Throughout a career spanning half a century, Stan Brakhage--the foremost experimental filmmaker in America, and perhaps the world--wrote controversial essays on the art of film and its intersections with poetry, music, dance, and painting. Published in small circulation literary and arts journals, they were gathered later into such books as Metaphors on Vision and Film at Wit's End. Beginning in 1989, and for a decade thereafter, Brakhage wrote the essays in Telling Time as an occasional column for Musicworks, a (...) Toronto quarterly. Ostensibly about the relation of film to music, they soon enlarged to explore primary concerns beyond film, including Brakhage's aesthetic theories based on the phenomenology of human cognition. In these essays he is as brilliant discussing Gertrude Stein or romantic love as he is on child psychology, astronomy, and physiology, all the while teasing out vital correspondences between the arts, and upending conventional ideas of how we perceive. His investigations of other artists are models of sympathetic intuition and generosity. Above all, he shares his theories, discoveries and understandings in the spirit of establishing a groundwork for many varieties of human liberation. His prose is filled with flashes of insight, elaborated metaphors, playful elisions, shorthand puns and neologisms, personal digressions, surprising epiphanies, leaps of faith, affronts to authority. He appeals to the imagination, and invites us to a more profound and personal experience of art. (shrink)

Moral nihilists need an answer: if moral discourse is fatally flawed, how are we to proceed? A popular option is fictionalism, to uphold the flawed discourse in the mode of a fiction. My thesis is that fictionalism is not the best available answer to the nihilist; a better one is revisionism, the proposal to refashion the discourse so as to cure it of all flaws. Should it be possible to revise the discredited practice, by removing what is erroneous while keeping (...) what is beneficial, the twisted allegiance to the original practice already recognized as flawed which characterizes fictionalism becomes entirely moot. Fictionalism fully worked out, I argue in this paper, is going to lead us to the very doorsteps of revisionism. (shrink)

Dealing with the continuously increasing rates of families wanting to either significantly delay or completely postpone their infant's vaccines has created an alarmingly untenable dilemma for the general pediatricians dealing with these families on a daily basis. Pediatricians must decide whether to continue to provide substandard care by foregoing many or most of the infant's highly recommended protective vaccines, or whether to dismiss from the practice the family who refuses vaccines. Much has been written about why they should retain these (...) families, but this paper will discuss some reasonable rationales as to why nearly 40% of pediatricians choose dismissal of these families. (shrink)

Does not contain all chapters present in the main book--from publisher's comments.

Drawing on ideas from philosophy (in particular, epistemology), I argue that one of memory’s most important functions is to provide its owner with knowledge of the physical world. This knowledge helps satisfy the organism’s need to confer stability on an ever-changing reality so the objects in which it consists can be identified and reidentified. I then draw a distinction between sources of knowledge (i.e., from physical vs. subjective reality) and argue—based on evolutionary principles—that because memory was designed by natural selection (...) to interface with the physical world, knowledge acquired via sensory/perceptual experiences should be better remembered than internally generated knowledge made available by introspection. A study conducted to test this hypothesis provides support. I conclude that a serious interdisciplinary approach to issues typically considered the purview of psychology best enables researchers to craft well-specified, theoretically based hypotheses that directly target functions of the mind. (shrink)

The methodological premise of the investigation is the meta-difference between foreground and background as a necessary element of any difference, including the difference between conceptual and terminological types of analysis of philosophical texts. The topic of terminological analysis is the function of the terms that make up the framework of concepts, the methods and justifications for their introduction. The role of D.Hume, who was the first to draw attention to the difference in the meaning of the same word in natural (...) and philosophical languages, is noted. More general questions are formulated regarding the prerequisites of terminological analysis: what is a term, what experience underlies the very process of introducing terms, are terms a necessary building material of philosophical texts or a necessary evil? The prerequisites for terminological analysis include the differences between a term and a word, as well as a term and a metaphor. Husserl’s concept of noetic-noematic structures is considered in terms of the difference between conceptual and terminological dimensions. The research focuses on the functions of “sense” as an intermediary between natural language and philosophical terminology. The prerequisites for the introduction of the terms “noesis” and “noema” are identified; in the first case, this is the traditional scheme of hylomorphism, in the second, the postulate of the identity of what is perceived during normal and abnormal perception. A comparison is made between Husserl’s expression “sense does not burn” with M.Bulgakov’s aphorism “manuscripts do not burn.” Husserl’s division of two types of consciousness (positional and neutral or shadow) reveals the incorrectness of Husserl’s description of the difference between the foreground and background of perception. Husserl’s description of “neutralization” is subjected to critical analysis using the example of the perception of Durer’s engraving. The final section of the article examines attempts to correlate the meaning of the word “sense” with experience, compares the role of the terms “sense” and “concept,” and also analyzes Husserl’s “generalization of the idea of meaning,” or expansion of the meaning of the term “sense.” Finally, a distinction is made between a methodology of separation, which corresponds to the boundary-setting function of terms, and a methodology of differentiation of differences, which implies the differentiating function of terms. (shrink)

Most music we hear comes to us via a recording medium on which sound has been stored. Such remoteness of music heard from music made has become so commonplace it is rarely considered. _Musical Performance: A Philosophical Study_ considers the implications of this separation for live musical performance and music-making. Rather than examining the composition or perception of music as most philosophical accounts of music do, Stan Godlovitch takes up the problem of how the tradition of active music playing (...) and performing has been challenged by technology and what problems this poses for philosophical aesthetics. Where does does the value of musical performance lie? Is human performance of music a mere transfer medium? Is the performance of music more expressive than recorded music? Musical Performance poses questions such as these to develop a fascinating account of music today. musicians - but via some recording medium on which sound has been stored. (shrink)

This article discusses Husserl’s “epoche” and “phenomenological reduction” and early Heidegger’s “fear” and “anxiety” from a conceptual and terminological point of view. The basis for comparing “epoche” and “fear” is their main function of neutralizing the world. The author also considers the way of correlating the epoche and anxiety as philosophical concepts with three types of realizable experience that served as their source. The main points and stages of the introduction of the term “epoche” are highlighted; the main functional differences (...) between the terms “epoche” and “phenomenological reduction” in various works of Husserl are indicated. A number of Husserl’s attempts to transform the methodological principles put forward by him into a description of a special experience of detachment, accessible through moral efforts, courage and honesty, are considered. In this regard, the transformation of Cartesian doubt into the procedure of “epoche” through the artificial procedure of “attempt at doubt” is analyzed. Three types of restrictions on the universality of the epoche are distinguished. Terminological and meaningful relationships between neutralization as a mode of consciousness and the epoche are considered. Two main differences are revealed, with the help of which Husserl tries to transform principles into experience: the difference between positional and neutral consciousness and the difference between an epoche and a quasi-epoche. Husserl’s interpretation of the epoche and reduction as a special experience has two main sources: first, the experience of the imagination, or fantasy, and in this sense the source of the epoche is the quasi-epoche, and not vice versa. Secondly, the postulate of the identity of sensation from the real and illusory object. Heidegger’s distinction between fear and anxiety is critically analyzed. The author comes to the conclusion that a common source of the phenomena of anxiety, fear, horror, fright, and so on consists in the collision and mutual penetration of various human worlds. It is impossible to distance oneself from this diversity; further, it is the true source of philosophical reflection. (shrink)

This article describes the fight of transnational civic networks to influence business development strategies and counter the threats to environmental and labor rights posed by the construction and exploitation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline in Transcaucasia. The article starts by discussing the role of civil society in the global struggle for sustainable development. Then a brief overview of the geopolitical significance of the Transcaucasian-Caspian region in today’s oil and gas markets is presented. The case study looks at how the (...) actions of international and domestic nongovernmental organizations influenced the BTC’s main shareholder and operator company, British Petroleum, as well as host countries’ governments, to switch to more environmentally cognizant and socially responsive practices. The article discusses internationalization of civil society networks in response to the looming environmental crisis in the region, using the BTC case as an illustration. The article concludes by generalizing from this particular case study to the broader issue of transnational civic activism as a risk-mitigating factor in the world dominated by industry-related threats presented by globalization of the extractive technologies. (shrink)

Baars (1988, 1997) has proposed a psychological theory of consciousness, called global workspace theory. The present study describes a software agent implementation of that theory, called ''Conscious'' Mattie (CMattie). CMattie operates in a clerical domain from within a UNIX operating system, sending messages and interpreting messages in natural language that organize seminars at a university. CMattie fleshes out global workspace theory with a detailed computational model that integrates contemporary architectures in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Baars (1997) lists the psychological (...) ''facts that any complete theory of consciousness must explain'' in his appendix to In the Theater of Consciousness; global workspace theory was designed to explain these ''facts.'' The present article discusses how the design of CMattie accounts for these facts and thereby the extent to which it implements global workspace theory. (shrink)

Much scholarship has claimed the physics of Emilie du Châtelet’s treatise, Institutions de physique, is Newtonian. I argue against that idea. To do so, I distinguish three strands of meaning for the category ‘Newtonian science,’ and I examine her book against them. I conclude that her physics is not Newtonian in any useful or informative sense. To capture what is specific about it, we need better interpretive categories.

Contraceptive prevalence is a key variable estimated from Demographic and Health Surveys. But the prevalence estimated from reports of husbands differs widely from that estimated for wives. In this research, using data from six Demographic and Health Surveys of sub-Saharan Africa, reports from spouses in monogamous couples with no other reported sex partners in the recent period are examined. Agreement ranged from 47% to 82%, but among couples in which one or both reported use, the category represented less than half (...) in all nations except Zimbabwe. Husbands generally had higher reports of condoms, periodic abstinence and pills but fewer reports of the IUD, injections and female sterilization. Either discussion of family planning with the spouse and/or higher socioeconomic status was associated with agreement in most of the surveys. Ambiguities in the survey question regarding current use need to be reduced, perhaps with an added probe question for non-permanent methods. (shrink)

Klein, Nguyen, & Zhang (in press) argued that the evolutionary transition from respondent to agent during the Cambrian Explosion would be a promising vantage point from which to gain insight into the evolution of organic sentience. They focused on how increased competition for resources -- in consequence of the proliferation of new, neurally sophisticated life-forms -- made awareness of the external world (in the service of agentic acts) an adaptive priority. The explanatory scope of Klein et al (in press) was (...) limited to consideration of the conscious apprehension of externally sourced content – i.e., content delivered from the sensory registration of objects occupying phenomenal space. But consciousness – at least for humans -- takes its objects from internal as well as external sources. In the present article we extend their analysis to the question of how internally sourced content (i.e., mental states) became the object of conscious apprehension. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss philosophical and psychological treatments of the question "how do we decide that an occurrent mental state is a memory and not, say a thought or imagination?" This issue has proven notoriously difficult to resolve, with most proposed indices, criteria and heuristics failing to achieve consensus. Part of the difficulty, I argue, is that the indices and analytic solutions thus far offered seldom have been situated within a well-specified theory of memory function. As I hope to (...) show, when such an approach is adopted, not only does a new, functionally-grounded answer emerge; we also gain insight into the adaptive significance of the process proposed to underwrite our belief in the memorial status of a mental state (i.e.,autonoetic awareness). (shrink)

This investigation addresses the internal experience as a spatial phenomenon. Ascertaining the difference between internal and external experience as a space metaphor leads to the question of the source of the space metaphors in principle. The analogy between time and space and the space metaphors in Husserl’s conception of time are considered. The question of the temporality of consciousness, evidence, and internal experience are brought to the fore by comparing Brentano’s and Husserl’s conceptions. The difference between the direct and indirect (...) modes of consciousness by Brentano, his conception of time as the boundary in the continuum, and his concept of the proteraesthesis proves to be relevant for the concept of internal experience as a spatial phenomenon. The essay calls in question the self-sufficiency of time-experience and the traditional correspondence of time to the internal experience and of space to the external one. The relation of the Here/There- and Now/Then-experience is discussed. I intend to elucidate the experience of boundary as a primary internal experience from which the space-experience arises. In its turn the boundary-consciousness has its origin in the differentiation-experience. In the latter there is no time, the internal one included, but there is a boundary-experience as a primary and indirect experience. Time is s shadow of space; it originates from the manifold of human spaces.Esta investigación aborda la experiencia interna como un fenómeno espacial. Determinar la diferencia entre la experiencia interna y externa como una metáfora del espacio conduce a la cuestión de la fuente de las, en principio, metáforas espaciales. Aquí se atiende la analogía entre el tiempo y el espacio y las metáforas espaciales en la concepción del tiempo de Husserl. Se ponen de relieve la cuestión de la temporalidad de la conciencia, la evidencia y la experiencia interna, comparando las concepciones de Brentano y Husserl. La diferencia entre los modos de conciencia directos e indirectos de Brentano, su concepción del tiempo como el límite en el continuo, y su concepto de la proteroestesis, son relevantes para el concepto de experiencia interna como un fenómeno espacial. El ensayo cuestiona la autosuficiencia de la experiencia del tiempo y la correspondencia tradicional del tiempo con la experiencia interna y del espacio con la externa. Se discute la relación de la experiencia Aquí/Ahí y de la experiencia Ahora/Luego. Mi in-tención es esclarecer la experiencia de la frontera como una experiencia interna primaria de la cual surge la experiencia espacial. A su vez, la con-ciencia de frontera tiene su origen en la experiencia de diferenciación. En esta último no hay tiempo —incluso el interno—, pero hay una experiencia límite como experiencia primaria e indi-recta. El tiempo es la sombra del espacio; se origina en la multiplicidad de espacios humanos.. (shrink)

We summarize a recent search for quantum reality. The full anhomomorphic logic of coevents for an event set is introduced. The quantum integral over an event with respect to a coevent is defined. Reality filters such as preclusivity and regularity of coevents are considered. A quantum measure that can be represented as a quantum integral with respect to a coevent is said to 1-generate that coevent. This gives a stronger filter that may produce a unique coevent called the “actual reality” (...) for a physical system. What we believe to be a more general filter is defined in terms of a double quantum integral and is called 2-generation. It is noted that ordinary measures do not 1 or 2-generate coevents except in a few simple cases. Various general results are stated. (shrink)

A transition effect matrix (TEM) is a quantum generalization of a classical stochastic matrix. By employing a TEM we obtain a quantum generalization of a classical Markov chain. We first discuss state and operator dynamics for a quantum Markov chain. We then consider various types of TEMs and vector states. In particular, we study invariant, equilibrium and singular vector states and investigate projective, bistochastic, invertible and unitary TEMs.

_Film Studies: An International Review_ Issue 1, Spring 1999 ISBN 1900755288.

A phenomenological analysis of subjectivism requires the study of subjectivity. This is the study of the form of being, or the modification of subjectivity, which establishes and reproduces subjectivism. The question is what is this form, and what understanding of the primary experience of consciousness, what understanding of self-awareness is contained in this form.

The article examines space as a hierarchy of differences and as a basic phenomenon of the world, while calling into question the existence of time as a natural process and basis for human experience. It analyses the functionality of time in connection with various types of individual spaces and reveals the correlativity of space and consciousness.

In recent years there has been rather extensive discussion in the physics literature of the possibility of transmission of material effects at speeds exceeding that of light.

The starting point of the investigation is the correspondence between the term and concept of Ego ("I") and the various types of experience. Two main ways of introducing and applying of the term "I" (Ego) in Russian philosophy are investigated from the semantic-analytical point of view. The first takes the Ego as initially existed either as a spiritual substance or a given form uniting experiences. This way of treating is realized in L. Lopatin's and V. Soloviev's philosophical teachings. The second (...) containing some moments of reflexion on the concept treated the Ego as a result of experience. It was developed in M. Karinskij und G. Spet. In context of difference between the Ego and the subject or consciousness the question of the owner of consciousness is considered. (shrink)

In the theses published in Voprosy filosofii there is, in my view, one very important question: What changes have occurred in the relations between art and science? Inasmuch as I am a scholar of foreign cultures, permit me to express that question a bit more concretely for myself: What changes have occurred in the West in the interactions between art and science? The question is rather complex, for in responding to it one must always take into consideration the factor of (...) "compression of time" during the RST. Not only scientific discoveries and industrial equipment have begun to obsolesce rapidly but also the notion of the role of science in the social and cultural development of society. Regrettably, the authors of some works published in our country, even in the 1970s, analyzing the relationship between science and art that has come into being in the West, ignore this circumstance. The "ancient" debate between Snow and Leavis, now almost fifteen years in the past, is presented as the most recent stirring in contemporary bourgeois culture. Yet even at that time it was clear that these discussions were to no point and would not lead to a constructive solution of the conflict between the "two cultures": the contradictions had gone entirely too far. Even then the English poet Auden granted that when he encountered scientists he felt like a "shabby scribe who had accidentally entered a drawing room bulging with dukes." This was not any rank-and-file "lyricist," but the famous Auden himself'. (shrink)

(1990). The effects of patrol officers' defensivesness toward the outside world on their ethical orientations. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 24-42. doi: 10.1080/0731129X.1990.9991879.

Changes over time in many large scale human practices such as science and technology seem best understood in terms of progress. Further, regarding such practices as slavery, we seem to have moved on and for the better, that is, to have progressed morally. But moral progress seems something different from other forms of progress. If possible at all, in what can it consist? Progress is understood as falling into three distinguishable categories; namely, progress as mere change, as change culminating in (...) some end‐state, and as change involving improvement or betterment. While scientific or economic progress seem of the last sort, moral progress is best understood as a hybrid of culminative change and improvement, a variety of progress labelled millenarian. Though there is an end towards which moral progress must tend, we do not know what it is. Further, moral progress must occupy a special superordinate and regulatory role regarding other progressive practices; that is, for moral progress to be possible, other progressive practices must come under the aegis of increasingly stringent moral regulation. This paper elaborates a model of moral progress, speculates upon signs of its presence, considers various relativist objections, and makes an exhortative plea for the need to have such a notion as a condition of the very possibility of moral progress. (shrink)

In his article on The Liabilities of Mobility, Merker asserts that “Consciousness presents us with a stable arena for our actions—the world …” and argues for this property as providing evolutionary pressure for the evolution of consciousness. In this commentary, I will explore the implications of Merker’s ideas for consciousness in artificial agents as well as animals, and also meet some possible objections to his evolutionary pressure claim.

Memory of past episodes provides a sense of personal identity — the sense that I am the same person as someone in the past. We present a neurological case study of a patient who has accurate memories of scenes from his past, but for whom the memories lack the sense of mineness. On the basis of this case study, we propose that the sense of identity derives from two components, one delivering the content of the memory and the other generating (...) the sense of mineness. We argue that this new model of the sense of identity has implications for debates about quasi-memory. In addition, articulating the components of the sense of identity promises to bear on the extent to which this sense of identity provides evidence of personal identity. (shrink)

I argue that our current practice of ascribing the term “ memory ” to mental states and processes lacks epistemic warrant. Memory, according to the “received view”, is any state or process that results from the sequential stages of encoding, storage and retrieval. By these criteria, memory, or its footprint, can be seen in virtually every mental state we are capable of having. This, I argue, stretches the term to the breaking point. I draw on phenomenological, historical and conceptual considerations (...) to make the case that an act of memory entails a direct, non-inferential feeling of re-acquaintance with one’s past. It does so by linking content retrieved from storage with autonoetic awareness during retrieval. On this view, memory is not the content of experience, but the manner in which that content is experienced. I discuss some theoretical and practical implications and advantages of adopting this more nuanced view of memory. -/-. (shrink)

I suggest that the recent, highly visible, and often heated debate over failures to replicate the results in the social sciences reveals more than the need for greater attention to the pragmatics and value of empirical falsification. It also is a symptom of a serious issue -- the underdeveloped state of theory in many areas of psychology. While I focus on the phenomenon of “social priming” -- since it figures centrally in current debate -- it is not the only area (...) of psychological inquiry to which my critique applies. I first discuss some of the key issues in the “social priming” debate and then attempt to show that many of the problems thus far identified are traceable to a lack of specificity of theory. Finally, I hint at the possibility that adherence to the materialist tenets of modern psychological theory may have a limiting effect on our full appreciation of the phenomena under scrutiny. (shrink)

Although it is now widely recognised by business leaders that their companies need to accept a broader responsibility than short-term profits, recent research suggests that as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social reporting become more widespread, there is little empirical evidence of the range of stakeholders addressed through their CSR programmes and how such programmes are reported. Through a CSR framework which was developed in an exploratory study, we explore the nature of stakeholder relationships reported across leading FTSE companies and (...) the importance they attach to communicating both social and business outcomes. It is evident from the hypotheses tested that the bigger FTSE companies, particularly extraction companies and telecoms, are more adept at identifying and prioritising their stakeholders, and linking CSR programmes to business and social outcomes. However, we draw the general conclusion that building stronger stakeholder relationships through CSR programmes – other than with customers – is not currently a priority for most companies. We also conclude that a limited sophistication in managing multiple stakeholders may compromise the impact of CSR upon business and social results. Finally, the managerial implications and the contribution of our study are discussed before closing with an acknowledgement of the limitations of this work and suggestions for further research. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the concept of cross-temporal personal identity (diachronicity). This particular form of identity has vexed theorists for centuries -- e.g.,how can a person maintain a belief in the sameness of self over time in the face of continual psychological and physical change? I first discuss various forms of the sameness relation and the criteria that justify their application. I then examine philosophical and psychological treatments of personal diachronicity(for example,Locke's psychological connectedness theory; the role of episodic memory) (...) and find each lacking on logical grounds, empirical grounds, or both. I conclude that to achieve a successful resolution of the issue of the self as a temporal continuant we need to draw a sharp distinction between the feeling of the sameness of one's self and the evidence marshaled in support of that feeling. (shrink)