The present study examined whether a dissociation among formats for rational numbers can be obtained in tasks that require comparing a number to a non-symbolic quantity. In Experiment 1, college students saw a discrete or else continuous image followed by a rational number, and had to decide which was numerically larger. In Experiment 2, participants saw the same displays but had to make a judgment about the type of ratio represented by the number. The magnitude task was performed more quickly (...) using decimals, whereas the relation task was performed more accurately with fractions. The pattern observed for percentages was very similar to that for decimals. A dissociation between magnitude comparison and relational processing with rational numbers can be obtained when a symbolic number must be compared to a non-symbolic display. (shrink)

This article combines my journey in Feminist Theology from Liberation to Reconciliation, with a deep appreciation of the late Catherine Halkes, a great influence in my life and a European foremother for Feminist Theology. The emergence of Feminist Theology globally was based on the contextual struggle for justice in society and religion. This evoked new awareness, academic disciplines, culture and spirituality, and in an eccesial dimension inspired the Woman Church movement. Evaluating progress and acknowledging tensions, it is time to take (...) new directions – including visions of liberation that aim for peace with justice, flourishing and ecological wellbeing – contained appropriately by the concept ‘praxis of reconciliation’. (shrink)

The neural basis of developmental changes in transitive reasoning in parietal regions was examined, using voxel-based morphometry. Young adolescents and adults performed a transitive reasoning task, subsequent to undergoing anatomical magnetic resonance imaging brain scans. Behaviorally, adults reasoned more accurately than did the young adolescents. Neural results showed less grey matter density in superior parietal cortex in the adults than in the young adolescents, possibly due to a developmental period of synaptic pruning; improved performance in the reasoning task was negatively (...) correlated with grey matter density in superior parietal cortex in the adolescents, but not in the adult group; and the latter results were driven by the more difficult trials, requiring greater spatial manipulation. Taken together, the results support the idea that during development, regions in superior parietal cortex are fine-tuned, to support more robust spatial manipulation, resulting in gre... (shrink)

A study of the political philosophy of the Russian born thinker explains how Isaiah Berlin came to reject ideological frameworks in favor of a pluralism that acknowledges the inevitable diversity of human values.

The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that (...) sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human mind can help athletes succeed. Sports psychology research has always focused on the themes, notions, and models of embodied cognition; embodied cognition, in turn, has found striking confirmation of its theoretical claims in the psychological accounts of sports performance and athletic skill. Athletic skill is a legitimate form of intelligence, involving cognitive faculties no less sophisticated and complex than those required by mathematical problem solving. After presenting the key concepts necessary for applying embodied cognition to sports psychology, the book discusses skill disruption ; sensorimotor skill acquisition and how training correlates to the development of cognitive faculties; the intersubjective and social dimension of sports skills, seen in team sports; sports practice in cultural and societal contexts; the notion of “affordance” and its significance for ecological psychology and embodied cognition theory; and the mind's predictive capabilities, which enable anticipation, creativity, improvisation, and imagination in sports performance. Contributors Ana Maria Abreu, Kenneth Aggerholm, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Duarte Araújo, Jürgen Beckmann, Kath Bicknell, Geoffrey P. Bingham, Jens E. Birch, Gunnar Breivik, Noel E. Brick, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Thomas H. Carr, Alberto Cei, Anthony Chemero, Wayne Christensen, Lincoln J. Colling, Cassie Comley, Keith Davids, Matt Dicks, Caren Diehl, Karl Erickson, Anna Esposito, Pedro Tiago Esteves, Mirko Farina, Giolo Fele, Denis Francesconi, Shaun Gallagher, Gowrishankar Ganesh, Raúl Sánchez-García, Rob Gray, Denise M. Hill, Daniel D. Hutto, Tsuyoshi Ikegami, Geir Jordet, Adam Kiefer, Michael Kirchhoff, Kevin Krein, Kenneth Liberman, Tadhg E. MacIntyre, Nelson Mauro Maldonato, David L. Mann, Richard S. W. Masters, Patrick McGivern, Doris McIlwain, Michele Merritt, Christopher Mesagno, Vegard Fusche Moe, Barbara Gail Montero, Aidan P. Moran, David Moreau, Hiroki Nakamoto, Alberto Oliverio, David Papineau, Gert-Jan Pepping, Miriam Reiner, Ian Renshaw, Michael A. Riley, Zuzanna Rucinska, Lawrence Shapiro, Paula Silva, Shannon Spaulding, John Sutton, Phillip D. Tomporowski, John Toner, Andrew D. Wilson, Audrey Yap, Qin Zhu, Christopher Madan. (shrink)

The situation caused by the 2019 coronavirus disease has been representing a great source of concern and a challenge to the psychological well-being of many individuals around the world. For couples in particular, this extraordinary rise in concern, combined with the stress posed by the virus containment measures, such as prolonged cohabitation and lack of support networks, may have increased the likelihood of couple problems. At the same time, however, COVID-19 concerns may have been a stimulus to activate couples’ stress (...) management processes. A couple’s resource, which may have an important role in dealing with COVID-19 concerns and stress, is dyadic coping, i.e., the process through which partners face stress together. Drawing on a sample of 1,823 Italian individuals involved in a couple relationship, the current study tested a serial mediation model in which concerns about COVID-19 predicted psychological well-being, through both explicit stress communication and perceived partner dyadic coping responses. In addition, the study explored whether this dyadic coping process functioned the same way in satisfied and dissatisfied couples. Results showed that concerns about the situation related to COVID-19 significantly threatened individuals’ psychological well-being. However, these concerns positively predicted explicit stress communication, which in turn positively predicted perceived partner’s dyadic coping responses, which finally positively predicted psychological well-being. In addition, in the group of dissatisfied individuals, the association between explicit stress communication and perceived partners’ dyadic coping responses was not significant. The present study adds to the research on couples’ coping by testing for the first time the whole theoretical model of dyadic coping and does so during a global emergency situation. The study also suggests key components of preventive interventions for individuals in couples. (shrink)

In this book John Gray argues that we live in a time of endings for the ideologies that governed the modern period. The Enlightenment projects of universal emancipation animates all the political doctrines and movements that are central in contemporary western societies. Yet it does not reflect the reality of the plural world in which we live. The western cultural hegemony which the Enlightenment embodied is coming to a close. Western liberal societies are not precursors of a universal civilization, (...) but only one form of life among many in the late modern world. Our inherited stock of political ideas no longer tracks that world. The crisis of New Right thought is as profound as that of the Left. Green theorists and communitarian thinkers have not understood the deep diversity and intractable conflicts of contemporary societies. And postmodernists, whose thought is ruled by the dated utopias of the modern period, do not engage with the real conditions of the world's emerging postmodern societies. Late modern thought occurs in an interregnum between modern projects that are no longer credible and postmodern realities that many find intolerable. John Gray suggests that some Enlightenment hopes of progress must be extinguished if we are to learn to respect cultural diversity and accept ecological limits. Respect for the Earth and for other species and cultures means abandoning the utopian and arcadian projects that haunt modern thought. We should aim to moderate the impact of human activity on the Earth while alleviating the unavoidable evils of human life. Yet the hubris which treats the Earth as an instrument of human purposes, and which regards other cultures as approximations to a universal civilization, embodies ancient and powerful traditions. John Gray's aim is to question these traditions and thereby to prepare our thinking for a time of beginnings. (shrink)

Keeley has recently argued that the philosophical issue of how to analyse the concept of a sense can usefully be addressed by considering how scientists, and more specifically neuroethologists, classify the senses. After briefly outlining his proposal, which is based on the application of an ordered set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for modality differentiation, I argue, by way of two complementary counterexamples, that it fails to account fully for the way the senses are in fact individuated in (...) neuroethology and other relevant sciences. (shrink)

Reductive externalist versions of representationalism hold that there is an externalist theory of content which is adequate for underwriting their claim that the character of experience can be reductively explained by the external physical properties represented by experience. In this paper such theories of content are shown to be inadequate, thus undermining the reductive explanation of the character of experience by the content of experience. It is argued that the character of experience is better explained non-reductively by reference to modes (...) of presentation of the properties of things. (shrink)

This book shows that Hauriou's positivist and pragmatic jurisprudence and social theory, as well as their application to the study of institutions, is satisfactorily supported by his idealistic philosophy. The nine chapters first locate Hauriou's influences, then situate his disciplinary methodologies within methodology in general. The central chapters concern each of the three methodologies in turn.

A palavra-chave é encontro, ou, talvez sua estranha intenção: a impossibilidade de expressar uma experiência que certos modos de classificação, ou uma tradição, impedem de ver o que é. Experiência que resiste ao acabado e inicia um processo de reconhecimento para dar lugar à expressão de seus vazios. Como criar esse percurso que se apodera de singularidades que a constituem? Deparamos-nos com a expressão de um ser em potência: toda vez que se tenta apreendê-lo, ele se deixa unir novamente por (...) aquilo que não tinha nada em comum, impelindo-me à criação. Expressa a necessidade de compreender os caminhos pelos quais alcancei a revelação dos pensamentos indizíveis que permitiram apreender como se engendram em nossa experiência. Descolando-se do plano da educação, seus procedimentos dirigem-se ao externo, em direção a outros planos, além do humano, passando por um plano de experiências interiores; recolhem vestígios atemporais da nossa experiência e os agrupa de tal maneira que se explicam por meios pouco confessáveis, complicando-se na expressão. Dado o desenvolvimento singular da revelação que surge com a necessidade da expressão, só mais tarde é que pude entender: o que parecia falta de sentido era justamente o sentido. É complexo descrever o que nos aconteceu. Mas foi justamente na frustração de tentar capturar o aprendizado que conseguimos de alguma forma compreendê-lo, embora não soubéssemos inicialmente traduzir essa compreensão em palavras: aí nasceram os pensamentos indizíveis. Tenho sempre comigo a sensação de que sua concepção está comprometida, donde surge um tal de desconforto, cada vez que tentamos enquadrá-los em uma explicação. Embora toda explicação exista neles e deles dependa de tal maneira que não pode ser concebida sem eles, contanto que venha depois. No instante em que surge a necessidade de dar a conhecer, esta se constitui em si mesma em um objetivo concreto. Deixo aqui palavras inspiradas em experiências mal sucedidas e encontros subseqüentes. (shrink)

In a series of important papers, G.A. Cohen has developed a forceful argument for the claim that workers are rendered unfree by capitalist institutions. His argument poses a powerful challenge to those who think that capitalist institutions best promote freedom. Yet, formidable as it is, Cohen's argument can be shown to be flawed at several crucial points. It is not one argument, but three at least, and one of the goals of my criticism of Cohen on this question is to (...) distinguish and assess the various separate lines of reasoning that together make up his case for the unfreedom under capitalism of workers as a class. Cohen argues of workers that they are rendered unfree by the institution of private property on which the capitalist system depends, that they suffer a form of collective unfreedom under capitalism, and that they are forced to sell their labor power under capitalism. (shrink)

This volume presents an English translation of Nietzsche's Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen or, Unfashionable Observations. The common impulse that links up these four essays is Nietzsche's attitude towards all mainstream and popular movements that constituted contemporary European, and especially German culture. The work offers the foundations for Nietzsche's whole philosophy, prefiguring both his characteristic philosophical style and many of the major ideas he develops in his later writings.

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to examine questions about the role and responsibilities of transaction lawyers working in the financial sector that, it is argued here, deserve closer scrutiny than they have hitherto received since the banking and economic crisis of 2008. It considers the manner in which the conduct of such lawyers in the pre-crisis financial markets may have played a particular role in contributing to the sources of latent risk that bore systemic fruit in 2008. (...) It poses the question, ‘Could they have acted differently?’. The first section concludes that there are strong and persuasive arguments both for and against reorienting the responsibilities of the transaction lawyer to include some obligation to take account of the risk to the financial system which the transactions they are conducting for their clients may pose. Secondly, this paper explores ways in which, nonetheless, financial sector lawyers could – and indeed should – be expected to play a part... (shrink)

The failure to resolve satisfactorily epistemological issues surrounding the identification of different senses has led to questions being asked of the nature of the senses. This issue has been thrown into sharp focus by two starkly contrasting positions. The first is a realist position that draws on science and is based on the application of criteria. The second is an anti-realist position that adheres to commonsense conceptions and is partly motivated by the apparent failure of criterial approaches. In this paper (...) I attempt to mediate between the two views. (shrink)

In the final scene of Michel Tournier’s postcolonial novel La Goutte d’or, the protagonist, Idriss, shatters the glass of a Cristobal & Co. storefront window while operating a jackhammer in the working-class Parisian neighbourhood on the Rue de la Goutte d’or. Glass fragments fly everywhere as the Parisian police arrive. In La Goutte d’or, Tournier explores the identity construction of Idriss through a discussion of the role that visual images play in the development of a twentieth-century consciousness of the “Other.” (...) At the beginning of the novel, a French tourist takes a photograph of Idriss during her visit to the Sahara. The boy’s quest to reclaim his stolen image leads him from the Sahara to Marseille, and finally to the Rue de la Goutte d’or in Paris. The Rue de la Goutte d’or remains one the most cosmopolitan neighbourhoods of the city. In Tournier’s novel, the goutte d’or also corresponds to a symbolic object: a Berber jewel. It is the jewel that Idriss brings with him, but which he also subsequently loses upon his arrival in Marseille. From the very moment that the French tourist photographs him, a marginalization of Idriss’s identity occurs. Marginality, quite literally, refers to the spatial property of a location in which something is situated. Figuratively speaking, marginality suggests something that is on the edges or at the outer limits of social acceptability. In this essay, I explore the construction of the marginalized postcolonial self through an examination of the function of visual representation in the development of a postcolonial identity in La Goutte d’or. In the end, I conclude that the construction of a postcolonial identity is based upon fragmentation and marginalization, which ultimately leads its subject to create an identity based upon false constructions. (shrink)

The centrality of human-machine weapon systems is a key aspect of postmodern war. Since 1939 such systems have proliferated while improved interfaces have led to several types of actual cyborg soldiers. As the crisis of postmodern war deepens it is producing a series of quite different militarized bodies. Cyborgs proliferate in type so it is no surprise that we have pilot-cyborgs and teleoperators, info-cyborgs (from political operatives to clerks and including all the servants of the computers and weapons systems), and (...) various fighting cyborg soldiers and sailors. There has also been a resurgence of a type of irregular warrior that many commentators describe as bestial. It is not a coincidence that while humanity is on the verge of producing real posthumans (quite possibly for military applications) so-called ‘prehuman’ types of war have broken out across the globe. War is based on bodies and its skewed logics have driven many cyborgian developments. Now, both war and our cyborg society are involved in a linked crisis fuelled by the relentless march of technoscience that has made modern war impossible and posthumans probable. The future of the human, and of a multitude of potential posthumanities, will largely be determined by how this crisis is resolved. (shrink)

Procedural approaches to political legitimacy have become increasingly popular amongst liberals. According to such an approach, the legitimacy of a state decision is primarily derived from the processes followed in order to make that decision and not from the quality of the decision itself. The processes that liberals have in mind are typically those found within a system of democratic institutions. These electoral and legislative procedures are supposed to allow the state’s constitutive members to reach legitimately binding agreements on how (...) the state should exercise its power. In response to this trend in liberalism, this dissertation has two goals. The first is to argue that formal results in the social decision sciences seriously question the viability of these procedural approaches. The second goal, however, is to argue that these results do not necessitate complete abandonment of procedural approaches but require liberals to more carefully specify the sorts of agreements that legitimacy requires and what procedures may reliably produce such agreements. I ultimately agree that procedures are important for liberalism but they require more careful understanding and defense. In order to carry this project out, this dissertation is divided into five chapters. In the first two chapters, I outline a fairly standard account of liberalism while arguing that it contains a serious tension that liberal democratic institutions are supposed to resolve. The second chapter in particular seeks to explain the various ways in which the procedural aspects of democracy are particularly appealing in this respect. In the third chapter, I then present Arrow’s famous impossibility result along with other formal result from social choice theory suggesting that in certain situations there simply is no correct procedure for legitimate outcomes that the liberal state may employ. The fourth chapter responds to this concern by maintaining that there exists a symmetry between how an individual person and the liberal state make decisions, and that insights into individual decision making sheds light on how it may be done by a group of people in a liberal democracy. Finally, in the fifth chapter, I move in this direction by presenting an account of the sort of agreements between individuals that legitimacy ought to be grounded upon. Ultimately, procedures like voting remain an important aspect of liberal democracy for authorizing state action, though not necessarily for the reasons that many liberal democrats endorse. (shrink)

Despite ample evidence of the efficacy and effectiveness of evidence-based parenting programmes (EBPPs) within research-led environments, there is very little evidence of maintenance of effectiveness when programmes are delivered as part of regular service provision. The present study examined the effectiveness of EBPPs provided during a period of sustained service-led implementation in comparison to research-led effectiveness evaluation. Data from 3706 parents who received EBPPs during sustained implementation by services were compared to data from 1390 parents who had participated in an (...) earlier researcher-led effectiveness trial of a national roll-out of EBPPs in England. In both phases, parents completed measures of child behaviour problems, parenting style and parental mental well-being prior to starting parenting programmes (pre-test), at the end of the programmes (post) and at 12-months follow up. Results from Generalised Estimating Equations controlling for potential covariates indicated significant improvements in child behaviour problems during sustained implementation, similar to the effectiveness phase; significant improvements in parenting style which were larger than the effectiveness phase at 12-month follow up; and significant improvements in parental mental well- being. Our findings demonstrate effective maintenance of gains when EBPPs are provided as part of regular provision across a large sample of English parents. Successful long-term implementation should consider effectiveness of EBPPs across the population, given the large contextual changes that take place between researcher-led evaluations and service take-up. Our findings support the integration of EBPPs in public health approaches to addressing child behaviour problems and parent well-being. (shrink)

Die elf Beiträge dieses Bandes gehen aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln dem Problem der Verkörperung von Sinn nach: phänomenologische, psychoanalytische und sprachwissenschaftliche Ansätze bilden dabei den Schwerpunkt; sie werden aber durch Studien aus der Literaturtheorie, der politischen Theorie und der Filmwissenschaft ergänzt. Was heißt es – das ist die zentrale Frage –, den Körper als leibliches Medium aufzufassen, welches Sinn nicht nur verkörpert, sondern überhaupt erst entstehen lässt? Gibt es bereits eine Sprache des Leibes diesseits der Ebene ausdrücklicher Rede?

Since the end of the 1970s, the Japanese concept of ma has often been used in the west to signify an aesthetics of distance. This paper is a reverse exploration whose aim is to understand how this term appeared in the critical discourse in Europe, but also in Japan with philosopher Nakai Masakazu. It shows that this concept is a recent elaboration of Japanese thought, which emerged from a dialogue with German phenomenology and Heidegger in particular.