EVER SINCE Plato declared imagining to be mere pseudo- or shadow-knowing—a form of eikasia, the lowest species of mental activity—Western philosophers have striven to put imagination in its place: a strictly subordinate place. With the exception of isolated figures such as Vico, Collingwood, and Bachelard, philosophers have denounced imagining for its digressiveness and excoriated it for its evasiveness, though sometimes surreptitiously admiring it for these very qualities. At the same time, and as part of the same deprecatory tactic, invidious comparisons (...) have been instituted between imagining and supposedly superior psychical activities. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example, the paradigm was pure thinking, over against which imagining appeared as deceitful and mendacious—as "the mistress of falsehood and error" in Pascal’s classic complaint. Even Kant, for all of his attention to imagination as a source of synthesis, considered the image to be "a mere set of particular qualities, determined by no assignable rule"—in contrast with the determinacy and rule-bound character of pure concepts. Kant, as much as Descartes or Pascal, Malebranche or Mersenne, Spinoza or Leibniz, would agree with Heidegger’s stern verdict that philosophical thinking is "charmless and image-poor.". (shrink)

On sait que Platon fait grand cas des êtres intelligibles en instaurant la théorie des Idées. Mais il n’est pas approprié de le considérer comme penseur qui néglige le rôle de l’apparence sensible. Ce philosophe demeure très sensible à la modalité par laquelle les phénomènes apparaissent dans le champ de notreperception. En distinguant deux types d’apparence : image et simulacre, il donne à l’image le rôle d’intermédiaire actif entre le sensible et l’intelligible. L’examen des modalités des actions humaines qui reçoivent (...) et créent des images, nous aide à voir comment Platon intègre la fonction des images dans la structure de sa philosophie. La réception et la création des images sont étroitement reliées et synthétisées pour former le système original de Platon, système dans lequel le fondement de la théorie des Idées relève d’un certain dynamisme de l’action humaine. Dans la recherche relative à la modalité de réception et de création des images, je porte mon attention sur l’usage platonicien du terme tupos qui exprime le principe de la conformité de l’image et de son modèle.Notamment dans la théorie de la formation des futurs gardiens de la cité idéale, le tupos fonctionne, comme un principe qui réglemente et oriente à plusieurs niveaux les activités de la mimèsis et de la poièsis qui portent sur les images. La réflexion sur cette fonction conductrice. (shrink)

Review of Aurel Codoban, Imperiul comunicării: corp, imagine și relaționare (The Empire of Communication: Body, Image and Relation), (Cluj-Napoca: Idea Design &Print, 2011).

Amidst the progress being made in the various (sub-)disciplines of the behavioural and brain sciences a somewhat neglected subject is the problem of how everything fits into one world and, derivatively, how the relation between different levels of discourse should be understood and to what extent different levels, domains, approaches, or disciplines are autonomous or dependent. In this paper I critically review the most recent proposals to specify the nature of interdiscourse relations, focusing on the concept of supervenience. Ideally supervenience (...) is a relation between different discourses which has all the advantages of reduction, but without its disadvantages. I apply the more abstract considerations to two concrete cases: schizophrenia and colour. Usually an interlevel or interdiscourse relation is seen as asymmetrical: the overlaying discourse depends on the underlying discourse (and not vice versa), where the out- or un-spoken assumption is that the ultimate underlying discourse is physical. Instead I argue that scientific categories referred to in interdiscourse relations are, ultimately, dependent on common sense categories and common sense normative criteria. It is the manifest categories and common sense ideas about what is reasonable and what is right that determine the relevant categorisations at the deeper, underlying levels. I suggest that the implications of this are not merely methodological or epistemological. (shrink)

Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has proven to be a highly effective medical imaging technique that produces detailed cross-sectional images of organs, tissues, and skeletal structures. Because of its versatility, MR imaging has been called “one of the most powerful diagnostic tools in contemporary clinical medicine.”1 MR imaging is advantageous because it does not rely on potentially harmful ionizing radiation used in other imaging techniques; however, the MR imaging scanner can cause considerable anxiety for individuals with claustrophobia, a fear of (...) confined spaces. The MR imaging scanner is designed as a large tube with a table in the middle. During examinations, the patient lies supine on the table, is slid into the scanner tube, and must remain still so that the MR imaging technologist can produce the precise images needed to facilitate an accurate diagnosis. Depending on the imaging required, the procedure can last from 20 to 50 minutes, which can be distressful for people with claustrophobia because the enclosed space might trigger anxiety-inducing feelings and thoughts. Using concepts from the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, this article attempts to describe what a patient experiences when they feel claustrophobic and to provide clinical strategies that MR technologists can use to navigate situations in which the scanner poses a risk of inducing a claustrophobia-related anxiety episode. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, which affects sense of identity. While the ability to have a coherent vision of the self relies partly on its reciprocal relationships with autobiographical memories, little is known about how memories ground “self-images” in schizophrenia. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 controls were asked to give six autobiographical memories related to four self-statements they considered essential for defining their identity. Results showed that patients’ self-images were more passive than those of controls. Autobiographical (...) memories underlying self-images were less thematically linked to these self-images in patients. We also found evidence of a weakened sense of self and a deficient organization of autobiographical memories grounding the self in schizophrenia. These abnormalities may account for the poor cohesiveness of the self in schizophrenia. (shrink)

This study takes a systemic functional multimodal social semiotic approach to the analysis and discussion of image and text relations in two sets of data. First, patterns of contextualisation of images and text in the online magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah produced by the Islamic extremist organisation which refers to itself as Islamic State are examined. The second data set consists of a sample of texts from Western online news and blog sites which include recontextualisations of images found in (...) the first data set. A sample of examples of the use and re-use of images is discussed in order to identify patterns of similarity and difference when images and text are recontextualised. It is argued that the ISIS material tends to foreground the interpersonal metafunction in combination with the textual metafunction, while the other data set tends to foreground the ideational metafunction. These inferences indicate that further exploration of a larger data set is worth pursuing. Such studies would provide deeper insights helping to distinguish between online material which supports terrorism and that which opposes it, as well as facilitating the further development of multimodal social semiotic approaches to image and text relations. (shrink)

This book investigates the ontological state of relations in a unique way. Starting with the notion of system, it shows that the system can be understood as a relational structure, and that relations can be assessed within themselves, with no need to transform relations in elements. “Relations” are understood in contrast to “relational property”: without a relation there is no identity, therefore no existence. What allows us to do that without hypostatizing the relation, and without immediately taking it (...) simply as a causal relation, can be better grasped, possibly, in reference to a few entities that make best display of their systemic nature, for example images, works of art, and virtual bodies. This book shows how virtual bodies are ontological hybrids representing a type of entity that has never appeared in the world before. This entity becomes a phenomenon in interactivity and evades the dichotomy between “external” and “internal”; it is neither a cognitive product of the consciousness, nor an image of the mind. The user is well aware of experiencing anotherreality, also in the sense of a paradoxical reduplication of perceptual synthesis. The virtual body-environment is therefore simultaneously external and internal, with virtual bodies-environments to be seen as artificial windows to an intermediary world. In this intermediary world, the space itself is the result of interactivity; the world takes place in the sense or feeling of immersion experienced by the user; and the body, perceived as “other”, takes upon itself the sense of its reality, of its effectiveness, as an imaginary and pathic incision, as a production of desire and emotion, to the point that the feeling of reality conveyed by a virtual environment will rely significantly on how this environment produces emotions in the users. (shrink)

Racial bias and language discrimination are recognized in the health sector in countries such as Sri Lanka. This may extend to images used in health communication and educational literature. We analyzed the racial and ethnic representation in a sample of newspapers and websites related to health obtained over a period. Most of the human figures in health-related messages in newspapers had an overrepresentation of Caucasians. This trend was absent in websites where 73% of the images of Sri Lankans. (...) The reasons for this pattern could be due to the availability of image-quality photographs and exposure to a norm that is racially biased. For example, a majority of images in medical textbooks and prestigious journals are of white Caucasians. A predominance of such images could have two impacts. At an individual level, it would affect acquiring skills of visual diagnoses. At a societal level, it may reinforce a view that most forms of health-related knowledge are created in the West and could add to existing discrimination based on skin color (i.e., colorism). The latter is a known psychosocial stressor that contributes to psychological distress among socially disadvantaged populations and promotes behaviors adverse to health and residential segregation. These may contribute to poorer physical, mental, and infant health outcomes in dark-skinned individuals compared to lighter-skinned in the USA and Canada. Such discrimination within the health system would compromise basic human dignity, disempower patients, and violate the principle of autonomy. Sri Lankan media, the healthcare profession, and educationists need to recognize the relevance and importance of using images that appropriately reflect the realities of their own environment, its people, and patients. (shrink)

FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING DETECTS DEGREES of consciousness in a few vegetative patients, despite the difficulty of establishing any form of communication with them at the bedside. What are the implications of our understanding of consciousness in defining one's identity? How do we care for these patients? To answer these questions, I propose relationality as an appropriate ethical resource. Relationality supports a renewed understanding of consciousness, identity, and care; it addresses the associated ethical issues; and it characterizes who we are, (...) how we understand ourselves theologically, and how, through discernment, we promote justice and love. (shrink)

This article is based on ethnographic research conducted between 1998 and 2000 in British Columbia, Canada. In this article Luce brings together the narratives of queer women she interviewed about their experiences of trying to become parents with her own stories about doing the research. Both sets of stories explore the ways in which relationships between people are reproduced and represented through images of sexuality, reproduction, queerness, parents, and families. Shifting between telling about the tensions she experienced while doing (...) ethnographic fieldwork and retelling women's stories about how their relationships to partners, fetuses, babies, and donors were perceived, the article draws attention to both political and methodological questions. (shrink)

Biomedical ontologies define entities and relations in order to represent knowledge in the biomedical domain. In addition, many ontologies further represent supplementary knowledge by linking terms from an external controlled vocabulary to the entities defined within the ontology itself. In this paper we concentrate on the domain of medical imaging, for which controlled vocabularies are emerging, but no ontology currently exists. We analyzed computed tomography reports in order to determine to which entities terms used in such reports refer and which (...) relations are used with regard to the recently published Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Relation Ontology. Our analysis revealed that the majority of entities referred to in radiological reporting practice are anatomical entities and anatomical coordinates. Based on the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Relation Ontology we provide a set of additional relations for the ontological structuring of image features such as shape, morphology, size and signal, frequently found in the reports. On the basis of these results we conclude that the construction of an imaging ontology may benefit greatly from already existing reference ontologies such as the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA), which represent those entities to which radiological reports most frequently refer. (shrink)

This article examines a changing global reality that manifests itself in new forms of social activism. The struggle of the multitude challenges political representation and contemporary art seems to corroborate this observation. Becoming a form of social intervention, it turns into an active force and leaves behind the need to double action with representation, representational practices being the hallmark of classical art. A new theory of the image would have to incorporate this dynamic: it would have to treat and develop (...) the basic categories of action and relation. There are few philosophies of the act, and the existing semiotic models mostly deal with dual structures (signifier/signified; sign/meaning; image/referent, and so on). It is necessary to sketch out a dynamic theory of the image that would: (1) reveal the limitations of the concept of representation; (2) conceive of the image as a set of multiple changing relations. The image would thus be seen as a necessary part of the relations governing the world in its entirety, that is, as part of the movement of matter itself. Which is another way of saying that those relations are actualized, or expressed, in the image. (shrink)

Understanding the neural basis of schizophrenia (SZ) is important for shedding light on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this mental disorder. Structural and functional alterations in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), hippocampus, and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) have been implicated in the neurobiology of SZ. However, the effective connectivity among them in SZ remains unclear. The current study investigated how neuronal pathways involving these regions were affected in first-episode SZ using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Forty-nine patients (...) with a first-episode of psychosis and diagnosis of SZ—according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision—were studied. Fifty healthy controls (HCs) were included for comparison. All subjects underwent resting state fMRI. We used spectral dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to estimate directed connections among the bilateral ACC, DLPFC, hippocampus, and MPFC. We characterized the differences using Bayesian parameter averaging (BPA) in addition to classical inference (t-test). In addition to common effective connectivity in these two groups, HCs displayed widespread significant connections predominantly involved in ACC not detected in SZ patients, but SZ showed few connections. Based on BPA results, SZ patients exhibited anterior cingulate cortico-prefrontal-hippocampal hyperconnectivity, as well as ACC-related and hippocampal-dorsolateral prefrontal-medial prefrontal hypoconnectivity. In summary, spectral DCM revealed the pattern of effective connectivity involving ACC in patients with first-episode SZ. This study provides a potential link between SZ and dysfunction of ACC, creating an ideal situation to associate mechanisms behind SZ with aberrant connectivity among these cognition and emotion-related regions. (shrink)

As part of their corporate social responsibility, many organizations practice cause-related marketing, in which organizations donate to a chosen cause with every consumer purchase. The extant literature has identified the importance of the fit between the organization and the nature of the cause in influencing corporate image, as well as the influence of a connection between the cause and consumer preferences on brand attitudes and brand choice. However, prior research has not addressed which cause composition most appeals to consumers or (...) the impact of cause choice on corporate image. A between-subjects field experiment in the Netherlands examines the influence of three core cause attributes—cause type, cause scope, and cause acuteness—on consumers’ perceptions of corporate image. Furthermore, this experiment examines the extent to which consumer identification with the cause mediates the influence of the cause attributes on corporate image. The findings indicate that identification with the cause leads to more positive evaluations of marketing campaigns for cause type and cause scope. Also, however, our results uncover a negative direct relationship between cause scope and corporate image. Cause acuteness is only marginally influential in corporate image perceptions. By proposing and testing a comprehensive model of the influence of cause attributes on corporate image in cause-related marketing, this article provides important implications and suggests avenues for further research. (shrink)

While there had still been an increasing flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into China during the 2002 downturn in FDI globally, such investments have historically been only sporadically successful. Much writing has detailed and discussed problems associated with China FDI but several costs remain dangerously overlooked. One such cost is that of micro-monitoring plants for work conditions and employee treatment in violation of local Chinese laws and possible home country ethics. Further, a more personal cost is presented – the (...) personal cost associated with maintaining an investment in a facility that violates standards of ethical employee treatment. Background information related to these issues is presented, along with a general overview of FDI in China. (shrink)

The article is based on research conducted at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Radiology Department (Memphis, Tennessee, USA). It examines embodied cognition embedded in radiological diagnostics relating image perception with normative judgment constitution. The research follows the causal thesis in that it is possible to grasp categories and causality via visual experience (causal impressions) and language (causal verbs), which in turn heavily depends on strategies of the enaction of imaging technology and intersubjective corroboration. In this way, the pre-reflective and intersubjective constitution (...) of categorial fulfillments of diagnostic experiences is disclosed by phenomenological ethnography of radiologists’ praxis showing how professional knowledge is structurally interrelated with certain kinesthetic and kinetic experiences, multilayered image apprehension and enactive metaphors. (shrink)

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can provide a number of measurements relevant to sport-related concussion (SRC) symptoms; however, most studies to date have used a single MRI modality and whole-brain exploratory analyses in attempts to localize concussion injury. This has resulted in highly variable findings across studies due to wide ranging symptomology, severity and nature of injury within studies. A multimodal MRI, symptom-guided region-of-interest (ROI) approach is likely to yield more consistent results. The functions of the cerebellum and basal ganglia transcend (...) many common concussion symptoms, and thus these regions, plus the white matter tracts that connect or project from them, constitute plausible ROIs for MRI analysis. We performed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), resting-state functional MRI, quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), and cerebral blood flow (CBF) imaging using arterial spin labeling (ASL), in youth aged 12-18 years following SRC, with a focus on the cerebellum, basal ganglia and white matter tracts. Compared to controls similar in age, sex and sport (N= 20), recent SRC youth (N= 29; MRI at 8 ± 3 days post injury) exhibited increased susceptibility in the cerebellum (p= 0.032), decreased functional connectivity between the caudate and each of the pallidum (p= 0.035) and thalamus (p= 0.021), and decreased diffusivity in the mid-posterior corpus callosum (p< 0.038); no changes were observed in recovered asymptomatic youth (N= 16; 41 ± 16 days post injury). For recent symptomatic-only SRC youth (N= 24), symptom severity was associated with increased susceptibility in the superior cerebellar peduncles (p= 0.011) and reduced activity in the cerebellum (p= 0.013). Fewer days between injury and MRI were associated with reduced cerebellar-parietal functional connectivity (p< 0.014), reduced activity of the pallidum (p= 0.002), increased CBF in the caudate (p= 0.005), and reduced diffusivity in the central corpus callosum (p< 0.05). Youth SRC is associated with acute cerebellar inflammation accompanied by reduced cerebellar activity and cerebellar-parietal connectivity, as well as structural changes of the middle regions of the corpus callosum accompanied by functional changes of the caudate, all of which resolve with recovery. Early MRI post-injury is important to establish objective MRI-based indicators for concussion diagnosis, recovery assessment and prediction of outcome. (shrink)

As part of their corporate social responsibility, many organizations practice cause-related marketing, in which organizations donate to a chosen cause with every consumer purchase. The extant literature has identified the importance of the fit between the organization and the nature of the cause in influencing corporate image, as well as the influence of a connection between the cause and consumer preferences on brand attitudes and brand choice. However, prior research has not addressed which cause composition most appeals to consumers or (...) the impact of cause choice on corporate image. A between-subjects field experiment in the Netherlands examines the influence of three core cause attributes—cause type, cause scope, and cause acuteness—on consumers’ perceptions of corporate image. Furthermore, this experiment examines the extent to which consumer identification with the cause mediates the influence of the cause attributes on corporate image. The findings indicate that identification with the cause leads to more positive evaluations of marketing campaigns for cause type and cause scope. Also, however, our results uncover a negative direct relationship between cause scope and corporate image. Cause acuteness is only marginally influential in corporate image perceptions. By proposing and testing a comprehensive model of the influence of cause attributes on corporate image in cause-related marketing, this article provides important implications and suggests avenues for further research. (shrink)

Robert B. Brandom’s From Empiricism to Expressivism ranges widely over fundamental issues in metaphysics, with occasional forays into epistemology as well. The centerpiece is what Brandom calls ‘the Kant-Sellars thesis about modality’. This is ‘[t]he claim that in being able to use ordinary empirical descriptive vocabulary, one already knows how to do everything that one needs to know how to do, in principle, to use alethic modal vocabulary – in particular subjunctive conditionals’. Despite claiming descent from Sellars, Brandom defends here (...) a version of modal realism and tries hard to limit Sellarsian nominalism, all in the service of elaborating Brandom’s own version of pragmatism. The range of issues Brandom addresses defies adequate consideration in a critical notice, so I confine myself here to a single issue: What is.. (shrink)

Teacher discipline strategies are well documented when it comes to its effects on students and the working climate in the classroom. Although it is commonly acknowledged that for student teachers classroom management is a major concern, student teachers? use of discipline strategies is largely unknown. In this paper, we examine student teachers? beliefs in relation to their discipline strategies. Three clusters of discipline strategies are distinguished: sensitive, directive and aggressive discipline strategies. Beliefs that were taken into account are self-images (...) on control and affiliation, control orientation and anticipated student responses on control and affiliation. All participants were student teachers of a one-year teacher education programme for secondary education in the Netherlands. Student questionnaires were used to measure discipline strategies (n?=?2506). Student teachers? (n?=?104) self-images, control orientation and anticipated student responses were measured with student teacher questionnaires. Results of the multiple regression analyses showed that student teachers? sensitive and directive discipline strategies are explained best by self-images on control; aggressive discipline strategies are explained best by self-images on affiliation and by control orientation. Apart from the possible academic interest in these particular findings, results are believed to be useful in a practical sense, in particular for teacher education programmes. (shrink)

The article describes the interpersonal relationships of various states of society of the «post-Shakespearean» era in the artistic work of the outstanding English playwright and actor Benjamin Johnson. Relying on sources and scientific literature, the author of the article tries to recreate the layer of everyday life in London at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, to reveal the problem of the «survival» of actors in the first stationary theater «Globus», their attempts to communicate with aristocrats, the attitude (...) towards famous actors and directors in the English late Middle Ages society The central problem of the research is also the relationship between V. Shaksrip and A. Ferabosko, whose acting troupes shared the «stage» of the «Globus» theater. All these questions are most vividly revealed in Benjamin Johnson’s tragedy «Thrice Crossing the Thames», which was published after his death at the author’s request. The image of English society revealed through the thoughts and worldview of his contemporary is simply amazing. In the author’s opinion, it is also valuable that Benjamin Johnson personally knew V. Shakespeare and A. Ferabosko, the unforgettable young actress Catherine Loster. Research methodology. The content-comparative method, the method of modification of concepts and terms, generalizing and problem-searching methods to reproduce the realities of the era were used to write the article. Conclusion. we see that the place of man and the concept of «humanity» in the English dramaturgy of the «post-Shakespearean» era have changed significantly. In English art, more and more realistic «notes» are felt. Instead of “elevated” and “low” on the pages of books, «street life», «urban slums», relations between new states of society, new social morality come to the English stage. In order to fully feel the depth of these changes, it is worth discovering the realistic human images reproduced by contemporaries of the «post-Neckspearian» era, understanding the criteria of their morality and humanity from the point of view of the author of the dramatic work, who wrote at the crossroads of two great eras. (shrink)

Images and Power: Rock Art and Ethics addresses the distinctive ways in which ethical considerations pertain to rock art research within the larger context of the archaeological ethical debate. Marks on stone, with their social and religious implications, give rise to distinctive ethical concerns within the scholarly enterprise as different perceptions between scholars and Native Americans are encountered in regard to worldviews, concepts of space, time, and in the interpretation of the imagery itself. This discourse addresses issues such as (...) the conflicting paradigms of oral traditions and archaeological veracity, differing ideas about landscapes in which rock art occurs, the intrusion of "desired knowledge", and how the past may be robbed by changing interpretations and values on both sides. Case studies are presented in regard to shamanism and war-related imagery. Also addressed are issues surrounding questions of art, aesthetics, and appropriation of imagery by outsiders. Overall, this discourse attempts to clarify points of contention between Euro-American scholars and Native Americans so that we can better recognize the origins of differences and thus promote better mutual understanding in these endeavors."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Humans are fast and accurate in categorizing complex natural images. It is, however, unclear what features of visual information are exploited by brain to perceive the images with such speed and accuracy. It has been shown that low-level contrast statistics of natural scenes can explain the variance of amplitude of event-related potentials (ERP) in response to rapidly presented images. In this study, we investigated the effect of these statistics on frequency content of ERPs. We recorded ERPs from (...) human subjects, while they viewed natural images each presented for 70 ms. Our results showed that Weibull contrast statistics, as a biologically plausible model, explained the variance of ERPs the best, compared to other image statistics that we assessed. Our time-frequency analysis revealed a significant correlation between these statistics and ERPs’ power within theta frequency band (~3-7 Hz). This is interesting, as theta band is believed to be involved in context updating and semantic encoding. This correlation became significant at ~110 ms after stimulus onset, and peaked at 138 ms. Our results show that not only the amplitude but also the frequency of neural responses can be modulated with low-level contrast statistics of natural images and highlights their potential role in scene perception. (shrink)

Ontologies of Rock Art is the first publication exploring a wide range of ontological approaches to rock art interpretation, constituting the basis for ground-breaking studies on Indigenous knowledges, relational metaphysics, and rock imageries. The book contributes to the growing body of research on the ontology of images by focusing on five main topics: ontology as a theoretical framework; the development of new concepts and methods for an ontological approach to rock art; the examination of the relationships between ontology, (...) images and Indigenous knowledges; the development of relational models for the analysis of rock images; and the impact of ontological approaches on different rock art traditions across the world. Generating new avenues of research in ontological theory, political ontology and rock art research, this collection will be relevant to archaeologists, anthropologists, and philosophers. In the context of an increasing interest in Indigenous ontologies, the volume will also be of interest to scholars in Indigenous Studies. (shrink)

This article aims to reveal aspects of the relation between the image and the victim in Georges Bataille’s writing, certainly as this applies to writings on art, but more particularly as it applies to Bataille’s relation to the victim of torture in the photographs of Chinese lingchi punishment, which entails physical dismemberment. It will be shown that Bataille does not have a ‘media specific’ approach to the image but reflects Sartre’s notion of the image. Critiques of Bataille’s relation to the (...) lingchi photos will be addressed, so as to clarify what is at stake in the relation between image and victim. (shrink)

Amidst the progress being made in the various (sub-)disciplines of the behavioural and brain sciences a somewhat neglected subject is the problem of how everything fits into one world and, derivatively, how the relation between different levels of discourse should be understood and to what extent different levels, domains, approaches, or disciplines are autonomous or dependent. In this paper I critically review the most recent proposals to specify the nature of interdiscourse relations, focusing on the concept of supervenience. Ideally supervenience (...) is a relation between different discourses which has all the advantages of reduction, but without its disadvantages. I apply the more abstract considerations to two concrete cases: schizophrenia and colour. Usually an interlevel or interdiscourse relation is seen as asymmetrical: the overlaying discourse depends on the underlying discourse (and not vice versa), where the out- or un-spoken assumption is that the ultimate underlying discourse is physical. Instead I argue that scientific categories referred to in interdiscourse relations are, ultimately, dependent on common sense categories and common sense normative criteria. It is the manifest categories and common sense ideas about what is reasonable and what is right that determine the relevant categorisations at the deeper, underlying levels. I suggest that the implications of this are not merely methodological or epistemological. (shrink)

Comment penser aujourd’hui la place des Africaines dans leurs sociétés dites postcoloniales? Ce texte propose de situer la complexité de la relation entre l’un et l’autre à la croisée des langues et des cultures. La domination d’une langue – le français – est l’un des critères mobilisés en vue de penser les représentations et les imaginaires liées au corps des femmes. Il s’agit d’aller au-delà de la race, de la classe, du genre et d’autres approches proposées par les perspectives intersectionnelles. (...) Les expériences vécues et les quêtes identitaires qui aliènent ou émancipent les corps et les esprits ne doivent pas être perdues de vue. Si l’émancipation peut s’effectuer individuellement, en luttant contre toutes sortes d’obstacles réels ou imaginaires, il importe de souligner la force de ce qu’on pourrait appeler la « solidarité féminine » et qui reste encore à penser. (shrink)

In contrast to symbol-manipulation approaches, Cognitive Linguistics offers a modal rather than an amodal account of meaning in language. From this perspective, the meanings attached to linguistic expressions, in the form of conceptualisations, have various properties in common with visual forms of representation. This makes Cognitive Linguistics a potentially useful framework for identifying and analysing language-image relations in multimodal texts. In this paper, we investigate language-image relations with a specific focus on intersemiotic convergence. Analogous with research on gesture, we extend (...) the notion of co-text images and argue that images and language usages which are proximal to one another in a multimodal text can be expected to exhibit the same or consistent construals of the target scene. We outline some of the dimensions of conceptualisation along which intersemiotic convergence may be enacted in texts, including event-structure, viewpoint, distribution of attention and metaphor. We take as illustrative data photographs and their captions in online news texts covering a range of topics including immigration, political protests, and inter-state conflict. Our analysis suggests the utility of Cognitive Linguistics in allowing new potential sites of intersemiotic convergence to be identified and in proffering an account of language-image relations that is based in language cognition. (shrink)

Cet article traite des images de la femme dans quelques contes marocains. Il s'agit de saisir les représentations sociales véhiculées par la littérature orale et les attitudes sous-jacentes exprimées par les relations de rôles des personnages féminins dans le cadre d'une démarche de type sociolinguistique.

The Adventure of the Image Through the Conflict of Interpretations. Starting from the self-image, through the image adventure landscape seen as an ensemble of conflict of interpretation, not only from a single glance or direction, whether it is evasive or complex, we follow our decipherment and transformation, be it process or state. Through multiple hypostases, whether isolated or open, I will focus on certain details that will be addressed as a dimension by means of text or material reproduction, or through (...) the passage of the same image we face each time through the filter of our own existence. We stop the other or ourselves against the other, thus removing the observer or viewer, thus providing not only distinct perspectives on the same subject or the same situation or even the same consequences, but also giving him the opportunity to choose how to relate to the internal and external environment, thus convincing that, to a lesser extent, or greater, he is the one who drives everything. This approach is based not only on the adventure of self-image in the archive of own experiences but also from the outside, from the archive of common experiences perceived by other people. (shrink)

The senses present their content in the form of images, three-dimensional arrays of located sense features. Peacocke’s “scenario content” is one attempt to capture image content; here, a richer notion is presented, sensory images include located objects and features predicated of them. It is argued that our grasp of the meaning of these images implies that they have propositional content. Two problems concerning image content are explored. The first is that even on an enriched conception, image content (...) has certain expressive limitations. In particular, it cannot express absolute location and time (as opposed to spatiotemporal relations) or logical complexity. Yet, perceptual experience does seem to express certain absolute locations—namely, here and now. How can it do so? Secondly, image content cannot exhaust the significance of perceptual states. This is proved by noting that perception, memory, and anticipation can have the same image content. Yet they have different significance. These problems show that some of the significance of sensory states comes from outside the image. (shrink)

A model is computable if its domain is a computable set and its relations and functions are uniformly computable. Let be a computable model and let R be an extra relation on the domain of . That is, R is not named in the language of . We define to be the set of Turing degrees of the images f under all isomorphisms f from to computable models. We investigate conditions on and R which are sufficient and necessary for (...) to contain every Turing degree. These conditions imply that if every Turing degree 0″ can be realized in via an isomorphism of the same Turing degree as its image of R, then contains every Turing degree. We also discuss an example of and R whose coincides with the Turing degrees which are 0′. (shrink)

Reading fiction for pleasurable is robustly correlated with improved cognitive attainment and other benefits. It is also in decline among young people in developed nations, in part because of competition from moving image fiction. We review existing research on the differences between reading/hearing verbal fiction and watching moving image fiction, as well as looking more broadly at research on image/text interactions and visual versus verbal processing. We conclude that verbal narrative generates more diverse responses than moving image narrative., We note (...) that reading and viewing narrative are different tasks, with different cognitive loads. Viewing moving image narrative mostly involves visual processing with some working memory engagement, whereas reading narrative involves verbal processing, visual imagery and personal memory (Xu et al 2005). but Attempts to compare the two by creating suggest that existing research is flawed by attempts to create equivalent stimuli and task demands face a number of challenges, and we discuss these difficulties in comparative approaches. We then investigate the possibility of identifying lower level processing mechanisms that might distinguish cognition of the two media, and propose a focus on internal scene construction and on working memory as foci for future research. Although many of the sources we draw on are focussed on English speaking participants in European or North American settings, we also cover material relating to speakers of Dutch, German, Hebrew and Japanese in their respective countries, and studies of a remote Turkish mountain community. (shrink)

The present contribution intends to outline diagrams in the process of their becoming and as the result of live-action gestures between people. It aims to demonstrate that diagrams are images produced in form of “texts”, that is in form of any interweaving of relations. After a re- reading of the notions of “image” and “text”, our article highlights the continuities of Peirce's views on the diagram, as a not only verbal function, into Deleuze and Guattari's theory, and provides a (...) closer look at Wittgenstein's idea that diagrams are indissociable from their use. A semiotic analysis of Maria Lai's work of art Legarsi alla montagna will show this recurrent dimension of performativity in diagrams, revealing the extent to which they create not general relations, but social and intersubjective ones. (shrink)