Sitting at the nexus of unchanging constitutional rights, constantly evolving social norms, and tensions between federal and state justice systems, defamation law in the US is exceedingly complex. In this work, I focus on a single conceptual and practical problem amidst this network: the fact-opinion distinction. This distinction—developed largely as a result of US Supreme Court decisions _Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc._ and _Milkovich v. Lorraine Journal Co._—states that, while opinions are protected under the First Amendment so long as they (...) do not imply “provably false” information, facts, if false, may always be actionable in a lawsuit for defamation. Thus, the judicial decision of whether an allegedly defamatory statement is fact or opinion is influential in determining whether a claim may move forward. In spite of the significance of this distinction, legal precedent and academic literature shows that there are no generally agreed upon characteristics to organize statements into these two categories. Using the framework of Appraisal Analysis (Martin and White, The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2005), I examine a corpus of previously adjudicated defamatory language to answer the question: _how does expression of stance differ between judicially-determined statements of opinion and fact in defamation cases?_ This analysis reveals that judicially-determined opinions express more markers of attitude and expanding engagement than their factual counterparts. Ultimately, I argue that this research may be directly applied to the analysis of allegedly defamatory language in the US, and, in being so applied, may play a role in adding robustness to existing analytical procedures regarding the distinction between fact and opinion in defamation law in the US. (shrink)

We propose a novel edge detector in the presence of Gaussian noise with the use of proximal support vector machine (PSVM). The edges of a noisy image are detected using a two-stage architecture: smoothing of image is first performed using regularized anisotropic diffusion, followed by the classification using PSVM, termed as regularized anisotropic diffusion-based PSVM (RAD-PSVM) method. In this process, a feature vector is formed for a pixel using the denoised coefficient’s class and the local orientations to detect edges in (...) all possible directions in images. From the experiments, conducted on both synthetic and benchmark images, it is observed that our RAD-PSVM approach outperforms the other state-of-the-art edge detection approaches, both qualitatively and quantitatively. (shrink)

Argumentamos e correlacionamos dois pontos, no texto. Primeiro, que, na filosofia política e no direito contemporâneos, a imparcialidade, a impessoalidade, a neutralidade e o formalismo metodológico-axiológicos das e por parte das instituições público-políticas, dos e por parte dos sistemas sociais direito e política, são a única base garantidora e fiadora do caráter antifascista, antitotalitário e antimassificador das instituições direito e política; da separação, da autonomia e da sobreposição dos sistemas sociais direito e política em relação às concepções abrangentes de mundo (...) da sociedade civil, bem como da separação, da autonomia e da sobreposição do direito – como base última de validação da democracia em geral – em relação à política; do controle de perspectivas fascistas assumidas por grupos político-culturais sediados na sociedade civil; e do fomento e da efetividade dos direitos e das liberdades básicos e de processos amplos, inclusivos e participativos de crítica social, de reconhecimento cultural, de luta política e de práxis pedagógica dos e pelos diferentes sujeitos político-culturais próprios à sociedade civil. Ora, e este seria o segundo argumento, a “Operação Vaza-Jato” nos tem mostrado que a “Operação Lava-Jato” rompeu com esse pressuposto fundamental, garantidor e fiador do Estado democrático de direito, ao fragilizar e até eliminar essa base metodológico-axiológica institucionalista. Com isso, ela correlacionou política e moral com e como direito, direito com e como política e moral, abrindo espaço para a colonização do direito pela política e pela moral e, principalmente, viabilizando que a política, agora aberta e descaradamente assumindo perspectivas essencialistas e naturalizadas como fundamento público-político dessas instituições, desses sujeitos institucionalizados e da vida social, instrumentalizasse o direito com fins políticos. Por isso, ninguém tem mais medo – na verdade se tem orgulho, no Brasil de hoje – de se ser fascista publicamente, sejam os sujeitos institucionalizados, sejam os sujeitos não institucionalizados! (shrink)

Biomedical experimentation on animals is justified, researchers say, because of its enormous benefits to human being. Sure an imals die a nd suffer , but that is m orally insignificant since the benefits of research incalculably outweigh the evils. Although this utilitarian claim appears straightforward and uncontroversial, it is neither straightforw ard n ot uncontroversial. This defense of animal experimentation is like ly to succeed only by rejecting three widely held moral presumptions. W e identify those presumptions and explain their (...) relevance to the justification of animal experimentation. We argue that even if non-human animals have con side rable less moral worth than humans, experimentation is justified only if its benefits are overwhelming. By building on arguments offered in earlier papers, we show that research ers c ann ot substantiate their claims of behalf of animal research. We conclude that there is currently no acceptable utilitarian defense of animal experimentation. Moreover, it is unlikely that they could be one. Since most apologists of animal experimentation rely on utilitarian justifications of their practice, it appears that biomedical experimentation on animals is not morally justified. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Biomedical experimentation on animals is justified, researchers say, because of its enormous benefits to human beings. Sure, animals suffer and die, but that is morally insignificant since the benefits of research incalculably outweigh the evils. Although this utilitarian claim appears straightforward and relatively uncontroversial, it is neither straightforward nor uncontroversial. This defence of animal experimentation is likely to succeed only by rejecting three widely held moral presumptions. We identify these assumptions and explain their relevance to the justification of animal (...) experimentation. We argue that, even if non‐human animals have considerably less moral worth than humans, experimentation is justified only if the benefits are overwhelming. By building on and expanding on arguments offered in earlier papers, we show that researchers cannot substantiate their claims on behalf of animal research. We conclude that there is currently no acceptable utilitarian defence of animal experimentation. Moreover, it is unlikely that there could be one. Since most apologists of animal experimentation rely on utilitarian justifications of their practice, it appears that biomedical experimentation on animals is not morally justified. (shrink)

A computational modeling approach was used to test one possible explanation for the limited capacity of the subitizing phenomenon. Most existing models of this phenomenon associate the subitizing span with an assumed structural limitation of the human information processing system. In contrast, we show how this limit might emerge as the combinatorics of the space of enumeration problems interacts with the human cognitive architecture in the context of an enumeration task. Subitizing‐like behavior was generated in two different models of enumeration, (...) one based on the ACT‐R cognitive architecture and the other based on the principles of parallel distributed processing (PDP). Our results provide good qualitative fits to results obtained in a variety of empirical studies. (shrink)

This paper raises concerns about the tenor of 21st century interaction by identifying a tendency whereby relatively innocuous, canonically private communication is transformed into public communication deemed offensive enough to attract institutional or legal sanction. To understand examples of this tendency, it applies Goffman’s architecture of interaction to email communication and proposes the notion of situational transformation to encapsulate reframing processes involving footing, face and participation framework. Through these processes (to which, it is shown, the email medium is especially vulnerable) (...) and a discourse of civility, the private becomes public and opposition becomes offence. (shrink)

The common view of the transition between subitizing and numerosity estimation regimes is that there is a hard bound on the subitizing range, and beyond this range, people estimate. However, this view does not adequately address the behavioral signatures of enumeration under conditions of attentional load or in the immediate post-subitizing range. The possibility that there might exist a numerosity range where both processes of subitizing and estimation operate in conjunction has so far been ignored. Here, we investigate this new (...) proposal, that people strategically combine the processes of subitizing and estimation to maximize accuracy and precision, given time or attentional constraints. We present a process-level account of how subitizing and estimation can be combined through strategic deployment of attention to maximize the precision of perceived numerosity given time constraints. We then describe a computational model of this account and apply it in two experimental simulations to demonstrate how it can explain key findings in prior enumeration research. While recent modeling work has argued that the behavioral signatures of enumeration can best be explained through a single numerosity system with a single form of representation, we argue that our model demonstrates how the traditional two-systems view of numerical representation accounts for behavioral data through coordination with a unified attentional mechanism, rather than a unified representation. (shrink)

Alexander Woloch, in a pioneering 2003 study on literary characters and characterization, observed that narrative meaning emerges in the dynamic attention to and neglect of the characters, major and minor, who inhabit the same story but occupy different positions therein. This essay draws on Woloch’s theory and methods to analyze the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, taking the women of the narrative as its case study. Aruru, Ninsun, Shamhat, Aya, Ishtar, the scorpion-man’s woman, Shiduri, and Uta-napishti’s wife are here examined (...) not as flat or stock characters but rather as individual personalities who often transcend both their constrained narrative spaces and the gendered characterizations applied to them in the scholarship of recent decades. In paying the women of the SB Epic of Gilgamesh the attention they deserve, this study sheds new light not only on the composition’s minor characters but also on its narrative structure and meaning. (shrink)

Volume 33, Issue 8, November 2020, Page 1096-1120.

This paper goes beyond — transcends — “pedagogy as justice,” recognizing that justice, particularly in these present times, may not be enough. Its wager is with pedagogies of and for life; pedagogies that plant and cultivate, that push and enable other modes of living, despite the capitalist-modern-colonial-racist system, beyond the system, and in the system's margins, borders, fissures, and cracks. These pedagogies, as Catherine Walsh argues here, are necessarily tied to and constitutive of decolonial(izing) praxis, a praxis that, while not (...) negating justice, takes us beyond it. The argument here is for the pedagogical-praxistical work being done now, and yet to be done; the actional thought, thoughtful action, and ongoing creation and construction of an otherwise for existence, for dignity, and for life in these times of multiple entwined pandemic-viruses, including capitalist greed, systemic racism, heteropatriarchy, and existential-territorial dispossession in which COVID is/was one more thread of the entwine. (shrink)

Many accounts of online trust are based upon mechanisms for building reputation. Trust is portrayed as desirable, and handing off trust is easier if trust is modelled to be transitive. But in the analysis of cyber-security protocols, trust is usually used as a substitute for certain knowledge: it follows that if there is no residual risk, then there is no need for trust. On this grimmer understanding, the less that users are required to trust, the better. Involuntary transitivity of trust (...) becomes corrosive, because it prevents participants from having control—or even knowledge—of the risks to which their trust assumptions expose them. In this paper, we take the stance that controlling the transitivity of trust requires us to recognise trust as a non-referentially transparent modality, similar to but significantly weaker than the epistemic modalities, and to accept the corollary that imaginary (indeed—even impossible) threats can have real consequences that adversely affect online security. An apparently paradoxical outcome is that the desire of principals to keep their trust assumptions private can actually assist the design of systems to satisfy multiple security agendas. However, this approach requires agents to have the capability to predicate accurately about states of affairs that are logically inconsistent with their beliefs, and consequently, designing systems in this way becomes more akin to diplomacy than engineering. (shrink)

Using a novel enumeration task, we examined the encoding of spatial information during subitizing. Observers were shown masked presentations of randomly-placed discs on a screen and were required to mark the perceived locations of these discs on a subsequent blank screen. This provided a measure of recall for object locations and an indirect measure of display numerosity. Observers were tested on three stimulus durations and eight numerosities. Enumeration performance was high for displays containing up to six discs—a higher subitizing range (...) than reported in previous studies. Error in the location data was measured as the distance between corresponding stimulus and response discs. Overall, location errors increased in magnitude with larger numerosities and shorter display durations. When errors were computed as disc distance from display centroid, results suggest a compressed representation by observers. Additionally, enumeration and localization accuracy increased with display regularity. (shrink)

The random]ized clinical trial is widely accepted as the optimal approach to evaluating the safety and efficacy of medical treatments. Resistance to randomized treatment assignment arises regularly, most commonly in situations where the disease is life-threatening and treatments are either unavailable or unsatisfactory. Historical control designs, in which all participants receive the experimental treatment with results compared to a prior cohort, are advocated by some as more ethical in such circumstances; however, such studies are often highly biased in favor of (...) the new treatment and frequently yield misleading results. Alternative controlled designs motivated by the desire to maximize the number of patients with the treatment ultimately determined to be superior have been proposed, but have been challenged on both methodological and ethical grounds. Debates about appropriate and ethical study designs recurred during the recent Ebola Virus Disease epidemic in West Africa. Despite its devastating nature, the EVD epidemic showed the ongoing necessity of conducting randomized trials to obtain convincing evidence of the safety and efficacy of therapeutic interventions. (shrink)

Category Theory has developed rapidly. This book aims to present those ideas and methods which can now be effectively used by Mathe­ maticians working in a variety of other fields of Mathematical research. This occurs at several levels. On the first level, categories provide a convenient conceptual language, based on the notions of category, functor, natural transformation, contravariance, and functor category. These notions are presented, with appropriate examples, in Chapters I and II. Next comes the fundamental idea of an adjoint (...) pair of functors. This appears in many substantially equivalent forms: That of universal construction, that of direct and inverse limit, and that of pairs offunctors with a natural isomorphism between corresponding sets of arrows. All these forms, with their interrelations, are examined in Chapters III to V. The slogan is "Adjoint functors arise everywhere". Alternatively, the fundamental notion of category theory is that of a monoid -a set with a binary operation of multiplication which is associative and which has a unit; a category itself can be regarded as a sort of general­ ized monoid. Chapters VI and VII explore this notion and its generaliza­ tions. Its close connection to pairs of adjoint functors illuminates the ideas of universal algebra and culminates in Beck's theorem characterizing categories of algebras; on the other hand, categories with a monoidal structure lead inter alia to the study of more convenient categories of topological spaces. (shrink)

The basic human ability to treat quantitative information can be divided into two parts. With proto-arithmetical ability, based on the core cognitive abilities for subitizing and estimation, numerosities can be treated in a limited and/or approximate manner. With arithmetical ability, numerosities are processed (counted, operated on) systematically in a discrete, linear, and unbounded manner. In this paper, I study the theory of enculturation as presented by Menary (2015) as a possible explanation of how we make the move from the proto-arithmetical (...) ability to arithmetic proper. I argue that enculturation based on neural reuse provides a theoretically sound and fruitful framework for explaining this development. However, I show that a comprehensive explanation must be based on valid theoretical distinctions and involve several stages in the development of arithmetical knowledge. I provide an account that meets these challenges and thus leads to a better understanding of the subject of enculturation. (shrink)

This paper is about some of the ways in which people sometimes speak while be- ing indifferent toward what they say. We argue that what Harry Frankfurt called ‘bullshitting’ is a mode of speech marked by indifference toward inquiry, the coop- erative project of reaching truth in discourse. On this view bullshitting is character- ized by indifference toward the project of advancing inquiry by making progress on specific subinquiries, represented by so-called questions under discussion. This ac- count preserves the central (...) insight of Frankfurt’s influential analysis of bullshitting in seeing the characteristic of bullshitting as indifference toward truth and falsity. Yet we show that speaking with indifference toward truth is a wider phenomenon than the one Frankfurt identified. The account offered in this paper thereby agrees with various critics of Frankfurt who argue that bullshitting is compatible with not being indifferent toward the truth-value of one’s assertions. Further, we argue that, while bullshitting and lying are not mutually exclusive, most lies are not instances of bullshitting. The account thereby avoids the problem that Frankfurt’s view ulti- mately is insufficient to adequately distinguish bullshitting and lying. (shrink)

Why would we want to develop artificial human-like arithmetical intelligence, when computers already outperform humans in arithmetical calculations? Aside from arithmetic consisting of much more than mere calculations, one suggested reason is that AI research can help us explain the development of human arithmetical cognition. Here I argue that this question needs to be studied already in the context of basic, non-symbolic, numerical cognition. Analyzing recent machine learning research on artificial neural networks, I show how AI studies could potentially shed (...) light on the development of human numerical abilities, from the proto-arithmetical abilities of subitizing and estimating to counting procedures. Although the current results are far from conclusive and much more work is needed, I argue that AI research should be included in the interdisciplinary toolbox when we try to explain the development and character of numerical cognition and arithmetical intelligence. This makes it relevant also for the epistemology of mathematics. (shrink)

Introduction: Play, Power, and the Western Mentality Whereas play has always had an important, if sometimes unthemat- ized, role in Western literary ...

One of the most important questions in the young field of numerical cognition studies is how humans bridge the gap between the quantity-related content produced by our evolutionarily ancient brains and the precise numerical content associated with numeration systems like Indo-Arabic numerals. This gap problem is the main focus of this paper. The aim here is to evaluate the extent to which cultural factors can help explain how we come to think about numbers beyond the subitizing range. To do this, (...) I summarize Clark’s notion of a difference maker in explaining complex causation that criss-crosses between mind and world and apply it to Menary’s Open MIND. MIND Group, Frankfurt, 2015a) discussion of mathematical cognition as a case of enculturation. I argue that while Menary’s views on enculturation can help explain what makes the difference between numerate and anumerate cultures, it cannot help specify what makes the difference between numerate and anumerate individuals. I argue that features of enculturation do not provide an account of innovation capable of explaining how individuals manage to improve and modify the practices of their cultural niche. This is because Menary’s construal of the role of enculturation in the development of mathematical cognition focuses mostly on the inheritance and transmission of practices, not on their origins, which involve individual-level understanding, rather than population-level practices and pressures. The upshot is that culture provides the necessary background conditions against which individuals can innovate. This role is crucial in the development of numerical abilities—crucial, but explanatorily limited. (shrink)

GOTTFRIED SCHWEIGER,GUNTER GRAF | : In this paper, we want to examine the particular vulnerability of children from an ethical perspective. We want to defend three claims: Firstly, we will argue that children’s vulnerability is best understood as a dynamic quality, meaning that as children progress through childhood, their vulnerability also undergoes particular changes. To capture this, we want to discriminate among physical, mental, social, and symbolic vulnerability, which vary according to certain features, such as age, maturity, gender, and race. (...) These different traits are furthermore important in order to understand what we owe children from an ethical perspective. In a nutshell, children have moral claims not to be harmed and to be protected against threats to their well-being and well-becoming, and these claims have to be explicated via the dynamic vulnerability of children. Finally, we will argue that one of the main issues is to balance the protection of children and their autonomy claims, which both enhance and diminish their vulnerability. | : Cet article examine la vulnérabilité particulière des enfants d’un point de vue éthique. Nous défendrons trois thèses. Premièrement, nous soutiendrons que la vulnérabilité des enfants est mieux comprise en tant que qualité dynamique, ce qui signifie que lorsque les enfants progressent durant l’enfance, leur vulnérabilité subit également des changements particuliers. Pour le mettre en relief, nous distinguerons la vulnérabilité physique, mentale, sociale et symbolique, qui varie en fonction de certaines caractéristiques telles que l’âge, la maturité, le sexe et la race. Ces différents traits sont en outre importants pour comprendre ce que nous devons aux enfants d’un point de vue éthique. En un mot, les enfants ont des exigences morales à ne pas être blessés et à être protégés contre les menaces à leur bien-être et à leur bien-devenir, et ces revendications doivent être expliquées par la vulnérabilité dynamique des enfants. Enfin, nous soutiendrons que l’un des principaux enjeux est d’équilibrer la protection des enfants et leurs revendications d’autonomie, qui à la fois renforcent et diminuent leur vulnérabilité. (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are shaped by enculturation. Enculturation is the acquisition of cognitive practices such as symbol-based mathematical practices, reading, and writing during ontogeny. Enculturation is associated with significant changes to the organization and connectivity of the brain and to the functional profiles of embodied actions and motor programs. Furthermore, it relies on scaffolded cultural learning in the cognitive niche. The purpose of this paper is to explore the components of symbol-based mathematical practices. Phylogenetically, these practices are the (...) result of concerted organism-niche interactions that have led from approximate number estimations to the emergence of discrete, symbol-based mathematical operations. Ontogenetically, symbol-based mathematical practices are associated with plastic changes to neural circuitry, action schemata, and motor programs. It will be suggested that these practices rely on previously acquired capacities such as subitizing and counting. With these considerations in place, I will argue that computations, understood in the sense of Turing (1936), are a specific kind of symbol-based mathematical practices that can be realized by human organisms, machines, or by hybrid organism-machine systems. In sum, this paper suggests a new way to think about mathematical cognition and computation. (shrink)

What is the nature of number systems and arithmetic that we use in science for quantification, analysis, and modeling? I argue that number concepts and arithmetic are neither hardwired in the brain, nor do they exist out there in the universe. Innate subitizing and early cognitive preconditions for number— which we share with many other species—cannot provide the foundations for the precision, richness, and range of number concepts and simple arithmetic, let alone that of more complex mathematical concepts. Numbers and (...) arithmetic, and mathematics in general, have unique features—precision, objectivity, rigor, generalizability, stability, symbolizability, and applicability to the real world—that must be accounted for. They are sophisticated concepts that developed culturally only in recent human history. I suggest that numbers and arithmetic are realized through precise combinations of non-mathematical everyday cognitive mechanisms that make human imagination and abstraction possible. One such mechanism, conceptual metaphor, is a neurally instantiated inference-preserving cross-domain mapping that allows the conceptualization of abstract entities in terms of grounded bodily experience. I analyze how the inferential organization of the properties and “laws” of arithmetic emerge metaphorically from everyday meaningful actions. Numbers and arithmetic are thus—outside of natural selection—the product of the biologically constrained interaction of individuals with the appropriate cultural and historical phenotypic variation supported by language, writing systems, and education. (shrink)

To be Black means to have ancestors whose humanity has been de-nied by slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and segregation, as well as by many theories elaborated in order to justify and intensify these modes of domination. To be Black also means having to face the enduring legacies of these systems and theories, which predomi-nantly manifest through overexposure to violence and death. Today, premature death and habituation to loss remain constitutive fea-tures of Black experience. Dignity, often de????ined as the inherent value of (...) every single human being, has been a core concept in ethics since Kant, at least. But in both philosophy and modern politics, the claim of respect for the dignity of people has coexisted with deep antiblack-ness. However, apart from the Western understanding of dignity stands another tradition. The concept of dignity is pervasive in Black radicalism, Caribbean philosophy, and African thought since the 18th century. This article draws inspiration from the legacy of these thinkers to elaborate an ethics centred on the speci????icities of racial-ized life. (shrink)

Neural network models of memory are notorious for catastrophic interference: Old items are forgotten as new items are memorized (French, 1999; McCloskey & Cohen, 1989). While working memory (WM) in human adults shows severe capacity limitations, these capacity limitations do not reflect neural network style catastrophic interference. However, our ability to quickly apprehend the numerosity of small sets of objects (i.e., subitizing) does show catastrophic capacity limitations, and this subitizing capacity and WM might reflect a common capacity. Accordingly, computational investigations (...) (Knops, Piazza, Sengupta, Eger & Melcher, 2014; Sengupta, Surampudi & Melcher, 2014) suggest that mutual inhibition among neurons can explain both kinds of capacity limitations as well as why our ability to estimate the numerosity of larger sets is limited according to a Weber ratio signature. Based on simulations with a saliency map‐like network and mathematical proofs, we provide three results. First, mutual inhibition among neurons leads to catastrophic interference when items are presented simultaneously. The network can remember a limited number of items, but when more items are presented, the network forgets all of them. Second, if memory items are presented sequentially rather than simultaneously, the network remembers the most recent items rather than forgetting all of them. Hence, the tendency in WM tasks to sequentially attend even to simultaneously presented items might not only reflect attentional limitations, but also an adaptive strategy to avoid catastrophic interference. Third, the mean activation level in the network can be used to estimate the number of items in small sets, but it does not accurately reflect the number of items in larger sets. Rather, we suggest that the Weber ratio signature of large number discrimination emerges naturally from the interaction between the limited precision of a numeric estimation system and a multiplicative gain control mechanism. (shrink)

Group sex among men who have sex with men may be understood as a ‘radical’ practice insofar as it transgresses dominant social discourses around appropriate sexual relations—prioritizing heteronormative, monogamous and risk‐averse sex. These practices are generally defined as steeped in risk, most commonly due to the potential for transmitting human immunodeficiency virus and sexually transmitted infections and accompanied by the possibility of legal and social repercussions. Our ethnographic research study explored the desires, practices and contexts of group sex participants (n (...) = 10) within a popular group sex party destination located in the United States. We employ a poststructuralist perspective (utilizing the work of Deleuze and Guattari) to understand group sex events with the pretext that bodies have no inherent ethics, meaning or essence: they are ‘bodies without organs’. We identify group sex as a form of boundary play, in which participants pursue new limits to what their bodies can do but within a carefully constructed environment that establishes norms of interaction meant to secure trust and safety between participants. A variety of risk reduction practices are shown to be promoted and honoured within these eventful sexual(ized) spaces. The application of poststructuralist concepts of ‘boundary play’ and ‘bodies without organs’ helped to depict the construction and navigation of pleasure, safety and risk among group sex participants. (shrink)

Recovery is a model of care in (forensic) mental health settings across Western nations that aims to move past the paternalistic and punitive models of institutional care of the 20th century and toward more patient‐centered approaches. But as we argue in this paper, the recovery‐oriented services that evolved out of the early stages of this liberating movement signaled a shift in nursing practices that cannot be viewed only as improvements. In effect, as “recovery” nursing practices became more established, more codified, (...) and more institutional(ized), a stasis developed. Recovery had been reterritorialized. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the threads of recovery, from its early days of antipsychiatry activism to its codification into mental health—including forensic mental health—institutions through the lens of poststructuralist philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. We believe that Deleuze and Guattari's scholarship provides the necessary, albeit uncomfortable, framework for this critical examination. From a conceptualization of recovery as an assemblage, we critically examine how we can go about creating something new, caught in a tension between stasis and change. (shrink)

If we distinguish phenomenal effects from their noumenal causes, the former being our conceptual(ized) experiences, the latter their grounds or causes in reality ‘as it is’ independent of our experience, then two contradictory positions with regards to the relationship between these two can be distinguished: either phenomena are identical with their noumenal causes, or they are not. Davidson is among the most influential modern defenders of the former position, metaphysical non-dualism. Dharmakīrti’s strict distinction between ultimate and conventional reality, on the (...) other hand, may be one of the most rigorously elaborated theories of the opposite position, metaphysical dualism. Despite this fundamental difference, their theories about the connection between phenomena and their noumenal causes are surprisingly similar in important respects. Both Dharmakīrti in his theory of ‘apoha’ and Davidson in his theory of ‘triangulation’ argued that the content of words or concepts depends on a process involving at least two communicating beings and shared noumenal stimuli. The main point of divergence is the nature of classification, but ultimately Dharmakīrti’s and Davidson’s conclusions on the noumenal-phenomenal relationship turn out to be complementary more than contradictory, and an integrative reconstruction suggests a ‘middle path’ between dualism and non-dualism. (shrink)

The power of compulsory heterosexuality regulates the sexuality of adolescent lesbians as strongly as it does their heterosexual peers. Marked with a sexual(ized) identity, young Southern lesbians in this life history study made claim to moral high ground by consistently identifying with the hegemonic good girl construct and by participating in the naming of women whose sexual behavior demonstrated a disregard for the ?rules.? The good girl/bad girl, the virgin/slut binaries, played significant roles in their identity claims, in their relationships, (...) and in their choices of friendships. Personal self-control (?just kissing?) is seen by these young women as admirable and sluts are seen as dangerous women who harm others and themselves. This article explores the marking of sluts and too experienced women in the life stories of White Southern adolescent lesbians and the continued social controls imposed on adolescent female sexuality through the devaluing of women's sexual agency. (shrink)

As a result of technological innovations and new cultural practices, the contemporary mediasphere is increasingly populated by digital(ized) faces. The phenomenon is not limited to human faces, but includes a vast universe of fictional animated faces, variously called ‘characters’, ‘mascots’ or ‘kyara’. In Japan, while certainly not new, kyara have been spreading thanks to globalization, digitalization and media-mix strategies. Through the connection between visual design, fictional narratives and socio-cultural consumption, kyara can be considered semiotic figures of in-betweenness, key symbolic mediators (...) in the Japanese mediascape. Their anthropomorphic face design mediates the cultural boundaries between the human and the non-human, the animate and the inanimate, nature and culture. Furthermore, their post-modern narratives mix inspiration from the past and the present, from myths to science fiction. Lastly, they involve an encyclopedic reworking between fiction and reality, mythical references and secularization, between the domains of seriousness and playful make-believe. The article aims to explore the semiotic dimensions of kyara in contemporary Japan, with emphasis on their logic of representation and cultural outcomes. These will be investigated through the analysis of the Pokemon franchise, which will make it possible to describe the emergence of new semiotic patterns of ‘playful visual animism’ in the process of media facialization of everyday life. (shrink)