Research on interpersonal trauma tends to focus on the effects of traumatic encounters on those one who directly undergo the experience. In this paper, I seek to understand the experiences of the friends and family of the one who has undergone trauma, a paradigmatic case being the relatives of veterans (O’Nell, 1999). I argue that one way we can understand the experiences of friends and relatives is through Pauline Boss’ concept of _ambiguous loss_ (Boss, 1986, 2007). The kind of ambiguous (...) loss relevant for our purposes is when a family member is physically present but psychologically absent, for example, in the case of a relative with advanced dementia. This is what I purport happens in some instances of traumatic experience. I argue that third-person traumatic encounter can be experienced as a loss due to the changes in the person who has undergone the traumatic encounter and that this, in turn, causes changes in the person experiencing the loss and their relationship with their traumatised family member. I argue that first-person traumatic encounter is a transformative experience (Paul, 2014), i.e., an experience which causes personal and epistemic changes in the subject undergoing it, and that third-person traumatic encounter can also be a transformative experience. (shrink)

Ambiguity associated with everyday practice of science has made it difficult to reach a consensus on how to define misconduct in science. This essay outlines some of the important ambiguities of practice such as distinguishing data from noise, deciding whether results falsify a hypothesis, and converting research into research publications. The problem of ambiguity is further compounded by the prior intellectual commitments inherent in choosing problems and in dealing with the skepticism of one's colleagues. In preparing a draft (...) code of ethics for the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), an attempt was made to take into account the ambiguities of practice. Also, the draft code adopted trust as its leading principle, specifically the importance of trust as a condition necessary for there to be science. During revision of the code, the focus on trust was changed. The new orientation was on trust as a consequence of carrying out science responsibly. By addressing the obligations necessary to engender trust, the ASBMB ethics code not only sets professional standards, but also makes a clear statement of public accountability. (shrink)

_The Ambiguity of Justice_ consists of a collection of essays that address difficulties and potential contradictions in thinking justice by focussing on Ricoeur's theory of justice and on the major thinkers that were influential for it.

Ambiguity in the Western Mind, edited with an Introduction by Craig J. N. de Paulo, Senior Editor, et al. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2005. Details: Preface by Joseph Margolis and distinguished contributors include John D. Caputo, Camille Paglia, Jaroslav Pelikan, Roland Teske, S.J. et al.

Viewed this way, the texts yield striking examples of language and notation that are irreducibly ambiguous and productive because they are ambiguous.

Clinical trials of novel agents often present several layers of ethical challenge. Because time and resources for ethical and safety review are limited, how investigators, IRBs, and regulators allocate attention to a trial's various safety dimensions itself represents a critical ethical question. In what follows, I use the example of a Parkinson's disease gene transfer trial to show how risks involving unknown probabilities or outcomes (ambiguity), might sometimes draw attention away from risks that involve known probabilities or outcomes. This (...) potentially undermines the goal of ‘systematic and nonarbitrary analysis of risk’ during ethical review. To counteract the possible effects of such attention biases, I propose that reviewers develop ‘cognitive aids’ like lists and, where appropriate, set aside time to discuss non-ambiguous risks. I also propose further research for addressing and understanding how attention allocation, emotion, and ambiguity influence ethical decision-making. (shrink)

We often consider semantic-pragmatic properties of language independently of each other. In actual texts, however, the properties frequently interact. For this reason a robust theory should allow us to account not only for semantic-pragmatic properties in isolation, but also for the ways in which they are combined. This is especially important for the understanding of literary texts because the exploitation of semantic-pragmatic properties is characteristic of literary language. This article argues that it is possible to account systematically for the occurrence (...) of metaphorical \literal poetic ambiguity in terms of the interaction of such properties. Using the notion of conceptual domains and subdomains, the article proposes two necessary conditions and shows how the interaction of these conditions allows for a simple account of metaphorical/literal ambiguity. The article concludes by suggesting that examining the ways in which basic semantic-pragmatic principles of language are used in literature to create poetic effects offers us another path in understanding the poetic, one which neither equates poetic effects with a distinct poetic language, as do many formalists, nor reduces the exploration of the poetic to the properties of everyday language, as cognitivists often have. (shrink)

With a few yet increasing number of exceptions, the cognitive sciences enthusiastically endorsed the idea that there are basic facial expressions of emotions that are created by specific configurations of facial muscles. We review evidence that suggests an inherent role for context in emotion perception. Context does not merely change emotion perception at the edges; it leads to radical categorical changes. The reviewed findings suggest that configurations of facial muscles are inherently ambiguous, and they call for a different approach towards (...) the understanding of facial expressions of emotions. Prices of sticking with the modal view, and advantages of an expanded view, are succinctly reviewed. (shrink)

Donnellan makes a convincing case for two distinct uses ofdefinite descriptions. But does the difference between the usesreflects an ambiguity in the semantics of descriptions? This paperapplies a linguistic test for ambiguity to argue that the differencebetween the uses is not semantically significant.

The aim of this article is to think about a current issue, the discourse of the Brazilian philosophical making, not worked in the content of Being and Nothingness. However, we think it is possible to bring up some of the themes discussed there, as well as Sartre's philosophical writing, to warn us about the pitfalls of this discourse, which is positioned as the opposite and better than the previous one, but which ends up reproducing what he criticizes by remaining in (...) an excluding dualism. Returning to the Sartrean perspective of thinking in terms of ambiguities, avoiding falling into both realism and idealism, balancing presence to oneself with presence to the world, seems us fundamental, even today, for a more complex discussion, which does not fall into false dilemmas. (shrink)

How should we make decisions when we do not know the relevant physical probabilities? In these ambiguous situations, we cannot use our knowledge to determine expected utilities or payoffs. The traditional Bayesian answer is that we should create a probability distribution using some mix of subjective intuition and objective constraints. Imprecise Bayesians argue that this approach is inadequate for modelling ambiguity. Instead, they represent doxastic states using credal sets. Generally, insofar as we are more uncertain about the physical probability (...) of an event, there is more divergence in the credal set. Hence, their approach can represent these ambiguities via the extent of the divergence. Imprecise Bayesianism has mostly been advocated for its epistemological features. In this article, we examine its properties for decision-making. We develop a model for comparing standard and Imprecise Bayesianism by testing their performances in a classic decision problem. We find that the representational tools of Imprecise Bayesianism also cause it to underperform in our tests. This issue has been overlooked, because previous research on Imprecise Bayesianism has not utilised agent-based modelling to provide information about its performance in the short-run. Overall, we reveal the Ambiguity Dilemma for Imprecise Bayesianism: To what extent should one value representational power or decision-making performance? (shrink)

In arguing against a supposed ambiguity, philosophers often rely on the zeugma test. In an application of the zeugma test, a supposedly ambiguous expression is placed in a sentence in which several of its supposed meanings are forced together. If the resulting sentence sounds zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence for ambiguity; if it does not sound zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence against ambiguity. The aim of this article is to show that arguments based on the (...) second direction of the test are misguided: ambiguous expressions, and in particular philosophically contested ones, do not reliably lead to zeugmaticity, so an absence of zeugmaticity provides no meaningful evidence for an absence of ambiguity. (shrink)

In this paper, ambiguity aversion to uncertain survival probabilities is introduced in a static life-cycle model with a bequest motive to study the optimal demand for annuities. Provided that annuities’ return is sufficiently large, and notably when it is fair, positive annuitization is known to be the optimal strategy of ambiguity neutral individuals. Conversely, we show that the demand for annuities decreases with ambiguity aversion and that there exists a finite degree of aversion above which the demand (...) is non-positive: the optimal strategy is then to either sell annuities short or to hold zero annuities if the former option is not available. To conclude, ambiguity aversion appears to be a relevant candidate for explaining the annuity puzzle. (shrink)

Shawn Loht's ground-breaking Phenomenology of Film: A Heideggerian Account of the Film Experience (2017) offers a detailed account of film experience as rooted in Martin Heidegger's existential structure of Dasein. Adapting Being and Time for a phenomenology of cinematic experience, Loht accurately describes how various existential structures of Dasein are “fostered” by the projected world of film: in Loht's account, being-in-the-world is extended in the film experience. Loht's project offers fertile ground for developing the phenomenological basis of film experience. Yet, (...) Loht anchors this account of film experience primarily in Heidegger's early philosophy; this leaves his adaptation not without challenges. First, if the structure of film experience is mapped too closely onto the notion of Dasein projecting itself into the filmworld, this theory presents the risk of taking the early Heidegger's “hands-on” approach too literally. Moreover, in its concern for Dasein's extensions into the world of film, Phenomenology of Film says little about the distinctly mediated character of filmworlds; this leaves ambiguous where the film experience effectively takes place. (shrink)

Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counterexample to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or to judgements to account for Gestalt switching. (...) I then argue that experiences of certain ambiguous figures are problematic because they have different phenomenal characters but that no difference in the nonconceptual content of these experiences can be identified. I consider three solutions to this problem that have been proposed by both philosophers and psychologists and conclude that none can account for all the ambiguous figures that pose the problem. I conclude that the onus is on representationalists to specify the relevant difference in content or to abandon their position. (shrink)

Daniel Ellsberg presented in Ellsberg (The Quarterly Journal of Economics 75:643–669, 1961) various examples questioning the thesis that decision making under uncertainty can be reduced to decision making under risk. These examples constitute one of the main challenges to the received view on the foundations of decision theory offered by Leonard Savage in Savage (1972). Craig Fox and Amos Tversky have, nevertheless, offered an indirect defense of Savage. They provided in Fox and Tversky (1995) an explanation of Ellsberg’s two-color problem (...) in terms of a psychological effect: ambiguity aversion . The ‘comparative ignorance’ hypothesis articulates how this effect works and explains why it is important to an understanding of the typical pattern of responses associated with Ellsberg’s two-color problem. In the first part of this article we challenge Fox and Tversky’s explanation. We present first an experiment that extends Ellsberg’s two-color problem where certain predictions of the comparative ignorance hypothesis are not confirmed. In addition the hypothesis seems unable to explain how the subjects resolve trade-offs between security and expected pay-off when vagueness is present. Ellsberg offered an explanation of the typical behavior elicited by his examples in terms of these trade-offs and in section three we offer a model of Ellsberg’s trade-offs. The model takes seriously the role of imprecise probabilities in explaining Ellsberg’s phenomenon. The so-called three-color problem was also considered in Fox and Tversky (1995). We argue that Fox and Tversky’s analysis of this case breaks a symmetry with their analysis of the two-color problem. We propose a unified treatment of both problems and we present a experiment that confirms our hypothesis. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to resolve the tension between Kant’s doctrine of the highest good and his entire philosophical system. The concept of the highest good is the first major ambiguity of the doctrine. There are three pairs of ambiguities: immanent-transcendent; justice-perfection; and individual-community. They are able to form eight combinations. Corresponding to the various combinations and conceptions of the highest good, interpreters also conceive different reasons for the necessity of the doctrine as well as various conditions (...) of its applicability. For example, some emphasize its religious dimension, whereas others understand it in the political sense. In this paper, I adopt a different approach in understanding the highest good’s systematic meaning as the moral confirmation, and suggest that only a transcendent, perfect and communal concept of the highest good can provide the most consistent doctrine. Additionally, it explains the importance of the different branches (such as philosophies of religion and of politics) of Kant’s system. (shrink)

The spiritual situation at the turn of the millennium can be interpreted through Paul Tillich's appropriation of modernity, by analysis of the determinative structures and decisive trends of our age. The methods and organization of industry determine modern society. Spiritually, this situation results in the proliferation of means without ends, the objectification of natural structures, and the reduction of persons to things. Extrapolating from Tillich's analysis, the spiritual situation at the turn of the millennium can be understood as a quasi‐religious (...) struggle between the movements of liberal individualism and multiculturalism, both of which lose the sense of ambiguity. The communitarian movement and related interpretations remain the minority voice offering a mediating position. (shrink)

A close reading of the poem of Parmenides, with focal attention to the way the proem situates Parmenides' insight in relation to Hesiod and Anaximander and provides the context for the thought of "... is". I identify three pointed ambiguities, in the direction of the journey to the gates of the ways of Night and Day, in the way the gates swing open before the waiting traveler, and in the character of the "chasm" that their opening makes, and I suggest (...) ways in which these ambiguities at once complicate and determine the significance of the thought of "... is" and its implications for the status of the opinions of mortals. (shrink)

Maximum-likelihood updating is a well-known approach for extending static ambiguity sensitive preferences to dynamic set-ups. This paper develops an example in which MLU induces an ambiguity averse maxmin expected utility decision-maker to prefer a bet on an ambiguous over a risky urn and be more willing to bet on the ambiguous urn compared to an subjective expected utility decision-maker. This is challenging, since prior to observing draws from the urns, the MEU decision-maker actually preferred the risky over the (...) ambiguous bet and was less willing to bet on the ambiguous urn than the SEU decision-maker. The identified switch in betting preferences is not due to a violation of dynamic consistency or consequentialism. Rather, it results from MLU’s selection of extreme priors, causing a violation of the stability of set inclusion over the course of the updating process. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se explora la relación entre las dimensiones proposicional y no proposicional de la creencia religiosa para mostrar que la última dirige el proceso de justificación y representa su límite. Se defiende que la no proposicional también tiene valor cognitivo, porque constituye una suerte de elección epistémica preteórica que no es exclusiva de la fe religiosa. Se explora la noción de ambigüedad religiosa, tanto a nivel intelectual como experiencial, y se sostiene que la relación entre la dimensión proposicional y la (...) no-proposicional de la fe está mediada por la función directiva de las presuposiciones metafísicas instauradas por la experiencia religiosa. ABSTRACT The article explores the relation between the propositional and non-propositional dimensions of religious belief in order to show that the latter guides the process of justification and represents its limit. It argues that the non-propositional dimension also has cognitive value because it constitutes a sort of pre-theoretical epistemic election that does not pertain exclusively to religious faith. The article also delves into the notion of religious ambiguity, both in its intellectual and experiential interpretations, and argues that the relationship between the propositional and the non-propositional dimensions of faith is mediated by the guiding role of the metaphysical presuppositions established by religious experience. (shrink)

What cognitive process allows a spectator to experience shock and surprise at a character’s actions, yet, a moment later, to decide that the actions presented onstage are coherent and understandable? Drawing upon theories of mindreading and conceptual blending, I offer a dynamic model of character that accounts for surprise, ambiguity, and dramatic shifts of understanding. Subtle changes to one’s perceptions, empathic imagination, and social knowledge—the sort of changes that accumulate throughout the viewing of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night —can alter one’s (...) understanding of a character in unexpected ways. (shrink)

This article explores subversion as a practice of resistance and draws on the example of subversive radio for illustration. Radio became an important site of power struggles in the twentieth century, often placed in the service of both resistance and oppression. An examination of subversive acts in radio broadcasting, I argue, helps shift the focus away from the myths of heroic resistance, directing attention to the uncertainties encountered by the subversive actor. To make this argument, I build on Frantz Fanon’s (...) influential work on the resistant potential of radio and engage with literature on subversion and everyday resistance. The article illustrates the ambiguity of subversion on the case study of Radio Bantu, a broadcaster of ethnic-specific radio programmes established by the South African apartheid regime. (shrink)

The veil of ignorance argument was used by John C. Harsanyi to defend Utilitarianism and by John Rawls to defend the absolute priority of the worst off. In a recent paper, Lara Buchak revives the veil of ignorance argument, and uses it to defend an intermediate position between Harsanyi's and Rawls' that she calls Relative Prioritarianism. None of these authors explore the implications of allowing that agent's behind the veil are averse to ambiguity. Allowing for aversion to ambiguity---which (...) is both the most commonly observed and a seemingly reasonable attitude to ambiguity---however supports a version of Egalitarianism, whose logical form is quite different from the theories defended by the aforementioned authors. Moreover, it turns out that the veil of ignorance argument neither supports standard Utilitarianism nor Prioritarianism unless we assume that rational people are insensitive to ambiguity. (shrink)

We use probability-matching variations on Ellsberg’s single-urn experiment to assess three questions: (1) How sensitive are ambiguity attitudes to changes from a gain to a loss frame? (2) How sensitive are ambiguity attitudes to making ambiguity easier to recognize? (3) What is the relation between subjects’ consistency of choice and the ambiguity attitudes their choices display? Contrary to most other studies, we find that a switch from a gain to a loss frame does not lead to (...) a switch from ambiguity aversion to ambiguity neutrality and/or ambiguity seeking. We also find that making ambiguity easier to recognize has little effect. Finally, we find that while ambiguity aversion does not depend on consistency, other attitudes do: consistent choosers are much more likely to be ambiguity neutral, while ambiguity seeking is much more frequent among highly inconsistent choosers. (shrink)

The processing of sequences of (English) sentences is analyzedcompositionally through transitions that merge sentences, rather thandecomposing them. Transitions that are in a precise senseinertial are related to disjunctive and non-deterministic approaches toambiguity. Modal interpretations are investigated, inducing variousequivalences on sequences.

Macpherson (Nous 40(1):82–117, 2006) argues that the square/regular diamond figure threatens representationalism, construed as the theory which holds that the phenomenal character is explained by the nonconceptual content of experience. Her argument is the claim that representationalism is committed to the thesis that differences in the experience of ambiguous figures, the gestalt switch, should be explained by differences in the NCC of perception of these figures. However, with respect to the square/regular diamond and some other ambiguous figure representationalism fails to (...) offer a unified account of how representational content makes them ambiguous. In this paper, I aim, first, to offer a representationalist account of ambiguous figures and, second, to examine and rebut Macpherson’s arguments. My main point is that in each ambiguous figure Macpherson discusses there are differences in representational content that can explain differences in phenomenal character or content. The representational differences are due to the ways the Cartesian frame of reference in which perceptual content is always cast cuts the figure, underlying different properties of the figure with respect to the axes of the Cartesian frame of reference. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue (a) that the predicate "true" is ambiguously used to express a deflationary and a substantial concept of truth and (b) that the two concepts are systematically related in that substantial truths are deflationary truths of a certain kind. Claim (a) allows one to accept the main insights of deflationism but still take seriously, and participate in, the traditional debate about the nature of truth. Claim (b) is a contribution to that debate. The overall position is (...) not new and it has previously been defended by supervaluationists about vagueness. However, the position is here motivated in a new, independent way, and an explanation is offered why some uses of "true" do not seem to require disambiguation. (shrink)

A notion of Education for Active Citizenship is identified in the pronouncements of certain politically influential individuals. Key elements in this are seen to include action, the citizen, appreciating the benefits of democracy and freedom, respect for the rule of law, a due balance between rights and duties, participation and service to the community. These are shown to be systematically ambiguous, simultaneously capable of evoking critical, independent-minded, socially effective citizens and docile conforming subjects. Clarification is held to be a necessary (...) precondition of translating the ideal of citizenship into specific curricular goals. (shrink)

A family of familiar linguistic tests purport to help identify when a term is ambiguous. These tests are philosophically important: a familiar philosophical strategy is to claim that some phenomenon is disunified and its accompanying term is ambiguous. The tests have been used to evaluate disunification proposals about causation, pain, and knowledge, among others. -/- These ambiguity tests, however, have come under fire. It has been alleged that the tests fail for polysemy, a common type of ambiguity, and (...) one that is at issue in philosophically interesting cases. Furthermore, the objection that the tests fail for polysemy is often taken to be an undeniable bit of linguistic data. -/- We argue that this is mistaken. The objection implicitly relies on controversial assumptions about how to account for copredicational sentences, in which a single argument is ascribed prima facie incompatible properties. Furthermore, on several viable theories of copredication, the objection fails. However, our discussion also reveals that even if ambiguity tests are preserved, they may be significantly harder to execute than previously thought. (shrink)

The Mona Lisa is probably the most celebrated example of ambiguous expression in art. Soranzo and Newberry demonstrated that a similar ambiguity can be perceived also in La Bella Principessa, another portrait credited to Leonardo da Vinci by many. The paper aims to show that an ambiguous expression can be perceived in a further painting attributed to Leonardo: The Lady with Dishevelled Hair, or La Scapigliata. An experiment was conducted whereby participants rated on a 7-point Likert scale the perceived (...) level of contentment of La Scapigliata and that of a comparable painting created by Andrea di Cione, alias Il Verrocchio. The two artworks were presented in random order to two groups of participants. One group could see the artworks from Close whilst the other group from Far from a Close or Far condition. Results show that the change of distance affected the perceived level of contentment of Leonardo’s figure but not that of Verrocchio’s. Specifically, whilst both artworks received similar ratings of contentment from the close-up condition, La Scapigliata was perceived to be more content from afar. It is concluded that La Scapigliata exhibits an ambiguous expression, and that this ambiguity is similar to the one observed in the Mona Lisa and La Bella Principessa. This result can be only partially interpreted within the spatial frequency hypothesis advanced by Livingstone and shows that a phenomenological account of Leonardo’s work might be more suited to capture the full extent of the phenomenon. Specifically, it is suggested that the principles of perceptual belongingness may need to be considered to fully capture the extent of the ambiguity depicted by Leonardo. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how pronouns were used by UK government speakers to allocate responsibility to themselves and others in all 92 daily televised COVID-19 briefings that were held between March and June 2020. We identified the referent for every use of the first-person plural pronoun (1PL) as ‘inclusive’, ‘exclusive’, or 'ambiguous' and analysed the transitivity patterns in which these pronouns act as Participants. We argue that the UK government uses the inherent ambiguity of this pronoun to strategically mitigate (...) their own responsibility for controlling the spread of the virus, while increasing the amount of responsibility to the general public. In doing so, we propose a transparent and replicable systematic method for identifying the referents of pronouns, which may be useful to other discourse analysts faced with the challenging task of pronoun resolution. (shrink)

Ambiguous Memory examines the role of memory in the building of a new national identity in reunified Germany. Contentious debates surrounding contemporary monuments to the Nazi past testify to the ambiguity of German memory and the continued link of Nazism with contemporary German national identity. The book discusses how certain monuments, and the ways Germans have viewed them, contribute to the different ways Germans have dealt with the past, and how they continue to deal with it as one country. (...) Providing a topography of East, West, and unified German memory during the 1980s and the 1990s, this work contributes to a better understanding of contemporary national identity and society. I show how public debate over such issues at Ronald Reagan's visit to Bitburg, the re-narration of Buchenwald as Nazi and Soviet internment camp, the Goldhagen controversy, and the Holocaust Memorial debate in Berlin contribute to the complexities surrounding the way Germans see themselves, their relationship to the past, and their future identity as a nation. The volume traces how the past was used and abused by both the East and the West in the 1980s, and how these approaches merged in the 1990s. (shrink)

The ambiguity of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, a fictionalised portrait of Cyrus the Great and his rise to rule an empire, has led present-day interpretations to diverge widely. Should Cyrus be seen as an ideal king, whose capabilities exceed those of other rulers, or a despot whose ascent to power depends on deception and manipulation? This paper uses the modern conceptualisation of transgression to look at Xenophon’s careful depiction of political and personal boundaries throughout the work. It suggests that the key (...) final episode of the work, Cyrus’ return to his home in Persia (Cyropaedia 8.5), shows that Cyrus retains a respect for both political and personal boundaries; this offers a further challenge to ‘republic to empire’ readings of the work. (shrink)

This article presents the results of a survey designed to test, with economically sophisticated participants, Ellsberg’s ambiguity aversion hypothesis, and Smithson’s conflict aversion hypothesis. Based on an original sample of 78 professional actuaries (all members of the French Institute of Actuaries), this article provides empirical evidence that ambiguity (i.e. uncertainty about the probability) affect insurers’ decision on pricing insurance. It first reveals that premiums are significantly higher for risks when there is ambiguity regarding the probability of the (...) loss. Second, it shows that insurers are sensitive to sources of ambiguity. The participants indeed, charged a higher premium when ambiguity came from conflict and disagreement regarding the probability of the loss than when ambiguity came from imprecision (imprecise forecast about the probability of the loss). This research thus documents the presence of both ambiguity aversion and conflict aversion in the field of insurance, and discuses economic and psychological rationales for the observed behaviours. (shrink)

Analytic political philosophy tries to make our political language more precise. But in doing so it risks departing from our natural language and intuitions. This article examines this tension. We...

Logarithmic ambiguities in the choice of asymptotically Cartesian coordinates at spatial infinity are discussed. It is shown that they do not affect the definitions of energy-momentum and angular momentum at i°. Thus, from a physical viewpoint, the ambiguities are “pure gauge.” A prescription is given for fixed this gauge freedom for the class of space-times in which the leading-order part of the Weyl tensor satisfies a certain reflection symmetry. This class admits, in all (relatively boosted) rest frames at infinity, a (...) one-parameter family of asymptotically distinct 3-surfaces (generalized 3-planes) on which the trace of the extrinsic curvature falls off faster than usual. (shrink)

Ambiguity is inherent in the concept of hope especially when used in the field of politics. While a functionalist view of politics can only understand hope in terms of manipulation, an Aristotelian view of politics may require hope for its operation. The ambiguity of hope, then, is traced to ancient Greek and Roman thought, in Hesiod and Ovid. This ambiguity can also be found in 20th century German philosophy. Ernst Bloch is just as enthusiastic about hope as (...) Theodor W. Adorno is skeptical about it. A reflection on their respective philosophies will lead to a better understanding of the potential and the danger of hope in the political field. (shrink)

In his "an ambiguity in the "sophist"," gregory vlastos showed that statements about forms in the central section of the "sophist" may be either 'ordinary' or 'pauline' predications. This paper refutes vlastos's claim that plato was "utterly unaware" of this ambiguity. 255c-e is taken to be the crucial passage here. This paper adapts the interpretation given by michael frede of this passage and shows that the sense of plato's partaking- terms (which are used to analyze statements about forms) (...) switches from a 'pauline' to an 'ordinary' usage at a definite point in the text which falls at the end of the crucial passage. the context and content of the passage determine that the switch is deliberate on plato's part. An analysis of an earlier passage, 250a-e, confirms this point. (shrink)

Grounded in newer French socio-political philosophy, this text deals with the paradoxical situation in which the interpretation of society as well as the relation between the individual and the social remains ambiguous even though autonomy and interrogation of the social emerges: Autonomy remains trapped between transcendence and immanence. Modernity is when society claims to know that it has to produce its own myths. Traditional societies did not relate to their myths as if they were their own products. Nevertheless, as soon (...) as the traditional religious points of reference are disclosed and disappear, the community gives itself new points of reference in order to put the social at a distance. Thus the social creates a distance to itself and a mirror for itself in order to perceive itself and work upon itself. The article explores the questions of why this is so and the difference between heteronomous and autonomous autotranscendence. (shrink)

By comparing two time periods, the early and late 20th century, this article examines the ambiguities and ambivalences in the state promotion of women in the nation-building projects of Mexico. I argue that in both cases, the state was keen to promote itself as modern and progressive and used women's status in society to these ends. Despite the explicit focus on women, there were many ambiguities and ambivalences resulting from the competing state projects in the political, socio-economic and cultural arenas (...) offering women both privileged spaces and constraints in the development of gendered citizenship. The contradictions arise from simultaneously promoting women's rights, extolling traditional gender roles and fearing women's political activism – both conservative and more radical. Although these ambivalences and ambiguities remain a constant feature, there is a key difference in the two time periods: in one the regime is inward looking, economically protectionist and corporatist, while in the other a new vision of Mexico has attempted to dismantle the corporatist structures and state development project with private economic initiatives and political individualism. In both periods, women gained important rights but romanticized imagery of the self-sacrificing mother was mobilized to underpin change: women were expected both to change and remain the same. (shrink)

The paper examines the status of ambiguity in the thought of Plotinus (c. 204/205-270). Even though ambiguity should be regarded as the enemy of the philosopher and as pertaining rather to the rhetorical tradition and not the philosophical one as it was especially established by Plato and Aristotle, one can argue that the particularly Neoplatonist philosophical project permitted an important place to it due to some fundamental inherent aspects that it contained. Most importantly, the ambiguity in the (...) generation of the Intellect from the One is examined in this paper as related to the dialectic between existence and being. In such a perspective, ambiguity is initiated by the fact that being is both one in order to exist and not one in order to be a being. Thus, it can be explained only in dialectic with an ontological reality beyond it, namely an absolute One. This means that, in turn, its generation as Intellect from the latter is necessarily a two-fold movement: Both a distribution of existence by procession and a reverting contemplative act for acquisition of substantial definition. This dialectic does not only concern the highest ontological level of the relation of the Being to the One, but is a permanent ontological vacillation in the system of Plotinus. The paper observes this valorization of ambiguity as an original and dynamic feature of Plotinian ontology that arguably paved the way for Modernity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ambiguities of Mild Cognitive ImpairmentTim Thornton (bio)Keywordsclassification, disease, mild cognitive impairment, normative, valuesCorner and Bond's paper (2006) raises some key ethical questions about the classification and diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In this commentary, I wish to revise some of the general issues about the classification of mental disorder raised by this particular classificatory concept. The central issue raised is the connection between the pathologic status of (...) a condition and what I term the plain facts about the frequency and nature of its symptoms.There are a number of ethical questions raised by applying the label of MCI. Centrally, perhaps, is the concern, illustrated by the case vignettes, that a diagnosis carries negative repercussions that might outweigh the more narrowly medical advantages of an early diagnosis. But although that concern may be appropriate, such ethical complications are a danger of any psychiatric classification or diagnosis, even the most well grounded. Any psychiatric diagnosis can carry a danger of stigma, for example.What seems to make such ethical concerns more serious in this case—at least to a philosopher outsider—is the implicit further concern that MCI is not a real, objective, or, to use a more medical term, valid category or classification. If it is not valid, then any negative connotations of the diagnosis will not be outweighed by medical technological achievements. In other words, the further ethical issues are given much greater weight if the question of validity is not satisfactorily resolved.The question of the reality, objectivity, or validity of MCI can be divided into two issues:1. Is MCI a real, objective, or valid feature of psychological phenomenology?2. Is MCI a real, objective, or valid psychological illness, disease, or pathology?A condition might be a real, objective, or valid feature of psychological phenomenology without being a real illness. It might be some other aspect of human living. Szasz (1960) suggests that this is the case with mental illness (he might more properly say "so-called mental illness") as a whole. But, less controversially, the unusual ability to calculate, mentally and in a flash, the date of future Easter Sundays is a genuine feature of human living—some people possess the ability even if most do not—without either it, or its lack, being an illness. Being real as an illness is a very specific kind of being. It is this, I suggest, that raises difficulties in the case of MCI by contrast with the easier question of whether something is a genuine feature of human living in some other way. [End Page 21]From "normal" and "normative" to "correct" and "incorrect"Corner and Bond (2006) usefully suggest that the question of whether MCI is real is made more difficult by an ambiguity in the sense of the word normal. They suggest that although "physiologic and cognitive decline is assumed to be a normal experience" this still leaves "boundary problems" about "distinguishing normal aging from disease" (Corner and Bond 2006, 3–4). Thus, if the symptoms of MCI are continuous with the ordinary phenomena of physiologic and cognitive decline, then they might also be merely normal. But this does not settle the status of MCI because normal can mean either "normative, that is, usual; or it can mean nonpathologic" (Corner and Bond 2006, 4).On the assumption that MCI is at least continuous with phenomena that are normal, then its symptoms might be normal in the sense of usual but nevertheless pathologic: an inevitable illness. Or they might be usual and nonpathologic, that is, merely a feature of aging that, although regrettable, lacks the connotations of illness (e.g., the appropriateness, if not the possibility, of treatment). (In principle on the assumption in play—that the symptoms of MCI are normal—they might be unusual but nonpathologic akin, for example, to an improved ability to solve crosswords with age that might affect a small lucky proportion of the population. Perhaps such a crossword puzzler might be reassured by their doctor: "Well that is very unusual but there is no need to worry: it is not a symptom of any illness. You are perfectly normal.")Thus the question "Is MCI normal... (shrink)