Risk is the probability that within a certain time some expected negative event will take place. In medicine risk can be related to a decision or to some intrinsic factors which are associated with the probability of the occurrence of a disease. Decisions can be necessary in the individual life with respect to the question of visiting a physician or performing a certain diagnostic or therapeutic procedure. The introduction of new pharmaceutical or technical products into medical use are another set (...) of decisions which can generate certain risks. Intrinsic or inherent risk factors are a set of variables or signs and symptoms which indicate the presence of a certain probability that some disease or event, e.g., arteriosclerosis or sudden infant death syndrome, may occur. Risk is always related to judgement. In a decision process cost, effectiveness and profit can be used to estimate the magnitude of the risk to be taken. In a similar way the problems in connection with an inherent risk are primarily related to the recognition of the magnitude of risk and to the possibility of prophylactic measures.In our own area of research, the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is an event where only risk factors can be observed. We point at two facts in this context: Highly complex patterns of symptoms like behaviour can better be classified by intuitive Gestalt perception. A medical procedure like induction of labour can itself become a risk factor. (shrink)

BackgroundCommonly applied measures of symptoms of anxiety are not sensitive to disease-specific anxiety in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. There is a need for validated instruments measuring COPD-specific anxiety. Therefore, we translated the COPD-Anxiety Questionnaire into Danish and performed an initial validation of the psychometric properties in a sample of patients with COPD.Materials and MethodsTranslation procedures followed the World Health Organization guidelines. Participants with COPD completed questionnaires measuring COPD-specific anxiety, general psychological distress as well as variables related to COPD, (...) quality of life, and socio-demography.ResultsA total of 260 patients with COPD completed questionnaires. The Danish version of CAF-R-DK demonstrated acceptable Cronbach’s α values that were comparable with those of the original CAF. As expected, the CAF-R-DK showed positive correlations with convergent constructs and negative correlations with discriminant constructs. However, the results for specific subdomains of the CAF-R-DK indicated inconsistency in the underlying concept of disease-specific anxiety, which was also suggested based on the subsequent confirmatory and exploratory factor analyzes.ConclusionThe CAF could serve as an important supplement to generic psychological distress screening of patients with COPD in somatic health care settings, and the questionnaire is now available in Danish. Translation into other languages is needed with the purpose of obtaining data for further testing the psychometric properties of the questionnaire. (shrink)

Descartes held that it is impossible to make true statements about what we perceive, but I go over alleged cases of illusory experience to show why such a skeptical conclusion (and recourse to God) is overblown. The overreaction, I contend, stems from an insufficient awareness of the habitual expectations brought to any given experience. These expectations manifest themselves in motor terms, as perception constantly prompts and updates an embodied posture of readiness for what might come next. Such habitual anticipations work (...) best when they efface themselves, so it is easy to blame perception when our expectations get frustrated. I illustrate this misdirected blame with the example of a stick partially in water: it is only because we expect the stick to be straight that its appearance as bent is deemed problematic. I thus conclude that, if we factor in the habitual interpretations operative in perception and switch to a processual view that allows practical engagement, we can deflate the worries that led Descartes to rule out perceptual truths. Distancing myself from the naïve “sign” of folk semiotics, my critique draws inspiration from the triadic semiotic model developed in some late medieval schools of Portugal. (shrink)

Using an enactive approach to trail runners’ activity, this study sought to identify and characterize runners’ phenomenological gestalts, which are forms of experience that synthesize the heterogeneous sensorimotor, cognitive and emotional information that emerges in race situations. By an in-depth examination of their meaningful experiences, we were able to highlight the different typologies of interactions between bodily processes (e.g., sensations, pains), behaviors (e.g., actions, strategies) and environment (e.g., meteorological conditions, route profile). Ten non-professional runners who ran an ultra-trail running race (...) (330 kilometers, 24,000 meters of elevation gain) volunteered to participate in the study. Data were collected in two steps: (1) collection of past activity traces (i.e., race maps, field notes and self-assessment scales) and (2) enactive interviews using the past activity traces in which the runners were invited to relive their experience and describe their activity. The enactive interviews were coded using the course-of-experience methodology to identify the phenomenological gestalts that emerged from activity and scaffolded the runners’ courses of experience. The results revealed that runners typically enact three phenomenological gestalts: controlling global ease, enduring general fatigue and experiencing difficult situations, and feeling freedom in the running pace. These phenomenological gestalts were made up of specific behaviors, involvements and meaningful situated elements that portrayed various ways of achieving an ultra-endurance performance in the race situation. They also highlighted how runners enact a meaningful world by acting in relation to the fluctuations in physical sensations and environmental conditions during an ultra-trail race. Practical applications for preparation, race management and sports psychology interventions are proposed to enrich the existing recommendations. In conclusion, this approach provides new research perspectives by offering a more holistic grasp of activity in trail running through an in-depth analysis of athletes’ experience. In doing so, we may expect that runners can connect these typical gestalts to their own personal experiences and stories as trail runners in order to sustain a viable approach to their sport. (shrink)

We introduce a St. Petersburg-like game, which we call the ‘Pasadena game’, in which we toss a coin until it lands heads for the first time. Your pay-offs grow without bound, and alternate in sign (rewards alternate with penalties). The expectation of the game is a conditionally convergent series. As such, its terms can be rearranged to yield any sum whatsoever, including positive infinity and negative infinity. Thus, we can apparently make the game seem as desirable or undesirable as (...) we want, simply by reordering the pay-off table, yet the game remains unchanged throughout. Formally speaking, the expectation does not exist; but we contend that this presents a serious problem for decision theory, since it goes silent when we want it to speak. We argue that the Pasadena game is more paradoxical than the St. Petersburg game in several respects. We give a brief review of the relevant mathematics of infinite series. We then consider and rebut a number of replies to our paradox: that there is a privileged ordering to the expectation series; that decision theory should be restricted to finite state spaces; and that it should be restricted to bounded utility functions. We conclude that the paradox remains live. (shrink)

First of all, and above all, a sign is expected to be significant. A sign without significance is like a hollow husk. It is chaff without seed. Sign and significance are correlative terms like parent and child. Just as no one is a parent who has not begotten or borne a child so nothing which does not have significance can be a sign. On this point the English and the Latin words are self-explanatory. In English the (...) words “sign” and “significance” contain the same root. In the Latin words “significans” – that which signifies – and “significatum” – that which is signified – the correlation is even more obvious. In German, however, there is no such ready evidence of the correlation in the terms themselves. Indeed at first blush the terms “Zeichen” and “Bedeutung” seem so unrelated that philosophers have felt themselves constrained to write volumes of explanations on the term “Bedeutung”. (shrink)

Drawing from field theory, Gestalt therapy conceives psychological suffering and psychotherapy as two intentional field phenomena, where unprocessed and chaotic experiences seek the opportunity to emerge and be assimilated through the contact between the patient and the therapist (i.e., the intentionality of contacting). This therapeutic approach is based on the therapist’s aesthetic experience of his/her embodied presence in the flow of the healing process because (1) the perception of beauty can provide the therapist with feedback on the assimilation of (...) unprocessed experiences; (2) the therapist’s attentional focus on intrinsic aesthetic diagnostic criteria can facilitate the modification of rigid psychopathological fields by supporting the openness to novel experiences. The aim of the present manuscript is to review recent evidence from psychophysiology, neuroaesthetic research, and neurocomputational models of cognition, such as the free energy principle (FEP), which support the notion of the therapeutic potential of aesthetic sensibility in Gestalt psychotherapy. Drawing from neuroimaging data, psychophysiology and recent neurocognitive accounts of aesthetic perception, we propose a novel interpretation of the sense of beauty as a self-generated reward motivating us to assimilate an ever-greater spectrum of sensory and affective states in our predictive representation of ourselves and the world and supporting the intentionality of contact. Expecting beauty, in the psychotherapeutic encounter, can help therapists tolerate uncertainty avoiding impulsive behaviours and to stay tuned to the process of change. (shrink)

It seems obvious that signs in visual art and musical notation are static carriers of visual and acoustic information. Both types of sign, however, represent dynamic processes. In real space-time, there exists no static visible thing or static audible sound. The sources of visible or audible information are dynamic – i.e. complementary substantialenergetic-informational – entities extending in space-time. The same is true of an artificial or organic receiver and processor of visual or audible information. Reality and semiosis – to (...) be, to be perceived, and to be understood or to communicate – are dynamic processes. From a semiotic point of view, thus, pictures, photographic or artistic sign structures can’t be icons – in any case, if icons in a Peirceian manner are understood as signs representing objects for an interpretant by similarity . Similarity between icon and object is not a static precondition but a dynamic result of visual semiosis, i.e. of categorizing. Seeing something or hearing something is, as a consequence, not an “intuitive” or instantaneous Gestalt shift between representamen and object ongoing in an interpretant. And so, according to Fernande SaintMartin 1990: “visual semiotics … has to adopt an epistemology which is more in agreement with the dynamics of observed phenomena. It will recognize that matter is not inertness, but energy.” If the material carrier of semiosis, the representamen, already is to be understood as energy or dynamic process, all the more the whole complementary triadic sign-relation – object-representamen-interpretant – has to be understood as energetic information flow. This is being recognized in the transition from naturalistic, i.e. reproducing or mapping art, to modern, i.e. processing or interpreting/transducing art. Paul Klee 1990 for example says about the semiotic function of visual art: “Art doesn’t reproduce the visible but makes visible” . And he correlates the artistic activity of visualizing with the primordial, cosmogonic process of formation: “Reduced to the primordial process of formation, to creation, the process of cell division emerges” . Visual artistic semiosis is, thus, obviously to be understood as the process of emerging dynamic sign structures. It is the skill of the painter that makes the static results of dynamic semiosis “readable” for the viewer as signs – lines and surfaces - of the dynamic visual meaning of the picture. (shrink)

The American Sign Language Sentence Reproduction Test (ASL-SRT) requires the precise reproduction of a series of ASL sentences increasing in complexity and length. Error analyses of such tasks provides insight into working memory and scaffolding processes. Data was collected from three groups expected to differ in fluency: deaf children, deaf adults and hearing adults, all users of ASL. Quantitative (correct/incorrect recall) and qualitative error analyses were performed. Percent correct on the reproduction task supports its sensitivity to fluency as test (...) performance clearly differed across the three groups studied. A linguistic analysis of errors further documented differing strategies and bias across groups. Subjects' recall projected the affordance and constraints of deep linguistic representations to differing degrees, with subjects resorting to alternate processing strategies when they failed to recall the sentence correctly. A qualitative error analysis allows us to capture generalizations about the relationship between error pattern and the cognitive scaffolding, which governs the sentence reproduction process. Highly fluent signers and less-fluent signers share common chokepoints on particular words in sentences. However, they diverge in heuristic strategy. Fluent signers, when they make an error, tend to preserve semantic details while altering morpho-syntactic domains. They produce syntactically correct sentences with equivalent meaning to the to-be-reproduced one, but these are not verbatim reproductions of the original sentence. In contrast, less-fluent signers tend to use a more linear strategy, preserving lexical status and word ordering while omitting local inflections, and occasionally resorting to visuo-motoric imitation. Thus, whereas fluent signers readily use top-down scaffolding in their working memory, less fluent signers fail to do so. Implications for current models of working memory across spoken and signed modalities are considered. (shrink)

James Matlock’s book, Signs of Reincarnation, is a recent addition to a seemingly endless stream of confused or superficial works on the topic of survival. Admittedly (and as one would expect), the case material is often of genuine interest. But when Matlock tries to make sense of that material, he demonstrates little grasp of the current state of the debate. Even worse, he seems unaware of the intellectually responsible strategies for challenging and criticizing positions opposed to his own. Since Matlock (...) criticizes what he says are my views throughout his book, and because this issue of the JSE features two comprehensive reviews of that book, I’ll focus only on the principal respects in which Matlock misdescribes my position and ignores the extended discussions I’ve provided, not only in Immortal Remains (Braude, 2003), but elsewhere (e.g., Braude, 2005a, 2005b, 2014a, 2014b, 2020), explaining the problems with the tired and flawed lines of reasoning he endorses. (shrink)

AI-generated images of “cats” offer novel opportunities to consider the semic role of expectations in sign formation where they act as a constraints on semiosis through the potential identification of the AImage as “correct,” or as a “glitch.” Because the identification of “errors” depends on a range of technical and cultural expertise, they offer valuable insights into the interpretive process. The automated generation of media by AI separates the artist’s decision-making process from image production, continuing a trajectory that began (...) with the invention of photography in the nineteenth century that brings the sign formation process into consciousness by distinguishing “intentional” and “unintentional” encoding. The identification AI-produced images as-glitched provides a vehicle to consider how the sign formation process informs identifications of creative action as an intentional action: aesthetic appraisals are central to this process where cultural beliefs about creativity become ideological constraints on interpretation. The potential to understand AI “glitches” as expressive features of the image-object, rather than errors, proceeds via the aesthetics and affects of earlier art, such as the “painterly motion” shown in old master paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, or via the heritage of Surrealism. These affective constraints on sign formation reveal the central role of “glitches” in the distinction of creative and uncreative action. (shrink)

According to ‘standard histories’ of nanotechnology, the colorful pictures of atoms produced by scanning probe microscopists since the 1980s essentially inspired visions of molecular nanotechnology. In this paper, I provide an entirely different account that, nonetheless, refers to aesthetic inspiration, First, I argue that the basic idea of molecular nanotechnology, i.e., producing molecular devices, has been the goal of supramolecular chemistry that emerged earlier, without being called nanotechnology. Secondly, I argue that in supramolecular chemistry the production of molecular devices was (...) inspired by an aesthetic phenomenon of gestalt switch, by certain images that referred to both molecules and ordinary objects, and thus symbolically bridged the two worlds. This opened up a new way of perceiving and drawing molecular images and new approaches to chemical synthesis. Employing Umberto Eco’s semiotic theory of aesthetics, I analyze the gestalt switch and the inspiration to build molecular devices and to develop a new sign language for supramolecular chemistry. More generally, I argue that aesthetic phenomena can play an important role in directing scientific research and that aesthetic theories can help understand such dynamics, such that they need to be considered in philosophy of science. (shrink)

This paper weakens the expectation dependence concept due to Wright and its higher-order extensions proposed by Li to conform with the preferences generating the almost stochastic dominance rules introduced in Leshno and Levy. A new dependence concept, called excess dependence is introduced and studied in addition to expectation dependence. This new concept coincides with expectation dependence at first-degree but provides distinct higher-order extensions. Three applications, to portfolio diversification, to the determination of the sign of the equity premium in the (...) consumption-based CAPM, and to optimal investment in the presence of a background risk, illustrate the usefulness of the approach proposed in the present paper. (shrink)

Legal language exists in a peculiar state of tension. It is theoretically expected to meet the specific technical needs of a range of professions while simultaneously remaining entirely accessible to the public at large. Its success at that latter aim is at best limited, with laypeople generally more able to recognize that a given text is legal in character than they are to grasp its technical content. For such readers, the primary semiotic function of legal language is an indexical one, (...) indicating that a text possesses a particular authoritative status even if its intended legal function remains opaque. This paper explores that authoritative indexicality of legal language through the multisemiotic analysis of two corpora: a corpus of legitimate legal documents filed in an American courthouse written by licensed attorneys and a corpus of pseudolegal documents filed in that same courthouse written by members of the Sovereign Citizen conspiracy movement. Sovereign Citizens appropriate features characteristic of legitimate legal language in their pseudolegal writings in an effort to imbue them with real legal authority. The comparison of these two corpora therefore provides a unique perspective on which features of legal writing most clearly communicate authority to non-lawyers. In addition to discussing the ways in which legal authority is manifested in these two corpora, this paper also outlines a novel method for the visualization of the spatial distribution of target features in a corpus of static multimodal texts by employing probability density estimation to generate a series of feature-based heatmaps. (shrink)

Although it is beyond doubt that there were historical connections between Whitehead and some of the proponents of Gestalt psychology, it is difficult to determine on the available body of historical evidence whether they were substantive or just marginal. A detailed comparison of Whitehead's process metaphysics and the theories of Gestalt psychology is a task yet to be undertaken. Whitehead's process philosophy and Gestalt psychology share basic similarities in their major principles. This is substantiated by two of (...) Ehrenfels'well-known gestalt qualities: superadditivity, and figure-ground relation. Both approaches can profit from one another: while Whitehead's concept of consciousness and its interrelatedness with unconscious processes seems to be more elaborate, the Gestalt psychological approach, on the other hand, shows how these topics can be investigated by using experimental research designs. This is illustrated by an experiment on complex problem solving which demonstrates that unreportable hints can improve even such sophisticated processes as complex problem solving. Since this is what should be expected from a Whiteheadian point of view, the results empirically confirm the process position on perception and thinking. Finally, further interesting possibilities of undertaking future empirical process research are outlined. (shrink)

There have been relatively few studies on sign language interaction carried out within the framework of conversation analysis (CA). Therefore, questions remain open about how the basic building blocks of social interaction such as turn, turn construction unit (TCU) and turn transition relevance place (TRP) can be understood and analysed in sign language interaction. Recent studies have shown that signers regularly fine-tune their turn-beginnings to potential completion points of turns (De Vos, Torreira & Levinson, 2015; Groeber, 2014; Groeber (...) & Pochon-Berger, 2014). Moreover, signers deploy practices for overlap resolution as in spoken interaction (McCleary & Leite, 2013). While these studies have highlighted the signers’ orientation to the ‘one-at-a-time’ principle described by Sacks et al., (1974), the present article adds to this line of research by investigating in more detail those sequential environments where overlaps occur. The contribution provides an overview of different types of overlap with a focus of the overlap’s onset with regard to a current signer’s turn. On the basis of a 33-minute video-recording of a multi-party interaction between 4 female signers in Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS), the paper provides evidence for the orderliness of overlapping signing. Furthermore, the contribution demonstrates how participants collaborate in the situated construction of turns as a dynamic and emergent gestalt and how they interactionally achieve turn transition. Thereby the study adds to recent research in spoken and in signed interaction that proposes to rethink turn boundaries and turn transition as flexible and interactionally achieved. (shrink)

The present study tests a gestalt explanation for the gambler's fallacy which posits that runs in random events will be expected to reverse only when the run is open or ongoing. This is contrasted with the law of small numbers explanation suggesting that people expect random outcomes to balance out generally. Sixty-one university students placed hypothetical guesses and bets on a series of coin tosses. Either heads or tails were dominant . In a closed run condition the run ended (...) prior to the critical trial , and in an open run condition the run remained open . As hypothesised, participants showed the gambler's fallacy in the open run condition, but not in the closed run condition. This difference is not due to differential memory for the outcomes. Men, and people with more previous experience gambling, were also found to be more prone to the gambler's fallacy. It is argued that the gestalt explanation best explains the results. (shrink)

A MAJOR PHILOSOPHICAL INTERPRETER of Kant and critic of Herbart and Hegel, Hermann Lotze ( 1817-1881) is known to historians of psychology primarily for his theory of spatial perception.' As Professor of Philosophy at Gottingen University from 1845 to 1880, he published his theory of the physiological mechanism for spatial consciousness no less than six times.2 Standard accounts present his local sign theory as an associationistic, empiricistic, or empiristic view.3 Yet they also mention its influence among nativists such as (...) Lotze's own student Carl Stumpf. Certainly there is an historical irony here which deserves explanation. This paper will describe Lotze's theory, indicate its origins in the work of scientists such as E. H. Weber and Johannes Muiller and philosophers such as Jakob Friedrich Fries and Johann Friedrich Herbart, and trace its transformation at the hands of psycholo- gists of various theoretical persuasions.4 The intent is not to argue for Lotze's personal influence so much as to illustrate how one fertile idea in the history of science can serve as the catalyst for a much broader conceptual development. (shrink)

According to Wittgenstein, internal relations are such that, once their terms are given, it is unthinkable that they do not hold. In his early philosophy, the concept of internal relation plays a central role in his views on meaning. The present paper addresses the question of how Wittgenstein's views about internal relations develop during his years of transition (1930-32). In particular, it investigates the connections between the concepts of internal relation, logical multiplicity, and aspect seeing in two thematic fields: (1) (...) Wittgenstein's discussion of the relation between an expectation and what fulfils it, and (2) his discussion of the relation between a sign and an action guided by it. (shrink)

This paper explores the character of emotion and its value in understanding ethical dilemmas in work organisations. Specifically, we examine the emotional labour of human resource professionals. Through in-depth interviews and diary study, we uncover the emotional and ethical struggles of HRPs as they search for the ‘right thing to do’ in situated interaction. Through the lens of emotion, we chart the process of how the very framing of what is deemed ‘right’ can move from the social to the moral (...) order and vice versa. Based on our findings, we contribute to understanding the linkages between emotional and ethical dilemmas, and how expectations of multiple ‘others’ at the individual, interpersonal and organisational level shape and constrain ethical choices. (shrink)

Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome characterized by dysfunctional processing of nociceptive stimulation. Neuroimaging studies have pointed out that pain-related network functioning seems to be altered in these patients. It is thought that this clinical symptomatology may be maintained or even strengthened because of an enhanced expectancy for painful stimuli or its forthcoming appearance. However, neural electrophysiological correlates associated with such attentional mechanisms have been scarcely explored. In the current study, expectancy processes of upcoming laser stimulation (painful and non-painful) and (...) its further processing were explored by event-related potentials (ERPs). Nineteen fibromyalgia patients and twenty healthy control volunteers took part in the experiment. Behavioral measures (reaction times and subjective pain perception) were also collected. We manipulated the pain/no pain expectancy through an S1–S2 paradigm (cue-target). S1 (image: triangle or square) predicted the S2 appearance (laser stimulation: warmth or pinprick sensation). Laser stimuli were delivered using a CO2 laser device. Temporal and spatial principal component analyses were employed to define and quantify the ERP component reliability. Statistical analyses revealed the existence of an abnormal pattern of pain expectancy in patients with fibromyalgia. Specifically, our results showed attenuated amplitudes at posterior lCNV component in anticipation of painful stimulation that was not found in healthy participants. In contrast, although larger P2 amplitudes to painful compared to innocuous events were shown, patients did not show any amplitude change in this laser-evoked response as a function of pain predictive cues (as occurred in the healthy control group). Additionally, analyses of the subjective perception of pain and reaction time indicated that laser stimuli preceded by pain cues were rated as more painful than those signaling non-pain expectancy and were associated with faster responses. Differences between groups were not found. The present findings suggest the presence of dysfunction in pain expectation mechanisms in fibromyalgia that eventually may make it difficult for patients to correctly interpret signs that prevent pain symptoms. Furthermore, the abnormal pattern in pain expectancy displayed by fibromyalgia patients could result in ineffective pain coping strategies. Understanding the neural correlates of pain processing and its modulatory factors is crucial to identify treatments for chronic pain syndromes. (shrink)

Taxonomy Based modeling was applied to describe drivers’ mental models of variable message signs (VMS’s) displayed on expressways. Progress in road telematics has made it possible to introduce variable message signs (VMS’s). Sensors embedded in the carriageway every 500m record certain variables (speed, flow rate, etc.) that are transformed in real time into “driving times” to a given destination if road conditions do not change.VMS systems are auto-regulative Man-Machine (AMMI) systems which incorporate a model of the user: if the traffic (...) flow is too high, then drivers should choose alternative routes. In so doing, the traffic flow should decrease. The model of the user is based on suppositions such as: people do not like to waste time, they fully understand the displayed messages, they trust the displayed values, they know of alternative routes. However, people also have a model of the way the system functions. And if they do not believe the contents of the message, they will not act as expected.We collected data through interviews with drivers using the critical incidents technique (Flanagan, 1985). Results show that the mental models that drivers have of the way the VMS system works are various but not numerous and that most of them differ from the“ideal expert” mental model. It is clear that users don’t have an adequate model of how the VMS system works and that VMS planners have a model of user behaviour that does not correspond to the behaviour of the drivers we interviewed. Finally, Taxonomy Based Modeling is discussed as a tool for mental model remediation. (shrink)

Gaze behavior is an important component of children’s language, cognitive, and sociocultural development. This is especially true for young deaf children acquiring a signed language—if they are not looking at the language model, they are not getting linguistic input. Deaf caregivers engage their deaf infants and toddlers using visual and tactile strategies to draw in, support, and promote their child’s visual attention; we argue that these caregiver actions create a developmental niche that establishes the visual modality capital their child needs (...) for successful sign language learning. But most deaf children do not have deaf signing parents and they will need to rely on adult signing teachers if they are to acquire a signed language at an early age. This study examines classroom interactions between a Deaf teacher, her teacher’s aide, and six deaf preschoolers to document the teachers’ “everyday practices” as they socialize the gaze behavior of these children. Utilizing a detailed behavioral and linguistic analysis of two video-recorded book-sharing contexts, we present data summarizing the teacher’s attention-getting actions directed toward the children and the discourse-embedded cues that signal the teacher’s expectations for student participation in the signed conversation. We observed that the teacher’s behaviors differed according to the parent status of the deaf preschooler suggesting that Deaf children of Deaf parents arrive to the preschool classroom with well-developed self-regulation of their attention or gaze. The teachers also used more physical and explicit cueing with the deaf children of hearing parents—possibly to promote their ability to leverage the visual modality for sign language acquisition. We situate these socialization patterns within a framework that integrates notions of intuitive or indigenous practices, developmental niche, and modality capital. Implications for early childhood deaf education are also discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Signs of Logic: Peircean Themes on the Philosophy of Language, Games, and CommunicationRobert W. BurchAhti-Veikko Pietarinen Signs of Logic: Peircean Themes on the Philosophy of Language, Games, and Communication Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006. xiv + 496 pp.This compendious volume of fourteen of Pietarinen's essays on Peirce, plus a three-page set of "Final Words" relating to the work of Robert Aumann, is a "must-have" for both the Peirce (...) scholar and any other philosopher who wishes to relate Peirce's thinking on language and logic to other major thinkers and logical themes of the twentieth century (and beyond). The essays extend or complement discussions of Peirce's logic and philosophy of language that have come to be expected from the "Finnish school" of philosophers, which includes Hintikka and Hilpinen, as well as Pietarinen.Nine of the essays (Chapters 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, and 14), comprising about two-thirds of the entire book, are revised and expanded versions of essays that Pietarinen has previously published. The remaining one-third (approximately) of the book is brand new. Chapters 1 and 2 serve as general introductions to the book's major interests. Chapter 6 is on evidence for constructivism in Peirce, as well as several other topics. Chapter 9 compares Peirce's ideas with Wilfred Hodges's "dialogue foundations" and contains a small philosophical dialogue, which has Peirce, Wittgenstein, and Hodges as its characters. Chapter 11 concerns evolutionary semantics and language [End Page 577] games. And the cursory Chapter 15 of "Final Words" predicts that the game-theoretical approach to semantics and Peirce scholarship has an exploding future, like an erupting volcano.From the foregoing one can gather, correctly, that each essay in the book is separately conceived and that the book is not a single continuous line of argumentative development of one or even of a few themes. Still, the essays are similar to one another in two ways, which ways are closely related to each other. First, they all concern the Peircean doctrine that semeiotic and semeiosis constitute the heartland of logic, and that this heartland is vastly richer than the sort of pure mathematical calculi that might mistakenly be taken for logic itself (and were in fact so taken for much of the twentieth century). Second, they all deal with the Peircean insistence that semeiosis is inherently a form of Praxis in which interchanges occur between or among various "agents" or "actors," one of which might be nature itself; so that at the very least logic is dialogic, and so that more generally one may justifiably speak of semeiosis as involving something like a "game." These lines of exploration will surprise no seasoned Peirce scholar, but the special genius of the Finnish "school" of Peirce interpretation from Hintikka forward is to have spotlighted in dramatic fashion the game-theoretical nature of many elements in Peirce's semeiotic.In these essays Pietarinen amply exhibits two attainments of mind that are indispensable for the serious Peirce scholar. One is the object of what we might call "The Eisele Imperative" after the vehement urgings of Carolyn Eisele: this is the possession of some significant degree of sophistication in mathematics. Pietarinen's mathematical skills are plainly sufficient for his discussions of logic and game theory. For example, his Chapter 5 is an excellent technical discussion of Peirce's existential graphs, and his Chapter 7 is an admirable technical discussion of certain aspects of game theory and generalized quantifiers. Another crucial skill needed by the serious Peirce scholar is the object of what we might call "The Pietarinen Corrective" after the practices exemplified in these essays: this is the possession of extremely broad knowledge of recent and contemporary philosophy, especially philosophy of language, logic, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science.Indeed, the breadth of Pietarinen's acquaintance with twentieth century logic and philosophy of language, both "analytic" and "continental," is breathtaking. This allows him scope for comparisons of Peirce's views with an extraordinarily wide, and not always easily anticipated, range of philosophers and philosophic traditions. Pietarinen's range of reference is so extensive that it would be pointless to attempt to discuss in... (shrink)

Taxonomy Based modeling was applied to describe drivers' mental models of variable message signs (VMS's) displayed on expressways. Progress in road telematics has made it possible to introduce variable message signs (VMS's). Sensors embedded in the carriageway every 500m record certain variables (speed, flow rate, etc.) that are transformed in real time into 'driving times' to a given destination if road conditions do not change. VMS systems are auto-regulative Man-Machine (AMMI) systems which incorporate a model of the user: if the (...) traffic flow is too high, then drivers should choose alternative routes. In so doing, the traffic flow should decrease. The model of the user is based on suppositions such as: people do not like to waste time, they fully understand the displayed messages, they trust the displayed values, they know of alternative routes. However, people also have a model of the way the system functions. And if they do not believe the contents of the message, they will not act as expected. We collected data through interviews with drivers using the critical incidents technique (Flanagan, 1985). Results show that the mental models that drivers have of the way the VMS system works are various but not numerous and that most of them differ from the 'ideal expert' mental model. It is clear that users don't have an adequate model of how the VMS system works and that VMS planners have a model of user behaviour that does not correspond to the behaviour of the drivers we interviewed. Finally, Taxonomy Based Modeling is discussed as a tool for mental model remediation. (shrink)

Taxonomy Based modeling was applied to describe drivers’ mental models of variable message signs (VMS’s) displayed on expressways. Progress in road telematics has made it possible to introduce variable message signs (VMS’s). Sensors embedded in the carriageway every 500m record certain variables (speed, flow rate, etc.) that are transformed in real time into “driving times” to a given destination if road conditions do not change. VMS systems are auto-regulative Man-Machine (AMMI) systems which incorporate a model of the user: if the (...) traffic flow is too high, then drivers should choose alternative routes. In so doing, the traffic flow should decrease. The model of the user is based on suppositions such as: people do not like to waste time, they fully understand the displayed messages, they trust the displayed values, they know of alternative routes. However, people also have a model of the way the system functions. And if they do not believe the contents of the message, they will not act as expected. (shrink)

Summary The present paper introduces the theoretical conceptualization of perceptual communication through expressive qualities. Initially, the difference with respect to the modality of perceptual communication mediated by signs is analyzed. Conversely, the theory of expressive qualities reflects the psychological conception of direct perception: any assumption of a cognitive stage of representation is excluded. Perceptual communication immediately expresses the specific character of the structural essence of the object. The structural essence is well studied by the perceptual paradigms of Experimental Phenomenology. Plurivocity, (...) the case in which the same objects can share many expressive characters, is also considered. (shrink)

Miracles are signs of God's power. Confusion about them comes from misunderstanding or doubting the relationship between God and creation rather than from science properly understood.

Echo phonology was originally proposed to account for obligatory coordination of manual and mouth articulations observed in several sign languages. However, previous research into the phenomenon lacks clear criteria for which components of movement can or must be copied when the articulators are so different. Nor is there discussion of which nonmanual articulators can echo manual movement. Given the prosodic properties of echoes (coordination of onset/offset and of dynamics such as speed) as well as general motoric coordination of various (...) articulators in the human body, we expect that the mouth is not the only nonmanual articulator involved in echo phonology. In this study, we look at a fixed set of lexical items across 36 sign languages and establish that the head can echo manual movement with respect to timing and to the axis/axes of manual movement. We propose that what matters in echo phonology is the visual percept of temporally coordinated movement that repeats a salient movement property in such a way as to give the visual impression of a copy. Our findings suggest that echoes are not obligatory motor couplings of two or more articulators but may enhance phonological distinctions that are otherwise difficult to see. (shrink)

The subject of meteorology was central to Girolamo Cardano’s thought. It held together his encyclopedism by tying the celestial realm to the sublunary world and human action. Meteorology, for Cardano, links abstract knowledge to the practical and operative. While many of his Aristotelian predecessors understood weather prediction as distinct from meteorology as a natural philosophical field, Cardano’s profound interest in conjectural arts and probabilistic reasoning led him to tie causal explanations to methods of forecasting future conditions of the air and (...) their effects on humans, especially regarding health and disease. While it might be expected that Cardano would have emphasized astrological tools for weather forecasting, instead he went in a different direction, namely, embracing the ancient tradition of weather signs and revising Aristotelian theories of winds. At the end of his career, which he mostly spent writing commentaries on Hippocratic writings, he integrated his understanding of weather signs with Hippocratic rules of prognosis, revising traditional understandings of the causes of winds. (shrink)

Sheldon Brivic has an immediately idealist and ultimately religious view of language and literature; he is devoted to Berkeley and Hegel, turns phenomenology into what he wittily calls "phonemonology" , and is much preoccupied with the individuality, personality, and god-like authority of the author. For Brivic, history is mainly important insofar as it passes through the mind of the author , and political criticism is readily construed as "narrowly political" , particularly if it seems insufficiently respectful of a favored character. (...) With the partial exception of phenonemology, these are not habits of thought with which I instinctively sympathize, though I do respect them and would certainly expect to learn something from them, especially when it comes to the practical criticism of Joyce, which is what I found most rewarding in the book; Brivic has a sensitive chapter on the consciousness of Stephen in the "Proteus" episode of Ulysses, as well as some noteworthy ideas on the echoing interactions between Stephen and Bloom and the more contentious relationship between Shem and Shaun in Finnegans Wake. Though he doesn't use the term, the homosocial bond would seem to be his long suit; since he does on page 160 use the phrase "between men," I think he could profitably have consulted Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's l985 book of the same name. Requests for reprints should be sent to Michael Walsh, Ph.D., Department of English, University of Hartford, West Hartford, Connecticut 06117. (shrink)

Developmental biology is a theory of interpretation. Developmental signals are interpreted differently depending on the previous history of the responding cell. Thus, there is a context for the reception of a signal. While this conclusion is obvious during metamorphosis, when a single hormone instructs some cells to proliferate, some cells to differentiate, and other cells to die, it is commonplace during normal development. Paracrine factors such as BMP4 can induce apoptosis, proliferation, or differentiation depending upon the history of the responding (...) cells. In addition, organisms have evolved to alter their development in response to differences in temperature, diet, the presence of predators, or the presence of competitors. This allows them to develop the phenotype, within the limits imposed by the genotype, best suited for the immediate habitat of the organism. Most developing organisms have also evolved to expect developmental signals from symbionts, and these organisms develop abnormally if the symbiont signals are not present. Thus Hoffmeyer’s “vertical semiotic system” of genetic communication and “horizontal semiotic system” of ecological communication are integrated during development. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of those of Frege's basic contributions to a theory of meaning that are most important for an understanding of Wittgenstein's later thought. It shows that Frege was aware of the problem of how, when constructing complex expressions out of their components, to avoid coming up with a list of names rather than a sentence. This led him to his strategy of not building a sentence out of its component parts, but of getting at the parts (...) by breaking up a whole. Wittgenstein, despite his own “synthetic” approach, did not encounter this problem, because he followed Frege's late insight to its logical conclusion, namely that the sense of an expression consists in its use as a sign. (shrink)

Research has shown that minimally counterintuitive concepts are more memorable than concepts that are simply bizarre. However, this disparity may exist only in studies using cross-cultural samples. To test the impact of bizarreness on culturally homogeneous populations, we read a fictional narrative to 33 college-age students at a Midwestern university. This narrative featured 18 sets of target items – six which were intuitive, six which were counterintuitive, and six which were bizarre. After hearing the story, experimenters administered a written recall (...) task. As hypothesized, students did not differ in their recall of counterintuitive or bizarre target items. Therefore, we propose a minimally distinctive model of memorability, encompassing both counterintuitiveness and bizarreness. This model may help us better understand the memorability of expectation violations, especially those within religious stories. (shrink)

A professor is brought before a secret tribunalin his law faculty for the purpose of decidingthe appropriateness of a student's grade. Thegrounds of the grade appeal are that theprofessor had taught critically instead ofpractically and that he had done so with anacademic bias and prejudice. He is also allegedto have taught philosophy rather than law. After many hours of examination andcross-examination as a defendant and as anexpert witness, the professor, Flink, begins adialogue with a spirit in an effort tounderstand the (...) nature and identity of law. Flink comes to appreciate that law is adisplacing discourse rather than a structure ofcategories signified in an official writing. The analytic method familiar to officials incommon law jurisdictions, Flink comes tounderstand, excludes the experiential meaningsthat are manifested through unwritten gesturesand rituals. Officials embody signs withexperiential expectations and past assumptions.The embodiment of meaning brings life intolegal language. But such an embodiment isforgotten as officials decompose textualfragments and reported social events intoanalytic units. Legal analysis is so successfulthat officials even forget that they hadforgotten something so important as theembodiment of meaning. The professor and the spirit also ask whetherjustice is an `ought' and where one can locatesuch an `ought'. They conclude that there is astructure within which legal officials reason.The exteriority of the structure is anunwritten `ought' realm. But the structurepossesses a gap, which enters into such anunanalysable object-less realm. Analyticreasoning has assumed that reason can take anofficial only so far until she or he mustjourney outside the structure to anunanalysable realm of personal values. However, the embodiment of meanings alsoincorporates unwritten collective values ofwhich officials, precisely because of thesuccess of the analysis project in forgettingthat something was forgotten, have never beenconscious. It is such an unanalysable realmthat grounds or authorises the analyticproject. The exterior authorising origin of theanalytic units of the structure rests upon apossibility that requires faith on the part ofthe officials, a faith that there exists afoundation, radically different from theanalytic units, on the other side of thestructure. The officials can, at best, imagineor picture the authorising origin, located asit is in the unanalysable object-less realmexterior to the written language of thestructure. The imagined origin takes the `form'of a bodiless spirit. The officials are haunted by thepossibility that the structure of humanlyposited rules are ultimately authorised by aspirit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION, AND REPRESENTATION IN THE SEMIOTIC OF JOHN POINSOT1 }AMES BERNARD MURPHY Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire 1) Language and the Semiotic of John Poinsot HE SEMIOTIC of John Poinsot is to the study of gns what physics is to the study of nature. Physics is oth the most fundamental and the most general science of nature. All natural processes, from the motion of planets to the division (...) of cells, are governed by, but not only by, laws of physics. Similarly, the semiotic of John Poinsot (traditionally known by his Dominican name, John of St. Thomas) is the most fundamental and general science of signs. The actions of all signs -from natural signs such as footprints and symptoms of disease, to signs of communication, such as logical operators and linguistic signs, to signs in cognition, such as concepts and percepts -are governed by, but not only by, the fundamental relational logic of semiosis set forth in his Ars Logica [1632]. If C. S. Peirce can be said to give us a chemistry of sixty-six signcompounds, John Poinsot, suitably revised, gives us the basic physical laws of motion that bring sign, object, and mind into relation.2 i The author would like to acknowledge gratefully the fellowships received from the American Council of Learned Societies and from Dartmouth College supporting the research of this article. I also wish to acknowledge the help of my research assistant, Daniel Glazer, in hunting down many essential books and articles. John Deely assisted by correcting my discussion of some of the finer points of Poinsot's theory as well as by providing many other helpful suggestions for revision. 2 The first modern author to point this out was Jacques Maritain, especially in "Signe et symbole," Revue Thomiste 44 (April 1938), pp. 299-300 and 569 570 JAMES BERNARD MURPHY What I wish to explore here is the question: To what extent does the semiotic of John Poinsot account for the meaning of linguistic signs? In one sense, we cannot expect such a fundamental and general theory of the action of signs to tell us much about language. Language is a surpassingly complex and, in many ways, a unique sign-system. Expecting a general theory of signs to capture the meaning of the linguistic sign is like expecting physics to explain reproductive biology. In another sense, though, we ought to expect his semiotic to illuminate that preeminent system of signs, human language. For in addition to "Le Langage et la theorie du signe," Anne.:re au chapitre II of Quatre essais sur!'esprit dans sa condition charnelle (Nouvelle edition revue et augmentee; Paris: Alsatia, 1956), pp. 113-124. This latter essay appears in a modestly amplified English version, " Language and the Theory of Sign," from Language : An Enquiry into Its Meaning and Function, edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), pp. 86-101; and, fully annotated in relation to Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis, it has been reprinted in Frontiers in Semiotics, edited by John Deely, Brooke Williams, and Felicia Kruse (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 51-62. Following Maritain, a number of authors have attempted to apply Poinsot's semiotic to contemporary debates. I note the principal ones in chronological order: John A. Oesterle, " Another Approach to the Problem of Meaning," The Thomist 7 (1944), pp. 233-263; John Wild, "An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Signs," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 8 (December 1947), pp. 217-244; Henry B. Veatch, Intentional Logic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952). Poinsot's Treatise on Signs was originally published in 1632 as a small part of volume 2 in the original five volumes (Alcala, Spain: 1631-1635) of his philosophical writings. These five volumes have been published as three volumes under the title Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus in the modern edition by Beatus Reiser (Turin: Marietti, 1930, 1933, 1937). The first independent presentation of Poinsot's complete Tractatus de Signis was prepared by John Deely in consultation with Ralph A. Powell and published in bilingual critical edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). Since the publication of this edition of the Tractatus, two major critiques and reconstructions of Poinsot's analysis... (shrink)

Emerging research shows that undergraduate students are searching for a deeper meaning in their lives from their university studies. Leading students forth into this kind of meaningful action is the primary responsibility of the Philosopher of Education. This paper describes how such meaningful action can be accomplished by integrating the pedagogical ontology of Martin Heidegger into a course in the history and philosophy of Education. The course challenges students to engage in the cooperative project of what John Sallis calls “world (...) building” by posing strategic questions, designing appropriate content, and demonstrating artful signs. Heidegger expects his students to rethink what it means for them to be a human being. When this identity is transformed, a new calling to think and an invocation to teach that calling can flow from that instruction. This paper describes this kind of instruction in practice by specifically characterizing what a “professor of learning to think” would be. (shrink)