This paper is an updated version of a paper that was first presented at the Creative Adjacencies - New Challenges for Architecture, Design and Urbanism Conference, held 3-6 June 2014 at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Campus Sint-Lucas Gent. It has already been published in Žindžiuvienė IE., Spatiality and Temporality : An Interdisciplinary Approach. Poland : IRF Press. ISBN : 978-83-943632-1-5. We thank Koen De Wandeler for the permission to republish it here.- Urbanisme – Nouvel article.

Visual experience is often characterised as being essentially spatial, and auditory experience essentially temporal. But this contrast, which is based upon the temporal structure of the objects of sensory experience rather than the experiences to which they give rise, is somewhat superficial. By carefully examining the various sources of temporal variation in the chemical senses we can more clearly identify the temporal profile of the resulting smell and taste (aka flavour) experiences. This in turn suggests that (...) at least some of the objects of olfactory experience have significant temporal structure, including interactions between odorants and the body’s own sensory systems. This can help to inform our understanding not only of the metaphysics of olfaction, but the temporal structure of sensory processing and experience in other sense-modalities, including vision and audition. (shrink)

This paper contributes data from Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní) to the discussion of how temporal reference is determined in tenseless languages. The empirical focus of this study is on finite clauses headed by verbs inflected only for person/number information, which are compatible only with non-future temporal reference in most matrix clause contexts. The paper first explores the possibility of accounting for the temporal reference of such clauses with a phonologically empty non-future tense morpheme, along the lines of Matthewson’s (...) (Linguist Philos 29:673–713, 2006 ) analysis of a similar phenomenon in St’át’imcets (Salish). This analysis is then contrasted with one according to which temporal reference is not constrained by tense in Paraguayan Guaraní, but only by context and temporal adverbials. A comparison of the two analyses, both of which are couched in a dynamic semantic framework, suggests empirical and theoretical advantages of the tenseless analysis over the tensed one. The paper concludes with a discussion of cross-linguistic variation of temporal reference in tensed and tenseless languages. (shrink)

The paper argues that cognitive states of biological systems are inherently temporal. Three adequacy conditions for neuronal models of representation are vindicated: the compositionality of meaning, the compositionality of content, and the co-variation with content. Classicist and connectionist approaches are discussed and rejected. Based on recent neurobiological data, oscillatory networks are introduced as a third alternative. A mathematical description in a Hilbert space framework is developed. The states of this structure can be regarded as conceptual representations satisfying the three (...) conditions. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the consequences of new scientific and philosophical approaches for the practical-theoretical framework of modern developmental biology. I highlight normal development, and the instructive-permissive distinction, as key parts of this framework which shape how variation is conceptualised and managed. Furthermore, I establish the different dimensions of biological variation: the units, temporality and mode of variation. Using the analytical frame established by this, I interpret a selection of examples as challenges to the instructive-permissive distinction. These examples include (...) the phenomena of developmental plasticity and transdifferentiation, the role of the microbiome in development, and new methodological approaches to standardisation and the assessment of causes. Furthermore, I argue that investigations into organismal development should investigate the effects of a wider range of kinds of variation including variation in the units, modes and temporalities of development. I close by examining various possible opportunities for producing and using normal development free of the assumptions of the instructive-permissive distinction. These opportunities are afforded by recent developments, which include new ways of producing standards incorporating more natural variation and being based on function rather than structure, and the ability to produce, store, and process large quantities of data. (shrink)

It has been reported in non-contingent schedules that the variety of patterns of behavior is affected by the temporal variation of water deliveries. While temporal variation is accomplished by delivering water at fixed or variable times, spatial variation is usually accomplished by varying the number of dispensers and distance among them. Such criteria do not consider the possible ecological relevance of the location of water dispensers. Nevertheless, it is plausible to suppose that the intersection of the programed contingencies, (...) the ecological differentiated space, and the relative location of relevant objects and events could set up an integrated system with the behavioral patterns of the organism. In the present study, we evaluated the eco-functional relevance of two locations of the dispensers upon behavioral dynamics in Wistar rats using fixed and variable time schedules in a modified open-field system. In Experiment 1, three subjects were exposed to a fixed time 30-s water delivery schedule. In the first condition, the water dispenser was located at the center of the experimental chamber. In the second condition, the water dispenser was located at the center of a wall of the experimental chamber. Each location was present for 20 sessions. In Experiment 2, conditions were the same, but a variable time schedule was used. Routes, distance to the dispenser, recurrence patterns, time spent in zones, entropy, and divergence were analyzed. Our findings suggest a robust differential relevance of the location of the dispensers that should be considered in studies evaluating behavioral dynamics. Results are discussed from an integrative, ecological-parametric framework. (shrink)

Cognition and Temporality argues that both verbal grammar and figural grammar have their cognitive basis in twelve characteristic forms of judgment, distributed among individuals in human populations throughout history. These twelve logical forms are context-free and language-free foundations in our attentional awareness, and shape all verbal and figural statements. Moreover, these types of historical judgment are psychogenetic inheritances in a population, and each serves a distinct problem-solving function in the human species. Through analysis of verbal and figural statements, the author (...) contends, the researcher can find evidence of these forms of judgment, and in turn analyze how the event to which those statements attend is formally constructed by that judgment. This construction guides how the event is assessed, approached, and engaged in the process of problem-solving. Artists and aestheticians in the early twentieth century--including Wassily Kandinsky, Stephen C. Pepper, and Andrew Paul Ushenko--have all posited an inherited attentional perspective in individuals, manifested in the logical correspondence between their distinctive verbal and figural grammars. Cognition and Temporality elaborates these claims, arguing that while the styles of well-known artists and writers are conditioned by the public styles of a particular time period, variations in personal style manifest one's inherited form of judgment, and the characteristic grammars that express that form. Through rigorous visual and stylistic analysis, the author demonstrates the expression of these forms among notable writers and artists across history. The result is a wide-ranging and provocative contribution to phenomenology, aesthetic philosophy, and cultural history. (shrink)

BackgroundPrevious studies suggested a circadian variation of migraine attack onset, although, with contradictory results – possibly because of the existence of migraine subgroups with different circadian attack onset peaks. Migraine is primarily a brain disorder, and if the diversity in daily distribution of migraine attack onset reflects an important aspect of migraine, it may also associate with interictal brain activity. Our goal was to assess brain activity differences in episodic migraine subgroups who were classified according to their typical circadian peak (...) of attack onset.MethodsTwo fMRI studies were conducted with migraine without aura patients (n= 31 in Study 1,n= 48 in Study 2). Among them, three subgroups emerged with typical Morning, Evening, and Varying start of attack onset. Whole brain activity was compared between the groups in an implicit emotional processing fMRI task, comparing fearful, sad, and happy facial stimuli to neutral ones.ResultsIn both studies, significantly increased neural activation was detected to fearful (but not sad or happy) faces. In Study 1, the Evening start group showed increased activation compared to the Morning start group in regions involved in emotional, self-referential (left posterior cingulate gyrus, right precuneus), pain (including left middle cingulate, left postcentral, left supramarginal gyri, right Rolandic operculum) and sensory (including bilateral superior temporal gyrus, right Heschl’s gyrus) processing. While in Study 2, the Morning start group showed increased activation compared to the Varying start group at a nominally significant level in regions with pain (right precentral gyrus, right supplementary motor area) and sensory processing (bilateral paracentral lobule) functions.ConclusionOur fMRI studies suggest that different circadian attack onset peaks are associated with interictal brain activity differences indicating heterogeneity within migraine patients and alterations in sensitivity to threatening fearful stimuli. Circadian variation of migraine attack onset may be an important characteristic to address in future studies and migraine prophylaxis. (shrink)

This paper examines the intersecting of the themes of temporality and truth in Deleuze's philosophy. For the ancients, truth was something eternal: what was true was true in all times and in all places. Temporality (coming to be and passing away) was the realm of the mutable, not the eternal. In the seventeenth century, change began to be seen in a positive light (progress, evolution, and so on), but this change was seen to be possible only because of the immutable (...) laws of nature that govern change. It was not until philosophers such as Bergson, James, Whitehead – and then Deleuze – that time began to be taken seriously on its own account. On the one hand, in Deleuze, time, freed from its subordination to movement, now becomes autonomous: it is the pure form of change (continuous variation) that lies at the basis of Deleuze's metaphysics in Difference and Repetition (and is explored more thematically in The Time-Image). As a result, on the other hand, the false, freed from its subordination to the form of the true, assumes a power of its own (the power of the false), which in turn implies a new ‘analytic of the concept’ that Deleuze develops in What Is Philosophy? (shrink)

The history of the field of intersex bodies/bodies with variations of sex development reflects the ongoing tension between sociomedical attempts to control uncertainty and reduce the duration of corporeal uncertainty by means of early diagnosis and treatment, and the embodied subjects who resist or challenge these attempts, which ultimately increase uncertainty. Based on various qualitative studies in the field of intersex, this article describes three temporal sociomedical approaches that have evolved over the last decade and aims to address (...) the uncertainty surrounding intersex/VSD bodies. These approaches are the corrective-concealing approach, which includes early surgeries and hormone therapies intended to “correct” intersex conditions and the deliberate concealment of the ambiguity and uncertainty associated with intersex conditions; the preventive approach, which involves early genetic diagnostic methods aimed at regulating or preventing the recurrence of hereditary conditions under the umbrella of VSD; and the wait-and-see approach, which perceives intersex bodies as natural variations and encourages parents to take time, wait, and give their children the right to bodily autonomy. A comparison of these approaches from biopolitical, phenomenological, and pragmatic perspectives reveals that time is an essential social agent in addressing and controlling uncertainty, a gatekeeper of social norms and social and physical orders, and, on the other hand, a sociopolitical agent that enables creative social change. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the debate about ‘tenseless languages’ by defending a tensed analysis of a superficially tenseless language. The language investigated is St’át’imcets (Lillooet Salish). I argue that although St’át’imcets lacks overt tense morphology, every finite clause in the language possesses a phonologically covert tense morpheme; this tense morpheme restricts the reference time to being non-future. Future interpretations, as well as ‘past future’ would-readings, are obtained by the combination of covert tense with an operator analogous to Abusch’s (1985) WOLL. (...) I offer St’át’imcets-internal evidence (of a kind not previously adduced) that the WOLL-like operator is modal in nature. It follows from the analysis presented here that there are only two (probably related) differences between St’át’imcets and English in the area of tense. The first is that St’át’imcets lacks tense morphemes which are pronounced. The second is that the St’át’imcets tense morpheme is semantically underspecified compared to English ones. In each of these respects, the St’át’imcets tense morpheme displays similar properties to pronouns, which may be covert and which may fail to distinguish person, number or gender. Along the way, I point out several striking and subtle similarities in the interpretive possibilities of St’át’imcets and English. I suggest that these similarities may reveal non-accidental properties of tense systems in natural language. I conclude with discussion of the implications of the analysis for cross-linguistic variation, learnability and the possible existence of tenseless languages. (shrink)

Some theories of personal identity allow some variation in what it takes for a person to survive from context to context; and sometimes this is determined by the desires of person-stages or the practices of communities.This leads to problems for decision making in contexts where what is chosen will affect personal identity.‘Temporal Phase Pluralism’ solves such problems by allowing that there can be a plurality of persons constituted by a sequence of person stages. This illuminates difficult decision making problems (...) when persons have to choose between different life-altering choices. (shrink)

In his insightful essay »Prophetic Religion and the Future of Capitalist Civilization« Cornel West fervently addressed a question of our abilities to imagine a more empathetic, more compassionate, and also more hospitable world, in which we could foresee, or perhaps already lay ground for a future community where the word religion would simply mean that we live our lives in the consciousness of our finitude and thus in an existential and cognitive humility. This kind of religion would enable us to (...) see beyond the margins of any narrow-minded religious ideology or any violent incarnation of religion. Based on these initial thoughts, we first wish to discuss two basic concepts of contemporary political theology – community and vulnerability. We shall argue that we need to offer in contemporary political theology a basic ethico-democratic response, infused with our imaginative capacity for remembrance and future hope. We will argue with Unger that we need to live through accepting an enhanced vulnerability, being shared in our democratic religious communities. From this view any loss of human life and its potentials is a sign of a grave injustice, and a catastrophe from an ethical point of view. Finally, we will propose the so called reverse thesis on religion – namely that today, perhaps, we should first look at religion in its radicalized ethico-political form which only later enables us to think about its various variations and incarnations within different traditions and cultures. We will argue that it is within this newly acquired temporality of religion and its inherent ontologico-political paradox, that it is possible to imagine a future place where recurrent hope for a life is reborn and nurtured within future pluralistic / inclusivistic / democratic / post-Christian communities, based on compassion and shared vulnerability, and not any more on power, or any other form of violence. (shrink)

In this chapter we examine the tendency to view future-oriented mental time travel as a unitary faculty that, despite task-driven surface variation, ultimately reduces to a common phenomenological state. We review evidence that FMTT is neither unitary nor beholden to episodic memory: Rather, it is varied both in its memorial underpinnings and experiential realization. We conclude that the phenomenological diversity characterizing FMTT is dependent not on the type of memory activated during task performance, but on the kind of subjective temporality (...) associated with the memory in play. (shrink)

There are two phrases in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit that provide a clue to what is going on in that book: Dasein ist geworfener Entwurf and Dasein existiert faktisch . I begin by trying to show how an interpretation of these phrases can help clarify Heidegger's philosophical claim about what it means to be human. I then try and explain why it is that, in a couple of important passages in Sein und Zeit, Heidegger describes thrown projection as an enigma (...) . After considering the meaning and etymology of the word ‘enigma’, I trace its usage in Sein und Zeit, and try and show how and why the relations between Heidegger's central conceptual pairings – state‐of‐mind and understanding , thrownness and projection, facticity and existentiality – are described by Heidegger as enigmatic. My thesis is that at the heart of Sein und Zeit, that is, at the heart of the central claim of the Dasein‐analytic as to the temporal character of thrown‐projective being‐in‐the‐world, there lies an enigmatic apriori. That is to say, there is something resiliently opaque at the basis of the constitution of Dasein's being‐in‐the‐world which both resists phenomenological description and which, I shall claim, is that in virtue of which the phenomenologist describes. In the more critical part of the paper, I try and show precisely how this notion of the enigmatic apriori changes the basic experience of understanding Sein und Zeit. I explore this in relation to three examples from Division II: death, conscience and temporality. I try and read Heidegger's analyses of each of these concepts against the grain in order to bring into view much more resilient notions of facticity and thrownness that place in doubt the move to existentiality, projection and authenticity. The perspective I develop can be described as originary inauthenticity. As should become evident, such an interpretation of Sein und Zeit is not without political consequences. (shrink)

Several philosophers have suggested that certain aspects of people’s experience of agency partly explains why people tend to report that it seems to them, in perceptual experience, as though time robustly passes. In turn, it has been suggested that people come to believe that time robustly passes on the basis of its seeming to them in experience that it does. We argue that what require explaining is not just that people report that it seems to them as though time robustly (...) passes, and that they believe that it does, but rather, the substantial variation (a) in people’s reports regarding whether it seems as though time robustly passes, and (b) their beliefs about whether time robustly passes. We empirically investigate the agentive explanation of (a), according to which variation in people’s agentive experiences explains variation in people’s reports regarding whether it seems to them as though time robustly passes. We also empirically investigate the experiential seeming explanation of belief, according to which variation in people’s beliefs about whether time robustly passes is explained by variation in their reports regarding whether it seems in experience as though time robustly passes. We found empirical support for the agentive explanation, but not for the experiential seeming explanation of passage beliefs. We consider the implications of our results for three views about temporal experience and temporal beliefs: dynamism, passage illusionism and deflationism. (shrink)

Imagine a single musical tone—for instance, the A above middle C that the oboe plays to tune an orchestra. Now imagine this tone, with no variation in dynamics, pitch, or timbre, extended over the course of “an hour or a day,” existing, as Peirce describes in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (W3:262),1 “as perfectly in each second of that time as in the whole taken together; so that, as long as it is sounding, it might be present to a (...) sense from which everything in the past was as completely absent as the future itself” (W3:262). Imagine a world consisting of nothing but the sensation of this single oboe A, and having never consisted of anything but it. In such a world, Peirce indicates, there would be no .. (shrink)

Long before the origins of agriculture human ancestors had expanded across the globe into an immense variety of environments, from Australian deserts to Siberian tundra. Survival in these environments did not principally depend on genetic adaptations, but instead on evolved learning strategies that permitted the assembly of locally adaptive behavioral repertoires. To develop hypotheses about these learning strategies, we have modeled the evolution of learning strategies to assess what conditions and constraints favor which kinds of strategies. To build on prior (...) work, we focus on clarifying how spatial variability, temporal variability, and the number of cultural traits influence the evolution of four types of strategies: (1) individual learning, (2) unbiased social learning, (3) payoff-biased social learning, and (4) conformist transmission. Using a combination of analytic and simulation methods, we show that spatial—but not temporal—variation strongly favors the emergence of conformist transmission. This effect intensifies when migration rates are relatively high and individual learning is costly. We also show that increasing the number of cultural traits above two favors the evolution of conformist transmission, which suggests that the assumption of only two traits in many models has been conservative. We close by discussing how (1) spatial variability represents only one way of introducing the low-level, nonadaptive phenotypic trait variation that so favors conformist transmission, the other obvious way being learning errors, and (2) our findings apply to the evolution of conformist transmission in social interactions. Throughout we emphasize how our models generate empirical predictions suitable for laboratory testing. (shrink)

The inapplicability of variations on theory reduction in the context of genetics and their irrelevance to ongoing research has led to an anti-reductionist consensus in philosophy of biology. One response to this situation is to focus on forms of reductive explanation that better correspond to actual scientific reasoning (e.g. part–whole relations). Working from this perspective, we explore three different aspects (intrinsicality, fundamentality, and temporality) that arise from distinct facets of reductive explanation: composition and causation. Concentrating on these aspects generates (...) new forms of reductive explanation and conditions for their success or failure in biology and other sciences. This analysis is illustrated using the case of protein folding in molecular biology, which demonstrates its applicability and relevance, as well as illuminating the complexity of reductive reasoning in a specific biological context. (shrink)

I analyze Deleuze’s concept of temporality in terms of its ontology and axiological (political and aesthetic) aspects. For Deleuze, the concept of temporality is non-monolithic, in the senses that it is modified throughout his works — the monographs, lectures, and those works that were co-authored with Félix Guattari — and that it is developed through reference to a dizzying array of concepts, thinkers, artistic works, and social phenomena. -/- I observe that Deleuze’s concept of temporality involves a complex ontology of (...) difference, which I elaborate through reference to Deleuze’s analyses of Ancient Greek and Stoic conceptualizations of time. From Plato through to Chrysippus, temporality gradually comes to be identified as a form that comprehends the variation of particulars. Deleuze modifies the ancients’ concept of time to suggest that time obtains as a form of ceaseless ontological variation. Through reference to Deleuze’s reading of Gilbert Simondon, I further suggest that Deleuze tends to conceive of temporality as an ontogenetic force which participates in the complex process of individuation. -/- A standout feature of this dissertation involves an analysis of how Deleuze’s concept of temporality is modified in his works on cinema. In Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image, temporality comes to be characterized as something other than the measure of the movement of existents. In his detailed analyses of Bergson — in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, and Bergsonism — Deleuze suggests that time involves an actualization of aspects of a virtual past as contemporaneous with the lived present. While not an outright denial of the relation of temporal succession, Deleuze’s claim implies a diminishment of this relation’s significance in an adequate elaboration of the nature of temporality. -/- Further, I observe —through reference to Deleuze’s readings of Marx, Kierkegaard, and Spinoza — that (the explicitly temporal) change of societal forms of economic organization is non-reducible to that suggested by linear evolution. The claim is that putatively discrete modes of economic organization do not enjoy temporal displacement with respect to one another. This suggests that linear evolutionary models of societal development are inadequate. This further implies that temporality is non-reducible to the relation of temporal succession. In concrete terms, societal change is characterized as immanent temporal variation. -/- Taken together, these analyses yield the conclusion that Deleuze tends to conceive of the nature of temporality as involving the ongoing realization of multiple — non-identical, sometimes contrary — aspects of a stochastic process of creation that is expressed in ontogenetic circumstances, social evolution, literary works, and filmic works. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Radical Female Imaginary: Temporality and Embodiment in Irigaray’s EthicsEwa Plonowska Ziarek* (bio)An important intervention of Irigaray’s work on sexual difference into the postmodern debates on ethics is the mediation between two different lines of ethical inquiry: one represented by the work of Nietzsche, Deleuze, Foucault, and, to a certain degree, Castoriadis, and the other by the work of Levinas, Derrida, and Lyotard. Although the two trajectories both (...) depart from the notion of morality as a universal system of law and judgment, they represent different approaches to freedom and obligation. For Levinas, Derrida, and Lyotard, the ethical significance of alterity disrupts social systems of signification and, in this sense, marks transcendence as a break in discourse, whereas for Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Foucault, otherness is expressed within the endless variations of becoming. To elucidate this difference, it might be useful to recall John Caputo’s distinction between two kinds of postmodern ethics—the Nietzschean heteromorphism and the Levinasian heteronomy. In its emphasis on becoming and change, heteromorphism, Caputo claims, puts forward the claim of liberation but cannot accommodate an obligation to the other: “In heteromorphism, the aim is freedom from inhibition and blockage, freedom from... the weight of values... from everything that weighs the will down....” By contrast, the Levinasian ethics of alterity gives priority to the obligation to the other, which calls the freedom of the subject into question: “freedom is suspect, suspended, held in question, because it is aggressive, self-accumulative, and eventually, finally murderous. Heteronomism wants the other to be free while one is oneself held hostage” [Caputo 60].In my discussion of the radical female imaginary I would like to show that Irigaray’s work refuses to align itself with either side of this divide. Originating in the very gap between liberation and responsibility, self and other, immanence and transcendence, freedom and obligation, the feminist ethics of sexual difference cannot disregard any of these claims. For Irigaray, the ethics of sexual difference has to enable different trajectories of gendered becomings without forgetting the obligation to the other. In fact, Irigaray argues that the responsibility to the other who differs sexually is the very source of such becomings. Irigaray’s ethics maintains neither the rigid separation between freedom and obligation, as is the case in Levinas’s work, nor their symmetrical reversibility, as is the case in Kant’s ethics. By contesting the oppositions between carnal passions and ethical obligations, between the respect for the other and the becoming of the self, Irigaray allows us to think through the disjunction between the two main ethical trajectories of postmodernism and to find the means to negotiate between them. In this essay I would like [End Page 60] to focus on two moments of such negotiation: the becoming of sexed bodies and the temporality of the female imaginary.One of Irigaray’s famous claims is the charge of the forgetting of sexed bodies in the discourses of philosophy, science, linguistics, and politics. Although this claim is certainly not new in feminist theory, what is original in Irigaray’s work is the diagnosis of the numerous symptoms of such forgetting, for instance, the relation she makes between the erasure of the sexed body and the nihilism of Western culture. For Irigaray, the forgetting of sexual difference manifests itself not only in the disregard for the specificity of feminine embodiment, desires, and genealogies but also in the disembodied character of linguistic analyses, in the erasure of the drama of enunciation evident in the privilege given to predication, in the separation of the subject of knowledge from carnality and desire, in the infatuation with formalism and with its obverse side, the crippling nostalgia for the maternal body, and, finally, in the rigid separation between the immanence of flesh and the transcendence of the spirit. 1 Even more striking is the originality of Irigaray’s intervention, which links the question of sexual difference with the temporality of the body.An important element of Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference is the recovery of “that repressed entity, the female imaginary” [TS 28]. Despite numerous excellent discussions of the imaginary in Irigaray’s work, the complexity of her negotiations around this... (shrink)

One of the key concepts in Giorgio Agamben’s reading of Paul is temporality. In this article, Delahaye examines this concept. Delahaye shows that Agamben’s understanding of messianic temporality hinges on the opposition between kairos and chronos, which Agamben takes for granted. He consequently traces this opposition back to Heidegger’s influence on Agamben. This leads Delahaye to conclude that messianic temporality can be understood as a variation on Heidegger’s idea of ecstatic temporality.

Clark reports on a variationist analysis of intervocalic word‐medial /t/ from recorded spontaneous speech monologues. The results provide evidence that tokens are more likely to be realized as voiced if the preceding token was voiced, an effect which is weaker with increased temporal distance between the prime and target.

In this study, we use temporally aligned word embeddings and a large diachronic corpus of English to quantify language change in a data-driven, scalable way, which is grounded in language use. We show a unique and reliable relation between measures of language change and age of acquisition (AoA) while controlling for frequency, contextual diversity, concreteness, length, dominant part of speech, orthographic neighborhood density, and diachronic frequency variation. We analyze measures of language change tackling both the change in lexical representations and (...) the change in the relation between lexical representations and the words with the most similar usage patterns, showing that they capture different aspects of language change. Our results show a unique relation between language change and AoA, which is stronger when considering neighborhood-level measures of language change: Words with more coherent diachronic usage patterns tend to be acquired earlier. The results support theories positing a link between ontogenetic and ethnogenetic processes in language. (shrink)

An integrative psychological concept that bridges the sciences and humanities, narrative identity is the internalized and evolving story a person invents to explain how he or she has become the person he or she is becoming. Combining the selective reconstruction of the past with an imagined anticipated future, narrative identity provides human lives with a sense of unity, moral purpose, and temporal coherence. In this article, I discuss how the evolution of human storytelling provides the basic tools for constructing (...) self-defining life narratives. I then consider theory and research on the development of narrative identity over the human life course, socially consequential variations in narrative identity, and how culture shapes the stories people tell about themselves. My overall perspective on narrative identity was formulated within the fields of personality and developmental psychology, but it is also informed by concepts and constructs in evolutionary biology, cognitive neurosci­ence, philosophy, and literary studies. (shrink)

IN this paper I would like to suggest that by reconstructing the relationship between time and teleology --as this relationship might be implied by Kant's theory--one of the most complicated problems of this theory may be solved. This problem concerns a construction of time suitable to the particular needs of Kant's doctrines of the history of reason and philosophy, or of the history of mankind, which proceeds according to the total imperative of morality. Teleological time, a concept which I shall (...) attempt to present in this paper, has to do with the two employments of judgment, the determinant and the reflective. This teleological time is not merely a form of intuition, nor is it subject to the schematism of deterministic causality, and it is exempt from some impediments which render rational history, in the domains of theory and praxis alike, impossible, if indeed such a history requires time. Thus, I shall attempt in this paper to suggest a solution to the so-called Kantian "antinomy of history": Kant's theory employs time as a form of intuition, which, on the one hand, has mechanical-deterministic qualities and, on the other, a rational history, although it seems that these two are in antagonism. I attempt to suggest a solution to this antinomy without claiming that the history of reason is a "pure supra-temporal processuality." This is a crucial problem in Kant's theory and the possibility of solving it is necessary for the success of the theory. This is also a problem of systematization: How is it possible to solve the problem of the duality of time and reason? (shrink)

Ordinary clocks do not measure time in the common and Newtonian sense, and there is a similar problem for spatial measurements due to effects of motion and gravitation. Einstein’s theories of relativity are based on the denial of the possibility of the ‘absolute’ measurements that would be required. Nevertheless, here it is shown how such measurements can be performed. For this purpose, a “light clock” (or equivalent) is linked with a “space-time odometer” that counts the zero crossings in the field (...) of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The readings of these two instruments allow to calculate the time interval and the length of their path in Euclidean space even in the presence of local variations in gravitational potential. (shrink)

Contemporary trends in low fertility can in part be explained by increasing incentives to invest in offspring’s embodied capital over offspring quantity in environments where education is a salient source of social mobility. However, studies on this subject have often neglected to empirically examine heterogeneity, missing out on the opportunity to investigate how this relationship is impacted when individuals are excluded from meaningful participation in economic spheres. Using General Social Survey data from the United States, I examine changes in the (...) relationship between number of siblings and college attendance for White and Black respondents throughout the 1900s. Results show that in the early 1900s, White individuals from larger families had a lower chance of completing four years of college education than those from smaller families, whereas the likelihood for Black individuals was more uniform across family sizes. These racial differences mostly converged in the later part of the century. These results may help explain variations in the timing of demographic transitions within different racial groups in the United States and suggest that the benefits of decreasing family size on educational outcomes may be conditional on the specific economic opportunities afforded to a family. (shrink)

Successful surgical treatment of patients with focal drug-resistant epilepsy remains challenging, especially in cases for which it is difficult to define the area of cortex from which seizures originate, the seizure onset zone. Various diagnostic methods are needed to select surgical candidates and determine the extent of resection. Interictal magnetoencephalography with source imaging has proven to be useful for presurgical evaluation, but the use of ictal MEG data remains limited. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether pre-ictal (...) variations of spectral properties of neural activity from ictal MEG recordings are predictive of SOZ location.We performed a 4 h overnight MEG recording in an 8-year-old child with drug-resistant focal epilepsy of suspected right fronto-temporal origin and captured one ~45-s seizure. The patient underwent a right temporal resection from the anterior temporal neocortex and amygdala to the mid-posterior temporal neocortex, sparing the hippocampus proper. She remains seizure-free 21 months postoperatively. The histopathological assessment confirmed frank focal cortical dysplasia type IIa in the MEG-defined SOZ, which was based on source imaging of averaged ictal spikes at seizure onset. We investigated temporal changes together with spatial differences in spectral parameters of background brain activity, namely the aperiodic broadband offset and slope, and assessed how they confounded the interpretation of apparent variations of signal power in typical electrophysiological bands. Our data show that the SOZ was associated with a higher aperiodic offset and exponent during the seizure compared to control regions. Both parameters increased in all regions from 2 min before the seizure onwards. Regions anatomically closer to the SOZ also expressed higher values compared to contralateral regions, potentially indicating ictal spread. We also show that narrow-band power changes were caused by these fluctuations in the aperiodic component of ongoing brain activity. Our results indicate that the broadband aperiodic component of ongoing brain activity cannot be reduced to background noise of no physiological interest, and rather may be indicative of the neuropathophysiology of the SOZ. We believe these findings will inspire future studies of ictal MEG cases and confirm their significance. (shrink)

[This is a pre-print; please cite the published version] This paper employs structural topic modeling (STM) to describe the academic philosophy landscape in Brazil. Based on a public national database, a corpus consisting of 12,515 abstracts of monographs defended in philosophy graduate programs between 1991 and 2021 was compiled. The final STM model identified 74 meaningful research topics, clustered into 7 thematic categories. This study discusses the prevalence of the most significant topics and categories, their trends across three decades, and (...) their (positive or negative) association with the supervisor's gender. Results show the first empirical evidence that Brazilian philosophical research exhibits a greater focus on philosophers than on specific themes or problems. Moreover, by visualizing the variations in topic prevalence over time, it was possible to track the rise or decline of the major interest categories and topics. Finally, results also show which topics are more influenced or less influenced by gender. (shrink)

This article explores affectivity, temporality, and their interrelation in patients who contracted COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in Sweden and with symptoms indicative of post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC) that remained one year after the infection. It offers a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis, showing how being ill with acute COVID-19 and with symptoms indicative of PCC can entail a radically altered self-world relation. We identify two examples of pre-intentional (existential) feelings: that of listlessness and that of not being able (...) to sense what is real and not real, both of which, in different ways, imply a changed self-world relation. We offer an analysis of intentional feelings: how the fear of not “returning” to one’s previous self and the hope of such a return weave together the present and the absent, as well as the past and the future, in ways that make the future appear as constricted, disquieting, or lost. We argue that a phenomenological differentiation among experiences of living with symptoms indicative of PCC—through attention to the way intentional affectivity and pre-intentional affectivity help shape the embodied self’s attunement to the world—is apt to yield a better understanding of the variations within these experiences and contribute to clinical practice. (shrink)

Healthcare professionals such as nurses faced a tough time during the pandemic. Despite the personal and professional challenges, they contributed immensely during the pandemic. However, there were variations in nurses’ work engagement during the pandemic. One reason could be their personality, especially neuroticism. Neuroticism represents individuals’ proneness to distress in stressful situations, such as COVID-19. Hence, understanding how and in which conditions neuroticism influences work engagement is crucial. We used the Job Demand-Resource model to test the association between neuroticism (...) and work engagement. As neuroticism represents the stress-proneness of an individual, we further investigated if stress mediates the neuroticism-work engagement link. For the nurses, patient interaction is an integral part of their job. Based on the data collected from the nurses, we tested if contact with patients alleviates the adverse effect of neuroticism on work engagement. During COVID-19, there was an intense need for nursing support. Hence, avoiding duty when society is looking for support might induce a fear of stigmatization among the nurses. We examined if the perceived stigma of duty avoidance would affect the neuroticism-engagement relationship. Our results indicated that higher patient contact alleviated the adverse effect of neuroticism on work engagement. On the other hand, higher fear of stigma exacerbated the adverse effect of neuroticism on work engagement. We further checked the combined effect of beneficiary contact and fear of stigma on neuroticism-work engagement relationships. The findings highlighted the importance of societal factors and policymakers in enhancing nurses’ work engagement. (shrink)

All change involves temporal variation of properties. There is change in the physical world only if genuine physical magnitudes take on different values at different times. I defend the possibility of change in a general relativistic world against two skeptical arguments recently presented by John Earman. Each argument imposes severe restrictions on what may count as a genuine physical magnitude in general relativity. These restrictions seem justified only as long as one ignores the fact that genuine change in a (...) relativistic world is frame-dependent. I argue on the contrary that there are genuine physical magnitudes whose values typically vary with the time of some frame, and that these include most familiar measurable quantities. Frame-dependent temporal variation in these magnitudes nevertheless supervenes on the unchanging values of more basic physical magnitudes in a general relativistic world. Basic magnitudes include those that realize an observer's occupation of a frame. Change is a significant and observable feature of a general relativistic world only because our situation in such a world naturally picks out a relevant class of frames, even if we lack the descriptive resources to say how they are realized by the values of basic underlying physical magnitudes. (shrink)

The current paper synthesizes theory and data from the field of life history (LH) evolution to advance a new developmental theory of variation in human LH strategies. The theory posits that clusters of correlated LH traits (e.g., timing of puberty, age at sexual debut and first birth, parental investment strategies) lie on a slow-to-fast continuum; that harshness (externally caused levels of morbidity-mortality) and unpredictability (spatial-temporal variation in harshness) are the most fundamental environmental influences on the evolution and development of (...) LH strategies; and that these influences depend on population densities and related levels of intraspecific competition and resource scarcity, on age schedules of mortality, on the sensitivity of morbidity-mortality to the organism’s resource-allocation decisions, and on the extent to which environmental fluctuations affect individuals versus populations over short versus long timescales. These interrelated factors operate at evolutionary and developmental levels and should be distinguished because they exert distinctive effects on LH traits and are hierarchically operative in terms of primacy of influence. Although converging lines of evidence support core assumptions of the theory, many questions remain unanswered. This review demonstrates the value of applying a multilevel evolutionary-developmental approach to the analysis of a central feature of human phenotypic variation: LH strategy. (shrink)

Computational cell models appear as necessary tools for handling the complexity of intracellular cell dynamics, especially calcium dynamics. However, while oscillating intracellular calcium oscillations are well documented and modelled, a simple enough virtual cell taking into account the mechano-chemical coupling between calcium oscillations and cell mechanical properties is still lacking. Considering the spontaneous periodic contraction of isolated cardiac myocytes, we propose here a virtual cardiac cell model in which the cellular contraction is modelled using an hyperelastic description of the cell (...) mechanical behaviour. According to the experimental data, the oscillating cytosolic calcium concentrations trigger the spatio-temporal variation of the anisotropic intracellular stresses. The finite element simulations of the virtual cell deformations are compared to the self-sustained contractions of isolated rat cardiomyocytes recorded by time-lapse video-microscopy. (shrink)

Humanity and water represent an intersection of two natural cycles: the human economy and the earth's hydrological system. Although water is vital for human survival and growth, the point where human endeavor intersects is the most variable and uncertain in the hydrological system. Significant spatial and temporal variation of evaporation and rainfall has led to a number of responses aimed at increasing certainty of access to water. However, many of the world's civilizations can attest that the very act of (...) reducing water uncertainty by technical means (capture, storage, and irrigation) has ultimately led to greater uncertainty and civilization failure. This article explores the concept of living with water as a complex entity, inseparably connected with all three levels of existential complexity - individual, social, and ecological - rather than as a commodity, which has led to our current uncertain status. (shrink)

This paper seeks to understand the treatment effect of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs on opioid prescription rates. Using county-level panel data on all opioid prescriptions in the U.S. between 2006 and 2015, we investigate whether state interventions like PDMPs have heterogeneous treatment effects at the sub-state level, based on regional and temporal variations in policy design, extent of urbanization, race, and income. Our models comprehensively control for a set of county and time fixed effects, countyspecific and time-varying demographic (...) controls, potentially endogenous time-series trends in prescription rates, and other state-level opioid interventions such as Naloxone Access and Good Samaritan laws, Medicaid expansion, and the provision of Methadone Assistance Treatment. We find that PDMPs are only effective in reducing prescription rates if they obligate doctors to check for patients' history prior to filling out a prescription, but the frequency at which a state requires its PDMP to be updated is irrelevant to its effectiveness. Moreover, the significant treatment effects of PDMPs are almost exclusively driven by urban and predominantly white counties, with the relatively more affluent regions showing greater responsiveness than their less affluent counterparts. (shrink)