In a monograph published last year, literary theorist Mark Noble notes that, in the way Deleuze understands the relationship between materialism and subjectivity, Deleuze “also sounds curiously like Santayana.” For example, the work of both philosophers “locates human value in a source at once immanent and alien.” Noble also wonders “whether the lesson of Santayana’s own negotiation with his tendency to humanize the non-human ground of experience also anticipates the thrill Deleuze chases when positing the univocity of being.” In the (...) present article, I will attempt to elaborate on this “anticipation,” the implications of which include a greater appreciation of Santayana on the part of Deleuze enthusiasts, an understanding of both philosophers as U.S.-influenced, European quasi-pragmatists, and a decision in favor of Michael Brodrick’s recent interpretation of Santayana as a “total natural event” philosopher of mind. (shrink)

A total of 366 UK children in four different schools, one in Wales, one in Northern Ireland, and two in England, were asked to respond to 20 potentially stressful life experiences. Each event was rated on a scale ranging from 7 to 1 , and the scale value and interquartile range were calculated. In addition, whether or not a given event was actually experienced was noted. Across the groups, there was a very high degree of agreement on all three measures, (...) the median correlations being 0.95 for scale values, 0.70 for interquartile ranges, and 0.92 for incidence. Furthermore, the pooled UK results were found to correlate equally closely with the figures previously obtained in the USA and five other countries. The possibility of a prevalent ‘culture of childhood’, cutting across geo‐political boundaries and ethnic groupings, appears to receive further support. (shrink)

Word co‐occurrence patterns in language corpora contain a surprising amount of conceptual knowledge. Large language models (LLMs), trained to predict words in context, leverage these patterns to achieve impressive performance on diverse semantic tasks requiring world knowledge. An important but understudied question about LLMs’ semantic abilities is whether they acquire generalized knowledge of common events. Here, we test whether five pretrained LLMs (from 2018's BERT to 2023's MPT) assign a higher likelihood to plausible descriptions of agent−patient interactions than to (...) minimally different implausible versions of the same event. Using three curated sets of minimal sentence pairs (total n = 1215), we found that pretrained LLMs possess substantial event knowledge, outperforming other distributional language models. In particular, they almost always assign a higher likelihood to possible versus impossible events (The teacher bought the laptop vs. The laptop bought the teacher). However, LLMs show less consistent preferences for likely versus unlikely events (The nanny tutored the boy vs. The boy tutored the nanny). In follow‐up analyses, we show that (i) LLM scores are driven by both plausibility and surface‐level sentence features, (ii) LLM scores generalize well across syntactic variants (active vs. passive constructions) but less well across semantic variants (synonymous sentences), (iii) some LLM errors mirror human judgment ambiguity, and (iv) sentence plausibility serves as an organizing dimension in internal LLM representations. Overall, our results show that important aspects of event knowledge naturally emerge from distributional linguistic patterns, but also highlight a gap between representations of possible/impossible and likely/unlikely events. (shrink)

Postmodernism’s unifying theme of the absent center raises an important question for metaphysics done in the Catholic tradition. Is novelty a “totally other” that utterly eludes human knowing? In posing this question, postmodernism spurs this tradition on to consider afresh how it integrates novelty and contingency. The following study concludes that no adequate account of this integration is possible without a rich concept of the singular. Rahner’s and Balthasar’s metaphysics of the singular shows that contingency, far from being an impasse (...) to a deeper penetration into reality, is the heart of creative process in both human and non-human events. Rahner’s doctrine of substance and Balthasar’s doctrine of analogy deconstruct the relativism in postmodernism’s view of the singular, even as they develop a more extensive view of the singular for which some strains of postmodernism seem instinctively to be groping. (shrink)

This study investigated the effect of obstructive sleep apnea on the neural mechanism of visual perception. A preliminary case-control study was conducted. Seventeen patients with moderate to severe OSA in the sleep center of Civil Aviation General Hospital and 20 healthy controls matched for age, sex, and education were recruited. The participants accepted the perceptual contour integration task, compared the differences in behavioral indicators between the two groups, and compared the differences in electroencephalography data between the two groups through event-related (...) potential technology. The groups did not differ significantly in age and gender, but they differed significantly in body mass index. The groups were not statistically different in terms of sleep structure and total sleep time. AHI, sleep efficiency, and minimal SaO2 value in the OSA group were significantly different from those of the control group. The results showed that the average reaction time of the OSA group was significantly longer than that of the healthy control group in the contour integration task. There was no significant difference in the accuracy rate. The results of EEG showed that the amplitudes of N100 of the OSA group were significantly higher than those of the control group at O1, Oz, and O2 electrodes. There was no significant difference in latency between the two groups. At the FCz electrode, the amplitudes of N200 of the OSA group were significantly higher than those of the control group. Therefore, we concluded that in the early stage of the perceptual integration task, although the neural response activity of patients with moderate and severe OSA was not accelerated, they need to call on more psychological resources, activate more neurons in the contour global recognition processing stage, and the compensatory effect of frontal lobe appeared in the stage of visual perception. (shrink)

RESUMEN Largamente desatendida o malinterpretada, la noción de caos en la filosofía de Nietzsche es una pieza constitutiva de la particular concepción del ser que este autor habría dejado apenas esbozada. El artículo se propone elaborar este concepto en la obra nietzscheana, siguiendo algunas de las metáforas que lo iluminan. Desde allí se busca plantear los rasgos centrales de una ontologia del caos, de sesgo no metafísico, que, al afirmar el carácter acontecimental de la realidad, puede verse como precursora de (...) la ontología hermenéutica contemporánea. ABSTRACT The notion of chaos, which has long been neglected or misinterpreted, is a constitutive element of a peculiar conception of being that the philosopher only had time to outline. The objective of this article is to elaborate on this concept in Nietzschean philosophy, guided by some of the metaphors that shed light on it. This serves as the basis to set forth the main characteristics of a non-metaphysical ontology of chaos that asserts the eventful nature of reality and can thus be seen as a precursor of contemporary hermeneutic ontology. (shrink)

This study explored the syntactic transfer effect of the non-local subject-verb agreement structure with plural head noun after two intensive phases of input training with event-related potentials (ERP). The non-local subject-verb agreement stimuli with the plural head nouns, which never appeared in training phases, were used for the stimuli. A total of 26 late L1-Chinese L2-English learners, who began to learn English after a critical period and participated in our previous experiments, were asked back to take part in this syntactic (...) transfer experiment. Results indicated that a significant ERP component P600 occurred in the key region (the verb) of the sentences with syntactic violations in the experimental group, but none occurred in the control group. This demonstrated that there was a significant transfer effect of the input training. The possible theoretical explanation was provided and also the malleability of the late L2 learners was discussed. (shrink)

Before the twentieth century, the Universe was usually imagined as a large spatially extended thing unfolding in time. The past was fixed and the future was open; unfolding was conceived as an asymmetric process of coming into being. Relativity introduced a new vision in which space and time are presented together as a single four-dimensional manifold of events. That, together with the fact that the fundamental laws of our classical theories are symmetric in time, made understanding why the past (...) and future present themselves so differently in our experience one of the central challenges of physics. The last two centuries have seen a great deal of progress in understanding various of the so-called arrows of time: the thermodynamic arrow, the cosmological arrow, the arrow of knowledge or information. There remains an outstanding piece of this puzzle that has seen little progress, one that Roger Penrose described in his beautiful paper Singularities and Time-Asymmetry in 1979 as: “The arrow most difficult to comprehend … namely the feeling of relentless forward temporal progression, according to which potentialities seem to be transformed into actualities.”I will propose that the insight needed to resolve the problem involves taking into account that we are part of the universe and that any attempt to model it as a totality involves self-reference. I will argue specifically that self-reference, against the background of a thermodynamic gradient, creates an instability in an embedded agent’s ability to know the future or even treat it as a potential object of knowledge. That instability captures the sense in which the future remains for her perpetually open and the passage of time resolves openness into the fixity of fact. (shrink)

PurposeThis study aims to describe the adverse events following immunization of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in cancer patients/survivors associated with their psychological distress.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted to assess AEFIs after the receipt of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in cancer patients/survivors attending a university hospital in Malaysia. Psychological distress was measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale before and after the first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccine.ResultsA total of 217 complete responses were received. Compared with before vaccination, both HADS Anxiety and (...) HADS Depression scores were significantly reduced after the first and second dose of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Most of the participants had mild-or-moderate systemic and local AEFIs, with the most common being pain at the injection site, tiredness, and headache for both the first and second doses of the vaccine. Positive correlations between the total AEFI score and HADS-A and HADS-D scores were observed after the first dose of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Similarly, positive associations were observed between the total AEFI score and HADS-A and HADS-D scores after the second dose of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.ConclusionMild-to-moderate AEFIs found in this study help address vaccine hesitancy in cancer patients/survivors. Receiving the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine had a positive effect on decreasing psychological distress in cancer patients/survivors. High severity of an AEFI was associated with higher anxiety and depressive symptoms. (shrink)

This full-color title is designed to be a classic reference for the millions of photographers going to digital, from enthusiasts shooting family events and vacations with their SLRs, to professionals creating journalistic prints and fine art. It?s the only book on the market with a focus on complete, end-to-end workflow from shoot to print. It?s tied to Adobe?s latest version of Photoshop, which boasts an installed base of 4 million! Serge Timacheff is a professional photographer living in Pacific Northwest. (...) He is the official photographer for the International Fencing Federation, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, and he photographs fencing at World Championships and the Summer Olympics. His 100-percent digital studio provides portraiture, event, commercial, and boudoir photography, and his fine art photographs appear in galleries and individual collections worldwide. David Karlins is a digital imaging expert, Web designer, teacher, consultant and author of numerous books and magazine articles. (shrink)

My claim is that Arendt founds the 'right to have rights' in the anarchic event of natality. Arendt is very explicit that the event of natality is an ontological event. In The Human Condition, she writes: "The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal "natural" ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted." At the same time, she is equally insistent that this ontological event is not (...) metaphysical; it is not the origin of anything like human nature: "To avoid misunderstanding, the human condition is not the same as human nature and the sum total of human activities and capabilities which correspond to the human condition do not constitute anything like human nature" . Indeed, this event has the character of a "startling unexpectedness." Natality, she argues, is the condition for human existence, but it can never "…explain what we are or answer the question of who we are for the simple reason that [it] can never condition us absolutely" . The 'who' does not possess an enduring, fixed nature, but is instead inherently marked by contingency and unpredictability. Arendt's ontology, therefore, does not describe an immutable order of essences; it does not seek enduring truths upon which to ground both thought and action; it does not posit a metaphysical notion of human nature or subjectivity in which human rights are inalienably inscribed. Instead, it is rooted in an unpredictable, anarchic event that provides the arche and principium of human action. For Arendt, the event of natality is the arche in the double etymological sense of origin and rule. In other words, natality is the unpredictable, anarchic origin that carries its rule or principle within it. As she points out in On Revolution, "What saves the act of beginning from its own arbitrariness is that it carries its own principle within itself or, to be more precise, that beginning and principle, principium and principle, are not only related to each other, but are coeval." Arendt goes on to argue: "For the Greek word for beginning is arche, and arche means both beginning and principle." By articulating this principium , Arendt does not give us an ontological politics; rather, she provides an ontological foundation for human rights. (shrink)

My claim is that Arendt founds the 'right to have rights' in the anarchic event of natality. Arendt is very explicit that the event of natality is an ontological event. In The Human Condition, she writes: "The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal "natural" ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted." At the same time, she is equally insistent that this ontological event is not (...) metaphysical; it is not the origin of anything like human nature: "To avoid misunderstanding, the human condition is not the same as human nature and the sum total of human activities and capabilities which correspond to the human condition do not constitute anything like human nature". Indeed, this event has the character of a "startling unexpectedness." Natality, she argues, is the condition for human existence, but it can never "…explain what we are or answer the question of who we are for the simple reason that [it] can never condition us absolutely". The 'who' does not possess an enduring, fixed nature, but is instead inherently marked by contingency and unpredictability. Arendt's ontology, therefore, does not describe an immutable order of essences; it does not seek enduring truths upon which to ground both thought and action; it does not posit a metaphysical notion of human nature or subjectivity in which human rights are inalienably inscribed. Instead, it is rooted in an unpredictable, anarchic event that provides the arche and principium of human action. For Arendt, the event of natality is the arche in the double etymological sense of origin and rule. In other words, natality is the unpredictable, anarchic origin that carries its rule or principle within it. As she points out in On Revolution, "What saves the act of beginning from its own arbitrariness is that it carries its own principle within itself or, to be more precise, that beginning and principle, principium and principle, are not only related to each other, but are coeval." Arendt goes on to argue: "For the Greek word for beginning is arche, and arche means both beginning and principle." By articulating this principium, Arendt does not give us an ontological politics; rather, she provides an ontological foundation for human rights. (shrink)

My hypoltheses concerning the United States led War on Terrorism are derived from the German novelist, critic and social theorist Ernst J¸nger’s outstanding 1930 essay on ‘Total Mobilization’. Accordingly, this article explores J¸nger’s ‘Total Mobilization’ and what I label the ‘totally mobilized body’ as the philosophical underpinning of the War on Terrorism from the perspective of my own conceptions of ‘ hypermodern total mobilization’, ‘globalitarian rule’ and the ‘neoconservative body’. From this post-J¸ngerian or hypermodern viewpoint, the examination of the War (...) on Terrorism as offered by social theorists such as Jean Baudrillard and Zygmunt Bauman, Gilles Deleuze, Douglas Kellner and Paul Virilio is analytically evaluated and developed. For their research on the ‘spirit of terrorism’ and the new ‘planetary frontier-land’, control societies, the momentous events of September 11, 2001, and ‘globalitarianism’ can help us to understand the complexities and multiplicities of the neoconservative body. The article concludes by probing the distinction between Jünger’s idea of modern total mobilization and my own hypermodern notions of ‘egalitarian rule’ and the ‘neoegalitarian body’. (shrink)

Postmodernism’s unifying theme of the absent center raises an important question for metaphysics done in the Catholic tradition. Is novelty a “totally other” that utterly eludes human knowing? In posing this question, postmodernism spurs this tradition on to consider afresh how it integrates novelty and contingency. The following study concludes that no adequate account of this integration is possible without a rich concept of the singular. Rahner’s and Balthasar’s metaphysics of the singular shows that contingency, far from being an impasse (...) to a deeper penetration into reality, is the heart of creative process in both human and non-human events. Rahner’s doctrine of substance and Balthasar’s doctrine of analogy deconstruct the relativism in postmodernism’s view of the singular, even as they develop a more extensive view of the singular for which some strains of postmodernism seem instinctively to be groping. (shrink)

Introduction: Children affected by parental HIV are more likely than unaffected peers to experience trauma and are at-risk for negative psychological and social outcomes. This study aimed to examine the relationship between adverse childhood events and psychosocial functioning among children affected by parental HIV.Methods: A total of 790 children ages 6–17 from Henan, China were enrolled in a longitudinal, randomized controlled trial of a resilience-based psychosocial intervention. At baseline, children reported on numerous psychosocial factors, including trauma exposure, symptoms of (...) anxiety and depression, and peer social functioning. We used linear regression analysis to test the direct effect of trauma exposure on peer social functioning. We then tested whether depression and anxiety symptoms served as two potential parallel mediators in the association between trauma exposure and peer social functioning.Results: Trauma exposure was significantly associated with poor peer social functioning when controlling for key covariates. When depression and anxiety symptoms were added to the model, the association between trauma exposure and peer social functioning became nonsignificant. Instead, there were significant indirect effects from trauma exposure to peer social functioning via depression and anxiety.Conclusion: This study is among the first to link trauma exposure to peer social functioning deficits for children affected by parental HIV and demonstrates that symptoms of anxiety and depression mediate this relationship. Findings underscore the need for comprehensive psychosocial support for children affected by HIV, including screening for trauma exposure and mental health disorders. (shrink)

Summary This study offers a detailed analysis of an episode of the popularization of astronomy which took place in Portugal, a peripheral country of Europe, and occurring in the early twentieth century. The episode was driven by the 28 May 1900 total solar eclipse which was seen on the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain). Instead of focusing on one of the ends of the popularization process, we analyze the circulation of knowledge among scientists and the public, contrast the aims of (...) the various expeditions, professional and amateur, which took place on Portuguese soil, analyze their repercussions in the Portuguese astronomical landscape, and the different ways used by the Portuguese political elite and astronomical community to successfully appropriate this astronomical event to serve their varied agendas, political, social and scientific. In this episode of public enthusiasm for science, a central figure emerged in the network of the official commission, professional and amateur communities and the ‘general public’: Frederico Tomás Oom (1864–1930), an astronomer of the Lisbon Astronomical Observatory. This paper aims to illustrate the different layers of the circulation process, and at proving that the popularization of science was not a unidirectional process from scientists to lay people nor did it serve only a particular agenda, be it political, social or scientific. (shrink)

As COVID-19 emerged as a phenomenon of the total environment, and despite the intertwined and complex relationships that make humanity an organic part of the Bio- and Geospheres, the majority of our responses to it have been corrective in character, with few or no consideration for unintended consequences which bring about further vulnerability to unanticipated global events. Tackling COVID-19 entails a systemic and precautionary approach to human-nature relations, which we frame as regaining diversity in the Geo-, Bio-, and Anthropospheres. (...) Its implementation requires nothing short of an overhaul in the way we interact with and build knowledge from natural and social environments. Hence, we discuss the urgency of shifting from current to precautionary approaches to COVID-19 and look, through the lens of diversity, at the anticipated benefits in four systems crucially affecting and affected by the pandemic: health, land, knowledge and innovation. Our reflections offer a glimpse of the sort of changes needed, from pursuing planetary health and creating more harmonious forms of land use to providing a multi-level platform for other ways of knowing/understanding and turning innovation into a source of global public goods. These exemplary initiatives introduce and solidify systemic thinking in policymaking and move priorities from reaction-based strategies to precautionary frameworks. (shrink)

BackgroundInternational guidelines recommend ethical and scientific quality standards for managing and reporting adverse events occurring during clinical trials to competent research ethics committees and regulatory authorities. The purpose of this study was to determine whether clinical trial protocols in Cameroon are developed in line with national requirements and international guidelines as far as detecting, reporting and investigating of adverse events is concerned.MethodsIt was a documentary review of all approved clinical trial protocols that were submitted at the Cameroon National (...) Ethics Committee for evaluation from 1997 through 2012. Data were extracted using a preconceived and validated grid. Protocol review process targeted the title, abstract, objectives, methodology, resources, and the chapter on safety.ResultsIn total, 106 clinical trial protocols were identified from 2173 protocols seen in the archive and 104 included for review. Seventy six trials did not include the surveillance of adverse events as part of their objective. A total of 91 protocols did not budget for adverse event surveillance, 76 did not have a data safety management board, 11 included insurance for participants, 47 did not include a case definition for serious adverse events, 33 described procedures to detect adverse events, 33 described procedure for reporting and 22 described procedure for investigating adverse events.DiscussionsMost clinical trial protocols in Cameroon are developed to focus on benefits and pay little attention to harms. The development of national guidelines can improve the surveillance of adverse events in clinical trial research conducted in Cameroon. Adverse events surveillance tools and a budget are critical for an adequate planning for adverse event surveillance when developing trial protocols.ConclusionClinical trial protocols submitted in the Cameroon National Ethics Committee do not adequately plan to assess adverse events in clinical trial protocols. In order to improve on the safety of participants and marketed drug, there is a need to develop national guidelines for clinical trials by the government, and to improve evaluation procedures and monitoring of ongoing trials by the ethics committee. (shrink)

How parents talk about social events shapes their children’s understanding of the social world and themselves. In this study, we show that parents in a society that more strongly values individualism and one that more strongly values collectivism differ in how they talk about negative social events, but not positive ones. An animal puppet show presented positive social events and negative social events. All shows contained two puppets, an actor and a recipient of the event. We (...) asked parents to talk to their 3- and 4-years old children about these events. A total of 26 parent–child dyads from the United States and Japan participated. The principal dependent measure was how much parent talk referred to the actor of each type of social event. There were no cultural differences observed in positive events – both the United States and Japanese parents discussed actors more than recipients. However, there were cultural differences observed in negative events – the United States parents talked mostly about the actor but Japanese parents talked equally about the actor and the recipient of the event. The potential influences of these differences on early cognitive and social development are discussed. (shrink)

Determining the knowledge that guides human judgments is fundamental to understanding how people reason, make decisions, and form predictions. We use an experimental procedure called ‘‘iterated learning,’’ in which the responses that people give on one trial are used to generate the data they see on the next, to pinpoint the knowledge that informs people's predictions about everyday events (e.g., predicting the total box office gross of a movie from its current take). In particular, we use this method to (...) discriminate between two models of human judgments: a simple Bayesian model (Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2006) and a recently proposed alternative model that assumes people store only a few instances of each type of event in memory (MinK; Mozer, Pashler, & Homaei, 2008). Although testing these models using standard experimental procedures is difficult due to differences in the number of free parameters and the need to make assumptions about the knowledge of individual learners, we show that the two models make very different predictions about the outcome of iterated learning. The results of an experiment using this methodology provide a rich picture of how much people know about the distributions of everyday quantities, and they are inconsistent with the predictions of the MinK model. The results suggest that accurate predictions about everyday events reflect relatively sophisticated knowledge on the part of individuals. (shrink)

This paper addresses the legendary total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919. Two British teams confirmed the light bending prediction by Albert Einstein: Charles R. Davidson and Andrew C. C. Crommelin in Sobral, Brazil and Arthur S. Eddington and Edwin T. Cottingham on the African island of Príncipe, then part of the Portuguese empire.By jointly analyzing the two astronomical expeditions supported by written and visual sources, I show how, despite extensive scholarship on this famous historical episode and the historiographical emphasis (...) on the plural dimensions of knowledge construction, many human and non-human actors have been kept in the shadow of the eclipse. I do so by focusing on what I call knowledge from the periphery together with knowledge from below, grounded literally on how localities (sites) affect choices and events, and growing outward to encompass a wide range of participants. I show how the geopolitical status of the two nations where the observational sites were located, and specifically Portugal's condition of colonial power, affected main decisions and events, while highlighting the active role of participants, ranging from experts from the peripheries and those involved in the travels to local elites and anonymous peoples, some of whom contributed to the observation of totality. (shrink)

The present article attempts to investigate the 'philosophical foundations' of psychology and thereby of the social sciences in general with regard to a central problem, viz. the question of the 'inner'. It does this with special critical reference to an authoritative psychological theory, viz. the so-called 'mediation theory', and tries to show the necessity of interdisciplinary clarification. In the first part mediation theory was introduced as a variant of psychological behaviorism which attempts to substitute for the untenable total neglect of (...) 'inner' events a way of talking about them which is secured methodologically and retains a behavioral foundation. Of the three crucial questions raised by the project the second, viz. question, which concerns the theoretical status of the assumed inner mediators could be answered to the effect that they must be "hypothetical constructs" having the nature of real, phenomenally verifiable events, if, indeed, they are to figure as links in S-R-chains. Conceiving of them as "intervening variables", such a conception would exclude this function. The discussion of 'internalization' of behavior sequences as assumed by mediation theory has led to the conclusion that the relevant phenomena cannot, in this case, justify the necessity of a non-dispositional explanation which goes beyond 'external' performances ). Likewise the subject matter of question remained undecided; that is, the possibilities of phenomenally verifying the assumed 'inner' mediation processes which are only asserted to exist by the theory but are unspecified in content. Therefore, the observable performances in the case of sequential behaviour do not support the mediation theoretic solution of the problem of the 'inner'. (shrink)

A country‘s development is bound to be influenced by external occurrences. This article analyses two astronomical examples in which Portuguese nationals used high visibility events in the international scientific community to press their own scientific interests upon the government, whether these interests were, or were not, directly linked to the events themselves.During the 1840s and 1850s the parallax, i.e. the distance, of Groombridge’s star 1830 was hotly debated. The astronomer Hervé Faye‘s suggestion at the Académie des Sciences de (...) Paris that observations be made in Lisbon due to its privileged location and the inadequacy of the Lisbon Navy Observatory to perform them rekindled the efforts to improve the Portuguese Navy observatory.In the 1850s and 1860s other Portuguese higher education institutions also wanted to upgrade their facilities or build new ones. Following accepted traditions, scientific field trips were considered a useful part of the acquisition planning for larger instruments, and therefore an important part of regeneration and renewal projects. The Portuguese scientists were, however, limited in their travels by government imposed budget constraints. The total solar eclipse of 18 July 1860 provided an extra argument to send Portuguese scientists abroad. The government support of the eclipse expedition led to an opportunity to travel through other countries and view their observatories and equipment.In the end, neither the Navy astronomers nor those from the Coimbra Astronomical observatory, the other significant site of Portuguese astronomical research, managed to fulfil their objectives, but the contacts initiated by some of the Portuguese travellers were important for the development of the Portuguese national Meteorological and Magnetic Observatories. (shrink)

Health Care Centres are institutions which, because of their specificity and character, are particularly exposed to various kinds of risk. One of the most important and most frequently used methods of risk management is the black spots method. The research material collected for the study comes from one of the hospitals in Wrocław. All hospital stays of the C22 (Face and Jaw Surgery Ward) and H05 (Injury and Orthopaedics Surgery Ward) settlement groups (DRG) were analysed - a total of 178 (...) hospitalisations. The black spots method was used in the study, which consisted of risk identification, the ordering of threats and proposals for remedial actions. Using the black spots method, it was possible to identify adverse events that occurred during the hospitalisation of patients with H05 and C22 DRGs in the Injury and Orthopaedics Surgery Ward and Facial and Jaw Surgery Ward. In both cases, the treatment costs for patients with complications were higher than for the stays without complications. (shrink)

La quatrième des Considérations inactuelles de Friedrich Nietzsche (Richard Wagner à Bayreuth) est emblématique en ce qu'elle présente la notion d'événement de façon dialectique. Participant au premier festival de Bayreuth durant l'été 1876, c'est à la fois en tant que spectateur, historien et philosophe, que Friedrich Nietzsche interprète l'événement comme un « cas » (« Der Fall ») ou un symptôme (« Das Symptom »), et saisit la volonté de Richard Wagner dans sa « chute » (« Der Vorfall »), (...) où le spectacle et la décadence sont les valeurs de la culture européenne et de l'Allemagne moderne. De plus, d’une volonté analogue, et d’abord impressionné par la hauteur du compositeur et la puissance de son œuvre totale (Gesamtkunstwerk), c’est à partir d’un « pathos de la distance » que le philosophe va « transvaluer » le cas Wagner après Bayreuth et le faire advenir comme le nouvel événement d’une histoire critique dans laquelle il se comprend lui-même. Alors, c’est comme un « grand » événement que nous interprétons Friedrich Nietzsche à Bayreuth décrit comme la synthèse d’un processus à la fois civilisationnel et culturel. (shrink)

The cognitive model for social anxiety disorder highlights the role of safety behaviors and post-event processing. We identify the serial mediating effect of state and trait PEP between three types of safety behaviors and social anxiety. Given that the associations between the three subtypes of safety behaviors and two perspectives of PEP have not yet been examined, we aimed to investigate these relationships according to the level of social anxiety. A total of 487 participants participated in an online survey. Participants (...) were classified into two groups, high and low, based on their social anxiety scores. We used Social Behavior Questionnaire to distinguish three types of safety behaviors and the State and Trait versions of the Post-Event Processing Inventory to identify two perspectives of PEP. We used descriptive statistics and an independent t-test to compare the high and low social anxiety groups. Mediation effects were examined using mediation analysis and bootstrapping with 5,000 replications. The results showed that the three safety behaviors had different effects on social anxiety via PEP. In the high social anxiety group, avoidance behavior and anxiety-symptom control predicted social anxiety positively, whereas impression management did not. However, with state PEP and trait PEP as mediators, impression management and avoidance behavior positively predicted social anxiety but not anxiety-symptom control. In the low social anxiety group, only avoidance behavior was significantly related to social anxiety, but when the state and trait PEP were mediated, the effect disappeared. These results indicated that impression management could affect social anxiety only when mediated by PEP in people with high social anxiety. A better understanding of the content and processes underpinning safety behavior and PEPs might have important implications for the prevention and treatment of social anxiety disorder. (shrink)

Life history theory predicts that greater extrinsic mortality will lead to earlier and higher fertility. To test this prediction, I examine the relationship between life expectancy at birth and several proxies for life history traits (ages at first sex and first marriage, total fertility rate, and ideal number of children), measured for both men and women. Data on sexual behaviors come from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Two separate samples are analyzed: a cross-sectional sample of 62 countries and a (...) panel sample that includes multiple cross-sectional panels from 48 countries. Multivariate regression analysis is used to control for potential confounding variables. The results provide only partial support for the predictions, with greater support among women than men. However, the prediction is not supported in sub-Saharan African countries, most likely owing to the nonequilibrium conditions observed in sub-Saharan Africa with respect to life expectancy. The applicability of the model to understanding HIV/AIDS risk behaviors is discussed. (shrink)

Levinas and the Night of Being investigates the ontological character of Totality and Infinity that has frequently been overlooked, suggesting that this ontological character is constituted by nocturnal events of being, the dark foundations that undergird the intentional activity of consciousness. Through a close reading of Totality and Infinity, Levinas and the Night of Being begins with the separation of the self and the nocturnal event of the enjoyment of the elemental that establishes the self as the (...) same in its independence and self-sufficiency. In its sameness, the self can then encounter the Other as other through the nocturnal event of the speech of the Other. The encounter with the Other through speech and language is the foundation for the nocturnal event of the pluralization of existence through fecundity, culminating in what Levinas and the Night of Being calls a world shared with the Other, a world of sociality and justice. This review emphasizes that Levinas and the Night of Being, by addressing the ontological character of Totality and Infinity, offers a significant contribution to the field of Levinas studies and points toward a valuable path for future research that examines how ontology and ethics might be thought together rather than in opposition. (shrink)

A re-visitation of Joule’s experiment motivates a critical analysis of thermodynamic notions: heat, total energy, first principle, organization of a scientific theory, its relationships with logic and mathematics. A rational re-construction of thermodynamics is suggested according to the model of a problem-based organization, that Sadi Carnot applied to his formulation. The new formulation accomplishes the long time theoretical process started by Joule’s experiment within physicists community's collective mind, i.e. the process of exiting out Baconian science for suggesting a first theory (...) out Newton’s paradigm, and eventually for introducing a pluralism of incompatible physical theories. (shrink)

EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS.

Our contributors explore a rich variety of aesthetic problems that bring about the self-reflexive re-evaluation of ideas.

Is aesthetics a product of evolution? Are human aesthetic behaviors in fact evolutionary adaptations? The creation of artistic objects and experiences is an important aesthetic behavior. But so is the perception of aesthetic phenomena qua aesthetic. The question of evolutionary aesthetics is whether humans have evolved the capacity not only to make beautiful things but also to appreciate the aesthetic qualities in things. Are our near-universal love of music and cute baby animals essential to our species’ evolutionary development, which took (...) place over thousands of years? In other words, do aesthetic practice and appreciation help people to survive or reproduce? Do aesthetic behaviors help to propel natural selection? If so, what does that tell us about ourselves as human beings? What does it tell us about art, our other aesthetic practices, and aesthetic experience? (shrink)

In her book, Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett thinks through what ontological, political, and ecological questions would look like if humans could admit that matter and nonhuman things are living, creative agents; the contributors to this issue of Evental Aesthetics begin to think through what aesthetic questions would look like.

This issue is dedicated to thinking about art and current aesthetic perspectives through Hegelianism.

In this special issue on animals and aesthetics, contributors explore encounters with animals in art and thought.

In this issue, our contributors demonstrate how art in the city, art “about” the city, art compared to the city, can bring to attention the insidious forces underlying every city’s gleaming, wide-awake veneer.

In "Aesthetic Histories" our contributors’ shared concern is the inspiring and confounding, healthy and uncomfortable and above all inevitable relationship between history and aesthetic praxis.

A hijacking is a violent takeover, a misappropriation of something for a purpose other than its intended one, by parties other than those for whom the thing was meant. This issue explores the aesthetic practices and consequences of unauthorized repurposing.

This issue profiles various attempts, both successful and fraught, to engage the divide between asceticism and opulence, between materialism and poverty.

The paper investigates whether causation is extrinsic in Humean Supervenience in the sense that "being caused by" is an intrinsic relation between token causes and effects. The underlying goal is to test whether causality is extrinsic for Humeans and intrinsic for anti-Humeans in this sense. I argue that causation is typically extrinsic in HS, but it is intrinsic to event pairs that collectively most of the universe's history.

Although some cognitive studies provided reasons that children with low socioeconomic status (SES) showed poor mathematical achievements, there was no explicit evidence to directly explain the root of lagged performance in children with low SES. Therefore, the present study explored the differences in neural correlates in the process of symbolic magnitude comparison between children with different SES by the event-related potentials (ERP). A total of 16 second graders from low SES families and 16 from middle/high SES families participated in this (...) study. According to the results of anterior N1 (early attention) and P2 (extraction of numerical meaning) over frontal region, the differences among children with different SES were manifested as differences in general neural activities in terms of attention and top-down cognitive control. In the late stage of cognitive processing, there was no significant difference in the average amplitude of the LPC between the children with different SES, indicating that low SES did not influence the information encoding and memory updating of numerical representation responsible by the parietal lobe. The educational implications of this study were mentioned in the discussion. (shrink)

Religion and spirituality (R/S) serve as coping mechanisms for circumstances that threaten people’s psychological well-being. However, using R/S inappropriately to deal with difficulties and problems in daily life may include the practice of Spiritual Bypass (SB). SB refers to avoiding addressing emotional problems and trauma, rather than healing and learning from them. On the other hand, coping strategies may be determined by the cultural context. This study aims to describe the presence of SB in individuals who may have experienced stressful (...) situations and to understand the influence of culture on SB by comparing SB in two culturally different groups. The sample consists of a total of 435 people, 262 of Honduran nationality and 173 of Spanish nationality. Both groups are approximately equivalent in age and gender. The degree of SB, stressful events, perception of social support and spiritual well-being are examined, respectively, through the Spiritual Bypass Scale, and specific items and subscales from the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy - Spiritual Wellbeing. The results showed a higher spiritual well-being and use of SB in the Honduran sample as compared to the Spanish sample, but similar social support and stressful events. Furthermore, some of the factors predicting SB were different between the two samples. While age and a greater number of R/S practices were important in both samples, for the Honduran sample the variables that best explained SB were being a Christian, having greater social support, fewer stressful events, and greater attendance at church or temple. For the Spanish sample, however, the variable that best explained SB was studying R/S texts. Therefore, SB must be understood within the culture in which it develops, since in different cultural contexts it appears to relate to differing factors. Thus, SB becomes a possible functional or dysfunctional coping strategy depending on the social context. (shrink)

The category-theoretic representation of quantum event structures provides a canonical setting for confronting the fundamental problem of truth valua- tion in quantum mechanics as exemplified, in particular, by Kochen-Specker’s theorem. In the present study, this is realized on the basis of the existence of a categorical adjunction between the category of sheaves of variable local Boolean frames, constituting a topos, and the category of quantum event al- gebras. We show explicitly that the latter category is equipped with an object of (...) truth values, or classifying object, which constitutes the appropriate tool for assigning truth values to propositions describing the behavior of quantum systems. Effectively, this category-theoretic representation scheme circumvents consistently the semantic ambiguity with respect to truth valuation that is in- herent in conventional quantum mechanics by inducing an objective contextual account of truth in the quantum domain of discourse. The philosophical im- plications of the resulting account are analyzed. We argue that it subscribes neither to a pragmatic instrumental nor to a relative notion of truth. Such an account essentially denies that there can be a universal context of reference or an Archimedean standpoint from which to evaluate logically the totality of facts of nature. In this light, the transcendence condition of the usual concep- tion of correspondence truth is superseded by a reflective-like transcendental reasoning of the proposed account of truth that is suitable to the quantum domain of discourse. (shrink)

The book aims to examine how a Trinitarian Theism can be formulated through the elaboration of a Relational Ontology and a Trinitarian Metaphysics, in the context of a hyperphatic epistemology. This metaphysics has been proposed by some supporters of the so-called Open Theism as a solution to the numerous dilemmas of Classical Theism. The hypothesis they support is that the Trinitarian nature of God, reflected in a world of multiplicity, relationality, substance and relations, demands that we think of God as (...) dynamic, internally multiple and relational. However, if the expression «God is love» – understood as the formula of the Trinity – is the key to a new theism, it leaves a problem open: how can it be translated philosophically? The research develops on two different levels: first, it assesses whether the expression should be translated into the Trinitarian paradigm, and the aporias it generates; secondly, it tries to assess whether this paradigm (eminently relational) has a correspondence in ontology: is there a satisfactory Relational Metaphysics already available? The suspicion is that such Trinitarian-Relational Ontology, invoked by many as a solution to the incongruities of classical theism, has yet to be formulated in a satisfactorily manner, despite the existence of various attempts to formulate Relational Ontologies. In order to provide an evaluation of all these attempts and to outline some possible new perspectives, the thesis consists of five chapters. It is the aim of the present dissertation to evaluate such attempts, and to outline some possible new solutions. In the chapters some points have been established: 1. there must be at least one irreducible real relation (non-reductionist realism); 2. the relation must be equally fundamental to the substance: this means that it is both external and internal; 3. this relation must be able to account for contingent causality; 4. holism is a plausible position; 5. the Trinity is a good theistic model of the divine, apophatic but rational. The last chapter then returns to ontological questions: several Relational Ontologies are examined – including ontic structural realism and process (or eventist) ontology – together with their applications in philosophy of religion (e.g.: the Relational God, Process Trinitarianism, the Entangled God). This assessment shows how all these ontologies postulate real transcendental relations (subsistent relations), inside the substances or inside the powers, inside the tropes or the structures, describing them as monads or processes (or actual occasions). These relations are the same we need to describe the Trinity. Therefore, they are either possible for both domains – ontology and theology – or they are both impossible. It has been opted for the second conclusion. But they are both impossible and inevitable: the fundamental entities of the world and their interactions (causation) must be described as real transcendental relations because each ontology transforms entities or relations into real transcendental relationships at some point. Thus, neither relationalism nor substantialism are convincing: from the fall of these two dogmas (or, rather, from the fall of their naive interpretations) we can realise that the fundamental reality is something that lies between processism (relationalism) and substantialism. It is impossible to completely substitute the notion of substance with the notion of event, process, structure or relation, both in speaking of God and in speaking about the entities of fundamental ontology. Neither monism nor pluralism can be affirmed in their pure forms. The hypothesis proposed, then, is that the notion of gunk-junk is the only one that can translate the relationality hitherto sought in an ontological model. The central part of the chapter describes the merits and defects of an eventist-infinitive ontology (EIO) based on the concept of gunk, and its potentiality to generate new theistic accounts. Through the notion of infinityings it seems to be possible to find some solutions for the questions left open by the causal relation, and therefore to defend at least the existence of one relation (external and internal). Each fundamental entity is described, in this ontology, through four transcendentals: ‘entity’, ‘relation’, ‘unity’ and ‘multiplicity’. The co-primarity between substance and relations (borrowed from the notion of relatio subsistens) differentiates EIO from the process philosophies precisely because it does not pretend to eliminate the substantial principle, or the category of substance, but wants to think of it with the transcendental of relationality. Of course, EIO poses a challenge to the role, the method and the explicative capacity of metaphysics, because what we can state of the fundamental reality is antinomic. EIO tries to assume the antinomy as a result, to make it the basis of a kind of apophatic ontology. If our best ontology is gunky, then it is possible to confirm what has been said in chap. 4: the ‘how’ of individual substances is unknown to us at least as much as the ‘how’ of God. Even in the world we have the mystery of a distinction that is not division. However, the convergence of these antinomies can find an ultimate explanation in a theistic metaphysics (EIM): God creates inside of Himself and his Trinitarian substance is “contracted” into the worldly entities. They are made contingent and ontologically different by this self-limitation, but it is still the infinity of God that makes space in Himself for something new, even though He is totally present in every entity. It is not absurd to think that the substances of the world keep track of the divine nature, even in His “contraction”. Among the characteristics of the divine nature that each created entity maintains we have the subsistent relationality, the pericoretic indwelling (the infinite gunk-junk), the fact of being always one-and-many. If EIO and EIM are accepted as a good compromise between relationalism and substantialism, even in their apophaticity, then, on this basis, a Trinitarian Philosophy is possible. The picture of reality that emerges represents the world as multiple, substantial, contingent and intrinsically relational, forcing us to postulate the transcendental of relationality and multiplicity. Such transcendental leads us to think of the world and God (and their relations) in a Trinitarian way – With the necessary acknowledgement that this is a reasonable but apophatic discourse. (shrink)

How are causal relations between particular states of affairs related to causal laws? There appear to be three main answers to this question, and the choice among those three alternatives would seem to be crucial for any account of causation. In spite of this fact, the question of which view is correct has been all but totally neglected in present-day discussions. Indeed, since the time of Hume, one answer has more or less dominated philosophical thinking about causation. This is the (...) view that causal relations between events/states of affairs logically supervene upon causal laws plus non-causal states of affairs. In this paper, I shall attempt to show that the view in question is exposed to decisive objections. (shrink)