This book posits an interconnection between the ways in which contemporary television serials cue cognitive operations, solicit emotional responses, and elicit aesthetic appreciation. The chapters explore a number of questions including: How do the particularities of form and style in contemporary serial television engage us cognitively, emotionally, and aesthetically? How do they foster cognitive and emotional effects such as feeling suspense, anticipation, surprise, satisfaction, and disappointment? Why and how do we value some serials while disliking others? What is it (...) about the particularities of serial television form and style, in conjunction with our common cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic capacities, that accounts for serial television's cognitive, socio-political, and aesthetic value, and its current ubiquity in popular culture? This book will appeal to postgraduates and scholars working in television studies as well as film studies, cognitive media theory, media psychology, and the philosophy of art. (shrink)

Some aspects of insect development were reconsidered in relation toWolpert's concept of “positional information”, which was briefly summarized. His distinction between positional information and “polarity potential” was shown to be unnecessary. The question was discussed whether transdetermination inDrosophila imaginai discs is a re-specification or a re-interpretation of positional information. In the first case transdetermination would depend on spatial relationships in the blastema, whereas in the second case it would not. As to the so-called “prepattern mutants”, it was emphasized that in (...) all cases published so far the supposed prepattern alterations are accompanied by growth disturbances which may account for changes in the specification of positional information. “Regulation” in imaginai discs is of a particular kind in that it depends on a proliferation phase. It takes place according to rules which were newly formulated in terms of positional information; the salient point of these rules is a tendency to maintain the slope of the positional information “gradients” and to produce symmetrically reduplicated, often defective organs. A short description of the postulated determinative processes occurring in imaginai discs from the early embryo up to the pupal stage was given. Intermingling of cells from various discs has shown that the cells may restore the original patterns in so far as their positional information has been stably specified,i.e. up to the level of the organ districts; within the districts mosaics are formed, which shows that positional information is specified with respect to new reference points. Transplantation experiments involving the abdominal epidermis of some other insects point to the possibility of limited local shifts in the positional information, and of both increase and reduction of the slope of the positional information curve. (shrink)

In this study, we examined the word superiority effect in Arabic and English, two languages with significantly different morphological and writing systems. Thirty-two Arabic–English bilingual speakers performed a post-cued letter-in-string identification task in words, pseudo-words, and non-words. The results established the presence of the word superiority effect in Arabic and a robust effect of context in both languages. However, they revealed that, compared to the non-word context, word and pseudo-word contexts facilitated letter identification more in Arabic than (...) in English. In addition, the difference between word and pseudo-word contexts was smaller in Arabic compared to English. Finally, there was a consistent first-letter advantage in English regardless of the context, while this was more consistent only in the word and pseudo-word contexts in Arabic. We discuss these results in light of previous findings and argue that the differences between the patterns reported for Arabic and English are due to the qualitative difference between word morphophonological representations in the two languages. (shrink)

A word often expresses many different morphological functions. Which part of a word contributes to which part of the overall meaning is not always clear, which raises the question as to how such functions are learned. While linguistic studies tacitly assume the co-occurrence of cues and outcomes to suffice in learning these functions (Baer-Henney, Kügler, & van de Vijver, 2015; Baer-Henney & van de Vijver, 2012), error-driven learning suggests that contingency rather than contiguity is crucial (Nixon, 2020; Ramscar, Yarlett, Dye, (...) Denny, & Thorpe, 2010). In error-driven learning, cues gain association strength if they predict a certain outcome, and they lose strength if the outcome is absent. This reduction of association strength is called unlearning. So far, it is unclear if such unlearning has consequences for cue–outcome associations beyond the ones that get reduced. To test for such consequences of unlearning, we taught participants morphophonological patterns in an artificial language learning experiment. In one block, the cues to two morphological outcomes—plural and diminutive—co-occurred within the same word forms. In another block, a single cue to only one of these two outcomes was presented in a different set of word forms. We wanted to find out, if participants unlearn this cue's association with the outcome that is not predicted by the cue alone, and if this allows the absent cue to be associated with the absent outcome. Our results show that if unlearning was possible, participants learned that the absent cue predicts the absent outcome better than if no unlearning was possible. This effect was stronger if the unlearned cue was more salient. This shows that unlearning takes place even if no alternative cues to an absent outcome are provided, which highlights that learners take both positive and negative evidence into account—as predicted by domain general error-driven learning. (shrink)

Speakers’ readiness to describe event scenes using active or passive constructions has previously been attributed—among other factors—to the accessibility of referents. While most research has highlighted the accessibility of agents, the present study examines whether patients’ accessibility can be modulated by means of visual preview of the patient character (derived accessibility), as well as by manipulating the animacy status of patients (inherent accessibility). Crucially, we also examined whether effects of accessibility were amenable to the visuospatial position of the patient (...) by presenting the patient character either to the left or to the right of the agent. German native speakers were asked to describe drawings depicting event scenes while their gaze and speech were recorded. Our results show that making patients more accessible using derived and inherent accessibility factors led to more produced passives, shorter speech onsets, and a reduction of fixations on patients. Complementing previous research on agent accessibility, our findings demonstrate that the accessibility of patients affected both sentence production and looking behavior. While effects were observed for both inherent and derived accessibility, they appeared to be more pronounced for the latter. Regarding character position, we observed a significant effect of position on participants’ gaze patterns and structural choices, suggesting that position itself can be considered an accessibility-related factor. Importantly, the position of a patient also interacted with our manipulation of its accessibility via visual preview. Participants produced more passives after preview than no preview for left-positioned but not for right-positioned patients, demonstrating that effects of patient accessibility (i.e., visual preview) were susceptible to character position. A similar interaction was observed for participants’ viewing patterns. These findings provide the first evidence that the position of a referent is a factor that interacts with other accessibility-related factors (i.e., cueing), emphasizing the need of controlling for position effects when testing referent accessibility. (shrink)

The way we refer to things in the world is shaped by the immediate physical context as well as the discourse history. But what part of the discourse history is relevant to language use in the present? In four experiments, we combine the study of task‐based conversation with measures of recognition memory to examine the role of physical contextual cues that shape what speakers perceive to be a part of the relevant discourse history. Our studies leverage the differentiation effect, (...) a phenomenon in which speakers are more likely to use a modified expression to refer to an object (e.g., dotted sock) if they had previously described a similar object (e.g., striped sock) than when they had not described a similar object. Two physical cues—the background that framed the to‐be‐described pictures and the position of the pictures in the display—were manipulated to alter perceptions about the relevant discourse context. We measured the rate with which speakers modify referring expressions to differentiate current from past referents. Recognition memory measures following the conversation probed what was and was not remembered about past discourse referents and contexts. Analysis of modification rates indicated that these contextual grouping cues shaped perceptions about the relevant discourse context. The contextual cues did not affect memory for the referents, but the memory for past referents was better for speakers than for listeners. Our findings show that perceptions about the relevant discourse history are a key determinant of how language is used in the moment but also that conversational partners form asymmetric representations of the discourse history. (shrink)

A symbol might have racist connotations in the sense that a substantial portion of the relevant population associates it with racist values or institutions. A governmental symbol display might therefore carry racist connotations that the government doesn’t intend, including connotations that haven’t always been attached to the symbol. So I claimed recently in the pages of this journal (Alter 2000b). I also explained how those claims create problems for some of George Schedler’s (1998) main views about governmental displays of the (...) Confederate battle flag. In his response, Schedler rejects my claims, arguing that they lead to absurdities when applied to various examples. He adds that one of his examples brings into question my “political savvy” (Schedler 2000, p. 5). Be that as it may, his arguments against my claims are entirely without force, and serve to confirm the weakness of his initial position. So I’ll argue. I’ll also identify a problematic assumption in our dispute, which is not uncommon in discussions of symbolic meaning and racist speech. (shrink)

An item that stands out (is isolated) from its context is better remembered than an item consistent with the context. This isolation effect cannot be accounted for by increased attention, because it occurs when the isolated item is presented as the first item, or by impoverished memory of nonisolated items, because the isolated item is better remembered than a control list consisting of equally different items. The isolation effect is seldom experimentally or theoretically related to the primacy or (...) the recency effects—that is, the improved performance on the first few and last items, respectively, on the serial position curve. The primacy effect cannot easily be accounted for by rehearsal in short‐term memory because it occurs when rehearsal is eliminated. This article suggests that the primacy, the recency, and the isolation effects can be accounted for by experience‐dependent synaptic plasticity in neural cells. Neurological empirical data suggest that the threshold that determines whether cells will show long‐term potentiation (LTP) or long‐term depression (LTD) varies as a function of recent postsynaptic activity and that synaptic plasticity is bounded. By implementing an adaptive LTP‐LTD threshold in an artificial neural network, the various aspects of the isolation, the primacy, and the recency effects are accounted for, whereas none of these phenomena are accounted for if the threshold is constant. This theory suggests a possible link between the cognitive and the neurological levels. (shrink)

Yoga has come to be an icon of Indian culture and civilization, and it is widely regarded as being timeless and unchanging. Based on extensive ethnographic research and an analysis of both ancient and modern texts, Yoga in Modern India challenges this popular view by examining the history of yoga, focusing on its emergence in modern India and its dramatically changing form and significance in the twentieth century. Joseph Alter argues that yoga's transformation into a popular activity idolized for its (...) health value is based on modern ideas about science and medicine. Alter centers his analysis on an interpretation of the seminal work of Swami Kuvalayananda, one of the chief architects of the Yoga Renaissance in the early twentieth century. From this point of orientation he explores current interpretations of yoga and considers how practitioners of yogic medicine and fitness combine the ideas of biology, physiology, and anatomy with those of metaphysics, transcendence, and magical power. The first serious ethnographic history of modern yoga in India, this fluently written book is must reading not only for students and scholars but also practitioners who seek a deeper understanding of how yoga developed over time into the exceedingly popular phenomenon it is today. (shrink)

An anthropological perspective on biosemiosis raises important questions about sociality, ecology and communication in contexts that encompass many different forms of life. As such, these questions are important for understanding the problem of religion in relation to social theory, as well as understanding our collective, biosocial animal history and the development of human culture, as an articulation of power, on an evolutionary time scale. The argument presented here is that biosemiotics provides a framework for extending Talal Asad’s genealogical critique of (...) religion to culture more broadly, providing an important perspective on power in relation to communication and in relation to the ‘supernatural’ attributes of language in a multi-species environment of signs and sign relationships. (shrink)

ABSTRACT (ENG) One of the concerns of Greek philosophy centred on the question of how a manifold and ordered universe arose out of the primitive state of things. From the mythical accounts dating around the seventh century B.C. to the cosmologies of the Classical period in Ancient Greece, many theories have been proposed in order to answer to this question. How these theories differ in positing a “something” that pre-existed the ordered cosmos has been widely discussed. However, scholars have rarely (...) made explicit how they differ in style of thought. In the span of four centuries the first deductive arguments of the Eleatic philosophers culminated in the emergence of logical proof and a form of explanation of natural phenomena, which consisted of searching for the simplest and fewest premises and deducting implications. In this paper it will be discussed how, at distinct stages of its development, the deductive thinking informed the solutions proposed to solve the chaos-order problem, that of how an ordered universe has been possible. -/- ABSTRACT (ITA) Una delle più importanti questioni della filosofia greca è stata quella di comprendere come sia stato possibile un universo ordinato a partire da uno stato primordiale. Dalle teogonie del VII secolo a.C. fino alle cosmologie dei filosofi dell’età classica, sono state proposte diverse teorie per dare risposta a questa domanda. Come esse differiscano nel postulare l’esistenza di un “qualcosa” di primordiale che preesisteva all’ordine del cosmo è stato molto discusso. Pochi studiosi, però, le hanno esaminate sullo sfondo della lenta evoluzione del pensiero deduttivo, culminata nella dimostrazione in geometria e in una forma di spiegazione dei fenomeni che consisteva nel cercare semplici premesse e inferire conclusioni. In questo articolo si mostrerà come il lento affermarsi della spiegazione razionale prima, dell’argomento deduttivo e della dimostrazione in geometria poi, abbiano dato forma alle diverse risposte al problema caos-ordine, e in particolare alla domanda su come sia sorto un universo ordinato. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading Style In DickensRobert AlterIt is a sad symptom of the devolution of literary studies and of our culture’s relation to language that it should at all be necessary to explain that style is crucial to the experience of reading. As the language of literature has been variously designated a mask for ideology, an expression of the “poetics of culture,” or a medium of communication not different in kind (...) from menus and graffiti, the academic study of literature in many cases seems to have lost the essential sense that style has its unique enchantments, and that those enchantments can often be a privileged vehicle of insight, even of vision. As someone who is temperamentally a rationalist, I do not want to sound mystical, but I find it an empirical fact as a reader that great writers are able in a variety of surprising ways to tap into occult connections between words and social, historical, psychological, or moral realities. Saul Bellow has aptly stated this commingling of uncanny insight and deep satisfaction that style can give its readers:A small clue will suffice to remind us that when we hear certain words—“all is but toys,” “absent thee from felicity,” “a wilderness of monkeys,” “green pastures,” “still waters,” or even the single word “relume”—they revive for us moments of emotional completeness and overflowing comprehension, they unearth buried essences. 1A novel is a whole world reconstituted through words. Style in a novel is that world’s very air which we breath (I shall presently cite a rather literal illustration of this principle in Dickens), the rhythm of relation [End Page 130] of the represented objects and personages, the depth of field in which they are seen. When we read style in Dickens, or in any other novelist, we of course are reading all sorts of other things at the same time—plot, character, moral dilemma, historical predicament, and so forth—but we can see all these in their full complexity only if we attend to the illuminating play of style.Despite the great length of his major novels, Dickens deserves to be read slowly, with delectation, with occasional pauses to reread a choice passage, because he is one of the most inventive and vigorous stylists in the whole range of English literature. Style, as we know, has many facets, and Dickens’s powerful rhythms, his supple patterns of alliteration, the hammer-blows of the anaphoric insistence he often favors, the cunning interplay of different linguistic registers he sometimes introduces, are all worthy of attention. But he is above all the great master of figurative language in English after Shakespeare, and what I want to concentrate on here is how I focus as a reader on Dickens’s use of figurative language, and what it reveals to me about the world of his novels.Dickens is one of those novelists who is preeminently a rhetorical performer, and so there is a good deal of self-conscious display of virtuosity, sheer exuberant verbal high jinks, in his writing. The high jinks are there for the reader to enjoy—in historical context, to keep the reader’s interest from one monthly serial to the next—but as Dickens grows in mastery and gravity, they are more and more a means of what Bellow calls unearthing buried essences. Let me glance quickly at the operation of style in a passage from Dombey and Son (1848), an approximate midpoint in Dickens career, and then consider more closely the visionary power of his prose at two moments in his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (1861). Here is the description in chapter thirteen of the company office of Dombey and Son as its august proprietor enters:The wit of the Counting-House became in a moment as mute as the row of leathern fire-buckets hanging up behind him. Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered through the ground-glass windows and skylights, leaving a black sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers, and the figures bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted in appearance, from the world without, as if they were assembled at the... (shrink)

Physicalism is standardly construed as a form of monism, on which all concrete phenomena fall under one fundamental type. It is natural to think that monism, and therefore physicalism, is committed to a supervenience claim. Monism is true only if all phenomena supervene on a certain fundamental type of phenomena. Physicalism, as a form of monism, specifies that these fundamental phenomena are physical. But some argue that physicalism might be true even if the world is disorderly, i.e., not ordered by (...) supervenience relations in the way commonly supposed (Montero in J Philos 110:92–110, 2013; Leuenberger in Inquiry 57:151–174, 2014; Montero and Brown in Topoi 37(3):523–532, 2018; Zhong in Philos Stud 178(5):1529–1544, 2021). Unless these authors intend to challenge the claim that physicalism is a type of monism—a claim so central to the dialectic in philosophy of mind that rejecting it risks changing the subject—they are committed to challenging a supervenience requirement for monism. We argue that monism entails that there are substantial supervenience relations among concrete phenomena: relations that would not obtain in a disorderly world. Our argument thus has implications for debates about physicalism and supervenience, and sheds light on an under-discussed issue: what is implied by classifying a theory in the philosophy of mind as a form of monism? We also argue that physicalism’s commitment to monism creates problems for _via negativa_ physicalism, on which the physical is characterized negatively. (shrink)

Derek Parfit's combined-spectrum argument seems to conflict with epistemicism, a viable theory of vagueness. While Parfit argues for the indeterminacy of personhood, epistemicism denies indeterminacy. But, we argue, the linguistically based determinacy that epistemicism supports lacks the sort of normative or ontological significance that concerns Parfit. Thus, we reformulate his argument to make it consistent with epistemicism. We also dispute Roy Sorensen's suggestion that Parfit's argument relies on an assumption that fuels resistance to epistemicism, namely, that 'the magnitude of a (...) modification must be proportional to its effect.'. (shrink)

Can the use of psychedelic drugs induce lasting changes in metaphysical beliefs? While it is popularly believed that they can, this question has never been formally tested. Here we exploited a large sample derived from prospective online surveying to determine whether and how beliefs concerning the nature of reality, consciousness, and free‑will, change after psychedelic use. Results revealed significant shifts away from ‘physicalist’ or ‘materialist’ views, and towards panpsychism and fatalism, post use. With the exception of fatalism, these changes endured (...) for at least 6 months, and were positively correlated with the extent of past psychedelic‑use and improved mental‑health outcomes. Path modelling suggested that the belief‑shifts were moderated by impressionability at baseline and mediated by perceived emotional synchrony with others during the psychedelic experience. The observed belief‑shifts post‑psychedelic‑use were consolidated by data from an independent controlled clinical trial. Together, these findings imply that psychedelic‑use may causally influence metaphysical beliefs—shifting them away from ‘hard materialism’. We discuss whether these apparent effects are contextually independent. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas's early work inaugurated a tradition of thinking about alterity as at odds with generalized forms of knowledge that characterize political institutions. However, in his later work Levinas broaches but leaves underdeveloped the provocative idea that institutional modes of reasoning can provide a welcome home for alterity if they follow the wisdom of love. Against this backdrop, I argue that reading G. W. F. Hegel's early writings on neighbor love alongside his mature philosophy of the state offers us important (...) resources for articulating an institutional approach to alterity that offers a compelling solution to Levinas's concern with letting the other(s) be seen by institutions in a non‐totalizing manner. Across his early writings, Hegel positions love as the vehicle through which one comes to be at home in the institutions of one's community and the vehicle through which one can revise and expand the institutions of one's community in novel ways. My aim is to demonstrate that Hegel's early account of love provides an indispensable blueprint for understanding his mature account of the relation between the individual qua infinitely unique and modern political institutions. In turn, this will enable us to discern the institutional approach to alterity embedded in his thought. (shrink)

This Article explores the relationship between the legitimacy of international courts and expansive judicial lawmaking. We compare lawmaking by three regional integration courts - the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Andean Tribunal of Justice, and the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice. These courts have similar jurisdictional grants and access rules, yet each has behaved in a strikingly different way when faced with opportunities to engage in expansive judicial lawmaking. The CJEU is the most activist, but its audacious (...) legal doctrines have been assimilated as part of the court’s legitimate authority. The ATJ and ECOWAS have been more cautious, but there is little to suggest that this caution has enhanced the legitimacy of either court. The ATJ has avoided serious challenges from governments, but its rulings have had little political impact. Conversely, the ECCJ’s circumspection has not shielded it from political opposition to its adjudication of clearly-established human rights. This pattern is at odds with the oft-voiced conventional wisdom that expansive judicial lawmaking undermines judicial legitimacy. Our modest goal in this Article is to problematize that claim and to posit an alternative hypothesis - that ICs spark legitimacy challenges due to the domestic political effects of their decisions, regardless of whether those decisions are expansionist. (shrink)

Given its significance to stakeholders, the process of revising audit reports is an essential subject in today’s economic context. This study aims to detail relevant elements of this process by evaluating alterations to and developments of the audit report, as supported by international and regional standard-setters and regulators. To that end, we examine audit reports that have already applied new auditing regulations. This case study approach allows us to highlight UK audit-reporting practices both before and after the ISA 700 was (...) issued and entered practice. Our findings reveal that in terms of content and content positioning, UK companies’ audit reports make use of the psychological effects of primacy versus serial position and have done so long before the applicability of the international standard for financial statements published after December 2016. (shrink)