Introduction -- Image in contemporary culture -- Language, thought and image -- The many faces of the image -- The anatomy of the poetic image -- The architectural image.

This paper discusses how the association learning principle works for supporting acquisition of basic spelling and reading skills using digital game-based learning environment with the Finland-based GraphoLearn technology. This program has been designed and validated to work with early readers of different alphabetic writing systems using repetition and reinforcing connections between spoken and written units. Initially GL was developed and found effective in training children at risk of reading disorders in Finland. Today GL training has been shown to support learning (...) decoding skills among children independent of whether they face difficulties resulting from educational, social, or biological reasons. (shrink)

Abstract Timothy Williamson has recently proposed to undermine modal skepticism by appealing to the reducibility of modal to counterfactual logic ( Reducibility ). Central to Williamson’s strategy is the claim that use of the same non-deductive mode of inference ( counterfactual development , or CD ) whereby we typically arrive at knowledge of counterfactuals suffices for arriving at knowledge of metaphysical necessity via Reducibility. Granting Reducibility, I ask whether the use of CD plays any essential role in a Reducibility-based reply (...) to two kinds of modal skepticism. I argue that its use is entirely dispensable, and that Reducibility makes available replies to modal skeptics which show certain propositions to be metaphysically necessary by deductive arguments from premises the modal skeptic accepts can be known. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9784-4 Authors Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, Wolfson College, Oxford University, Oxford, OX2 6UD UK Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

I want to show the importance of the notion of conatus for Hobbes' political philosophy. According to Hobbes, all motion of bodies consists of elementary motions he called 'endeavors.' They are motions 'made in less space and time than can be given,' and they obey the law of persistence or inertia. A body strives to preserve its state and resist the causal power of other bodies. I call this the conatus-principle. Hobbes' argument for social contract and sovereign is based essentially (...) on this model. He proves that the natural conatus makes people strive to preserve their lives and therefore to get out of the destructive state of nature; commit to mutual contracts; keep the contracts unless some external cause otherwise determines; and establish a permanent sovereign power that Hobbes calls 'an artificial eternity of life.' All this is determined by the fundamental laws of nature, essentially, by the conatus-principle. I also show that the Prisoner's Dilemma interpretation of the Hobbesian state of nature does not represent all of the essential features of Hobbes' argument. (shrink)

David Lewis [2] suggests that an adequate inductive method should be immodest, i.e. recommend itself as at least as accurate as any of its rivals. On this basis he works out a solution to the intricate problem of choosing among Carnap's λ-methods. Lewis himself points out certain undesirable consequences of his solution. I will argue that the solution breaks down for a more general reason than that indicated by Lewis; like other procedures for estimating degrees of belief I am familiar (...) with, it overlooks the component of lawlikeness of inductive situations. This is not to object to the requirement of immodesty; I only want to draw attention to certain assumptions which Lewis makes in deriving his equations and which seem to be unjustified. (shrink)

DNA polymerase epsilon is a mammalian polymerase that has a tightly associated 3′→5′ exonuclease activity. Because of this readily detectable exonuclease activity, the enzyme has been regarded as a form of DNA polymerase delta, an enzyme which, together with DNA polymerase alpha, is in all probability required for the replication of chromosomal DNA. Recently, it was discovered that DNA polymerase epsilon is both catalytically and structurally distinct from DNA polymerase delta. The most striking difference between the two DNA polymerases is (...) that processive DNA synthesis by DNA polymerase delta is dependent on proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), a replication factor, while DNA polymerase epsilon is inherently processive. DNA polymerase epsilon is required at least for the repair synthesis of UV‐damaged DNA. DNA polymerases are highly conserved in eukaryotic cells. Mammalian DNA polymerases alpha, delta and epsilon are counterparts of yeast DNA polymerases I, III and II, respectively. Like DNA polymerases I and III, DNA polymerase II is also essential for the viability of cells, which suggests that DNA polymerase II (and epsilon) may play a role in DNA replication. (shrink)

In our culture, intelligence, emotions and embodied intuitions continue to be seen as separate categories. The body is regarded as a medium of identity as well as social and sexual appeal, but neglected as the ground of embodied existence and silent knowledge, or the full understanding of the human condition. Prevailing educational and pedagogic practices also still separate the mental and intellectual capacities from emotions and the senses, and the multifarious dimensions of human embodiment.

This collection of essays discusses a central feature of European philosophy: the idea of a universal active power as the ultimate world-explanation.

This article surveys recent developments in the epistemology of modality.

The concept of being in a position to know is an increasingly popular member of the epistemologist’s toolkit. Some have used it as a basis for an account of propositional justification. Others, following Timothy Williamson, have used it as a vehicle for articulating interesting luminosity and anti-luminosity theses. It is tempting to think that while knowledge itself does not obey any closure principles, being in a position to know does. For example, if one knows both p and ‘If p then (...) q’, but one dies or gets distracted before being able to perform a modus ponens on these items of knowledge and for that reason one does not know q, one is still plausibly in a position to know q. It is also tempting to suppose that, while one does not know all logical truths, one is nevertheless in a position to know every logical truth. Putting these temptations together, we get the view that being in a position to know has a normal modal logic. A recent literature has begun to investigate whether it is a good idea to give in to these twin temptations—in particular the first one. That literature assumes very naturally that one is in a position to know everything one knows and that one is not in a position to know things that one cannot know. It has succeeded in showing that, given the modest closure condition that knowledge is closed under conjunction elimination, being a position to know cannot satisfy the so-called K axiom of normal modal logics. In this paper, we explore the question of the normality of the logic of being in a position to know in a more far-reaching and systematic way. Assuming that being in a position to know entails the possibility of knowing and that knowing entails being in a position to know, we can demonstrate radical failures of normality without assuming any closure principles at all for knowledge. Moreover, the failure of normality cannot be laid at the door of the K axiom for knowledge, since the standard principle NEC of necessitation also fails for being in a position to know. After laying out and explaining our results, we briefly survey the coherent options that remain. (shrink)

This book explores the shared experiential ground of cinema, art, and architecture. Pallasmaa carefully examines how the classic directors Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Andrei Tarkovsky used architectural imagery to create emotional states in their movies. He also explores the startling similarities between the landscapes of painting and those of movies.

The epistemology of modality has focused on metaphysical modality and, more recently, counterfactual conditionals. Knowledge of kinds of modality that are not metaphysical has so far gone largely unexplored. Yet other theoretically interesting kinds of modality, such as nomic, practical, and ‘easy’ possibility, are no less puzzling epistemologically. Could Clinton easily have won the 2016 presidential election—was it an easy possibility? Given that she didn’t in fact win the election, how, if at all, can we know whether she easily could (...) have? This paper investigates the epistemology of the broad category of ‘objective’ modality, of which metaphysical modality is a special, limiting case. It argues that the same cognitive mechanisms that are capable of producing knowledge of metaphysical modality are also capable of producing knowledge of all other objective modalities. This conclusion can be used to explain the roles of counterfactual reasoning and the imagination in the epistemology of objective modality. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin pointed out the affinity of cinema and architecture, and argued unexpectedly that tbese art forms are both essentially tactile arts. The tactility of the material art of building is not difficult to grasp, but the idea that a cinematic projection could result in fundamentally tactile experience certainly meets objections. However, the philosophical as well as neurological studies ofthe past few decades in perception, emotion, and thought, as well as in artistic expressions, suggest that these two arts, or poetic (...) images at large, address ali our senses, including our synthesizing existential sense, all at once. The arts communicate through the “fiesh of the world”, to use a notion of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The acts of perception, feeling, thinking, and memorizing cal! for the reality and sense of embodiment. We identify ourselves unknowingly with constructed architectural spaces as well as projected cinematic situations with our empathetic capacity. So, Benjamin ‘s argument could be re- -formulated: cinema and architecture are embodied atis in which the externa! and the internal are fully intertwined and fused. “The world is wholly inside, and 1 aro wholly outside myself’, as Merleau-Ponty enigmatically argues. (shrink)

The idea of active power played central role in the 17th Century philosophy and science. The idea is as follows: if not prevented, bodies necessarily do certain things in virtue of their power. This kind of thought naturally arose from what might properly be called the law of persistence, according to which moving bodies continue their motion unchanged if no new external force intervenes.1 What bodies do in virtue of their power was called actions, and in terms of actions such (...) things as resistance, pressure and affections were explained. What is this active power? One of the main aims of philosophers in the 17th and 18th Centuries was to find a good answer to this question. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson is one of the most influential living philosophers working in the areas of logic and metaphysics. His work in these areas has been particularly influential in shaping debates about metaphysical modality, which is the topic of his recent provocative and closely-argued book *Modal Logic as Metaphysics* (2013). The present book comprises ten essays by metaphysicians and logicians responding to Williamson’s work on metaphysical modality. The authors include some of the most distinguished philosophers of modality in the world, as (...) well as several rising stars. Each essay is followed by a reply by Williamson. In addition, the book contains a major new essay by Williamson, ‘Modal science,’ concerning the role of modal claims in natural science. This book was originally published as a special issue of the *Canadian Journal of Philosophy.*. (shrink)

Although religiosity fosters some antisocial behaviors (e.g., support for suicide attacks), it is well-known that it also enhances in-group cooperation and prosociality (e.g., donating to charity). Supernatural punishment hypothesis suggests that the fear of punishment from an invisible, potent, and powerful supernatural agent can keep everyone in line, and encourage prosociality. We first investigated this relationship in a predominantly Muslim country and then tested a model suggesting that attachment to God can lead people to think God as authoritarian, which in (...) turn leads them to report more prosocial intentions. The results demonstrate that (1) there are some findings suggesting that Attachment to God Inventory is a reliable measure in Turkey, (2) seeing God as authoritarian is positively correlated with prosociality, and (3) our above-mentioned model was supported by the data. Results generally support the supernatural punishment hypothesis and additionally show the utility of attachment theory in explaining the religiosity-prosociality link. (shrink)

We report the results of one visual‐world eye‐tracking experiment and two referent selection tasks in which we investigated the effects of information structure in the form of prosody and word order manipulation on the processing of subject pronouns er and der in German. Factors such as subjecthood, focus, and topicality, as well as order of mention have been linked to an increased probability of certain referents being selected as the pronoun's antecedent and described as increasing this referent's prominence, salience, or (...) accessibility. The goal of this study was to find out whether pronoun processing is primarily guided by linguistic factors (e.g., grammatical role) or nonlinguistic factors (e.g., first‐mention), and whether pronoun interpretation can be described in terms of referents' “prominence” / “accessibility” / “salience.” The results showed an overall subject preference for er, whereas der was affected by the object role and focus marking. While focus increases the attentional load and enhances memory representation for the focused referent making the focused referent more available, ultimately it did not affect the final interpretation of er, suggesting that “prominence” or the related concepts do not explain referent selection preferences. Overall, the results suggest a primacy of linguistic factors in determining pronoun resolution. (shrink)

This paper examines "moderate modal skepticism", a form of skepticism about metaphysical modality defended by Peter van Inwagen in order to blunt the force of certain modal arguments in the philosophy of religion. Van Inwagen’s argument for moderate modal skepticism assumes Yablo's (1993) influential world-based epistemology of possibility. We raise two problems for this epistemology of possibility, which undermine van Inwagen's argument. We then consider how one might motivate moderate modal skepticism by relying on a different epistemology of possibility, which (...) does not face these problems: Williamson’s (2007: ch. 5) counterfactual-based epistemology. Two ways of motivating moderate modal skepticism within that framework are found unpromising. Nevertheless, we also find a way of vindicating an epistemological thesis that, while weaker than moderate modal skepticism, is strong enough to support the methodological moral van Inwagen wishes to draw. (shrink)

This book presents a contribution to the neglected branch of history of morals in a time when virtue has been lost, and moral disorder or vacuum has ensued. The study covers a very long period from Homer and Hesiod until the twelfth century of the Common Era.

What does God do with the “holes” or “troumatisms” that comprise the limits of our existence, that “original solitude” whereby we are confronted with the impending annihilation of all sense? Are we left enclosed in it or does God accompany us there? This essay considers to what extent Christ’s descent on Holy Saturday takes part in the extra-phenomenal “impossibility of possibility” of this original solitude. Such a consideration requires distinguishing between that “underworld” Christ descends to on the Second Day from (...) the sin that is the proper domain of “hell.” Christ descending to the underworld marks God entering our finitude so it may be transformed (Holy Saturday) rather than our faults so that we may be resurrected (Last Judgment). Philosophically, Holy Saturday, as the ab-sense and non-sense residing between Crucifixion (Good Friday) and Resurrection (Easter Sunday), exemplifies the extra-phenomenal in which nothing is manifested (phenomenology) nor signified (hermeneutics). This intermediate realm is then one in which God comes to meet us at the limit of our own finitude. (shrink)

Low reason is about coping in the world in the world's terms; but our freedom, morality, and enlightenment require the higher, more speculative faculty. Dr. Hanhijarvi (Humboldt Univ.) invites us to explore the great thinkers and re-activate the profound abilities of the human mind that so importantly out-shine today's mechanistic thinking.

Socrates’ Criteria: A Libertarian Interpretation argues that Socrates requires definitions for freedom or rational agency. Socrates is freedom’s advocate; he is not an early epistemologist or semanticist. Due to this, he is still relevant to current philosophy.

This contribution attempts, in the face of the criterion of the fruitful contradiction, to build a bridge between two recent developments in phenomenology: the hyperphenomenology of Bernhard Waldenfels on the one hand, and the extraphenomenology of Emmanuel Falque on the other. In the present article, this confrontation first attempts to prepare the possibility of an in-depth comparison. In this process opened here, we obtain a first transitional figure from a viviparous poetry which, in the light of the hyperphenomenologically and extra-phenomenologically (...) unutterable, places in space a third relat: the hissing hyperhors. (shrink)