The understanding of locomotion in neurological disorders requires technologies for quantitative gait analysis. Numerous modalities are available today to objectively capture spatiotemporal gait and postural control features. Nevertheless, many obstacles prevent the application of these technologies to their full potential in neurological research and especially clinical practice. These include the required expert knowledge, time for data collection, and missing standards for data analysis and reporting. Here, we provide a technological review of wearable and vision-based portable motion analysis tools that emerged (...) in the last decade with recent applications in neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease and Multiple Sclerosis. The goal is to enable the reader to understand the available technologies with their individual strengths and limitations in order to make an informed decision for own investigations and clinical applications. We foresee that ongoing developments toward user-friendly automated devices will allow for closed-loop applications, long-term monitoring, and telemedical consulting in real-life environments. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the development of Jewish studies in Germany since reunification. After a brief historical review of the subject in the nineteenth century with the development of modern Reform Judaism and the science of Judaism created by Jewish religious and secular scholars, it focuses on the development of the past thirty years, in which not only the Jewish community but also Jewish studies have increased in importance. The growth of the Jewish community was largely due to (...) immigration from the Soviet Union, but also partly to young Israelis who moved to Berlin. In line with these different backgrounds, a new interest in diaspora research emerged. The paper also deals with the difference between German Jewish studies and those of most other countries, where Jewish studies are mainly designed by Jewish scholars. (shrink)

Background: Magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging is a neuroimaging technique that may be useful for non-invasive mapping of brain temperature over a large brain volume. To date, intra-subject reproducibility of MRSI-based brain temperature has not been investigated. The objective of this repeated measures MRSI-t study was to establish intra-subject reproducibility and repeatability of brain temperature, as well as typical brain temperature range.Methods: Healthy participants aged 23–46 years were scanned at two time points ~12-weeks apart. Volumetric MRSI data were processed by reconstructing (...) metabolite and water images using parametric spectral analysis. Brain temperature was derived using the frequency difference between water and creatine for 47 regions of interest delineated by the modified Automated Anatomical Labeling atlas. Reproducibility was measured using the coefficient of variation for repeated measures, and repeatability was determined using the standard error of measurement. For each region, the upper and lower bounds of Minimal Detectable Change were established to characterize the typical range of TCRE values.Results: The mean global brain temperature over all subjects was 37.2°C with spatial variations across ROIs. There was a significant main effect for time [F = 37.0, p < 0.0001] and for brain region [F = 2.66, p < 0.0001]. The time*brain region interaction was not significant [F = 0.80, p = 0.83]. Participants' TCRE was stable for each ROI across both time points, with ROIs' COVrep ranging from 0.81 to 3.08% ; majority of ROIs had a COVrep <2.0%.Conclusions: Brain temperature measurements were highly consistent between both time points, indicating high reproducibility and repeatability of MRSI-t. MRSI-t may be a promising diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic tool for non-invasively monitoring brain temperature changes in health and disease. However, further studies of healthy participants with larger sample size and numerous repeated acquisitions are imperative for establishing a reference range of typical brain TCRE, as well as the threshold above which TCRE is likely pathological. (shrink)

A Teoria Crítica nasceu da reformulação da relação entre a filosofia e pesquisa social empírica, no Instituto de Pesquisa Social de Frankfurt, em 1931, quando Horkheimer defendeu a reorientação da agenda de pesquisa do Instituto, bem como a substituição de sua abordagem pelo que ficou conhecido como materialismo interdisciplinar. Ele conectou reflexão teórica, baseada no marxismo filosófico, e ciência social empírica, em resposta a outras interpretações do marxismo ortodoxo. Desde as primeiras pesquisas e elaborações teóricas do Instituto nessa época, Horkheimer (...) e Adorno manifestaram sua preocupação com o destino da humanidade – e a junção entre teoria social e pesquisa dizia respeito a tal preocupação. Horkheimer deixou isso claro no prefácio de The Authoritarian Personality, onde defendeu a articação entre a pesquisa e os interesses do Instituto e sua preocupação com a emancipação humana - desenvolvida a partir de uma análise cientificamente honesta do mundo material. Foi Adorno, contudo, no contato com a experiência científica norte-americana que, apesar de sua rejeição inicial da pesquisa empírica, reformulou seu conceito sobre ela, desenvolvendo uma teoria dialética da primazia do objeto, a partir da qual a possibilidade de uma teoria crítica como práxis se torna clara. O objetivo deste trabalho é mostrar o contexto da relação entre Teoria Crítica e pesquisa social empírica e como um compromisso com a práxis é parte integrante da mediação desta. (shrink)

The articles in this issue are a selection of the papers presented at the conference Knowledge as Assimilation, held at the University of Helsinki on 9-11 June 2017. The conference was the result of a collaboration between two research groups that have been established in Finland and Sweden from 2013 onwards: the research project Rationality in Perception: Transformations of Mind and Cognition 1250-1550, funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the University of Helsinki, and the research programme Representation (...) and Reality: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Aristotelian Tradition, funded by the Riksbankens jubileumsfond and located at the University of Gothenburg. (shrink)

Freedom and the subject in Jean-Paul Sartre -- Freedom and necessity in Jacques Derrida -- Freedom and the subject in contemporary philosophy and theory -- Theorizing pathologies and therapeutics of freedom.

This study situates Henry Havelock Ellis’s sexological research within the nineteenth-century evolutionary debates, especially the discussion over sexual selection’s applicability to humanity. For example, Ellis’s monograph on sexual behavior, _Sexual Inversion_ (1897), treated inborn homosexuality as a natural variation of evolutionary mechanisms. This book was situated within a longer study of human sexuality in relation to evolutionary selection. His later works dealt even more directly with Charles Darwin’s concept of selection, such as _Sexual Selection in Man_ (1905). Through _Sexual Selection (...) in Man_, Ellis asserted that sexual attraction stemmed from a physical cause rather than an innate aesthetic sense. I argue that Ellis’s best-known historical publications, including his work on sexual inversion, were intended to intervene in the contemporary evolutionary debates. This analysis also identifies a specific point where evolutionary theory informed the foundation of sexology as a scientific discipline. (shrink)

In this treatise, al-Fārābī refers to mental acquisition of certain elementary principles of knowledge or cognitions that are the primary basis of any demonstrative process; and this means that cognitions, which are in our intellect, are independent of all experience. The innate character of cognitions is treated in his other works, as is their nature, e.g., whether they are content-ideas or dispositio.

This book is an unusually readable and lucid account of the development of Derrida's work, from his early writings on phenomenology and structuralism to his most recent interventions in debates on psychoanalysis, ethics and politics. Christina Howells gives a clear explanation of many of the key terms of deconstruction - including differance, trace, supplement and logocentrism - and shows how they function in Derrida's writing. She explores his critique of the notion of self-presence through his engagement with Husserl, and (...) his critique of humanist conceptions of the subject through an account of his ambivalent and evolving relationship to the philosophy of Sartre. The question of the relationship between philosophy and literature is examined through an analysis of the texts of the 1970s, and in particular Glas, where Derrida confronts Hegel's totalizing dialectics with the fragmentary and iconoclastic writings of Jean Genet. The author addresses directly the vexed questions of the extreme difficulty of Derrida's own writing and of the passionate hostility it arouses in philosophers as diverse as Searle and Habermas. She argues that deconstruction is a vital stimulus to vigilance in both the ethical and political spheres, contributing significantly to debate on issues such as democracy, the legacy of Marxism, responsibility, and the relationship between law and justice. Comprehensive, cogently argued and up to date, this book will be an invaluable text for students and scholars alike. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century investigations of the deep sea provide a case study for black box science. Naturalists were forced to theorize about a space for which they had no direct sensory observations. This study traces the emergence of bathymetry and deep-sea biology and then analyzes how men of science dealt with the uncertainty associated with their black box practices. I argue that these investigators created multiple types of black boxes based on their uncertainties and that these black boxes did not operate equivalently. (...) Consequently, scholars should be aware of the different categories of black boxes when they describe scientific practices. (shrink)

It has been widely assumed that all languages share some structural features; language universals. Evans and Levinson challenge this assumption and provide a wealth of empirical evidence supporting their claim that linguistic diversity is the most remarkable characteristic of human languages. The response to their paper reveals fundamental disagreements, indicating that different authors rely on substantially different definitions of key terms such as ‘language’ and ‘language universal’. In this paper I will not take sides but discuss the implications of these (...) different definitions on the debate and suggest that conceptual precision is essential for the success of the discipline-crossing collaboration that is needed in language evolution research. Insights gained from other debates in evolutionary theorizing should inform language evolution debates. (shrink)

Behavioral economics has potential to offer novel solutions to some of today's most pressing public health problems: How do we persuade people to eat healthy and lose weight? How can health professionals communicate health risks in a way that is heeded? How can food labeling be modified to inform healthy food choices? Behavioral Economics and Public Health is the first book to apply the groundbreaking insights of behavioral economics to the persisting problems of health behaviors and behavior change. In addition (...) to providing a primer on the behavioral economics principles that are most relevant to public health, this book offers details on how these principles can be employed to mitigating the world's greatest health threats, including obesity, smoking, risky sexual behavior, and excessive drinking. With contributions from an international team of scholars from psychology, economics, marketing, public health, and medicine, this book is a trailblazing new approach to the most difficult and important problems of our time. (shrink)

Being and God: A Systematic Approach in Confrontation with Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Luc Marion , by Lorenz B. Puntel Content Type Journal Article Pages 164-165 Authors Christina M. Gschwandtner, University of Scranton Journal Comparative and Continental Philosophy Online ISSN 1757-0646 Print ISSN 1757-0638 Journal Volume Volume 4 Journal Issue Volume 4, Number 1 / 2012.

The philosophical work of Jean-Luc Marion has opened new ways of speaking about religious convictions and experiences. In this exploration of Marion’s philosophy and theology, Christina M. Gschwandtner presents a comprehensive and critical analysis of the ideas of saturated phenomena and the phenomenology of givenness. She claims that these phenomena do not always appear in the excessive mode that Marion describes and suggests instead that we consider degrees of saturation. Gschwandtner covers major themes in Marion’s work—the historical event, art, (...) nature, love, gift and sacrifice, prayer, and the Eucharist. She works within the phenomenology of givenness, but suggests that Marion himself has not considered important aspects of his philosophy. (shrink)

This article theorises a group of mothers’ experiences of shame as a result of feeding infant formula to their children. Drawing on interviews with formula and breastfeeding mothers, the author brings together insights from scholarship on shame, feminist scholarship on reproductive labour and the Marxist notion of estranged labour to demonstrate that shame causes the formula-feeding mothers in this study, who initially wanted to breastfeed, to be estranged in their labour as mothers. The article addresses a gap in qualitative infant-feeding (...) scholarship, which focuses primarily on breastfeeding. It provides an empathic account framing breastfeeding and formula-feeding mothers as potential allies against ‘controlling images’ of motherhood who face different facets of the same pressure to fulfil idealised roles. Both scholarly work on reproductive labour, and public programmes supporting new mothers, should account more seriously for the experiences of formula feeding mothers. (shrink)

By exploring the writings of Mandeville, Hume and Smith, this book offers a critique of Hayek's theory of cultural evolution and explores the roots of his powerful defence of liberalism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 98-115 [Access article in PDF] Tristram Shandy, David Hume and Epistemological Fiction Christina Lupton I LAURENCE STERNE's Tristram Shandy, the nine-volume novel which dominated London's literary marketplace during the years of its publication between 1759 and 1767, has served over the course of its reception as a case in point for reading literature and philosophy side by side. Yet even in this lengthy (...) and variegated history of Sterne appreciation, "side by side" has more often than not proved to be a question of reading philosophy as literature's source and the key to its logic. In most secondary work on the novel, Sterne's references to empirical psychology appear as clues to a line of influence which leads, depending on the turn of the critic and his or her milieu, either back to a Lockean faith in self-knowledge and to a Humean skepticism with its residual stress on the realm of social accountability and the merits of mental association, or forward to the terrain of modernism, with its insistence on the constitutive power of language itself. From the ongoing measured attempts to monitor Sterne's use of Locke to the conviction, instigated by John Traugott in 1954, that Sterne's dramatization of rationalism shares much with David Hume's positive account of association, this complex critical history is well rehearsed, and its variants soundly warranted by Sterne's liberal borrowing from each of the well-stocked Rabelaisian, empiricist, and Augustan shelves of his own library.In recent decades, this critical debate runs towards a view of Sterne working self-consciously with an emergent sense of the aesthetic as a response to the epistemological quandaries of rationalism under pressure. In this essay, I will diverge from the critical tradition which has [End Page 98] combed the texts of British empiricism for the right "key" to Tristram Shandy. 1 I want to avoid this avenue of investigation not because it promises poor results—in the case of Sterne, rich moments of "unlocking" are undeniable—but because it relies on lining up philosophy and literature in a particular generic relation to one another. In general, this method assigns problem-raising to philosophy and problem-echoing to literature. Established Sterne critics, including John Traugott, Melvin New, and Arthur Cash, routinely ask how Tristram Shandy follows up or even solves the formal articulations of a problem raised by Locke or Hume.Despite the importance to date of this philosophical-problems-played-out-in-literature model for reading Tristram Shandy, the model of reading literature and philosophy together which I want to introduce in this piece is much more a side-by-side one. More specifically, I want to suggest that the epistemological problem which shows up in Tristram Shandy is less a rearticulation of grand philosophical concerns at a local register than a transformation of the problem of epistemology at the site of its articulation. While knowledge can be seen as the problem which Locke's rationalism, Hume's rhetorical and social projects, or Kant's account of aesthetic judgment set out to solve, for Sterne, I will argue, epistemological uncertainty is less a problem than the basis of the productive relationship Tristram Shandy develops between, on one hand, literature as an object of knowledge and, on the other, the acknowledgement that words, particularly literary words, depend on subjective responses. By comparing Hume's Treatise and Tristram Shandy, my aim is to show how the closely allied texts diverge in their strategies for exploring and containing the fracturing implications of skepticism. II Like many other literary authors of the eighteenth century, Sterne is engaged in debates crossing what we now think of as the disciplinary boundary between philosophy and literature and, despite its celebrated status as an inaugural work of modern fiction, Tristram Shandy intimately incorporates nonfictional forms of political and philosophical inquiry. 2 One of Tristram's more celebrated briefs to his reader is a witty but revealingly knowing description of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding: "I will tell you in three words what the book... (shrink)

On 27 December 1994, woman theologian Christina Landman published her first contribution to the religious column Godsdiens Aktueel [Religion in Action] in the Afrikaans daily newspaper Beeld. The reaction of the Afrikaans readers of Beeld to what has been regarded by readers as ‘an alternative voice’ will be presented in this article. Although Landman is still writing for this column and has published 222 articles until 15 March 2023, in this article only the first 57 articles will be considered, (...) published over 8 years between 1994 and 2002. The content and reference of the articles and the reaction of the readers to that have changed with the developments that occurred in Landman’s life story, as well as with the changes in politics and society since the democratic elections of 1994. From 1994 to 1999, Landman invited a reactionary response from readers by addressing them as gender and political activists. However, from the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century, from 2000, Landman addressed the readership from a perspective of the healing of society. The responses of readers in the letters to Beeld, both to the accusing and to the healing Landman, will not be analysed in terms of the presumed political and religious agendas of the readers, but will be presented under themes emanating from their letters in an unmediated fashion. The ‘audience reception’, as a methodology is applied contributing to advance readers’ responses to a modern religious text.Contribution: Contributing to an academic body of research, data gathered from 57 sources over 8 years, represent voices varying in race, gender and religious affiliation, providing for a minority of readers to be liberated through her voice. Audience reception’, as a methodology, enhances the academic debate on the development of thought in a specific culture-religious dialogue. (shrink)

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

American Philosophical Association Blog on omnisexuality and the culture of professional philosophy today. A generous reading on the need to bridge the Continental Analytic divides.

This paper offers an account of recognition and its relation to knowledge. One important observation is that while ‘know’ is a stative verb, ‘recognize’ is an achievement verb. A second is that ‘recognize’ is knowledge entailing, both when combined with a complementizer phrase and when combined with a noun phrase. The behavior of the latter kind of construction is particularly subtle and is the main focus of this paper. This paper ends with an interesting puzzle about object recognition.

Some conditional involving factive emotives present a prima facie challenge to the thesis that conditionals obey modus ponens. Drawing on recent work by Timothy Williamson, I offer an error-theoretic diagnosis of the phenomenon, one that appeals to a heuristic that we use in suppositional reasoning.

How do people decide which claims should be considered mere beliefs and which count as knowledge? Although little is known about how people attribute knowledge to others, philosophical debate about the nature of knowledge may provide a starting point. Traditionally, a belief that is both true and justified was thought to constitute knowledge. However, philosophers now agree that this account is inadequate, due largely to a class of counterexamples (termed ‘‘Gettier cases’’) in which a person’s justified belief is true, but (...) only due to luck. We report four experiments examining the effect of truth, justification, and ‘‘Gettiering’’ on people’s knowledge attributions. These experiments show that: (1) people attribute knowledge to others only when their beliefs are both true and justified; (2) in contrast to contemporary philosophers, people also attribute knowledge to others in Gettier situations; and (3) knowledge is not attributed in one class of Gettier cases, but only because the agent’s belief is based on ‘‘apparent’’ evidence. These findings suggest that the lay concept of knowledge is roughly consistent with the traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief, and also point to a major difference between the epistemic intuitions of laypeople and those of philosophers. (shrink)

The Cognitive Reflection Test is purported to test our inclination to overcome impulsive, intuitive thought with effortful, rational reflection. Research suggests that philosophers tend to perform better on this test than non-philosophers, and that men tend to perform better than women. Taken together, these findings could be interpreted as partially explaining the gender gap that exists in Philosophy: there are fewer women in Philosophy because women are less likely to possess the ideal ‘philosophical personality’. If this explanation for the gender (...) gap in Philosophy is accepted, it might be seen to exonerate Philosophy departments of the need to put in place much-needed strategies for promoting gender diversity. This paper discusses a number of reasons for thinking that this would be the wrong conclusion to draw from the research. Firstly, the CRT may not track what it is claimed it tracks. Secondly, the trait tracked by the CRT may not be something that we should value in philosophers. Thirdly, even if we accept that the CRT tracks a trait that has value, this trait might be of limited importance to good philosophising. Lastly, the causal story linking the gender gap in CRT score and the gender gap in Philosophy is likely to be far more complex than this explanation implies. (shrink)

They do not need to be rescued from masculinity."--BOOK JACKET.

The study combines theories of myth, popular culture, structuralism and poststructuralism to explain the enormous appeal of Star Wars and Harry Potter. Although much research already exists on both stories individually, this book is the first to explicitly bring them together in order to explore their set-up and the ways in which their structures help produce ideologies on gender and ethnicity. Hereby, the comparison yields central insights into the workings of modern myth and uncovers structure as integral to the success (...) of the popular genre. It addresses academic audiences and all those wishing to approach the tales from a fresh angle. (shrink)

This article contends that environmental organisations vary in type, scale and purpose in ways that help stewards self-sort into the opportunities that align with their individual motivations and environmental concerns. To explore these potential links between personal motivations and environmental organisational attributes, we rely on descriptive and inferential statistics from surveys of two partner environmental organisations: one local scale community based-organisation and one a broader scale environmental non-profit organisation, both located in Central Texas, USA. These partners were selected based on (...) their compatible pro-environmental missions but disparate spatial scales of operation. The survey results (n=377) revealed meaningful between-organisation differences in volunteer environmental stewards, which raise the possibility of a ‘First Law of Environmental Stewardship’ whereby all stewards are related (by their values), but stewards in the same organisation are more related than stewards in different organisations. These findings expose some of the nuances of environmental volunteerism by highlighting connections between personal motivations, geographic scale, and organisation type. (shrink)