We identify two aspects of the problem of maintaining perceptual stability despite an observer's eye movements. The first, visual direction constancy, is the (egocentric) stability of apparent positions of objects in the visual world relative to the perceiver. The second, visual position constancy, is the (exocentric) stability of positions of objects relative to each other. We analyze the constancy of visual direction despite saccadic eye movements.Three information sources have been proposed to enable the visual system to achieve stability: the structure (...) of the visual field, proprioceptive inflow, and a copy of neural efference or outflow to the extraocular muscles. None of these sources by itself provides adequate information to achieve visual direction constancy; present evidence indicates that all three are used.Our final question concerns how information processing operations result in a stable world. The three traditionally suggested means have been elimination, translation, or evaluation. All are rejected. From a review of the physiological and psychological evidence we conclude that no subtraction, compensation, or evaluation need take place. The problem for which these solutions were developed turns out to be a false one. We propose a “calibration” solution: correct spatiotopic positions are calculated anew for each fixation. Inflow, outflow, and retinal sources are used in this calculation: saccadic suppression of displacement bridges the errors between these sources and the actual extent of movement. (shrink)

The volume collects classics of Marxist historiography of science, including a new translation of Boris Hessen's “The Social and Economic Roots of Newton's ...

Starting from the idea that functions are formally similar to actions in that they are described and explained in a similar way, so that both admit of an accordion effect, I turn to Anscombe’s insight that the point of practical reasoning is to render explicit the relation between the different descriptions of an action generated by the accordion effect. The upshot is, roughly, that an item has a function if what it does can be accounted for by functional reasoning. Put (...) differently, a part of a system has a function if what it does is a functional part of what the system does. (shrink)

This volume sets out to address the question as to whether and how the critical conception of objectivity could still be relevant in contemporary philosophy. This means reflecting on the validity of the ascription of certaindefects to the Kantian system, as well as on their very description as defects. In order to do so, the volume brings together presentations that treat Kantian objectivity from many different angles. Some are more traditionally exegetical in nature, and discuss the interpretation of concepts within (...) or traits of Kant’s philosophy. Others trace the fate of the Kantian legacy in later philosophical and scientific thought. Still others reflect on the potential of transcendental perspectives for con-temporary philosophy and science. It is this variety in focus that makes the engagement with critical objectivity in this volume of interest not only to professional historians of philosophy and science, but to researchers engaged with the philosophical aspects of objectivity in their fields in general. (shrink)

Boris Kment takes a new approach to the study of modality that emphasises the origin of modal notions in everyday thought. He argues that the concepts of necessity and possibility originate in counterfactual reasoning, which allows us to investigate explanatory connections. Contrary to accepted views, explanation is more fundamental than modality.

One of the great problems of caregivers and health professionals in recent times has been the so-called compassion fatigue and its association with burnout syndrome. Another pole of compassion has been described in terms of compassion satisfaction. Both propositions could be problematic in the caregiving setting. This is an analytical reflective article that through an apparent aporia tries to problematize and propose a theoretical synthesis that allows to denote compassion as a virtue in Aristotelian terms. To this end, it resorts (...) to etymologies, translations and mainly to the classical theoretical references regarding compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction and, of course, Aristotelian ethics. This is a theoretical bet that leaves open the discussion regarding the dichotomies compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction; apathy and hyperpathy; and proposes to rethink compassion as a virtue, a reasoned middle ground, contextualized in the framework of care between two possible excesses. (shrink)

BackgroundThe UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the reformed guardianship law in Germany, require that persons with a disability, including people with dementia in Alzheimer’s disease (PwAD), are supported in making self-determined decisions. This support is achieved through communication. While content-related communication is a deficit of PwAD, relational aspects of communication are a resource. Research in supported decision-making (SDM) has investigated the effectiveness of different content-related support strategies for PwAD but has only succeeded in improving understanding, (...) which, although one criterion of capacity to consent, is not sufficient to ensure overall capacity to consent. The aim of the ‘spatial intervention study’ of the DECIDE project is to examine an innovative resource-oriented SDM approach that focuses on relational aspects. We hypothesise that talking to PwAD in their familiar home setting (as opposed to a clinical setting) will reduce the complexity of the decision-making process and enhance overall capacity to consent. MethodsPeople with a suspected or confirmed diagnosis of dementia in Alzheimer’s disease will be recruited from two memory clinics (N = 80). We will use a randomised crossover design to investigate the intervention effect of the decision-making place on capacity to consent. Besides reasoning capacity, which is part of overall capacity to consent and will be the primary outcome, various secondary outcomes (e.g., other aspects of capacity to consent, subjective task complexity, decisional conflict) and suspected moderating or mediating variables (e.g., meaning of home, demographic characteristics) will be assessed.DiscussionThe results of the study will be used to develop a new SDM strategy that is based on relational resources for PwAD. If a change in location achieves the anticipated improvement in capacity to consent, future research should focus on implementing this SDM strategy in a cost-effective manner in clinical practice.Trial registration: DRKS00030799. (shrink)

Die Untersuchung rekonstruiert das Subjekt in seinen kulturhistorischen Formationen als kooperationsorientierten Bewährungssucher, der sich den jeweiligen Formen des Zusammenlebens gemäß formiert, um sich in ihnen bewähren zu können. Die systematisch entwickelte Bezogenheitstheorie erlaubt die Rekonstruktion der universalen und kulturspezifischen Aspekte des Subjekts. die Untersuchung zeigt auf der Subjektebene die Bedingungen der Entfaltung modernen Zusammenlebens auf und kann von daher als eine empirisch durchgeführte Mikrosoziologie der Moderne gelten. Aus dieser kulturhistorisch gesättigten Subjekttheorie werden schließlich Schlussfolgerungen für die pädagogische Professionalität gezogen (Zum (...) Umgang mit Bewährungssuchern).​. (shrink)

On the received view, counterfactuals are analysed using the concept of closeness between possible worlds: the counterfactual 'If it had been the case that p, then it would have been the case that q' is true at a world w just in case q is true at all the possible p-worlds closest to w. The degree of closeness between two worlds is usually thought to be determined by weighting different respects of similarity between them. The question I consider in the (...) paper is which weights attach to different respects of similarity. I start by considering Lewis's answer to the question and argue against it by presenting several counterexamples. I use the same examples to motivate a general principle about closeness: if a fact obtains in both of two worlds, then this similarity is relevant to the closeness between them if and only if the fact has the same explanation in the two worlds. I use this principle and some ideas of Lewis's to formulate a general account of counterfactuals, and I argue that this account can explain the asymmetry of counterfactual dependence. The paper concludes with a discussion of some examples that cannot be accommodated by the present version of the account and therefore necessitate further work on the details. (shrink)

In this handbook, I put into practice my philosophical views on children's mathematics. The handbook contains brief instructions and examples of mathematical activities. In the INSTRUCTIONS section, instructions are given on how, and in part why that way, to help preschool children in their mathematical development. In the ACTIVITIES section, there are examples of activities through which the child develops her mathematical abilities.

In this article, modern standards of early years mathematics education are criticized and a proposal for change is presented. Today's early years mathematics education standards rest on a view of mathematics that became obsolete already at the end of the 19th century while the spirit of children's mathematics is precisely the spirit of modern mathematics. The proposal for change is not a return to the “new mathematics” movement, but something different.

Carme fears that Scylla is in love with her own father ; Scylla replies that she loves no one she should love, but one of the besiegers—though she can hardly bring herself to utter his name : nil amat hic animus, nutrix, quod oportet amari,in quo falsa tamen lateat pietatis imago,sed media ex acie, mediis ex hostibus—eheu,quid dicam quoue aegra malum hoc exordiar ore? 265dicam equidem, quoniam tu nunc non dicere, nutrix,non sinis: extremum hoc munus morientis habeto.265 aegra Baehrens: agam (...) Z: ipsa ρ: ausa Sillig. (shrink)

The aim of Modality and Explanatory Reasoning (MER) is to shed light on metaphysical necessity and the broader class of modal properties to which it belongs. This topic is approached with two goals: to develop a new and reductive analysis of modality, and to understand the purpose and origin of modal thought. I argue that a proper understanding of modality requires us to reconceptualize its relationship to causation and other forms of explanation such as grounding, a relation that connects metaphysically (...) fundamental facts to non-fundamental ones. While many philosophers have tried to give modal analyses of causation and explanation, often in counterfactual terms, I argue that we obtain a more plausible, explanatorily powerful and unified theory if we regard explanation as more fundamental than modality. The function of modal thought is to facilitate a common type of thought experiment – counterfactual reasoning – that allows us to investigate explanatory connections and which is closely related to the controlled experiments of empirical science. Necessity is defined in terms of explanation, and modal facts often reflect underlying facts about explanatory relationships. The study of modal facts is important for philosophy not because these facts are of much metaphysical interest in their own right, but largely because they provide evidence about explanatory connections. (shrink)

Evidential decision theory (EDT) says that the choiceworthiness of an option depends on its evidential connections to possible outcomes. Causal decision theory (CDT) holds that it depends on your beliefs about its causal connections. While Newcomb cases support CDT, Arif Ahmed has described examples that support EDT. A new account is needed to get all cases right. I argue that an option A's choiceworthiness is determined by the probability that a good outcome ensues at possible A‐worlds that match actuality in (...) the facts causally unaffected by your decision (the “unaffected facts”). Moreover, you should evaluate A on the assumption that A is compossible with the unaffected facts. This view entails that you should use EDT when evaluating A on the assumption that the unaffected facts determine your action, but use CDT when assessing A on the opposite assumption. A's choiceworthiness equals a weighted average of these conditional assessments. The weights are determined by your beliefs about whether the unaffected fact determine your action. This account gets both Newcomb and Ahmed cases right. According to an influential view, whether you take the unaffected facts to determine your action can make a difference to whether you can regard yourself as free and the action as being under your control. While my account is neutral on this issue, it entails that whether you take the unaffected facts to determine your action is important in a different way: it matters to whether you should follow EDT or CDT. (shrink)

If definitive evidence concerning treatment effectiveness becomes available from an ongoing randomized clinical trial, then the trial could be stopped early, with the public release of results benefiting current and future patients. However, stopping an ongoing trial based on accruing outcome data requires methodological rigor to preserve validity of the trial conclusions. This has led to the use of formal interim monitoring procedures, which include inefficacy monitoring that will stop a trial early when the experimental treatment appears not to be (...) working. For participants, inefficacy monitoring is especially important as it ensures that they are not being treated worse than if they had not enrolled on the trial. We discuss the importance of reporting with trial results the formal interim inefficacy monitoring guidelines that were utilized, and, if none were used, the reasons for their absence. A survey of two leading medical journals suggests that this is not current practice. (shrink)

The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) revolutionized the study of language, signs, and discourse in the twentieth century. He successfully reconstructed the proto-Indo-European vowel system, advanced a conception of language as a system of arbitrary signs made meaningful through kinetic interrelationships, and developed a theory of the anagram so profound it gave rise to poststructural literary criticism. The roots of these disparate, even contradictory achievements lie in the thought of Early German Romanticism, which Saussure consulted for its insight into (...) the nature of meaning and discourse. Conducting the first comprehensive analysis of Saussure's intellectual heritage, Boris Gasparov links Sassurean notions of cognition, language, and history to early Romantic theories of cognition and the transmission of cultural memory. In particular, several fundamental categories of Saussure's philosophy of language, such as the differential nature of language, the mutability and immutability of semiotic values, and the duality of the signifier and the signified, are rooted in early Romantic theories of "progressive" cognition and child cognitive development. Consulting a wealth of sources only recently made available, Gasparov casts the seeming contradictions and paradoxes of Saussure's work as a genuine tension between the desire to bring linguistics and semiotics in line with modernist epistemology on the one hand, and Jena Romantics' awareness of language's dynamism and its transcendence of the boundaries of categorical reasoning on the other. Advancing a radical new understanding of Saussure, Gasparov reveals aspects of the intellectual's work previously overlooked by both his followers and his postmodern critics. (shrink)

Proceeding from Lessing’s distinction between poetry and visual art, Boris Groys argues that language is not external to, but resides behind, the image. The image constitutes the scene of a frustrated linguistic desire. Modern visual art sought to avoid the obscenity of staging this unfulfilled desire by conducting a systematic ascetic repression of the linguistic impulse. This negation of linguistic desire culminated in Judd’s ‘specific ob jects’. Y et the modern image, Groys emphasizes with reference to Greenberg and McLuhan, (...) still transmits a message, namely that of its medium bearer. Modern artists torture the image and put it into a state of emergency or exception in which it confesses its interior. In the image’s sub-medium space, in turn, resides language. Avantgarde artists and modern media theorists share the wish to achieve durability by becoming the media of the media. The border between the image and language, Groys closes, can neither be stabilized nor abolished. (shrink)

The article suggests a reading of the term ‘epistemic account of truth’ which runs contrary to a widespread consensus with regard to what epistemic accounts are meant to provide, namely a definition of truth in epistemic terms. Section 1. introduces a variety of possible epistemic accounts that differ with regard to the strength of the epistemic constraints they impose on truth. Section 2. introduces the paradox of knowability and presents a slightly reconstructed version of a related argument brought forward by (...) Wolfgang Künne. I accept the paradox and Künnes argument as sound objections to all the different epistemic accounts which are committed to one of the various constraints on truth introduced in section 1. Section 3. offers a modified epistemic constraint which, or so I argue, is immune to the paradox of knowability and plausible on independent grounds. (shrink)

Eric Watkins argues that according to Kant, causation is not a relation between two events, but a relation between the “causality” of a substance and an event. It is shown that his arguments are partly based on a confusion between causation and interaction. Further, Watkins claims that for Kant, causes cannot be temporally determined. If this were true, it would follow that there can be no causal chains, and that all factors that determine the time when an effect occurs do (...) not belong to its cause. However, it is not true. In order to understand Kant, one must distinguish between causation, action, and interaction. When two substances interact, each of them does something (an event), which causes something to happen to the other one. (shrink)

In this paper, I make a contribution to a naturalistically-minded theory of truthmakers by proposing a solution to the nasty problem of truthmakers for negative truths. After formulating the difficulty, I consider and reject a number of solutions to the problem, including Armstrong's states of affairs of totality, incompatibility accounts, and JC Beall 's polarity view. I then defend the position that absences of truthmakers are real and are responsible for making negative truths true. According to the positive account of (...) absences I offer, absences of contingent states of affairs are causally relevant mind-independent features of the physical world, located within space and time, and capable of being discovered by scientific inquiry. Recognition of the reality of absences strengthens truthmaker theory as a naturalistic metaphysics, as truth and falsity of each and every contingent proposition finds an ontological grounding in some region of the physical universe. (shrink)

From the comparison of time in inertial frames, possible types of transformations between inertial frames are deduced. This elementary deduction directly relates the properties of time with the type of transformations. When all inertial frames measure the same time (time is absolute), the transformations are Galilean. When each inertial frame has its own time, different from the times of other inertial frames (time is not invariant) the transformations are Lorentz-like with the same positive parameter k. The parameter k is the (...) supremum of possible velocities in an inertial frame, the same for all inertial frames. Einstein's postulate about the invariance of the speed of light says more: there is a uniform motion with the supremum k, which is exactly the motion of light in a vacuum. At the end of the article, attempts to reduce the special theory of relativity to the principle of relativity are criticized. (shrink)

Born and Pauli, in talking of the style of science, meant its relatively stable features, which characterized a long period of scientific progress. “I do not mean,” wrote Born in 1953, “that there exist (outside mathematics) any unchanging principles, a priori principles in the strict sense of the term. But I think that certain general tendencies of thought exist, which change very slowly and which form definite philosophical periods with their own characteristic ideas in all fields of human activity, including (...) science. In a recent letter to me, Pauli used the expression ‘styles’; styles of thought, not only in art but in science too. In adopting this term, I would assert that style is also a characteristic of physical theory, and it is precisely this fact that gives its principles a certain constancy. They are, as it were, relatively a priori principles in relation to the particular period. If one is familiar with the style of one's time, one can make certain cautious predictions. One can at least reject ideas that are foreign to the style of one's time”. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging 2007 study of Claude Lévi-Strauss's aesthetic thought, Boris Wiseman demonstrates not only its centrality within his oeuvre but also the importance of Levi-Strauss for contemporary aesthetic enquiry. Reconstructing the internal logic of Lévi-Strauss's thinking on aesthetics, and showing how anthropological and aesthetic ideas intertwine at the most elemental levels in the elaboration of his system of thought, Wiseman demonstrates that Lévi-Strauss's aesthetic theory forms an integral part of his approach to Amerindian masks, body decoration and mythology. (...) He reveals the significance of Lévi-Strauss's anthropological analysis of an 'untamed' mode of thinking at work in totemism, classification and myth-making for his conception of art and aesthetic experience. In this way, structural anthropology is shown to lead to ethnoaesthetics. Lévi-Strauss, Anthropology and Aesthetics adopts a broad-ranging approach that combines the different perspectives of anthropology, philosophy, aesthetic theory and literary criticism into an unusual and imaginative whole. (shrink)

Non-classical science gives a very specific answer to the question of scientific errors and their epistemological value. But for all the specificity of this answer, it casts light on a problem that remains with us century after century, the historically constant problem of truth and error—one of the most fundamental problems of knowledge. At first sight, these two poles have always stood opposite each other, like good and evil, beauty and ugliness. But moral and aesthetic theories have long since left (...) behind this initial conception, and shown that the two polar concepts are in fact inseparable. As regards truth and error, their indivisibility has only become apparent in the context of non-classical science. Truth has ceased to be the absolute contradiction of error. Contemporary science finds it to be something relative, inseparable from its opposite pole. But the non-classical, retrospective approach, a re-evaluation of the past of science in the light of its present, and indeed even more in the light of its prognosis, its future, allows one to see that scientific truths that are adequate for the object of knowledge always reflect only one side of the objective world, a world which has an infinite number of sides. The irreversible process that leads from relative error to relative truth has an absolute character: an irreversible process of generalization, concretization and complication of a Weltanschauung that more accurately reflects the infinite complexity of life. (shrink)

V prispevku preučujemo vlogo slovenščine pri konstituiranju spolno nenormativnih subjektov. Poststrukturalistični obrat v sociolingvistiki je prinesel nove teoretične okvire, ki so preizprašali obstoječe predpostavke o navidezno naravnih družbenih kategorijah. Na izhodiščih kvir jezikoslovja, ki predstavlja temeljni izziv predpostavki, da so binarni sistemi spolne in seksualne kategorizacije naravni, univerzalni in nedvomni, raziskujemo, v kolikšni meri slovnični spol omejuje in hkrati omogoča uresničevanje transspolnih in spolno nebinarnih identitet med govorkami_ci slovenščine. Spolno nebinarne osebe za izražanje svojih nenormativnih spolov uporabljajo jezikovne prakse, kot (...) so podčrtaj, inverzni spolni označevalci ali mešanje ženskih in moških slovničnih oblik. Njihova družbena dejanja so odvisna od družbene strukture, obenem pa lahko z decentralizacijo binarnih spolov vodijo k njenim spremembam. (shrink)

Philosophy is traditionally understood as the search for universal truths, and philosophers are supposed to transmit those truths beyond the limits of their own culture. But, today, we have become skeptical about the ability of an individual philosopher to engage in "universal thinking," so philosophy seems to capitulate in the face of cultural relativism. In Introduction to Antiphilosophy, Boris Groys argues that modern "antiphilosophy" does not pursue the universality of thought as its goal but proposes in its place the (...) universality of life, material forces, social practices, passions, and experiences --angst, vitality, ecstasy, the gift, revolution, laughter or "profane illumination" --and he analyzes this shift from thought to life and action in the work of thinkers from Kierkegaard to Derrida, from Nietzsche to Benjamin. Ranging across the history of modern thought, Introduction to Antiphilosophy endeavors to liberate philosophy from the stereotypes that hinder its development. --Publisher. (shrink)

Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary effort to understand the structures and functions of the brain and brain-mind relations. This effort results in an increasing amount of data, generated by sophisticated technologies. However, these data enhance our descriptive knowledge, rather than improve our understanding of brain functions. This is caused by methodological gaps both within and between subdisciplines constituting neuroscience, and the atomistic approach that limits the study of macro- and mesoscopic issues. Whole-brain measurement technologies do not resolve these issues, but rather (...) aggravate them by the complexity problem. The present article is devoted to methodological and epistemic problems that obstruct the development of human neuroscience. We neither discuss ontological questions nor review data, except when it is necessary to demonstrate a methodological issue. As regards intradisciplinary methodological problems, we concentrate on those within neurobiology and psychology. As regards interdisciplinary problems, we suggest that core disciplines of neuroscience can be integrated using systemic concepts that also entail human-environment relations. We emphasize the necessity of a meta-discussion that should entail a closer cooperation with philosophy as a discipline of systematic reflection. The atomistic reduction should be complemented by the explicit consideration of the embodiedness of the brain and the embeddedness of humans. The discussion is aimed at the development of an explicit methodology of integrative human neuroscience, which will not only link different fields and levels, but also help in understanding clinical phenomena. (shrink)