Proceedings of the 11th Interdisciplinary Symmetry Congress-Festival of the International Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry. Special Theme: “Tradition and Innovation in Symmetry - Katachi”.

We used a response competition paradigm to investigate whether a distractor is effectively rejected under conditions where it is projected to a highly-loaded hemisphere. In two experiments we asked right-handed participants to identify a target among five task-relevant letters while they ignored a distractor. We manipulated both the distractor visual-field and the compatibility of the target and the distractor. In the low-loaded visual-field, we presented a distractor with one task-relevant stimulus to one visual-field and the remaining task-relevant stimuli to the (...) opposite visual-field. In the high-loaded visual-field, we presented a distractor and task-relevant stimuli in reverse. In Experiment 1 , we found a compatibility effect for the low-loaded, but not for the high-loaded visual-field. In Experiment 2, this modulation of the compatibility effect did not appear when the upper/lower visual-field was manipulated. These findings demonstrate that a distractor is successfully ignored when it is presented to a highly-loaded hemisphere. (shrink)

Kitarō Nishida is the most important and representative philosopher in modern Japan, who now attracts increasing attention internationally. He endeavored to give a logical foundation to the Eastern way of thinking through his confrontation with Western philosophers. The aim of this paper is to recover the modern and intercultural significance of Plotinus’ philosophy in the light of Nishida’s philosophy. Nishida refers to Plotinus repeatedly, expressing his deep empathy, though his philosophy, which professes itself to be highly critical, is not mysticism. (...) When we compare him with Plotinus, we can find a great affinity in their fundamental structure. ‘Absolute nothingness (zettai mu)’, the basis of all reality in Nishida’s philosophy, is prior to both subjectivity and objectivity, and corresponds to the Plotinian One, which transcends both thinking and being. The correspondence between their logical structures consists in regarding subjectivity and objectivity as developments of an indefinite principle that transcends and precedes the discrimination of the two, and determination as determination of what is indeterminate. However, differing from Plotinus, Nishida lays stress on corporality, ordinariness and individuality. Though Plotinus was never pessimistic about this world, the experience emphasized in theEnneadswas not earthly, while Nishida’s ‘radical ordinariness’ was the standpoint to which we should attain in a mundane life. When we compare Plotinus with Nishida, we encounter the intersection of the West and the East, antiquity and modernity, and mysticity and ordinariness. (shrink)

Recent climate change statistics attribute over a quarter of carbon emissions to residential energy use in the United Kingdom. To address this, a building standard was introduced to aim to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption. This paper analyzes how such an environmental standard reconfigures the sociotechnological relations and practices of housing professionals that design, construct, and manage social housing. We focus on how actors engage with the standard’s recommendation for incorporating low and zero carbon technologies (...) into new buildings. We identify diverse practices that emerge from these engagements, which, we contend, have significant consequences for the working relationships of professional actors and for renewable energy provision. By being entwined in, and generative of actors’ practices, we argue that the Code becomes part of the sociotechnological relationships and infrastructures that shape energy provision. (shrink)