Uptalk is the use of a rising, questioning intonation when making a statement, which has become quite prevalent in contemporary American speech. Women tend to use uptalk more frequently than men do, though the reasons behind this difference are contested. I use the popular game show Jeopardy! to study variation in the use of uptalk among the contestants’ responses, and argue that uptalk is a key way in which gender is constructed through interaction. While overall, Jeopardy! contestants use uptalk 37 (...) percent of the time, there is much variation in the use of uptalk. The typical purveyor of uptalk is white, young, and female. Men use uptalk more when surrounded by women contestants, and when correcting a woman contestant after she makes an incorrect response. Success on the show produces different results for men and women. The more successful a man is, the less likely he is to use uptalk; the more successful a woman is, the more likely she is to use uptalk. (shrink)

In critical care medicine, teaching and mentoring practices are extremely important in regard to attracting and retaining young trainees and faculty in this important subspecialty that has a scarcity of needed personnel in the USA. To this end, we argue that Foucault’s Technologies of the Self is critical background reading when endeavoring to effect the positive transformation of faculty into effective teachers and mentors.

This article describes the way in which emotion can lead to false consciousness by analysing a single incident in Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. We trace a sequence of events which occur after the hero is humiliated in public, utilizing Helen Lewis's theory of shame dynamics. We argue that such an analysis may led towards models of causality in social science. Our interpretation of class idealization in the mass media, myths and legends, and class shaming in humour (...) suggests that social differentiation between sacred and profane persons may have an emotional basis. (shrink)

In Voltaire's work, Candide, a young, naïve man, who has been taught that humans live in the best of all possible worlds, is thrust into the world only to find that this may not be so. He learns over time to balance his optimism with the skepticism he acquires through experience. While today's medical students are not naïve like the character Candide, they, nonetheless, carry an impression of the ideal medical practice, along with the expectation of a successful medical (...) practice. Good mentors and role models are important to students in order to temper their optimism, control their skepticism, and to help them to be realistic, not only about their expectations of medical practice, but what society expects of them. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

We have synthesized a 582,970-base pair Mycoplasma genitalium genome. This synthetic genome, named M. genitalium JCVI-1.0, contains all the genes of wild-type M. genitalium G37 except MG408, which was disrupted by an antibiotic marker to block pathogenicity and to allow for selection. To identify the genome as synthetic, we inserted "watermarks" at intergenic sites known to tolerate transposon insertions. Overlapping "cassettes" of 5 to 7 kilobases (kb), assembled from chemically synthesized oligonucleotides, were joined by in vitro recombination to produce intermediate (...) assemblies of approximately 24 kb, 72 kb ("1/8 genome"), and 144 kb ("1/4 genome"), which were all cloned as bacterial artificial chromosomes in Escherichia coli. Most of these intermediate clones were sequenced, and clones of all four 1/4 genomes with the correct sequence were identified. The complete synthetic genome was assembled by transformation-associated recombination cloning in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, then isolated and sequenced. A clone with the correct sequence was identified. The methods described here will be generally useful for constructing large DNA molecules from chemically synthesized pieces and also from combinations of natural and synthetic DNA segments. 10.1126/science.1151721. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo determine whether gait and accelerometric features can predict disorientation events in young and older adults.MethodsCognitively healthy younger and older participants navigated on a treadmill through a virtual representation of the city of Rostock featured within the Gait Real-Time Analysis Interactive Lab system. We conducted Bayesian Poisson regression to determine the association of navigation performance with domain-specific cognitive functions. We determined associations of gait and accelerometric features with disorientation events in real-time data using Bayesian generalized mixed effect models. The (...) accuracy of gait and accelerometric features to predict disorientation events was determined using cross-validated support vector machines and Hidden Markov models.ResultsBayesian analysis revealed strong evidence for the effect of gait and accelerometric features on disorientation. The evidence supported a relationship between executive functions but not visuospatial abilities and perspective taking with navigation performance. Despite these effects, the cross-validated percentage of correctly assigned instances of disorientation was only 72% in the SVM and 63% in the HMM analysis using gait and accelerometric features as predictors.ConclusionDisorientation is reflected in spatiotemporal gait features and the accelerometric signal as a potentially more easily accessible surrogate for gait features. At the same time, such measurements probably need to be enriched with other parameters to be sufficiently accurate for individual prediction of disorientation events. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

It is not uncommon to hear that poor school performance, welfare dependancy, youth unemployment, and criminal activity result more from shortcomings in the personal makeup of individuals than from societal forces beyond their control. Are American values declining as so many suggest? And are those values at the root of many social problems today?Shaped by experience and public policies, people's values and social norms do change. What role can or should a democratic government play in shaping values? And how do (...) these values conditon the efficacy of public policy?In this book, six distinguished social scientists identify trends in America's values and their consequences, and consider public policy tools with which some of those values might be changed.Daniel Yankelovich begins with a discussion of how American values have shifted in the last half-century, and argues that affluence is the driving force behind these changes in values. James Q. Wilson argues that destructive habits which can lead to social pathologies, like crime and drug use, are set early in life; he examines how public policy might intervene when children are young to promote better values. David Popenoe maintains that America has veered too far towards industrialist values, and explores the resulting decline of families and many attendant social ills. Nathan Glazer describes the history and present status of the dispute over multicultural education. Jane Mansbridge examines the process of building cooperation, consensus, and public spirit. And George Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen discuss the problem of gang criminality.Inthe past, social scientists have often sidestepped questions about values as undefinable, unquantifiable, and somehow unscientific. The essays in this volume address these questions at last.Henry J. Aaron, director of the Economic Studies program at Brookings, is the authorof numerous books, including most recently Serious and Unstable Condition: Financing America's Health Care (1991), and coeditor of Setting Domestic Priorities (1992). Thomas E. Mann is director of the Brookings Governmental Studies program, coeditor of Media Polls in American Politics (1992), and coauthor of the Renewing Congress series (1993). Timothy Taylor is managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives at Stanford University. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission declared that allowing medical providers to advertise directly to consumers would be “providing the public with truthful information about the price, quality or other aspects of their service.” However, our understanding of the advertising content is highly limited.ObjectiveTo assess whether direct-to-consumer medical service advertisements provide relevant information on access, quality and cost of care, a content analysis was conducted.MethodTelevision and online advertisements for medical services directly targeting consumers were collected in two major urban (...) centres in Nevada, USA, identifying 313 television advertisements and 200 non-duplicate online advertisements.ResultsBoth television and online advertisements reliably conveyed information about the services provided and how to make an appointment. At the same time, less than half of the advertisements featured insurance information and hours of operation and less than a quarter of them contained information regarding the quality and price of care. The claims of quality were substantiated in even fewer advertisements. The scarcity of quality and cost information was more severe in television advertisements.ConclusionThere is little evidence that medical service advertising, in its current form, would contribute to lower prices or improved quality of care by providing valuable information to consumers. (shrink)

Strategies to increase influenza vaccination rates have typically targeted healthcare professionals and individuals in various high-risk groups such as the elderly. We argue that they should focus on increasing vaccination rates in children. Because children suffer higher influenza incidence rates than any other demographic group, and are major drivers of seasonal influenza epidemics, we argue that influenza vaccination strategies that serve to increase uptake rates in children are likely to be more effective in reducing influenza-related morbidity and mortality than those (...) targeting HCPs or the elderly. This is true even though influenza-related morbidity and mortality amongst children are low, except in the very young. Further, we argue that there are no decisive reasons to suppose that children-focused strategies are less ethically acceptable than elderly or HCP-focused strategies. (shrink)

ISBN-13: 978-1934074480
Plot Summary from the book:
"An aristocratic young man, fed up with his studies, contemplates military service. His teacher is unable by any reasoning to call him back him from the path he has embarked upon. The young man enlists another youth who commits himself to the journey, dressed in military garb, and he happens upon two deserting soldiers, unsightly and ill-used both in their dress and in their hygiene. Both young men are so moved (...) by the deserters’ remarks deploring and reviling their lot in life that they return to their studies. One of the deserters, however, hopes to be welcomed back by the wife and small children he had deserted and left penniless and bereft of friends. She gives him a nasty reception, with verbal and corporal abuse, and he barely manages to have his sin forgiven and to return to her good graces."
From the Table of Contents:
Introduction
How to Use this Book
Jacobus Pontanus: Biography
Jesuit Comedy – Seriously?
The Stratocles as a Spiritual Exercise
Just War and the Morality of Military Service
A Play about War and the Real Wars of Pontanus' Time
The Characters and Their Names
Pontanus’ Use of Classical Sources
The History of the Text of Stratocles
Performance
Stratocles or War
Endnotes
Appendices
Pontanus on Humanist Studies
Pontanus on Writing Comedy
Renaissance School Hazing, called “Deposition”
Anonymous: Instructions for Deposition
Dialogue on Hazing (Progymnasma 100)
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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology. By HANS Kii'NG. Translated by J. R. Stephenson. New York: Crossroad, 1987. Pp. 601. $37.50 (cloth bound). This is an imposing book (first German edition, 1970), not only in length, but in breadth of presentation. Kiing, in the introduction, outlines the philosophical, theological and cultural milieus out of which Hegel's theology (...) and philosophy emerged. In the next 400 pages (seven chapters), Kiing thoroughly articulates the historical development of Hegel's theological and philosophical thought as expressed in his successive writings, specifically examining and evaluating the christological elements. Kiing's final chapter interprets Hegel's Christology in light of recent biblical historical/critical methodology, by way of a prolegomenon to a future Christology. The book concludes with five integral historical/theological excursus which take up specific questions that arise out of this Hegelian enterprise, for example: "Does God suffer?," "The Dialectic of the Attributes of God," "Immutability of God?". In the preface to this English edition, Kiing states that the purpose of this work is to "provide theologians with an introduction to Hegel's theological and christological thought.... [It will be] a many-leveled 'invitation' into Hegel's life and 'thought, with particular reference to his religious world, and then into his theology and Christology " (p. ix). "Moreover,.this book is an introduction to Hegel's thought by way of 'prolegomena to a future Christology '. In ·these pages we endeavour to return... a provisional reply that will take us some way in the right direction" (p. x). Why did Kiing look to Hegel for the clue to a future Christology? His thesis is that "the biblical message concerning a God who is by no means separated from the world but rather operates within it, and who is by no means stuck immovable and immutable in an unhistorical and suprahistorical realm but rather performs living acts in hi&tory can be better understood [along the lines of Hegelian thought] than in terms of the metaphysics of either classical Greece or the middle ages" (p. xii). Any student of historical or philosophical theology/christology will be captivated by Kiing's treatment of.the development of Hegel's ilhought. Undoubtedly he has mastered Hegel's life, writings and 698 694 BOOK REVIEWS thought, and presents these in a clear, complete and engaging manner. Kiing notes that Hegel, beginning with his student days at Tiihingen, was influenced by three strong cultural and intellectual currents: the Enlightenment as it specifically culminated in the thought of Kant, the French Revolution, and the rise of the Romantic movement. Kiing shows that, while the young Hegel was acquainted with the Bible, and even,though he already displayed an interest in the role of religion (folk religion) as formative of society, nowhere was he "seized in a lively and inward fashion by the Christian faith, by the figure of Christ himself" (p. 54). To rthe contrary, Hegel's early experience of Christianity was lifeless and joyless. During his subsequent time in Bern, Hegel's evaluation of Jesus un· derwent a transformation. Hegel became fascinated with Greek religion, not because it was true, but because it embodied the culture and spirit of the people. Developing this train of thought, he stated that "The supreme end of man is morality, and his religious bent is pre· eminent among his aptitudes for promoting that end" (p. 69). In light of this, Hegel considered Jesus,to lack the humane and universal scope of Socrates, who was " the paradigm of a free, good and humane Hellenism and of harmony with nature, world and state " (p. 63). Jesus' teaching was too much an authoritarian imposition upon people rarther than, like Socrates', a nurturing of their inner spirit and life. Shordy, as reflected in his Life of Jesus, Hegel's view of Jesus was to change. Now he was placed above Socrates, not because he was acknowledged to be the eternal Son of God, nor because he reconciled mankind to God by his death on the cross, but rather because he per· sonified the divine ideal of virtue that is so necessary for social order. " Whart is... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 247-248 [Access article in PDF] Christ and Buddha: Weaving a Path for the New Millennium Thomas G. Hand, S.J.Mercy Center, Burlingame, CAThis dialogue conference/retreat was held at Mercy Center, Burlingame, CA, August 10-15, 1999. Well over the stated limit of 150 people joined a faculty of ten in presentations, discussions, sharing, meditation, and rituals. The conference was born primarily out of the personal and (...) social need for dialogue felt by Sandi Peters, who joined the program staff of Mercy Center after three years spent at Insight Meditation East, Barre, Massachusetts.Besides Peters as presider, the faculty members were: representing the Buddhist side--Nigel Edmonds (Mahayana and Christianity), Chris Phillips (Theravada), Ven. Thubten Chodron (Vajrayana), Rev. Heng Sure (Chinese Mahayana), and Patrick Thornton (Theravada and Christianity); representing the Christian side--Thomas G. Hand, S. J. (Catholic), Kevin Hunt, OCSO (Cistercian monk), Roshi Jinne Richardson (Zen and Christianity), and Rev. Shari Young (Episcopal and Zen).In a well-received keynote talk, Thomas Hand offered as the basis for the whole dialogue "The Primacy of Experience" in both traditions. The major themes were: (1st day) "The Challenges of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue," (2nd day) "The Language and Symbols of the Traditions," (4th day) "Weaving a Path for the New Millennium" as a joint venture of the two traditions together. On the third day, participants engaged in "Practice--East and West," including presentations geared toward practice both then and there and in the future.One marked difference between this conference and those that Mercy Center put on from 1985 to 1988 was the quality of the participants. In the earlier conferences, many were seekers and intellectual questioners. This year, besides such qualities, the participants were sincere practitioners. In fact, a great many were practicing in both traditions. They often classified themselves as Buddhist Christians or as Christian-root Buddhists. The greater depth of dialogue that has developed in less than fifteen years was clearly apparent. What is more, the sharing and insights of both Buddhist and Christian presenters seemed to have become increasingly relaxed, articulate, and vital. Their presentations were met with much deeper understanding and enthusiasm by all the participants. [End Page 247]Besides the presentations, participants deeply appreciated the chi kong and tai chi sessions, the daily meditation together, the day of practice, the tea ceremony, and the closing ritual. In a word, the conference was holistic dialogue.Those of dual practice were especially happy to find that they are not alone, that many are coming together to weave a new Path for the new millennium.Tapes are available. Contact Sandi Peters at (650) 340-7486.... (shrink)

The ‘new realist’ G E Moore is hardly known as a metaphysician of time, yet I argue his 1910–11 lectures, later published as Some Main Problems of Philosophy, offer the first substantial English-language defence of presentism and the A-theory. This paper contextualises Moore’s positions, stressing his intellectual connections with J M E McTaggart and Bertrand Russell; explores his Common Sense metaphysics of time; and argues that his time realism owes a great debt to ‘old realist’ Henry Sidgwick.

Section: Lectures Keywords: History of analytic philosophy, Moore, Sidgwick, Russell, McTaggart, A-theory, B-theory, presentism Disciplines: Philosophy The ‘new realist’ G E Moore is hardly known as a metaphysician of time, yet I argue his 1910–11 lectures, later published as _Some Main Problems of Philosophy_, offer the first substantial English-language defence of presentism and the A-theory. This paper contextualises Moore’s positions, stressing his intellectual connections with J M E McTaggart and Bertrand Russell; explores his Common Sense metaphysics of time; and argues (...) that his time realism owes a great debt to ‘old realist’ Henry Sidgwick. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE DOMINICAN SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA AND THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF AMERICA: SOME BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES THOMAS F. O'MEARA. O.P. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana SALAMANCA, northwest of Madrid and Avila and not far from Spain's border with Portugal, preserves the atmosphere of a medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque university even as it develops the schools and clinics of a contemporary center of studies. There are associations with Teresa (...) of Avila, who spent the night there just after her reform was approved by Rome, with the young Cervantes, with Luis de Leon and Ignatius Loyola, and with John of the Cross, who was a student there. A bridge from the time of Trajan spans the river Tormes, and the Romanesque cathedral still reserves a chapel for the Mozarabic rite. The University of Salamanca The city brings to mind sixteenth century Dominicans like Francisco de Vitoria, often called the founder of international law, and Domingo Bafiez, confessor to Teresa of Avila. The Order of Friars Preachers, however, came to Salamanca in 1222 at the same time that Dominic's missions were taking root in·Paris and Bologna; the friars founded a priory and soon a school under the patronage of St. Stephen (San Esteban). The " Dominican School of Salamanca " means formally the line of great theologians reaching from Diego de Deza at the end of the fifteenth century to Tomas de Lemos, a main protagonist in Rome in 1607 in the controversy over grace entitled De Auxiliis. Today, after seven and a half centuries of existence, the Salamancan SSS 556 THOMAS F. o'MEARA, O.P. Dominicans remain a vital community, active m teaching, research and publishing. My attention was directed to the Dominicans at Salamanca by two volumes of essays reporting on congresses concerning the "Dominicans and the Discovery of the New World." My interest was not church history but the history of theologies of how grace might exist outside of explicit faith and sacramental baptism. The following report is a bibliographical survey of recent research on a theological era and school. Focusing on the thought of the theologians stimulated by the experiences of the missionaries in the Indies, it treats the Dominicans during the first decades after the voyages of Columbus. In the 1480s, as it entered its golden age, the University of Salamanca had a hundred professors and almost 7000 students. University records begin late, but they show that in 1546/47, one hundred thirty-four Dominicans were studying at the university, and in 1598/99, eighty. J. L. Espinel has written. a historical guide to the Dominican buildings and institutions.1 The great period of the Dominican school at the University began with Diego de Deza ( 1480-1486), professor and archbishop of Seville, and Matias de Paz (1518-1519), a professor of Scripture. Francisco de Vitoria (1526-1546) and Domingo de Soto (15321549 ) were its most gifted thinkers, but the school's achievements continued with Melchior Cano (1546-1552), Juan de la Pefia (1561-1565) and Domingo Banez (1581-1604). These t San Esteban de Salamanca, Historia y Gufa, Siglos, XIII-XX (Salamanca: Editorial San Esteban, 1978); see also R. Hernandez, "Convento y estudio de San Esteban," La Universidad de Salamanca (Salamanca: Universidad, 1989), pp. 369ff.; A. Martin Melquiades, "La Escuela de teologia de Salamanca," Atti del Congresso internazionale, Tommaso d'Aquino nel suo settimo centenario, Tommaso d'Aquino nella storia del pensiero, 1 :2 (Naples: Edizione Domenicane Italiane, 1975), pp. 242ff. A Salamancan Dominican of the 1930s, Vicente Beltran de Heredia, pioneered research in the history of the university and in the writings of the Dominican speculative masters. His writings can be found in past issues of Ciencia Tomista (CT), and some of his books and several recent collections of his most important essays are available from Editorial San Esteban. Similarly initial research in the United States can be found in the writings of Lewis Hanke. SALAMANCA AND THE SPANISH CONQUEST 557 are joined by lesser figures like Pedro de Sotomayor (15601564 ), Mancia de Corpus Christi (1564-1576), and Bartolome de Medina (1576-1581). The occupants of the chair in theology of the liturgical hour of prime from Vitoria in 1526 to Bafiez's... (shrink)

This collection of essays in moral philosophy has as its intended mark of distinction the fact that moral problems of the moment are the themes of the essays. The chapter headings indicate this contemporary concern: Abortion, Sex, Human Rights and Civil Disobedience, Criminal Punishment, Violence and Pacifism, War and Suicide and Death. There are essays by: Paul Ramsey, Philippa Foot, Jonathan Bennett, Thomas Nagel, Sara Ruddick, Richard Wassenstrom, [[sic]] John Rawls, R. M. Dworkin, William Kneale, H. L. A. Hart, (...) J. R. Lucas, Newton Carver, Jan Narveson, G. E. M. Anscombe, R. M. Hare, R. F. Holland, Mary Mothersill. One might well be inclined to agree with the editor's opposition to such philosophizing about morality which abstracts from the moral problems of one's own life. A purely theoretical approach to the study of morality would almost appear contradictory. However, it is necessary to express grave reservations about such a collection of essays as this. While the arguments of the essays are thoughtful and somewhat uncommon, the conclusions of the essays, as a rule, do not differ from "advanced" liberal opinions. In other words, the essays do not challenge students' opinions. The reading of these essays will but confirm the young in their prejudices. The problems the essays are concerned with are real problems; and it is a defect of the book that with the single exception of the chapter on Abortion no real opposing arguments are presented.--J. W. S. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 76–81 Comments on Eugene Thacker’s “Cosmic Pessimism” Nicola Masciandaro Anything you look forward to will destroy you, as it already has. —Vernon Howard In pessimism, the first axiom is a long, low, funereal sigh. The cosmicity of the sigh resides in its profound negative singularity. Moving via endless auto-releasement, it achieves the remote. “ Oltre la spera che piú larga gira / passa ’l sospiro ch’esce del mio core ” [Beyond the sphere that circles widest / penetrates (...) the sigh that issues from my heart]. 1 The axiomatic sigh of the pessimist is in a way the pure word of philosophy, a thought that thinks without you, speaks where you are not. The live pneumatic form of the soul’s eventual exit from the dead body’s mouth, the sigh restores consciousness to the funeral of being, to the passing away that is existence. Pessimism speaks in piercing aphorisms because first it sighs. “Beyond the sphere passeth the arrow of our sigh. Hafiz! Silence.” 2 … pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes—the crime of not pretending it’s for real. To the pessimist, the ‘real’ world—the world on whose behalf we are expected to wake up in the morning—is a ceaseless index of its own unreality. The pessimist’s day is not an illumined space for the advancement of experience and action, but a permanently and inescapably reflective zone, the vast interior of a mirror where each thing is only insofar as it is, at best, a false image of itself. Within this speculative situation, inside the doubleness of the mirror, pessimism splits into two paths, false and true, one that tries to fix pessimism (establish a relation with the mirror) and decides in favor of the apparent real, and another that totally falls for pessimism (enters the mirror) and communes with the greater reality of the unreal. These two paths are distinguished by their relation to pessimism’s guilt vis-à-vis the world’s reality-project. The first form, that which remains pessimism for the world and puts on a smiling face, stays guilty to itself (i.e. unconscious) and thus turns hypocritical, becoming at once the pessimism of the commoner who really just wants things to be better for himself and the pessimism of the elite who wants to critically refashion reality in his own image. The general form of this worldly, hypocritical pessimism is the impulse to ‘make the world a better place’, which is the global mask under which the world is diurnally made worse. The second form, that which follows pessimism away from the world and ceases to put on a smiling face, refuses guiltiness as itself theessential Occidental mode of pretense and turns honest, becoming at once the intelligent pessimism required of all ordinary action and the radical pessimism necessary for self-knowledge: seeing that no one is capable of doing good. The general form of this universal, honest pessimism is the impulse not to worry, to give up and embrace dereliction, which is the only real way the world is actually improved. Where worldly pessimism is the engine productive of interminably warring secular and sacred religions (good-projects), universal pessimism strives hopelessly for the paradise of a supremely instantiated pessimus: things are getting so bad that there is no longer any time for them to get worse; things are so constantly-instantly worst that this is BEST. Cosmic pessimism is the mode of universal pessimism which can yet discourse with the world, which has not chosen silence and can spread the inconceivably BAD NEWS in an orderly form ( kosmos ) that the world can understand (if it wanted to). … the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world. That is what the world is (the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world). … a generalized misanthropy without the anthropos. Pessimism crystallizes around this futility—it is its amor fati , rendered as musical form. Pessimism’s love of fate is a blind love, a love of the blindness of being human in a cosmos conceived around the human’s eclipse, a heavy levitation in the contradictory space between the inescapability of its having been and the impossibility of its will-be. Pessimism’s song of futility is a sensible way of loving fate, with a minimum of eros, by means of a kind of matrimonial love of the fatal. As music, pessimism stays open to the irreparable and the inexorable without the binding of affirmation, in the apparent absence of the radical, infinitely surplus will that absolute amor fati seems to require. Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent? “Unless a man aspires to the impossible, the possible that he achieves will scarcely be worth the trouble of his achieving it. We should aspire to the impossible, to absolute and infinite perfection [….] The apocatastasis is more than a mystical dream: it is a norm of action, it is a beacon for high deeds [….] For true charity is a species of invasion [….] It is not charity to rock and lull our fellow men to sleep in the inertia and heaviness of matter, but rather to arouse them to anguish and torment of spirit.” 3 … the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought. “The paroxysm of interior experience leads you to regions where danger is absolute, because life which self-consciously actualizes its roots in experience can only negate itself [….] There are no arguments [….] On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos [….] I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing .” 4 It took three attempts before she was fully decapitated, all the while she continued, perhaps miraculously, to sing. According to the earliest account of Cecilia’s martyrdom, the beheading turns out worse. After not severing her head in three strokes, “the cruel executioner left her half dead” (seminecem eam cruentus carnifex dereliquit). 5 Cecilia’s effortlessly powerful endurance of the three strokes—a fitting icon for pessimism as an art of dereliction—demonstrates the “passivity and absence of effort [….] in which divine transcendence is dissolved.” 6 There’s a ghost that grows inside of me, damaged in the making, and there’s a hunt sprung from necessity, elliptical and drowned. Where the moving quiet of our insomnia offers up each thought, there’s a luminous field of grey inertia, and obsidian dreams burnt all the way down. Like words from a pre-waking dream. There is no reason to think that they are not. NOTES 1. Dante Alighieri. Vita Nuova . ed. and trans. Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1995. 41:10. 2. Hafiz of Shiraz. The Divan . trans. H. Wilberforce Clarke. London: Octagon Press. 1974. 10.9. 3. Miguel de Unamuno. The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations . trans. Anthony Kerrigan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1972. 305-6. 4. E.M. Cioran. On the Heights of Despair . trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1992. 9-10. 5. Giacomo Laderchi. S. Caeciliae Virg[inis] et Mart[yris] Acta. . . Rome. 1723. 38. 6. Georges Bataille. On Nietzsche . trans. Bruce Boone. London: Continuum. 2004. 135. See Nicola Masciandaro. “ Half Dead: Parsing Cecilia .” A Commentary on Eugene Thacker’s "Cosmic Pessimism" Gary J. Shipley Pessimism is the refusal to seek distraction, the refusal to remodel failure into a platform for further (doomed) possibilities, the refusal of comfort, the acceptance of the sickness of healthy bodies, the cup of life overflowing with cold vomit. If, as Ligotti suggests when discussing Invasion of the Body Snatchers , 1 humans prefer the anxieties of their familiar human lives to the contentment of an alien one, then the pessimist, we could argue, represents some perverted combination of the two, preferring (presuming he has a choice) the defamiliarization of human life to the contentment of its unquestioned mundanity. The quasi-religious state of mind that Wittgenstein would mention on occasion, that of “feeling absolutely safe,” 2 is a state the pessimist could only imagine being approximated by death, or perhaps some annihilative opiate-induced stupor. This Wittgensteinian commingling of certainty and faith looks every bit the futile gesture, a mere rephrasing of collapse or partial collapse. The only certainty open to the pessimist is that of the toxic formula of life itself—a formula known and lacuna-free. Certainty, far from being the gateway to deliverance, becomes the definitive impediment; and the possibility of salvation, as long as it remains, becomes crucially reliant on postulations of ignorance, epistemic gaps, a perennial incompleteness: “the perfect safety of wooed death […] the warm bath of physical dissolution, the universal unknown engulfing the miniscule unknown.” 3 The height of Leibniz’s Panglossian insanity nurtured the idea that our knowing everything—via the universal calculus—could be accurately described a triumph, as opposed to a nightmare in which our every futility is laid bare. Stagnancy and boredom are perhaps two of the greatest ills of Western civilisation, and the most potent pessimism tells you that you’re stuck with both. The most we can hope for, by way of salvation, is to throw open our despair to the unknown. The fact that Schopenhauer’s pessimism stopped short of morality and allowed him to play the flute, as Nietzsche complained, highlights the predicament of a man who despite having adorned nothingness with a smiling face still found himself alive. The demand here is that it be felt: a cross-contamination of intellect and emotion. The safety net of numerous parentheses makes for a failed philosophy, rather than a philosophy of failure. Depressives make bad pessimists, because, unless they choose to die, living will always infect them with necessities of hope, forcing them to find something, anything (all the various “as ifs”) to make existence tolerable. For as Cioran observed, while “[d]epressions pay attention to life, they are the eyes of the devil, poisoned arrows which wound mortally any zest and love of life. Without them we know little, but with them, we cannot live.” 4 And even when cured of our depressions we’ll find ourselves consumed, eaten alive by the hyper-clinical (borderline autistic) mania that replaces them: a predicament captured all too clearly in the microscriptual fictions of Robert Walser, where spectral men and women stifle their depressive madness with protective comas of detail, their failed assimilations buried beneath thick crusts of remote data. Like Beckett’s Malone their stories may have ended, but cruelly their lives have not. Pessimism is an extraneous burden (a purposeless weight) that makes everything else harder to carry, while at the same time scooping it out and making it lighter. If pessimism had a sound it would be the harsh non-noise of tinnitus—the way that every person would hear themselves if they refused their distractions long enough to listen: a lungless scream from the extrasolar nothing of the self. The music of pessimism—if indeed we can imagine such a thing—is the reverberating echo of the world’s last sound, conjectured but never heard, audible only in its being listened for. The one consolation of this hollow paradox of audibility being, that “he will be least afraid of becoming nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now.” 5 The pessimist suffers a derangement of the real, a labyrinthitis at the nucleus of his being: he’s the stumbling ghost relentlessly surprised that others can see him. If Cioran’s refusal is manifested in sleep (when even saying ‘no’ is too much of a commitment), then Pessoa’s resides in the dreams inside that sleep. Pessoa chooses to exploit the fact that he’s being “lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied” 6 by growing more voids to live him. His is a Gnostic breed of sleep, “sleeping as if the universe were a mistake,” 7 a sleep that dreams through Thacker’s cosmic pessimism (“a pessimism of the world-without-us.”, “the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time” 8 ), through the critical error of there being anything at all when there could be nothing. The metaphysical pessimist is someone who, however well life treats them, still desires to wake from it, as from the poisonous air of a bad dream. Pessimism is a paradox of age, being simultaneously young and old; its youth residing in a refusal to accept the authority of existence (its rich history, its inherent beneficence), a refusal to “get over” the horror of what it sees with its perpetually fresh eyes, and its maturity in the unceremonious disposal of the philosophical playthings (those futile architectures) of adolescence. As Thacker remarks: “Pessimism abjures all pretenses towards system—towards the purity of analysis and the dignity of critique.” 9 A sentiment shared with Pessoa, who duly categorizes those that choose to enact this futile struggle: “The creators of metaphysical systems and of psychological explanations are still in the primary stage of suffering.” 10 If the pessimist has shared a womb with anyone, it’s with the mystic and not the philosopher. As Schopenhauer tells us: “The mystic is opposed to the philosopher by the fact that he begins from within, whereas the philosopher begins from without. […] But nothing of this is communicable except the assertions that we have to accept on his word; consequently he is unable to convince.” 11 The crucial difference between the mystic and the pessimist is not the latter’s impassivity and defeatism, but his unwillingness/inability to contain in any way the spread of his voracious analyticity, his denial of incompleteness, his exhaustive devotion to failure. The truth of our predicament, though heard, is destined to remain unprocessed. Like the revelations of B.S. Johnson’s Haakon (“We rot and there’s nothing that can stop it / Can’t you feel the shaking horror of that?” 12 ) the pessimist’s truths are somehow too obvious to listen to, as if something inside us were saying, “Of course, but haven’t we gotten over that?” Pessimism is simple and ugly, and has no desire to make itself more complex or more attractive. The true moral pessimist knows that the Utilitarian’s accounts will always be in the red. He can see that for all his computational containments, his only honest path is a negative one, and that such a path has but one logical destination: that of wholesale human oblivion. Thacker notes how at the core of pessimism lies the notion of “the worst,” through which death is demoted by the all-pervasive suffering of a life that easily eclipses its threat. And so with doom made preferable to gloom, death begins to glint with promise, “like beauty passing through a nightmare.” 13 But even among pessimists suicide is, for the most part, thought to be an error. Schopenhauer, for instance, regarded suicide a mistake grounded in some fundamentally naïve disappointment or other. Pessoa too thought suicide an onerous escape tactic: “To die is to become completely other. That’s why suicide is a cowardice: it’s to surrender ourselves completely to life.” 14 There is a call here to be accepting of and creative with the puppetry of your being, an insistence that it’s somehow a blunder to attempt to hide in death from the horrors you find inlife. 15 Tied up with this perseverance is the slippery notion of the good death, for maybe, as Blanchot warns, suicide is rarely something we can hope to get right, for the simple reason that “you cannot make of death an object of the will.” 16 “Even in cases where the entire corpus of an author is pessimistic, the project always seems incomplete,” 17 and this is not simply because the project itself belies something yet to be disclosed, but because the project itself is a thing waiting. It waits on a cure it knows will not come, but for which it cannot do anything (as long as it continues to do anything) but wait. NOTES 1. See Thomas Ligotti. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race . New York: Hippocampus Press. 2010. 91. 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein. “A Lecture on Ethics.” Philosophical Review . (74) 1. 1965. 8. 3. Vladimir Nabokov. Pale Fire . New York: Vintage. 1989. 221. 4. E. M. Cioran. The Book of Delusions . trans. Camelia Elias. Hyperion. 5.1. (2010): 75. 5. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. vol. 2 . trans. E .F J. Payne. New York: Dover. 1966. 609. 6. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 67. 7. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 35. 8. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 68. 9. Ibid. 73. 10. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 341. 11. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. vol. 2 . trans. E .F J. Payne. New York: Dover. 1966. 610-11. 12. B.S Johnson. “You’re Human Like the Rest of Them.” in Jonathan Coe. Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson . London: Picador. 2004. 177. 13. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 415. 14. Ibid. 199. 15. “Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.” Anne Sexton. No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews and Prose . ed. Steven Gould Axelrod. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1985. 92. 16. Maurice Blanchot. The Space of Literature . trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1989. 105. 17. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 75. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History. By John Van Seters. The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament. By Samuel E. Balentine. Theodicy in the Old Testament. Edited by James L. Crenshaw. Ce Dieu censé aimer la Souffrance. By François Varone. Evil and Evolution, A Theodicy. By Richard W. Kropf. ‘Poet and Peasant’ and ‘Through Peasant Eyes’: A Literary‐Cultural Approach to (...) the Parable in Luke. By Kenneth Bailey. The Biblical Foundations for Mission. By Donald Senior and Carroll Stuhlmueller. New Testament Foundations of Ministry. By Colin Kruse. Church, Ministry and Unity. By James E. Griffiss. Theology of Ministry. By Thomas Franklin O'Meara. Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology. By Colin E. Gunton. I believe in the Holy Spirit. By Yves Congar. Between Jesus and Paul. By Martin Hengel. From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background. By Frances Young. Alan of Lille: The Frontiers of Theology in the Later Twelfth Century. By G.R. Evans. Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe. By Clarissa W. Atkinson. Church, Politics and Society: Scotland 1408–1929. Edited by N. Macdougall. Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution. Collected Essays, Volume II. By Frances A. Yates. Seven‐Headed Luther: Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentury, 1483–1983. Edited by Peter Newman Brooks. Ökumenische Erschliessung Martin Luthers. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer. Luther's Ecumenical Significance, An Interconfessional Consultation. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer, in collaboration with Carter Lindberg and Harry McSorley. States of Mind: A Study of Anglo‐Irish Conflict 1780 to 1980. By Oliver MacDonagh. The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth‐Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter Reform. By Gregory L. Freeze. Pusey Rediscovered. Edited by Perry Butler. Between Two Worlds: George Tyrrell's Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold. By Nicholas Sagovsky. The Concept of Glaubenslehre. By Walter E. Wyman, Jr. The Existence and Nature of God. Edited by Alfred J. Freddoso. Faith and Reason. By Anthony Kenny. Logic and The Nature of God. By Stephen T. Davis. Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality. By Josef Fuchs. Morality and Conflict. By Stuart Hampshire. Realism and Imagination in Ethics. By Sabina Lovibond. Intentionality. By John R. Searle. Philosophical Papers, I: Practical Reason. By G.H. von Wright. Philosophical Papers, II: Philosophical Logic. By G.H. von Wright. A Model of Making: Literary Criticism and its Theology. By Ruth Etchells. The Return of the Goddess: Femininity, Aggression and the Modern Grail Quest. By Edward Whitmont. The Power of the Poor in History. By Gustavo Gutierrez, translated by Robert R. Barr. The God of the Xhosa. By Janet Hodgson. Our Hymn Tunes: Their Choice and Performance. By Donald Webster. The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan. By William Morgan. An Introduction to Plato's Laws. By R.E. Stalley. Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. By Kenneth M. Sayre. Plato's ‘Parmenides’: Translation and Analysis. By R.E. Allen. Politics in the Ancient World. By M.I. Finley. (shrink)

아리스토텔레스의 작품들에 대한 토마스 아퀴나스의 주해의 의도는 최근 수 십 년 동안 제이퍼(H. V. Jaffa), 고티에(R. A. Gauthier), 브래들리(D. J. M. Bradley), 도이그(J. C. Doig), 엘더스(L. Elders) 등과 같은 여러 학자들 사이에서 종종 논쟁거리가 되어 왔다. 그 중에서도 용기라는 덕은 아리스토텔레스와 토마스 아퀴나스 사이에 있었던 논쟁들 중의 핵심적인 요소였다. 예를 들면, 드용(R. K. De Young)은 토마스 아퀴나스가 전쟁터에서의 용기보다는 오히려 순교자의 용기의 주요한 행위로서 인내만을 강조함으로써 아리스토텔레스의 용기 개념으로부터 갈라섰다고 주장한다. 이와 같은 그녀의 토마스 아퀴나스의 순교자의 인내에 관한 충실한 (...) 이해는 여러 관점들 안에서 성격상 철저하게 신학적이라는 것을 부정할 수는 없다.BR 그러나 드용의 주장과는 달리, 헤르트(J. A. Herdt)와 라이히버그(G. M. Reichberg)와 같은 학자들은 토마스 아퀴나스의 용기에 대한 설명이 더 광범위한 신학적인 전통들을 배경으로 하여 지속됨에도 불구하고, 가장 두드러진 것은 그의 용기에 관한 설명들이 아리스토텔레스로부터의 벗어남 또는 이탈이 결코 아니라고 주장한다. 그들은 그가 어떤 의미에서 아리스토텔레스에게 의존하고 있는 순교자의 용기의 주요한 행위로서 인내라는 전형을 주장하는 것 이외에도, 전쟁터 용기에 대한 아리스토텔레스의 분석을 거부하는 것이 아니라 오히려 아리스토텔레스를 능가하는 방식을 취하고 있다고 주장한다. 또한 그들은 그가 “은총은 자연을 완전하게 만든다.”라는 원리를 받아들임으로써 이러한 두 가지 형태들, 즉 후천적으로 획득된 용기와 주입된 용기 사이에 존재할 수 있는 다양한 관계들에 주의를 기울이고 있다고 주장하고 있다.BR 이 연구에서는 먼저, 연구자는 토마스 아퀴나스의 순교자의 용기와 인내에 관한 드용의 입장을 검토해보고자 한다. 이 방법의 일환으로서, 연구자는 드용이 지적한 내용들, 즉 순교자로서 인내와 신의 은총으로서 인내를 살펴볼 것이다. 그리고 나서 드용의 주장들에 대한 반론으로서 첫째, 연구자는 헤르트의 주장들을 중심으로 하여 토마스 아퀴나스가 신의 은총 없이도 시민의 덕으로서 인내를 가지는 것이 가능하다는 것을 분명하게 보여주고 있다는 것을 드러낼 것이다. 둘째, 본 연구자는 라이히버그의 주장을 중심으로 하여 토마스 아퀴나스는가 아리스토텔레스의 군대의 용기 또는 전쟁터에서의 용기를 대담함과 인내라는 두 가지의 정념들의 적절한 균형을 통하여 아리스토텔레스의 용기의 개념을 발전적으로 변용시켰다고 주장할 것이다. 결론적으로, 연구자는 토마스 아퀴나스가 아리스토텔레스의 용기의 개념을 단순히 그리스도교의 순교 또는 인내와 관련되어 있는 용기의 개념으로 변형시키려고 한 것이 아니라 아리스토텔레스의 부분적인 진리를 더 완전한 진리 쪽으로 나아갈 수 있는 지를 보여주고자 한 것임에 분명하다는 것을 제시하고자 한다. (shrink)

Many recent evolutionary psychology and human behavioral ecology studies have tested hypotheses by examining correlations between variables measured at a group level (e.g., state, country, continent). In such analyses, variables collected for each aggregation are often taken to be representative of the individuals present within them, and relationships between such variables are presumed to reflect individual-level processes. There are multiple reasons to exercise caution when doing so, including: (1) the ecological fallacy, whereby relationships observed at the aggregate level do not (...) accurately represent individual-level processes; (2) non-independence of data points, which violates assumptions of the inferential techniques used in null hypothesis testing; and (3) cross-cultural non-equivalence of measurement (differences in construct validity between groups). We provide examples of how each of these gives rise to problems in the context of testing evolutionary hypotheses about human behavior, and we offer some suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The progression of research and scholarly inquiry does not occur in isolation and is wholly dependent on accurate reporting of methods and results, and successful replication of prior work. Without mechanisms to correct the literature, much time and money is wasted on research based on a crumbling foundation. These guidelines serve to outline the respective responsibilities of researchers, institutions, agencies, and publishers or editors in maintaining the integrity of the research record. Delineating these complementary roles and proposing solutions for common (...) barriers provide a foundation for best practices. (shrink)

While Wittgenstein’s work has been extensively investigated in relation to many other important and influential philosophers, there is very little scholarly work that positively investigates the relationship between the work of Wittgenstein and Wilhelm Dilthey. To the contrary, some commentators like Hacker (2001a) suggest that Dilthey’s work (and that of other hermeneuticists) simply pales or is obsolete in comparison to Wittgenstein’s own insights. Against such assessments, this article posits that Wittgenstein’s and Dilthey’s thought most crucially intersects at the related topics (...) of scientism on the one hand and scientific and philosophical method on the other. In reconstructing Dilthey’s conceptions of understanding versus explaining and central points of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, it becomes apparent that they share a staunch rejection of scientism and use the notion of understanding as a means to prevent methodologies from the natural sciences encroaching onto the human sciences (in Dilthey’s case) and philosophy (in Wittgenstein’s case). Notwithstanding a number of central ways in which these thinkers differ, this article closes by suggesting that there is some evidence according to which Wittgenstein, like Dilthey, can reasonably be understood as championing some central tenets of the hermeneutical tradition. (shrink)

Biologically, pain is neither intrinsically good nor bad, but is a communication mechanism designed to serve organismal ends. Pain for any given person at any given time should be evaluated on the basis of “success” (or not) in serving those purposes. Yet, the physiological, psychological, and cultural complexity of the experience makes moral consideration of pain complicated. This is especially the case with infants in pain. The competence of the infant as a “decision maker” cannot, of course, be assumed. Even (...) if the child “thinks” about pain, an epistemological barrier exists in that the child cannot clearly communicate about the pain experience. Furthermore, any expressions of pain from the child may be necessary for diagnosis. Just coercion criteria provide a means of evaluating when and to what extent pain in infants should be controlled under the authority of surrogate decision makers. (shrink)

Anselm's argument has two distinct conclusions: (a) we cannot intelligibly doubt that god exists, and (b) this god, whose existence we cannot doubt, exists necessarily. if we replace anselm's vague conception of god by the spinozistic conception of substance, a defensible version of the ontological argument, understood as having these two conclusions, can be constructed. two important consequences of this analysis are: (1) the ontological argument, properly understood, deals simply with the concept of substance. it is a further question whether (...) substance ought to be understood as god. (2) the ontological argument does not actually demonstrate the existence of anything. it simply makes clear the consequences of adopting a metaphysical view which employs the spinozistic conception of substance. (shrink)

The recently published Cambridge Companion to Spinoza contains a fine essay by Pierre- Francois Moreau on Spinoza’s reception and on his influence during the more than three hundred years that have passed since his death. In Moreau’s twenty-five page article we find a brief paragraph on the novelist George Eliot and half a sentence on Ed Curley. There is not another mention, at all, of any other philosopher from an English-speaking land since the seventeenth century – nothing on how Spinoza’s (...) ideas were received in England, North America or Australia. Not a word on any influence that Spinoza might have had on later thinkers in those countries. (shrink)

Not long ago, I received an email from a man who had been trying to get his seven-year-old son interested in science, and teach him a little bit about the workings of the brain. He had been showing his son one of those diagrams of a brain with various regions labeled as "speech center," vision center," and the like (something similar to this, I suppose), when the little boy suddenly asked, "Daddy, which part of the brain does imagination come from?". (...) It was not on the diagram, and the father, although he studied human biology at college, realized he did not know the answer. As we do these days, he got on the internet to try to find out. It was not as easy as he might have expected. "Imagination" is certainly a word that is found on a lot of web pages, and there are plenty that seem to be devoted to celebrating or promoting it, but very few of them seem to have anything at all to say about what it is, how it works, or where in the brain it might be implemented. Eventually, he found his way to this site. Even here, however, he could find no straightforward answer to his son's apparently straightforward question. (The truth is, the question is not nearly as straightforward as it appears.) He thought I might be a good a person to ask, however, and sent me an email. What follows is a lightly revised version of the reply I sent. It is not written in terms that a seven-year-old could understand (I am not clever enough to do that), but neither is it pitched at the professional, academic level of most of the material on this site. I would like to think that it answers the question (inasmuch as it can be answered in the current state of scientific knowledge) in a way that a layperson should be able to understand, and that they might then be able to explain to a curious and intelligent child. If you want to know the detailed reasons, and see the citations to the scientific literature, that justify the claims made here, you can find them in the other articles on this site.. (shrink)

In two experiments, subjects’ task was to decide whether a binocularly viewed target word was evaluatively good (e.g., fame, comedy, rescue) or bad (e.g., stress, detest, malaria) in meaning. Just prior to this target word, a priming word was presented to the nondominant eye, and masked by an immediately following presentation of a letter—fragment pattern to the dominant eye. (Masking effectiveness was demonstrated by subjects’ failure to discriminate the left vs. right position of a test series of words.) In Experiment (...) 1, which used evaluatively positive or negative words as priming stimuli, judgment latency for the evaluative decision task was facilitated by primes that agreed in evaluation with targets, and was retarded by primes that disagreed in evaluation with targets. This result demonstrated that the evaluative meaning of priming stimuli was processed under conditions that prevented subjects from detecting their presence. Primes in Experiment 2 were 2-word strings for which the evaluative meaning of individual words was orthogonal to the evaluative sentence meaning (e.g., the two evaluatively negative words, "enemy fails,“ make up an evaluatively positive sentence). Results of Experiment 2 indicated that masked priming effects were influenced by the evaluative meanings of individual words, but not by their sentence meanings. This result supported the conclusion that the processing of undetected, dichoptically masked words is limited to analyses that are not powerful enough to extract sentence meanings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PARODY AND THE ARGUMENT FROM PROBABILITY IN THE APOLOGY by Thomas J. Lewis Over a century ago James Riddell pointed out that Socrates' defense speech in die Apology closely followed the standard form of Athenian forensic rhetoric. He called the Apology "artistic to the core," and he identified parts of "the subde rhetoric of this defense."1 Since then many scholars have explicated the rhetorical elements in Socrates' defense.2 (...) Their work has led in turn to recent attempts to integrate the rhetorical form into an overall understanding of the meaning and significance of the Apology? The puzzle to be solved is what to make of the fact that Socrates disclaims the ability and the intention to use rhetoric in a speech which is itself a rhetorical masterpiece. R. E. Allen raises the possibility thatby using the techniques ofrhetoric and at the same time denying that he is using them Socrates is dissembling or lying. However, Allen rejects this possibility and interprets Socrates' falsehood as only a surface or apparent falsehood. According to Allen it is ironic parody of a disreputable rhetoric which seeks to convince without concern for the truth.4 For Allen the object of the parody is base rhetoric in general, the type of rhetoric denounced by Socrates in the Gorgias as "rhetoric aiming at gratification and pleasure, and indifferent to truth and the good of the soul."5 Two subsequent articles, one by Kenneth Seeskin, the other by Douglas Feaver andJohn Hare, support the view that Socrates is parodying the debased form of rhetoric. However, they place somewhat different emphasis on the exact object of the parody. They argue that the object of Socrates' rhetorical parody is Gorgias' Pahmedes, rather than pandering rhetoric in general.6 After summarizing the many rhetorical similarities between Gorgias' Palamedes and Socrates' defense speech, Seeskin concludes that "Gorgias' Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 359-366 360Philosophy and Literature Palamedes is not a masterpiece of world literature; it is a collection of topoi—tried and true devices for winning acquittal... [whereas] despite his disclaimer, Socrates' speech is no amateur performance. On the contrary, he knew all the tricks of the trade and employed them with consummate skill" (p. 97). Seeskin uses Plato's Gorgias to explain how Socrates' rhetoric fits within an overall understanding of the Apology. He notes the two types ofrhetoric presented in the Gorgias: base rhetoric, a species of flattery which aims at gratification; and philosophic or true rhetoric which aims at improving the soul. Then Seeskin makes a crucial point. He insists it is not enough to distinguish between base rhetoric and philosophic rhetoric; there must be a way to identify a given instance of rhetoric as either base rhetoric or as philosophic rhetoric. Moreover, he cautions that distinguishing the one from the other is no easy task. "It is impossible to tell them apart on the basis of technique alone. Base rhetoric is no less polished for its baseness.... Nor can one tell them apart on the basis of their stated goals. Flattery succeeds only to the extent that it can pass itself off as something better" (p. 98). Thus, if Socrates and Palamedes employ the same rhetorical devices, Seeskin wonders how we can tell which type ofrhetoric is in the Apology. "Somewhere in the Apology of Socrates there ought to be a clue which allows one to distinguish his defense from the 'standard' defense composed by Gorgias" (p. 99). Seeskin finds the clue in the exordium, where Socrates denies that he is a skillful speaker: "Unless, of course, by a skillful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth. If that is what they mean, I would agree that I am an orator, though not after their pattern" (17b). Although Palamedes makes a comparable claim, Seeskin argues that Palamedes was concerned with appearance rather than truth, and that the key to appearance is the use of the argument from probability. According to Seeskin, Socrates does not rely on the argument from probability, whereas this argument permeates the Palamedes. "Again and again, the speaker tries to show that it would be implausible to suppose that anyone in his position did what he is accused of doing. How... (shrink)

This paper mentions several different sorts of "essentialism," and examines various senses in which quantified modal logic is "committed to" the most troublesome kind of essentialism. It is argued that essentialism is neither provable, Nor entailed by any contingently true non-Modal sentence. But quantified modal logic is committed to the meaningfulness of essentialism. This sort of commitment may be made innocuous by requiring that essentialism simply be made logically false; some of the consequences of taking this line are explored.