings are of a preliminary nature and will contribute to the start of an important discussion. (shrink)

While generally accepted as an interpretive theory, Bull’s emblematic text demonstrates strong structural characteristics. Subsequent attributions move between the interpretive or ‘reflexive’ and t...

Dem Postmarxismus wird haufig ein mangelndes Verstandnis des Staats vorgeworfen. Dieser Band stellt sich dieser Lesart entgegen und zeichnet ein vielfaltiges Bild der Staatsverstandnisse von Abensour, Agamben, Badiou, Balibar, Bauman, Butler, Castoriadis, Deleuze und Guattari, Derrida, Hardt und Negri, Hall, Holloway, Lefort und Gauchet, Laclau und Mouffe, Nancy, Ranciere und zizek. Die Zugange dieser Autor_innen zum Staat werden anhand zentraler Konzepte in leicht zuganglicher Form dargestellt und von marxistischen und neomarxistischen Staatstheorien abgegrenzt. Im letzten Teil werden die gegenseitigen Beeinflussungen zwischen (...) postmarxistischen Staatsverstandnissen einerseits und feministischen und postkolonialen Zugangen andererseits beschrieben, wie auch die Verschrankung postmarxistischer Theorien mit zeitgenossischen politischen Bewegungen. Insgesamt bietet der Band damit einen erstmaligen Uberblick zu den Konzepten und der Bedeutung postmarxistischer Staatsverstandnisse. (shrink)

The present essay aims first at clarifying Werner Beierwaltes’ understanding of Neoplatonism at large as the accomplishment of Greek philosophy pursued by Plotinus and coherently developed by Proclus. It seeks secondly to locate Beierwaltes’ remarkable effort to trace the “Wirkungsgeschichte” of Neoplatonism. Focus has been placed, thirdly on his understanding of Dionysius Areopagita as the effective mediator of Neoplatonic issues in the Latin philosophical tradition long before the rediscovery of Proclus in the 13. century. Beierwaltes’ understanding of Dionysius’ “Christian Neoplatonism” (...) as a lucky instance of “Hellenization of Christianity” is finally compared with different exegesis provided by Ivánka and Balthasar in the years immediately preceding Beierwaltes’ remarkable Proclus-monography of 1965. (shrink)

Cornelia Dean draws on her 30 years as a science journalist with the New York Times to expose the flawed reasoning and knowledge gaps that handicap readers when they try to make sense of science. She calls attention to conflicts of interest in research and the price society pays when science journalism declines and funding dries up.--.

From the discovery of distant galaxies and black holes to the tiny interstices of the atom, here is the very best on physics and astronomy from the New York Times! The newspaper of record has always prided itself on its award-winning science coverage, and these 125 articles from its archives are the very best, covering more than a century of breakthroughs, setbacks, and mysteries. Selected by former science editor Cornelia Dean, they feature such esteemed and Pulitzer Prize-winning writers as (...) Malcolm W. Browne on teleporting, antimatter atoms, and the physics of traffic jams; James Glanz on string theory; George Johnson on quantum physics; William L. Laurence on Bohr and Einstein; Dennis Overbye on the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson; Walter Sullivan on the colliding beam machine; and more. (shrink)

The reign of paper files would seem to be over once files are reduced to the status of icons on computer screens, but Vismann's book, which examines the impact of the file on Western institutions throughout history, shows how the creation of order in medieval and early modern administrations makes its returns in computer architecture.

Der Band plädiert für eine Resymmetrisierung des Sprachlichen und des Bildlichen für das Verständnis der Gegenwartsgesellschaft. Bildlichkeit wird als eine vom Wahrnehmungsmodus unterschiedene genuin soziale Sinnform aufgefasst. Wir verlassen uns darauf, dass auch Andere ganz selbstverständlich dargestellte Welt von wahrgenommener Welt unterscheiden. Auf die Darstellungen von Darstellungsformen hat sich moderne Kunst spezialisiert. Am Beispiel der Gegenwartskunst wird die Vermehrung, Kombinatorik und wechselseitige Bezugnahme künstlerischer Formen als Katalysator für innerkünstlerische Transformationen identifizierbar.

Learning in intelligent systems is a result of direct or indirect interaction with the environment. Humans can learn by way of different states of (inter-)action such as the execution or the imagery of an action, but their unique potential to induce brain-related as well as mind-related changes in the motor action system is still being debated. The systematic repetition of different states of action (e.g., execution and imagery in terms of physical and mental practice) and their contribution to the learning (...) of complex motor actions has traditionally been approached by way of performance improvements. More recently, approaches highlighting the role of action representation in the learning of complex motor actions have evolved. In the present perspective paper, we build on brain-related findings and sketch recent research on learning by way of imagery and execution from a hierarchical, perceptual-cognitive approach to the motor action system. These findings provide valuable insights into the learning of intelligent systems from a perceptual-cognitive, representation-based perspective and as such add to our current understanding of action representation in memory and its changes with practice. Future research should build bridges between approaches in order to more thoroughly understand functional changes throughout the learning process, and to jointly contribute to developing intelligent cognitive systems and their application in robotics, rehabilitation, or sports. (shrink)

This study of axiology explores the axiocentricity of being human. Human beings dwell in the realm of value. Values are not simply what persons have; values in large part are what persons are. The mystique of values is analyzed here in terms of their cultural, phenomenological, and ontological status. The relationship between science and values is debated. Values should not be submitted to reductionism. Postmodernism raises new problems for the future of a philosophy of values. Yet, we may direct our (...) hopes toward happiness, universalism, and humanism as inseparable from value-life. (shrink)