The aim of this paper is to examine W. V.Quine's theory of infants' early acquisition oflanguage, with a narrow focus on Quine's theory ofobservation sentences. Intersubjectivity and sensoryexperiences, the two features that characterise thenotion, receive the most attention. It is argued,following a suggestion from Donald Davidson, thatQuine favours a proximal theory of languageacquisition, i.e., a theory which is focused onprivate experiences as ultimate sources ofstimulation, contrary to a distal theory, where thestimulus source is located in externally observableobjects and events. (...) I use the philosophical criticismof Donald Davidson, Dagfinn Føllesdal and CharlesTaylor to suggest an alternative account of languageacquisition, which emphasises the primacy ofparticipation and joint attention to external stimuli.I argue that such an alternative theory is moreconsistent with recent studies in child developmentand language acquisition. (shrink)

Through a literature analysis, this study proposes that the difference between scientific innovation and technological innovation has been ignored in the current research on the level of scientific and technological innovation and its influencing factors. Combined with multidimensional proximity and knowledge type of current research, a theoretical induction has been carried on their corresponding relation with scientific innovation and technological innovation, research hypotheses were proposed the multidimensional proximity effect on the mode and degree of scientific innovation and technological innovation, (...) five theoretical factors, which are the economic development level, regional economic structure, the level of opening to the outside world, science and technology input and education input, are proposed to affect the level of scientific innovation and technological innovation. In this study, the Yangtze River Delta region of China from 2001 to 2018 is selected as the research sample, and the two hypotheses proposed are tested through a mixed method of exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial panel econometric model. The main conclusions are as follows: i) As an exogenous variable, geographical proximity has a small impact on the level of scientific innovation, but a large impact on the level of technological innovation; ii) As endogenous variables, theoretical influencing factors may not play a significant role in the actual environment due to the complex influence of multidimensional proximity; iii) Based on the idea of improving multidimensional proximity and the actual situation of the region and the city, we can formulate policies conducive to improving the regional and urban innovation environment. (shrink)

In recent years sense–datum theories have received much criticism, but there is one type of error frequently involved in the sense–datum concept which is in need of further consideration. This error consists in a category confusion of such a nature that what is properly regarded as perceptual mode is treated as though it were the attribute of a thing. The mode or manner of perception is mistakenly transferred to the sense–datum with results which a little careful reflection shows (...) to be absurd. In what follows a specific case of this error connected with the notion of phenomenal organization will be discussed. (shrink)

It is a contested question in contemporary theories of religion whether the concept of religion can be defined in a sound way or not. Many theorists maintain that a universal but delimiting definition is impossible. In this study, by contrast, it is argued that a conceptual analysis of religion that holds universally is perfectly possible because the following thesis can be seen as a necessary and sufficient conceptual condition of what religion is: X is a religion if and only if (...) X is a collection of artifacts which has the proper function of representing a supraphysical world. On this thesis, it is argued that artifacts such as pictorial and verbal representations, rituals, symbols, and various tools constitute religion as a cultural object, which, as a collection of artifacts, has the proper function of representing a conceived world that is not entirely physical, and which, allegedly, is a prerequisite for existential welfare in relation to observance. It is here important to understand what is constitutive for these kinds of conceived worlds. Supraphysical world is defined as follows. Given that the actual world is a physical world, a conception S is a construction of a supraphysical world if and only if both of the following conditions apply to S: Metaphysical component: S is a duplicate of the actual world with the addition of an anti-physical substance. Existential-normative component: S is an alleged prerequisite for existential welfare in relation to observance. The core argument of the study is that holds a priori for the concept of religion and as an a posteriori necessity for every instance of a religion. Apart from discussing the methodological problems of defining religion, the study introduces a new theory of religion in terms of. It addresses issues in the theory of artifacts; in the theory of representations; and in the theory of conceptual analysis. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of the phenomenology of size perception and the use of instructions to tease apart phenomenal and cognitive aspects. It develops his own recent proposals concerning the geometry of visual space. The chapter proposes that visual space is contracted along the lines of sight. This contraction would explain the apparent convergence of railway tracks, but without invoking a “proximal mode” experience. Parallel railway tracks receding into the distance project converging lines onto the retinas. A (...) true proximal mode representation would show these lines converging as if in a vertical plane. But we experience them as converging while also receding in depth along the ground. The chapter suggests that this calls for a third geometry of visual space, intermediate between a linear perspective projection and full phenomenal constancy. The chapter attributes reports of full constancy to cognitive factors. size perception, visual space, geometry, lines of sight, proximal mode, phenomenal constancy. (shrink)

Every perceptual experience has an objective and a subjective side. We see object size, independent of distance, but we also see that distant objects project smaller images. Early modern conceptions focused on local stimulation and thus on the subjective aspect. Helmholtz and Hering emphasized the objective aspect. Helmholtz split visual experience into two stages, with sensation representing the subjective side and perception, through cognitive processes, the objective side. Gestalt theory denied this dualism, rejecting both sensory and cognitive stages. Despite contrary (...) evidence, the sensation/perception dualism persists, in brightness models and past experience theories. That we can detect visual angle and luminance does not mean that these are raw sensations out of which perception of size and lightness is built. Size and color constancy are truly visual, not cognitive. Instructions to subjects in vision experiments must avoid the proximal mode on the one hand and cognitive judgments on the other. (shrink)

Since the 1970s, researchers have focused on visual joint attention as a way to observe and operationalize joint attention. I will argue that this methodological choice has neglected other modalities and as a consequence might be missing important elements in the account of the development of JA and the evolutionary history of JA. I argue that by including other modes of interaction, such as touch, we open the possibility of finding that non-human primates and younger human infants engage in basic (...) forms of JA. Moreover, I argue that touch, as a proximal mode of perception, is the ontogenetic precursor of social communication. (shrink)

Seeing happens effortlessly and yet is endlessly complex. Among the most fascinating aspects of visual perception is its stability and constancy. As we shift our gaze or move about the world, the light projected onto the retinas is constantly changing. Yet the surrounding objects appear stable in their properties. Psychologists have long been interested in the constancies. They have asked questions such as: How good is constancy? Is constancy a fact about how things look, or is it a product of (...) our beliefs and judgments about how things look? How can the contents of visual experience be studied experimentally? Philosophers have long been interested in characterizing visual experience and have become widely interested in the constancies more recently. As psychologists and philosophers have interacted, new questions have arisen: If experience is not as of retinal stimulation (proximal mode), but does not always exhibit constancy (or at least not in all respects), how shall we describe this intermediate state? Also, should we regard any departure from constancy as a failure of the visual system, or might it be a reasonable or adaptive response? In what circumstances is seeing highly conditioned by cognitive factors such as background assumptions, and in what circumstances not? Our volume focuses on size constancy and color constancy. It considers methodologies for studying conscious visual perception, efforts to describe visual experience in relation to constancy, what it means that constancy is not always perfect, and the conceptual resources needed for explaining visual experience. (shrink)

One often hears it said that our visual-perceptual contact with the world is “perspectival.” But this can mean quite different things. Three different senses in which our visual contact with the world is “perspectival” are distinguished. The first involves the detection or representation of behaviorally important relations, holding between a perceiving subject and the world. These include time to contact, body-scaled size, egocentric position, and direction of heading. The second perspective becomes at least explicitly manifest in taking up the “ (...) class='Hi'>proximal mode” and involves the representation of relational “appearance properties,” such as, perhaps , angular size and angular/projective shape at or from a viewpoint. The third perspective is associated with the pencil of rays structured by the position and geometry of the eyes. The relationships between these three perspectives are charted, and their connection with conscious experiential awareness discussed. So, e.g., there is no simple or direct route from the detection of the relations constitutive of perspective2 to detection of the relations constitutive of perspective1. The relations definitive of perspective3 are probably not themselves detected or represented by the visual system, but define the informational arena within which detection of the relations definitive of perspective1 and perspective2 takes place. (shrink)

The term “perceptual constancy” was used by the Gestalt theorists in the early part of the twentieth century (e.g., Koffka 1935, 34, 90) to refer to the tendency of perception to remain invariant over changes of viewing distance, viewing angle, and conditions of illumination. This tendency toward constancy is remarkable: every change in the viewing distance, position, and illumination is necessarily accompanied by a change in the local proximal (retinal) stimulation, and yet perception remains relatively stable. The tendency toward (...) perceptual constancy encouraged the Gestalt theorists to look beyond local proximal stimulation in grounding their theories of perception. In the ensuing decades, much has been learned about the constancies. Evidence for this assertion may be found in the contributions to the current volume as well as in earlier volumes (e.g., Epstein 1977; Walsh and Kulikowsky 1998). These advances notwithstanding, significant questions remain open. Our aim here is to note some advances and specify some open questions. (shrink)

Hyppolite stresses his proximity to Merleau-Ponty, but the received interpretation of his “anti-humanist” reading of Hegel suggests a greater distance between their projects. This paper focuses on an under-explored dimension of their philosophical relationship. I argue that Merleau-Ponty and Hyppolite are both committed to formulating a mode of philosophical expression that can avoid the pitfalls of purely formal or literal and purely aesthetic or creative modes of expression. Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to navigate this dichotomy, I suggest, closely resembles Hyppolite’s interpretation (...) of Hegel’s “speculative” mode of expression. In particular, his emphasis on the “mediating” character of philosophical language, which moves between descriptive and creative expression, suggests a debt to Hyppolite. This reading provides more evidence to think that Hyppolite cannot be straightforwardly understood as an anti-humanist or post-phenomenological thinker, and paves the way for a _rapprochement_ between his work and the broader phenomenological tradition. (shrink)

Today’s predominant mode of politics is the post-political biopolitics an expression which is effectively tautological: “post-politics” designates the reduction of politics to the expert administration of social life. Such a politics is ultimately a politics of fear, a politics focused on the defense against a potential victimization or harassment. Therein resides the true line of separation between radical emancipatory politics and the predominant status quo politics: it is not the difference of two different positive visions, sets of axioms, but, (...) rather, the difference between the politics based on a set of universal axioms and the politics which renounces the very constitutive dimension of the political, since it resorts to fear as its ultimate mobilizing principle: fear of immigrants, fear of crime, fear of godless sexual depravity, fear of the excessive State itself, fear of ecological catastrophes, fear of harassment – such a politics always relies on the manipulation of a paranoid ochlos – the frightening rallying of frightened men. The zero-level of politics today is the depoliticized expert administration and coordination of interests; the only way to introduce passion into this field, to actively mobilize people, is through fear. At the level of social objectivity, we have mechanisms and processes to be regulated by expert administrators; the subjective counterpart of it is fear, the basic constituent of today’s subjectivity. This is why the big event not only in Europe in the early 2006 was that the anti-immigration politics “went mainstream”: they finally cut the umbilical link that connected them to the far Right fringe parties. From France to Germany, from Austria to Holland, in the new spirit of pride at one’s cultural and historical identity, the main parties now find it acceptable to stress that the immigrants “are guests who have to accommodate themselves to the cultural values that define the host society – it is “our country, love it or leave it.” This fear is, at its most basic, the fear of the Neighbor. There are two topics which determine today’s liberal tolerant attitude towards Others: the respect of Otherness, openness towards it, and the obsessive fear of harassment – in short, the Other is OK insofar as its presence is not intrusive, insofar as the Other is not really Other… In the strict homology with the paradoxical structure of chocolate laxative, tolerance this coincides with its opposite: my duty to be tolerant towards the other effectively means that I should not get too close to him, not to intrude into his/her space – in short, that I should respect his/her intolerance towards my over-proximity. This is what is more and more emerging as the central “human right” in late-capitalist society: the right not to be “harassed,” i.e., to be kept at a safe distance from the others. (shrink)

Facial expression is a mode of close‐proximity non‐vocal communication used by primates and is produced by mimetic/facial musculature. Arguably, primates make the most‐intricate facial displays and have some of the most‐complex facial musculature of all mammals. Most of the earlier ideas of primate mimetic musculature, involving its function in facial displays and its evolution, were essentially linear “scala natural” models of increasing complexity. More‐recent work has challenged these ideas, suggesting that ecological factors and social systems have played a much (...) larger role in explaining the diversity of structures than previously believed. The present review synthesizes the evidence from gross muscular, microanatomical, behavioral and neurobiological studies in order to provide a preliminary analysis of the factors responsible for the evolution of primate facial musculature with comparisons to general mammals. In addition, the unique structure, function and evolution of human mimetic musculature are discussed, along with the potential influential roles of human speech and eye gaze. BioEssays 30:212–225, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The perceptual system estimates distal conditions based upon proximal sensory input. It typically exploits information from multiple cues across and within modalities: it estimates shape based upon visual and haptic cues; it estimates depth based upon convergence, binocular disparity, motion parallax, and other visual cues; and so on. Bayesian models illuminate the computations through which the perceptual system combines sensory cues. I review key aspects of these models. Based on my review, I argue that we should posit co-referring perceptual (...) representations corresponding to distinct sensory cues. For example, the perceptual system represents a distal size using a representation canonically linked with vision and a distinct representation canonically linked with touch. Distinct co-referring perceptual representations represent the same denotation, but they do so under different modes of presentation. Bayesian cue combination models demonstrate that psychological explanation of perception should attend to mode of presentation and not simply to denotation. (shrink)

The pandemic compels us to ask fundamental questions about our place in the world: the many ways humans rely on one another, how we vitally and sometimes fatally breathe the same air, share the surfaces of the earth, and exist in proximity to other porous creatures in order to live in a social world. What we require to live can also imperil our lives. How do we think from, and about, this common bind? Judith Butler shows how COVID-19 and all (...) its consequences—political, social, ecological, economic—have challenged us to reconsider the sense of the world that such disasters bring about. Drawing on the work of Max Scheler, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and critical feminist phenomenology, Butler illuminates the conditions in which we seek to make sense of our disorientation, precarity, and social bonds. What World Is This? offers a new account of interdependency in which touching and breathing, capacities that amid a viral outbreak can threaten life itself, challenge the boundaries of the body and selfhood. Criticizing notions of unlimited personal liberty and the killing forces of racism, sexism, and classism, this book suggests that the pandemic illuminates the potential of shared vulnerabilities as well as the injustice of pervasive inequalities. Exposing and opposing forms of injustice that deny the essential interrelationship of living creatures, Butler argues for a radical social equality and advocates modes of resistance that seek to establish new conditions of livability and a new sense of a shared world. (shrink)

We provide some meta-theoretical constraints for the evaluation of a-spatial theories of sounds and auditory perception. We point out some forms of spatial content auditory experience can have. If auditory experience does not necessarily have a rich egocentric spatial content, it must have some spatial content for the relevant mode of perception to be recognizably auditory. An auditory experience devoid of any spatial content, if the notion makes sense at all, would be very different from the auditory experiences we (...) actually enjoy. This is enough to dismiss current a-spatial theories of auditory perception. As a consequence, our initial taxonomy of proximal, medial, and distal theories, as well as our phenomenological argument in favor of distal theories, are still topical. (shrink)

This paper considers two among the several points of intersection in the work of Roberto Esposito and Jacques Derrida. First, and most obviously: in the context of conceptualizing community, and more broadly, Esposito and Derrida have elaborated concepts of immunity and auto-immunity to refer to auto-destructive modes of defense which profoundly threaten what – seemingly – ought to have been safeguarded through their mechanism. The second point of proximity is the use both make of figures of maternity and birth in (...) these conceptualizations. This comparison not only illuminates the differing philosophical commitments of Derrida and Esposito but also offers a means of challenging the fate of sexual difference in the work of Esposito. (shrink)

The history of philosophy risks a self-opacity whereby we overestimate or underestimate our proximity to prior modes of thinking. This risk is relevant to assessing Hegel’s appropriation by McDowell and Priest. McDowell enlists Hegel for a quietist answer to the problem with assuming that concepts and reality belong to different orders, viz., how concepts are answerable to the world. If we accept Hegel’s absolute idealist view that the conceptual is boundless, this problem allegedly dissolves. Priest enlists Hegel for a dialetheist (...) answer to the problem with assuming that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive, viz., how certain sentences are both true and false. If we accept Hegel’s dialectical view that certain contradictions are necessary, this problem allegedly dissolves. For both McDowell and Priest, we find a true friend in Hegel. I argue that McDowell’s and Priest’s appropriations of Hegel overestimate Hegel’s affinity with quietism and dialetheism. McDowell reads Hegel as a quietist who silences metaphysical claims and the skeptical questions they raise against commonsense, but neglects Hegel’s adaptation of ancient skepticism against commonsense. Priest reads Hegel as a dialetheist who subordinates formal logic to dialectical logic by affirming the truth of certain contradictions, but neglects Hegel’s commitment to resolving contradictions for the sake of truth qua whole. I diagnose their misreadings in terms of what Hegel regards as the three moments of logic and argue that while McDowell jumps to its third moment, Priest stalls at its second moment. According to Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, logic has three “moments”: the abstractive moment of the understanding, which “stops short” at fixed categories; the negative moment of dialectic, which discovers the “genuine nature” of the categories, viz., that each “passes over, of itself, into its opposite”; and the positive moment of speculation, which grasps the “unity” of categories through the “dissolution” of their inner opposition. Hegel warns that if these moments are “kept separate from each other […] they are not considered in their truth”. I suggest that quietist and dialetheist readings of Hegel fail to consider truthfully the unified moments of his logic. In his quietist critique of metaphysics, McDowell enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of concept and reality. But McDowell helps himself directly to the third moment of logic, where the unity of the categories, and hence the boundlessness of the conceptual, would be fully articulated. Since he arrives at the third moment prematurely, ignoring its prior moments, he obscures its truth (§1). In his dialetheist critique of formal logic, Priest enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of truth and falsity. But Priest restricts himself gratuitously to the second moment of logic, where contradictions within the categories are not yet resolved. Since he stalls at the second moment, severed from its final moment, he obscures its truth (§2). I argue we can extricate Hegel from quietist and dialetheist misreadings only if we grasp the truth of the three moments of logic. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke sit together in the canon of political thought but are rarely treated in common historical accounts. This book narrates their intertwined careers during the Restoration period, when the two men found themselves in close proximity and entangled in many of the same political conflicts. Bringing new source material to bear, In the Shadow of Leviathan establishes the influence of Hobbesian thought over Locke, particularly in relation to the preeminent question of religious toleration. Excavating Hobbes's now (...) forgotten case for a prudent, politique toleration gifted by sovereign power, Jeffrey R. Collins argues that modern, liberal thinking about toleration was transformed by Locke's gradual emancipation from this Hobbesian mode of thought. This book investigates those landmark events - the civil war, Restoration, the popish plot, the Revolution of 1688 - which eventually forced Locke to confront the limits of politique toleration, and to devise an account of religious freedom as an inalienable right. (shrink)

This contribution investigates the intimate relation and the tension between legal and literary procedures of personification and subjectivation. In order to do so, the contribution turns to Kafka’s The Trial and examines the proximity of the juridical procedure depicted in the novel, intending to establish Josef K. as a subject, to the narrative procedures of the novel itself that aims at bringing forth an accountable protagonist. The intimate relation of the legal procedures described in the novel and the narrative ones (...) of the novel itself is rooted in a shared historical heritage that impacts both. I argue that the fundamental configuration of advocacy in the classical rhetorical procedure: speaking for someone, against someone, in front of an other, lies at the basis of both legal and literary procedures. Against this common rhetorical background I investigate developments in legal procedures and the formation of the modern novel in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Both developments occlude the rhetorical mechanisms of speaking-for and speaking against and turn the rhetorical procedures of personification into mechanisms of subjectivation. Kafka’s Proceß reflects these developments, yet does not affirm this transformation and ultimately does not result in a guilty subject and a ‘believable’ character. Rather, the novel embodies a gesture of resistance against certain modes of subjectivation that seem to be prevalent both in modern law and in the novel of formation. (shrink)

Argumentation is the gear of a cognitive process of reconstruction when it manifests itself in the discursive proximal space. The cognitive-semiotic perspective of multimodal argumentation suggests that, depending on the knowledge, the codes and signs employed (modes) and the context, certain multimodal structures can lead some audiences towards an accurate mental representation of argumentation, without the need forany formal standardized and verbal structure. We are able to argue with other(s) effectively without the need for a verbal translation of the (...) contents in a space that includes the semiotic interpretation of the message. (shrink)

This essay explores an aspect of Cicero's use of cultural writing for political ends: his employment of the epideictic rhetorical mode in two of his speeches, Pro Archia and In Pisonem. The epideictic is a ludic rhetorical domain that embraces paradoxes: it encompasses both praise and blame, is both markedly Greek and proximate to the Romans' laudatio funebris, and is associated both with textual fixity and viva voce improvisation. The epideictic mode is thus an ideal vehicle for Cicero's (...) self-fashioning and, moreover, constitutes a framework which reveals that Cicero's encomiastic defense of Archias' Roman citizenship and his invective against his aristocratic nemesis Piso are polar and complementary opposites. The self-consciously literary quality of epideictic allows Cicero to transform the Pro Archia from a legal defense to a general meditation on literary culture in which Cicero blurs himself with his client to defend his own status within Rome's elite while fixing his version of his consulate in ornate prose. The Pro Archia simultaneously becomes a simulacrum of the poem which Cicero hopes Archias will write and Cicero's own pre-mortem funeral oration. Yet the Pro Archia's suppressed legal arguments pregure the eventual failure of his immediate self-fashioning aims. The In Pisonem's invective inverts the Pro Archia's self-fashioning strategies in order to debunk Piso's image and to recuperate Cicero's own prestige at the expense of Piso's. The In Pisonem has the same long-range cultural ambitions as the Pro Archia, but without the previous speech's hopes for tangible short-term success. Faced with his inability to cause Piso real political damage, Cicero crafts an ornately polished caricature of Piso designed to achieve canonical longevity. Cicero's reception by the orators of Seneca's Suasoriae and Controversiae gives evidence of the successes, and limitations, of these long-term cultural goals. (shrink)

Apart from these reservations, however, the child sacrifices certain immediate ends of satisfaction for ends which by their very transcendence elude him. The consequence of his new attitude on his interpretation of the actions of other individuals will he striking; for, inasmuch as their acts and gestures no longer signify as means to his immediate and tangible ends within his life-space, their behavior will be problematic, and the child will attempt to interrogate its meaning. Under the old dispensation he could (...) grasp the meaning of a bodily movement by following its direction towards an object in his proximate environment, and the end of the movement was simply the object viewed as terminus ad quem or as positively charged with respect to action. Under the new dispensation, based no longer on Pleasure and Pain but on Good and Bad, the signification of the gestures and speech of those around the child is transcendent in the sense that it does not aim at material objects or at combinations of the same in his proximate milieu, but at possible or ideal objects separated from the child not by an interval of space but by an interval of time. Thus the transcendent terminus of a gesture is not a materially given object but an object to be constructed and as yet existing only in the projects of the parents. Moral and intellectual formation is a process of self-alienation, of auto-suggestive submission to the Transcendent, interrupted periodically on the part of the child by acts of defiance, systematic contradiction and obstinacy, and regression to earlier modes of adjustment with considerable nuisance-value. If under the regime of indulgence the child becomes what he is by acquiring his immanent meaning in his activities of self-gratification, under the regime of discipline he becomes other than he is by a sacrifice of his determinate individuality. (shrink)

Argumentation is a cognitive process of reconstruction that occurs in the discursive proximal space. Multimodal argumentation, from a cognitive-semiotic perspective, suggests that certain multimodal structures can lead audiences to an accurate mental representation of argumentation, depending on the knowledge possessed, codes and signs employed (modes), and context. It is not necessary to have a formal standardized and verbal structure. We are able to argue effectively with others without the need for verbal translation, taking into account the semiotic interpretation of (...) the message. (shrink)