_Purpose._ This article aims at outlining the consider Ukrainian identity in the context of European collective action through the prism of value orientations/approaches. _Theoretical basis._ The following methods were used in order to cover the problem as objectively as possible: historical, analytical, comparative, socio-geographical, behavioral, and dialectical. The use of these methods contributed to tracing the peculiarities of identity and collective action in the dynamics of the historical process and social development. _Originality._ The role of identity in collective action formation (...) is considered. It was established that identity determines the socio-species structure and projects social development. After all, identification for a person in the formation process is a basic need that determines a person’s belonging, not identity. During the formation of "I" there is a combination of "I1" + "I2" + "Other" = "WE". This process is complex and long-term, but it is precisely the process that gives you the opportunity to clearly understand your "I" and know yourself. It was found that identity as a social phenomenon, which is related to the formation of the "I", is determined by certain circumstances, which can be conditionally divided into objective and subjective. After analyzing the scientific literature, a generalization was made that identity is not a new phenomenon, but it has certain features at each stage of social development. This became most noticeable in the conditions of globalization, when countries that are actually different perceive the "Other", unite around certain problems, and then this union forms a system of mutual relations. It is thanks to this approach that alliances, multicultural associations, etc. are formed, and an example of this is the heterogeneous European identity. Special attention is drawn to the role of values, which are the landmarks in the process of identity and the formation of collective action. Based on political, social, economic, historical processes and ontological features, it was established that identity is a dynamic process, since values during a person’s life, the existence of the state, etc. are variables. This is confirmed by the value orientation and various socio-political processes aimed at the formation of Homo in countries that have the status of "between". _Conclusions._ The article illustrates and justifies the existence of several forms of identity according to which the types of identity are formed. The fact proves that identity is not a constant process and varies due to multiple factors: social, political, economic, and religious as well as due to formations – regional, local, civilizational, etc. As practice shows, the problem of identity mostly has situational nature and arises due to the need for unification. The socio-historical process manifests the significance of the values in the formation of a collective European heterogeneous identity. These processes are influenced by many factors: geographical, historical, mythological, etc. (shrink)

Offering a solution to the skeptical puzzle is a central aim of Nozick's sensitivity account of knowledge. It is well-known that this account faces serious problems. However, because of its simplicity and its explanatory power, the sensitivity principle has remained attractive and has been subject to numerous modifications, leading to a of sensitivity accounts. I will object to these accounts, arguing that sensitivity accounts of knowledge face two problems. First, they deliver a far too heterogeneous picture of higher-level beliefs about (...) the truth or falsity of one's own beliefs. Second, this problem carries over to bootstrapping and Moorean reasoning. Some beliefs formed via bootstrapping or Moorean reasoning are insensitive, but some closely related beliefs in even stronger propositions are sensitive. These heterogeneous results regarding sensitivity do not fit with our intuitions about bootstrapping and Moorean reasoning. Thus, neither Nozick's sensitivity account of knowledge nor any of its modified versions can provide the basis for an argument that bootstrapping and Moorean reasoning are flawed or for an explanation why they seem to be flawed. (shrink)

A classic analytic approach to biological phenomena seeks to refine definitions until classes are sufficiently homogenous to support prediction and explanation, but this approach founders on cases where a single process produces objects with similar forms but heterogeneous behaviors. I introduce object spaces as a tool to tackle this challenging diversity of biological objects in terms of causal processes with well-defined formal properties. Object spaces have three primary components: (1) a combinatorial biological process such as protein synthesis that generates objects (...) with parts that are modular, independent, and organized according to an invariant syntax; (2) a notion of “distance” that relates the objects according to rules of change over time as found in nature or useful for algorithms; (3) mapping functions defined on the space that map its objects to other spaces or apply an evaluative criterion to measure an important quality, such as parsimony or biochemical function. Once defined, an object space can be used to represent and simulate the dynamics of phenomena on multiple scales; it can also be used as a tool for predicting higher-order properties of the objects, including stitching together series of causal processes. Object spaces are the basis for a strategy of theorizing, discovery, and analysis in biology: as heuristic idealizations of biology, they help us transform inchoate, intractable problems into articulated, well-structured ones. Developing an object space is a research strategy with a long, successful history under many other names, and it offers a unifying but not overreaching approach to biological theory. (shrink)

Under this title, I wish to clarify the philosophical perspective that has run through my work for the last fifteen years, in three volumes: L’hystérique entre Freud et Lacan, La folie dans la raison pure, and Les constructions de l’universel. In the first of these works, I reflected on the status of the body in psychoanalysis, on the distance that needed to be taken with regard to the two Western traditions of thought concerning the body, namely those of Aristotle and (...) Descartes, in order to understand Freud’s conceptions of the erogenous body and the drive. I also raised the question of the divergence between the physiological- and the drive-constructions of the body. In my second book, I tried to understand to what degree a philosophical system, in this case Kant’s transcendental theory of the object, may be the meeting point between a new logic—a new logic of negation in Kant’s case—and a fantasized encounter with a mad thinker. I also considered the way in which a philosophical text weaves several active heterogeneous directions like the warp and the weft within thought, and how they may be spotted in the text. Finally, in Les constructions de l’universel, I considered the relevance of the concept of the universal for understanding how conceptual thought detaches itself from its author, and compared art, philosophy, and dream analysis from this point of view. I also tried to evaluate the pertinence of Lacan’s project of producing a logic of sexuation, and the degree of autonomy such a project has with respect to the internal ambiguities of the logical and philosophical concept of the universal. In these three books, I have practiced a philosophy of contingency—contingency of the relation between discourses and contingency of the real with respect to the thought which knows it. It is this philosophy of contingency that I would like to explain. (shrink)

Las Relaciones Geográficas son textos escritos en español con el fin de obtener descripciones fiables del dominio colonial. Investigaciones anteriores con repertorios muy diferentes han establecido que la heterogeneidad léxica es una tendencia común a toda la producción escrita colonial. El objetivo de esta investigación es comprobar si un repertorio más concreto como las relaciones de la gobernación de Yucatán representa un conjunto homogéneo o heterogéneo en la incorporación del préstamo indígena. Con una metodología cuantitativa y cualitativa se analiza la (...) potencial pluralidad léxica de estos textos asociada a determinados factores. Las conclusiones corroboran la heterogeneidad léxica a pesar de ser un corpus uniforme y muestran tres tendencias a la hora de incluir los prehispanismos en los documentos españoles. Relaciones Geográficas are texts in Spanish that aim at obtaining reliable descriptions from the colonialism period. Previous research with very different repertoires have established that lexical heterogeneity is a common trend in the entire colonial written production. The objective of this research is to check whether a particular repertoire, such as relations of the Government of Yucatán represents a homogeneous or heterogeneous body of indigenous loans incorporation. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies are used to analyse the potential lexical plurality of these texts which are associated with certain specific factors. The findings corroborate that lexical heterogeneity is present, despite being a uniform corpus, and show three different trends when including prehispanic concepts in Spanish documents. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of the nature of mental imagery from a new perspective. It suggests that sign-theoretical approach as elaborated by C. S. Peirce can give a better and more comprehensive explanation of mental imagery. Our empirical findings follow the methodology of cognitive semiotics and they show that (i) properties of mental images are heterogeneous in nature; (ii) properties of mental images are dependent on the characteristics of object-stimulus; (iii) properties of mental images are dependent on individual differences (...) in imaginary capacities. This suggests that, contrary to representational accounts, mental imagery is not based on one dominant representational format. Imagery constitutes a complex system of signs consisting of several sign elements and dynamic relations. A sign-theoretical account may give a better explanation of the nature of mental imagery, as it accommodates heterogenous evidence from this experiment. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the heterogeneity problem for sensitivity accounts of knowledge against an objection that has been recently proposed by Wallbridge in Philosophia. I argue in, 479–496, 2015) that sensitivity accounts of knowledge face a heterogeneity problem when it comes to higher-level knowledge about the truth of one’s own beliefs. Beliefs in weaker higher-level propositions are insensitive, but beliefs in stronger higher-level propositions are sensitive. The resulting picture that we can know the stronger propositions without (...) being in a position to know the weaker propositions is too heterogeneous to be plausible. Wallbridge objects that there is no heterogeneity problem because beliefs in the weaker higher-level propositions are also sensitive. I argue against Wallbridge that the heterogeneity problem is not solved but only displaced. Only some beliefs in the weaker higher-level propositions are sensitive. I conclude that the heterogeneity problem is one of a family of instability problems that sensitivity accounts of knowledge face and that Wallbridge’s account raises a further problem of this kind. (shrink)

In this article, I explore Namita Goswami’s Subjects That Matter. Goswami has laid out an extensive excavation of the variety, depth, and breadth of antagonistic encounters between the Western world and subaltern subjects. I am interested in Goswami’s take on the production of the unknowable women of color who are constructed either as good wives, animate objects without wills of their own, or transgressors of the genre of producing women of color as oppressed. I argue that the question of (...) class='Hi'>heterogeneity already assumes the very thing that is under question: to presuppose heterogeneity is already to presuppose its limit conditions—to already understand what difference looks like, which could preempt the possibility of infinite, or indefinite iterations. The irony is that we run the risk of assuming the very thing that we are trying not to presuppose, anticipate, or cordon off. Moreover, I question whether it is possible to encounter deep radical differences in any way other than antagonistically, since the unknown, from experience, is assumed to threaten. (shrink)

Objectives: Hospital ethics committees increasingly affect medical care worldwide, yet there has been little evaluation of these bodies. Israel has the distinction of having ethics committees legally required by a Patients' Rights Act. We studied the development of ethics committees in this legal environment.Design: Cross-sectional national survey of general hospitals to identify all ethics committees and interview of ethics committee chairpersons.Setting: Israel five years after the passage of the Patients' Rights Act.Main measurements: Patients' rights and informal ethics committee structure and (...) function.Results: One-third of general hospitals have an ethics committee, with committees concentrated in larger facilities. Hospitals without committees tended to lack any structure to handle ethics issues. Committees tend to be interdisciplinary and gender-mixed but ethnic mix was poor. Confidentiality is the rule, however, legal liability is a concern. One-third of patients' rights ethics committees never convened and most committees had considered fewer than ten consults. Access to the consultation process and the consultation process itself varied substantially across committees. Some patients' rights ethics committees attempted to solve cases, others only rendered decisions. Informal committees often refused to consider cases within Patients' Rights Act jurisdiction.Conclusions: Despite statutory requirement, many Israeli patients and clinicians do not have access to ethics committees. The scant volume of cases shows serious discrepancies between practice and Patients' Rights Act regulations, suggesting the need for education or revision of the law. Heterogeneity in committee function demonstrates need for substantial improvement. (shrink)

Commonsense reasoning often relies on the perception of similarity as well as dissimilarity between objects or situations.

This essay situates Object Lessons in the contemporary academic spaces of women’s studies in India. A decade ago, Object Lessons offered an extensive critique of identity knowledges in the US academy with a special focus on women’s studies. What might its relevance be in the contemporary Indian context? The institutionalisation of women’s studies in India has been shaped by the resources of the social sciences, with their empirical bent and especially their connection to state and development policy. This makes for (...) specific differences with the US context while many concerns are shared. The essay also looks at how gender as a category has been deployed in specific contexts in contrast to that of “women”, in the light of Wiegman’s cautions over seeking resolutions to particular problems through a preferential treatment of categories. By way of concluding thoughts on the Indian situation, women’s studies in India is hypervisible compared to other identity knowledges. In spite of its marginal and precarious location in the academy, it carries a disproportionate political burden, one that a heterogeneous student body is shouldering in their struggles for a sustainable future. (shrink)

Adequate measurement is an essential component of the assessment of mental health disorders and symptoms such as depression and anxiety. The present study investigated sex-specific differences in the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7. This comprehensive cross-sectional design study pursued four objectives: measurement invariance of PHQ-9 and GAD-7 between male and female; depression and anxiety prevalence differences; cross-sex differences in the relationship between depression and anxiety; and a comparison of symptom heterogeneity. A sample of 1966 students from South (...) Africa completed the PHQ-9 and the GAD-7. Data analyses for measurement invariance, latent class analysis, inter-variable correlations and group comparisons were conducted in Mplus. The two-dimensional PHQ-9 achieved scalar invariance, while the GAD-7 yielded metric invariance. The somatic and non-somatic latent dimensions of depression were compared and showed no significant difference between male and female groups. The positive relationship between depression and anxiety was also not significantly different between the two groups. While the PHQ-9 symptoms formed three classes in the male group, and four classes in the female group, the GAD-7 had the same number of classes and a similar pattern between the two groups. These findings hold implications for the measurement, assessment and understanding of symptom manifestation and distribution, as well as the treatment of depression and anxiety in South Africa. (shrink)

Heterogeneous information networks can naturally simulate complex objects, and they can enrich recommendation systems according to the connections between different types of objects. At present, a large number of recommendation algorithms based on heterogeneous information networks have been proposed. However, the existing algorithms cannot extract and combine the structural features in heterogeneous information networks. Therefore, this paper proposes an efficient recommendation algorithm based on heterogeneous information network, which uses the characteristics of graph convolution neural network to automatically learn node information (...) to extract heterogeneous information and avoid errors caused by the manual search for metapaths. Furthermore, by fully considering the scoring relationship between nodes, a calculation strategy combining heterogeneous information and a scoring information fusion strategy is proposed to solve the scoring between nodes, which makes the prediction scoring more accurate. Finally, by updating the nodes, the training scale is reduced, and the calculation efficiency is improved. The study conducted a large number of experiments on three real data sets with millions of edges. The results of the experiments show that compared with PMF, SemRec, and other algorithms, the proposed algorithm improves the recommendation accuracy MAE by approximately 3% and the RMSE by approximately 8% and reduces the time consumption significantly. (shrink)

Background: Many people with aphasia and people without brain injury talk to themselves in their heads, i.e., have “inner speech.” Inner speech may be more preserved compared with spoken speech for some people with aphasia and may serve a variety of functions (e.g., emotion regulation), which motivates us to provide a high-fidelity characterization of it. Researchers have used multiple methods to measure this internal phenomenon in the past, which we combine here for the first time in a single study. -/- (...) Aims: We compare performance between individuals with and without aphasia on inner speech tasks that assess inner speech “inthe- moment” to general subjective impressions of inner speech to tease apart the relationship of aphasia severity to inner speech. Methods and Procedures: Twenty people with mild-moderate aphasia and twenty neurotypical controls completed several inner speech tasks, including objective silent rhyme judgements (picture, written, and auditory), subjective reports of inner speech during naming, and subjective rating scales about inner speech experience more generally. -/- Outcomes and Results: In-the-moment inner speech during silent rhyming tasks was associated with aphasia severity only for picture and written rhyming but not auditory rhyming. In-the-moment inner speech reports during silent naming were not associated with aphasia severity, nor were the subjective ratings about general inner speech experience. Individuals with and without aphasia demonstrated a variety of subjective general inner speech experiences, demonstrating heterogeneity of this phenomenon more broadly. -/- Conclusions: Methods of measuring inner speech complement each other and speak to different facets of the inner speech phenomenon, and clinicians and researchers must carefully choose the method(s) that will provide the information about inner speech that they desire. (shrink)

The information in the working environment of industrial Internet is characterized by diversity, semantics, hierarchy, and relevance. However, the existing representation methods of environmental information mostly emphasize the concepts and relationships in the environment and have an insufficient understanding of the items and relationships at the instance level. There are also some problems such as low visualization of knowledge representation, poor human-machine interaction ability, insufficient knowledge reasoning ability, and slow knowledge search speed, which cannot meet the needs of intelligent and (...) personalized service. Based on this, this paper designs a cognitive information representation model based on a knowledge graph, which combines the perceptual information of industrial robot ontology with semantic description information such as functional attributes obtained from the Internet to form a structured and logically reasoned cognitive knowledge graph including perception layer and cognition layer. Aiming at the problem that the data sources of the knowledge base for constructing the cognitive knowledge graph are wide and heterogeneous, and there are entity semantic differences and knowledge system differences among different data sources, a multimodal entity semantic fusion model based on vector features and a system fusion framework based on HowNet are designed, and the environment description information such as object semantics, attributes, relations, spatial location, and context acquired by industrial robots and their own state information are unified and standardized. The automatic representation of robot perceived information is realized, and the universality, systematicness, and intuition of robot cognitive information representation are enhanced, so that the cognition reasoning ability and knowledge retrieval efficiency of robots in the industrial Internet environment can be effectively improved. (shrink)

In multiple robot systems, the problem of allocation of complex tasks to heterogeneous teams of robots, also known as the multiple robot coalition formation problem, has begun to receive considerable attention. Efforts to address the problem range from heuristics based approaches that search the subspaces of the coalition structure to evolutionary learning approaches. Conventional approaches typically strive to optimize a single objective function such as the number of tasks executed or the time required to execute all tasks, or a weighted (...) function of such objectives. In real world applications, objectives such as minimizing distance traveled and maximizing the number of tasks completed are often conflicting in nature. The coalition formation problem thus naturally lends itself to a multi-objective optimization approach based on evolutionary learning. In this paper, we formulate the problem of mapping coalitions of robots to a set of tasks as a multi-objective optimization problem and propose a variant of non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm to arrive at trade-off solutions. Additionally, we extend the solution to domains where robot resources are non-additive. Simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach in generating the set of Pareto-optimal solutions. (shrink)

For many assertions, the correspondence theory of truth seems intuitively to give the best account of the difference between truth and falsity, but one of its problems is how to explicate the notions of “correspondence” and “truthmaking”. In conformity with the view of David Armstrong, it is claimed that truthmaking is an internal relation between a truthmaker and a truth(-value-)bearer. The truthbearer (a token proposition) can exist without the truthmaker (an object or a state of affairs), and vice versa, but (...) when both exist the truthmaker necessarily makes the truthbearer true and correspondence obtains. Contrary to Armstrong’s reductionist analyses of internal relations and propositions, however, it is argued that internal relations can have a mind-independent existence and “add to being”, that truthbearers and truthmakers are categorially different, and that the correspondence theory of truth requires a distinction between internal relations with heterogeneous and homogeneous relata, respectively. (shrink)

This article is written in the framework of actor-network theory and presents the results of an ethnographic study of the holographic research laboratory in Sofia, Bulgaria, conducted during the period of 1993-1997. It focuses on the microlevel of laboratory practice — the intimate relationships between scientists and the objects they are studying. The article specifies the constrictions imposed by the concepts of “laboratory” and “experiment,” and advances a new concept of heterogeneous couple. The “coupling” is a process in which the (...) initial asymmetry between “active” and “passive” modes of behavior changes toward more balanced and “distributed” patterns of interaction. Theheterogeneous couple is defined as an elementary form of life between human and nonhuman agents. The notions of ANT are mirrored with notions borrowed from the non-orthodox phenomenological tradition. Using Levinas’s notions of passivity and responsibility, the scientist is considered as a “hostage” of the nonhuman beings he or she discovers and gives names. (shrink)

Substantial evidence indicates that cognitive training can be efficacious for older adults, but findings regarding training-related brain plasticity have been mixed and vary depending on the imaging modality. Recent years have seen a growth in recognition of the importance of large-scale brain networks on cognition. In particular, task-induced deactivation within the default mode network is thought to facilitate externally directed cognition, while aging-related decrements in this neural process are related to reduced cognitive performance. It is not yet clear whether task-induced (...) deactivation within the DMN can be enhanced by cognitive training in the elderly. We previously reported durable cognitive improvements in a sample of healthy older adults who completed 6 weeks of process-based object-location memory training compared to an active control training group. The primary aim of the current study is to evaluate whether these cognitive gains are accompanied by training-related changes in task-related DMN deactivation. Given the evidence for heterogeneity of the DMN, we examine task-related activation/deactivation within two separate DMN branches, a ventral branch related to episodic memory and a dorsal branch more closely resembling the canonical DMN. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing an untrained object-location memory task at four time points before, during, and after the training period. Task-induced activation values were extracted for the ventral and dorsal DMN branches at each time point. Relative to visual fixation baseline: the dorsal DMN was deactivated during the scanner task, while the ventral DMN was activated; the object-location memory training group exhibited an increase in dorsal DMN deactivation relative to the active control group over the course of training and follow-up; changes in dorsal DMN deactivation did not correlate with task improvement. These results indicate a training-related enhancement of task-induced deactivation of the dorsal DMN, although the specificity of this improvement to the cognitive task performed in the scanner is not clear. (shrink)

The research is focused on the problems of transforming a complex heterogeneous spatial system, urban agglomeration with a unique natural complex. The paper touches upon the following issues: restrictions on spatial development, zoning of territories, transformation of the settlement framework, social transformations, and integration of the most significant city-forming objects. To predict transformations in such a system, a complex multilevel model is considered — “the biosphere core vs. urban environment”. Forming such a model to analyze the prospective development of the (...) territory involves updating the methodology aimed at the systemic socio-ecological-economic analysis of developing heterogeneous spatial systems, integration of cartographic and digital information, adaptation of IT visualization technologies, including the “neogeography” toolkit. In the study the authors analyze the main prospects for the spatial territory development as exemplified by developing the urban environment of the Chelyabinsk agglomeration with a unique “green zone” (Chelyabinsk urban forest), complex multi-level socio-economic system. The main research results create the prerequisites for a significant expansion of the possibilities for analyzing the prospects for sustainable socio-ecological-economic development of complex spatial systems with unique natural objects and effective management of regional development. (shrink)

The 1984 Nobel Prize for physics wasawarded to two European scientists for theircontributions to the `large project' that ledto the identification of two importantfundamental particles. The citation recognizedthat major discoveries in high-energy physicsdemanded more than intellectual achievement andtechnical innovation. Such qualities had to beembedded in a technological, managerial,institutional and political infrastructure.This paper aims to capture the salient featuresof that infrastructure by insisting that atleast one of the laureates should be viewed,not only as a physicist, but also as a`heterogeneous engineer', who (...) succeeded inmobilizing the human and material resourcesneeded to attain his objectives. As such, hisproject was similar to the Manhattan project,and was typical of the transformation in thepractice of physics that came about during theSecond World War. (shrink)

Driven by the theory of sustainable development, Chinese firms have gradually realized the importance of ESG disclosure. Executives play a core role in ESG decision-making, but whether and how top management team (TMT) faultlines affect ESG disclosure has yet to be systematically discussed. Based on the attention-based view and faultline theory, we select 6456 observations of 910 Chinese A-share listed firms from 2012 to 2021 as the research object to empirically test the above critical practical issues that have not been (...) fully answered. We find that TMT information-based faultlines improve firms' ESG disclosure, but TMT social category faultlines reduce firms' ESG disclosure. In addition, the internal mechanism test showed that the TMT's future-oriented attention plays a mediating role in the above relationship. Finally, we also find that institutional shareholding enhances the positive impact of the TMT's future-oriented attention on ESG disclosure. This study enriches the literature on TMT faultlines and ESG disclosure, demonstrating that the composition of the TMT and its attention allocation are important factors for promoting firms' ESG disclosure. The conclusions of this study can help firms strengthen their ESG disclosure by building efficient TMTs and provide important implications for firms to better fulfill their ESG responsibilities. (shrink)

For the contemporary reader of Psychoanalysis: Its Image and Its Public the analyses of communicative systems in the book provides a challenging occasion for reconsidering current social psychological thinking about the character of social groups. In Moscovici's careful delineation of the communicative systems of diffusion, propagation and propaganda through his content analysis of the French press, one can also see the description of different types of group structured through distinctive social psychological organisations. Moscovici himself suggests that the genres of diffusion, (...) propagation and propaganda are each linked to the construction of a specific type of social-psychological object, opinion, attitude and stereotype respectively. But one can also identify different forms of affiliation corresponding to each communicative genre, and consequently also different representations of the people who constitute both the in-group and the out-group in each instance. The affiliative bonds might be described as forms of sympathy, communion and solidarity. (shrink)

This article studies natural food packaging as enabling artifacts of the traditional material culture of Antioquia in Colombia. For this purpose, we consider artifacts as objective nodes that combine design and use intentions, functions, materials, histories, artifactual lineages, and cooperative relationships that stabilize ritualized practices of a human group. We take the example of natural packaging as artifacts that enablers and stabilizers of traditional cooking and food preparation practices. Natural packaging materials are here assumed to be leaves having some favorable (...) property to contain a food product. After providing a theoretical reflection, we analyze the data collected from fieldwork we conducted in two towns in Antioquia, Colombia (Santa Fe de Antioquia and Amagá), as well as from an interview with an expert in the field. Finally, we show that it is possible to postulate an analysis under a relational ontological description of a traditional practice with conceptual categories of the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Despite much research on the relationship between awareness and dementia little can be concluded concerning their relationship and the role of other factors. It is likely that studies capture different phenomena of awareness. This study aimed at identifying and delineating such variation by analysing data from three questionnaires obtained during the longitudinal study of awareness in 101 people with early-stage dementia. The data concerned awareness in relation to memory, activities of daily living and socio-emotional function. Significant differences in patterns of (...) discrepancies were obtained. This suggests that the awareness phenomena involved were structurally different; and that, in turn, this may reflect variation in the intrinsic linking between awareness and its ‘object’ . The identification of such differences is necessary so that appropriate methodologies can be applied to the study of awareness in different contexts. (shrink)

This book offers novel interpretations of several of Berkeley's most distinctive philosophical doctrines, including his theory of vision, heterogeneity thesis, anti-abstractionism, immaterialism, likeness principle, and the divine language thesis. Key to those interpretations is a focus on Berkeley's critical use of the Cartesian doctrine of objective presence, which demands causal explanations for the content of sensory ideas.

There is a “revolving door” between federal agencies and the industries regulated by them. Often, at the end of their industry tenure, key industry personnel seek employment in government regulatory entities and vice versa. The flow of workers between the two sectors could bring about good. Industry veterans might have specialized knowledge that could be useful to regulatory bodies and former government employees could help businesses become and remain compliant with regulations. But the “revolving door” also poses at least three (...) ethical and policy challenges that have to do with public trust and fair representation. First, the presence of former key industry personnel on review boards could adversely impact the public’s confidence in regulatory decisions about new technology products, including agrifood biotechnologies. Second, the ‘‘revolving door’’ may result in policy decisions about technologies that are biased in favor of industry interests. And third, the ‘‘revolving door’’ virtually guarantees industry a voice in the policy-making process, even though other stakeholders have no assurance that their concerns will be addressed by regulatory agencies. We believe these three problems indicate a failure of regulatory review for new technologies. The review process lacks credibility because, at the very least, it is procedurally biased in favor of industry interests. We argue that prohibiting the flow of personnel between regulatory agencies and industry would not be a satisfactory solution to the three problems of public trust and just representation. To address them, regulatory entities must reject the traditional notion of objectivity. Instead they should adopt the conception of objectivity developed by Sandra Harding and re-configure their regulatory review on the basis of it. That will ensure that a heterogeneous group of stakeholders is at the decision-making table. The fair representation of interests of different constituencies in the review process could do much to inspire warranted public confidence in regulatory protocols and decisions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Contingent Object of PsychiatryDavid McCallum (bio)Keywordsmental illness, dangerousness, law, genealogyWilson and Adhead’s plea that the British Government’s proposed new mental health legislation might entail a misappropriation of psychiatry’s true mission will strike a chord in numerous jurisdictions. Many European countries during the last northern summer will adopt mental health legislation that moves in the opposite direction to the United Nations Convention on Human Rights for persons with disabilities, (...) and will allow for compulsory mental health treatment. In this author’s home state of Victoria, Australia, the Mental Health Act has five criteria that must be met for someone to be made an involuntary patient in an institution or hospital, in the community, or in one’s own home (Victoria 2003, s.6). One of the criteria is that the person is judged to be at risk of danger to themselves or others. Once made an involuntary patient, one looses the right to refuse medical treatment. At present, in various parts of the world, medical practitioners are being required to assess a person’s level of dangerousness with immediate consequences for that person’s liberty.From the point of view of a historian of the human sciences, these events propel psychiatry into a dialogue with its recent past. The project of Western psychiatry is usually characterized as a breaking down of the walls of the old asylum that contained the lunatic in its dark recesses, and the subsequent unveiling of the mental patient thanks to the rational, liberatory practices of medicine. But modern psychiatry has also been shaped by the coming into being of particular conceptions of mental illness that are not all its own making. This entailed the removal over time of the mental defective and the mental deficient, the moral imbecile, the epileptic, the alcoholic, the chronically insane, and so on, from spaces in which psychiatry would seek to define it object—populations that psychiatry would determine to be “not amenable to treatment.” If we were to see this shaping in a Foucauldian sense, we would also want to include earlier eighteenth- and nineteenth-century separations of the lunatic and the criminal (Foucault 1965, 1979). Moreover, we might want to insist that the marking out of the modern mental health patient is first and foremost an administrative act—an act of separation and management within a bounded population—which then serves as a condition of possibility for the emergence of knowledges in psychiatric medicine, with the latter following rather than preceding the arrangement of bodies in the asylum/hospital.The psychiatrist in public medicine may well be encouraged to shape a new mission according to the requirements of an administration concerned with managing dangerousness. A shift in the social vocation of the psychiatric expert has been observed over several decades, and may represent a profound departure from the traditions [End Page 69] of mental medicine (Castel 1991). Those “dirty words”—risk assessment—involve new strategies where face-to-face relations between carer and cared are displaced by an activity of calculating abstract factors deemed liable to produce risk—“a transition from the clinic of the subject to an ‘epidemiological’ clinic” (Castel 1991, 282). The broad contours of this shift sees the specialist medical carer take a back seat while the manager/ administrator assumes a more autonomous role of allocating individuals into various categories of risk. It is in this sense that the psychiatrist does not make a diagnosis as such, but rather contributes to a list of factors compiled to measure a level of riskiness. Risk assessment forms part of social surveillance that dispenses with the actual presence of the carer and the cared, and provides for a form of systematic predetection rather than treatment. As Castel (1991, 288) presents it,(t)here is, in fact, no longer a relation of immediacy with a subject because there is no longer a subject. What the new preventative policies primarily address is no longer individuals but factors, statistical correlations of heterogeneous elements. They deconstruct the concrete subject of intervention, and reconstruct a combination of factors liable to produce risk. Their primary aim is not to confront a concrete dangerous situation, but to anticipate... (shrink)

BackgroundCognitive frailty includes reversible and potentially reversible subtypes; the former is known as concurrent physical frailty and pre-mild cognitive impairment subjective cognitive decline, whereas the latter is known as concurrent PF and MCI. The diagnoses of pre-MCI SCD and MCI are based on clinical criteria and various subjective cognitive decline questionnaires. Heterogeneous assessment of cognitive impairment results in significant variability of CI, CF, and their subtype prevalence in various population-based studies.ObjectiveThis study aimed to compare the classification differences in CI and (...) CF subtypes from PF and normal cognition by applying clinical and objective cognitive criteria. Clinical criteria comprised Fried PF and clinical MCI criteria combined with the SCD questionnaire, whereas objective criteria comprised Fried PF and objective cognitive criteria based on the norm-adjusted six neuropsychological test scores.MethodsOf the 335 volunteers in this study, 191 were diagnosed with CI based on clinical cognitive diagnosis criteria, and 144 were identified as robust normal based on objective cognitive assessment from the community-dwelling older adult cohort. Individuals with clinical CI, including 94 with MCI and 97 with pre-MCI SCD, were reclassified into different z-score-derived MCI, pre-MCI SCD, and normal subgroups based on objective cognitive criteria. The classification diagnostic accuracy of normal cognition, PF, pre-MCI, MCI, CF, and CF subtypes based on clinical and objective criteria was compared before and after adjusting for age, sex, and education level.ResultsThe reclassification of objective assessments indicated better performance than that of clinical assessments in terms of discerning CI severity among different subgroups before adjusting for demographic factors. After covariate adjustment, clinical assessments significantly improved the ability to cognitively discriminate normal individuals from those with pre-MCI SCD and MCI but not the z-score-derived pre-MCI SCD and MCI groups from the robust normal group. Furthermore, the adjustment did not improve the ability to discriminate among individuals with reversible CF from those with potentially reversible CF and pre-MCI only SCD from MCI only SCD.ConclusionsObjective criteria showed better performance than clinical criteria in the diagnosis of individuals with CI or CF subtypes. Rapid clinical cognitive screening in combination with normative z-scores criteria is cost effective and sustainable in clinical practice. (shrink)

I propose a certain classification of entities which are introduced in various theories of intentionality under the label ‘intentional objects’. Franz Brentano’s immanent objects, Alexius Meinong’s entities ‘beyond being and non-being’, or Roman Ingarden’s purely intentional objects can serve as examples of suchentities. What they all have in common is that they have been introduced in order to extensionalise the so called ‘intentional contexts’ (‘intentional’ with ‘t’). But not all entities which function this way deserve the name of intentional objects. (...) In particular, neither Frege’s senses nor mental contents of the early Husserl are tobe classified as intentional objects in my sense. Roughly speaking, to be properly called ‘an intentional object’ a postulated entity must be supposed to function as a quasi-target of the subject’s intention. In other words: intentional objects are supposed to stand ‘before the subject’s mind’, so that they, in a sense, ‘replace’ the common sense objects of reference. It turns out that the intentional objects that were introduced in the history of philosophy make up groups which,from the ontological point of view, are very heterogeneous. Nevertheless it is possible to formulate certain systematic criteria of classifying them. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a certain classification of entities which are introduced in various theories of intentionality under the label ‘intentional objects’. Franz Brentano’s immanent objects, Alexius Meinong’s entities ‘beyond being and non-being’, or Roman Ingarden’s purely intentional objects can serve as examples of such entities. What they all have in common is that they have been introduced in order to extensionalise the so called ‘intentional contexts’ (‘intentional’ with ‘t’). But not all entities which function this way deserve the (...) name of intentional objects. In particular, neither Frege’s senses nor mental contents of the early Husserl are to be classified as intentional objects in my sense. Roughly speaking, to be properly called ‘an intentional object’ a postulated entity must be supposed to function as a quasi-target of the subject’s intention. In other words: intentional objects are supposed to stand ‘before the subject’s mind’, so that they, in a sense, ‘replace’ the common sense objects of reference. It turns out that the intentional objects that were introduced in the history of philosophy make up groups which, from the ontological point of view, are very heterogeneous. Nevertheless it is possible to formulate certain systematic criteria of classifying them. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's ethics of embodiment, focusing upon care of the self, has motivated feminist scholars to pursue promising models of embodied resistance to disciplinary normalization. Cressida Heyes, in particular, has advocated that these projects adopt practices of “somaesthetics,” following a program of body consciousness developed by Richard Shusterman. In exploring Shusterman's somaesthetics proposal, I find that it does not account for the subjective challenges of resisting normalization. Based on narrative theories of subjectivity, the role narrative plays in normalization, and a (...) commitment to developing concrete, feminist practices of embodied ethics, I develop a model of “narrative somaesthetics” based on an updated consciousness-raising model that emphasizes group heterogeneity and narrative conflict that deals with these challenges. Through an analysis of interviews with self-identified femme lesbians and a “female to femme” transition support group featured in the documentary film, FtF: Female to Femme, I argue that narrative somaesthetics enables the analytical, genealogical work required to identify and weaken normalization's constraints on embodied feminist ethics. (shrink)

Objective standards for justification or for being a reason would be desirable, but inductive skepticism tells us that they cannot be presupposed. Rather, we have to start from subjective-relative notions of justification and of being a reason. The paper lays out the strategic options we have given this dilemma. The paper explains the requirements for this subject-relative notion and how they may be satisfied. Then it discusses four quite heterogeneous ways of providing more objective standards, which combine without guaranteeing complete (...) success. (shrink)

Abstract Normative criteria for evaluations of economic and social outcomes are often formulated in terms of social welfare functions which are essentially and importantly non-satiable. However, there are good reasons to consider certain normative criteria and many policy objectives to be capped, i.e. bounded, and thus satiable provided sufficient resources are made available for their satisfaction. Inspired by the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke class of indicators, this paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to develop a model for assessing outcomes in terms of capped objectives (...) based on an understanding of individual shortfalls from the objective, denoted needs. We present an indicator to measure need satisfaction in a population of individuals with heterogeneous needs and highlight an aggregation problem under scarcity. For such situations, we develop three ways in which the indicator can be weighted that reflect respectively concerns over the frequency, depth and severity of the need shortfalls and show that normative evaluations based on these weighting schemes can conflict, yielding mutually inconsistent outcome rankings. The indicator can be adapted to measure a wide variety of phenomena, e.g. health needs, education shortfalls, deprivation, etc., and it is suited for targeting exercises and other policy implementations. In particular, it allows for exogenous weighting schemes, i.e. weights that can incorporate non-shortfall characteristics relevant for the evaluation, e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, etc. The indicator thus enables new ways for researchers to promote and study satiable objectives in a wide variety of contexts relevant to economic and social policy, e.g. human development programs, poverty reduction, healthcare policies, etc. (shrink)

The Health Council of the Netherlands is an independent scientific advisory board to the Dutch government in matters of public health. In this article we argue that even for an independent body such as the Health Council there seems to be no escape from the increasing intertwinement of scientific and societal processes. In order to produce a serviceable truth for policymaking, the council needs to reflect on what goes on in its socio-political surroundings. On the other hand, how could we (...) ever come to understand the legitimacy of the council when notions of scientific objectivity dissolve in such a reflexive, inherently political stance? In a situation where science and society are thoroughly interrelated, the Health Council somehow succeeds in bringing about or re-claiming some sense of objectivity. Our central question will be how to conceptualise this notion of 'objectivity' without having to rely on idealized notions of objectivity that are criticized in philosophical, sociological and historical studies of science and society. In order to do so, we will regard the objectivity of advisory reports of the Health Council as being constructed out of heterogeneous elements and under complex circumstances. The theoretical point will be empirically underpinned with case material drawn from activities of the Health Council in the period 1985-2002 in predominantly the subject areas healthcare and medical technology. (shrink)

On formal anticipation: the object in Kant and Wittgenstein This article discusses the affinity between Kant’s notion of objectivity and Wittgenstein’s view on the limitations of language by addressing both philosophers’ relation to the constitutive space at work in a transcendental logic. For both, the system and conceptual room hosting the activity of subjective conditionality is dynamically connected to what can be seen as an object in response to the heterogeneity between concepts and sensibility. In his work On the (...) Genealogy of Universals. The Metaphysical Origins of Analytic Philosophy (2018) Fraser MacBride makes a plea for the importance of Kant in the history of the origin of analytical philosophy, more specifically, the philosophies of Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein. He nevertheless does so in an inadequate way, because he understands Kant from a realist perspective striving to see ‘objects’ as an awaiting reality ‘out there’ to be made our own. Contrary to that, we make the case that a transcendental dynamics of a ‘lost’ primordial captivity is at work in the process of the constitution of objects. We look into Wittgenstein’s notion of substance and the problematic subreptitious exchange between the notions of substance and attribute on the one hand and the relation between the particular and the universal according to MacBride on the other. We propose that both Kant and Wittgenstein sharpen the awareness for the transcendental anticipatory activity of a presupposition, to be seen as a crucial moment within pure formalization and logical strictness, built on a minimal ontology of openness to what is determinable within the action of determination, opposite to a realism of what is simply determined as ‘what is the case’ without taking into account the constituting subject-pole. (shrink)

In approaching the topic, ‘Objectivity and Cultural Divergence’, there is little doubt that certain styles of philosophizing will conceive of the task confronting them as that of devising or at least calling attention to standards of rationality by which distinctions between objectivity and divergence are to be drawn. This mode of philosophizing is marked by the confidence it has in its own methods. It seldom occurs to it to question its own operations; to ask whether the heterogeneity of our (...) culture does not itself create difficulties for the practice of philosophy. It is to such questionings as these, however, that I want to direct attention in this lecture. (shrink)

In approaching the topic, ‘Objectivity and Cultural Divergence’, there is little doubt that certain styles of philosophizing will conceive of the task confronting them as that of devising or at least calling attention to standards of rationality by which distinctions between objectivity and divergence are to be drawn. This mode of philosophizing is marked by the confidence it has in its own methods. It seldom occurs to it to question its own operations; to ask whether the heterogeneity of our (...) culture does not itself create difficulties for the practice of philosophy. It is to such questionings as these, however, that I want to direct attention in this lecture. (shrink)

Educational analysts need new ways to engage with policy processes in a networked world of complex transnational connections. In this discussion, Tara Fenwick and Richard Edwards argue for a greater focus on materiality in educational policy as a way to trace the heterogeneous interactions and precarious linkages that enact policy as complex manifestations. In particular, Fenwick and Edwards point to the methodologies of actor-network theory (ANT), at least in its most recent permutations, as a useful approach to materiality in policy (...) analysis. Published examples of educational policy studies drawing from these methodologies are beginning to appear. In reviewing these, we argue that ANT sensibilities help to make visible the sociomaterial assemblages—the “messy objects”—that enact policy, the micro-negotiations that mobilize and stabilize (and destabilize) these assemblages, and the multiple ontologies that often coexist in policy environments. Fenwick and Edwards conclude with a discussion of methodological issues for working with concepts of ontological variance and messy objects in educational policy. (shrink)

This article charts the history of mental testing in the context of the rise and fall of Russian child science between the 1890s and the 1930s. Tracing the genealogy of testing in scientific experimentation, scholastic assessment, medical diagnostics and bureaucratic accounting, it follows the displacements of this technology along and across the boundaries of the child science movement. The article focuses on three domains of expertise – psychology, pedagogy and psychiatry, examining the key guises that mental testing assumed in them (...) – namely, the experiment, the exam and the diagnosis. It then analyses the failed state-bureaucratic harnessing of mental testing in early Soviet attempts to manage mass education, discussing the peculiar dynamics of the legitimation of testing, as it swung between black-boxing and instrumentalization, on the one hand, and scandal and controversy, on the other. The article argues that mental testing thrived in Russia as a strategically ambiguous and flexibly interpreted ‘boundary object’, which interconnected a highly heterogeneous field, enabling the coexistence and cooperation of diverse occupational agendas and normative regimes. (shrink)

Transportation cyber-physical systems are constrained by spatiality and real-time because of their high level of heterogeneity. Therefore, applications like traffic control generally manage moving objects in a single-machine multithreaded manner, whereas suffering from frequent locking operations. To address this problem and improve the throughput of moving object databases, we propose a GPU-accelerated indexing method, based on a grid data structure, combined with quad-trees. We count object movements and decide whether a particular node should be split or be merged on (...) the GPU. In this case, bottlenecked nodes can be translated to quad-tree without interfering with the CPU. Hence, waiting time of other threads caused by locking operations raised by object data updating can be reduced. The method is simple while more adaptive to scenarios where the distribution of moving objects is skewed. It also avoids shortcomings of existing methods with performance bottleneck on the hot area or spending plenty of calculation resources on structure balancing. Experiments suggest that our method shows higher throughput and lower response time than the existing indexing methods. The advantage is even more significant under the skewed distribution of moving objects. (shrink)

This paper offers a reading of Guttierez Alea's film Memories of Underdevelopment ( Memorias del Subdesarrollos , 1968) using Jameson's notion of the 'homeopathic neutralization' of repetition through its very usage in the modernist work of art to assuage the alienation of industrial society. Before the reading of the film begins, however, I explore the motif of repetition in the work of a handful of the most important thinkers of the newly industrial society. I mobilize their insights on different levels (...) of being: sociological, biological, psychological, and aesthetic, in order to understand how Alea uses repetition of form and content to construct the film's protagonist as a metaphor for the counter-revolution. I conclude with thoughts about the heterogeneity of communist states, and the dialectical relationship between high culture and popular culture. I propose that this relationship is better seen as a continuum with two extreme poles, rather than as a binary switch. (shrink)

The text begins by charting the current seeming resistance of understanding one?s own cul?ture as inherently heterogenous, transculturally mixed with the foreign. Looking at classic contributions to the theory of culture, the text continues by dealing with the identitary temp?tation so as to understand it from the perspective that cultural life forms can only be ap?proached from the perspective of the intractable foreignness of the world - on the condition that we are permanently accepted in them. The fact that foreignness (...) cannot thus be?re?moved? means that we never experience?complete? enculturation, but rather we remain always tied to the precultural. The article thesis is that for this very reason we have an in?delible affinity to everything transcultural, which can foremost be understood as what can be found?beyond? familiar forms of life, and which can bind us to the?beyond?, as we will never fully feel domesticated in this?here present?. Ironically, however, the transcultural draws on the precultural. Apologists of identity negate this latter insight, offering warped images of homogenized belonging that, it would appear, allow for no interior disagreement, oddity, or distance. (shrink)