Although we find the idea of representation by similarities attractive as such, we have two main objections to the specific proposal of Edelman. First, he does not consider complexity issues in terms of storage and speed of recall for recognition. Related to this, the appearance of objects depends on far more factors than just shape, illumination, and pose. This requires an intermediate shape abstraction process that extracts category-specific shape properties from the mixed appearance of images.

pp. 79–103 The idea of utility in Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments Rosen, F.

Collecting papers read at a conference with the same title at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, in 1997, the present volume bears eloquent witness to the growing interest in idealistic philosophy. In his introduction, the editor, Bill Mander, provides historical sketches of the idealists covered, but the historical scholarship signalled by the title is interwoven throughout with — mostly idealist — philosophizing in the present. Staying short for the most part of broader historical perspectives, some papers highlight important aspects of the (...) intellectual context in which idealism, as reconsidered today, necessarily finds itself, and point to its possible contributions, while others continue an idealistic discourse very much on its own terms. Properly enough in the idealistic context however, most of the contributors seem to be aware that history and present philosophizing cannot be wholly separated. If they do not directly address it, most contributions at least illustrate abundantly what is presently, and what was during the historical period covered, taking place on the modern scene as set by broader and deeper cultural forces, the proper understanding of which, as will soon become clear, I think in some cases holds a key to the assessment of important aspects of their subject-matter. Mention will be made of all papers, but since in-depth analyses of each are here impossible, while being in this case at the same time desirable, I choose to discuss about one third of the contributions in greater detail. (shrink)

As a philosopher rather than a historian, Phillip Ferreira tends naturally, in his article in this issue of The Pluralist, "On the Imperviousness of Persons," as in his first one on The Worldview of Personalism, to place the emphasis quite as much on the general philosophical issues as on the specific historical interpretation of Pringle-Pattison. But this emphasis was from the beginning invited by my own assessment of Pringle-Pattison. I will continue here to answer Ferreira to a considerable extent in (...) its terms, but, as a historian rather than a philosopher, I will try to use arguments which, based on my historical knowledge of them, I think would have been those of Pringle-Pattison and the other personal .. (shrink)

Personalism is understood today as the name of an important current in twentieth-century thought which, inspired by the Christian and humanistic traditions of the West, has sought to deepen our understanding of the meaning and value of human personhood. Opposing both individualism and collectivism, personalism has stressed the uniqueness of each person, the meaning and value of interpersonal relations, and the unity that holds persons together and is, ultimately, also personal in itself: the person of God. Personalism's insights into the (...) nature of personhood have broad implications for our view of ethics, politics, education, and religion. The history of personalism has, however, been poorly understood. Jan Olof Bengtsson shows that personalism began as early as the eighteenth century and was a central, international current of thought throughout the nineteenth century - that it was, in fact, more characteristic of the nineteenth century than of the twentieth. (shrink)

As regular readers of The Pluralist are aware, there appeared in 2008 an issue devoted to Jan Olof Bengtsson's The Worldview of Personalism.1 The issue included five articles, each concerned with a different aspect of the book; and after each article, there was a "Reply" by Bengtsson. In what follows, I shall say something about Bengtsson's reply to my own contribution, "Absolute and Personal Idealism." However, first let me briefly describe that article's argument.In "Absolute and Personal Idealism," I examined (...) the personalist attack on absolutism as formulated by Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison in two works: Hegelianism and Personality and The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy. In the first section of .. (shrink)

La Vita di Filareto il Misericordioso, un testo agiografico di grande interesse storico e letterario, oggetto di riscritture e traduzioni, fu edita per la prima volta nel 1900 da Vasiliev, dal Paris. gr. 1510 (V). Nonostante la maggiore antichità del codice (X secolo), quella di V risultò in seguito una versione secondaria rispetto alla versione edita nel 1934 da Fourmy e Leroy, tratta dai codici Genuensis Urbanus 34 (G) dell'XI secolo e Paris. gr. 1608 (P) del XIV secolo, e riedita (...) ora da Lennart Rydén, recentemente scomparso. Le altre versioni dell'opera sono oggetto di uno studio, di cui è annunciata la pubblicazione, da parte di Jan Olof Rosenqvist. (shrink)

The British idealists of the late 19th and early 20th century are best known for their contributions to metaphysics, logic, and political philosophy. Yet they also made important contributions to social and public policy, social and moral philosophy and moral education, as shown by this volume. Their views are not only important in their own right, but also bear on contemporary discussion in public policy and applied ethics. Among the authors discussed are Green, Caird, Ritchie, Bradley, Bosanquet, Jones, McTaggart, Pringle-Pattison, (...) Webb, Ward, Mackenzie, Hetherington, Muirhead, Collingwood and Oakeshott. The writings of idealist philosophers from Canada, South Africa, and India are also examined. Contributors include Avital Simhony, Darin Nesbitt, Carol A. Keene, Stamatoula Panagakou, David Boucher, Leslie Armour, Jan Olof Bengtsson, Thom Brooks, James Connelly, Philip MacEwen, Efraim Podoksik, Elizabeth Trott and William Sweet. (shrink)

In the debate about actions in virtual environments two interdependent types of question have been pondered: What is a person doing who acts in a virtual environment? Second, can virtual actions be evaluated morally? These questions have been discussed using examples from morally dubious computer games, which seem to revel in atrocities. The examples were introduced using the terminology of “virtual murder” “virtual rape” and “virtual pedophilia”. The terminological choice had a lasting impact on the debate, on the way action (...) types are assigned and on how moral evaluation is supposed to be conducted. However, this terminology and its theoretical consequences, while sometimes resulting in correct results, lead to absurd results when applied across the board. It will be suggested that these absurd consequences can be avoided by a different answer to the question what people in virtual worlds are doing. Alleged virtual actions are first and foremost the creation and modification of data-structures and the resulting output in computer hardware. Such modifications of data structure and imagery can be performed with different intentions, purposes and styles, which will influence the type and moral evaluation of a user’s actions. This reinterpretation allows for a more complex analysis of the moral reasons for praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of actions in virtual environments. This analysis takes not just harm and effects on character into account but the peculiar ways in which speech acts can be morally wrong: e.g. agitatory, deceptive, bullshitting. (shrink)

This paper develops elements of a phenomenological account of how interpersonal care contributes to the structure of intentionality. It does so by reflecting on a first-person account of parental grief by the poet and thinker Denise Riley. Her autobiographical notes on the aftermath of the death of her adult son revolve around a marked experience of altered temporal flow. By relating what she considers to be an almost unspeakable alteration in her experience of time, Riley unearths a level of nuanced (...) phenomenological reflection that can inform philosophical studies of lived time and intentionality. The paper will build on Riley's observations on altered temporal experience in grief to explore the entanglement of temporality and intersubjectivity in the constitution of intentionality. By doing so, the paper demonstrates that and how a phenomenological study of grief can directly speak to key concerns of the philosophy of mind and of interdisciplinary consciousness studies. (shrink)

Complex vocal learning, the capacity to imitate new sounds, underpins the evolution of animal vocal cultures and song dialects and is a key prerequisite for human speech and song. Due to its relevance for the understanding of cultural evolution and the biology and evolution of language and music, the trait has gained much scholarly attention. However, while we have seen tremendous progress with respect to our understanding of its morphological, neurological and genetic aspects, its peculiar phylogenetic distribution has remained elusive. (...) Intriguingly, animals as distinct as hummingbirds and humpback whales share well-developed vocal learning capacity in common with humans, while this ability is quite limited in nonhuman primates. Yet, solving this ‘vocal learning conundrum’ may shed light on the constraints ancestral humans overcame to unleash their vocal capacities. To this end I consider major constraints and functions that have been proposed. I highlight an especially promising ecological constraint, namely the spatial dimensionality of the environment. Based on an informal comparative review, I suggest that complex vocal learning is associated with three-dimensional habitats such as air and water. I argue that this is consistent with recent theoretical advances—i.e., the coercion-avoidance and dimensionality hypotheses—and with the long-standing hypothesis that mate choice is a major driver of the evolution and origin of complex vocal learning. However, I stress that multiple functions may apply and that quantitative phylogenetic comparative methods should be employed to finally resolve the issue. (shrink)

We construct bounded degree acyclic Borel graphs with large Borel chromatic number using a graph arising from Ramsey theory and limits of expander sequences.

This chapter considers four areas in the differences between Vygotsky's concept of reason and ‘Enlightenment rationality’ in its familiar characterisation. These areas cover: (1) foundationalism and anti‐foundationalism, (2) the conception of science, (3) the conception of development and (4) idealism and materialism. The last is developed more by Ilyenkov, although, given its Hegelian and Spinozist provenance, it can be reasonably interpreted as part of the general direction of Vygotsky's work. Two indications of the importance of Hegel for understanding Vygotsky are: (...) first, the absence of an unbridgeable epistemological chasm between thought and world, and second, the conception of development as a non‐linear process embedded in historical resources. Marx's and Hegel's ideas of history and development influenced every aspect of Vygotsky's thinking on concepts. Vygotsky's work provides no blueprint for teachers and educational administrators, but it does provide a frame of ideas within which questions concerning education can fruitfully be pursued. (shrink)

In recent years, the problem of value has been drastically pushed away towards the periphery of the discipline of literary studies. More and more, this fact has come to be experienced as a source of frustration and misunderstandings.1 In this article, I would like to show the great extent to which a value-oriented approach is in fact inevitable. By the same token, however, I will also indicate the disturbing ambiguities that the consideration of the value-dimension may reveal. The example I (...) will use for my demonstration, the case of the French photographic novel , is fairly straightforward , but at the same time it betrays my slightly polemical intentions, since this genre is undoubtedly held in low esteem both within and without the domain of literary scholarship.It seems reasonable to assume that our twentieth century, with its turbulent successions of competing fashions and trends, has radically affected the concept of value, that is, the dialectical game of valorization and devalorization. The notion of value has of course become subject to “devaluations” on the content-level, as the mixtures and the instabilities of the criteria called on clearly lattest.2 In addition—and more important—value has been disobjectified, that is, snatched from the object of the judgment and located on the side of the judging subject. Jan Baetens teaches French at the Vlaamse Economische Hogeschool . He is the author of three books: Aux frontiers du récit: “Fable” de Robert Pinget comme “nouveau nouveau roman” ; Hergé écrivain: microlectures de Tintin ; and Les Mesures de l’excès: notes pour un traverse de “Eglogues” de Renaud Camus et al. . He is currently at work on the various aspects of grammatextuality in literature and the comics. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, it explores the extent to which diversity of connectivity or the connection through multiple internet access points may facilitate online privacy behavior. Second, it explains the diversity of connectivity-online privacy behavior link in terms of information literacy. Design/methodology/approach Situated in the context of urban poor youth in the Philippines, this paper used a quantitative approach, specifically an interview-administered survey technique. Respondents were from three cities in Metro Manila. To test for indirect (...) relationship, survey data were analyzed using bootstrapping technique via SPSS macro PROCESS. Findings Urban poor youth with diversified connection to the internet engaged in online privacy behavior. The more the youth are connected to the internet through diverse modalities, the more this fosters cautious online privacy behavior. In addition, information literacy explained how diversity of connectivity facilitated online privacy behavior. It suggests that differences in online privacy behavior may result from the extent of basic know-how of navigating online information. In the context of the urban poor in the Global South, the youth are constantly negotiating ways to not only connect to the internet but also acquire digital skills necessary for protective online behaviors. Originality/value To date, this is one of the few papers to contribute to conversations about online privacy among youth in the Global South. It broadens the literature on social determinants of online privacy behavior that is crucial for designing policy interventions for those in the margins. (shrink)

The identification of Smad proteins as molecular components of the transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) signaling cascade has enhanced our understanding of how ligand-mediated activation of TGF-β receptors leads to modulation of target gene transcription. Recent studies have identified a distinct, structurally related class of Smads which inhibits, rather than transduces, TGF-β family signals. The molecular mechanism of action and the exact signaling pathways that are targeted by antagonistic Smads are not completely understood. These proteins appear to participate in autoregulatory negative (...) feedback loops in which signaling initiated by specific TGF-β family ligands induces the expression of an inhibitory Smad that then functions to modulate the amplitude or duration of signaling. Negative feedback circuits such as these play important roles in fine-tuning the activity of multifunctional signaling molecules during embryonic patterning and in response to pathologic stimuli in adults. BioEssays 21:382–390, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Introduced with the hope of reducing refereeing errors and increasing “football justice”, the Video Assistant Referee has attracted much criticism from players and spectators alike. Drawing o...