This study considers Newman’s sermon—“On the Nature of the Future Promise”—which he preached on 4 September 1825 at St. Clement’s Church, Oxford—likely with his mother and sisters present in the congregation; in addition to treating Newman’s style of preaching and Evangelical theology, this sermon’s theological and pastoral dimensions are also examined.

In this paper we consider the conditions of second-order exchangeability and second-order partially exchangeability together with some applications.The first application concerns a general linear state-space model in which the noise process is assumed to be second-order partially exchangeable. Other applications of the second-order exchangeability condition regard statistical procedures in which imprecise prior probability assessments are employed.

This paper describes the perspectives of stakeholders within the North American dairy industry on key issues affecting the welfare of dairy cattle. Five heterogeneous focus groups were held during a dairy cattle welfare meeting in Guelph, Canada in October 2012. Each group contained between 7 and 10 participants and consisted of a mix of dairy producers, veterinarians, academics, students, and dairy industry specialists. The 1-h facilitated discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Content analysis of the resulting transcripts showed that participants (...) across all stakeholder categories identified lameness as the most important welfare issue facing dairy cattle. Other prominent issues of concern included cow comfort, disease, on-farm mortality, stockmanship, painful procedures, injuries, cull cow management, calf management, and restriction of behavioural freedoms. Participants typically gave several reasons for why they considered issues problematic. Underlying reasons were grouped according to animal-centered concerns [at both the individual and at the herd level ] and industry-centered concerns . This analysis identified areas of shared concern among diverse stakeholder groups, which should aid in the development of standards and policies that satisfy stakeholders within and external to the dairy industry. (shrink)

This paper proposes a sender-receiver model to explain two large-scale patterns observed in natural languages: Zipf’s inverse power law relating the frequency of word use and word rank, and the negative correlation between the frequency of word use and rate of lexical change. Computer simulations show that the model recreates Zipf’s inverse power law and the negative correlation between signal frequency and rate of change, provided that agents balance the rates with which they invent new signals and forget old ones. (...) Results are robust across a wide range of parameter values and structural assumptions, such as different forgetting rules and forgetting rates. Analysis of the model further suggests that Zipf’s law relating word frequency and rank arises because of language-external factors and that frequent signals change less because frequent signals are less subject to drift than rare ones. The paper concludes with some brief considerations on model-based and data-driven approaches in philosophy. (shrink)

It is long known that facial configurations play a critical role when inferring mental and emotional states from others. Nevertheless, there is still a scientific debate on how we infer emotions from facial configurations. The theory of constructed emotion (TCE) suggests that we may infer different emotions from the same facial configuration, depending on the context (e.g. provided by visual and lexical cues) in which they are perceived. For instance, a recent study found that participants were more accurate in inferring (...) mental and emotional states across three different datasets (i.e. RMET, static and dynamic emojis) when words were provided (i.e. forced-choice task), compared to when they were not (i.e. free-labelling task), suggesting that words serve as contexts that modulate the inference from facial configurations. The goal of the current within-subject study was to replicate and extend these findings by adding a fourth dataset (KDEF-dyn), consisting of morphed human faces (to increase the ecological validity). Replicating previous findings, we observed that words increased accuracy across the three (previously used) datasets, an effect that was also observed for the facial morphed stimuli. Our findings are in line with the TCE, providing support for the importance of contextual verbal cues in emotion perception. (shrink)

Summary The treatment of the consonant ‘T’ in the names Tharsus and Thartarus and some temporal clauses shows that the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri was written by a Phoenician native speaker. Comparisons with both coins and laws issued under Caracalla suggest that this work has been written at Tarsus under this emperor. The author’s major aim was that of maintaining that both the Tyche of the city and its new founder were Tyrians. He wanted to argue against the contemporary ambition (...) of his fellow citizens to be Greek. (shrink)

Nostalgia refers to that painful experience due to the impossibility of recovering a past whose memory provokes a feeling of comforting happiness and which, nevertheless, inevitably attracts us. This leads us to a reiterated tendency to remember in search of that space of familiarity, of sense, which we know is lost, although we trust that it’s still redeemable. In this article we will analyze this possibility of reencounter that, in its expression, enables a potential recognition of oneself, that is, an (...) opportunity to reaffirm the past-present continuity that reinforces the unfolding of a life project today, looking at the future. (shrink)

Attention is a cognitive phenomenon that, for its multiple functions and its permeability to emotional and cultural aspects, it’s a phenomenon with difficult definition. At the same time, the reasons that difficult its definition makes it a fundamental piece to understand the human behaviour, particularly the way that it interacts with its environment. In this article, we want to review the role of attention in the awareness process that allow the subject an adequate adaptation to the environment, and, through it, (...) set his perspective of reality, his own «world». / La atención es un fenómeno cognitivo que, debido a sus múltiples funciones y a su permeabilidad a aspectos emocionales y culturales, resulta un fenómeno de difícil definición. Al tiempo, eso que por una parte dificulta su aprehensión, por otra la convierte en una pieza fundamental para comprender el comportamiento humano, particularmente el modo en que interactúa con su medio. En el presente artículo queremos revisar el papel de la atención en los procesos de toma de conciencia que permiten al sujeto una adecuada adaptación al medio y cómo, a través de ella, configurar su perspectiva de la realidad, su «mundo». (shrink)

In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel characterizes Arabic/Islamic philosophy as ‘Oriental’. The meaning and motivation of this characterization are not obvious. In this paper, I address his treatment and outline the key ideas that lead Hegel to describe Islamic philosophy as ‘Oriental’. By highlighting similarities and differences in relation to Oriental philosophy, I shed light on Hegel's approach to Islamic philosophy, which is connected to his view of Oriental philosophy, the East and Islam in its various aspects, (...) and to his more general view of the history of philosophy and of the Absolute as spirit. (shrink)

This paper develops a response to the ethical conception of the human Other formulated by Gilles Deleuze in his review of Michel Tournier’s 1967 novel Friday. The central contention here is that although Deleuze develops a compelling notion of intensive ethics in response to Tournier’s novel, that ethics also remains deeply problematic in refusing to ascribe a positive role to the human Other. My wager is that some of these problems can be brought to light by placing Deleuze’s philosophy in (...) dialogue with that of Emmanuel Levinas. As I seek to show, Levinas’s philosophy of alterity not only reveals that Deleuze is mistaken in failing to ascribe a positive ethical role to the human Other, but also begins to point the way toward a more positive conception of ethics that does not oppose the Other to the intensive realm that Deleuze so much values. (shrink)

In their shared works, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari repeatedly advise that ethical practices of experimentation must be imbued with a large dose of prudence. Among commentators, this concept of prudence has primarily been read in cautionary terms, as that which merely enables ethical subjects to avoid the “many dangers” of experimentation. By contrast, this article develops a wider, more positive reading of Deleuzo-Guattarian prudence. Focussing specifically on A Thousand Plateaus, I show that, for Deleuze and Guattari, we must always (...) exercise prudence in ethics because prudence constitutes one positive means of maximizing the success of experimental ethical praxes. (shrink)

La atención es uno de los fenómenos psicológicos más presentes en la obra orteguiana y, a la vez, uno de los más desatendidos por la crítica. Habitualmente el fenómeno ha quedado eclipsado por ideas tradicionalmente más nodales como la de “perspectiva”, sin embargo, no podemos ignorar que ideas como esta hallan su fundamento precisamente sobre el fenómeno de la atención, lo que le otorga una importancia a considerar. En el presente libro, mediante una revisión crítica de los textos orteguianos, se (...) despliega y reúne un conjunto de argumentos con los que defender la centralidad de la atención en el pensamiento orteguiano ofreciendo, con ella, uno de los elementos cardinales en la estructuración sistemática de su obra, pues, como veremos, es en la atención donde el autor halla el fundamento para edi car su método perspectivista y, a su vez, donde descansa cierta posibilidad de cristalizar su doctrina raciovitalista. (shrink)

Con la obra de Poliziano se refuerza la idea de la existencia de un topos que, por su valencia de significado es adoptado por toda una serie de artistas que de alguna manera expresan en él su propia adhesión a la idea platónica de naturaleza, de lugar metafísico, ideal y abstracto. El "jardín", modelo instrumental y racionalizado, muestra el gusto de finales del siglo XV, que impregna todos los ámbitos de la creatividad, hasta el punto de que la Naturaleza termina (...) siendo una creación de la mente humana. El autor describe en este trabajo cómo el horizonte estético y filosófico trazado por Poliziano en sus Stanze, cuyos valores y gustos recrea, puede tomarse como clave para sondear la extrema complejidad del siglo XV. © Centro de Investigaciones sobre Vico. Cuadernos sobre Vico - Todos los derechos reservados. (shrink)

The author examines the intriguing link between magic and Gnosticism.

Dans beaucoup de textes magiques , on retrouve des triangles, des carrés et des cercles créés par des mots magiques arrangés selon ces for­mes. Une série de gemmes et de papyri avait recours à des héros de la mythologie grecque pour la guérison de certaines maladies. On s’adressait à Tantale, Lycurgue ou Persée pour contrôler des organes du corps humain, et les formules qui les nommaient étaient écrites en forme de triangles. On a l’habitude d’expliquer ces formations triangulaires de mots (...) comme une soustraction progressive de lettres qui faisait décroître la maladie et les autres maux. Cette explication est valable dans certains cas, mais non dans d’autres. Souvent des triangles du même type ajoutent chaque partie du mot au mot lui-même, comme dans le cas de noms de divinités, dont la force était multipliée par cette opération graphique. La Tetraktys pythagoricienne est le cas le plus ancien de ce type d’additions. Les formations carrées de mots multipliaient un mot par lui-même et représentaient d’autres formes d’exaltation d’un nom divin ou d’une formule magique. Ces spéculations se fondaient sur la pensée mathématique et géométrique des pythagoriciens. Les mots magiques palindromiques étaient souvent écrits sous forme circulaire, laquelle pouvait entourer et contrôler le nom d’une personne ou des symboles du mal.Geometric formations of words in the ancient magic arts. In many magical texts triangles, squares and circles often occur, which are created by magical words arranged in these forms. A series of gems and papyri look to the heroes of Greek mythology for the treatment of specific diseases. In fact, it is known that spells invoking Tantalos, Lycourgos or Perseus were created in order to control the organs of the human body and that triangular word formations were used to write these spells. The usual explanation of triangular word formations maintains that the progressive elimination of letters compels sickness and other evil to diminish. This is true, but this explanation cannot be applied to every triangle or wing formation. Similar triangles often add each part of the word to the others, as in the case of divine names, whose force is magnified by such a graphic operation. The pythagoric Tetraktys is the most ancient example of such sums. The square formations multiplied one word by itself and represented other ways of extolling a divine name or the might of a magical spell. These speculations were based on the mathematics and geometry of the Pythagoric tradition. Palindromic magical words were often written in circular formations, which could cluster round and control the name of a person or symbols of something evil. (shrink)

This study considers Newman’s sermon—“On the Nature of the Future Promise”—which he preached on 4 September 1825 at St. Clement’s Church, Oxford—likely with his mother and sisters present in the congregation; in addition to treating Newman’s style of preaching and Evangelical theology, this sermon’s theological and pastoral dimensions are also examined.

Over half a century ago, George Zipf observed that more frequent words tend to be older. Corpus studies since then have confirmed this pattern, with more frequent words being replaced and regularized less often than less frequent words. Two main hypotheses have been proposed to explain this: that frequent words change less because selection against innovation is stronger at higher frequencies, or that they change less because stochastic drift is stronger at lower frequencies. Here, we report the first experimental test (...) of these hypotheses. Participants were tasked with learning a miniature language consisting of two nouns and two plural markers. Nouns occurred at different frequencies and were subjected to treatments that varied drift and selection. Using a model that accounts for participant heterogeneity, we measured the rate of noun regularization, the strength of selection, and the strength of drift in participant responses. Results suggest that drift alone is sufficient to generate the elevated rate of regularization we observed in low‐frequency nouns, adding to a growing body of evidence that drift may be a major driver of language change. (shrink)