Even though the description of the universe in cosmology is known to be given by a smooth 4-dimensional Lorentz manifold for energies below Planck scale, one still can ask about the origins of this phenomenon. In this paper we show that mathematics used for description of quantum systems at micro scale determines smoothness of spacetime at large cosmological scales and indicates the dimension 4 as the only possible dimension for spacetime.

We give an almost explicit presentation of exotic functions corresponding to some exotic smooth structure on topologically trivial R4. The construction relies on the model-theoretic tools from the previous paper. We can formulate unexpected, yet direct connection between ‘‘localized’’ exotic small R4’s and some noncommutative spaces. The formalism of QM can be interpreted in terms of exotic smooth R4’s localized in spacetime. A new way of looking at the problem of decoherence is suggested. The (...) 4-dimensional spacetime itself has built-in means which may enforce a kind of decoherence. (shrink)

A general duality connecting the level of a formal theory and of a metatheory is proposed. Because of the role of natural numbers in a metatheory the existence of a dual theory is conjectured, in which the natural numbers become formal in the theory but in formalizing non-formal natural numbers taken from the dual metatheory these numbers become nonstandard. For any formal theory there may be in principle a dual theory. The dual shape of the lattice of projections over separable (...) Hilbert space is exhibited. The crucial ingredient of this dual theory is set-theoretical (Cohen) forcing. Then, some attempts have been made to exhibit the dual shape of the exotic smooth (small) structures on topological ℝ4. There are striking similarities of both pictures. Nonstandard solutions of the equations of motion of 10-dimensional superstring of IIB type are described as a model theoretic extension of standard ones. Based on Brans conjecture one can predict the existence of sources of gravity in 4 dimensions. By their dual origins they carry quantum information as well. The generalized Maldacena conjecture appears naturally, which sheds light on a definition of background independent string theory. (shrink)

Even though the description of the universe in cosmology is known to be given by a smooth 4-dimensional Lorentz manifold for energies below Planck scale, one still can ask about the origins of this phenomenon. In this paper we show that mathematics used for description of quantum systems at micro scale determines smoothness of spacetime at large cosmological scales and indicates the dimension 4 as the only possible dimension for spacetime.

The temporal structure of behavior contains a rich source of information about its dynamic organization, origins, and development. Today, advances in sensing and data storage allow researchers to collect multiple dimensions of behavioral data at a fine temporal scale both in and out of the laboratory, leading to the curation of massive multimodal corpora of behavior. However, along with these new opportunities come new challenges. Theories are often underspecified as to the exact nature of these unfolding interactions, and psychologists have (...) limited ready-to-use methods and training for quantifying structures and patterns in behavioral time series. In this paper, we will introduce four techniques to interpret and analyze high-density multi-modal behavior data, namely, to: (1) visualize the raw time series, (2) describe the overall distributional structure of temporal events (Burstiness calculation), (3) characterize the nonlinear dynamics over multiple timescales with Chromatic and Anisotropic Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA), (4) and quantify the directional relations among a set of interdependent multimodal behavioral variables with Granger Causality. Each technique is introduced in a module with conceptual background, sample data drawn from empirical studies and ready-to-use Matlab scripts. The code modules showcase each technique’s application with detailed documentation to allow more advanced users to adapt them to their own datasets. Additionally, to make our modules more accessible to beginner programmers, we provide a “Programming Basics” module that introduces common functions for working with behavioral timeseries data in Matlab. Together, the materials provide a practical introduction to a range of analyses that psychologists can use to discover temporal structure in high-density behavioral data. (shrink)

In connection with the work of Anscombe, Macpherson, Steinhorn and the present author in [1] we investigate the notion of a multidimensional exact class, a special kind of multidimensional asymptotic class with measuring functions that yield the exact sizes of definable sets, not just approximations. We use results about smooth approximation [24] and Lie coordinatization [13] to prove the following result, as conjectured by Macpherson: For any countable language $\mathcal {L}$ and any positive integer d the class $\mathcal {C}$ (...) of all finite $\mathcal {L}$-structures with at most d 4-types is a polynomial exact class in $\mathcal {L}$, where a polynomial exact class is a multidimensional exact class with polynomial measuring functions. (shrink)

Deficits in gestures act as early signs of impairment in social interaction and communication in children with autism spectrum disorder. However, the pieces of literature on atypical gesture patterns in ASD children are contradictory. This investigation aimed to explore the atypical gesture pattern of ASD children from the dimensions of quantity, communicative function, and integration ability; and its relationship with social ability and adaptive behavior. We used a semi-structured interactive play to evaluate gestures of 33 ASD children and 24 typically (...) developing children. And we evaluated the social ability, adaptive behavior, and productive language of ASD and TD children by using the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System version II and Chinese Communication Development Inventory. No matter the total score of CCDI was corrected or not, the relative frequency of total gestures, behavior regulation gestures, SI gestures, and joint attention gestures of ASD children were lower than that of TD children, as well as the proportion of JA gestures. However, there was no significant group difference in the proportion of BR and SI gestures. Before adjusting for the total score of CCDI, the relative frequency of gestures without vocalization/verbalization integration and vocalization/verbalization-integrated gestures in ASD children was lower than that in TD children. However, after matching the total score of CCDI, only the relative frequency of gestures without vocalization/verbalization integration was lower. Regardless of the fact that the total score of CCDI was corrected or not, the relative frequency and the proportion of eye-gaze-integrated gestures in ASD children were lower than that in TD children. And the proportion of gestures without eye-gaze integration in ASD children was higher than that in TD children. For ASD children, the social skills score in ABAS-II was positively correlated with the relative frequency of SI gesture and eye-gaze-integrated gestures; the total score of ABAS-II was positively correlated with the relative frequency of total gestures and eye-gaze-integrated gestures. In conclusion, ASD children produce fewer gestures and have deficits in JA gestures. The deficiency of integrating eye gaze and gesture is the core deficit of ASD children’s gesture communication. Relatively, ASD children might be capable of integrating vocalization/verbalization into gestures. SI gestures and the ability to integrate gesture and eye gaze are related to social ability. The quantity of gestures and the ability to integrate gesture with eye gaze are related to adaptive behavior.Clinical Trial Registration:www.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier ChiCTR1800019679. (shrink)

Recent advances in differential topology single out four-dimensions as being special, allowing for vast varieties of exotic smoothness structures, distinguished by their handlebody decompositions, even as the coarser algebraic topology is fixed. Should the spacetime we reside in takes up one of the more exotic choices, and there is no obvious reason why it shouldn’t, apparent pathologies would inevitably plague calculus-based physical theories assuming the standard vanilla structure, due to the non-existence of a diffeomorphism and the consequent (...) lack of a suitable portal through which to transfer the complete information regarding the exotic physical dynamics into the vanilla theories. An obvious plausible consequence of this deficiency would be the uncertainty permeating our attempted description of the microscopic world. We tentatively argue here, that a re-inspection of the key ingredients of the phenomenological particle models, from the perspective of exotica, could possibly yield interesting insights. Our short and rudimentary discussion is qualitative and speculative, because the necessary mathematical tools have only just began to be developed. (shrink)

We show that in 4-spacetime modified at very short distances due to the weakening of classical logic, the higher dimensions emerge. We analyse the case of some smooth topoi, and the case of some class of pointless topoi. The pointless topoi raise the dimensionality due to the forcing adding “string” objects and thus replacing classical points in spacetime. Turning to strings would be something fundamental and connected with set theoretical forcing. The field theory/strings dualities originate at the set theoretical (...) level of the theories. It is argued that this fundamental level can help solving some difficulties of the physical dualities. (shrink)

Doctoral programs at U.S. universities play a critical role in the development of human resources both in the United States and abroad. This volume reports the results of an extensive study of U.S. research-doctorate programs in five broad fields: physical sciences and mathematics, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, biological sciences, and the humanities. Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States documents changes that have taken place in the size, structure, and quality of doctoral education since the widely used 1982 editions. This (...) update provides selected information on nearly 4,000 doctoral programs in 41 subdisciplines at 274 doctorate-granting institutions. This volume also reports the results of the National Survey of Graduate Faculty, which polled a sample of faculty for their views on the scholarly quality of program faculty and the effectiveness of doctoral programs in preparing research scholars/scientists. This much-anticipated update of such an essential reference will be useful to education administrators, university faculty, and students seeking authoritative information on doctoral programs. (shrink)

In this paper, we continue the study of the Killing symmetries of an N-dimensional generalized Minkowski space, i.e., a space endowed with a metric tensor, whose coefficients do depend on a set of non-metrical coordinates. We discuss here the finite structure of the space–time rotations in such spaces, by confining ourselves to the four-dimensional case. In particular, the results obtained are specialized to the case of a “deformed” Minkowski space M_4, for which we derive the explicit general form of the (...) finite rotations and boosts in different parametric bases. (shrink)

In classifications of vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary size and depth have often been separately conceptualized (Schmitt, 2014). Although size and depth are known to be substantially correlated, it is not clear whether they are a single construct or two separate components of vocabulary knowledge (Yanagisawa & Webb, 2020). This issue has not been addressed extensively in the literature and can be better examined using structural equation modeling (SEM), with measurement error modeled separately from the construct of interest. The current study reports (...) on conventional and Bayesian SEM approaches (e.g., Muthén & Asparouhov, 2012) to examine the factor structure of the size and depth of second language vocabulary knowledge of Japanese adult learners of English. A total of 255 participants took five vocabulary tests. One test was designed to measure vocabulary size in terms of the number of words known, while the remaining four were designed to measure vocabulary depth in terms of word association, polysemy, and collocation. All tests used a multiple-choice format. The size test was divided into three subtests according to word frequency. Results from conventional and Bayesian SEM show that a correlated two-factor model of size and depth with three and four indicators, respectively, fit better than a single-factor model of size and depth. In the two-factor model, vocabulary size and depth were strongly correlated (r =.945 for conventional SEM and.943 for Bayesian SEM with cross loadings), but they were distinct. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

I BEGIN WITH A PUZZLE of sorts. Time is one; space is two—at least two. Time comes always already unified, one time. Thus we say “What time is it now?” and not “Which time is it now?” We do not ask, “What space is it?” Yet we might ask: “Which space are we in?”. Any supposed symmetry of time and space is skewed from the start. If time is self-consolidating—constantly gathering itself together in coherent units such as years or hours (...) or semesters or seasons— space is self-proliferating. Take, for example, the dimensionality of space. One dimension in space is represented by a point or a line, whose radically reduced format mocks the extensiveness of cosmic space. Two dimensions, as in a plane figure, also falls far short of our sense that space spreads out indefinitely far beyond the perceiving subject. Only with three dimensions do we begin to approach an adequation between the structure and the sense of space. For then the subject is surrounded by something sufficiently roomy in which to live and move. Indeed, as Aristotle, Kant, and Merleau-Ponty all remark, the three-dimensionality of space directly reflects our bodily state, that is, the fact that as upright beings three perpendicular planes implicitly meet and intersect in us. Even here, proliferation abounds: our bilateral symmetry means that each dimension is doubled: one vertical plane bifurcates into “up” and “down,” the other vertical plane into “front” and “back,” and the horizontal plane into “right” and “left.” Thus subject-centered space is triple, only to be redoubled. Further, if we think of spatiality not as body-based but as locatory—as determined by landmarks and other locales in the environment—the proliferation is more striking still. There are the four cardinal directions, which themselves split easily into the thirty two points of a compass. Nor need we be so arithmetically well-rounded. Even apart from fancy mathematical models of n –dimensional space, and recent technological instantiations of virtual space, there is no end to the number or ways in which we can be oriented in space—in accordance with what Deleuze and Guattari call “the variability, the polyvocity of directions” by which we can move in any given spatial scene. Beyond direction, however, is place. Heidegger remarks that “space has been split up into places.” The fact is that we continually find ourselves immersed in a multiplex spatial network whose nodal points are supplied by particular places. If space is infinitely large, place is indefinitely many. (shrink)

I BEGIN WITH A PUZZLE of sorts. Time is one; space is two—at least two. Time comes always already unified, one time. Thus we say “What time is it now?” and not “Which time is it now?” We do not ask, “What space is it?” Yet we might ask: “Which space are we in?”. Any supposed symmetry of time and space is skewed from the start. If time is self-consolidating—constantly gathering itself together in coherent units such as years or hours (...) or semesters or seasons— space is self-proliferating. Take, for example, the dimensionality of space. One dimension in space is represented by a point or a line, whose radically reduced format mocks the extensiveness of cosmic space. Two dimensions, as in a plane figure, also falls far short of our sense that space spreads out indefinitely far beyond the perceiving subject. Only with three dimensions do we begin to approach an adequation between the structure and the sense of space. For then the subject is surrounded by something sufficiently roomy in which to live and move. Indeed, as Aristotle, Kant, and Merleau-Ponty all remark, the three-dimensionality of space directly reflects our bodily state, that is, the fact that as upright beings three perpendicular planes implicitly meet and intersect in us. Even here, proliferation abounds: our bilateral symmetry means that each dimension is doubled: one vertical plane bifurcates into “up” and “down,” the other vertical plane into “front” and “back,” and the horizontal plane into “right” and “left.” Thus subject-centered space is triple, only to be redoubled. Further, if we think of spatiality not as body-based but as locatory—as determined by landmarks and other locales in the environment—the proliferation is more striking still. There are the four cardinal directions, which themselves split easily into the thirty two points of a compass. Nor need we be so arithmetically well-rounded. Even apart from fancy mathematical models of n –dimensional space, and recent technological instantiations of virtual space, there is no end to the number or ways in which we can be oriented in space—in accordance with what Deleuze and Guattari call “the variability, the polyvocity of directions” by which we can move in any given spatial scene. Beyond direction, however, is place. Heidegger remarks that “space has been split up into places.” The fact is that we continually find ourselves immersed in a multiplex spatial network whose nodal points are supplied by particular places. If space is infinitely large, place is indefinitely many. (shrink)

It is argued that the `problem of time' in quantum gravity necessitates a refinement of the local inertial structure of the world, demanding a replacement of the usual Minkowski line element by a 4+2n dimensional pseudo-Euclidean line element, with the extra 2n being the number of internal phase space dimensions of the observed system. In the refined structure, the inverse of the Planck time takes over the role of observer-independent conversion factor usually played by the speed of light, which now (...) emerges as an invariant but derivative quantity. In the relativistic theory based on the refined structure, energies and momenta turn out to be invariantly bounded from above, and lengths and durations similarly bounded from below, by their respective Planck scale values. Along the external timelike world-lines, the theory naturally captures the `flow of time' as a genuinely structural attribute of the world. The theory also predicts expected deviations---suppressed quadratically by the Planck energy---from the dispersion relations for free fields in the vacuum. The deviations from the special relativistic Doppler shifts predicted by the theory are also suppressed quadratically by the Planck energy. Nonetheless, in order to estimate the precision required to distinguish the theory from special relativity, an experiment with a binary pulsar emitting TeV range gamma-rays is considered in the context of the predicted deviations from the second-order shifts. (shrink)

Individual character strengths have been increasingly valued, as they facilitate social functioning, well-being, and performance. However, little is known about how individuals use their strengths for important but distinct goals including task accomplishment and relationship maintenance in organizations. The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a Strengths Use Scale that can be used to measure the use of strengths for tasks and relationships in the workplace. For this purpose, we used the exploratory mixed-method design and conducted a (...) series of studies. In Study 1, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis to ensure the construct validity of the Strengths Use Scale on a sample of 187 employees. We found that the scale comprises two dimensions: strengths use for tasks and strengths use for relationships. In Study 2a, we verified the two-factor structure of the Strengths Use Scale using the confirmatory factor analysis on a separate sample of 213 employees. The results of Study 2b demonstrated that the scale has good measurement invariance across gender and age groups, on the sample of 205 employees. Moreover, strengths use for tasks and strengths use for relationships positively correlated with well-being and work engagement and negatively correlated with turnover intention, supporting the criterion-related validity of the scale. In Study 3, a test–retest reliability analysis with a sample of 94 employees indicated that the scale has high reliability. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

In this book, leading theorists present new contributions and reviews addressing longstanding challenges and ongoing progress in spacetime physics. In the anniversary year of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, developed 100 years ago, this collection reflects the subsequent and continuing fruitful development of spacetime theories. The volume is published in honour of Carl Brans on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Carl H. Brans, who also contributes personally, is a creative and independent researcher and one of the founders of the (...) scalar-tensor theory, also known as Jordan-Brans-Dicke theory. In the present book, much space is devoted to scalar-tensor theories. Since the beginning of the 1990s, Brans has worked on new models of spacetime, collectively known as exotic smoothness, a field largely established by him. In this Festschrift, one finds an outstanding and unique collection of articles about exotic smoothness. Also featured are Bell's inequality and Mach's principle. Personal memories and historical aspects round off the collection. (shrink)

al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273) was a scholar of tafsīr, ḥadīth and fiqh. He experienced both Western and Eastern civilizations in the geography of Andalusia and Egypt, respectively. In his famous Tafsīr called al-Jâmi li-Aḥkâm al-Qur’ān, al-Qurṭubī comparatively explained and interpreted all legal verses. Also, in addition to exploring the spesific legal rulings denoted in the Qur’ān and the Sunnah, al-Qurṭubī has largely interpreted the legal norms regarding the issues of jurisprudence. By doing this, al-Qurṭubī contributed to the formation and development of (...) a civil codification activity under a kazuistic format. The casuistic structure of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān is anlaysed in terms of the form and content in the sample of al-Jâmi. Therefore, neither the similarity or similarity of the schools of the legal exegesis of Qur’ān and of the legal schools nor the disciplines of positive law, but their kazuistic structures, which systems they built and which interpretation methods and techniques they operated on this basis, were evaluated in terms of their original structure. In this direction, the article emphasizes that the casuistic structure of the legal exegesis of Qur’ān is established on and by the Prophet’s sayings and practices. Although, it has been observed that it is a unique tradition, both as form and content, and that the interpretation means are identified with its own unique structure, it has been concluded that the casuistic method is not one of the fundamental elements of both this tradition and Islamic legal thought. This means that the casuistic method is always a tool that can be changed and transformed according to the conditions of time and space.Summary: As it is stated in al-Isrāʾ 17/106: “And (it is) a Qur’ān which we have separated (by intervals) that you might recite it to the people over a prolonged period. And we have sent it down progressive.”, the Qur’ān is revelaed in about twenty-three years by taking into consideration the sociocultural positions of its interlocutors. The Prophet Muḥammad explained the Qur’ān by the virtue of the ayah: “(We sent them) with clear proofs and written ordinances. And We revealed to you the message (i.e. that you may make clear to the people what was sent down to them and that they might give thought.” (an-Naḥl 16/44). Of course, there is no subject integrity in this Qurānic chronology-which also reflects life. As a matter of fact, the issues related to individual and society have been independently analyzed by a casuistic/case-based method and ruled in accordance with the intention of Allāh. It can be seen that the ayahs “They ask you about wine and gambling. Say, ‘In them is great sin and (yet, some) benefit for people. But their sin is greater than their benefit.’ And they ask you what they should spend. Say, ‘The excess (beyond needs).’ Thus Allāh makes clear to you the verses (of revelation) that you might give thought.” (al-Baqara 2/219) and other ayahs such as (al-Baqara 2/186; al-Nisāʾ 4/176; al-Anfāl 8/1) reflect the casuistic method in terms of form and content. This can also be exemplified by the Sunna. For example, when the question “Is it permissible to perform ablutions with sea water?” was posed to Messenger of Allāh. He said that “It’s water is clean and his dead (fish) are lawful “(Abū Dāwūd, “Ṭaḥāra”, 41). By this answer, the Prophet Muḥammad indeed ruled and established a general rule.It can be said that this early example table formed the basis of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān in terms of origin, source and application, and that its shape and content are often immanent in the examples it contains. In this article, based on the prophetic period, the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān and casuistic structure has been studied with an analytical and critical approach. Again, because the casuistic method is one of the universal concepts of east-west science and cultural life, an interdisciplinary approach was exhibited in this study. The roots of the casuistic method date back to 5000 BC and the legal systems of the society and states of antiquity are examined from this method. This method is chosen and used in the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān. However, this study does not analyse the sameness or the similarity of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān and the legal schools nor the positive law disciplines, but the casuistic structures used by these, the systems they have built on this basis and the interpretation methods and techniques they have been used and analyzed in terms of their originality.In effect, the article embodies the Qur’ānic exegesis called al-Jâmi li-Aḥkâm al-Qur’ān by al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273), a scholar of tafsīr, ḥadīth and fiqh. In addition to the works of the aḥkām al-Qur’āns, which deal with the interpretation of the ayahs related to the subjects of ʿibādāt, muʿāmalāt ve ʿuḳūbāt, many other works have been used in parallel with the development of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān. al-Qurṭubī, who comparingly explained the legal verses in his tafsīr, investigated the aspects of the Qur’ān and Sunna that indicate the aḥkām, generally interpreted the existing legal norms within the framework of evidence and introduced his own opinions and etasblished his ijtihād. Thus, he benefited from the tafsīr accumulation and contributed to the formation and development of a civil legalization activity with casuistic format. As a matter of fact, the casuistic/case-based method has been used as a codification/tadwīn technique by Western and Eastern legal disciplines and systems. The casuistic method covers both concrete event and abstract ruling methods. In the casuistic method, which is fact-based event, the laws are organized according to all possible events that can be experienced. On the other hand, the abstract method, which is defined as the abstract ruling method, aims to organize the laws in a general and abstract framework. In the article, it is stated that the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān contains both concrete and abstract dimensions in its own way. It has been emphasized that the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān is based on divine revelation (waḥy) and that it is separated from human law as its origin and source, and that this feature is its most faithful characteristic. On this basis, the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān is a separate scholarly tradition and has its own definition, subject and purpose. Its original structure and function have been noted. As a matter of fact, the subject and purpose of the legal exegesis of the Qur’ān always require the tafsīr and taʾwīl of the legal verses having regard to the Qur’ān and Sunna. It is also necessary for the purpose of investigating the ways in which nuṣūṣ (an explicit statement upon which a ruling is based) can refer to the provisions and to resolve the issues related to individuals and society. As a matter of fact, the legal verses function as a guide for humanity until the day of judgment as the inspiration for religious-legal matters; they contain the content and provisions that offer happiness in the two worlds. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce the notion of a first order topological structure, and consider various possible conditions on the complexity of the definable sets in such a structure, drawing several consequences thereof.Our aim is to develop, for a restricted class of unstable theories, results analogous to those for stable theories. The “material basis” for such an endeavor is the analogy between the field of real numbers and the field of complex numbers, the former being a “nicely behaved” unstable structure (...) and the latter the archetypal stable structure. In this sense we try here to situate our work ono-minimal structures [PS] in a general topological context. Note, however, that thep-adic numbers, and structures definable therein, will also fit into our analysis.In the remainder of this section we discuss several ways of studying topological structures model-theoretically. Eventually we fix on the notion of a structure in which the topology is “explicitly definable” in the sense of Flum and Ziegler [FZ]. In §2 we introduce the hypothesis that every definable set is a Boolean combination of definable open sets. In §3 we introduce a “dimension rank” on definable sets. In §4 we consider structures on which this rank is defined, and for which also every definable set has a finite number of definably connected definable components. We show that prime models over sets exist under such conditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 323-326 [Access article in PDF] The Tacit Dimension Thomas Fuchs Thirty years after its appearance, Blankenburg's "Psychopathology of common sense" has not lost its relevance. In my commentary I will try to illustrate the fruitfulness of his approach by pointing to some connections with the phenomenology of the body as well as with recent memory and infant research.As Blankenburg himself indicates, the (...) notion of common sense developed by a shift of meaning from the classical sensus communis and thus has its original basis in the sensual-bodily experience. By the koinè aísthesis, Aristoteles meant a central sense organ integrating all single modalities of sensation (which he localized in the heart). In German physiology and psychiatry of the nineteenth century, the sensus communis was still translated as "Gemeingefühl" ("common feeling") or "cenesthesia" (Fuchs 1995). This term denoted the inner, proprioceptive bodily sensations, but also an original unity of the senses, which has been rediscovered by recent infant research as intermodal sensory perception. The affection of the body was thus regarded as the common basis of all sensation.Looking on this track for a bodily basis of the common sense, we find it in the habitual structure of the lived-body as analysed by Merleau-Ponty (1945). The body is the primary "matter-of-course," namely, the tacitly functioning medium of our everyday being-in-the-world prior to any subject-object split. The body schema, in Merleau-Ponty's view, is not only a system of familiar units of movement or "kinetic melodies," it also incorporates the surrounding things, tools, and spaces that are familiar to us and that we "inhabit." Thus, the musician "does not only manipulate the instrument like a separate object, but lives in it like a limb and inhabits the expressive musical space it opens" (Behnke 1997). But for Merleau-Ponty, the body schema is also the basis of "intercorporeity," i.e., a prepersonal sphere of reciprocal comportment and understanding prior to any explicit consensus and symbolic communication. In this sphere of elementary contact, the "atmospheric" senses play a major role: The sense of smell (as shown, e.g., by the expression "to scent treason" or in German, "jemand nicht riechen können" [not be able to "smell" or stand someone]) as well as the sense of taste whose ambiguous meaning, mentioned by Blankenburg, points to the bodily basis of the feeling for what is suitable, decent, or aesthetically pleasing. Even the designation of homo sapiens that we give to ourselves is derived from the latin sapere (to taste/to know), and thus shows that the knowledge characteristic for man is not an explicit one, but an intuitive, implicit knowing or "feel" for his surroundings, or as Kant says, an "aesthetic rather than intellectual judgment" (cited by Blankenburg).Polanyi (1967) has analysed this knowledge at the roots of common sense as "tacit knowledge." It is based on processes of Gestalt formation that enable us to grasp unified wholes through their constituting elements without still being aware of the latter. Thus, we understand the facial expression of others immediately but cannot tell from which details. Or we know how [End Page 323] to waltz without knowing the single movements or being able to explain it. Tacit knowledge implies all the taken-for-granted that we have forgotten once it has become our second nature and part of our bodily habits. It is mainly based on the neuronal coupling of single sensori-motor units by repeated perception or action. This unconscious knowing has only recently come to be explored by psychology under the heading of "implicit" or "procedural memory" (Schacter 1987, 1996). It contains familiar styles or "melodies" of moving, perceiving, and being-with-others in which our whole bodily and emotional experience is engaged. There is an atmospheric, "felt" quality about them that cannot be analysed into single elements. Implicit knowledge may, therefore, never be wholly expressed by words—it is only realized in the concrete situation. It may only be circumscribed by expressions such as "how it feels...," "how it is...," e.g., how it is... (shrink)

This study was carried out to determine the ethical sensitivity levels of students enrolled in the nursing faculty. The sample of the descriptive study consisted of 594 students who were taught at the Faculty of Nursing in February - May 2018 and agreed to participate in the study. The data were collected by Personal Information Form prepared by researchers to evaluate the demographic characteristics of students and The Modified Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire for Student Nurses. The data obtained from the application (...) were analyzed using SPSS for Windows 23.0 program. The majority of the students (75.9%) participating in the study were women and 74.9% stated that they internalized the profession. The total score average of The Modified Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire for Student Nurses is 4.93 ± 0.49. While the lowest average score in all classes is “Experiencing Ethical Dilemma” sub-dimension, the highest average score is in the “Interpersonal Orientation” sub-dimension. It is the 3 rd year student with the highest average score received from the scale. It was determined that the ethical sensitivity of the nursing students was medium and there was a significant difference between the ethical sensitivity levels of the students between the classes. It is thought that ensuring the continuity of the ethical education of the nursing students will be effective in increasing the awareness of the students on the subject. For this reason, it is recommended to integrate ethical issues in all courses in the structuring of nursing education curriculum programs. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding and (...) topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

Exotic ontologies are all the rage. Distant from common sense and often science as well, views like mereological essentialism, nihilism, and fourdimensionalism appeal to our desire to avoid arbitrariness, anthropocentrism, and metaphysical conundrums.1 Such views are defensible only if they are materially adequate, only if they can “reconstruct” the world of common sense and science. (No disrespect to the heroic metaphysicians of antiquity, but this world is not just an illusion.) In the world of common sense and science, bicycles (...) survive changes in their parts, billiard balls strike one another, and nothing travels faster than light. The mereological essentialist denies the rst, but offers this replacement: “there exist successions of numerically distinct, but appropriately related, bicycles with different parts” (Chisholm, , chapter ). The nihilist denies the second, but offers this replacement: “there exist X s and Y s such that the X s are arranged billiard-ball-wise, the Y s are also arranged billiard-ball-wise, and the X s strike the Y s”.2 The four-dimensionalist denies the third, but offers this replacement: “no sequences of matter-stages that are related by genidentity travel faster than light”.3 There is room for disagreement over what exactly “reconstruction” amounts to, but at a minimum: when a metaphysical theory reconstructs ordinary sentences φ1. . . as replacement sentences ψ1. . . , ordinary and scienti c evidence must not refute the view that, strictly speaking, it is ψ1. . . rather than φ1. . . that are true. The metaphysician needs reconstruction in order to face the tribunal of experience. An intriguing newcomer to the contemporary scene is the ancient doctrine of monism, the claim that “reality is one”.4 I will argue that, contrary to.. (shrink)

In this document, we study a 3-polygraphic translation for the proofs of SKS, a formal system for classical propositional logic. We prove that the free 3-category generated by this 3-polygraph describes the proofs of classical propositional logic modulo structural bureaucracy. We give a 3-dimensional generalization of Penrose diagrams and use it to provide several pictures of a proof. We sketch how local transformations of proofs yield a non contrived example of 4-dimensional rewriting.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Historical Significance and Structure of Monroe Beardsley's AestheticsAn AppreciationNoël Carroll (bio)IntroductionMonroe C. Beardsley's Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, published in 1958 by Harcourt, Brace and World Inc.,1 was a watershed event in the history of analytic aesthetics—a climax of sorts with respect to what preceded it and, at the same time, the opening of a new, more intricately developed and defended research program in aesthetics (...) than what had been previously on offer. Beardsley's Aesthetics, and developments therefrom,2 consolidated and crystallized a tendency in aesthetics that had begun to emerge at least by the time of the publication of Francis Hutcheson's An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design,3 which tendency, following Beardsley, we can call the aesthetic theory of art. Assembled out of parts and suggestions from Hutcheson, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Bell, among others, the aesthetic theory of art—of which Beardsley's version is one of the most accomplished, if not the most accomplished—has shown remarkable resilience, continuing to command allegiance from many distinguished, contemporary proponents, including Nick Zangwill, Gary Iseminger, and, with certain important modifications, Alan Goldman and Malcolm Budd.Part of what I would like to do in this essay is not only to trace the evolution of the aesthetic theory of art from its origins through to Beardsley's Aesthetics (and his subsequent tinkering with this masterwork) but also to show how the structure of the aesthetic theory of art, as crafted by Beardsley, is simultaneously so elegant, comprehensive, and systematic that it is understandable that Beardsley preferred constantly to repair it after each attack rather than to abandon it for the kinds of alternatives being proffered by Goodman, Danto, Wollheim, Dickie, Wolterstorff, and then Walton. In other words, Beardsley's reluctance to give up was genuinely motivated. [End Page 2] For, if only the kinks could have been smoothed out of it, the aesthetic theory of art, of the sort initiated in Aesthetics and elaborated subsequently by Beardsley, was itself a thing of beauty: exceedingly economical in its foundational principles and powerful in its reach. Thus, whereas typically I address the shortcomings of the aesthetic theory of art, in this essay I would like to talk about its strengths, strengths that I believe encouraged Monroe Beardsley to stick with it through thick and thin—that is, through a thick swarm of often thin counterexamples.In the next part of this essay, I will try to place Aesthetics historically in the course of Western aesthetics. Then in the final section, I shall attempt to explain how the structure of the sort of aesthetic theory of art incipient in Beardsley's Aesthetics and pursued by him in later works is so almost irresistibly attractive that virtually no number of anomalies can shake its friends out of the faith that such problems can be ultimately controlled, if not entirely overcome.On the Historical Significance of Beardsley's AestheticsBeardsley's Aesthetics is the culmination of certain tendencies that had been coalescing in various ways in Western aesthetics since the eighteenth century. One of Beardsley's most significant and influential twentieth-century predecessors was Clive Bell, who in his book Art, as is well known, defined art as that which possessed significant form. Significant form, in turn, was characterized as that which caused an aesthetic emotion. Bell's notion of an aesthetic emotion, I conjecture, derived from Schopenhauer's claim that what an artwork does is to lift us out of our everyday concerns—out of the world of striving. The aesthetic emotion, according to Bell, is a matter of being carried "out of life into ecstasy."4 The aesthetic experience, according to the Schopenhauer-Bell line of thought, involves the release of the individual from the pressures of life—from the pursuit of an endless process of desiring in Schopenhauer's lingo.This notion of aesthetic experience as detachment owes something to Kant's hypothesis that an authentic aesthetic judgment is disinterested, which, of course, itself is descended historically from Hutcheson's contention that beauty amounts to an experience of disinterested pleasure. However, whereas for Hutcheson and Kant disinterestedness is a... (shrink)

Located in Kleinbasel close to the Rhine, the Kaskadenkondensator is a place of mediation and experimental, research-and process-based art production with a focus on performance and performative expression. The gallery, founded in 1994, and located on the third floor of the former Sudhaus Warteck Brewery (hence cascade condenser), seeks to develop interactions between artists, theorists and audiences. Eight, maybe, nine or ten 40 litre bags of potting compost lie strewn about the floor of a high-ceilinged white washed hall. Dumped, split (...) open, the soil mixed with iridescent specks of green, blue and red glitter. On the walls hang large black and white photographic images—negative and positive prints barely clean, hardly sharp, scavenged from the world and presented half processed. On a third wall, hangs a framed golden and charcoal surface. Finally, a huge stain of black dye runs down a wall that descends into a sunken quarter of the Kaskadenkondensator gallery space. The results of a collaboration between Oliver Minder and Walter Derungs reflect on themes addressed in the recent Aesthetics in the 21st Century conference held by the department of English, University of Basel. In particular, the joint show questions how an aesthetic experience may be other than a human-world interaction, hinting at the withdrawal and veiling that objects perform, while demanding that different works engage with each other and play out this game under the non-supervisory eyes of a human audience. Things here are becoming—sometimes it’s a movement towards a more complete ontic whole in a projection of finality, other times it’s a dispersal, an atrophy to rather disarrayed entities. Yet, in the moment and place in which the objects are, we take them as here and now. Let’s get to the material of the stuff that Minder and Derungs have assembled. Oliver Minder employs organic materials—potting earth, cuttlefish ink secretion, rice, and insects; yet his works hardly seem natural in the sense of a harmonic relation between material and the form they are constrained into, the objects they are compelled to occupy. For the substrates on, through, or within which these natural materials are mediated are harshly inorganic substances—Plexiglas, safety glass, acrylic resin, boat varnish, spray paint. Minder, thus, generates a conflict within the materiality of his work between two polar opposites—from the human perspective—in the contiguity of materials engaging with each other in a thrown together formation that nonetheless appears to keep the materials and the objects they make in happy accidental relation to each other. Let me expand a little: on the one hand, the things Minder makes query our belief in substance as belonging in a particular domain, an environment suited to precisely that stuff. We are focused on thinking categorically where things belong, both in terms of natural place and natural relations they might extend to each other. Hence, we are driven to think of environment and order. On the other hand, while extracting things from their conventional place and arranging them within awkward constellations that we as observers feel isn’t quite right, Minder manages to persuade the viewer that the materials are nonetheless “doing alright.” So, simultaneous to our awareness of the appropriateness of the world according to our global notions of accord and uniformity, we are forced to accept the local discrepancies of disassociation, inappropriateness and misplacement. The tension between these two vectors generates a vacillation that intensifies Minder’s work. In the Kaskadenkondensator works, then, it is vital to first consider the material of Minder’s works: potting compost—what is it doing here in the first place?—seems to enjoy being “polluted” by sparkly glitter. Glitter has a long history, used in cosmetics by the Egyptians, and in cave paintings, too, earlier made of beetle shells and mica, nowadays glitter is made of plastic cut to minute sizes down to 50 microns. So what’s the point here? Well shiny bits of dust-like material are actually generated from ultra-thin plastic sheets and are normally cut into shapes that fit contiguously on a two-dimensional surface: squares, triangles, hexagons etc. What then appears to be totally random, chaotic decoration, is actually an array of extremely regular identifiable objects. 1 Of course scale has a role to play here. The minuteness of the dimensions means the regularity is beyond our recognition—all we see are the twinkling surfaces of the multi-coloured grains of plastic. In contrast, potting compost, which appears to be unary in its dull unresponsive lumpen disposition, is in fact an amalgam of a variety of organic and inorganic materials: peat, bark, mushroom compost, and sand and perlite, and should perhaps be more proactively exciting to the viewer because of this complexity. Yes; we can (if we care to) identify different textures, different sizes in the mixture of the medium, but I claim that we tend to treat this organic/inorganic assemblage as just a simple substance. Further and crucially important to our consideration here is that the medium is partially contained, but also partially spilling from the split plastic bags in which it is sold in garden centres. That the compost spills out gives it a movement suggesting life; that the bags are cast here and there in a random fashion by Oliver Minder, lying like discarded carcasses, hacked torsos, dismembered bodies, suggests a horrific murder scene, a Tatort. 2 The glitter flourishes in the medium, lies happy and decorative; that is simply what it does, how it is—always already broken, made-for-scattering, designed to be incomplete; the taken-to-be-natural compost, in contrast, cannot rest content but is forced to speak to us metaphorically in its abject overflowing of violence and rupture. While Oliver Minder’s elements in the installation direct our attention to material, Walter Derungs’ works raise questions around seeing and making in photography. There is a simultaneous flicker between the materials and their use in the production of a sense making representation, on the one hand, and on the other the very notion of what is worthy of picturing, framing, representing on the other. Derungs' images are of non-places. Ranging from archaic decaying monster buildings, buildings that have gone far beyond the ravages of a time that we can safely associate with the genteel preservation of a Bernd and Hill Belcher post-industrial decline, to the background “noise” of an urban world that is falling apart, and to which we most of the time seem to pay little attention, and habitually just pass by. In this respect, their non-ness differs somewhat from the conventional association of the term with Marc Augé 3 , where emphasis is on the specifics (if we do care to examine them for their non-placedness) of the spatial or place containment in which movement between multimodal coordinates occurs in supermodern late capitalist post-urban spaces. In other words, we might be in an Augéian non-place and (not) experience—be impervious to—that environment, or we might in Derungs’ manner look out from such a position at the “scenery” around us. I claim scenery, as this is what Derungs seems to do with his partial photography—construct a very purposefully articulated, symmetric, flat world of image. Mostly depopulated, his images construct a space in which the direction of time is uncertain: are these partial structures falling apart, or perhaps terminated in a never-to-be-completed state, or are they a few steps from final completion? Temporal and spatial dimensions figure large in Derungs’ image-making: his world, and perhaps this is in fact the only way for it to be registered photographically, is already image before it is photographed. A key combination of images in this show is a matrix of six black and white negative prints measuring 300 x 215 cm that form the image of a semi-derelict (or is it yet incomplete) church, and adjacent on a perpendicular wall, a single black and white positive print 150 x 250 cm of two bricked-up windows of a late-Victorian industrial building. What are we led to believe that we see here? In the negative print, the conditions of perception 4 are sufficiently reproduced for us to recognise the structure of the building, to distinguish ground and form, to relate some partial elements of narrative, and to recognize symbols such as the alter cross and figure of Christ, a looming crane, a traffic cone, and banks of tiered seating. We piece the image together both from the individual forms which we recognize despite the tonal reversal, and we piece the six prints together as a whole, the matrix of lines between them emphasizing our purview onto the world. While we recognise the forms at work in the image and might possibly relate the negative reversals to other figurations such as Vera Lutter’s camera obscura exposures, we cannot but avoid seeing the partialness of the image in the sponge marks of the developer that was spread by hand across the prints. 5 Derungs’ thus intervenes with our usual conception of photography as the mimetic realist vehicle sine qua non , by exposing the viewer to tonal reversal and incomplete or over developed areas of the print. We thus confront both the idiom of such image making and its raw (chemical) materiality at once in the simultaneity of the recognition of what the image pictures and the recognition that it is in the act of picturing. The church image, taken from the series “BW Negativs 2011,” thus orients us towards how we see things in the world via photographs. The single image of the bricked-up wall presents us with a completely different visuality that relates to a faciality 6 which we cannot easily escape from. We look, or rather try to look with no success, through the face of the windows, through the classic Albertian screen 7 which has already been given to us in the church matrix beside. Yet although we should be able to make more of these concealed windows because they are a positive print, because they are complete, because they approach us on a more realistic scale, reproduced at life size, we cannot. The objects pictured here withdraw from us; furthermore, they merely mock our blindness at not seeing how we look. Blocked up with quite a hint of paned glass behind, one window is blanked out with a white blind, the other simply blankly dark. The apertures look like eyes with teeth in them, or a Dogon mask, or even Man Ray’s Noire et Blanche (1926) if we want to get really perverse. The height of elegant modernist chauvinist beauty thrown against the vacuity of post-industrial decline. Derungs thus catapults us consciously into a world enfolded with and through images, but in such a way that the images themselves become objects that stand resistant to us, impervious to our gaze, indifferent. We—and indeed they—do not attempt to reach out to a real that is beyond, rather the images play in a world that is just theirs, and we can only enter that world if we too submit to their regime: tonal reversal, segmented, partial, inadequate, still, wrenched out of time. In contemplation, in the flood of the image “falling” off the wall, we too become image-object. Perhaps enough has now been said about the works, yet enough can never really be said, we know the image will always exceed the word—let’s accelerate the critique: Derungs’ work continues in a second space partially partitioned from this first room. Opposing three more “BW Negativs” which figure yet more quotidian aspects of the world is Minder’s gold spray paint and cuttlefish secretion mix: things that just shouldn’t work together do in the dialogue between stuff that Derungs and Minder have constructed. Minder makes things; Derungs makes images; together they make objects which inhabit their own world which we can approach and sensually engage with and come to grips with only on those objects’ own terms. This is best summarised by a final work made by Oliver Minder which on a third wall faces these two semi-partitioned spaces. A deep black stain about 100 X 200 cm with streak marks running down a further 2 metres hovers positioned to observe the whole work, and also to be part of this installation, too. This liminal flat suzerain lies in/out of the whole work. The stain of cuttlefish secretion resonates with Derungs’ sponge strokes on the church image; it mirrors the iris of an all-seeing eye; it combines material in situ with the situation itself. Where Minder’s other works have material and medium or substrate upon which the material is exercised, this single black hole is image which sucks everything up into itself. It draws the viewer, who must otherwise look away attentively at the floor work, and imagine horror, or smile at the ironic play of glitter. Look away at the image constructions that suggest how it is we too look to our world. See the play of thing and image in a third area. Or, finally return to the base of the pyramid that triangulates, to realise the stuff-image that unlocks it all for us. Black on white, organic on inorganic, material to substrate, that which in the falling out of one on the other, in its running down the wall simply gives form to both content and expression in one direction, and content and expression to form in another. NOTES In fact, glitter is used as associative forensic evidence: the 20,000 or so varieties are all uniquely identifiable. Joel Sternfeld, Tatorte: Bilder gegen das Vergessen (München: Schirmer/Mosel, 1996). Marc Augé, Non­places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity trans. John Howe (London: Verso, 2006). An echo of the uneven paint strokes of light­sensitive chemicals in the paper preparations made by Henry Talbot some 170 years ago in the first sun drawings that also often pictured architectural forms. It was Talbot’s surprising discovery that where a weaker chemical solution was more thinly spread, greater light sensitivity was actualized, yet this virtual image had then to be chemically developed in a second step. Thus, Derungs unevenly finished spongings suggestively trace back to this originary technology (although his sweeps are the stains of uneven development and not those of the initial preparation of light–sensitive material). Umberto Eco, “Critique of the Image” in “Articulations of Cinematic Code” Cinematics 1, 1970. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Geoffrey Batchen, Burning With Desire: the Conception of Photography (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999). (shrink)

Conditional Structures in Mesopotamian Old Babylonian. By Eran Cohen. Languages of the Ancient Near East, vol. 4. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012. Pp. x + 198. $44.50.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imperfect Men in Perfect Societies:Human Nature in UtopiaGorman BeauchampIUtopists view man as a product of his social environment. Nothing innate in the psychic make-up of man—no inherent flaw in his nature, no inheritance of original sin—prevents his being perfected, or at least radically ameliorated, once the social structure that shapes character can be properly reordered. Utopists, in short, deny that there is such a thing as "human nature"—if, as (...) John Plamenatz suggests, to say that something is human nature is just another way of saying that it cannot be changed.1 To accept the psychic constitution of man as fixed, immutable, is anathema to utopists, who agree rather with Ortega y Gasset: "Man has no nature. What he has is history."2 The social conditions that have obtained historically, that is to say, have made man what he has been—anything but utopian; but if man's history could be changed, so could his "nature." The idea of Progress, so pervasive in the West from the seventeenth century on, lends some credence to this contention. W. D. Howells's Altrurians, their creator notes, "get some sad amusement out of the fact that the capitalist world believes human nature cannot be changed, though cannibalism and slavery and polygamy have all been extirpated in the so-called Christian countries, and these things were once human nature, which is always changing...."3 Utopia is merely a means, then, of imaginatively expediting, directing, culminating the historically progressive creation of a morally exemplary race of men.The environmentalist psychology espoused by utopists springs from one of two anterior assumptions (although in the creation of many fictional idola the distinction between them is often blurred). The first [End Page 280] assumption is formulated most famously by Rousseau in the Discourse on Inequality: that "man is naturally good, and only by his institutions is he made bad."4 The second assumption is formulated most famously by Locke in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding: that the mind—and by extension the character—is a tabula rasa that takes impression from the stimuli exerted by the external world and thus is neither innately good or bad, but plastic, malleable.5 An intriguing conflation of these two theories operates, for instance, in the psyche of the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the long middle section of the book, where the monster's side of the story is presented sympathetically, his character develops in a text-book demonstration of Lockean psychology; yet, at the same time, this lumbering tabula rasa quivers with enough benevolence (the implausible provenance of which mystifies) to put most saints to shame. He becomes evil and destructive only after being persecuted unmercifully for his misshapen appearance.6 Indeed, the criminal career of Mary Shelley's monster rehearses the common utopian argument that society's injustice to man (or monster) is the source of his crimes. "With our present state of society," writes James Casey in A New Moral World (1885), "we manufacture criminals and then punish them for being so."7 H. G. Wells, in A Modern Utopia (1905), concurs: "Crime and bad lives are the measure of the State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community."8 And both are but restating the charge of Sir Thomas More's Raphael Hytholoday, leveled several centuries earlier in the original Utopia (1519): "If you allow people to be badly brought up and their habits to be corrupted little by little from childhood and if you then punish them for crimes to which their early training has disposed them, what else is this, I ask, but first making them thieves and then punishing them for it?"9 Evil deeds, then, to reiterate the utopist's point, result not from some vicious mole in human nature, but from the malfunctioning of society itself. Utopia, by contrast, is—or theoretically ought to be—a world without crime.Rousseau's concept of the innate goodness of man and the evil of his institutions most often informs primitivist models of utopia, exotic worlds inhabited by noble savages uncorrupted by civilization. The idealized Indians of Montaigne's essay... (shrink)

In the Western tradition, at least since the 14th century, the philosophy of knowledge has been built around the idea of knowledge as a representation [Boulnois 1999]. The question of the evaluation of knowledge refers at the same time (1) to the object represented (which one does one represent?), (2) to the process of knowledge formation, in particular with the role of the knowing subject (which one does one represent and how does one represent it?), and finally (3) to the (...) relationship between the representation and the represented object. Criteria of evaluation such as “validity”, “adequacy” or “truth”, as mentioned in chapter 4, make sense only with respect to these three dimensions. An evaluation can thus (1) depend on the ontological nature of the object of knowledge, (2) relate to the relationship between subject and object—including the structures (cognitive, social) which organize this relationship, or (3) relate to the relation of similarity between the object and its representation as well. The relevant criteria of evaluation thus depend on the points of view adopted on these questions. As there are indeed a plurality of points of view in this field, the goal of this appendix is to summarize, as briefly as possible, the various positions adopted by the philosophers and to refer to the relevant texts of reference for more information. The first section introduces useful discussions about the philosophy of theoretical knowledge and general epistemology, from a quasi-historical perspective. Section two discusses the intermediary but central notion of models. Section three, more exploratory, intro-duces an approach to simulation as “concrete experiment”. It suggests that such a frequent claim in the literature, when precisely evaluated, can, to some extent, renew both the representational and the linguistic views on simulation. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss several generalization of theorems from stability theory to simple theories. Cherlin and Hrushovski, in [2] develop a substitute for canonical bases in finite rank, ω-categorical supersimple theories. Motivated by methods there, we prove the existence of canonical bases (in a suitable sense) for types in any simple theory. This is done in Section 2. In general these canonical bases will (as far as we know) exist only as “hyperimaginaries”, namely objects of the forma/Ewhereais a possibly (...) infinite tuple andEa type-definable equivalence relation. (In the supersimple, ω-categorical case, these reduce to ordinary imaginaries.) So in Section 1 we develop the general theory of hyperimaginaries and show how first order model theory (including the theory of forking) generalises to hyperimaginaries. We go on, in Section 3 to show the existence and ubiquity of regular types in supersimple theories, ω-categorical simple structures and modularity is discussed in Section 4. It is also shown here how the general machinery of simplicity simplifies some of the general theory of smoothly approximable (or Lie-coordinatizable) structures from [2].Throughout this paper we will work in a large, saturated modelMof a complete theoryT. All types, sets and sequences will have size smaller than the size ofM. We will assume that the reader is familiar with the basics of forking in simple theories as laid out in [4] and [6]. For basic stability-theoretic results concerning regular types, orthogonality etc., see [1] or [9]. (shrink)

This is a survey paper. Contents: 1 Introduction ― 2 Preliminary remarks on information, truth and mind - 2.1 Remarks on information and truth - 2.2 Some clues from the philosophy of mind - 2.3 Functionalism as applied to belief revision - 2.4 Filling in the parameters ― 3 Belief change = revision + reflection - 3.1 Foundationalism - 3.2 Coherentism ― 4 Inference operations for simple change operations: three examples - 4.1 Example 1: flat data bases - 4.2 Example (...) 2: up-sets in prioritized data bases - 4.3 Example 3: maximal-consistent sets in prioritized data bases ― 5 Representing coherentist belief change by operations on prioritized data bases - 5.1 Moderate revision - 5.2 Revision by comparison ― 6 A very brief history of belief revision - 6.1 The 1980s: AGM's classical model - 6.2 The 1990s: iteration - 6.3 The 2000s: merging ― 7 Conclusion. (shrink)

This article uses Arndt's depiction of marketing epistemology to suggest a possible explanation for the lack of emphasis on marketing ethics within the marketing literature. While a growing number of writers are turning their attention to the area, marketing's heavy reliance on logical empiricism has contributed to a disinclination in the development of this area. Only through recent and numerous revelations of misconduct has the discipline of marketing responded to its ethical dimensions.

According to Diogenes Laertius, the concept of ‘appearance’ played a central role in Stoic philosophy. As staunch corporealists, the Stoics believed that appearances are physical structures in our corporeal soul which provide the foundation for all our thoughts. One of the crucial features of appearance is that it is a representational mental state that has the ability to provide us with accurate awareness of the world through causal interaction between our senses and external objects, and thus supply the means (...) for acquiring knowledge about the reality. However, the Stoics recognized that we can also be aware and think of objects that are real but are not presently affecting our senses, as well as objects that are altogether fictional and thus incapable of ever interacting with our senses. Because of this, it was important for them to distinguish between representational mental states which are and those which are not caused by external objects at the moment in which they are formed. Chrysippus was one of the Stoics who paid special attention to this distinction; in a key text, Aet. 4.12, he is reported as reserving the name ‘appearance’ only for the former states, while for the latter he used a different term, ‘imagination’. (shrink)

Smooth muscle cells have developed a contractile machinery that allows them to exert tension on the surrounding extracellular matrix over their entire length. This has been achieved by coupling obliquely organized contractile filaments to a more‐or‐less longitudinal framework of cytoskeletal elements. Earlier structural data suggested that the cytoskeleton was composed primarily of intermediate filaments and played only a passive role. More recent findings highlight the segregation of actin isotypes and of actin‐associated proteins between the contractile and cytoskeletal domains and (...) raise the possibility that the cytoskeleton performs a more active function. Current efforts focus on defining the relative contributions of myosin cross‐bridge cycling and actin‐associated protein interactions to the maintenance of tension in smooth muscle tissue. (shrink)

The explosive emergence of net-based learning in higher education brings with it new possibilities and constraints in teaching and learning environments. This edited collection considers how the concept of Academic Bildung - a term suggesting a personal educational process beyond actual educational learning - can be applied to net-based higher education, drawing on Scandinavian research to address the topic from both a theoretical and practical standpoint. Chapters explore the facilitation of online courses and argue how and why universities should involve (...) dimensions of Academic Bildung on both a strategic and technological pedagogical content level.The book is structured in three parts: Part I frames the current state of net-based learning and introduces Bildung as a concept; Part II contains a set of 4 case studies in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, also including a fifth study that looks at Scandinavian approaches to teaching and learning in comparison with data from USA, UK, Australia and Canada; Part III provides a synthesis of theories and cases to examine whether a Scandinavian orientation can be discerned. Contributions suggest that in order to address one of the fundamental functions of higher education, the ability to produce new knowledge, the Academic Bildung of the students has to be in focus. Grounded in theoretical and empirical discussion, this book will appeal to researchers and academics in the field of higher education as well as personnel who work with teaching and learning with technology, and academics interested in the question of Academic Bildung. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 1-18 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Inquiry in Education:Community,Transcendence, and the Meaning of Pedagogy Hanan A. Alexander What does it mean to understand education as an art, to conceive inquiry in education aesthetically, or to assess pedagogy artistically? Answers to these queries are often grounded in Deweyan instrumentalism, neo-Marxist critical theory, or postmodern skepticism that tend to fall prey to the paradoxes (...) of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism. 1 This essay offers an alternative, communitarian account of education as an art and a neo-Kantian approach to aesthetic inquiry in education that avoids these difficulties.I begin by examining the emergence of aesthetic inquiry in education in the context of the larger qualitative revolution in educational research. The struggle to justify the qualitative turn in educational thought was initially framed in terms of two influential doctrines: that cognition and affect on the one hand, and truth, beauty, and goodness on the other, can be clearly distinguished from one another. Qualitative methods were conceived as an alternative research paradigm — a new epistemology — in keeping with Thomas Kuhn's influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2 Qualitative research, on this account, is a cognitive endeavor aimed at discovering a form of knowledge no less valid and reliable than that produced by quantitative methodologies. This way of framing the discussion led to the dichotomizing of positivist and postpositivist epistemologies, one embracing absolutism, objectivism, and rationalism, the other relativism, subjectivism, and romanticism. 3 This approach succeeded in pointing to some serious flaws in the prevailing positivist account of social research, yet it left qualitative inquiry dependent on versions of epistemological relativism and subjectivism that philosophers of knowledge have shown to be self-contradictory and incoherent. 4 [End Page 1]Conceiving of pedagogy in aesthetic terms challenges the prevailing positivist epistemology on a deeper level because it questions the accepted distinctions between thinking and feeling, and between truth, beauty, and goodness. If art can be conceived as a form of cognitive inquiry in addition to affective expression, then the appreciation and assessment of education as art requires not merely a new research paradigm or an alternative epistemology. Rather, it entails a reshuffling of our very conception of the relations between science, art, and ethics.These concepts can be reconceived to avoid the paradoxes of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism if we recognize with Iris Murdoch that sovereignty belongs to communal conceptions of a transcendent good. Educational arts empower people to express, appreciate, and critique collective conceptions of goodness, and artistic criticism of pedagogy celebrates a sacred dimension in educational thought and practice. 5 This approach occasions a fresh look not only at the practice, appreciation, and assessment of pedagogy, but also at the very meaning of the concept of education and the sorts of inquiry that can fruitfully inform its practice. Two Dogmas of Educational Research Two dogmas have dominated educational research for most of this century: the idea that there exists a clear disjunction between the cognitive and affective domains; and the supposed radical independence from one another of truth, beauty, and goodness. 6 According to a popular view rooted in these doctrines, the search for truth is a cognitive affair governed by science, while ethics and the arts are tied to the emotions and the humanities. Inquiry into the former is objective — reliability depends on method not researcher — and into the latter, subjective — results can vary according to interpreter. In this attitude, the cognitive domain dominates the public arena through the influence and prestige of science and measurement. 7Until the middle 1970s, behavioral and social research in education expressed these dichotomies in the distinction made between quantitative and qualitative research. The former was thought to be scientific and objective, the latter, humanistic and subjective. As qualitative inquiry came into its own in the 1980s, its proponents sought justification and legitimization in accord with cognitive dominance. 8 First, they argued that qualitative research methods had checks against error as rigorous as its quantitative counterparts. 9 Later, the cognitive domain... (shrink)

The analysis of multimodal argumentation in advertising is a crucial and problematic area of research. While its importance is growing in a time characterized by images and pictorial messages, the methods used for interpreting and reconstructing the structure of arguments expressed through verbal and visual means capture only isolated dimensions of this complex phenomenon. This paper intends to propose and illustrate a methodology for the reconstruction and analysis of “double-mode” arguments in advertisements, combining the instruments developed in social semiotics, pragmatics, (...) and argumentation theory. An advertisement is processed through a five-step path. The analysis of its context, text genre, and images leads to a first representation of the messages that it encodes both pictorially and verbally (step 1). These first semantic representations are further enriched by including their polyphonic articulations and presuppositions (step 2), their explicatures (step 3), and their dialogical functions and illocutionary forces (step 4). These pragmatic steps retrieve the commitment structure of the ad, which allows a further argument analysis conducted through argumentation schemes (step 5). (shrink)

It will be shown that in the lattice of recursively enumerable sets one can define elementarily with parameters a structure isomorphic to (∑ 0 4 , ∑ 0 3 ), i.e. isomorphic to the lattice of ∑ 0 4 sets together with a unary predicate selecting out exactly the ∑ 0 3 sets.

It is consistent with $\neg\mathrm{CH}$ that every universal theory of relational structures with the joint embedding property and amalgamation for $\mathscr{P}^-(3)$-diagrams has a universal model of cardinality $\aleph_1$. For classes with amalgamation for $\mathscr{P}^-(4)$-diagrams it is consistent that $2^{\aleph_0} > \aleph_2$ and there is a universal model of cardinality $\aleph_2$.

This article uses Arndt's depiction of marketing epistemology to suggest a possible explanation for the lack of emphasis on marketing ethics within the marketing literature. While a growing number of writers are turning their attention to the area, marketing's heavy reliance on logical empiricism has contributed to a disinclination in the development of this area. Only through recent and numerous revelations of misconduct has the discipline of marketing responded to its ethical dimensions.

A literary and historical analysis of the structure and meaning of recurrent symbols, images, and actions employed in Plato’s dialogues. In this book, Clinton DeBevoise Corcoran examines the use of place in Plato’s dialogues. Corcoran argues that spatial representations, such as walls, caves, and roads, as well as the creation of eternal patterns and chaotic images in the particular spaces, times, characterizations, and actions of the dialogues, provide clues to Plato’s philosophic project. Throughout the dialogues, the Good serves as an (...) overarching ordering principle for the construction of place and the proper limit of spaces, whether they be here in the world, deep in the underworld, or in the nonspatial ideal realm of the Forms. The Good, since it escapes the limits of space and time, equips Plato with a powerful mythopoetic tool to create settings, frames, and arguments that superimpose different dimensions of reality, allowing worlds to overlap that would otherwise be incommensurable. The Good also serves as a powerful ethical tool for evaluating the order of different spaces. Corcoran explores how Plato uses wrestling and war as metaphors for the mixing of the nonspatial, eternal forms in the world and history, and how he uses spatial images throughout the dialogues to critique Athens’s tragic overreach in the Peloponnesian War. Far from merely an incidental backdrop in the dialogues, place etches the tragic intersection of the mortal and the immortal, good and evil, and Athens’s past, present, and future. (shrink)

Philanthropic venture capital (PhVC) is a financing option available for social enterprises that, like traditional venture capital, provides capital and value-added services to portfolio organizations. Differently from venture capital, PhVC has an ethical dimension as it aims at maximizing the social return on the investment. This article examines the deal structuring phase of PhVC investments in terms of instrument used (from equity to grant), valuation, and covenants included in the contractual agreement. By content analyzing a set of semistructured interviews (...) and thereafter surveying the entire population of PhVC funds that are active in Europe and in the United States, findings indicate that the non-distribution constraint holding for non-profit social enterprises is an effective tool to align the interests of both investor and investee. This makes the investor behaving as a steward rather than as a principal. Conversely, while backing non-profit social ventures, philanthropic venture capitalists structure their deal similarly as traditional venture capital, as the absence of the non-distribution constraint makes such investments subject to moral hazard risk both in terms of perks and stealing and social impact focus. (shrink)

Recently the cosmological evolution of the universe has been considered where 3-dimensional spatial topology undergone drastic changes. The process can explain, among others, the observed smallness of the neutrino masses and the speed of inflation. However, the entire evolution is perfectly smooth from 4-dimensional point of view. Thus the raison d’être for such topology changes is the existence of certain non-standard 4-smoothness on R4 already at very early stages of the universe. We show that the existence of such smoothness (...) can be understood as a byproduct of the quantumness of the origins of the universe. Our analysis is based on certain formal aspects of the quantum mechanical lattice of projections of infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces where formalization reaches the level of models of axiomatic set theory. (shrink)