In Color Harmonies, Augusto Garau systematically investigates the role of both color and form in visual perception and presents an original theory of the aesthetic relations among colors.

Harmony is one of the most fundamental Japanese values. It is derived from Confucianism and encompasses a state of mind, an action process and outcomes of the action. This article draws on research data and discusses Japanese nurses’ perceptions of harmony as reflected in their everyday practice. The most important virtues for these nurses were reported as politeness and respect for other persons. The outcome from the nurses’ harmonious practice, it is claimed, benefited patients and created peaceful, harmonious (...) relationships for all. Because of the unique link between harmony and the location of interaction, the ideal ‘workplace harmony’ threatened some nurses’ professional decision making. These nurses confused harmony with conformity by superficial agreement. The Japanese seniority system could be a major factor contributing to this problem. Ethics education that includes traditional values and concepts in Japanese culture is strongly urged. (shrink)

Most "art and science" books focus on the science of perspective or the psychology of perception. Hidden Harmony does not. Instead, the book addresses the surprising common ground between physics and art from a novel and personal perspective. Viewing the two disciplines as creative processes, J. R. Leibowitz supplements existing and original research with illustrations to demonstrate that physics and art share guiding aesthetics and compositional demands and to show how each speaks meaningfully to the other. Leibowitz widens (...) our experience and understanding of both domains by exploring how concepts such as balance and re-balance, coherence and unity, and symmetry and "broken" symmetry affect and are affected by artistic vision and scientific principle. He reveals shared themes and understandings in each field and adroitly illustrates the parallels between the dabs of color and layers of images in a work of art and the particles of matter and packets of energy that compose the observable, physical world. Featuring examples of art images and complementary examples of physics concepts, this contemplative work helps us see art and physics as artists and physicists do. (shrink)

Humor is a contextual phenomenon that exists in all societies, although the impact of humor may differ across different cultures. The data for this research was collected using an ethnographic approach, incorporating participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Based in three different South Korean organizations, this research offered the opportunity to interact in depth with workers of varying ages, genders, hierarchical levels, and organizational roles. Observations were complimented by 46 in-depth interviews and ad hoc follow-up discussions. This paper adopts a Confucian (...) perspective to understand the perception and use of workplace humor in these South Korean organizations. Confucian philosophy emphasizes the value of formality within society in order to maintain respectful relationships between individuals. We suggest that humor is used in these South Korean workplaces to support traditional Confucian values of harmony and hierarchy, and the changing cultural values in these workplaces influence humor perceptions in complex ways. The Confucian value of harmony maintained through the idea of hierarchy creates pressure for organizational members, to accept and cope with contentious humor in the workplace. In particular, the clash between the need to maintain harmonious relationships in the workplace (through obedience towards superiors) and the desire to reject some types of humor highlights issues for younger organizational members. Internal conflict creates distress for younger employees who may hold more Westernized values and this affects their emotional, psychological well-being. This study presents a cross-cultural perspective to organizational humor, and suggests that humor may not always be a positive experience for organizational members, but instead may create psychological distress in some employees. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a survey of 842 undergraduate business students in four nations - the United States of America, the Peoples' Republic of China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. This survey asked students to respond to four scenarios with potentially unethical business behavior and a string of questions related to the importance of ethics in business strategy and in personal behaviors. Based on arguments related to differences in recent historical experiences, the authors suggest that student responses (...) may be as different within the East Asian environment as they are between this environment as a whole and the USA. Survey results indicate a greater perception of ethical problems and more importance placed on ethics per se in business practices, as well as less of an emphasis on social harmony on the part of USA students. At the same time, substantial national differences in response are also witnessed within the set of East Asian students. A priori expectations as to the manner in which these East Asian responses should vary based on differences in recent historical experiences are partially, but not fully, supported. The authors argue that the key value of the reported research rests on a demonstration that national differences within a common cultural area can be as great as differences across cultural areas and that practitioners of global business must fine-tune their expectations as to acceptable business and personal actions to accommodate specific national historical experiences to be effective. (shrink)

The representation of a complex but stable, self-regulated and, finally, harmonious nature penetrates the whole history of Ecology, thus contradicting the core of the Darwinian evolution. Originated in the pre-Darwinian Natural History, this representation defined theoretically the various schools of early ecology and, in the context of the cybernetic synthesis of the 1950s, it assumed a typical mathematical form on account of α positive correlation between species diversity and community stability. After 1960, these two aforementioned concepts and their positive correlation (...) were proposed as environmental management tools, in the face of the ecological crisis arising at the time. In the early 1970s, and particularly after May’s evolutionary arguments, the consensus around this positive correlation collapsed for a while, only to be promptly restored for the purpose of attaching an ecological value on biodiversity. In this paper, we explore the history of the diversity–stability hypothesis and we review the successive terms that have been used to express community stability. We argue that this hypothesis has been motivated by the nodal ideological presuppositions of order and harmony and that the scientific developments in this field largely correspond to external social pressures. We conclude that the conflict about the diversity–stability relationship is in fact an ideological debate, referring mostly to the way we see nature and society rather than to an autonomous scientific question. From this point of view, we may understand why Ecology’s concepts and perceptions may decline and return again and again, forming a pluralistic scientific history. (shrink)

L’article vise à examiner les caractéristiques de la systématicité chez Johann Heinrich Lambert. Influencé par Christian Wolff, Lambert élabore une doctrine originale de l’architectonique qui comprend pour l’essentiel deux parties : d’une part, une manière de déterminer la représentation systématique dans la perception sensible qui constitue une première façon de connaître des rapports entre vérités. D’autre part, une théorie de l’harmonie réelle des vérités qui permet d’unifier des relations conceptuelles et propositionnelles et qui a comme avantages de mieux déceler (...) les erreurs et de contrer le scepticisme. L’article a également pour objectif de montrer que la conception architectonique des vérités chez Lambert est certes fondationnaliste, mais ne saurait constituer une forme d’holisme. (shrink)

Family firm leaders acting as stewards of a close-knit enterprise may attempt to build a positive atmosphere of trust, clarity, and cohesiveness in the firm’s operation. Yet, conditions unique to family firms may lead some family members to develop a heightened sense of entitlement and weaker bonds to the organization. This creates conditions for a Fredo effect, where a family member’s incompetence, opportunistic behaviors, and/or ethically dubious actions can impede the firm’s success, potentially resulting in a scandal that could lead (...) to the firm’s demise and negative economic impact on employees, customers, and other stakeholders. Surveying 147 family-firm members, we examine the role that linkages among perceptions of family harmony norms, distributive fairness, role ambiguity, and relationship conflict play in the emergence of a family member who acts as an impediment to the firm, which can be manifested in damaging unethical behaviors. As hypothesized, family harmony norms and fairness perceptions are negatively related to family impediment, while role ambiguity is positively related to family impediment. However, relationship conflict mediates these connections, underscoring the potential damage this type of conflict can create in a family firm, even if leaders of the firm attempt to establish conditions that reflect a stewardship approach to firm governance. We discuss how these findings impact the development of an ethical climate in the family firm and the implications for family business survival or scandal. (shrink)

Gadamer’s notion of dialogical truth relies on the claim that self and world “belong together” as aspects of a single, unitary phenomenon, one which is made manifest in language. This view has difficulty, however, accounting for that which is untruthful. To get past this obstacle I suggest that we turn to Nishida’s work, which shows how we can bring self and world together into a kind of harmony such that the cultivation of perception makes possible truthful expression.

Because theories of visual perception have traditionally concentrated on form, artists have generally dealt with the problem of color through their own observation and intuition. In _Color Harmonies,_ Augusto Garau systematically investigates the role of both color and form in visual perception and presents an original theory of the aesthetic relations among colors. Garau, a painter who teaches the psychology of form, pays particular attention to the way colors behave when organized in patterns. His theory of color combination (...) addresses two principal compositional elements: the relations between figure and ground and the phenomenon of transparency. Garau meticulously analyzes the use of color in paintings by masters such as Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse to show how his theory applies to actual works of art. Containing many full-color examples, his introduction to the workings of color relations is of great practical use to art historians and critics, artists, interior decorators, fashion and set designers, and anyone who works with color to display information or convey emotions. "In an area of the psychology of art where reliable guidance is still so hard to come by, [Garau's] well-supported contributions to the theory of color composition ought to be welcomed by practitioners and scholars alike."—from the Foreword by Rudolf Arnheim. (shrink)

Depuis la premiere edition de cet ouvrage en 1958, l'interet porte a la perception de la musique n'a cesse de croitre. Le domaine de recherche tel qu'il se presente aujourd'hui est, heureusement, degage des clivages institutionnels. Il associe psychologues, acousticiens, theoriciens de la musique, informaticiens, neuro-scientifiques et tous ceux qui contribuent au progres de cette discipline [...] L'ouvrage de R. Frances, par l'influence qu'il a exerce, est devenu un classique. Il analyse de maniere detaillee, entre autre, les effets de (...) l'harmonie tonale sur les perceptions des formes melodiques, le processus engage dans l'attribution d'une tonalite, et la representation abstraite des notes et de leur relation avec une tonalite. On y trouvera egalement plusieurs descriptions des differents effets melodiques sur la memoire et de la perception categoriale des notes et des intervalles, ainsi que de stimulantes discussion a propos des schemes melodiques et du role de l'attention dans la perception auditive. L'ouvrage respectte un equilibre judicieux entre les aspects culturels et les aspects biologiques de la question. Tandis qu'il insiste sur l'influence de la duree de l'ecoute et de la pratique du melomane sur la perception de la musique, R. Frances s'appuie sur la litterature concernant les amusies pour illustrer l'analyses des types d'abstractions cognitives executees pour l'auditeur. Prof. Diana Deutsch (Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego). (shrink)

Classic publishing of Eastern philosophy, religion, and poetry. This is a facsimile edition of the work originally published in London by John Murray in 1940.

Empirical evidence is reviewed indicating that the extraordinary aspects of the human mind are due to our species’ ability to go beyond simple “dyadic associations” and to process the relations among three items of information simultaneously. Classic explanations of the “triadic” nature of human skills have been advocated by various scholars in the context of the evolution of human cognition. Here I summarize the core processes as found in (i) the syntax of language, (ii) tool-usage, and (iii) joint attention. I (...) then review the triadic foundations of two perceptual phenomena of great importance in human aesthetics: (iv) harmony perception and (v) pictorial depth perception. In all five subfields of human psychology, most previous work has emphasized the recursive, hierarchical complexity of such “higher cognition,” but a strongly reductionist approach indicates that the core mechanisms are triadic. It is concluded that the cognitive skills traditionally considered to be “uniquely” human require three-way associational processing that most non-Primate animal species find difficult or impossible, but all members of Homo sapiens – regardless of small cultural differences – find easy and inherently intriguing. (shrink)

The teaching of akhlāq (moral values) in Islamic Education lessons is one of the important aspects in the Integrated Curriculum for Secondary Schools in Malaysia. Its purpose is to develop the potential of the individual in a holistic, balanced and integrated manner, encompassing the intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical aspects in order to create a balanced and harmonious human being with high moral standards. The aim of this article is to examine teachers' perceptions of the teaching of akhlāq at secondary (...) school level. Data were collected from 22 respondents about the process of teaching and learning akhlāq, the school environment and the internal and external factors that might influence the students' akhlāq. The study found that most of the Islamic Education teachers interviewed were satisfied with the process of teaching and learning akhlāq in their schools. Despite a few weaknesses in terms of implementation, they believed that school activities, religious activities and school regulations at their schools gave positive and significant contributions to the development of students' akhlāq. It was also found that peers, negative attitudes among some teachers, parents and local communities, the mass media, entertainment centres and the demands of jobs had negative influences on the students' akhlāq. (shrink)

The words “mind” and “matter” are used glibly, both by ordinary people and by philosophers, without any adequate attempt at definition. Philosophers are much to blame for this. My own feeling is that there is not a sharp line, but a difference of degree; an oyster is less mental than a man, but not wholly un-mental. And I think “ mental ” is a character, like “ harmonious ” or “ complicated,” that cannot belong to a single entity, but only (...) to a system of entities. But before defending this view, I wish to spend some time on traditional theories. (shrink)

James Shelley argues that the perception of beauty, as Hutcheson characterizes it, in the first of the two treatises that comprise the Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, that is, the Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, is not what I called in The Seventh Sense, ‘non-epistemic’ perception but, rather, ‘epistemic’ perception through and through. Having studied Shelley's arguments with care, and consulted the relevant primary sources yet again, I am still (...) convinced that the best reading of Hutcheson's second Inquiry, in the first edition of 1725, has Hutcheson espousing a non-epistemic account of our perception of what he calls ‘absolute beauty’. And so I argue in the present paper. (shrink)

This paper develops the implications of Spinoza’s invocation in chapter 6 of the traditional analogy between the oikos and the polis. Careful attention to this analogy reveals a number of interesting features of Spinoza’s political theory. Spinoza challenges the perception that absolute monarchy offers greater respite from the intolerable anxiety of the state of nature than does democracy. He acknowledges that people associate monarchical rule with peace and stability, but asserts that it can too easily deform its subjects. Unchallenged (...) monarchy may be credited with a certain order, “but if slavery, barbarism, and desolation are to be called peace, there can be nothing more wretched for mankind than peace.” This is all familiar to friends of Spinoza, but what kind of democracy is the alternative to those monarchies that tend toward despotism? It is a form of association that, he suggests, resembles a bitterly quarrelsome but nevertheless virtuous family. Thus, he admits that democratic, or popular, rule is typically turbulent and disorderly, but urges his reader to view contentions and disputes as a kind of salutary discord that preserves rather than threatens virtue. (shrink)

The aim of this text is to investigate if it is possible to attribute to Plato a dualistic conception of human nature, that is, whether the philosopher can be inscribed in the line of thinkers who establish the so-called “Mind-Body Problem”. In various passages of Platonic Dialogues we can see that the body and the soul constitute two different and quite incompatible natures. On the other hand, the relationship between body and soul is constitutive of human being and is unquestionable (...) in the act of perception. Our study develops in three moments. At a first time we explain the reasons why it is justified to claim that there is in Plato’s Dialogues a difference between soul and body; afterwards, we analyze the relationship between soul and body just as an essential attribute of human nature; we bring about the investigation with the analysis of the “Plato’s pineal gland”, specifically, the element that allow us to consider the liaison between soul and body as a “dual relationship”, that is, not as an undifferentiated unit, nor as a juxtaposition of elements unrelated to each other. Our proposal consists in showing that the mathematical structure, proportional, harmonic and musical crosses all reality: the cosmic body and soul, as well as the human body and soul. (shrink)

In this paper, the Internet of Things with intelligent face perception and processing function is used to supervise online English teaching. In the intelligent learning environment, learners mainly learn by watching the information presentation screen of the learning content, i.e., the learning screen, which is the main environment for learners to learn and is the main channel for information interaction between learners and the learning content. The color matching, layout, graphic decoration, and background texture of the learning screen have (...) a significant impact on learners’ emotions, interests, motivation, and effect in the learning process. On the contrary, the accurate identification of learners’ emotions is the basis for building a harmonious emotional interaction in the wisdom learning environment and is an important means to judge learners’ learning status, which is of great significance to promote learners’ wisdom learning. In addition to providing learners with personalized learning contents and learning paths, the learning images presented by the intelligent learning environment should also be compatible with learners’ emotional states and visual emotional preferences and can play a role in regulating and stimulating learners’ learning emotions. The system works well in the testing process, which verifies the feasibility, rationality, and effectiveness of our application of face perception to online teaching effectiveness monitoring, and can be combined with the old result-oriented effectiveness monitoring method for online teaching, with certain theoretical research significance and practical application value. (shrink)

The present study attempts to reconstruct Husserl’s account of empirical illusion and hallucination and disclose the significance of sense-deception in Husserl’s phenomenology. By clarifying the relation between the “leibhaftige presence” and “existence” of perceived objects, I shall be able to contend that illusion and hallucination are nullified, invalid perceptions. Non-existence or in-actuality is a form of invalidity: the Ungültigkeit of what demands its insertion in the totality of actual existence. Husserl elaborates an ex-negativo account of in-actuality, in which sensory deception (...) refers to a modal modification, which is always relative and contextual in relation to the total nexus of experience in its intersubjectively validated and harmonious unfolding. (shrink)

In the philosophical literature, it is customary to think of perception as being assessable with respect to epistemic norms. E.g., the whole discussion around disjunctivism, which is now often considered to be the dominant, if not the default position in philosophy of perception, is, by and large, framed and motivated by epistemological concerns about truth and falsity. This book argues that perception is normative in another, more fundamental sense. Perception is governed by norms that Doyon calls (...) perceptual, that is, immanent to its own structure. This does not mean that perceptual norms are cut-off from external facts; it rather means that they are constitutive moments of our experience of these facts. Perceptual norms are, in that sense, constitutive or enabling norms in that they establish what perception is. To articulate this view, he draws in the repertoire of the phenomenological tradition, in the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in particular. Like Kant, both phenomenologists were concerned with the question of the unity of experience and sought to identify the conditions of possibility for having a perception, which they conceive not as a mere sensible experience of the outer world, but as a continuous and meaningful experience of reality. Unlike Kant, however, neither phenomenologist immediately identified these conditions with cognition or epistemic criteria. For both phenomenologists, perception has its own standards, its own conditions of possibility. Perception obtains when it unfolds concordantly or coherently; and when the perceptual progression corresponds to or is in harmony with one's goal or interest, perception can also be said to be optimal. From the phenomenological point of view, concordance (Einstimmigkeit) and optimality (Optimalität) are the two basic perceptual norms governing over perceptual experience, and much of the book is devoted to clarifying their meaning and to address the philosophical consequences that follow from this insight. (shrink)

Sufficiently grounding the origin of sense-perceptions in the mind is an issue that has concerned philosophers for a long time, and remains an issue even today. In eighteenth-century Germany prior to the publication of Kant’s Critical philosophy, the two main competing theories to causally ground sense-perceptions were pre-established harmony and physical influx, the latter of which ultimately carried the day. A third option had been around in the seventeenth century: occasionalism. However, historians of philosophy believe this option to have (...) entirely disappeared in the eighteenth century. I will show that this is not the case. In this paper, I focus on one influential German occasionalist: Gottfried Ploucquet (1716–90). Ploucquet not only criticizes Leibniz’s theory of pre-established harmony for providing an ultimately ungrounded, subjective, and arbitrary account of the origin of sense-perceptions, but also presents his own daring alternative: a representationalist-occasionalist theory that locates the objective ground of sense-perceptions in the divine mind. (shrink)

The extremely rapid evolution of portable technologies and children's receptiveness to constantly accessing the latest information creates the conditions for a number of new developments in most areas of activity. Moreover, their attraction to real-time visualisation of various events and competitions projects a certain level of perception and imitation of certain behaviours. Therefore, special attention should be paid to them from the earliest stages, i.e., from the time they are selected to play various sports. Also, the complementarity of some (...) sports must be taken into account when it is desired to obtain positive results. Age group adaptation and the investigation of some of the parameters relevant to different age groups have generated values that can support positive outcomes in the long term and thus increase motivation to participate in sport at a competitive level. (shrink)

To say Early Confucians advocated the possession of a sense of shame as a means to moral virtue underestimates the tact and forethought they used successfully to mold natural dispositions to experience shame into a system of self, familial, and social governance. Shame represents an adaptive system of emotion, cognition, perception, and behavior in social primates for measurement of social rank. Early Confucians understood the utility of the shame system for promotion of cooperation, and they build and deploy cultural (...) modules – e.g., rituals, titles, punishments – with this in mind. These policies result in subtle alterations to components of the evolved shame system that are detectable in data form contemporary cross-cultural psychology that show that populations in the Confucian diaspora have a unique shame profile compared to Western and non-Western populations. The status of Confucian diaspora populations as outliers in the context of shame is partially explained by appeal to the cultural transmission and historical endurance of relevant Early Confucian cultural modules. (shrink)

Epidemiological studies of the last decade have shown a low prevalence of hypomania and bipolar I disorder in Western societies while pointing to a prevalence of unipolar mania in non-Western societies. This work seeks to investigate the explanatory role of the Stimmung concept to understand these differences, as much as the increase in the number of cases of mania in the West in the last two decades. It attempts to explore the relationship between the phenomenology of hypomania and its adaptation (...) to the atmosphere of its environment. Our hypothesis is that the experience of hypomania would be in harmony with the narrative of Western societies and with Stimmung (in the sense of the term used by Spitzer and Heidegger) of these societies. Finally, we will present a clinical case and analyzes of business leadership manuals that will illustrate the phenomenological relationship of Stimmung and mania, as well as its transformation in the sphere of work. (shrink)

In today’s age, we see the increasing influence of technology on people, which begs to raise the question: “Is society determined by technology?” Rising up within the constraints of each society, technology had its limitations, as it catered to the needs and interests of the masses. As society evolved, so did its requirements. We are at a stage where dependence on technology has gone through the roof with new innovations coming up in the sector, the rise of artificial intelligence, for (...) instance. Technology has replaced the concept of being a mere tool and is creating/demanding space of its own. With advancements in various fields like robotics which churn out machines that can mimic human behaviour and are equipped with anthropomorphic features, it has become rather difficult to view them as mere commodities waiting for one’s (human master’s) command. Keeping this in view, the paper primarily focuses on the relationship between society and technology, with special emphasis on artificial intelligence, through an analysis of the films Ra One (Bollywood), Android Kunjappan (Mollywood), and Ironman 3 (Hollywood). Secondarily, an experimental study was carried out to know the perception of the Engineering students, the future technologists, who are the stakeholders of the 21st-century technological world, with an aim to know their perception of technology and bring an awareness of the limitations of technology and its role in the creation of utopian and dystopian world. Finally, the paper examines the consequence of technological determinism and autonomy from a colonial perspective and intends to bring preparedness among the students to perceive technology conscious of its limitation and bring harmony between society and technology that leads towards building a utopian world. (shrink)

In nature scent is important for man primarily as a marker of food and sexual attractiveness, it polarizes as objects of life and decay, death. Scent, just like touch and taste exists till subject and object get opposed to each other, it is the sphere where body is included into material world, and flesh of the world is incrusted into the body. Aesthetics in its anthropologic meaning is limited by a body- perceptible dimension. Development of such categories as the sublime, (...) tragic, comic are not possible here. Creation of compound aromas, including those which do not exist in nature, can not overstep the limits of the beautiful- -ugly opposition. There is no contradiction, nourishing the comic, the tragic or the sublime, in blending of body with the world by means of scent. The spectrum of the aesthetic in the sphere of aromas is expanded in the plane from the beautiful to the ugly: fragrant, heady, amber, garlic, carpic, putrid, hideous, stinking. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 20th Century to the present day, it has rarely been doubted that whenever formal aesthetic methods meet their iconological counterparts, the two approaches appear to be mutually exclusive. In reality, though, an ahistorical concept is challenging a historical analysis of art. It is especially Susanne K. Langer´s long-overlooked system of analogies between perceptions of the world and of artistic creations that are dependent on feelings which today allows a rapprochement of these positions. Krois’s insistence on (...) a similar point supports this analysis. - I - Unbestritten bis heute gilt, formwissenschaftliche und ikonologische Methoden scheinen sich grundsätzlich auszuschließen, da die ersteren auf ahistorischen und die letzteren auf historischen Grundlagen aufbauen. Dem entgegen soll mit diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, wie insbesondere die Forschungen Susanne K. Langers und ergänzend diejenigen von John M. Krois eine Annäherung beider Positionen ermöglichen. (shrink)

This is a quantitative research study with a cross-sectional designand a survey approach to address the views of a large sample of youngpeople in relation to family responsibility in a society where East meets West.The survey results suggest that the sample hold relatively positive attitudestowards Chinese cultural values and family responsibility. The traditional valueof importance of family, filial piety and harmony with others were still stronglysupported by many young people. The findings further revealed that the morethe Chinese cultural values (...) the young people associated with, the more thepositive attitudes in family obligation they would have. However, globalinfluences which emphasize the right of freedom and to have personal choicemay have been at work too. There are implications for a matrix of policies tosupport young people in their transitions to adulthood. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the genesis of Kant’s conception of a realm of ends, arguing that Kant first started to think of morality in terms of striving to be a member of a realm of ends, understood as an ideal community, in the early 1760s, and that he was influenced in this by his encounter with the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. In 1766 Kant published Dreams of a Spirit Seer, a commentary on Swedenborg’s magnum opus, Heavenly Secrets. Most commentators (...) take Kant’s attitude towards Swedenborg to have been entirely negative, and argue that, at the most, Kant’s encounter with him had a purely negative impact on Kant’s development, inducing him to reject certain of his early metaphysical positions. I argue, in contrast, that Swedenborg had a positive influence on Kant’s development, particularly on his ethics, for Kant’s conception of a realm of ends is modeled on Swedenborg’s conception of heaven as a community of spirits governed by moral laws. (shrink)

Abstract This paper proposes a new phenomenological approach to social history by clarifying, critiquing and developing key insights from Husserl’s late work. First, it clarifies how Husserl began to refute phenomenology’s so-called solipsism and ahistoricality by advancing a concept of history that integrates subjective, intersubjective and communal organizations of experience. This concept, his “history of presence”, can be called a “temporal mode of oriented constitution”. Its value is to show how a single recursive series of determinations organizes a diverse set (...) of epistemic norms, personal memories, and intersubjective apperceptions. As we analyze each moment of this series, the history of presence emerges as highly relevant to social inquiry, inasmuch as it highlights the roles of intersubjective awareness and shared “world-time”. Second, however, the paper shows that Husserl grounded his history, not in this self-other-world triad, but in metaphysical foundations. By falling back on an atemporal principle of identity, Husserl’s thirst for Cartesian certainty obscured some of his insights. To develop these, the paper concludes with a new look at Les maîtres fous, a famous and controversial ethnographic film by Jean Rouch. Much of Rouch’s film echoes Husserl’s own problems, but Rouch’s use of montage replaces metaphysics with rhythm, identity with alterity, hegemony with mimicry, harmonious perception with dissonant yet generative apperception. Thus, Rouch dramatizes Husserl’s relevance to the phenomenology of social history. This paper’s internal critique and cross-cultural juxtaposition of Husserl’s late work portrays such relevance more accurately than Derrida’s uncharitable “metaphysics of presence” critique. (shrink)

The harmonious free play of the imagination and understanding is at the heart of Kant’s account of beauty in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, but interpreters have long struggled to determine what Kant means when he claims the faculties are in a state of free play. In this article, I develop an interpretation of the free play of the faculties in terms of the freedom of attention. By appealing to the different way that we attend to objects in (...) aesthetic experience, we can explain how the faculties are free, even when the subject already possesses a concept of the object and is bound to the determinate form of the object in perception. (shrink)

Mathematics and music in practice and performance, and in learning and teaching, share many characteristics, such as beauty and harmony, memory and intuition and mind or intellect. These raise the principles of processing information in mathematics and music and, by implication, the role of an acquaintance with the essentials of perception, abstraction and affective connaturality in teacher education. This paper compares mathematics and music and considers the acquisition of knowledge and skills through the external and internal senses and (...) emotions, utilizing the role of knowledge through multiple intelligences. In doing so it does not canvas the utilities of mathematics and music as fields of human endeavour so much as their role in the cultivation of serenity and knowledge in the cultured mind. This is a theoretical paper but it is based on nearly a century of teaching from the combined work of the two authors in the teaching of music and mathematics. The paper highlights the importance of inspiration in teaching, inspiration built on a thorough basis of the foundations of anthropology to include the emotions as well as the intellect. While teacher education programs rightly concern themselves with knowledge of the field of study, knowledge of pedagogy, they do not always consider the ability to inspire which is at the heart of managing and mentoring people. (shrink)

Western perceptions of Russia have a long history, starting from the earliest reports in the fifteenth century. For some Westerners Russia appeared as a utopian, harmonious society. For others it appeared as an ideal monarchy. Some, however, saw it as a despotic Asian state. The Western images of Russia from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries were thus mixed and ambiguous. The positive image of Russia as the ideal Biblical society that stood outside of history somewhat blurred the differences between (...) Russia and the West. In contrast, for an increasing number of Westerners, especially from the more advanced proto-capitalist countries, Russia was part of the non-Western world, thus emphasizing its difference from the West. Russia was thus assimilated into the Western image of the Orient where repulsion combined with fascination, until, under the impact of Romanticism in the nineteenth century, its foreignness was articulated in terms of civilizational and religious differences. (shrink)

To grasp the truth in traditional Chinese classics, we need to uncover the long obscured "xiang" 象 (image) thinking, which has long been overshadowed by Occidentalism, "xiang thinking" is the most fundamental thought of human beings. The logic of linguistics all comes from "xiang thinking". Through conceptual thinking, people can understand Western classics on metaphysics, yet they may not completely understand the various schools of Chinese classics. The difference between Chinese and Western ways of thinking originated in the difference of (...) the basic views developed in the "Axial period". Since Aristotle, Western metaphysical ideas have all been manifested in substantiality, objectivity, and being ready-made, whereas Chinese Taiji, Dao, Xin-xing, and Zen were manifested in the non-substantiality, non-objectivity, and non-ready-made-ness of a dynamic whole. To grasp substance, rational and logical thinking such as definition, judgment, and reasoning is necessary. On the other hand, to grasp Taiji, Dao, etc., which is a dynamic whole or non-substances, "xiang thinking", which is related to perception and rich in poetic association, is essential. History has taught us a lesson, i.e., when we opened the window to logical thought, we closed that of "xiang thinking". We should remember the words of Xu Guangqi, i.e., "To mingle harmoniously and understand thoroughly so as to excel". /// 重新打开被西方中心论长期遮蔽的 "象思维" 是把握中国传统经典本真的 需要。"象思维" 是人类最本原的思维。语言逻辑部经过 "象思维" 孕育而产生。 用概念思维可以透彻解读西方形上学经典，却未必能透彻解读中国诸家经典。中西 两种思维的不同，源于在 "轴心时期" 产生的基本理念的不同。西方形上学理念从 亚里士多德以降均为不同实体，显示为实体性、对象性、现成性。而中国的太极、 道、心性、禅则显示为动态整体的非实体性、非对象性、非现成性。把握实体，需 要用理性的、逻辑的概念思维，如定义、判断、推理等。而把握动态整体或非实体 的太极、道等，则需要用悟性的、诗意联想的 "象思维"。历史的经验教训是:在我 们打开逻辑概念思维这扇窗户时，却错误地关闭了 "象思维" 这扇窗户。我们应记 住徐光启的箴言 "会通以超胜"。. (shrink)

Proponents of enactivism should be interested in exploring what notion of action best captures the type of action-perception link that the view proposes, such that it covers all the aspects in which our doings constitute and are constituted by our perceiving. This article proposes and defends the thesis that the notion of sensorimotor dependencies is insufficient to account for the reality of human perception, and that the central enactive notion should be that of perceptual practices. Sensorimotor enactivism is (...) insufficient because it has no traction on socially dependent perceptions, which are essential to the role and significance of perception in our lives. Since the social dimension is a central desideratum in a theory of human perception, enactivism needs a notion that accounts for such an aspect. This article sketches the main features of the Wittgenstein-inspired notion of perceptual practices as the central notion to understand perception. Perception, I claim, is properly understood as woven into a type of social practices that includes food, dance, dress, music, etc. More specifically, perceptual practices are the enactment of culturally structured, normatively rich techniques of commerce of meaningful multi- and inter-modal perceptible material. I argue that perceptual practices explain three central features of socially dependent perception: attentional focus, aspects’ saliency, and modal-specific harmony-like relations. (shrink)

Lorsque Rousseau, au livre IV de l’Emile, distingue entre les objets physiques et les objets moraux du goût, il généralise les arguments produits depuis 1749dans les nombreux textes consacrés à la musique, sur la priorité de la mélodie sur l’harmonie. S’il est bien clair que, dans son anthropologie, toute la force de la musique repose sur l’imitation dont le chant est en charge, il s’avère néanmoins essentiel de s’interroger sur les modalités selon lesquelles une philosophie de l’expression musicale peut thématiser (...) les déterminations matérielles de son objet. Ainsi Rousseau, lorsqu’il doit faire droit à la façon dont l’harmonie concourt d’elle-même, comme « chose physique », aux grands effets de la musique, est-il conduit à réviser les principes gnoséologiques de la dichotomie tranchée qu’il a mise en place, afin de penser les conditions effectives de la perception musicale. (shrink)

This article aims to offer a thorough and new account of the components of Leibniz’s theory of pre-established harmony, understood as an explanation of the unity among all substances. It argues for a formulation of the theory in terms of six complementary components, developing interpretations of them along with critical discussions of other interpretations found in the Leibniz literature. The paper shows that, as they have been presented so far, interpretations of pre-established harmony have almost universally omitted one (...) of its key components, namely Leibniz’s construal of intrinsic force as representational power. Once this is established, the article offers a novel interpretation of the relationship between representational power and the harmony among substances. Particularly, it is argued that, correctly understood, the representation of all substances among themselves entails, or is sufficient for, their harmony. (shrink)

Since nothing about God is passive, and the perception of pain is inherently passive, then it seems that God does not know what it is like to experience pain. Nor would he be able to cause us to experience pain, for his experience would then be a sensation (which would require God to have senses, which he does not). My suggestion is that Berkeley avoids this situation by describing how God knows about pain “among other things” (i.e. as something (...) whose identity is intelligible in terms of the integrated network of things). This avoids having to assume that God has ideas (including pain) apart from his willing that there be perceivers who have specific ideas that are in harmony or not in harmony with one another. (shrink)

This article examines the neo-Confucian response to the question, “How to achieve the state of oneness,” as put forth by Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao. While both philosophers achieve this state through internal affectivity, their interpretations diverge significantly. Cheng Yi views internal affectivity as an inherent goodness that emanates from the pre-manifested mind but warns against emotional instability and desires. He thus rejects the notion of “teaching benevolence through perception.” (yijue xunren) and instead emphasizing the primacy of the unmanifested (...) mind in attaining oneness. Conversely, Cheng Hao stresses the inward perception of bodily sensations and supports “teaching benevolence through perception.” He argues that through sensory arousal and the transformation of vital energy, the mind and body can achieve harmony, thereby embodying the benevolence present in “heaven, earth, and all things.” This divergence in their approaches to oneness reflects their differing responses to Buddhism and contrasting views on human nature. (shrink)

This book is a synthesis of more than three decades of research into the concept of time and its semiotic nature. If traditional philosophy – and philosophy of time should be no exception – in the shadow of advancing biology can be said to have reached an impasse, one important reason for this, in harmony with Wittgenstein’s vision, appears to have been its lack of appropriate tools for explicating language. The present theory of time proceeds, accordingly, from the exploration (...) of temporal expressions in language as an evolutionary fact. It derives in a hypothetical, coherent feedback process of hierarchically ordered distinctions the semantics of time from its biologically dictated perceptual and cognitive-pragmatic origins. The corresponding abductive-regulative model is anchored in the assumption of biological rhythmization as the very foundation of perception and mental/physical action. Understood to originate in space and spatial perspective, time reveals itself as an instrument for temporal perspective on motion (events and situations) in a process of analysis, i.e., discontinuation of chaos made divisible and continuous by the rhythmical screen. Whereas traditional philosophy of time paid attention almost exclusively to the temporal category of tense, the biopragmatic model sees strong evidence in the perspectival nature of time for ascribing the decisive, and probably universal, role in temporal analysis to the linguistic category of aspect. Aspect may, according to the present findings, be assumed to partake already of change-of-state and cause-effect analysis without which man’s adaptation to new situations – and precondition for survival – would be inconceivable. The proposed model of space/time cognition, inspired by Hegelian dialectics, Heidegger-Gadamer’s hermeneutic circle and Peircean logic, makes Kantian a priori superfluous and liberates time from its enigmatic appearance. For the first time in temporal studies it thus appears possible to derive hypothetically linguistic expressions of time all the way from pretemporal, homogeneous continuity effected by biological rhythmization, via pretemporal metonymic (Gestalt), chunk-wise partitioning – as a general precondition for the perception and, based on primary metaphorization, the cognition of things, space and motion – to temporal analysis/discontinuation proper, primarily by aspectual perspective, and the subsequent synthesized, heterogeneous continuity of temporally ordered events. The conception of time, so disastrous for modern temporal logic, i.e., as moving object assigned extension, divisible continuity (‛linearity’) and direction, can be shown to have emerged as a result of secondary metaphorization. (shrink)

Mind was the oneness of form and function. The change from an old theory to a new one about zhong 中 (the mean) and he 和 (harmony) was a shift from the idea of the separate form of nature and function of mind to one about both form and function of mind. Form was both the form of the spirit of the mind and of the substantiality of nature (not the same as substantial realities in substantialism); it was the (...) integration of vacancy and substantiality, the integration of mind and nature. In contrast, function meant both feelings and perceiving action. It was infeasible to interpret function without reference to form; likewise, it was impractical to talk about perception without mentioning nature. On the other hand, a knower represented nature through concrete things and his actions, and a perceiver enlightened himself, realizing the self-consciousness of nature as a whole. Mind, nature, and perception could be interpreted as a whole, and these three could be separated too. Viewed in general, mind, nature, and principles were oneness; observed separately, nature differed with principles: nature meant principles, but perception was the quintessence of qi. The unfolding of perception, however, had its independence, and could be easily influenced by qi; thus, it was necessary to transform and cultivate qi-related temperament. Realistically, a man needs to face up to himself and to transform himself, and this sentiment is inspiring for today. (shrink)

A person listening to music can be said to “hear space” in two senses: metaphorically, when the musical features of a composition, such as melody, harmony or rhythm, evoke a space (e.g., if she hears a “rising” melodic line) or suggest abstract concepts related to an imaginary spatial scene; and literally, when she perceives spatial information relating to sound sources and the spatial region where they are located. In this paper I will analyze the way we perceive space when (...) listening to music, focusing on the experience of physical space. I will apply a model of the way we experience non-musical (or environmental) sound sources to the perception of musical sound sources. I will argue that our experience of musical and non-musical sound sources involve similar perception of the spatial properties of sounds sources, by applying a specific model of spatial experience of non-musical sound sources to some musical compositions which exemplify different roles of space as an aesthetic tool, I will argue that our experience of musical and non-musical sound sources involve similar perception of the spatial properties of sound sources. Accordingly I will suggest that if we want to capture the difference between musical experience and the auditory experience of non-musical sounds with relation to space, we should probably focus on the experience of metaphorical space. (shrink)

According to Hermann von Helmholtz, sensations are signs that external causes impress on our sense organs; those signs are then used by the mind to acquire knowledge of the reality. Helmholtz's work points out the difficulty of defining a notion of causality suitable for explaining the relation between sensations on the one hand and the physical world on the other. In fact, he states that: 1) Physical stimuli, understood as the causal origins of sensations, are unknowable in themselves; 2) There (...) is no empirical evidence for the kind of causality from which sensations originate; 3) A transcendental causality is nothing but the urge of the intellect to know everything. It is necessary to keep in mind that Helmholtz is a committed empiricist : therefore, he believes that all knowledge originates from sensations. He tries avoiding commitments with any kind of pre-established harmony between the two sides of the causal relation. That is to say, sensible perceptions give us information about the peculiarities of the external world, but the relation between sensations and the reality should be explained and should not be taken for granted. In this paper, I study Helmholtz's struggles with providing a suitable explanation of that relation; in doing so, I also make use of Emile Du Bois-Reymond's work concerning the limits of human understanding, and in particular the transcendent difficulty of grasping the origins of sensations. (shrink)

will give an overview of the fascinating communication between G. W. Leibniz and Pierre Bayle on pre-established harmony and sudden change in the soul which started from Bayle’s footnote H to the article “Rorarius” in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) and ended in 1706 with Bayle’s death. I will compare the views presented in the communication to Leibniz’s reflections on the soul in his partly concurrent Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (1704) and argue that many topics in the (...) communication with Bayle are discussed with more details in Nouveaux essais. I also argue that the communication helped Leibniz to respond to Locke’s views concerning uneasiness in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, xxi. Bayle himself, however, was not able to completely understand Leibniz’s views on spontaneity as he was unaware of the contents of the Nouveaux essais, especially the systematic role of petites perceptions in Leibniz’s philosophy of mind. I will also reflect on whether the controversy could have ended in agreement if it would have continued longer. (shrink)

Ancient Chinese history holds a quality which has syncretized traditional thought with its cultural wealth unified of mystical and mythological figures in the background. Such that classical documents, which had begun to be written before Common Era, has directly influenced the political regime, education system and status of society in China. One of the most prominent features of these works is to propound collective knowledge about perception of cosmology, attitudes to earthiness, community standards, policy and morality. Among Five Classics (...) works of these masterpieces of Chinese philosophy, Book of Changes which stands closest to metaphysical narrative, mainly consists of the texts about prophecy. While this piece of work had been referred as a divination guide in Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC), it turned into a cosmological text that included a range of philosophical commentary during Warring States Period (475-221 BC). The mainstay of this remarkable change is the direct correlation of all the concepts and terms that characterize the worldly beyond along with the relevant text, especially yin-yang dualism, which symbolizes an extraordinary harmony in early Chinese thought. Traditional idea suggests reciprocity in which heaven, earth and man are interconnected to maintain natural order. However, the superiority attributed to human beings also brings compulsive responsibilities to idealize a compatible society. This paper aims to discuss influences of cosmological and anthropological items on human behaviors explained in prescriptive perspective. (shrink)