This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * The gaze drifts where the stare dares not. The gaze is attentive while the stare is intent. Dériver : Equally to drift and/or to derive. —When drifting then, something must be taken along. Something must be derived from the drift. Something of oneself must always become other. Incorporating the other, incorporating oneself as other. Je est un autre , Rimbaud disait; 1 this in his last letter to Georges Izambard, a final correspondence to a former mentor and friend, from whom he was drifting away, having derived much. The drift is a control incomplete. To drift is to come closer and closer, but to always be turning away, pulling apart, pulling oneself apart. It is parabolic in the sense that it is always eluding a formerly established intent. Of all axes, it never finds room to rest. Filling new spaces, always changing places, ever escaping the Cartesian; the indubitable pinpointing of position. It is never pinned down. Love together what we will be apart. Once together, we will drift apart. Il le faut . Attention is held; it traces the path. It follows each point which traces the arc, the line, the swerve. It is not concerned with the figure being drawn, but rather the movement between one point and the next. The smallest movement. The clinamen of De Rerum Natura is the smallest of swerves, it is nothing more than the minimum — nec plus quam minimum . Michel Serres says of the clinamen , that it is an absurdity — a logical, geometrical, mechanical, physical absurdity. 'The clinamen, from here (its state of absurdity), finds refuge in subjectivity; it passes from the world to the soul, from the physical to the metaphysical, from the theory of inert bodies in freefall to the theory of the free movements of the living.' 2 So this swerve is something of the mind and something of the body, both in action, rather than a body which is merely acted upon. Swerve, however, has a connotation of suddenness. It is a movement which is made to avoid an otherwise inevitable impact. Drift, on the other hand, is the unleashing of something which is then allowed to follow a more complex series of forces. These forces now come from within as well as without. It is no longer tethered; now following tides, winds, flows or pitched slopes, now acting on its own. We are not atoms in freefall. Our attention long ago pulled us from this precipitous descent. We now live, ourselves, as one of the many forces. In the drift, as with the gaze, there is an ease. ‘Ease is the proper name of this unrepresentable space.’ It is the space nearest, the next, the neighboring space. To occupy this space requires a turn, a shift or a drift. It cannot be reached by proceeding straight ahead. ‘..the space adjacent, the empty place where each can move freely, in a semantic constellation where spatial proximity borders on opportune time (ad-agio, moving at ease) and convenience borders on the correct relation.’ 3 Intention always seeks to straighten this line, to make it less complex, to isolate the point of departure and the desired destination. It believes there can be two points and, between them, there must be a straight line. Can there be? Maybe. Must there be? Never. Straight lines may exist, but they can never be followed to the finish. After leaving this point, we will never reach that one without being buffeted at least a little — at least the least. One foot in front of the other, this is a very restrictive dance, less even than a two-step. Straight lines lead only to lost intentions, being the shortest and quickest way to get there. When attention drifts it slowly turns away from the intended target, leaving it for something which pulls the attention away. Now we are for a moment free; all at once we can pivot, now we can waltz. Drifting along the page, deriving from what is seen. Reading is seeing; the movement of the eyes as they drift. Reading in the eyes what has been seen, what has been derived from the act of reading. Reading eyes drift back and forth down the page, now and then jump back and forth, up to the top, one word, back down, quickly a few pages back, now gaze out towards the horizon. When attention drifts it is the gaze that follows. Our attention is not restricted to the path the words follow, but links them together; deriving what is to be seen, rather than read. La philosophie fait voir . ‘Thus, philosophers speak through proverbs, and demonstrate. They connect their imaginations with foreign rings, flown into famous tombs.’ 4 Now drifting off to sleep, dreams come as unintended visions. To dream is pure drift, vision without an object, gazing into the dark, reading the unknown of the night. NOTES: Arthur Rimbaud, Poésies (Paris: Bibliothéque de Cluny, 1958), 57. Michel Serres, La Naissance de la Physique (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1977), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson. Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993), 25. Louis Aragon, Une Vague des Rêves (Paris: Editions Seghers, 2006), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson.  . (shrink)

Previous long-term memory research found that angry faces were more poorly recognised when encoded with averted vs. direct gaze, while memory for happy faces was unaffected by gaze. Contrasti...

Assume ZF + AD +V=L and letκ< Θ be an uncountable cardinal. We show thatκis Jónsson, and that if cof = ω thenκis Rowbottom. We also establish some other partition properties.

Understanding terrestrial carbon metabolism is critical because terrestrial ecosystems play a major role in the global carbon cycle. Furthermore, humans have severely disrupted the carbon cycle in ways that will alter the climate system and directly affect terrestrial metabolism. Changes in terrestrial metabolism may well be as important an indicator of global change as the changing temperature signal. Improving our understanding of the carbon cycle at various spatial and temporal scales will require the integration of multiple, complementary and independent methods (...) that are used by different research communities. Tools such as air sampling networks, inverse numerical methods, and satellite data allow us to study the strength and location of the global- and continental-scale carbon sources and sinks. Bottom-up studies provide estimates of carbon fluxes at finer spatial scales and examine the mechanisms that control fluxes at the ecosystem, landscape, and regional scales. Bottom-up approaches include comparative and process studies that provide the necessary mechanistic information to develop and validate terrestrial biospheric models. An iteration and reiteration of top-down and bottom-up approaches will be necessary to help constrain measurements at various scales. We propose a major international effort to coordinate and lead research programs of global scope of the carbon cycle. (shrink)

Objective: To determine the views of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and professionals in relation to confidentiality, consent and access to data within a proposed MS register in the UK. Design: Qualitative study using focus groups (10) and interviews (13). Setting: England and Northern Ireland. Participants: 68 people with MS, neurologists, MS nurses, health services management professionals, researchers, representatives from pharmaceutical companies and social care professionals. Results: People with MS expressed open and altruistic views towards the use of their personal (...) information to facilitate service provision and research, placing trust in responsible guardianship and legitimate use of their information. Participant’s proposed that people with MS should be able to select their individual level of involvement in a register using levels of consent. It was agreed that access to the register should be governed by a guardianship committee composed of a range of stakeholders. People with MS did not wish their details to be used by marketing agencies and did not consider this a legitimate use of their data. Whilst participants were positive of the role a register could play in promoting research, participants felt that access to data by pharmaceutical industries should be administered by the guardianship committee. People with MS are concerned should their employers be able to access their personal information. Professionals were more cautious than people with MS in their approach to the use of patient personal data within a register. Conclusions: Whilst all stakeholders were positive of the benefits of an MS register, development of such a resource must incorporate robust data security and guardianship measures in order to ensure that, whilst opportunities are maximised, risks to the privacy of individuals and legal challenges to professionals are avoided. (shrink)

Buddhisms and Deconstructions considers the connection between Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction, focusing on the work of Robert Magliola. Fourteen distinguished contributors discuss deconstruction and various Buddhisms—Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese —followed by an afterword in which Magliola responds directly to his critics.

© 2016 Regents of the University of California.The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 3,062 new measurements from 721 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. All the particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We also give numerous (...) tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Among the 117 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised, including those on Pentaquarks and Inflation. The complete Review is published online in a journal and on the website of the Particle Data Group. The printed PDG Book contains the Summary Tables and all review articles but no longer includes the detailed tables from the Particle Listings. A Booklet with the Summary Tables and abbreviated versions of some of the review articles is also available. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plotinus and the Parmenz'des B. DARRELL JACKSON IN 1928 E. R. DODDSARGUED that the first two hypotheses of Plato's Parmenides are the primary source of Plotinus' doctrines of the One and of Nous. I Dodds' main evidence was a list of parallels between the Parmenides and the Enneads? He argued further that the Neoplatonic interpretation of the Parmenides as positive metaphysics was neo-Pythagorean in origin. Several Plotinus scholars (...) have accepted and extended Dodds' view of the importance of the Parmenides for Plotinus. This group includes ]~mile Br6hier, ~ A. H. Armstrong, 4 Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, 5 and Paul Henry. n But Dodds' position is by no means universally accepted. Elmer O'Brien has recently argued that the Plotinian One was derived ultimately from Philo and mediated to Plotinus through Albinus and Numenius. 7 He says that Dodds' case, though good, is not convincing. It. A. Wolfson has been the great advocate of the Philonic origin of Plotinus' views. According to Wolfson, the doctrines attributed by Plotinus to Plato are not Plato's but mainly Philo's. 8 Others see Plotinus in varying degrees of dependence upon Plato. Philip Merlan holds that Plotinus is more in debt to the immediate successors of Plato and to Aristotle's interpretation of Plato than to the Platonic writings themselves. 9 C. J. de Vogel sees Plotinus as dependent upon Plato for a hierarchy of being which was accepted and elaborated by various middle Platonists and Gnostics. 1~According to de Vogel, the Parmenides wus not importan% in this hierarchy tradition, n In this article I shall re-examine Dodds' position. I believe the case for Plotinus' dependence upon the Parmenides can be strengthened. I shall try to do this by examining the systematic relation of Plotinus' thought to the Parmenides. Dodds x"The Parmenides of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic 'One'," The Classical Quarterly, XXII (1928), 129-142. 2Ibid., 132 f. *In the introductions to Enneads V.3 (esp. pp. 43 f., 46 f.), V.5 (pp. 87 ft.), VI.4-5 (pp. 161163,165-168),and VI.7 (pp. 49, 60) in his Bud~ edition and translation of the Enneads (Paris, 1931-38). 4The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Cambridge, at the University Press: 1940), pp. 14-28. In his article "Plotinos", Vol. 21, pt. 1 of Paulys Real-Encyclopgdie der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 1951, cols. 552-554. eIntroduction to the second edition of Stephen MacKenna's translation of the Ennead.~ (New York: Pantheon Books Inc., n. d.), pp. xli-xliv. Elmer O'Brien (ed. and trans.), The Essential Plotinus (New York: Mentor, 1964),p. 15. 8"Albinus and Plotinus on Divine Attributes," Harvard Theological Review, XXXXV (1952), 115. 9From Platonism to Neoplatonism (2n ed. rev.; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960). 10"On the Neoplatonic Character of Platonism and the Platonic Character of Neoplatonism," Mind, LXIII (1953), 43-64. 11Ibid., 58. [3]5] 316 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY considered only parallel terminology. I shall in addition look at parallel argumentation and conclusions. Furthermore, since Dodds accounts only for Plotinus' first two hypostases, I shall consider the relation of the third hypostasis (soul) to the Parmenides. My primary interest is not the source of Plotinus' interpretation of the Parmenides but the way he carries that interpretation out. TM The former issue has often been focal in the literature on this subject. ~8It is certain thay many of the ideas used by Plotinus were already in circulation. But it is equally certain that in his combination of these ideas of a hierarchy, of transcendence, etc., Plotinus is original. I shall argue that this originality of combination is largely determined by an interpretation of the Parmenides. I should add that I am not concerned with whether Plotinus' interpretation is correct. ~4 In the following pages I shall attempt to show three things: (1) how Plotinus explicitly interprets the Parmenides, (2) to what extent he draws upon the language of the Parmenides, and (3) to what extent Plotinus' system may be understood by its relation to the Parmenides. I. Plotinus' Interpretation of the Parmenides The obvious place to begin an analysis of Plotinus' relation to the Parmenides is Enneads V... (shrink)

Introduction, by R. A. Markus.--St. Augustine and Christian Platonism, by A. H. Armstrong.--Action and contemplation, by F. R. J. O'Connell.--St. Augustine on signs, by R. A. Markus.--The theory of signs in St. Augustine's De doctrina Christiana, by B. D. Jackson.--Si fallor, sum, by G. B. Matthews.--Augustine on speaking from memory, by G. B. Matthews.--The inner man, by G. B. Matthews.--On Augustine's concept of a person, by A. C. Lloyd.--Augustine on foreknowledge and free will, by W. L. Rowe.--Augustine on free (...) will and predestination, by J. M. Rist.--Time and contingency in St. Augustine, by R. Jordan.--Empiricism and Augustine's problems about time, by H. M. Lacey.--Political society, by P. R. L. Brown.--The development of Augustine's ideas on society before the Donatist controversy, by F. E. Cranz.--De Civitate Dei, XV, 2, and Augustine's idea of the Christian society, by F. E. Cranz.--Chronological table.--Note on further reading (p. [422]-423). (shrink)

“Let no one think that he has sufficiently understood the Scriptures who has not looked after a church with the prophets for a hundred years …. We are beggars. That's for sure.”—Martin Luther.

Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has its (...) advocates, most theorists have sought a middle way that accommodates both the common-sense view of mind and the metaphysical conviction about the physical world. This volume presents a collection of new, specially written essays by a diverse group of philosophers, each of whom is widely known for defending a particular conception of minds and their place in nature. Contributors include Robert Audi, Lynne Rudder Baker, Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ruth Garrett Millikan, H. W. Noonan, Philip Pettit, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Van Gulick. (shrink)

The existence of consciousness in animals may have been overlooked. Continuity in consciousness between humans and animals is predicted by evolutionary theory. However, there are specific methodological difficulties associated with investigating such a phenomenon: it cannot be directly measured; animals, unlike humans, cannot directly tell us about their conscious experience; experiments which have made comparisons to human consciousness cannot detect consciousness of a different form; application of the law of parsimony in science has traditionally led to the conclusion that it (...) does not exist. (shrink)

The paper uses questionnaire responses provided by a sample of ethical investors to investigate willingness to sacrifice ethical considerations for financial reward. The paper examines the amount of financial reward necessary to cause an ethical investor to accept a switch from good ethical performance to poor ethical performance. Conjoint analysis is used to allow quantification of the utilities derived from different combinations of ethical and financial performance. Ethical investors are shown to vary in their willingness to sacrifice ethical for financial (...) performance, and hence to display more heterogeneity than the all-encompassing ‘ethical’ label implies. Because of the existence of sub-groups of ethical investors with different attitudes towards financial reward, an attempt has been made to associate observable investors’ characteristics with their level of willingness to trade-off morality for cash. One sub-group of investors in particular appears highly resistant to the idea of accepting higher financial return as compensation for poor ethical performance. This unwillingness casts doubt on Jensen and Meckling’s widely reported claim that trade-off behaviour is ubiquitous in all areas of life. (shrink)

The time taken to react voluntarily to a stimulus is far longer than can be accounted for by ordinary processes of nerve conduction and synaptic delay, and varies unpredictably from trial to trial. Though random, the distribution of reaction times usually follows a relatively simple law, which in turn can be explained by the LATER model, in which a decision signal, representing belief in the existence of the target, rises in response to incoming sensory evidence from an initial value to (...) a criterion level at which action is initiated. But the rate of rise fluctuates randomly from trial, to an extent that cannot be explained by sensory noise at the input. These conclusions, confirmed by recording from neurons in the frontal eye fields, suggest that the randomness of reaction time is due to a deliberate, gratuitous, neural process which confers certain biological advantages as well as having implications for general ideas about the nature of ‘free will'. (shrink)

The experience of newborn screening for Krabbe disease in New York State demonstrates the ethical problems that arise when screening programs are expanded in the absence of true understanding of the diseases involved. In its 5 years of testing and millions of dollars in costs, there have been very few benefits, and the testing has uncovered potential cases of late-onset disease that raise difficult ethical questions in their own right. For these reasons, we argue that Krabbe screening should only be (...) continued as a research project that includes the informed consent of parents to the testing. (shrink)

The problem of the impact of traditions of romantic literature on Dostoevsky’s novel ‘The Idiot‘ is examined in the article. The author points out that the attitude of Russian novelist towards the phenomena of the outgoing culture was essentially devoid of dogmatism: the very approach to different cultural trends and styles was always notable for amazing flexibility and diversity. A novel by Charles Nodier, ‘Jean Sbogar‘, is considered as one of the precedent texts. Its motivic repertoire is reproduced in full (...) in the novel by F. Dostoevsky. A comparison of the protagonist of the French novel, Jean Sbogar, which is depicted in two masks, with the main characters of the novel ‘The Idiot‘ Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin, suggests that, starting from a given source, Dostoevsky developed Nodier’s art idea. Russian writer abandoned the principle of a split personality in favor of representation of two heroes that are fighting and, at the same time, there is a mystical connection between them. Comparison between Myshkin and angel-like Lothario and between Rogozhin and the rogue Jean Sbogar once again confirms the idea that in Dostoevsky’s novel there is an introduction of high philosophical symbolism in realism: ‘splitting‘ a romantic image sends a thoughtful reader to the Gospel legend about Christ and the robber. Thus, reading of the images of "The Idiot" through the prism of romantic novels of Charles Nodier detects correlation not only between the plot of the novel and literary tradition, but also between the plot and the Christian symbolism. Someone else’s text not only becomes Dostoevsky’s material for improvisation, but also serves as a secret pointer to the reader and reconstructs his cultural memory. (shrink)

Annotation A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Plato was born around 2,500 years ago. He lived in a small city-state in Greece and busied himself with the problems of his fellow Greeks, a people living in scattered cities around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In all he tried to do for the Greeks he failed. Why, then, should people in the modern world bother to read what he had to say? Does it make sense to go to a Greek thinker for advice on the problems of (...) an age so different from his own? To anyone who has questioned the relevance of Plato to the modern world Richard Crossman’s lively book provides a brilliant reply. The problems facing Plato’s world bear striking parallels to ours today, the author maintains, so who better to turn to than Plato, the most objective and most ruthless observer of the failures of Greek society. Crossman’s engaging text provides both an informed introduction to Greek ideas and an original and controversial view of Plato himself. (shrink)