Voluntary stream segregation was investigated in cochlear implant users and normal-hearing listeners using a segregation-promoting objective approach which evaluated the role of spectral and amplitude-modulation rate separations on stream segregation and its build-up. Sequences of 9 or 3 pairs of A and B narrowband noise bursts were presented which differed in either center frequency of the noise band, the AM-rate, or both. In some sequences, the last B burst was delayed by 35 ms from their otherwise-steady temporal position. In the (...) other sequences, the last B bursts were temporally advanced from 0 to 10 ms. A single interval yes/no procedure was utilized to measure participants’ sensitivity in identifying delayed vs. no-delay sequences. A higher d′ value showed the higher ability to segregate the A and B subsequences. For NH listeners, performance improved with each spectral separation. However, for CI users, performance was only significantly better for the condition with the largest spectral separation. Additionally, performance was significantly poorer for the largest AM-rate separation than for the condition with no AM-rate separation for both groups. The significant effect of sequence duration in both groups indicated that listeners made more improvement with lengthening the duration of stimulus sequences, supporting the build-up effect. The results of this study suggest that CI users are less able than NH listeners to segregate NBN bursts into different auditory streams when they are moderately separated in the spectral domain. Contrary to our hypothesis, our results indicate that AM-rate separation may interfere with the segregation of streams of NBN. Additionally, our results add evidence to the literature that CI users build up stream segregation at a rate comparable to NH listeners, when the inter-stream spectral separations are adequately large. (shrink)

The formation of particles of elemental tin in association with the nucleation of the precipitate phase θ′ in an Al–1.7 at.% Cu–0.01 at.% Sn alloy has been investigated by high resolution transmission electron microscopy. Analysis of lattice images has demonstrated that these tin particles associated with θ′ platelets formed during short-term ageing (typically 3 min at 200 degrees Celcius) exhibit a crystallographic form that is distinctly different from that previously reported in such ternary alloys and also from that observed in (...) the binary alloy Al–0.01 at.% Sn. Those tin particles that could be clearly identified as β-Sn phase shared a crystallographic relationship of the form (001)Sn‖(001)Al‖(001)θ′, [110]Sn‖[100]Al‖[100]θ′ with the α-Al and θ′ phases with which they were simultaneously in contact. The observations imply that, while tin may assist nucleation of platelets of θ′, the formation of θ′ equally influences the crystallography of β--Sn that forms in association with θ′. Following prolonged ageing (typically 50 h at 200°C), the β-Sn particles in contact with θ′ plates had coarsened and diminished in number, and most now exhibited an orientation relationship with α-Al matrix similar to that observed in the binary alloy Al–0.01 at.% Sn (i.e. (100)Sn‖(111)Al, [010]Sn‖[112]Al) and to that previously observed in the later stages of ageing of the ternary alloy Al–1.7 at.% Cu–0.01 at.% Sn. (shrink)

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is the most likely site where egocentric spatial relationships are represented in the brain. PPC cells receive visual, auditory, somaesthetic, and vestibular sensory inputs; oculomotor, head, limb, and body motor signals; and strong motivational projections from the limbic system. Their discharge increases not only when an animal moves towards a sensory target, but also when it directs its attention to it. PPC lesions have the opposite effect: sensory inattention and neglect. The PPC does not seem (...) to contain a “map” of the location of objects in space but a distributed neural network for transforming one set of sensory vectors into other sensory reference frames or into various motor coordinate systems. Which set of transformation rules is used probably depends on attention, which selectively enhances the synapses needed for making a particular sensory comparison or aiming a particular movement. (shrink)

Avez-vous remarqué que dans le monde tout ce qui compte va par quatre? La musique : timbre, harmonie, rythme et mélodie. Le repérage : altitude, latitude, longitude et datation. Les quatre aspects de la cause: pour quoi, avec quoi, par quoi et selon quoi? Les forces de la nature : interactions faible, forte, électromagnétique et gravitationnelle... Les vingt-quatre particules élémentaires qui constituent la matière une famille de six leptons associée à trois familles de quarks. Et aussi la logique d'un discours (...) nuancé : oui, non, oui et non, ni oui ni non. Pourquoi quatre est-il partout? La notion de quaternité apporte une réponse à la fois simple et surprenante à cette question. A partir d'exemples tirés de l'expérience humaine, les auteurs en dégagent les aspects structurels et s'en servent pour approfondir le sens des mathématiques et de divers autres domaines liés à la genèse de la connaissance. Il s'agit d'une nouvelle épistémologie, fondée sur un modèle logique qui complète celui d'Aristote. (shrink)

_The Budapest School: Beyond Marxism_ develops a systematic reconstruction of the post-Marxist projects of the Budapest School. It charts the evolution of these thinkers from their beginnings in the ‘renaissance of Marxism’ through to their contemporary critical theories of modernity.

Parti INTRODUCTION Wittgenstein sometimes suggested looking on words as instruments, for example in the following passages from ...

In recent years, a series of key social, political and economic events has placed the critique of capitalism very much on the theoretical agenda. Responding to these developments, many have begun to express the need for a rapprochement between social criticism and the critique of political economy. The present essay represents a contribution to the recovery of the project that was once synonymous with critical theory itself via a critical engagement with the early writings of Jürgen Habermas. Not only is (...) Habermas’ explicit engagement with the critique of political economy among the most substantial to be found within the mainstream tradition of critical theory, his early social-theoretical insights into the emergent ‘primacy of the political’ in late capitalism can be taken as representative of a number of broader trends in late-20th-century thought which sought to go beyond the premises and categories of Marx’s economic works. Simply put, no reappraisal of the relationship between critical theory and the critique of political economy can succeed, I submit, without taking seriously Habermas’s path-breaking and wide-ranging innovations. (shrink)

The paper surveys the origins of chemical engineering in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It deals particularly with the recognition of the field as an independent discipline, its relations with chemistry and mechanical engineering, and the influence on its growth of industrial ‘demand’. The position of chemical engineering in public discourse, in the City and Guilds Central Institution, and at Imperial College of Science and Technology and University College London are discussed, together with the creation of (...) the Institution of Chemical Engineers in 1922. The idea that the discipline grew merely in response to the demands of industrial capitalists is rejected, and a variety of other interest groups is shown to have participated. (shrink)

Posidonivs was fortunate to be born in an age when the Romans had begun to recognize their own intellectual limitations, and had turned for guidance to a hitherto despised nation, admitted by themselves to be as much their superior in originality as it was inferior to them in practical matters. He was, moreover, the official exponent of a philosophical system which, destined as it was to exercise for hundreds of years the strongest moral influence over the world, had already taken (...) a firm hold on the more thoughtful minds at Rome. Probably any Greek teacher of ability had, in the time of Cicero, a good chance to make a name; Posidonius, who was a man of considerable intellectual gifts, great learning, and some originality, and who was, moreover, the accredited successor to Zeno and Chrysippus, obtained a reputation which lasted for some centuries. (shrink)

In both continental and analytical philosophy, social ontology has emerged as a particularly lively and increasingly sophisticated area of debate. This essay explores the potential contribution that social-ontological thinking can make to the continued development of critical theory via a critical reading of Georg Lukács and the Possibility of Critical Social Ontology – a collection of essays edited by Michael J. Thompson and published by Brill as part of the Studies in Critical Social Sciences series. The essay argues that whilst (...) social ontology as such no doubt offers a fruitful avenue for contemporary critical theory, the later philosophy of Georg Lukács represents an untenable and antiquated theoretical resource for such endeavours. The conceptual and systematic barriers to the revitalisation of the late Lukács are explored with specific reference to Lukács’ specific interpretation of the paradigm of labour and, closely related to this, his philosophy of history. (shrink)

Context: The dominant approach to the study of perception is representational/computational, with an emphasis on the achievements of the brain and the nervous system, which are taken to construct internal models of the world. Alternatives include ecological, embedded, embodied, and enactivist approaches, all of which emphasize the centrality of action in understanding perception. Problem: Despite sharing many theoretical commitments that lead to a rejection of the classical approach, the alternatives are characterized by important contrasts and points of divergence. Here we (...) focus on the enactive and ecological approaches, in particular, on how they construe the status of the environment and the content of perception. Method: We begin with a review of James Gibson’s ecological psychology, highlighting it as a psychology for all organisms not just humans. Against this backdrop, we consider enactivist arguments against direct perception - a central assertion of the ecological approach - and in favor of interpreting the activity of perceptual agents as a kind of construction of a perceptually meaningful world. Results: We assess the merits of this interpretation and we conclude that it cannot be grounded on fundamental principles such as thermodynamics and organism-environment mutuality. Implications: As a consequence, enactivism remains close to representationalism and entails a form of dualism. Constructivist content: We advance a criticism of the constructivist foundations of the enactive approach to perception. Perception-action mutuality at the heart of enactivism does not require mental construction; indeed, perception-action mutuality obviates construction. (shrink)

For the purposes of the new text of Livy which Professor Conway and Professor C. F. Walters are preparing for the Oxford Series of Classical Texts, I undertook in 1908 to examine the Codex Leidensis, which contains Livy's first decade.

ABSTRACT On 19 July 2019, Agnes Heller died whilst swimming in Lake Balaton outside Budapest. With her passing, the culture of humanity lost one of its most remarkable representatives. So too, contemporary critique lost a philosophical sensibility that is, today, within the neoliberal university, increasingly rare. It is this philosophical sensibility with which this essay is concerned. Through a critical reconstruction of Heller’s reading of three key figures from the philosophical tradition (Marx, Pascal and Kierkegaard), this essay both charts the (...) changes and continuities in Heller’s philosophy of concrete subjectivity and makes a case for its continuing relevance to the cultural project of philosophy. (shrink)

In recent years, the works of György Márkus – a member of what has been dubbed the ‘Budapest School’ – have begun to generate an increasingly sophisticated and vibrant discussion. The present essay seeks to contribute to this burgeoning body of critical literature by offering a summary account and evaluation of the evolution of Márkus’s thought from the critique of alienation developed during the 1960s through to his post-Marxist philosophy of culture in the latter decades of the 20th century. It (...) does so with the intention of answering what is arguably the question confronting the contemporary reception of Márkus’s body of work: in what relation do Márkus’s later works stand to the aspirations and ideals of his early, more explicitly Marxist writings? (shrink)

Throughout the world, Eastern European critical theory is enjoying a moderate, yet exciting, resurgence. From its oppositional roots in praxis philosophy and critical sociology, this diffuse and dynamic tradition has expanded its field of concern to encompass, among other problems, the aporias of democracy, the Holocaust and legacies of totalitarianism, the vicissitudes of modern culture and the ethical imperatives of living after the grand narrative. In the process, Eastern European thought has come to figure as a vital alternative to the (...) dominant tendencies emanating from Frankfurt and Paris. This essay surveys and introduces a collection of papers delivered at The International Conference of Marxist Critical Theory in Eastern Europe held in Chengdu, P.R.C., in November 2018. It both highlights the thematic range of contemporary scholarship on Eastern European critical theory and signals potential directions in future research. (shrink)

This essay aims to continue to develop the thesis that the welter of political-economic, social, technological, and subjective transformations that characterized the final decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st necessitate a re-thinking of the relationship between social criticism and the critique of political economy. Herein the focus is directed towards the critique of reification and industrial rationalization as developed in the works of Georg Lukács and Cornelius Castoriadis. Drawing on recent phenomenological and psychological analyses (...) of work within contemporary capitalism, I argue for both the historical obsolescence of the critique of reification as it has been traditionally understood and, consequently, the need for novel conceptual responses to the pressing needs of our time. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a qualified defence of Axel Honneth's recognition-theoretical critique of reification. This defence begins by engaging with a cross-section of the recent critical responses to Honneth's theory. In response to these criticisms I develop a reading of the recognition-theoretical critique of reification which illuminates both the intentional structure and pre-ethical nature of affective recognition whilst also reconstructing the existential contours of reification, understood as the “forgetfulness of recognition.” The paper concludes by taking the problem of “forgetfulness” (...) in a novel direction by drawing on the theory of double reflection expounded by Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. In this final discussion I argue that the recognition-theoretical application of the theory of double reflection provides a conceptual model which allows one to think through the social, cultural and political mediations which inhibit, or wholly.. (shrink)

The text of Fronto is in a very corrupt state, and the startling discrepancies which exist between different collations, as well as the unintelligibility of many of the readings deciphered, seem to justify a good deal of conjectural emendation. I append some attempts to complete or restore the sense in some passages of the Greek letters which seem hitherto to have been left in an unsatisfactory state. Not having had access to the MS, I have relied on the collations of (...) Naber and others for a statement of what is to be found in the palimpsest. (shrink)

This article is concerned with understanding continuity and stability in teaching, and their significance. It looks particularly at the work of Anthony Giddens on structure and agency, that of Martin Heidegger on the limits of discursive and theoretical analysis, and the communitarian strand within ethics. It applies this discussion to understandings of teachers’ work in the context especially of policy and agendas for change, arguing that continuity and the notion of a community of practitioners is critical to maintaining the distinctive (...) ethical quality of teaching. (shrink)

This article is concerned with understanding continuity and stability in teaching, and their significance. It looks particularly at the work of Anthony Giddens on structure and agency, that of Martin Heidegger on the limits of discursive and theoretical analysis, and the communitarian strand within ethics. It applies this discussion to understandings of teachers’ work in the context especially of policy and agendas for change, arguing that continuity and the notion of a community of practitioners is critical to maintaining the distinctive (...) ethical quality of teaching. (shrink)

The idea of creaturely life has, in recent years, emerged as an important and illuminating category of literary and philosophical critique. In this paper I seek to contribute to this contemporary discourse by examining the references to the creaturely found in the writings of T.W. Adorno. Whilst much attention has been paid to Walter Benjamin’s reflections on creatureliness, Adorno, a thinker with whom Benjamin is often associated, has received comparatively little in this regard. I begin to redress this lacuna by (...) developing a reading of key passages of Dialectic of Enlightenment which orients itself towards Adorno’s remarks concerning the ‘inverse theology’ which he sees as grounding both his own, and Benjamin’s, thought. In placing theological core of Adorno’s philosophy in the foreground of my analysis, I argue that the notion of the creature, which I claim signifies a redemptive perspective on human existence, can be read as an important, if somewhat overlooked, concept in the normative framework of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. (shrink)

In the Laura Ashworth case in 2008, the Human Tissue Authority considered itself bound to overturn a deceased daughter's alleged wish that one of her kidneys should go to her mother, who at the time had end stage kidney failure and was on dialysis. 12 This was so even though Laura's earlier wish to be a living donor would most likely have been authorised, had the formal assessment process begun. The decision provoked much criticism. The recent Department of Health document (...) Requested Allocation of a Deceased Donor Organ, published 29 March 2010, developed by the UK health administrations together with the HTA and NHS Blood and Transplant , which is the main organ allocation body in the UK, seeks to resolve this ethical dilemma by setting out the circumstances in which requests for such deceased donations may be acceptable. 3 The most important conditions appear to be:a. the donation must be unconditional in nature;b. there must be …. (shrink)

Transplantation research on samples and organs from deceased donors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is under threat. The key problems relate to difficulties encountered in gaining consent for research projects, as distinct from consent to donation for clinical transplantation. They are due partly to the terms of the Human Tissue Act 2004 (the 2004 Act), and partly to its interpretation by the Human Tissue Authority (HTA). They include excessive interaction with donor representatives regarding ‘informed consent’ to research projects, uncertainty (...) as to the scope and duration of a donor's ‘authority’ over an organ, and restrictions caused by the apparent need for licensing of transplantation research under the 2004 Act, combined with lack of certainty, or guidance, as to the distinction between ‘research’, which requires a licence, and ‘service development’, which does not. In our view this confusion hinders and deters Specialist Nurses for Organ Donation in approaching donor representatives and discussing possible research projects with them. It has also, as we have reported elsewhere, led to abandonment of research projects for fear of liability, despite both Research Ethics Committee (REC) approval and donor consent. Such problems do not seem to occur under the transplant laws of most other comparable jurisdictions. The Transplantation Ethics Symposium, ‘The ethics of organ retrieval: goals, rights and responsibilities’, hosted by the MRC Centre for Transplantation at King's College London in December 2010, revealed that many senior clinicians and researchers, administrators, and lawyers are both unclear and in disagreement concerning the effects of the 2004 Act and the extent to which it is adhered to or ignored in practice. In this paper we examine the difficulties encountered and suggest solutions based on a less restrictive interpretation of the 2004 Act, or, more probably, a regulatory change under its authority. We propose that, in the long term, a law which includes consent for REC-approved research within the general consent for organ donation and transplantation seems preferable to the present system, both ethically and in practical terms. (shrink)