Taalfilosofische essays waarin het werk van kunstenaars, filosofen en wetenschapsbeoefenaars wordt geanalyseerd op de rol van taal.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 155-165.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NIETZSCHE AND MIMESIS by Mark P. Drost The phenomenon of imitation as it operates in Nietzsche's dieory of ecstasy is the central and most important element in his theory of tragedy and art in general. In Nietzsche's vision oftragedy we see diat this ecstasy is not limited to the individual artist, but it infects the tragic chorus and the spectators as well. Nietzsche's reinterpretation of the concept of imitation (...) is presented through the Apollonian and Dionysian artistic impulses which express themselves as distinct tendencies in die arts. In order to understand Nietzsche's concept of imitation one must trace the artwork back to the artist whose activity is an imitation of the Apollonian or die Dionysian state. The fusion of these artistic impulses in their highest development occurs in the chorus. The ecstatic impulse of the chorus results in a paradoxical act of self-displacement: a vision which exceeds the boundaries of the stage and diminishes die distance which is normally secured through the theatrical conventions of distance. We shall see how Nietzsche's vision oftragedy can be understood as a reinterpretation ofthe classical concept of imitation by contrasting it with Aristotle's theory. The classical concept ofart as imitation (mimesis) is best expressed in die Poetics ofAristotle. Under the term "mimesis" there is included an array of artistic activity, e.g., epic poetry, "the poetry of tragic drama, and, moreover comedy and dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and lyre-playing" (1447al4). Since tragedy has its roots in poetry, the causes from which tragedy arises are similar to (if not identical with) the causes from which poetry arises. Poetic imitation itself appears to have two causes. First, imitation is natural to man from childhood (1448b2). Man is the most mimetic of creatures, and in childhood he learns by imitating the 309 310Philosophy and Literature people, diings, and events around him. Second, because he learns through them, man takes delight in seeing die images of things and recognizing that they are imitative. Since the pleasure of such recognition is so great, one can in fact take delight in seeing images ofthings which are painful to see in their original (1448b12). The former cause yields pleasure from the knowledge of the original while die second cause yields pleasure because one knows it is not an original. Thus the knowledge that what is being witnessed is an imitation is required for the mimetic pleasure to be experienced. Ifone has not seen the original, the pleasure one experiences is somediing different from die pleasure one takes in imitation (1448b6). It is not that imitation can never merely reproduce or copy its original in the manner of a perfect imitation, but artistic imitation requires that diere always be a sufficient difference between the representation and the original to allow for knowledge and die mimetic pleasure subsequent to it. The paradox of imitation is this: the more perfect the imitation is, the less it is known as a work ofimitation. In general, the greater die degree of the realism ofthe imitation, the greater is the need for some indication that it is art and not reality. With respect to this Arthur Danto says, "Mimesis itself, providing diat the conventions of dislocation are clear to the audience, in fact inhibits just those beliefs that would be activated widiout those conventions."1 The spectator could not obtain mimetic pleasure from the "perfect imitation" if the illusion it generated were so effective as to render the artistic medium completely transparent. The causes of mimetic pleasure are die fact diat one is presented widi an imitation and that one is aware of die difference (and/or similarity) between an object and its representation dirough an artistic medium which is never completely transparent. Although by perceiving an imitation we learn of the thing imitated, it is not essential to die concept ofimitation that there actually and empirically exist an original event or figure which explains the content of die imitation. Though the concept ofimitation is a relational concept, it is not so in the sense that there must be an originally existing personage or state ofaffairs against which we may measure the accuracy ofme mimetic representation. The... (shrink)

Day length provides an important environmental cue by signalling conditions favourable for flowering. While Arabidopsis promotes flowering in response to long days, rice promotes flowering in response to short days. Despite this difference, a recent paper reveals that the network controlling this response is highly conserved in these distantly related plants, only the activity of one component is reversed.1 This reveals how an important developmental process can be diversified for adaptation by using the same set of genes, but regulating them (...) differently. BioEssays 25:829–832, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

“Double-halfers” think that throughout the Sleeping Beauty Problem, Beauty should keep her credence that a fair coin flip came up heads equal to 1/2. I introduce a new wrinkle to the problem that shows even double-halfers can't keep Beauty's credences equal to the objective chances for all coin-flip propositions. This leaves no way to deny that self-locating information generates an unexpected kind of inadmissible evidence.

Political leaders may change their mind about a policy, or even a significant moral issue. While genuinely changing one’s mind is not hypocritical, there are reasons to think that leaders who claim such a change are merely hypocritically pandering for political advantage. Indeed, some social science studies allegedly confirm that constituents will judge political leaders who change positions as hypocritical. Yet these studies are missing crucial details that we normally use to distinguish genuine mind changers from hollow hypocrites. These details (...) suggest ways in which political leaders can communicate that their mind change is genuine without necessarily being judged hypocritical. (shrink)

On page 1 of his classic text, Millsap states, “Measurement invariance is built on the notion that a measuring device should function the same way across varied conditions, so long as those varied conditions are irrelevant [emphasis added] to the attribute being measured.” By construction, measurement invariance techniques require not only detecting varied conditions but also ruling out that these conditions inform our understanding of measured domains. In fact, measurement invariance techniques possess great utility when theory and research inform their (...) application to specific, varied conditions that, if not detected, introduce measurement biases, and, thus, depress measurement validity. Yet, we see emerging bodies of work where scholars have “put the cart before the horse” when it comes to measurement invariance, and they apply these techniques to varied conditions that, in fact, may reflect domain-relevant information. These bodies of work highlight a larger problem in measurement that likely cuts across many areas of scholarship. In one such area, youth mental health, researchers commonly encounter a set of conditions that nullify the use of measurement invariance, namely discrepancies between survey reports completed by multiple informants, such as parents, teachers, and youth themselves. In this paper, we provide an overview of conceptual, methodological, and measurement factors that should prevent researchers from applying measurement invariance techniques to detect informant discrepancies. Along the way, we cite evidence from the last 15 years indicating that informant discrepancies reflect domain-relevant information. We also apply this evidence to recent uses of measurement invariance techniques in youth mental health. Based on prior evidence, we highlight the implications of applying these techniques to multi-informant data, when the informant discrepancies observed within these data might reflect domain-relevant information. We close by calling for a moratorium on applying measurement invariance techniques to detect informant discrepancies in youth mental health assessments. In doing so, we describe how the state of the science would need to fundamentally “flip” to justify applying these techniques to detect informant discrepancies in this area of work. (shrink)

B. L. Ware and Wil Linkugel (1973) identified apologia as a rhetorical genre. Ever since, argumentation scholars have spent an enormous energy analyzing speeches of self-defense as well as public relations efforts to deny charges. Much less attention has been accorded to the act that prompts such contention, accusation. Argumentation in Political Interviews takes up a special case: discussions between journalists and politicians where charges of inconsistency arise and are uttered, disputed, and dispatched. The practice is common. The stakes are (...) high. “Flip-flopping” is an undesirable term for a politician who cannot get his thinking straight. Thus, journalists prize catching up a politician in contradictions; politicians wish to escape the clutches of contradiction and to appear reasonable.Corina Andone explains the dialectical structures and the rhetorical contexts for contemporary practices in the United Kingdom.Argumentation in Political Interviews extends pragma-dialectics general. (shrink)

Mathematics is one of the core STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subject disciplines. Engaging students in learning mathematics helps retain students in STEM fields and thus contributes to the sustainable development of society. To increase student engagement, some mathematics instructors have redesigned their courses using the flipped classroom approach. In this review, we examined the results of comparative studies published between 2011 and 2020 to summarize the effects of this instructional approach (vs. traditional lecturing) on students’ behavioral, emotional, and (...) cognitive engagement with mathematics courses. Thirty-three articles in K–12 and higher education contexts were included for analysis. The results suggest that the use of the flipped classroom approach may increase some aspects of behavioral engagement (e.g., interaction and attention/participation), emotional engagement (e.g., course satisfaction), and cognitive engagement (e.g., understanding of mathematics). However, we discovered that several aspects (e.g., students’ attendance, mathematics anxiety, and self-regulation) of student engagement have not been thoroughly explored and are worthy of further study. The results of this review have important implications for future flipped classroom practice (e.g., engaging students in solving real-world problems), and for research on student engagement (e.g., using more objective measures, such as classroom observation) in mathematics education. (shrink)

Mario Bunge is an important philosopher of science. But he does not limit himself to using his “truth-technology” in his particular philosophical discipline. For decades, he has also endeavored to achieve an independent profile as a public intellectual on the basis of his wide-ranging competence. To this end, he authoritatively criticizes authors who market themselves to the public as anti-scientists or as pseudo-scientists. On his home continent of Latin America, Mario Bunge is regarded as a role model because he has (...) achieved international recognition like no other South American philosopher before him. (shrink)

Background: An effectiveness assessment on ASCT in locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer identified serious ethical issues associated with this intervention. Our objective was to systematically review these aspects by means of a literature analysis. Methods: We chose the reflexive Socratic approach as the review method using Hofmann's question list, conducted a comprehensive literature search in biomedical, psychological and ethics bibliographic databases and screened the resulting hits in a 2-step selection process. Relevant arguments were assembled from the included articles, and (...) were assessed and assigned to the question list. Hofmann's questions were addressed by synthesizing these arguments. Results: Of the identified 879 documents 102 included arguments related to one or more questions from Hofmann's question list. The most important ethical issues were the implementation of ASCT in clinical practice on the basis of phase-II trials in the 1990s and the publication of falsified data in the first randomized controlled trials (Bezwoda fraud), which caused significant negative effects on recruiting patients for further clinical trials and the doctor-patient relationship. Recent meta-analyses report a marginal effect in prolonging disease-free survival, accompanied by severe harms, including death. ASCT in breast cancer remains a stigmatized technology. Reported health-related-quality-of-life data are often at high risk of bias in favor of the survivors. Furthermore little attention has been paid to those patients who were dying. Conclusions: The questions were addressed in different degrees of completeness. All arguments were assignable to the questions. The central ethical dimensions of ASCT could be discussed by reviewing the published literature. (shrink)

Surrealism in North Africa and Western Asia : crossings and encounters -- Multiple surrealisms -- Surrealist encounters.

Pets often factor in older adults’ health behaviors and decisions. However, the degree to which issues related to pet ownership are encountered or addressed by professionals working with this population remains unknown. The aim of this study was to identify specific issues stemming from pet ownership professionals had encountered in their work with older adults, people living with dementia, and care partners. An interdisciplinary sample completed an online survey addressing pet ownership issues encountered in their work. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, and (...) repeated measures ANOVAs were used to analyze quantitative data. A conventional content analysis was used to analyze open-ended responses to an item asking about “other” issues encountered in their work with these populations. The professionals estimated 46.29% of clients had been pet owners, 41.23% regularly asked about pets, and 79.22% had encountered issues related to pet ownership. Specific issues raised to the professionals varied by type of client. The professionals reported older adults most often raised getting pet items into the home and concerns about their pets’ health. The issues most often raised by people living with dementia to the professionals were planning for the pet due to a housing transition and basic pet care. Care partners focused on basic pet care and planning for the pet due to a housing transition. The professionals themselves most often raised the issues of basic pet care, concerns about falling, and the pets’ behavior. Professionals who entered clients’ homes were more likely to raise issues stemming from pet ownership compared to those who reported they did not enter clients’ homes in their current job, t = 5.59, p < 0.00001. The eleven new issues identified by the content analysis underscored how the health and wellbeing of people and their pets are linked. The results of this study provide strong evidence that professionals do encounter issues related to pet ownership. Including issues stemming from pet ownership into procedures, policies, and programs is likely to have positive impacts on those served by and working in the geriatric workforce. (shrink)

The Green Economy is a strategic development concept of the United Nations incorporating a broad array of potential meanings and implications. It is subject to academic conceptualisation, operationalisation, reflection and criticism. The aim of our paper is to conceptualise a subset of the multi-faceted and at times polarised debate around the implications and applications of the Green Economy concept, and to provide reflective grounds for approaches towards the concept. By using qualitative content analysis and a participatory approach, we investigate perceptions (...) of young researchers from various disciplines working on issues related to the Green Economy. The spectrum of disparate perceptions observed among the respondents is accommodated within a two-dimensional model. The dimensions are 1) the degree and nature of desired societal change in relation to the current economic model and set of institutions; and 2) the role of research in delivering such change. We discuss the model in light of the existing literature. (shrink)

An examination of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of "alienated self-consciousness.".

La compresión del movimiento pasional humano y su riqueza como un dinamismo que forma parte de la realidad sustancial de un ser inteligente corpóreo encuentra en la vasta obra de santo Tomás de Aquino un tesoro poco explotado y nunca suficientemente conocido que redunda, por su valor, en un enorme enriquecimiento del estudio para los estudiantes de Psicología, contribuyendo enormemente a elevar la compresión de esta dimensión fundamental del ser humano como ser racional y libre.

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

This entirely new work guides the reader through the most basic systems of modal propositional logic up to systems of modal predicate with identity, dealing with both technical developments and discussing philosophical applications.

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phe- notypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evo- lution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon dis- cussing the variability of the very ”contexts of life”: the in- teractions between organisms, biological niches and ecosys- tems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of (...) time the ”niches” which constitute the boundary conditions on selec- tion. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the ”phase space”, no laws of mo- tion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound concep- tual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to under- stand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of ”enablement”. Life lives in a web of enablement and radical emergence. This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases. Mutations or other causal differ- ences will allow us to stress that ”non conservation princi- ples” are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as sym- metries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to ”extended criticality” as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter. (shrink)

Editor James Fetzer presents an analytical and historical introduction and a comprehensive bibliography together with selections of many of Carl G. Hempel's most important studies to give students and scholars an ideal opportunity to appreciate the enduring contributions of one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century.

An effectiveness assessment on ASCT in locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer identified serious ethical issues associated with this intervention. Our objective was to systematically review these aspects by means of a literature analysis. We chose the reflexive Socratic approach as the review method using Hofmann's question list, conducted a comprehensive literature search in biomedical, psychological and ethics bibliographic databases and screened the resulting hits in a 2-step selection process. Relevant arguments were assembled from the included articles, and were assessed (...) and assigned to the question list. Hofmann's questions were addressed by synthesizing these arguments. Of the identified 879 documents 102 included arguments related to one or more questions from Hofmann's question list. The most important ethical issues were the implementation of ASCT in clinical practice on the basis of phase-II trials in the 1990s and the publication of falsified data in the first randomized controlled trials (Bezwoda fraud), which caused significant negative effects on recruiting patients for further clinical trials and the doctor-patient relationship. Recent meta-analyses report a marginal effect in prolonging disease-free survival, accompanied by severe harms, including death. ASCT in breast cancer remains a stigmatized technology. Reported health-related-quality-of-life data are often at high risk of bias in favor of the survivors. Furthermore little attention has been paid to those patients who were dying. The questions were addressed in different degrees of completeness. All arguments were assignable to the questions. The central ethical dimensions of ASCT could be discussed by reviewing the published literature. (shrink)

Listening to a speaker selectively practicing previously encoded information leads to better memory for the practiced information, but at the same time results in induced forgetting of related memories. These effects have been found to occur due to the concurrent, and covert, retrieval of information on the part of the listener. Using a modified version of the method of serial reproduction, this study explored the degree to which rehearsal and retrieval-induced forgetting effects propagated in 64 3-person-chains of connected participants. We (...) manipulated the degree of concurrent retrieval from the part of the listener by activating high and low relational motivations during the listening task. We showed that the degree of propagation of retrieval-induced forgetting was larger when concurrent retrieval was activated than when concurrent retrieval was attenuated. This study provides a framework that aims to bridge between micro-level cognitive phenomena and macro-level social dynamics. (shrink)