By the start of the twenty-first century, the notion of ‘the sublime’ had come to seem incoherent. In the last ten years or so considerable light has been shed by empirical psychologists on a related notion of ‘awe’, and a fruitful dialogue between aestheticians and empirical psychologists has ensued. It is the aim of this paper to synthesize these advances and to offer what I call a ‘two-tiered’ theory of the sublime that shows it to be a coherent aesthetic category. (...) On this theory, sublime experiences begin in an ‘awe response’ (the ‘thin sublime’) and might, with the additional element of temporally-extended reflection, turn into a ‘thick sublime’ response. Building on accounts of the sublime as a species of ‘aesthetic awe’ (Clewis, 2019a and 2019b; Arcangeli, et al., 2020) I aim to show that this two-tiered theory helps to explain why sublime experiences seem to have a basic, primordial core, but also seem to be historically and culturally quite variable (as Nicolson, 1963 [1959]; Battersby, 2007; and McMahon, 2017 have stressed). On this model, the cultural and historical variability comes in largely at the point of the temporally-extended reflection characteristic of the thick sublime, due to the cognitive stock that the subject brings to the encounter. Thus, sublime experiences really lend themselves to being interpreted quite variously by the subject (as well as by the theorist) of these experiences, as, for example, affording insight into the Divine, our moral vocation, or our metaphysical unity with the entire universe, among other lofty thoughts. (shrink)

The aesthetic category of the sublime has been theorized (especially in the Kantian tradition) as integrally intertwined with the moral. Paradigmatic experiences of the sublime, such as gazing up at the starry night sky, or out at a storm-whipped sea, lead in a moral or religious direction depending on the cognitive stock brought to the experience, since they typically involve a feeling of awe and reflection on the peculiar situation of the human being in nature. The monumental is a similar (...) aesthetic category, integrally intertwined with the political, but, by contrast, has garnered almost no attention from aestheticians. My main goal in this paper is to sketch a theory of ‘the monumental’ as an aesthetic category—one that is a species of the sublime but differs qualitatively from the natural/environmental sublime in significant ways, and thus merits a distinctive label. In doing so, I aim to shed light on the nature and power of monuments specifically, and to begin to address a lacuna in our understanding of a long-standing and culturally important form of public art. (shrink)

Explores what the last few decades of European/American, feminist, and postcolonial science and technology studies can learn from each other. This book proposes new directions for thinking about objectivity, method, and reflexivity in light of the new understandings developed in the post-World War II world.

This work runs counter to the traditional interpretations of Peirce's philosophy by eliciting an inherent strand of pragmatic pluralism that is embedded in the very core of his thought and that weaves his various doctrines into a systematic ...

Advances in technology are accelerating the momentum for change in all sectors of society. There is at present a lag time between the actual development and implementation of new technology and the public consciousness of the issues involved. The rapid rate of social change, however, emphasizes the critical role of the educational system and the need to continually estimate and evaluate direction to best serve the common good. Forty-five influential Minnesota leaders in education, business/industry and government were interviewed on issues (...) related to education and the changing economy. (shrink)

Previous accounts of hedges assume that they cause language to become vague or fuzzy ; however, hedges can actually sharpen numerical concepts by giving explicit information about approximation, especially where bare numbers appear misleadingly round or precise. They can also tell hearers about the direction of approximation. This article provides a first empirical account of interactions between hedging and rounding in numerical expressions. We demonstrate that hedges occur more commonly with round numbers than with non-round ones. However, we also provide (...) evidence from user studies that in the absence of hedges, readers interpret round numbers as approximations and non-round ones as precise; and that placing a hedge before a round number has no effect on its interpretation, whereas placing it before a non-round number shifts people’s interpretations from precise towards approximate. We attempt to explain this conundrum. (shrink)

The technology for the digitized text creates fluid meaning, representing its culture in transition from the dominance of the single-authored text with its hierarchically ordered system. This new architecture for the digitized word has been making explicit the shift from human consciousness reflecting the interiority of the self to a human consciousness reflecting self in relation to others. Educators using the technology of networked writing environments need to understand how the technology functions and intervenes for pedagogical processes during models of (...) asynchronous and synchronous collaborative writing. Both models support a constructivist view of learning; however, for each, educators need to consider the ethos of the writer as inhabiting a negotiated, shared space with readers during text production. As a consequence, cocognition may occur when writers share ideas and engage in the process of collaboration. (shrink)

Rethinking the ways modern science encodes destructive political philosophies.

The convergence of increasingly efficient high throughput sequencing technology and ubiquitous Internet use by the public has fueled the proliferation of companies that provide personal genetic information (PGI) direct-to-consumers. Companies such as 23andme (Mountain View, CA) and Navigenics (Foster City, CA) are emblematic of a growing market for PGI that some argue represents a paradigm shift in how the public values this information and incorporates it into how they behave and plan for their futures. This new class of social networking (...) business ventures that market the science of the personal genome illustrates the new trend in collaborative science. In addition to fostering a consumer empowerment movement, it promotes the trend of democratizing information—openly sharing of data with all interested parties, not just the biomedical researcher—for the purposes of pooling data (increasing statistical power) and escalating the innovation process. This target article discusses the need for new approaches to studying DTC genomics using social network analysis to identify the impact of obtaining, sharing, and using PGI. As a locus of biosociality, DTC personal genomics forges social relationships based on beliefs of common genetic susceptibility that links risk, disease, and group identity. Ethical issues related to the reframing of DTC personal genomic consumers as advocates and research subjects and the creation of new social formations around health research may be identified through social network analysis. (shrink)

Douglas Husak contends that both criminalization and punishment can serve preventive goals, so long as they respect retributive culpability constraints. This Essay draws on Husak’s work to argue that, while Husak is right to defend the legitimacy of criminal law as a preventive endeavor, preventive coercion is also permissible on consequentialist grounds alone, outside the culpability constraints of the criminal law. The Essay presents a unified consequentialist theory of preventive coercion, addresses deontological objections to ‘pure’ preventive detention, and argues that (...) a consequentialist approach to prevention might ultimately be more protective of liberty and equality interests than the deontological ‘mad or bad’ approach that currently dominates Anglo-American jurisprudence and legal theory. (shrink)

El relato mitológico de Níobe es un motivo constante en la literatura antigua que se remonta a la Ilíada de Homero. Así, esta primera referencia textual sobre Níobe ha sido reutilizada, remodelada e incluso reinterpretada a lo largo de los siglos hasta la literatura latina de época imperial. No solo nos referimos aquí al relato mítico, en términos de forma o contenido, sino también a la conexión entre el uso y función del propio episodio. Todo ello indica el dinamismo de (...) los textos, es decir, que ni estos ni su interpretación eran fijos, sino que podían cambiar dependiendo de la necesidad del autor en su obra. (shrink)

By combining a flanker task and a cuing task into a single paradigm, the authors assessed the effects of orienting and alerting on conflict resolution and explored how normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) modulate these attentional functions. Orienting failed to enhance conflict resolution; alerting was most beneficial for trials without conflict, as if acting on response criterion rather than on information processing. Alerting cues were most effective in the older groups— healthy aging and AD. Conflict resolution was impaired only (...) in AD. Orienting remained unchanged across groups. These findings provide evidence of different life span developmental and clinical trajectories for each attentional network. (shrink)

Although Kant argues that a world republic with coercive public law is the only rational way to secure a lawful cosmopolitan condition, he states that it is an unachievable ideal, and he proposes a voluntary, non-coercive federation of states as a substitute. While some scholars have criticized Kant for moving away from this ideal due merely to pragmatic considerations, I argue that his rejection of a coercive world republic is based on his conception of state sovereignty and what is required (...) for a lawful condition. I consider how we can institutionalize a lawful condition between states without a coercive world republic in ways that go beyond Kant’s voluntary federation. I also consider how we can resolve this dilemma in Kant’s account to support a federal world republic. (Published online first on June 16, 2014). (shrink)

Using data drawn from a racially/ethnically diverse sample of participants ( N = 1,489; 52% female; Mage_T1: 18.10; 34% Latino, 21% White, 20% Asian, 11% Black, 11% multiracial/multiethnic, and 3% other), we conducted a binary logistic regression to identify which factors during adolescence and early adulthood were associated with voting behavior in the 2020 presidential election. There were three main findings. First, young adults who had more cross-racial/ethnic friendships and those who participated in volunteer activities during their senior year of (...) high school were more likely to vote. Second, having cross-racial/ethnic friendships and endorsing self-transcendence values (benevolence, universalism) in early adulthood were positively associated with voting behavior, even when controlling for high school factors. Third, those who endorsed self-enhancement values were more likely to vote when they had more cross-racial/ethnic friendships during high school. Implications for voting patterns among young adults in future presidential elections are discussed. (shrink)

THE CONCEPT OF WORLD IN LEWIS'S PHILOSOPHY IS USUALLY\nTAKEN AS A COMMON-SENSE ONE INDICATING "WHAT IS THE CASE,"\nAND THEN IT IS NOTED THAT HIS STATEMENTS CONCERNING THE\nWORLD ARE INCONSISTENT WITH HIS PRAGMATICALLY ORIENTED\nPOSITION AS A WHOLE. HOWEVER, LEWIS'S CONCEPT OF WORLD IS A\nPRECISE TECHNICAL CONCEPT WHICH PROVIDES AN IMPORTANT KEY\nTO THE SYSTEMATIC UNITY OF HIS CONCEPTUAL PRAGMATISM.\nTHOUGH METAPHYSICAL REALITY IS A CONCRETE ONGOING PROCESS\nFAR DIFFERENT FROM THE WORLD, THIS LEADS TO A PROBLEM ONLY\nTHROUGH A CONFUSION OF METAPHYSICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL\nCATEGORIES; THE (...) WORLD IS BASICALLY A CONCEPT OF\nEPISTEMOLOGY. TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF THE WORLD IS TO\nUNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF THAT PRECISE ENCOMPASSING\nSTRUCTURE WHICH EMERGES FROM THE APPLICATION OF AN ABSTRACT\nCONCEPTUAL SYSTEM TO THE CONCRETE PROCESS AND WHICH, AS A\nPRODUCT OF THE LOGICAL INTERACTION OF BOTH, IS IN FACT\nIDENTICAL WITH NEITHER. (shrink)

As an international IRB collaboration project, we set out to develop an approach to enhance the understanding of issues related to the conduct of human research with an international partner. While the larger project included two specific aims, the activities supporting the first aim are addressed in this paper—specifically, human research protection program capacity strengthening in Cali, Colombia, through the development of an infrastructure that supports the conduct of human research with appropriate protection of subjects and access to new resources (...) at the international site. (shrink)

Este artículo indaga y reflexiona en torno a la «ontología del sentir» elaborada por Maurice Merleau-Ponty, especialmente sobre su noción de carne. Se procurará hacer evidente que la noción de carne es un intento radical de Merleau-Ponty para desarmar las nociones autónomas de sujeto elaboradas tanto por la modernidad filosófica como por la fenomenología, proponiendo en su lugar una noción «pasiva» de sujeto que está fundada en una primacía ontológica de la sensibilidad: en un Sensible en sí al que entiende (...) como «presencia originaria» y como «el trasfondo a partir del cual puede ser pensada toda donación de sentido». Igualmente, se pretende mostrar cómo esa «ontología del sentir» da lugar tanto a un «horizonte de invisibilidad» que subyace a toda representación como a una idea corporal, expresiva, gestual y creadora del lenguaje. (shrink)

Gene retrocopies are generated by reverse transcription and genomic integration of mRNA. As such, retrocopies present an important exception to the central dogma of molecular biology, and have substantially impacted the functional landscape of the metazoan genome. While an estimated 8,000–17,000 retrocopies exist in the human genome reference sequence, the extent of variation between individuals in terms of retrocopy content has remained largely unexplored. Three recent studies by Abyzov et al., Ewing et al. and Schrider et al. have exploited 1,000 (...) Genomes Project Consortium data, as well as other sources of whole‐genome sequencing data, to uncover novel gene retrocopies. Here, we compare the methods and results of these three studies, highlight the impact of retrocopies in human diversity and genome evolution, and speculate on the potential for somatic gene retrocopies to impact cancer etiology and genetic diversity among individual neurons in the mammalian brain. (shrink)

A review of Tomáš Hlobil´s Geschmacksbildung im Nationalinteresse: Die Anfänge der Prager Universitätsästhetik im mitteleuropäischen Kulturraum 1763–1805 (Bochumer Quellen und Forschungen zum 18. Jahrhundert 2. Hanover: Wehrhahn, 2012, 462 pp. ISBN 978-3-86525-247-0).

J.L. Austin’s insight that language should be treated as a domain of human action, rather than merely as a tool for the transmission of information, has been enormously influential. His analysis of speech acts continues to be widely utilised in a vast number of fields, from the philosophy of language to social and political philosophy, the philosophy of law, gender and literary studies, as well as a variety of social sciences. Yet scholars have so far focused on performative utterances and (...) illocutionary acts, while the perlocutionary dimension of speech has generally been dismissed as unessential. This special issue, drawing inspiration from Stanley Cavell’s seminal work on passionate utterance, aims to shed new light on the philosophical, moral and political relevance of the perlocutionary. (shrink)

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.

En este artículo sondearemos los modos de conciencia de un sujeto que intenta desencadenarse de la voluptuosidad y del dolor, dado que la conciencia que posibilita el descubrimiento de la voluntad en cuanto cosa en sí es fruto del éxtasis de su negación. Testimonios personales del filósofo aunados con referentes platónicos y kantianos entre la conciencia empírica y la mejor, ayudarán a esclarecer el desencadenamiento de la metafísica de la voluntad. In this article we shall delve into the conscience moods (...) in a subject who intends to unchain from voluptuosness and pain, inasmuch as the conscience that makes it possible the discovery of will as the thing in itself is the fruit of its negation ecstasy. Personal testimonies of the philosopher together with Platonic and Kantian referents between the empirical conscience and the better conscience will help to elucidate the unleashing of will metaphysics. (shrink)

I propose a theory of popular power, according to which a political order manifests popular power to the extent it robustly maintains an egalitarian basic structure. There are two parts to the theory. First, the power of a political order lies in the basic structure's robust self-maintenance. Second, the popularity of the political order’s power lies in the equality of relations between the society's members. I will argue that this theory avoids the perverse consequences of some existing radical democratic theories (...) of popular power which focus on mass expression, either in plebiscites or in social movements, as popular power's canonical instances. In particular, my theory does not valourise momentary expression over durable effect, and it offers a ready framework for conceptualising the sometimes-oligarchic substructure of the supposedly canonical instances of popular power. I will show that this theory has strong precedents within a certain republican tradition of political philosophy. (shrink)