A person of average height would assert a truth by the conditional ‘if I were seven feet tall, I would be taller than I am,’ in which an indicative clause ‘I am’ is embedded in a subjunctive conditional. By contrast, no one would assert a truth by ‘if I were seven feet tall, I would be taller than I would be’ or ‘if I am seven feet tall, I am taller than I am’. These examples exemplify the (...) fact that whether a sentence's evaluation remains at the actual world in the scope of a modal or conditional depends on the combination of mood in the embedded and matrix clauses rather than, as is commonly thought, just on the presence of an operator ‘actually’. This essay argues that this phenomenon provides evidence that mood admits of bound and free readings along the lines of tenses and pronouns. It therefore favors the hypothesis that natural language contains variables and quantifiers for possible worlds in the object language. This, in turn, requires that the truth of a semantic value of a sentence (or whatever structure is embedded in a modal) be relativized to a sequence of worlds rather than to an individual world, and thus be distinguished from a proposition in the traditional sense. The essay also compares the framework defended with an alternative account of similar phenomena by Kai Wehmeier. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultants (CECs) must know key moral principles and have adequate psychosocial skills. This is, though, not enough. They must also have and hone “between-the-lines” skills that will change over time. This article discusses seven of these skills that CECs need before, during, and after consultations. They have in common the unusual primary goal of maximizing CECs’ ability to bond with the patients and families with whom they consult. A focus on relationships, rather than on ethical outcomes, may (...) paradoxically enhance the possibility of achieving an ethical outcome. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550) by Bernard McGinnDennis J. Billy C.Ss.R.The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550). By Bernard McGinn. New York: Crossroad, 2012. Pp. xiv + 721. $70.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8245-9901-0.This fifth volume of McGinn’s Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism covers the Dutch, Italian, and English vernacular mystics of the late Middle Ages. In previous volumes, the author treated the Foundations (vol. 1), (...) Growth (vol. 2), Flowering (vol. 3), and Harvest (vol. 4) of Western Christian mysticism from its roots in the Jewish matrix and the Greek ideal to its fruition in the German vernacular writings of Meister Eckhart and his students. In this latest volume, he continues his history of Western Christian mysticism by focusing on varieties of vernacular mysticism in the Low Countries, Italy, and England from 1350 to 1550.Conscious of the dangers of historical periodization and regional classification, as well as the relationship of mysticism to the greater ecclesiastical world, McGinn takes pains to show the distinctive character of each mystic under consideration, while at the same time pointing out appropriate parallels with Western and Eastern Christian mystics from past historical epochs and those contemporary voices from both within and [End Page 476] without each mystic’s linguistic region. In his preface, he apologizes to his readers for the long gestation of the present volume and offers a brief account of how his original plan of writing a three-volume history of Western Christian mysticism evolved into a series of seven, due in large part to the sheer wealth of sources and his desire to give them a thorough treatment. Rather than following his original intention of including other vernacular traditions in his previous volume on German mysticism, he wisely chose to devote an entire volume to these other important strands (ix–x).Instead of writing a general introduction to the volume, McGinn decides to give a brief introduction to each of the three major parts. He divides his work into thirteen chapters constructed along the following lines: (1) “Late Medieval Mysticism in the Low Countries” (chaps. 1–5), (2) “Mysticism in Late Medieval Italy” (chaps. 6–9), and (3) “Mysticism in Late Medieval England” (chaps. 10–13). The volume closes with a brief conclusion (491–94), extended annotations (495–661), an extensive bibliography (662–704), and indices for Scripture references (705–6), names (707–12), and subjects (713–21). The book’s organization reflects the theme of diversity highlighted in its title. Although each part has its own internal structure and stands on its own as a survey of the material at hand, it also fits well into the volume’s overall plan of pointing out the distinctiveness and great variety of the vernacular mysticisms produced during this period. Taken individually, each part can be considered a probing monograph on the vernacular mysticism in each region. Taken together, the parts offer a unique glimpse into the mystic and literary creativity that sets this period apart as one of the most fertile periods in the history of Christian mysticism.In part 1, “Late Medieval Mysticism in the Low Countries,” McGinn notes that “the period ca. 1350 to ca. 1550 is the central era for Dutch mysticism” and “witnessed a florescence of mystical authors writing in the Dutch-Flemish language” (1). Although he hesitates to refer to a Dutch “school” of mysticism and thinks that “Ruusbroec should not be made the yardstick by which all later Dutch mystics are measured,” he has no reservations about considering him “a gravitational center in the history of Dutch mysticism” (2). This section of the book begins with an in-depth look at the mystical writings of Jan van Ruusbroec (1293–1381) (chap. 1) and continues with a study of Goenendaal mysticism after Ruusbroec (chap. 2). It then turns to a treatment of the mystical aspects of the Devotio Moderna, with a special emphasis on The Imitation of Christ and some vernacular mystics numbered among the Devout, such as Hendrik Mande (ca. 1360–1431, Gerlach Peters (ca. 1375–1411), and Alijt Bake (1415–55), and adds a brief note on the nominalistic... (shrink)

Matrix and line develops a social theory using the work of Jacques Derrida as its philosophical basis. In particular, notions of differance, writing, textuality, margin, dissemination, gramme, and others are integrated into the project of formulating a new language of politics. At the same time, the study is focused on the politics in/of language. ;The question of language is at the heart of this study. In the central chapter I argue that, although Habermas is correct to orient social (...) theory toward language, his approach to language is, in my view, not correct. In formulating the alternative, Heidegger, and from analytic philosophy, Donald Davidson, are important contributors in addition to Derrida. ;There are a number of other important engagements in the dissertation, most prominently with Marxist thinkers. However, the study remains focused on what can be developed within the Derridean framework, instead of developing a general response to Marxism. ;The theory addresses postmodern society and culture and is, in that sense, "postmodern." However, postmodernity is theorized as an historical impasse, in which the link between history and memory is severed. Memory is progressively devalued and destroyed. This devaluation is the result of a secularism at the end of its tether. A writerly, participatory approach to society becomes nearly impossible in this context. The notion of "postsecularism" is counterposed to this postmodern hyper-secularism. The prime concern is to develop a new sense of community, one that textually recovers some of the presecular community values , and some of the key achievements of the Enlightenment, and some of the new possibilities that have been generated by the crisis of modernity. (shrink)

Intrigued by Robinson and Southgate's 2010 work on “entering a semiotic matrix,” we expand their model to include the juxtaposition of all signs, symbols, and mental categories, and to explore the underpinnings of creativity in science, religion, and art. We rely on an interdisciplinary review of human sentience in archaeology, evolutionary biology, the cognitive science of religion, and literature, and speculate on the development of sentience in response to strong selection pressure on the hominin evolutionary line, leaving us (...) the “lone survivors” of complex, multiple lines of physical and cultural evolution. What we call Matrix Thinking—the creative driver of human sentience—has important cognitive and intellectual features, but also equally important characteristics traced to our intense sociability and use of emotionality in vetting rational models. Scientist, theologian, and artist create new cultural knowledge within a social context even if alone. They are rewarded by emotional validation from group members, and guided by the ever present question, “Does it feel right?”. (shrink)

Drawing on 75 semi-structured qualitative interviews with Arab, South Asian, and Black Muslim women social justice activists, ages 18–30 years, organizing in the United States and the United Kingdom, I theorize their experiences as the basis of the matrix of gendered Islamophobia. Building upon Jasmine Zine’s concept of gendered Islamophobia, I synthesize this concept with Patricia Hill Collins’s theory of the matrix of domination to give a more in-depth and nuanced structure of how gendered Islamophobia operates and is (...) resisted by Muslim women activists. This article identifies the overlapping configurations of power that affect Muslim women’s lives through structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains, countering reductionist accounts of Islamophobia as a universalized, unvariegated social force impacting all Muslims in similar ways. Instead, the matrix of gendered Islamophobia locates Islamophobia within shifting axes of oppression that are simultaneously structured along the lines of gender, race, class, sexuality, and citizenship. The findings of this research reveal a dialectical relationship between Muslim women’s oppression and simultaneous contestation of gendered Islamophobia via their collective remaking of alternative ideas, politics, discourses, and organizing practices. (shrink)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept suggesting that good business is about more than maximizing profit. In order to achieve social legitimacy a corporation must pay attention to a complex web of values and relations, and different CSR strategies and policies can be viewed as ways to manage this complexity. The corporate legitimacy matrix introduced in this article represents the strive for social legitimacy as a balancing act along three lines: a) The sustainability dimension: Balancing economic, social and (...) environmental considerations, b) The stakeholder dimension: Balancing considerations of stakeholders at the local, national and global level, and c) The trust dimension: Balancing rational argumentation, credibility and emotional appeal. This article explores these three aspects of corporate legitimacy and how they are related. It is intended as a theoretical contribution towards a better understanding of the relationship between CSR and corporate legitimacy, as well as a practical tool to support the analysis of actual corporate legitimacy challenges. (shrink)

In this multidisciplinary book, mathematician Matthew He provides integrative perspectives of algebraic biology, cognitive informatics, and poetic expressions of the human mind. Using classical Pythagorean Theorem and contemporary Category Theory, the proposed matrix models of the human mind connect three domains of the physical space of objective matters, mental space of subjective meanings, and emotional space of bijective modes; draws the connections between neural sparks and idea points, between synapses and idea lines, and between action potentials and frequency curves.

The citation index of Thomas Kuhn’s work may strike any imagination. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is undoubtedly a twentieth-century record-breaker in the field of philosophy of science in terms of such a scientometric parameter. But such fame has been bitter in many ways and placed a heavy burden on the author. For several decades he has been the target of the harshest and most severe criticism. Often the concept of “normal science” and the “scientific revolution” as a “Gestalt switch” (...) was declared ridiculous and absurd. The paper analyses three lines of criticism of Kuhn’s concept: the first came from practicing scientists, the second from specialists in the philosophy of science, and the third from the field of social epistemology. Reproaches about the political bias of Kuhn’s concept were taken to extremes, since his views were widely popular. In our opinion, Kuhn should be called a victim of spontaneous hypercriticism. This circumstance did not allow him to improve the original model of scientific revolutions. In this respect, replacing the concept of “paradigm” with the concept of “disciplinary matrix” was a step backwards, not forwards. However, it is impossible to deny that in the field of the historiography of science, he acted as a real reformer. With the courage of Don Quixote, he defended the rights of historical reconstruction, the preservation of the historical past of science, which should not be completely assimilated within the framework of the modern system of knowledge. His motto was – “penetrate the minds of other people who lived in the past.” He boldly argued that in the process of historical development, science changes not only ideas about the object of knowledge, but also the reference of its ideas and concepts. Such a formulation of the question has not yet been fully reflected in modern epistemological concepts. (shrink)

Implementing the key functions, any company is faced with issues related to the formation and analysis of the range of goods, products, services. Regardless of the field of activity, enterprises need to analyze each product line separately in order to make timely adjustments to the product range policy, which directly affects the economic efficiency of the enterprise as a whole. The purpose of the study is to reveal the content of matrix methods of assortment analysis. The article deals (...) with the concepts of "assortment", "product assortment", their meaning and impact on the company's activities; matrix methods: BKG matrix; Dibb-Simkin matrix; Markon matrix. The scientific novelty lies in the author's interpretation of the comparative characteristics of these methods, summarized in a tabular form, allowing enterprises to choose the optimal method when analyzing assortment positions in real business conditions. (shrink)

For over half a century, scholars have laboured to show that C. S. Lewis's famed but apparently disorganised Chronicles of Narnia have an underlying symbolic coherence, pointing to such possible unifying themes as the seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins, and the seven books of Spenser's Faerie Queene. None of these explanations has won general acceptance and the structure of Narnia's symbolism has remained a mystery. -/- Michael Ward has finally solved the enigma. In Planet Narnia he (...) demonstrates that medieval cosmology, a subject which fascinated Lewis throughout his life, provides the imaginative key to the seven novels. Drawing on the whole range of Lewis's writings (including previously unpublished drafts of the Chronicles), Ward reveals how the Narnia stories were designed to express the characteristics of the seven medieval planets - - Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn - - planets which Lewis described as "spiritual symbols of permanent value" and "especially worthwhile in our own generation". Using these seven symbols, Lewis secretly constructed the Chronicles so that in each book the plot-line, the ornamental details, and, most important, the portrayal of the Christ-figure of Aslan, all serve to communicate the governing planetary personality. The cosmological theme of each Chronicle is what Lewis called 'the kappa element in romance', the atmospheric essence of a story, everywhere present but nowhere explicit. The reader inhabits this atmosphere and thus imaginatively gains connaître knowledge of the spiritual character which the tale was created to embody. -/- Planet Narnia is a ground-breaking study that will provoke a major revaluation not only of the Chronicles, but of Lewis's whole literary and theological outlook. Ward uncovers a much subtler writer and thinker than has previously been recognized, whose central interests were hiddenness, immanence, and knowledge by acquaintance. (shrink)

We present a module based criterion, i.e. a sufficient condition based on the absolute value of the matrix coefficients, for the convergence of Gauss–Seidel method (GSM) for a square system of linear algebraic equations, the Generalized Line Criterion (GLC). We prove GLC to be the “most general” module based criterion and derive, as GLC corollaries, some previously know and also some new criteria for GSM convergence. Although far more general than the previously known results, the proof of GLC (...) is simpler. The results used here are related to recent research in stability of dynamical systems and control of manufacturing systems. (shrink)

The author of this book has traced the major lines of argument over those years in a most engaging style with clear descriptions of the concepts and ideas.

In a review in JHS lxxxix 127 Dr M. L. West gives as an example of ‘a certain innocence on matters of literary history’ the belief that seven-stringed lyres ‘came in’ in the seventh century B.C. Since the emphasis in the context is upon rigorous down-dating, what Dr West seems to be saying is that seven-stringed lyres were not in use amongst the Greeks before about 600 B.C. I hope that I do not misunderstand Dr West's contention: the (...) purpose of this short note is to suggest, with the greatest respect and deference, that another view of the matter may perhaps be permissible.Let us ignore the seven-stringed musical instrument shown on the Ayia Triadha sarcophagus, because evidence from the Late Bronze Age may be thought too remote to be relevant to early Hellenic musical practice. Let us also leave aside ancient opinions associating Terpander with the seven-stringed lyre and assigning him to the first half of the seventh century B.C.. Dr West may well regard the putting of trust in such testimonies as evidence of incorrigible amateurism. There remains, nevertheless, a contemporary witness to the existence of seven-stringed lyres amongst the Greeks of the seventh century B.C.In JHS lxxi 248, fig. 8, there is illustrated a fragment of a Subgeometric dinos of the first half of the seventh century B.C. from the excavations at Old Smyrna. On the piece is painted a seven-stringed lyre. The lines representing strings are carefully distinguished and spaced. It would be extravagant to assert that the artist could not count, or that he was suffering from hallucinations, or that he was imagining a type of instrument never seen by himself or his customers. In short, a tentative suggestion may be made—with due deference and hesitation: scholars, including those whom in this particular matter Dr West would, it seems, classify as innocents, ‘can seriously argue’ that seven-stringed lyres were reintroduced to Greece or ‘came in’ well within the first half of the seventh century B.C. (shrink)

Two lines of evolution in modern philosophy, empiricism and rationalism, are illustrated with ideas from the film, The matrix. The essay concludes with Kant’s defence of the idea that we do indeed live in a “matrix,” but it’s one of our own constructions. Awareness of this fact sets us free to create a better world.

In Drawing the Line, philosopher Samuel Gorovitz examines the ethical questions that permeate the daily lives of medical professionals: Who should be making life and death decisions? How should scarce medical resources be allocated? What rules should govern the use of fetal tissues in research? Where should we draw the line?The questions are rooted in the author's seven-week observation of events at Boston's Beth Israel hospital. Gorovitz shares with readers an intense, disturbing, and insightful account of operating (...) rooms, intensive care units, surgeons' meetings, and administrative discussions of competition in the health-care market. His unusual look at contemporary health care combines startling reality with the provocative reflections of a highly respected philosopher. Author note: Samuel Gorovitz is Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. He is also the author of the widely hailed Doctors' Dilemmas. (shrink)

Rainer Maria Rilke points to it in the opening lines of the first Duino elegy (published in 1923) when he writes that “beauty is nothing but / the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bea...

This article aims to draw a portrait of the influence of cybernetics on soft science. To this end, structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy will be successively analyzed in a perspective based on importing concepts stemming from the cybernetic paradigm (information, feedback, entropy, complexity, etc.). By focusing more specifically on the American postwar context, we intend to remind the audience that many soft science specialists were involved in the elaboration of this ‘new science’. We will then retrace the influence of the (...) cybernetic paradigm on structuralism. Starting with the historic meeting between Roman Jakobson and Claude Lévi-Strauss, we will illustrate that structural phonology is directly inspired by discoveries stemming from the informational model. In the same perspective, the conceptual borrowings of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan from cybernetics will be identified and analyzed. Then, we will address the matter of the relationship between postmodern theories and the cybernetic paradigm. The philosophical movement towards deconstruction, as well as Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, will be analyzed based on how they relate to this paradigm. We will also insist on the fact that the philosophy of Jean- François Lyotard’s La Condition postmoderne is fully in line with the epistemological revolution launched by cybernetics. (shrink)

Recent feminist theorizing has pointed to a `resurgent patriarchy' within neo-liberal postfeminist times, which re-orders and restabilizes the heterosexual matrix through a politics of `postfeminist masquerade' demanded of girls and women (McRobbie). This paper seeks to complicate this thesis, exploring the regulation and rupture of Butler's `heterosexual matrix' as a complex performative politics through which girls' conflictual relationships with themselves, and other girls and boys are staged and through which dominant versions of tweenage and teenage femininity are reinscribed (...) but also reworked, in race and class specific ways. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's powerful conceptual repertoire for disrupting Oedipal logics in Anti-Oedipus, we offer a `molecular mapping', illustrating cracks and ruptures in what is a porous heterosexual matrix, exploring a rhythm of `deterritorializations' and `reterritorializations' of the normative in our respective ethnographic and narrative interviews with girls. We also trace more sustained ruptures of heteronormative femininity drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari's notion of `lines of flight' and Braidotti's concept of `alternative figuration'. We argue ruptures and alternative figurations are not constitutive of total `molar' resistance to norms, but are significant spaces of doing girl differently and crucial to map if we are to perceive the malleability and multiplicity of contemporary girl subjectivities, which exceed heteronormative femininity and phallogocentric desire. (shrink)

Seven COVID-19 vaccines are now being distributed and administered around the world (figure correct at the time of submission), with more on the horizon. It is widely accepted that healthcare workers should have high priority. However, questions have been raised about what we ought to do if members of priority groups refuse vaccination. Using the case of influenza vaccination as a comparison, we know that coercive approaches to vaccination uptake effectively increase vaccination rates among healthcare workers and reduce patient (...) morbidity if properly implemented. Using the principle of least restrictive alternative, we have developed an intervention ladder for COVID-19 vaccination policies among healthcare workers. We argue that healthcare workers refusing vaccination without a medical reason should be temporarily redeployed and, if their refusal persists after the redeployment period, eventually suspended, in order to reduce the risk to their colleagues and patients. This ‘conditional’ policy is a compromise between entirely voluntary or entirely mandatory policies for healthcare workers, and is consistent with healthcare workers’ established professional, legal and ethical obligations to their patients and to society at large. (shrink)

The United States Marine Corps (USMC) trains 40,000 recruits in ethical conduct each year. The Marines operate under highly stressful conditions and are perceived as moral exemplars. This study investigates their recruit training practices at Parris Island, SC and suggests applications consistent with ethical and psychological research that offer potential for building ethical corporate cultures and improving ethical behavior. The lessons were: 1) select values that fit the business, 2) use organizational-derived “hero stories”, 3) socialize members with conviction and repetition, (...) 4) utilize line leaders to conduct the training to provide specific guidelines for behavior, 5) closely monitor and reward ethical behavior, 6) add emotional control to the cognitive training, and 7) train with realistic business simulations. The seven lessons from the USMC can help business leaders earn a reputation for trustworthy leadership, a vital corporate asset. (shrink)

In a recent work published in this journal, “Van Fraassen e a inferência da melhor explicação” (2016), Minikoski and Rodrigues da Silva identify four critical lines proposed by Bas van Fraassen against the form of abductive reasoning known as ‘inference to the best explanation’ (IBE). The first one, put forward by the Dutch philosopher in his seminal book The Scientific Image (1980), concerns the distinction between observable and unobservable entities. Minikoski and Rodrigues da Silva consider that the distinction is of (...) no relevance to the scientific practice. For this reason, they address van Fraassen’s allegations against IBE qua justification of the existence of unobservable entities in a couple of pages and prefer focusing on the other lines they identified. The aim of this work is to pour over the analysis that the two authors perform about van Fraassen’s mentioned argument and some realists’ replies, particularly in the section that Minikoski and Rodrigues da Silva devote to this topic. This will allow us to clarify van Fraassen’s vision on scientific practice and on the ‘immersion in the theoretical world-picture’. The importance and the relevance of the distinction between observables and unobservables will also be reaffirmed. (shrink)

“There is a long tradition in Latin American debates that is not well known in Europe and the United States…” (p. 89). This sentence, almost read in passing in the middle of the book in relation to two different conceptions of the nation, can be said to summarize the main spirit behind Biglieri and Cadahia’s populist actualization of Mariátegui’s classic, Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928). In this case, the book we have in our hands is difficult to (...) define or classify. Clearly, it is not a purely “academic” enterprise –as the very authors disclaim in the first lines of their Introduction (p. xxii). It has no full presumption of “objectivity” or “neutrality” because it takes a self-reflected partisan point of view. Conversely, it is not a “manifesto” either, since it engages deeply in theoretical debates after rigorously reviewing the existing literature. Perhaps the best way to define these Essays on Populism is finding rescue in Althusser’s notion of “theoretical intervention”, and Biglieri and Cadahia develop a total of seven placing “populism” in relation to different conjunctures: its own methodology (empirical or ontological), the Left/Right imaginary, neoliberal fascism, (plebeian) Republicanism, (inter)nationalism and feminism. However, the result is not a concatenation of isolated “papers”, but a constellation illuminated by a similar light, which I take it to be no other than the laudable attempt to bring to the fore a series of militant experiences, philosophical theses and heated debates with Latin American autonomists and Spanish republicans which are not always well known in the English-speaking literature, despite they have the power to dislocate the question around populism. (shrink)

"This is a book about humanists, but even humanists cannot agree on what a humanist is," declares Sarah Bakewell. Indeed, for centuries now, thinkers, writers, scholars, politicians, activists, artists, and countless others have been searching for and refining a philosophy of the human spirit. Humanism can be found in writings of Plato and Protagoras and in the thought of Confucius. It is ever-present in the work of Michel de Montaigne, and guided the thinking and activism of Harriet Taylor Mill. When (...) Zora Neale Hurston writes, "Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of morning out of the misty deep of dawn, is glory enough for me." That is humanism par excellence. In Humanly Possible, Bakewell puts forward that all the different meanings of "humanism" are worth looking at together because they are all concerned with humanitas, or, as she puts it, "our culture and learning, our words and art, our good manners and sociable desire to say hello to the universe." What unites humanists, religious or not, scholarly or not, philosophical or not, is that they all put the human world of culture and morality at the center of their concerns. What could be more human than that? Embracing and indeed celebrating humanism's swirling, kaleidoscopic, rich ambiguity, Bakewell sets out not just to trace this vital philosophical lineage through the lives of its major protagonists but in fact to make her own dazzling contribution to its expansive literature. The result is an intoxicating, joyful celebration of the human spirit from one of our most beloved and charming writers. (shrink)

It has generally been assumed that rapid visual search is based on simple features and that spatial relations between features are irrelevant for this task. Seven experiments involving search for line drawings contradict this assumption; a major determinant of search is the presence of line junctions. Arrow- and Y-junctions were detected rapidly in isolation and when they were embedded in drawings of rectangular polyhedra. Search for T-junctions was considerably slower. Drawings containing T-junctions often gave rise to very (...) slow search even when distinguishing arrow- or Y-junctions were present. This sensitivity to line relations suggests that preattentive processes can extract 3-dimensional orientation from line drawings. A computational model is outlined for how this may be accomplished in early human vision. (shrink)

Physicians often express frustration with the ‘system’ in which they work. Over time, this frustration may put them at risk of burnout and disengagement, which may impact patient care. In this study, we aimed to understand the nature of the system flaws that physicians identified in their published narratives and to explore their self-representation as agents of change. We reviewed all reflective narratives published in four medical journals between January 2015 and December 2017. By consensus, we identified those that addressed (...) system flaws. Using content and narrative analysis, we analyzed the types of flaws and the physicians’ orientation to the flawed system. We identified seven recurring system flaws—five related to medical culture: failures of communication, erosive impact of the hidden curriculum, inadequate health advocacy, frenzied pace of work, and experience of stigma. Less frequently, physicians’ narratives also exposed limited and disparate healthcare resources and restrictive institutional practices as impeding patient-centered care. Physicians expressed agency to create change foremost when writing about flaws related to medical culture. While physicians are challenged by system flaws, they strive to practice in ways that do not succumb to them. We saw tension between the elements outside the physician’s control and those within it. This tension becomes a source of distress when the compromises that emerge from system flaws move physicians away from the values that define their professional identity. (shrink)

The main purpose of this dissertation is to apply and develop new forcing techniques to obtain models where several cardinal characteristics are pairwise different as well as force many (even more, continuum many) different values of cardinal characteristics that are parametrized by reals. In particular, we look at cardinal characteristics associated with strong measure zero, Yorioka ideals, and localization and anti-localization cardinals.In this thesis we introduce the property “F-linked” of subsets of posets for a given free filter F on the (...) natural numbers, and define the properties “ $\mu $ -F-linked” and “ $\theta $ -F-Knaster” for posets in a natural way. We show that $\theta $ -F-Knaster posets preserve strong types of unbounded families and of maximal almost disjoint families. These kinds of posets led to the development of a general technique to construct $\theta $ - $\textrm {Fr}$ -Knaster posets (where $\textrm {Fr}$ is the Frechet ideal) via matrix iterations of ${<}\theta $ -ultrafilter-linked posets (restricted to some level of the matrix). The latter technique allows proving consistency results about Cichoń’s diagram (without using large cardinals) and to prove the consistency of the fact that, for each Yorioka ideal, the four cardinal characteristics associated with it are pairwise different. Another important application is to show that three strongly compact cardinals are enough to force that Cichoń’s diagram can be separated into 10 different values. Later on, it was shown by Goldstern, Kellner, Mejía, and Shelah that no large cardinals are needed for Cichoń’s maximum (J. Eur. Math. Soc. 24 (2022), no. 11, p. 3951–3967).On the other hand, we deal with certain types of tree forcings including Sacks forcing, and show that these increase the covering of the strong measure zero ideal $\mathcal {SN}$. As a consequence, in Sacks model, such covering number is equal to the size of the continuum, which indicates that this covering number is consistently larger than any other classical cardinal characteristics of the continuum. Even more, Sacks forcing can be used to force that $\operatorname {\mathrm{non}}(\mathcal {SN})<\operatorname {\mathrm{cov}}(\mathcal {SN})<\operatorname {\mathrm{cof}}(\mathcal {SN})$, which is the first consistency result where more than two cardinal characteristics associated with $\mathcal {SN}$ are pairwise different. To obtain another result in this direction, we provide bounds for $\operatorname {\mathrm{cof}}(\mathcal {SN})$, which generalizes Yorioka’s characterization of $\mathcal {SN}$ (J. Symbolic Logic 67.4 (2002), p. 1373–1384). As a consequence, we get the consistency of $\operatorname {\mathrm{add}}(\mathcal {SN})=\operatorname {\mathrm{cov}}(\mathcal {SN})<\operatorname {\mathrm{non}}(\mathcal {SN})<\operatorname {\mathrm{cof}}(\mathcal {SN})$ with ZFC (via a matrix iteration forcing construction).We conclude this thesis by combining creature forcing approaches by Kellner and Shelah (Arch. Math. Logic 51.1–2 (2012), p. 49–70) and by Fischer, Goldstern, Kellner, and Shelah (Arch. Math. Logic 56.7–8 (2017), p. 1045–1103) to show that, under CH, there is a proper $\omega ^\omega $ -bounding poset with $\aleph _2$ -cc that forces continuum many pairwise different cardinal characteristics, parametrized by reals, for each one of the following six types: uniformity and covering numbers of Yorioka ideals as well as both kinds of localization and anti-localization cardinals, respectively. This answers several open questions from Klausner and Mejía (Arch. Math. Logic 61 (2022), pp. 653–683).Abstract prepared by Miguel Antonio Cardona-MontoyaE-mail: [email protected]: https://repositum.tuwien.at/handle/20.500.12708/19629. (shrink)

Though seen in several photographs, Alfred von Sybel remained for many years a rather unknown member of the early phenomenological movement. Detailed documentation of his life and work only became available following research on the “Circle of Bergzabern,” a group comprised of former members from the “Philosophical Society Göttingen”: von Sybel, Conrad, Conrad-Martius, Hering, Koyré, Lipps and Stein, were listed as the seven participants. In the Phänomenologenlied, written in 1907, von Sybel outlined the groups’ approach: “to the things themselves” (...) (zu den Sachen selbst), in a programmatic way, and it became an integral part of their meetings. Following his extensive correspondence, this article reveals von Sybel’s desperate search for fellowship and orientation, which resulted in a very puzzling life. Thus, this first ever-published comprehensive biography of von Sybel mirrors the mysteries surroundingthe song: different versions exist and due to a lack of details it remains a puzzle which version is the original one. (shrink)

Why read Simondon today? Seven lines of inquiry are sketched out here, seven problematics whose construction Simondon invites us to explore, seven twists away from the dominant political treatment of questions concerning the individual, the social body, the contract, identity, the affects, heterogeneity.

For organizational development that is future-oriented, enterprises increasingly need qualified, motivated and efficient workers who are able and willing to contribute actively to technical and organizational innovations. Furthermore, customers and consumers are increasingly interested in healthy products and services. Therefore, health has become a (potential) business value of strategic importance. In interaction with all relevant stakeholders, an approach was developed for companies that want to manage their health impact in a proactive and preventive manner. The approach was termed Integral Health (...) Management (IHM). IHM forms a strategic approach for reducing the costs of sickness absence and working disability, while the productivity and resilience of the company and its employees are increased. This brings the company direct economic benefits. Finally, it is of prime interest for employees to remain physically and mentally healthy and employable. The IHM approach distinguishes seven lines of development: (1) health as a strategic company interest; (2) the realization of a healthy primary process; (3) a safe and sound physical (work) environment; (4) an inspiring social (work) environment; (5) vital people; (6) a sound relationship with the immediate organizational environment and local community, and (7) healthy products and/or services. The inter-relationships between the seven development lines are essential for combining an improvement of the business impact on health with a strategic interest of companies and organizations. The seven lines of IHM development can easily be linked to the European Foundation for Quality Management''s European Excellence Model. (shrink)

Alva Noë’s _Action in Perception _offers a provocative and vigorous defense of the thesis that vision is enactive: visual experience depends on dispositional motor responses. On this view, vision and action are inextricably bound. In this review, I argue against enactive perception. I raise objections to seven lines of evidence that appear in Noë’s book, and I indicate some reasons for thinking that vision can operate independently of motor responses. I conclude that the relationship between vision and action is (...) causal, not constitutive. I then address three other contentious hypotheses in the book. Noë argues that visual states are not pictorial; he argues that all perception is conceptual; and he argues that the external world makes a constitutive contribution to experience. I am unpersuaded by these arguments, and I offer reasons to resist Noë’s conclusions. (shrink)

The excuse for publishing a new anthology of texts in ancient philosophy is that the effort is not a duplication of previous attempts, either in terms of the texts offered or the interpretations tendered. It is impossible to meet the first criterion for the pre-Socratics, since there is a concise and relatively agreed upon canon of material. What then of the interpretations offered in this volume? They are scant, unimaginative, and, in some cases, misleading. This is especially true in the (...) case of the sophists. Thus, Callicles' long speech from the Gorgias is quoted as representative of sophistical doctrine on the antithesis between nature and convention. The practice of quoting Plato on the sophists is hazardous at best. Why not, instead, print and analyze those intriguing fragments one and two of Antiphon's Περὶ ληθείας? Or if Plato is to be trusted in regard to the sophists, why not quote Protagoras' remarks in the Platonic dialogue of that same name? Or the excursion in the Theaetetus? These selections would present a much more complete picture of Protagoras' doctrines than the seven lines from the doxographical tradition that the editors supply. In addition, there appears to be little logic in the bibliographies. The only secondary source suggested for the sophists is Untersteiner's book. Havelock's The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics is equally controversial, but certainly more reliable. Or if J. H. Loenen's "Was Anaximander an Evolutionist?" could be dredged up from Mnemosyne, surely some material from the other journals could have been found for the sophists. After the pre-Socratics, the book offers about eighty-five pages of selections from Plato, one hundred pages from Aristotle, twenty-five pages from Hellenistic stoicism, Epicureanism, and skepticism and a concluding twenty pages from Plotinus. A novel and quite useful feature of the book is a thematic table which topically indexes the texts according to the editors' conception of the main branches of philosophy.--E. A. R. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 133-152 [Access article in PDF] Benjamin Franklin in Jewish Eastern Europe: Cultural Appropriation in the Age of the Enlightenment Nancy Sinkoff * Figures In 1808 an anonymous Hebrew chapbook detailing a behaviorist guide to moral education and self-improvement appeared in Lemberg, Austrian Galicia. Composed by Mendel Lefin of Satanów, an enlightened Polish Jew (maskil in the Hebrew terminology of the period), (...) Moral Accounting (Sefer Heshbon ha-Nefesh) was a crucial weapon in Lefin's lifelong literary war against Hasidism, the new Jewish pietistic movement which had captured the hearts and souls of much of eighteenth-century Polish Jewry. 1 The core of Moral Accounting was a boxed grid, seven lines by thirteen, which correlated, respectively, to the days of the week and to thirteen virtues in need of improvement. The grid was to be used daily throughout a thirteen-week cycle which repeated four times during the course of a year. Addressing a traditionally-educated Jewish audience, Mendel Lefin did not disclose the gentile source of the method of moral self-reform, but he did acknowledge that it was not his innovation: "Several years ago a new method was revealed, and it is [such] a wonderful invention for this [kind] of [moral] education that it seems that its renown will spread as quickly, if God desires it, as that of the invention of printing which brought light to the world." 2 [End Page 133] The creator of this "wonderful invention" was none other than Benjamin Franklin, whose "Rules of Conduct" first appeared in 1791 in the second part of his English Autobiography. 3There has been a noticeable interest recently among historians of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) to map carefully, region by region, the nuances and varieties of the Jewish encounter with modernity. 4 Nonetheless, Haskalah scholars have generally regarded Mendel Lefin's use of Franklin's technique as a confirmation of their view that the impetus for the Haskalah among East European Jewry lay in its exposure to the West in general and to the Berlin Haskalah's Western orientation in particular. 5 They have viewed Moral Accounting as merely a translation of yet another text of the European and American Enlightenments into Hebrew, and they have paid little attention to the Polish context and orientation of Lefin's work. 6 Implicit in this view, too, was the problematic assumption that translation of a text is an uncritical, acquiescent act. Mendel Lefin's wholesale adoption of Franklin's "Rules of Conduct," implied, first, a static, unidirectional influence of a Western text on an East European and, second, that Franklin's work itself had a fixed, absolute meaning which Lefin simply appended to his Hebrew book. Yet the appearance of the "Rules of Conduct" in Hebrew and [End Page 134] Lefin's use of other Western and non-Jewish texts were anything but mechanical. 7Not only Lefin's Jewishness but his Polish origins and Polish orientation make the assumption of passivity particularly acute. Effaced from the map of Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, Poland's history has not been integrated into general historical treatments of the Enlightenment. 8 Just as studies of the Jewish Enlightenment describe a trajectory from Berlin to Austrian Galician to Russia, so do general interpretations of the European Enlightenment draw a line from Germany and France to Russia, bypassing Poland. For example, in Roy Porter and Mikulás Teich's important book, The Enlightenment in National Context, Poland is nowhere to be found. 9 Yet Poland, too, had an Enlightenment (Oswiecenie), beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, which was stimulated by many of the same forces that spurred change in the West: the desire to reform antiquated political systems, to liberate education from religious dogma, and to create a rational state apparatus. In Poland the Enlightenment had its own national coloring; it was sponsored not by a rising bourgeois class but by royal and noble circles (and thus lacked the social critique of the Enlightenment in the... (shrink)

Reconfiguring the human -- Lines, planes, and bodies: redefining human action -- Action as affect -- The transindividuality of affect -- The tongue -- Renaturalizing ideology: Spinoza's ecosystem of ideas -- The matrix -- Ideology critique today? -- The fly in the coach -- "I am in ideology," or the attribute of thought -- What is to be done? -- Man's utility to man: reason and its place in nature -- The politics of human nature -- Reason and the (...) human essence -- Man's utility to man -- Nonhuman utility -- Beyond the image of man -- Desire for recognition? Butler, Hegel, and Spinoza -- Spinoza in Hegel -- Desire in Hegel -- Conatus and cupiditas in Spinoza -- From interpersonal recognition to impersonal glory -- Judith Butler's post-Hegelian politics of recognition -- The impersonal is political: Spinoza and a feminist politics of imperceptibility -- The politics of recognition -- Elizabeth Grosz's critique of the politics of recognition -- Thinking beyond the (hu)man -- A politics of imperceptibility -- Nature, norms, and beasts -- The beast within -- Animal affects (and) the first man -- Ethics as ethology? (shrink)

Cell lines and cell samples from patients provide opportunities for studying the mechanisms of leukemic cellular differentiation and proliferation. Phorbol esters and 1,25 dihydroxy vitamin D3 can induce differentiation of myeloid leukemic cells to macrophages. Differentiation to granulocytes can be induced by several different compounds. Myeloid differentiation is associated closely with the alteration in expression of several oncogenes. These regulatory events may be associated with the extent of methylation, unfolding or association of chromatin to the nuclear matrix. Oncogene amplification, (...) mutation, or deletion can occur with malignant transformation. Future studies point to the development of specific pharmacological agents which can modify the neoplastic transformation. (shrink)

Chapter Seven discusses Edgar Ulmer's The Black Cat as the creation of a high modernist European émigré working in a lowbrow American genre, the horror movie. Ulmer portrays a self-destructive generation of Europeans permanently scarred by the horrors of World War I. Into their world, he introduces a young American couple on their honeymoon, who, in their naïveté, are almost destroyed by the mad Europeans, but escape their satanic clutches in the end. Hoping to succeed in his newly adopted (...) homeland, Ulmer seems to turn his back on his European heritage as a dead end, and yet he cannot help suggesting the cultural superiority of his sophisticated European characters. The Black Cat takes its place in a long line of European works critical of American culture, while at the same time raising serious doubts about Europe's future in the 1930s. (shrink)

The Leslie matrix model for discrete population growth has been modified and used several times in population dynamics. A review is given of the basic model and of its principal modifications. The modifications relating to the influences of ‘internal’ or ‘external’ factors to the population are studied with greater detail. The same applies to models where the population is divided in stages rather than in age classes. In the same line, Hadjibiros studied a more general model, where the (...) transition matrix corresponds to a population divided in stages of unequal duration, and where the time varying influences of the ‘internal’ or ‘external’ factors are included. This model offers the possibility of computer simulation of the population dynamics of a natural population represented by a demographic vector. Some kind of relationship is proposed between the general matrix model and the Lefkovitch matrix ; the elements of which, obtained by regression techniques from census data, describe the biological dependance of a stage i at time t + 1 on a stage j at time t. (shrink)

Purpose Although the term “responsibility” plays a central role in bioethics and public health, its meaning and implications are often unclear. This paper defends the importance of a more systematic conception of responsibility to improve moral philosophical as well as descriptive analysis. Methods We start with a formal analysis of the relational conception of responsibility and its meta-ethical presuppositions. In a brief historical overview, we compare global-collective, professional, personal, and social responsibility. The value of our analytical matrix is illustrated (...) by sorting out the plurality of responsibility models in three cases (organ transplantation, advance directives, and genetic testing). Results Responsibility is a relational term involving at least seven relata. The analysis of the relata allows distinguishing between individual versus collective agency, retrospective versus prospective direction, and liability versus power relations. Various bioethical ambiguities result from insufficient, implicit, or inappropriate ascriptions of responsibility. Conclusions A systematic conception of responsibility is an important tool for bioethical reflection. It allows an in-depth understanding and critique of moral claims on a meta-ethical level without presuming one particular normative approach. Considering the concept of responsibility can also help to complement the current bioethical focus on individual autonomy by including the perspectives of other actors, such as family members or social groups. (shrink)

We prove assorted properties of matrices over \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb{Z}_{2}}$$\end{document}, and outline the complexity of the concepts required to prove these properties. The goal of this line of research is to establish the proof complexity of matrix algebra. It also presents a different approach to linear algebra: one that is formal, consisting in algebraic manipulations according to the axioms of a ring, rather than the traditional semantic approach via linear transformations.

The past seven centuries of scholarly attention to and debate over the Roman de la Rose bear strong witness to the fact that the allegorical figure Faus Semblant presents us with an interpretive crux—one of many such in the poem—that we are not likely to resolve in the coming centuries. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that a character who so embodies paradox—a profane friar who is openly honest about his intent to deceive—should be so difficult to pin (...) down; it is his singular talent, after all, to dissemble and confuse. The last century has seen a significant increase in criticism centered upon Faus Semblant that seeks to understand what he signifies within the larger allegory of the poem and how he relates to Jean de Meun's purported satire and antifraternalism. But this struggle to understand and explain the character began centuries earlier and, like him, has taken many forms. As early as the thirteenth century, the passage of Jean's poem in which Faus Semblant explains his craft and guile had begun to attract a diverse group of revisers: scribes, who added or deleted passages in order to shape a reading of the poem or avoid offending readers; remanieurs, such as Gui de Mori, who substantially rewrote the passage in efforts to reshape the poem into a more cohesive form; readers, whose marginal inscriptions and notae often accompany the passage; and illustrators , as images of Faus Semblant are frequently included in illuminated copies of Rose manuscripts. Even Jean himself seemed to feel the need to gloss and contain Faus Semblant, offering an apology and clarification in lines 15213–30. (shrink)

The ἰαματικά, a collection of seven short epigrams about healing grouped together and so labelled in the Milan papyrus attributed to Posidippus, present another useful source of information about the cult and cures of Asclepius (AB 95–101;P Mil. Vogl. VIII 309, XIV.30–XV.22). Brief though the epigrams are (all are four lines in length except the first, which is eight lines), they accord well with the picture of the cult presented by material, epigraphic and other literary evidence.