A number of theories about the origins of musicality have incorporated biological and social perspectives. Darwin argued that musicality evolved by sexual selection, functioning as a courtship display in reproductive partner choice. Darwin did not regard musicality as a sexually dimorphic trait, paralleling evidence that both sexes produce and enjoy music. A novel research strand examines the effect of musicality on sexual attraction by acknowledging the importance of facial attractiveness. We previously demonstrated that music varying in emotional content increases the (...) perceived attractiveness and dating desirability of opposite-sex faces only in females, compared to a silent control condition. Here, we built upon this approach by presenting the person depicted (target) as the performer of the music (prime), thus establishing a direct link. We hypothesized that musical priming would increase sexual attraction, with high-arousing music inducing the largest effect. Musical primes (25 s, piano solo music) varied in arousal and pleasantness, and targets were photos of other-sex faces of average attractiveness and with neutral expressions (2 s). Participants were 35 females and 23 males (heterosexual psychology students, single, and no hormonal contraception use) matched for musical background, mood, and liking for the music used in the experiment. After musical priming, females’ ratings of attractiveness and dating desirability increased significantly. In males, only dating desirability was significantly increased by musical priming. No specific effects of music-induced pleasantness and arousal were observed. Our results, together with other recent empirical evidence, corroborate the sexual selection hypothesis for the evolution of human musicality. (shrink)

A short number of entries in Andalusi biographical sources are devoted to pious women. These women are usually described as practising the recitation of the Quran, giving alms, leading a retired life and fasting. Together with other texts, these biographies draw a picture in which a secluded life and fasting became the privileged characteristics of religious piety among Andalusi women. Fasting, in particular, could be used as a means of going beyond the limits imposed on women by Muslim orthopraxis.

Marine Lorrain : Dans votre travesti, est-ce que vous pouviez compter sur une aide quelconque des Tibétains tout au long de votre pèlerinage? Comment faisiez-vous pour subsister? Alexandra David-Néel : Ah, il y avait des villages. Devant les villages, on s’en allait mendier, puisqu’on était des mendiants. On s’en allait mendier et, puis, on chantait des choses religieuses aux portes des villages. Je fais ça très bien, du reste ; mon fils aussi, lui, il est tibétain, naturellement. Et alors,...

Poussin, à Rome, dit du Caravage qu'il était venu au monde pour détruire la peinture et cependant il est dit aussi qu'il possédait l'art de peindre tout entier. Ce livre cherche non point à résoudre une contradiction mais plutôt à développer une inconsistance du système représentatif dans le procès de peindre de Poussin au Caravage et vice versa. Il y sera donc question de mimésis et de fantaisie, d'histoire et d'action, de perspective et de ténèbres, de mort et de décapitation...

Motivated by Kalman residuated lattices, Nelson residuated lattices and Nelson paraconsistent residuated lattices, we provide a natural common generalization of them. Nelson conucleus algebras unify these examples and further extend them to the non-commutative setting. We study their structure, establish a representation theorem for them in terms of twist structures and conuclei that results in a categorical adjunction, and explore situations where the representation is actually an isomorphism. In the latter case, the adjunction is elevated to a categorical equivalence. By (...) applying this representation to the original motivating special cases we bring to the surface their underlying similarities. (shrink)

We previously showed that owner personality and human-dog relationship predicted the performance of a human-dog dyad in a practical task. Based on the same data set we presently investigate the effects of individual and social factors on the social attraction of dogs to their owners. Twenty-two male and female owners and their intact male dogs were observed during a “picture viewing” test, where we diverted the owner's attention away from their dog whilst it was permitted to move freely around the (...) room. Owner personality axis “neuroticism” and dog personality axis “vocal and aggressive” were, respectively, positively and negatively related to the time the dog stayed in proximity to the owner. Quality of relationship and attachment also had significant effects on this proximity. We conclude that personality and the nature of the human-dog relationship may all influence dogs' social attraction to their owners. (shrink)

L'actuel regain d'intérêt pour la philosophie témoigne de l'attente la plus légitime qui soit, eu égard aux prétentions traditionnelles et à l'aura de cette discipline, mais également la plus difficile à satisfaire : qu'elle mène celui qui épouse ses chemins à une véritable réappropriation de sa propre existence, à une recréation personnelle. Impossible ici de se satisfaire d'un horizon de consolations aimables et de recettes de prospérité, non plus que de vertiges théorisants ou d'érudition monomaniaque. Face à un monde qui (...) semble avoir d'avance consumé nos élans et consommé nos révoltes, les postures et commodités ne sont plus de mise. Un retour d'authenticité s'impose à l'engagement philosophique lui-même. En fait, la mise à l'épreuve de soi est passage obligé, dès lors que de mort de Dieu en chute des idoles de remplacement, nul ne peut plus prétendre faire surgir la valeur irréductible de l'humain d'ailleurs que de l'homme... D'où la pertinence et l'attrait de l'exploration, ici proposée, des voies traditionnelles et ressorts nouveaux d'une maïeutique propre à faire naître l'homme à lui-même, à travers la mise à nu et le retrait de tous les masques que nous imposent la vie en société et le respect de ses codes. Poussant au déracinement du moi comme à une étape nécessaire au dévoilement de notre vérité, les auteurs de cet essai s'inscrivent dans la lointaine filiation de ces philosophes de l'Antiquité (Stoïciens, Cyniques) qui vivaient leur philosophie comme un travail sur soi, voire une ascèse, et dans le prolongement de tout ce pan de la pensée contemporaine qui, avec Foucault notamment, s'est employé à armer la philosophie d'un pouvoir maximal de transformation croisée de celui qui s'y adonne et du social qui l'environne. (shrink)

We previously showed that owner personality and human–dog relationship predicted the performance of a human–dog dyad in a practical task. Based on the same data set we presently investigate the effects of individual and social factors on the social attraction of dogs to their owners. Twenty-two male and female owners and their intact male dogs were observed during a “picture viewing” test, where we diverted the owner’s attention away from their dog whilst it was permitted to move freely around the (...) room. Owner personality axis “neuroticism” and dog personality axis “vocal and aggressive” were, respectively, positively and negatively related to the time the dog stayed in proximity to the owner. Quality of relationship and attachment also had significant effects on this proximity. We conclude that personality and the nature of the human–dog relationship may all influence dogs’ social attraction to their owners. Keywords: companion animals; dog–human attachment; dyadic relationships; human-animal interactions; human–dog attachment; human–dog relationship; human–dog social interactions; personality; pets. (shrink)

Pourquoi a-t-on raison de se révolter contre l'homme-machine et le monde mécanique qu'entraînent les mutations technologiques incontrôlées? Et si, contre les robots, la fragilité faisait l'humanité? Un traité philosophique, un manuel de combat. Dans cet essai de philosophie contemporaine, Pascal Marin rassemble un large faisceau d'arguments contre ceux qui entendent faire de l'homme une machine. De chapitre en chapitre, il dénonce le fantasme du transhumanisme californien, qui s'exporte aujourd'hui à travers des médias en mal de sujets. Mais selon Marin, cette (...) crise du sens de l'humain est peut-être une chance pour la pensée : elle contraint à mieux prendre la mesure de la vie qui demeure énigmatique à la science. Cette enquête d'anthropologie radicale progresse donc par des chemins insolites jusqu'à atteindre à l'ironie d'un constat paradoxal : ce pouvoir technicien fascinant, qui semble sans limite, aurait pour cause le rapport intime que l'homme entretient depuis toujours avec le raté, la panne, le bug, bref tout ce qui peut mettre justement une machine en défaut. Un cri d'alerte, où l'intelligence et le style convainquent à chaque page. (shrink)

In this article I analyse the structural and cultural conditions of low-caste women's political agency in urban north India. Whereas in Western feminist political theory, the sexual division of labour is considered to be a key constraint for women's political participation, I show how this has a secondary relevance in the context analysed. I argue that issues concerning the division of labour are intertwined with and subject to those of male consent and support for women's activities. I illustrate how it (...) is often the supposedly ‘oppressive’ household boundaries rather than alternative outer spaces that, under a series of enabling circumstances, initiate women's political activities. Against this backdrop, I show how Indian women activists’ political agency is shaped by men's role, and how agency's relational nature is embedded in women's lifecycles, everyday practices and cultural expectations; in essence, in overall gendered agency. Comparative analyses between Western and non-Western models of political participation and discourse have only just begun. In this respect, I contribute to this nascent field in the following directions: not only do the arguments I present in this article challenge the individualistic Western subject of political action, but they also complicate the idea of the resulting empowerment as a culturally constructed process whose understanding arises from the dialectics between insider and outsider values. (shrink)

In the current debate on republicanism the relationship between republicanism and democracy is an aspect whose historical dimension has thus far hardly been investigated. It offers instead also the chance to clear up ambiguities on the opposition between republicanism and liberalism. In this sense, recent research on the radical Enlightenment, on the link between economics and politics, by a new reading of physiocracy as political discourse, and on the foundations of political representation represent some of the most important advances made (...) by historical research over the last few years. This essay wishes to trace these results back to a long line of research on a modern republicanism that had already been investigated many decades ago by a historian of the Enlightenment interested in republican tradition, Franco Venturi, the author of Settecento riformatore and of Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment, to which John Pocock dedicated the first volume of his recent Barbarism and Religion. By means of a successful integration of three recent essays by John Israel on the uniqueness of Dutch republican discourse, by Richard Whatmore on the economic roots of French republicanism and by Nadia Urbinati on the foundations of representative democracy in Condorcet, it is possible to isolate the characteristics of a democratic republicanism. Among the various threads that have been followed up, the theme of equality has surfaced in various ways in the search for the characteristics of modern republicanism. These highlight the idea of the emergence in the early modern age of an European political culture and of a democratic and egalitarian republicanism that was encouraged by the contribution from various national situations within which it forged its identity, against the model of an Atlantic republicanism. (shrink)

All humans share a universal, evolutionarily ancient approximate number system (ANS) that estimates and combines the numbers of objects in sets with ratio-limited precision. Interindividual variability in the acuity of the ANS correlates with mathematical achievement, but the causes of this correlation have never been established. We acquired psychophysical measures of ANS acuity in child and adult members of an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucú, who have a very restricted numerical lexicon and highly variable access to mathematics education. (...) By comparing Mundurucú subjects with and without access to schooling, we found that education significantly enhances the acuity with which sets of concrete objects are estimated. These results indicate that culture and education have an important effect on basic number perception. We hypothesize that symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical thinking mutually enhance one another over the course of mathematics instruction. (shrink)

Although we are beginning to understand the neurocognitive processes that underlie the emergence of dreaming, what accounts for the bizarre phenomenology of dreams remains debated. I address this question by comparing dreaming with waking mind wandering and challenging previous accounts that utilize bizarreness to mark a sharp divide between conscious experiences in waking and sleeping. Instead, I propose that bizarreness is a common, non-deficient feature of spontaneous offline simulations occurring across the sleep-wake cycle and can be tied to the specific (...) characteristics of spontaneous thought as being dynamic, unconstrained, (hyper)associative and highly variable in content. Rather than misrepresenting waking reality, bizarreness can be employed to investigate the very building blocks of spontaneous cognition. The absence of bizarreness in thought processes is imposed by automatic and deliberate cognitive constraints. By contrast, thought and memory processes operating on their own without such constraints are inherently marked by different degrees and types of bizarreness. (shrink)

Nous remercions chaleureusement Manuela Ivone Cunha et la revue Terrain. Revue d'ethnologie de l'Europe de nous avoir autorisés à reproduire ce texte. Celui-ci a déjà paru dans Terrain, N° 29, 1997, p. 59-68 et été mis en ligne ici. Résumé : Le temps est une référence omniprésente de la vie en prison, l'un et l'autre étant parfois assimilés. L'emprisonnement entraîne un changement du rapport à un temps qui devient plus objectivé. Multiforme, ce rapport varie selon les diverses périodisations mises (...) en œuvres - Anthropologie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay aims at reconsidering the impact of Physiocratic ideas on the United States context during and after the American Revolution, which represented the first turning point concerning the democratic implications of political economy. In the confrontation in the 1790s between Jefferson’s Republicans and Hamilton’s Federalists the early scientific analysis of economics, grounded in the central role of agriculture formulated by Physiocracy, gave strong theoretical validation of the agrarian democracy ideology as an alternative to the British model and contributed (...) to shaping the American identity. The article will investigate this opposition and the economic culture that provides theoretical foundations to two opposed political projects. The reasons and the forms of this impact will be explored through the confrontation between Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures and George Logan’s series of pamphlets conceived as an orchestrated campaign against the Secretary of the Treasury. The study of Physiocracy beyond Europe and the Old Regime can offer new and divergent outlooks compared to recent studies aiming at questioning the relevance of Physiocratic theory in the Old Regime social and political context and its impact during the French Revolution. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to return to the genesis of the American agrarian myth in the eighteenth century, as a path to investigate the origins of the American national identity. This will be done by means of a comprehensive reassessment of St. John de Crèvecoeur, the Norman noble whose name is bound to the success of Letters from an American Farmer. His work contains the origins of the agrarian ideal as a peculiarly American phenomenon, prior to independence and (...) before Republican ideology placed agrarian democracy at its foundations, making the project of agrarian development and democratic participation inseparable one from another. A Frenchman who became American and then, after 25 years, French again, Crèvecoeur represents an ideal lens through which to analyse the hitherto insufficiently explored contribution of French economic culture to the creation of American national identity. As a multi-faceted figure whose richness has been dominated by his image as the author of a best-selling autobiographical novel, Crèvecoeur is here also seen as an agronomist who was no stranger to physiocracy and as a diplomat and French intellectual who always felt profoundly American. It was precisely this attachment to the land, seen as fundamental to the vision of a new and distinct form of peaceful cohabitation and democratic partnership, that became a political theme and an economic development project of the new nation and, as such, was a main plank of the agrarian ideology of Thomas Jefferson's Republicans. (shrink)

A layoff is a threatening yet common event which employees might face at some point in their working lives. In two scenario-based experiments, we investigated which actions of a layoff agent during a dismissal notification meeting may contribute to laid-off employees’ fairness judgments and negative attitudes toward the employer. In general, the extent to which layoff victims were treated with respect was consistently found to increase perceptions of interpersonal and procedural fairness and to mitigate negative attitudes toward the employer. Further (...) results showed that layoff victims preferred to be given an adequate explanation of the reasons for the layoff and to receive notice from the direct supervisor. Relationships between the layoff agent’s actions and layoff victims’ negative attitudes toward the employer were mediated by perceptions of procedural fairness. In addition, delegating the layoff agent’s task to an external consultant increased perceived psychological contract breach. Our findings have important implications for organizational justice research and for the managerial practice of implementing fair layoffs. In particular, small actions, such as treating employees with respect, might be of benefit both to humans and organizations. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 182-184.

To date, we know very little about the effects of the differences in attachment classifications on the physiological correlates of stress regulation in adolescent age groups. The present study examined for the first time heart rate and heart rate variability during an attachment interview in adolescents. HR and HRV data were collected during a baseline assessment as well as during the administration of the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System in a community-based sample of 56 adolescents. We additionally used the Adult (...) Attachment Interview in 50% of our sample to test the convergent validity. Adolescents with a secure attachment representation showed a higher HRV from baseline to the AAP interview compared to those with an insecure-dismissing and the unresolved group. A comparison between the two insecure attachment groups showed no significant difference related to HR and HRV. Cohen’s Kappa revealed an almost perfect agreement between the AAP and the AAI for the four-group classification. Our results indicate that adolescents with a secure attachment representation are more capable of dealing with attachment-related distress which is represented in higher HRV during an attachment interview. (shrink)

Gender bias is a recalcitrant problem in academia and society. However, dissent has been created on this issue. We focus on dissenting studies by Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, arguing that they reach conclusions that are unwarranted on the basis of the available evidence and that they ignore fundamental objections to their methodological decisions. Drawing on discussions from other contexts, particularly on manufactured dissent concerning anthropogenic climate change, we conclude that dissent on gender bias substantially contributes to the (...) exacerbation of biases in society and an increasing number of attacks on researchers, making it both epistemically and socially problematic. (shrink)

We establish the Robinson joint consistency theorem for the infinite-valued propositional logic of Łukasiewicz. As a corollary we easily obtain the amalgamation property for MV-algebras—the algebras of Łukasiewicz logic: all pre-existing proofs of this latter result make essential use of the Pierce amalgamation theorem for abelian lattice-ordered groups together with the categorical equivalence Γ between these groups and MV-algebras. Our main tools are elementary and geometric.

Associations of Politics and Nature: Cuban Corals in East‐Berlin, 1964–1974. The concept of association is centre stage in ecological studies on coral reefs. It describes the specific composition of diverse coral species in a given reef section that depends, among other factors, on the type of surf and the form of the seabed. ‘Association’ is also an important concept in Bruno Latour's plea for transcending the division between humans and objects in sociological analysis. Drawing on the idea of association, the (...) article explores the history of the corals that were moved from the northern Cuban coast to East‐Berlin in the late 1960s and worked into a coral reef diorama exhibited in East Berlin's Natural History Museum in 1974. By focusing on the mobilisation of the corals between Cuba and the GDR as well as within the museum, I will show that far from being sharply defined objects of nature, the corals collected in Cuba and displayed in East‐Berlin must be understood as parts of constantly changing heterogeneous associations of organisms, non‐organic material, national politics, postcolonial economies and institutional politics. (shrink)

Annotation Die Studie behandelt die sprachliche Akkulturation der Hugenotten, die als franzAsische Protestanten am Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts auch in Brandenburg Zuflucht fanden. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Rekonstruktion der sprachlichen Integration dieser Migranten, die im Laufe der Zeit ihre franzAsische Sprache aufgaben und zur deutschen Sprache A1/4bergingen. Die Analyse der sprachlichen Situation in drei verschiedenen Hugenottenkolonien zeigt, wie die Sprachwechselprozesse, je nach Ort und Kontext, einen sehr unterschiedlichen Verlauf nahmen.

El objeto de estudio de la presente investigación está constituido por las discriminaciones legales sufridas por las mujeres migrantes trabajadoras del hogar en España. Específicamente, aborda las discriminaciones que resultan de la intersección entre las diferentes relaciones de poder que afectan a este sector, con la finalidad de contribuir a la visibilización de las problemáticas existentes y de las demandas respectivas. Para ello, además de los estudios disponibles, se han tomado en consideración las voces de las propias trabajadoras a partir (...) de la observación participante en el sindicato de mujeres trabajadoras del hogar Sindihogar. (shrink)