O artigo busca sustentar a tese de que W. Mignolo não consegue realizar seu principal objetivo: romper com padrões eurocêntricos na produção de conhecimento. Para atingir tal fim, o método empregado foi a análise imanente do livro “On Decoloniality” (2018). Foi proposto que o afastamento pretendido pelo autor não se efetiva, uma vez que sua teoria do conhecimento e solução epistemológica se configuram como uma renovação da filosofia da vida da fase imperialista. Com isso, Mignolo e sua “epistemologia de fronteiras” (...) reproduzem os aspectos essenciais daquela tendência do pensamento burguês. (shrink)

Translated and reprinted by permission of Monthly Review magazine. (c) Monthly Review. All rights reserved. The New Irrationalism by John Bellamy Foster (February 2023, Volume 74, Number 9). Tradução por Lara Nora Portugal Penna. Revisão por Elcemir Paço Cunha.

Introduction: The actions taken by the government to deal with the consequences of the coronavirus diseases 2019 pandemic caused different levels of restriction on the mobility of the population. The need to continue offering physical exercise to individuals after stroke became an emergency. However, these individuals may have barriers to adhere to the programs delivered remotely. There is a lack of evidence related to adherence, attendance, safety, and satisfaction of remote exercise programs for this population.Objective: The aim was to evaluate (...) adherence and barriers to attend a remote physical exercise program for individuals after stroke. We aimed to identify adherence and attendance rate of the remote physical exercise program ; to identify the safety of a remote physical exercise program ; and to identify the overall experience to participate in a remote program.Materials and methods: This is a longitudinal study, including 36 stroke survivors who already attended a face-to-face physical exercise program prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The remote physical exercise program included sessions for 2 days/week for a duration of 22 weeks, with a total of 44 sessions, which were delivered asynchrony via recorded video sessions. As outcome measures, we performed two questionnaires to identify attendance, barriers, safety, and overall experience related to the program.Results: The adherence rate was 86. The attendance rate was 19, with a total of 8 sessions. The main barriers for lower attendance rate were as follows: lack of motor skills and physical fitness to workout in 80 reports, followed by no exercise companion in 44 reports. The remote physical program has been shown to be safe, and the overall experience was positive from the perspectives of the participants and the family members.Conclusion: Although the adherence rate was high, the attendance rate was low on the remote physical exercise program. The main barriers to attending the program remotely reflect the need of tailoring individually an asynchrony mode of delivering the sessions to individuals after stroke. Our results also indicate how the COVID-19 impacted the health conditions of stroke survivors. The program was safe, and the overall experience indicated a change in the mental, physical, and social health of individuals after stroke and their family members. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface This issue of Feminist Studies includes a cluster of essays that demonstrates new approaches to life writing, with special attention to unconventional women’s autobiographies. Lara Vapnek describes the historical inhibitions that shaped the self-presentation of pioneering American labor activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in the early twentieth century such that she omitted her sexual relationships with both women and men from her autobiographical writings. Overlapping with Vapnek’s historical (...) focus, Nora Doyle’s essay takes a new look at Gertrude Stein’s bestknown and most accessible work, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, seeing it as Stein’s clever reworking of the women’s genre of domestic fiction in its pairing of a domesticated wife with a “genius” husband. In her examination of Kamala Das’s Balyakala Smaranakal (Memories of childhood), Sharmila Sreekumar discusses how the memoir’s depiction of self-deferral rather than self-realization unsettles autobiographical conventions through its troubling of the relationship between “self,” “life,” and “writing” that is constitutive of the genre. In Olga Zilberbourg’s short story, two women are baffled as they contemplate a friend’s suicide: what does it say about their own accomplishments and losses? Attention to the visual aspects of women’s lives and to their embodiment is highlighted in Estelle Carol’s memoir about her time spent as a member of the Graphic Collective of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union in the 1970s. Corey Hickner-Johnson’s lyrical essay describes the first-person I of the poem as pushing herself to a physical extreme. Her autobiographical crisis-moment, depicted in acutely visceral and visual terms, wills into relief life’s underlying colors against a backdrop of otherwise drab monotony and disappointment. Feminist graphic artwork is discussed in Hillary Chute’s review essay on the newly popular genre of graphic novels by women. Alexandra Ketchum’s “‘The Place We’ve Always Wanted to Go But Never Could Find’: Finding Woman Space in Feminist Restaurants and Cafés in Ontario 1974–1982” and Samantha Pergadia’s “Geologies of 8 Sex and Gender: Excavating the Materialism of Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler” shift our attention away from individual life trajectories to broader sweeps of space and time. Ketchum’s history of feminist restaurants and cafes in Ontario, Canada, in the mid 1970s to early 1980s encourages us to consider the importance of space to the formation of feminist solidarities and political organizing, while Pergadia’s analysis of the geological understandings that undergird the work of both Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler invites us to rethink the temporalities through which gendered and sexed subjects, as well as academic disciplines, are formed. In closing, Ashwini Tambe reflects on the #MeToo movement and how we might fashion a more responsive public reckoning with sexual coercion. The issue leads off with Vapnek’s essay, “The Rebel Girl Revisited: Rereading Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s Life Story.” As Vapnek details, Flynn, an activist in the Industrial Workers of the World, chronicled her life only as far as 1926. Although she envisioned women’s emancipation as an integral component of the socialist revolution, her self-censorship reveals “how communism as well as anticommunism has limited our knowledge of the feminist past.” Flynn remained committed to socialism and women’s rights and continued to agitate for social change, but her efforts to narrate her later life were stymied by internal inhibitions and external forces. For a decade she lived with another woman at a time when leftists were not open about same-sex relationships. Nor did she wish to reveal her sexual relationships with a number of men or the psychological breakdown she suffered in 1926. Joining the US Communist Party in 1936 re-energized her career as a labor organizer and resulted in her being sent to prison from 1955 to 1957 during the period of the Red Scare in the United States. By her middle age, she had experienced not only nonconventional personal relationships but also a dramatic change in her appearance: rather than the slim girl pictured on the cover of songs designed to encourage the labor movement, she was a stout, matronly woman. Inhibited from revising her autobiography to account for her later life... (shrink)

This article is divided in three parts in order to investigate on the authorial and creative philosophical production in the Brazilian academic environment. In the first part, we show the challenge to authorial production in philosophy in Brazil, starting from the example of recent initiatives in the philosophy of religion. In the second part, by means of an analogy with music, we intend to argue that the plead for a greater promotion of authorial philosophy in Brazil does not mean to (...) devaluate the work with history of philosophy, which seems to be the predominant approach in academic philosophy in our country. The third part addresses the challenges to the formation of philosophical authorship, based on the triplet student-professor-knowledge, and acknowledging objective and subjective aspects of learning. (shrink)

O artigo pretende avaliar criticamente o conceito de fé e o modo como a fé cristã é racionalmente justificada por Alvin Plantinga em sua principal obra Warranted Christian Belief (2000). Para tanto, o texto parte de uma comparação com a proposta de Richard Swinburne. Após discutir brevemente a epistemologia geral de Plantinga, o texto expõe a sua aplicação à crença em Deus e à fé cristã. A tese de Plantinga de que a fé não constitui um “salto no escuro” e (...) que o seu componente não-teórico é semelhante ao amor erótico é comparada com a visão de Swinburne, segundo a qual a fé firme pode comportar elementos de incerteza na crença e supõe uma decisão voluntária, sendo, por isso mesmo, meritória. A comparação sugerirá que as diferenças indicam uma possibilidade de complementaridade entre as duas concepções. (shrink)

Weber-Fechner Law states that the perceived intensity is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus. Recent experiments suggest that this law also holds true for perception of numerosity. Therefore, the use of a logarithmic scale for the quantification of the perceived intensity may also depend on how the cognitive apparatus processes information. If Weber-Fechner law is the result of natural selection, then the logarithmic scale should be better, in some sense, than other biologically feasible scales. We consider the minimization of (...) the relative error as the target of natural selection and we provide a formal proof that the logarithmic scale minimizes the maximal relative error. (shrink)

Este artigo visa refletir sobre a moral contemporânea a partir da ética de Nietzsche, tendo como foco principal a sua _Genealogia da Moral_ e, como contraponto a ser problematizado, o livro _The weariness of the self_ do sociólogo francês Alain Ehrenberg. De início, para analisar alguns tipos morais relevantes na primeira obra, revisamos o itinerário genealógico entre a “vontade de verdade” cristã e o niilismo budista (ou “ceticismo em matéria de moral”), destacando ainda alguns comentários de Nietzsche em torno de (...) Kant e o utilitarismo inglês. A autocrítica kantiana do conhecimento, afinal, manteve intacta a valoração negativa (cristã) da vida ao não questionar o valor em si da verdade. Por sua vez, ao arrogar o bem definitivo à felicidade, o utilitarismo inglês tornou a compaixão cristã compatível com o “ceticismo em matéria de moral”. A partir disso, argumentamos que a nova figura moralmente exemplar — não sendo mais a do cristão, alvo principal da genealogia nietzschiana — é a do budista, uma vez que este adere integralmente o niilismo. Em um segundo momento deste estudo, problematizamos a tese de Ehrenberg segundo a qual a figura do “indivíduo soberano” teria hoje se tornado hegemônica sob a égide da categoria da depressão. Não sendo concebível, sob o prisma nietzschiano, tal “indivíduo soberano” deprimido descrito por Ehrenberg, observamos, por fim, que é o niilismo que efetivamente se prolifera hoje: a partir da ilusão de superação total da moralidade, a moral contemporânea cultiva a fraqueza e o cansaço fisiológico através de um programa de combate irrestrito ao sofrimento. (shrink)

In this article I expound some of the main criticisms by David Hume and Immanuel Kant against the legitimacy of natural theology, the philosophical activity of presenting arguments for or against the existence of God. The aim is not to contribute to the scholarship in history of philosophy, but as a starting point for describing the main lines of Richard Swinburne’s approach to natural theology in terms of inductive probabilistic arguments. His proposal has been part of a current philosophical movement (...) of re-establishing the argumentative debate on the existence and nature of God, an area that has been growing in quantity and quality since the 1970’s. (shrink)

O tema deste estudo é o ritmo samba-reggae como uma expressão afrobrasileira. Apresentamos, inicialmente, alguns aspectos sócio históricos relevantes no tocante à construção da multietnismo e multilinguismo na Bahia, para que se possa compreender tal ritmo como expressão afro. Como corpus de análise apresentamos algumas composições musicais do ritmo citado, que foram examinadas a partir de uma perspectiva léxico semântica, com o objetivo de assinalar sua conexão com aspectos afro religioso e afro político.

The fact that Oswald T. Avery (1877-1955) did not become a Nobel Laureate for his discovery of DNA as the genetic material has frequently been cited as a prime example of a mistake made in the awarding of the Nobel Prizes. The late Nobel Laureate Arne Tiselius explained the oversight away by saying that Avery "was an old man when he made his discovery" (Litell 1967)—although Avery was actually younger than several others who won the Nobel Prize around the same (...) time. Later, in somewhat of a contradiction, Tiselius said that Avery was the most deserving scientist not to have received the Nobel Prize for his work (Judson 2003).The opening of the Nobel archives 50 years after Avery's name was cited gives insights into .. (shrink)

This article intends to show that Plantinga’s criticism against Bayesianism as an account of what is involved in rationality does not apply to all forms of Bayesianism. Swinburne’s version, based on a logical theory of probability, is an example of Bayesianism not hit by Plantinga’s criticism. In addition, the article argues that the problem of dwindling probabilities – pointed out by Plantinga in Warranted Christian Belief (2000) – vanishes in a Bayesian approach. So, even if it is not a sufficient (...) account of rationality, Bayesianism helps to understand important elements of inductive reasoning, especially those relative to cumulative cases. (shrink)

Traditional discussions about the arrow of time in general involve the concept of entropy. In the cosmological context, the direction past-to-future is usually related to the direction of the gradient of the entropy function of the universe. But the definition of the entropy of the universe is a very controversial matter. Moreover, thermodynamics is a phenomenological theory. Geometrical properties of space-time provide a more fundamental and less controversial way of defining an arrow of time for the universe as a whole. (...) We will call the arrow defined only on the basis of the geometrical properties of space-time, independently of any entropic considerations, “the global arrow of time.” In this paper we will argue that: (i) if certain conditions are satisfied, it is possible to define a global arrow of time for the universe as a whole, and (ii) the standard models of contemporary cosmology satisfy these conditions. (shrink)

Causal selection is the cognitive process through which one or more elements in a complex causal structure are singled out as actual causes of a certain effect. In this paper, we report on an experiment in which we investigated the role of moral and temporal factors in causal selection. Our results are as follows. First, when presented with a temporal chain in which two human agents perform the same action one after the other, subjects tend to judge the later agent (...) to be the actual cause. Second, the impact of temporal location on causal selection is almost canceled out if the later agent did not violate a norm while the former did. We argue that this is due to the impact that judgments of norm violation have on causal selection—even if the violated norm has nothing to do with the obtaining effect. Third, moral judgments about the effect influence causal selection even in the case in which agents could not have foreseen the effect and did not intend to bring it about. We discuss our findings in connection to recent theories of the role of moral judgment in causal reasoning, on the one hand, and to probabilistic models of temporal location, on the other. (shrink)

To counter the pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, some have proposed accelerating SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development through controlled human infection trials. These trials would involve the deliberate exposure of relatively few young, healthy volunteers to SARS-CoV-2. We defend this proposal against the charge that there is still too much uncertainty surrounding the risks of COVID-19 to responsibly run such a trial.

Mathematicians often conduct aesthetic judgements to evaluate mathematical objects such as equations or proofs. But is there a consensus about which mathematical objects are beautiful? We used a comparative judgement technique to measure aesthetic intuitions among British mathematicians, Chinese mathematicians, and British mathematics undergraduates, with the aim of assessing whether judgements of mathematical beauty are influenced by cultural differences or levels of expertise. We found aesthetic agreement both within and across these demographic groups. We conclude that judgements of mathematical beauty (...) are not strongly influenced by cultural difference, levels of expertise, and types of mathematical objects. Our findings contrast with recent studies that found mathematicians often disagree with each other about mathematical beauty. (shrink)

Within philosophy of action, there are three broad views about what, in addition to beliefs, answer the question of “what to do?” and so determine an agent’s motivation: desires, judgments about values/reasons, or states of the will, such as intentions. We argue that recent work in decision theory vindicates the volitionalist. “What to do?” isn’t settled by “what do I value” or “what reasons are there?” Rational motivation further requires determining how to trade off the possibility of a good outcome (...) against the possibility of a bad one—i.e., determining how much of a risk to take. The risk attitudes that embody this tradeoff seem best understood as intentions: as self-governing policies to weight desires or reasons in certain ways. That we need to settle our risk attitudes before making most decisions corroborates Bratman’s claim that self-governing policies are required for resolving impasses of evaluative and normative underdetermination. Moreover, far from being rare or confined to tie-breakings, cases that are underdetermined but for one’s risk attitudes are typical of everyday decision-making. The will is required for most rational action. (shrink)

Little is known about employee reactions in the form of un/ethical behavior to perceived acts of unfairness toward their peers perpetrated by the supervisor. Based on prior work suggesting that third parties also make fairness judgments and respond to the way employees are treated, this study first suggests that perceptions of interactional justice for peers (IJP) lead employees to two different responses to injustice at work: deviant workplace behaviors (DWBs) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Second, based on prior literature pointing (...) to supervisors as among the most important sources of moral guidance at work, a mediating role is proposed for ethical leadership. The article suggests that supervisors who inflict acts of injustice on staff will be perceived as unethical leaders, and that these perceptions would explain why employees react to IJP in the form of deviance (DWBs) and citizenship (OCBs). Data were collected from 204 hotel employees. Results of structural equation modeling demonstrate that DWBs and OCBs are substantive reactions to IJP, whereas ethical leadership significantly mediates reactions in the form of DWBs and OCBs. Behavioral ethics and managerial implications are discussed. (shrink)

Recommender Systems (RecSys) have been around since the early days of the Internet, helping users navigate the vast ocean of information and the increasingly available options that have been available for us ever since. The range of tasks for which one could use a RecSys is expanding as the technical capabilities grow, with the disruption of Machine Learning representing a tipping point in this domain, as in many others. However, the increase of the technical capabilities of AI-powered RecSys did not (...) come with a thorough consideration of their ethical implications and, despite being a well-established technical domain, the potential impacts of RecSys on their users are still under-assessed. This paper aims at filling this gap in regards to one of the main impacts of RecSys: personal autonomy. We first describe how technology can affect human values and a suitable methodology to identify these effects and mitigate potential harms: Value Sensitive Design (VSD). We use VSD to carry out a conceptual investigation of personal autonomy in the context of a generic RecSys and draw on a nuanced account of procedural autonomy to focus on two components: competence and authenticity. We provide the results of our inquiry as a value hierarchy and apply it to the design of a speculative RecSys as an example. (shrink)

Psychology distinguishes between a bodily and a narrative self. Within neuroscience, models of the bodily self are based on exteroceptive sensorimotor processes or on the integration of interoceptive sensations. Recent research has revealed interactions between interoceptive and exteroceptive processing of self-related information, for example that mirror self-observation can improve interoceptive awareness. Using heartbeat perception, we measured the effect on interoceptive awareness of two experimental manipulations, designed to heighten attention to bodily and narrative aspects of the self. Participants gazed at a (...) photograph of their own face or at self-relevant words. In both experimental conditions interoceptive awareness was significantly increased, compared to baseline. Results show that attention to narrative aspects of self, previously regarded as relying on higher-order processes, has an effect similar to self-face stimuli in improving interoceptive awareness. Our findings extend the previously observed interaction between the bodily self and interoception to more abstract amodal representations of the self. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to extend the knowledge about why procedural justice has behavioral implications within organizations. Since prior studies show that PJ leads to legitimacy, the author suggests that, when formal regulations are unfairly implemented, they lose their validity or efficacy. This “rule deactivation,” in turn, leads to two proposed destructive work behaviors, namely, workplace deviance and decreased citizenship behaviors. The results support this mediating role of RD, thus suggesting that it forms part of the generative mechanism (...) through which unfair procedures influence ethical behavior within organizations. The author ends the article by discussing behavioral ethics and managerial implications as well as suggestions for future research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Through an interdisciplinary literature review, this propositional paper explores the emergence and unfolding of professionals’ moral identity conflicts involving important but contrasting values. Building on the exemplary case of physicians’ professional-religious dilemmas in End-of-Life circumstances, we develop a multilevel model of professional-personal identity conflict dynamics in ethically-charged situations in which we integrate individual-level mechanisms with organizational-level boundary conditions, namely peer social support and ethical climate, in relation to psychological well-being. Our conceptual model contributes to the ethics, identity and human (...) behavior literature by advancing suggestions of how professionals may prevent or/and resolve moral conflicts concerning also other identities and contexts. (shrink)

In psychiatry there is no sharp boundary between the normal and the pathological. Although clear cases abound, it is often indeterminate whether a particular condition does or does not qualify as a mental disorder. For example, definitions of ‘subthreshold disorders’ and of the ‘prodromal stages’ of diseases are notoriously contentious. Philosophers and linguists call concepts that lack sharp boundaries, and thus admit of borderline cases, ‘vague’. This overview chapter reviews current debates about demarcation in psychiatry against the backdrop of key (...) issues within the philosophical discussion of vagueness: Are there various kinds of vagueness? Is all vagueness representational? How does vagueness relate to epistemic uncertainty? What is the value of vagueness? Given the immense social, moral, and legal importance of demarcating the normal from the pathological in psychiatry, what are the pros and cons of gradualist approaches to mental disorders, that is, of construing boundaries as matters of degree? (shrink)

The model emphasizes the ethical dynamics of compassion in hospitality settings by suggesting that under an organizational ethical climate, the hotel staff will be more morally aware of peers’ pain and suffering, and motivated to participate in delivering compassion. Based on the positive psychology focus on compassion as individual states and traits supporting interpersonal dealings, the paper operationalizes compassion based on four individual factors involved in the compassionate process: empathic concern, or an other-oriented emotional response elicited by and congruent with (...) the perceived welfare of a person in need; mindfulness, a state of consciousness in which attention is focused on present-moment phenomena occurring both externally and internally; kindness, or understanding the pain or suffering of others; and common humanity, or seeing others’ experiences as part of the larger human experience. Data were collected from 280 employees at ten hotels in the Canary Islands. With the exception of self-interest, results of multiple linear regressions demonstrate that each of the six interpreted factors of ethical climate has substantive effects on any of the studied elements of staff compassion. The egoistic-related and principle-related climate factors generated a more consistent and intense compassionate reaction, suggesting that the staff is moved to act out of compassion either to assure that the team succeeds or to support each other out of moral obligation. (shrink)

In the 20th century, the boundaries of psychosis emerged as an area in which psychiatric judgement faced numerous and profound uncertainties. Between obvious neuroses and personality and reactive disorders on the one hand, and unquestionable psychoses on the other, psychiatrists faced a world of suspected cases of schizophrenia, doubtful personality disorder diagnoses or probable cases of psychosis constituting a garden of equivocal clinical presentations in which both individual psychiatrists and the discipline as a whole were confronted with the limits of (...) their knowledge. This article examines how psychiatrists from two German university clinics managed the multiple uncertainties involved in diagnosing cases of early psychosis between 1950 and 1980. Based on the analysis of a sample of records, we propose a pragmatic interpretation of the ways in which these uncertainties were recorded by psychiatrists. How were uncertainties and doubts expressed in the records and managed by clinicians? What means were used to dispel doubt? What were the consequences for patients of these diagnostic uncertainties? The article defines an uncertainty diagnosis as a diagnosis expressed with reservations by its author and recorded as such in a medical file. Depending on the nature of the uncertainty, the types of evidence used by the professionals and how this evidence was dealt with, we have identified three types of uncertainty diagnoses: suspicion, plausibility and probability diagnoses. The article then reflects on the role of the patients themselves in shaping these uncertain situations. (shrink)

Turing was an exceptional mathematician with a peculiar and fascinating personality and yet he remains largely unknown. In fact, he might be considered the father of the von Neumann architecture computer and the pioneer of Artificial Intelligence. And all thanks to his machines; both those that Church called “Turing machines” and the a-, c-, o-, unorganized- and p-machines, which gave rise to evolutionary computations and genetic programming as well as connectionism and learning. This paper looks at all of these and (...) at why he is such an often overlooked and misunderstood figure. (shrink)

The understanding of a wide array of practices related to fraud, bribery, corruption, and more widely, illicit practices have been capturing the attention of practitioners and management researchers worldwide. A substantial portion of the extant research has used university students to measure their actual or intended cheating behaviours and often studies have tested for variations across countries and cultures. We highlight some major concerns in this stream of inquiry and discuss both the definition and some inconclusive results in prior studies, (...) namely those deriving from differences in cheating behaviour across different cultural contexts. We suggest the need to examine intentionality, and further advance that intentionality may assume a reactive or a proactive essence. Depending on the social and formal contexts of different countries, both reactive and proactive intentions lead to distinct moral concerns, which we name in this work omorality (meaning ‘our morality’) or immorality (in the traditional sense). (shrink)

Investigations of human action have led to the conclusion that much action production can occur unconsciously. Behaviors such as reflexes and automatisms in neurological conditions reveal that action production can be mediated unconsciously. Less obvious, however, are the unconscious mechanisms associated with everyday voluntary actions. Voluntary action is a complex form of action that involves both unconscious and conscious component processes. This chapter reviews the unconscious components of voluntary action and then examines how these components interact with consciousness. The analysis (...) includes treatments of Skinner’s influential “three-term contingency” and the phenomenon of effortless control. The chapter discusses the unresolved issues and paradoxes that are encountered when investigating action from a reductionistic standpoint in which there is no homunculus-like agent involved in voluntary action. (shrink)

Perception of time is susceptible to distortions; among other factors, it has been suggested that the perceived duration of a stimulus is affected by the observer’s expectations. It has been hypothesized that the duration of an oddball stimulus is overestimated because it is unexpected, whereas repeated stimuli have a shorter perceived duration because they are expected. However, recent findings suggest instead that fulfilled expectations about a stimulus elicit an increase in perceived duration, and that the oddball effect occurs because the (...) oddball is a target stimulus, not because it is unexpected. Therefore, it has been suggested that top-down attention is sometimes sufficient to explain this effect, and sometimes only necessary, with an additional contribution from saliency. However, how the expectedness of a target stimulus and its salient features affect its perceived duration is still an open question. In the present study, participants’ expectations about and the saliency of target stimuli were orthogonally manipulated with stimuli presented on a short (Experiment 1) or long (Experiment 2) temporal scale. Four repetitive standard stimuli preceded each target stimulus in a task in which participants judged whether the target was longer or shorter in duration than the standards. Engagement of top-down attention to target stimuli increased their perceived duration to the same extent irrespective of their expectedness. A small but significant additional contribution to this effect from the saliency of target stimuli was dependent on the temporal scale of stimulus presentation. In Experiment 1, saliency only significantly increased perceived duration in the case of expected target stimuli. In contrast, in Experiment 2, saliency exerted a significant effect on the overestimation elicited by unexpected target stimuli, but the contribution of this variable was eliminated in the case of expected target stimuli. These findings point to top-down attention as the primary cognitive mechanism underlying the perceptual extraction and processing of task-relevant information, which may be strongly correlated with perceived duration. Furthermore, the scalar properties of timing were observed, favoring the pacemaker-accumulator model of timing as the underlying timing mechanism. (shrink)

The aesthetics of imperfection emphasises spontaneity, disruption, process and energy over formal perfection and is often ignored by many commentators or seen only in improvisation. This comprehensive collection is the first time imperfection has been explored across all kinds of musical performance, whether improvisation or interpretation of compositions. Covering music, visual art, dance, comedy, architecture and design, it addresses the meaning, experience, and value of improvisation and spontaneous creation across different artistic media. A distinctive feature of the volume is that (...) it brings together contributions from theoreticians and practitioners, presenting a wider range of perspectives on the issues involved. Contributors look at performance and practice across Western and non-Western musical, artistic and craft forms. Composers and non-performing artists offer a perspective on what is 'imperfect' or improvisatory within their work, contributing further dimensions to the discourse. The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts features 39 chapters organised into eight sections and written by a diverse group of scholars and performers. They consider divergent definitions of aesthetics, employing both 18th-century philosophy and more recent socially and historically situated conceptions making this an essential, up-to-date resource for anyone working on either side of the perfection-imperfection debate. (shrink)

Using the position as an independent variable, and time as the dependent variable, we derive the function $${\mathcal{P}}^{(\pm )}=\pm \sqrt{2m({\mathcal{H}}-{\mathcal{V}}(q))}$$, which generates the space evolution under the potential $${\mathcal{V}}(q)$$ and Hamiltonian $${\mathcal{H}}$$. No parametrization is used. Canonically conjugated variables are the time and minus the Hamiltonian ( $$-{\mathcal{H}}$$ ). While the classical dynamics do not change, the corresponding Quantum operator $${{{\hat{\mathcal P}}}}^{(\pm )}$$ naturally leads to a 1/2-fractional time evolution, consistent with a recent proposed space–time symmetric formalism of the Quantum (...) Mechanics. Using Dirac’s procedure, separation of variables is possible, and while the two-coupled position-independent Dirac equations depend on the 1/2-fractional derivative, the two-coupled time-independent Dirac equations lead to positive and negative shifts in the potential, proportional to the force. Both equations couple the (±) solutions of $${{{\hat{\mathcal P}}}}^{(\pm )}$$ and the kinetic energy $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}$$ (separation constant) is the coupling strength. Thus, we obtain a pair of coupled states for systems with finite forces, not necessarily stationary states. The potential shifts for the harmonic oscillator (HO) are $$\pm {\hbar {\omega}} /2$$, and the corresponding pair of states are coupled for $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}\ne 0$$. No time evolution is present for $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}=0$$, and the ground state with energy $${\hbar {\omega}} /2$$ is stable. For $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}>0$$, the ground state becomes coupled to the state with energy $$-{\hbar {\omega}} /2$$, and this coupling allows to describe higher excited states in the HO. Energy quantization of the HO leads to the quantization of $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}=k{\hbar {\omega}}$$ ( $$k=1,2,\ldots$$ ). For the one-dimensional Hydrogen atom, the potential shifts become imaginary and position-dependent. Decoupled case $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}=0$$ leads to plane-waves-like solutions at the threshold. Above the threshold ( $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}>0$$ ), we obtain a plane-wave-like solution, and for the bounded states ( $${\mathcal{K}}_{0}<0$$ ), the wave-function becomes similar to the exact solutions but squeezed closer to the nucleus. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of the present article is to rebuild picturebooks’ identity as polyphonic cultural objects based on a brief historical trajectory. Dialogue established between text and reader in contemporary picturebook’s production is broadened by the presence of different semiosis that allow multiple voices to be heard, since they act as meaning enhancers. The Bakhtinian concept of polyphony is herein held at the picturebook reflections scope to set contrast in children’s literature, which has a moralizing nature and is substantiated from (...) a monological perspective. The books by Angela Lago, who is a representative of the Brazilian children’s literature, are herein analyzed to disclose multimodal aspects found in this cultural object (book). In conclusion, picturebooks open a window of possibilities for open minded and creative readings, as well as for different readers, due to their polysemic and polyphonic nature. (shrink)

O objetivo desse artigo é apresentar as vias de pesquisa da filosofia de Machado de Assis. Parte-se da perspectiva não colonial para analisar o dilema da crítica literária a respeito da presença da filosofia na obra de Machado de Assis. Os argumentos da crítica justificam-se pela retórica da modernidade e pela lógica da colonialidade. Sob três critérios interpretativos distintos – o racial, o geográfico e o ideológico – mantém-se o mesmo dilema: como tornar filósofo aquele que não pode ser filósofo? (...) Novas vias de interpretação da obra de Machado de Assis podem solucionar esse dilema ao indicarem temas e métodos de pesquisa não coloniais sobre a relação entre a filosofia e a vida intelectual do autor. (shrink)

Transgenerational social actions are collective actions that endure over a considerable period of time and require the cooperation of multiple generations. Yet, it remains unclear what kind of obligations and rights, if any, allow actions to persist through the ages, binding future generations to be part of them. This paper proposes a way forward by considering transgenerational actions as a particular type of long-term joint commitments. Drawing on plural subject theory, I explore the conditions for membership, normativity, and justification of (...) transgenerational joint commitments, while also amending the model to address classical issues of asymmetry, non-existence, and non-reciprocity of future generations. The proposed approach meets three desiderata: transgenerational actions do not rely on individual intentions but are collective in a strong sense, they are normative in a social sense but can encourage the development of a personal moral sensitivity to transgenerationality, and they are both stable over time and flexible enough to resist paternalism through the proxy acts of representatives of future generations. (shrink)

We evaluate whether evidence from conceptual combination supports the relational priming model of analogy. Representing relations implicitly as patterns of activation distributed across the semantic network provides a natural and parsimonious explanation of several key phenomena observed in conceptual combination. Although an additional mechanism for role resolution may be required, relational priming offers a promising approach to analogy.

Entendendo “pensamento pós-metafísico” no sentido da crítica moderna e positivista à metafísica como forma de conhecimento, o artigo apresenta a filosofia analítica da religião como uma resposta à tese de que a linguagem religiosa não tem sentido porque não se refere a nenhum dado empiricamente verificável ou falseável. Em primeiro lugar, é apresentada a resposta não-realista ao desafio pós-metafísico, especialmente a de D. Z. Phillips, baseada nas ideias de Wittgenstein. Nessa proposta, o sentido da linguagem religiosa não está na referência (...) a uma realidade transcendente, mas ao uso que ela tem como guia existencial e ético. Em seguida, é exposta a resposta realista à crítica antimetafísica, usando-se elementos das ideias de alguns dos principais autores da filosofia analítica da religião: Alvin Plantinga, William Alston e Richard Swinburne. Além de sustentarem o significado referencial real da linguagem religiosa, eles argumentam que a metafísica é não só defensável cognitivamente, mas também condição importante para o raciocínio científico.Taking ‘post-metaphysical thought’ in the sense of the modern and positivistic criticism to metaphysics as a form of knowledge, the article presents analytic philosophy of religion as a response to the thesis that religious language has no meaning since it does not refer to any empirically verifiable or falsifiable data. Firstly, it is presented the non-realist reply to the post-metaphysical challenge. The main non-realist author introduced is D. Z. Phillips, who based his ideas on Wittgenstein’s philosophy. According to this proposal, the meaning of religious language is not given by reference to a transcendent reality, but to its use as an ethical and existential guide. Next, it is expounded the realist position to the antimetaphysical criticism, using ideas by some of the leading authors in the analytic philosophy of religion: Alvin Plantinga, William Alston and Richard Swinburne. Apart from holding that religious language has a real referential meaning, they argue that metaphysics is not only cognitively defensible, but also an important condition for scientific reasoning. (shrink)

Michel Onfray e André Comte-Sponville são os dois mais famosos representantes do ateísmo filosófico francês contemporâneo, que continua uma tradição iniciada no século XVIII de negação irreligiosa da noção monoteísta de Deus. Embora compartilhando várias ideias, como o naturalismo e, obviamente, a rejeição do monoteísmo, suas propostas têm diferenças importantes. Onfray imputa à religião a maioria dos males enfrentados pela humanidade, recusando-se a fazer qualquer concessão à tradição religiosa monoteísta, e propondo uma filosofia libertária de tipo hedonista e materialista. Comte-Sponville (...) vê aspectos positivos na religião no tocante à manutenção da unidade social e propõe uma espiritualidade mística ateia. O artigo faz uma breve apresentação de suas teses e formula críticas a ambas as propostas. Onfray está muito mais preocupado em convencer de uma proposta política do que em argumentar filosoficamente em favor de uma tese e Comte-Sponville não parece perceber as consequências auto-refutadoras do naturalismo, que também torna muito problemática a própria noção de moralidade. Palavras-chave: Michel Onfray; Comte-Sponville; ateísmo; neoateísmo; naturalismo.Michel Onfray and André Comte-Sponville are the most famous representatives of philosophical contemporary French atheism, which is a continuation of a tradition begun in the 18 th Century of irreligious denying of the monotheistic notion of God. Although sharing many ideas, like naturalism and, obviously, the rejection of the monotheistic conception of God, their proposals show important distinctions. Onfray blames on religion most of evils faced by humanity, refusing to make any concession to monotheism, and proposing a libertarian, hedonistic, materialistic philosophy. Comte-Sponville sees positive aspects in religion regarding the keeping of social unity, and puts forward an atheistic spirituality. The article makes a brief presentation of both theses and formulates criticisms to each of them. Onfray is much more concerned with convincing of a political proposal than with arguing in favour of his thesis philosophically, and Comte-Sponville does not seem to notice the self-defeating consequences of naturalism, which also makes very problematic the very notion of morality. Keywords: Michel Onfray; Comte-Sponville; atheism; neoatheism; naturalism. (shrink)