It is commonly believed that human perceptual experiences can be, and usually are, multimodal. What is more, a stronger thesis is often proposed that some perceptual multimodal characters cannot be described simply as a conjunction of unimodal phenomenal elements. If it is the case, then a question arises: what is the additional mode of combination that is required to adequately describe the phenomenal structure of multimodal experiences? The paper investigates what types of audio–visual experiences have phenomenal character that cannot (...) be analysed as a mere conjunction of visual and auditory elements; and how can we properly characterise the required, additional mode of perceptual combination. Three main modes of combination are considered: instantiation, parthood, and grouping. It is argued that some phenomena involving intermodal relations, like spatial and temporal ventriloquism, can be analysed in terms of audio–visual, perceptual grouping. On the other hand, cases of intermodal binding need a different treatment. Experiences involving audio–visual binding should be analysed as experiences presenting objects or events which instantiate, or which have a proper part instantiating, both visually and auditorily determined properties. (shrink)

In this position paper, we have used Alan Cooper’s persona technique to illustrate the utility of audio- and video-based AAL technologies. Therefore, two primary examples of potential audio- and video-based AAL users, Anna and Irakli, serve as reference points for describing salient ethical, legal and social challenges related to use of AAL. These challenges are presented on three levels: individual, societal, and regulatory. For each challenge, a set of policy recommendations is suggested.

It is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be referred (...) to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters. Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals. Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely lifelogging and self-monitoring, remote monitoring of vital signs, emotional state recognition, food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, activity and personal assistance, gesture recognition, fall detection and prevention, mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed. (shrink)

Ambient assisted living technologies are increasingly presented and sold as essential smart additions to daily life and home environments that will radically transform the healthcare and wellness markets of the future. An ethical approach and a thorough understanding of all ethics in surveillance/monitoring architectures are therefore pressing. AAL poses many ethical challenges raising questions that will affect immediate acceptance and long-term usage. Furthermore, ethical issues emerge from social inequalities and their potential exacerbation by AAL, accentuating the existing access gap between (...) high-income countries and low and middle-income countries. Legal aspects mainly refer to the adherence to existing legal frameworks and cover issues related to product safety, data protection, cybersecurity, intellectual property, and access to data by public, private, and government bodies. Successful privacy-friendly AAL applications are needed, as the pressure to bring Internet of Things devices and ones equipped with artificial intelligence quickly to market cannot overlook the fact that the environments in which AAL will operate are mostly private. The social issues focus on the impact of AAL technologies before and after their adoption. Future AAL technologies need to consider all aspects of equality such as gender, race, age and social disadvantages and avoid increasing loneliness and isolation among, e.g. older and frail people. Finally, the current power asymmetries between the target and general populations should not be underestimated nor should the discrepant needs and motivations of the target group and those developing and deploying AAL systems. Whilst AAL technologies provide promising solutions for the health and social care challenges, they are not exempt from ethical, legal and social issues. A set of ELSI guidelines is needed to integrate these factors at the research and development stage. (shrink)

The literature is predominated by studies seeking to clarify the extent of the availability, functionality, accessibility and/or utilisation of library materials in schools at various levels. The extent of principals' management of library resources and their contribution to the lesson preparation activities of teachers seems to have been under-researched. In bridging the gap, the current study was designed to assess the extent and contribution of principals’ management of library resources to teachers’ lesson preparation practices. Six specific objectives were of interest (...) to the researchers. The quantitative research method, following the ex-post facto research design, was adopted. The stratified proportional random sampling technique was used to choose a sample of 743 respondents from a population of 1,857 secondary school teachers in Ikom Education Zone, Cross River State, Nigeria. An instrument named "Management of Library Resources and Teachers' Lesson Preparation Questionnaire" (MLRTLPQ) was used to gather data. The quantitative content validity method was used to assess the degree to which the items in the instrument were clear, relevant, and represented a wide range of the anticipated content based on the views of domain experts. One sample t-test and hierarchical regression analyses were used for data analyses. Four stepwise hierarchical linear models were specified and fitted accordingly. It was found that teachers’ lesson preparation practice is significantly low generally; there is a significantly low extent in principals’ management of textual, auditory, visual and audio-visual library resources; there is a significant composite contribution of principals’ management of library resources on teachers’ lesson preparation practices in public secondary schools in model 3 and model 4. Based on these findings, practical implications are discussed, with recommendations made for a better library management practice in secondary schools for quality lesson preparation practices. (shrink)

Deepfakes are audio, video, or still-image digital artifacts created by the use of artificial intelligence technology, as opposed to traditional means of recording. Because deepfakes can look and sound much like genuine digital recordings, they have entered the popular imagination as sources of serious epistemic problems for us, as we attempt to navigate the increasingly treacherous digital information environment of the internet. In this paper, I attempt to clarify what epistemic problems deepfakes pose and why they pose these problems, (...) by drawing parallels between recordings and our own senses as sources of evidence. I show that deepfakes threaten to undermine the status of digital recordings as evidence. The existence of deepfakes thus encourages a kind of skepticism about digital recordings that bears important similarities to classic philosophical skepticism concerning the senses. However, the skepticism concerning digital recordings that deepfakes motivate is also importantly different from classical skepticism concerning the senses, and I argue that these differences illuminate some possible strategies for solving the epistemic problems posed by deepfakes. (shrink)

Deepfake technology uses machine learning to fabricate video and audio recordings that represent people doing and saying things they've never done. In coming years, malicious actors will likely use this technology in attempts to manipulate public discourse. This paper prepares for that danger by explicating the unappreciated way in which recordings have so far provided an epistemic backstop to our testimonial practices. Our reasonable trust in the testimony of others depends, to a surprising extent, on the regulative effects of (...) the ever-present possibility of recordings of the events they testify about. As deepfakes erode the epistemic value of recordings, we may then face an even more consequential challenge to the reliability of our testimonial practices themselves. (shrink)

As the lyrics to the traditional nineteenth century gospel hymn state, one of the goals of many magical and religious practices is to experience ‘a closer walk with Thee,’ coming into the presence of the holy in both figurative and arguably literal terms. One of the many ways to improve this likelihood of achieving the deep and immersive presence of the holy—described by the scholar of comparative religion Rudolf Otto as the “gentle tide, [the] pervading [of] the mind with a (...) tranquil mood” numinous experience—is through the careful use of various sonic elements. To this point, an exploration of physical worship spaces themselves, a review of the means of creating sounds within worship, and a study of the related uses of sonic technology during worship rituals can help to elucidate just how these sonic elements compare in their utilization between ancient magic and more contemporary magical and religious applications. It is my contention that the overall goal of creating an immersive environment for worship and ritual practice has remained a constant from Ancient Greek and Roman times through to the present, while the technology available to achieve this goal (both in the creation of an immersive physical space and in the use of engaging and relatable musical instruments and instrumental styles) has continually progressed. Put another way, the methods in which we might best utilize various sonic elements to achieve the most numinous experience—the ‘how’— have certainly changed over time, but the underlying ‘why’ and the core goal of using sound to increase this sense of a presence with the holy has remained largely unchanged. (shrink)

Deepfakes are algorithmically modified video and audio recordings that project one person’s appearance on to that of another, creating an apparent recording of an event that never took place. Many scholars and journalists have begun attending to the political risks of deepfake deception. Here we investigate other ways in which deepfakes have the potential to cause deeper harms than have been appreciated. First, we consider a form of objectification that occurs in deepfaked ‘frankenporn’ that digitally fuses the parts of (...) different women to create pliable characters incapable of giving consent to their depiction. Next, we develop the idea of ‘illocutionary wronging’, in which an individual is forced to engage in speech acts they would prefer to avoid in order to deny or correct the misleading evidence of a publicized deepfake. Finally, we consider the risk that deepfakes may facilitate campaigns of ‘panoptic gaslighting’, where many systematically altered recordings of a single person's life undermine their memory, eroding their sense of self and ability to engage with others. Taken together, these harms illustrate the roles that social epistemology and technological vulnerabilities play in human ethical life. (shrink)

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

In the case of ventriloquism, seeing the movement of the ventriloquist dummy’s mouth changes your experience of the auditory location of the vocals. Some have argued that cases like ventriloquism provide evidence for the view that at least some of the content of perception is fundamentally multimodal. In the ventriloquism case, this would mean your experience has constitutively audio-visual content (not just a conjunction of an audio content and visual content). In this paper, I argue that cases like (...) ventriloquism do not in fact warrant that conclusion. I then try to make sense of crossmodal cases without appealing to fundamentally multimodal content. (shrink)

Given that conspiracies exist, can we be justified in dismissing conspiracy theories without concerning ourselves with specific details? I answer this question by focusing on contrarian conspiracy theories, theories about conspiracies that conflict with testimony from reliable sources of information. For example, theories that say the CIA masterminded the assassination of John F. Kennedy, 9/11 was an inside job, or the Freemasons are secretly running the world are contrarian conspiracy theories. When someone argues for a contrarian conspiracy theory, their options (...) are to appeal to eyewitness testimony, incriminating documents, photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, allegedly scientific evidence, anomalies, or considerations of cui bono (who benefits). Most laypeople don’t know how to adequately respond to arguments for contrarian conspiracy theories, but this doesn’t mean that it’s dogmatic to reject them. I argue that many laypeople are defeasibly justified in rejecting a variety of contrarian conspiracy theories based on testimony and this justification is rarely defeated by arguments for contrarian conspiracy theories even if we don’t know how to respond to these arguments. (shrink)

We describe a strategy for integration of data that is based on the idea of semantic enhancement. The strategy promises a number of benefits: it can be applied incrementally; it creates minimal barriers to the incorporation of new data into the semantically enhanced system; it preserves the existing data (including any existing data-semantics) in their original form (thus all provenance information is retained, and no heavy preprocessing is required); and it embraces the full spectrum of data sources, types, models, and (...) modalities (including text, images, audio, and signals). The result of applying this strategy to a given body of data is an evolving Dataspace that allows the application of a variety of integration and analytic processes to diverse data contents. We conceive semantic enhancement (SE) as a lightweight and flexible process that leverages the richness of the structured contents of the Dataspace without adding storage and processing burdens to what, in the intelligence domain, will be an already storage- and processing-heavy starting point. SE works not by changing the data to which it is applied, but rather by adding an extra semantic layer to this data. We sketch how the semantic enhancement approach can be applied consistently and in cumulative fashion to new data and data-models that enter the Dataspace. (shrink)

Reading proficiency plays a vital role in keeping up-to-date with technological advancements and innovations in education. However, there are Grade 7 students who need help with the essential skill of reading. These students need support for them to cope with the classroom demands. This transcendental phenomenological qualitative research aims to determine the academic experiences of struggling readers inside the classroom. Five struggling readers were the participants of this study. These five participants were purposefully selected after being recommended by the school (...) reading coordinator. The interview guide questionnaire was the instrument of this study. The interview guide questionnaire contains open-ended questions that were validated by experts. One-on-one interviews were conducted for about 20 to 40 minutes each. Using an audio recorder, the interviews were recorded. After the interview, a verbatim transcription was made and thematic analysis was utilized to analyze the significant lines of the participants. The following themes were elicited from the participants' responses, namely: lack of computer skills, limited visual attention span, hesitation and anxiety to participate, difficulty in interaction, difficulty with the use of technology in education, confusion with letter-sound identification, less motivation to learn, problem understanding the lesson, and slow in taking down notes. The participants attributed their reading difficulties to themselves, their teachers, and their parents. In light of these findings, it is strongly recommended that a robust and comprehensive reading recovery program be implemented. This program should address struggling readers' multifaceted challenges and provide them with the necessary support to enhance their reading proficiency and overall academic performance. (shrink)

Art museums are built to elicit a wide variety of feelings, emotions, and moods from their visitors. While these effects are primarily achieved through the artworks on display, museums commonly deploy numerous other affect-inducing resources as well, including architectural solutions, audio guides, lighting fixtures, and informational texts. Art museums can thus be regarded as spaces that are designed to influence affective experiencing through multiple structures and mechanisms. At face value, this may seem like a somewhat self-evident and trivial statement (...) to make. However, in this article, I argue that niche construction theory enables us to make several illuminating observations about the ways in which art museums are engineered to influence our feelings. To expound on this claim, I single out for discussion the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which for its entire lifespan (1939–52)—and prior to its evolution into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—was expressly organized to kindle in its visitors a special, spiritual form of aesthetic experience: a liberating feeling of cosmic rhythm and order, no less. -/- The argument will proceed as follows: In Part 1, I introduce the basics of niche construction theory and specify the sense in which I apply it to museums and aesthetic affective experiencing. In Part 2, I outline the origins and ethos of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, after which I pin down the type of affective experience it fostered by drawing from visitors’ self-reported reactions to the artworks on display. Then, in Part 3, I use niche construction theory to explain how the Museum consciously fashioned itself, by means of various mutually supportive resources and technologies, into a fertile setting for the specified feelings. Finally, in Part 4, I extend beyond the discussed case to assess the implications of niche construction theory for a broader understanding of how art museums make us feel. In other words, by tracing the early steps of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting towards the present-day Guggenheim, I call attention to the general variation in affective niches as regards their structure, technologies, and affective aims. Overall, the article elucidates the functioning of art museums as affective niches and furthers the conceptual development of niche construction theory in aesthetics. (shrink)

This paper is an expanded written version of my reply to Rosanna Keefe’s paper ‘Modelling higher-order vagueness: columns, borderlines and boundaries’ (Keefe 2015), which in turn is a reply to my paper ‘Columnar higher-order vagueness, or Vagueness is higher-order vagueness’ (Bobzien 2015). Both papers were presented at the Joint Session of the the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association in July, 2015. At the Joint Session meeting, there was insufficient time to present all of my points in response to Keefe’s (...) paper. In addition, the audio of the session, which is available online, becomes inaudible at the beginning of my reply to Keefe’s comments due to a technical defect. The following is a full version of my remarks. (shrink)

This study aimed to understand the preserved elements of self-identity in persons with moderate to severe dementia attributable to Alzheimer’s disease. A semi-structured interview was developed to explore the narrative self among residents with dementia in a residential care facility and residents without dementia in an independent living setting. The interviews were transcribed verbatim from audio recordings and analyzed for common themes, while being sensitive to possible differences between the groups. The participants with dementia showed evidence of self-reference even (...) though losses in explicit memory were evident. The most noticeable difference between the two groups was time frame reference. Nonetheless, all participants showed understanding of their role in relationships and exhibited concrete preferences. Our findings suggest that memory loss and other cognitive deficits associated with moderate to severe dementia do not necessarily lead to a loss of “self.”. (shrink)

Comparisons between audiobook listening and print reading often boil down to the fact that audiobooks impose limitations on the recipient’s continuous in-depth reflection. As a result, audiobook listening is considered a shallow alternative to reading. This chapter critically revisits the following three intuitions commonly associated with such comparisons: 1) Audiobooks elicit more mental imagery than print. 2) Audiobooks invite more inattentive processing than print. 3) Audiobook listening is more contingent on the environment than print reading. Instead of postulating the superiority (...) of print over audio, the chapter argues that the three intuitions are largely based on a misconception of print reading, its experiential characteristics, and its function. (shrink)

This article attempts to answer a question that many dancers and non-dancers may have. What is dance according to the media? Furthermore, how does the written word portray dance in the media? To answer these ques-tions, this research focuses on the role that the discourse of dance in media plays in the public sphere’s knowledge construction of dance. This is impor-tant to study because the public sphere’s meaning of dance will determine whether dance education is promoted or banned in schools (...) and in society. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature of dance in the media. One limitation of this contribution is that the research uses only newspaper articles as a source of analysis. Future research should include an analysis of visual and audio clips of dance as portrayed in the media. (shrink)

Against claims that cognitive science of religion undercuts belief in God, many defenders of theistic belief have invoked the Religious Reasons Reply: science cannot undercut belief in God if one has good independent reasons to believe. However, it is unclear whether this response helps salvage the god beliefs of most people. This paper considers four questions: (1) What reasons do Christians have for believing in God? (2) What kinds of beliefs about God can the reasons support? (3) Are the reasons (...) rationalizations? (4) Can cognitive science undercut the reasons? Many Christians invoke everyday religious experiences (EREs)—such as experiences of divine presence, guidance, and communication—as reasons to believe. Unlike another popular reason to believe in God (the appearance of design and beauty in nature), EREs can support beliefs about a relational God who is present to me, who guides my life, and who speaks to me. EREs are not rationalizations since they seem to cause and sustain such beliefs. Nonetheless, EREs like experiences of hearing God speak are problematic reasons to believe. ‘Soft’ voice-hearing experiences are easily undercut. ‘Hard’ experiences of an external, audible voice are probably underpinned by similar cognitive processes as audio-verbal hallucinations. (shrink)

Steven Spielberg‘s filmed representation of the Holocaust dares its viewers to experience, as secondary witnesses, atrocities committed by the Nazis in Poland. The film is yet another form of testimonial narrative (audio-visual but lacking a full historical context, except for a few on-screen titles) which aligns the survivors, who have come to be known as the Schindler Jews, and their descendants, on the one hand, and Spielberg‘s cameraman (comparable to an internalized narrator), Spielberg the film director (an external, omniscient (...) narrator), and the film-theater audience, on the other. We are all turned into witnesses in the same process and at the same time in which the real witnesses, the survivors, testify to the horror of the Holocaust. (shrink)

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In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the Tabby Cats knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. Later the dreamer herself gave us more information. Of six predictions (...) four were confirmed. The dreamer’s apartment is repeatedly disturbed and, each time, a new cat appears. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning, soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AUDIO RECORD OF CLASS AVAILABLE: link is on first page of the paper you download from this page. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of Mercury knowing nothing of the dreamer and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of falsifiable predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. The dreamer is instructed to confront a friendship he had abandoned and, when he does so, (...) is frightened by the inner life he discovers. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AN AUDIO-RECORD OF COMPLETE CLASS: link is given on first page of the paper you download here. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the Black Planet knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us -- her video camera was switched off ) to give us more information about the dreamer. Our predictions were (...) mostly confirmed. The dreamer is in a car with his dad. It is not clear who is driving. This record is another iteration of an experiment that is described more fully in the paper The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System that Tests Symbolic Meaning, soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AUDIO RECORD OF COMPLETE BLACK PLANET CLASS: link is given on 1st page of the text you download from this page. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the White House knowing nothing of the dreamer and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of falsifiable predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. Of 17 predictions 15 were confirmed. The dreamer suffers dislocation and loss until she (...) asks a female manager for help. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. More than any of the other iterations, it details how talk therapy promotes personality reorganization. It then supports these observations with experimental evidence. Because it demonstrates how talk therapy works, this iteration supports talk therapy against pressure from the drug and insurance corporations. AUDIO-RECORDING OF WHOLE CLASS: link provided on first page of the paper you download here. (shrink)

(NOTE: This is a transcript of the class. FOR THE FULL PAPER, please click on "Maxson J. McDowell".) A complete transcript of an experiment performed within a class on dream interpretation. Knowing only the dreamers age and gender, we interpreted his dream from its text. Our interpretation included predictions about the dreamer's psychological issues, and about his defenses. It also identified a series of jokes within the dream which would tend to penetrate the dreamer's defenses. When we had finished our (...) 'blind' interpretation, the bringer of the dream gave us more information about the dreamer against which we tested the accuracy of our predictions. A paper on this experiment has been submitted for publication. A link to an AUDIO-RECORDING of this class is given on the first page of this transcript. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted 'The Dream of the Three Orcas' knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. -/- Our interpretation included nine predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had not been present before our interpretation was complete) to give us more information about the dreamer. Later the dreamer also gave us more information. Our predictions were mostly confirmed. The (...) dreamer is standing on beach when huge orca-like floats appear. -/- This record is another iteration of an experiment that is described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System that Tests Symbolic Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. ONLINE AUDIO RECORD OF ENTIRE ORCAS' CLASS : link is on title page of the paper you can download here. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the Flaming Sword knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and who also gave no visual feedback to our discussion) to give us more information about the dreamer. Eight months later the bringer gave us (...) further information from the dreamer. Our predictions were mostly confirmed. In the dream, the dreamer’s identity is repeatedly questioned. -/- This record is another iteration of an experiment that is described more fully in the paper The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog, soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. -/- AUDIO RECORD OF THE CLASS ABOUT THE FLAMING SWORD: link is on the title page of the paper you can download here. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Little is known about how hospitalized patients share decisions with physicians. METHODS: We conducted an observational study of patient-doctor communication on an inpatient medicine service among 18 hospitalized patients and 9 physicians. A research assistant (RA) approached newly hospitalized patients and their physicians before morning rounds and obtained consent. The RA audio recorded morning rounds, and then separately interviewed both patient and physician. Coding was done using integrated analysis. RESULTS: Most patients were white (61%) and half were female. (...) Most physicians were male (66%) and of Southeast Asian descent (66%). All physicians explained the plan of care to the patients; most believed that their patient understood. However, many patients did not. Physicians rarely asked the patient for their opinion. In all those cases, the decision had been made previously by the doctors. No decisions were made with the patient. Patients sometimes disagreed. CONCLUSIONS: Shared decision-making may not be the norm in hospital care. Although physicians do explain treatment plans, many hospitalized patients do not understand enough to share in decisions. When patients do assert their opinion, it can result in conflict. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Some hospitalized patients are interested in discussing treatment. Improving hospital communication can foster patient autonomy. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted 'The Dream of Geese Nesting in Trees' knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been mostly silent and who also gave no visual feedback to our discussion) to give us more information about the dreamer. Our main predictions were confirmed. Goslings are falling (...) on the dreamer’s head. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper, 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System that Tests Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AUDIO RECORD OF COMPLETE CLASS: link is at top of paper you can download from this page. (shrink)

Kyiv-Mohyla Seminar on the History of Philosophy was established by the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies (in co-operation with Ukrainian Philosophical Foundation) in 2003. In this yearly seminar, the Department’s members as well as the historians of philosophy from other academic institutions regularly take part. Since 2003, 16 meetings of the seminar took place. They were focused on such topics as “Historiography of Philosophy in Ukraine: Current State and Perspectives” (2003), “Actual Problems of the Source Studies in (...) the Historiography of Philosophy” (2004), “The Problem of Text Interpretation in the Historiography of Philosophy” (2005), “Dmytro Chyzhevskyi as a Historian of Philosophy” (2006), “Historiography of Philosophy in Ukraine: Current State and Perspectives” (2007), “The Problem of Method in the Historiography of Philosophy” (2007), “Oleksii Losiev: Personality and Heritage (to the 115 th Anniversary of His Birth)” (2008), “Methodology of the Historiography of Philosophy: Actual Strategies” (2008), “Wilhelm Windelband as a Philosopher and Historian of Philosophy (to the 160 th Anniversary of His Birth)” (2008), “Hegel’s Heritage in the Mirror of Interpretations” (2009), “The Studies on the History of Philosophy: New Generation” (2010, 2011), “Kant’s Criticism from the perspective of Wolf’s dogmatism” (2012), “The Reception of Indian Philosophy in Ukraine: 1840s–1930s” (2013), “Did Kant Answer the Question on What a Man Is?” (2016). The proceedings of the early three meetings were published in a special volume (Tkachuk, 2006). The current issue of “NaUKMA Research Papers in Philosophy and Religious Studies” contains the proceedings of the sixteenth meeting of Kyiv-Mohyla Seminar on the History of Philosophy, which took place at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy on February 1, 2017. The main speaker was Dr. Taras Lyuty, while the co-speakers included Dr. Mykhailo Minakov and Dr. Vakhtang Kebuladze. The meeting was conducted by Prof. Vadym Menzhulin. The audio recording of the meeting was deciphered by a PhD-student Taras Fostiak. (shrink)

Age and gender classification has become relevant to an increasing amount of applications, particularly since the rise of social platforms and social media. Even Nevertheless, contrast to the large performance improvements recently reported for the closely related task of audio. In this research, we show that performance on these tasks can be significantly improved by learning representations using deep convolutional neural networks (CNN). where we get in the ResNet the training accuracy was 98% ,validation accuracy 95%, testing accuracy 96% (...) .Testing dataset organized into one folder (age-gender-test) and contains 1676 audio files related to 39 of age and gender categories and 40 epoch. (shrink)

Contemporary critical instincts, in early modern studies as elsewhere in literary theory, often dismiss invocations of mind and cognition as inevitably ahistorical, as performing a retrograde version of anachronism. Arguing that our experience of time is inherently anachronistic and polytemporal, we draw on the frameworks of distributed cognition and extended mind to theorize cognition as itself distributed, cultural, and temporal. Intelligent, embodied action is a hybrid process, involving the coordination of disparate neural, affective, cognitive, interpersonal, ecological, technological, and cultural resources. (...) Because the diverse elements of such coupled systems each have their own histories and dynamics, many distinctive or competing times are built in to the very mechanisms of remembering and reasoning. We make this argument by means of two distinct case histories: a reading of the site-specific audio walk of Canadian artist Janet Cardiff; and an extended discussion of a famously anachronistic moment in William Shakespeare’s King Lear. These readings reveal the inherent polytemporalities of human mental and social life. (shrink)

Performance is increasingly important to the poet, which is evidenced by the growing numbers of videos and audio recordings online including YouTube, the National Poetry library, and Poetry Archive. As a result, there are greater opportunities to engage with poets reading their own work and consequently, there is a need to move away from thinking of poetry as primary something that takes shape on the page. Furthermore, by refocusing attention to poetry as an oral artform, in particular to poetry (...) performance, different ways of understanding the value of poetry come to the fore. The live poetry performance, I argue, offers an attempt to reclaim the personal individual expression of language in contemporary society and demands attention by the audience because of the role of voice and body in the performance. Through awareness of ‘uniqueness of voice,’ the performed poem becomes a site of collective meaning making with individual identity intact as a shared endeavour between performer and audience, and necessarily resists appropriation (in the sense that the words experienced cannot be divorced from the performer or the performance space to serve as a proxy for meaning elsewhere). This chapter therefore makes an argument for the need to engage with spoken word and performance poetry in the live performance space. (shrink)

This study aimed to unveil the lived experiences of teachers implementing personalized reading strategy. A qualitative design was utilized in this study to fourteen elementary teachers from Nuling Integrated School, Sultan Kudarat. These teachers were selected via purposive sampling who were subjected to Focus Group Discussion. A semi-structured questionnaire was validated and utilized in this study. The interview responses were audio-taped recorded with the consent from the participants. From the generated results, there were 6 emerging themes that described teachers’ (...) challenges in implementing personalized teaching strategy namely, patience in the development of activities, time constraint, alignment to learners’ needs, types of materials and activities, progress monitoring result, and parent-pupil convergence. Meanwhile, teachers coping mechanisms in handling struggling readers were focused on the provision of varied strategies, knowing students learning needs, utilization of Marungko approach, provision of instructional materials, and use ICT and videos. Furthermore, the insights acquired by teachers were diagnosing learners’ needs and interests, preparation consumes more time, and modification of learning activities. (shrink)

The Way of Humanity, second edition, presents a Confucian vision for personal and social transformation intended to bring about a worldwide social order of harmony, dignity, and justice for all peoples, beyond divisive sectarianism and nationalism. It is based on ideals for human flourishing gleaned from Confucian and Neo-Confucian thought as distilled by a highly respected elder philosopher in South Korea, Yi Dong Jun, PhD (Haengchon, literary name). He is Professor Emeritus of the College of Confucian Studies and Eastern Philosophy (...) at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. This work is the first detailed presentation of a contemporary Korean philosopher’s perspective on Confucianism as grounded in daily life, its implications for personal spiritual development, and its potential to contribute to world development. The book holistically presents Master Haengchon’s insights through vivid stories, philosophical essays, numerous illustrations, audio recordings of Confucian chanting, recommendations for further reading, and, new to the second edition, poems inspired by Confucian classics about ideals for an opening of the world to wellbeing and justice for all peoples. There are two recordings of chants included as supplemental.mp3 files. For open access to the ebook and associated audio files, go to the University of Kansas ScholarWorks website: The Way of Humanity, second edition, presents a Confucian vision for personal and social transformation intended to bring about a worldwide social order of harmony, dignity, and justice for all peoples, beyond divisive sectarianism and nationalism. It is based on ideals for human flourishing gleaned from Confucian and Neo-Confucian thought as distilled by a highly respected elder philosopher in South Korea, Yi Dong Jun, PhD (Haengchon, literary name). He is Professor Emeritus of the College of Confucian Studies and Eastern Philosophy at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. This work is the first detailed presentation of a contemporary Korean philosopher’s perspective on Confucianism as grounded in daily life, its implications for personal spiritual development, and its potential to contribute to world development. The book holistically presents Master Haengchon’s insights through vivid stories, philosophical essays, numerous illustrations, audio recordings of Confucian chanting, recommendations for further reading, and, new to the second edition, poems inspired by Confucian classics about ideals for an opening of the world to wellbeing and justice for all peoples. There are two recordings of chants included as supplemental files in this record. Each has been made available in.wav format and.mp3 format. The files in the.mp3 format are much smaller and suitable for downloading in situations where bandwidth is restricted. The ebook is available here on ResearchGate. But for access to the ebook and associated audio files, search the University of Kansas Libraries ScholarWorks website. (shrink)

We often hear how scientists have discovered that a certain human trait – or a trait of another type of organism – is innate, genetic, heritable, inherited, naturally selected etc. All these claims have something in common: they all declare a trait to have significant organism internal (for instance genetic) causes that are present in the organism at its birth. I call claims like these “nativist claims”. Nativist claims are important. They shape our overall understanding of what we are, what (...) we can do and what is good for us. They also impact our practical decision making. For instance, we know that certain types of genes increase the risk of certain diseases, and increasingly this has an effect on healthcare practices. Many people believe that in the matter of children’s education we should consider the fact that many cognitive abilities are highly heritable. Associations between genetics and aggressive behavior have been taken to be alleviating circumstances in criminal sentencing. It is therefore important to correctly understand the content and implications of nativist claims. In this doctoral thesis I analyze, by philosophical means, the content of different kinds of nativist claim. What does it mean that some psychological tendency is innate? What does it mean that intelligence is 50% heritable? How (if at all) do genes come to carry information about the traits of an organism – they are nothing like the information carriers familiar to us, such as newspapers, e-mails, secret codes, and audio files. This thesis emphasizes two things. Firstly, I demonstrate, that in different scientific contexts these words ('innate', 'genetically caused' etc.) can mean very different things. Therefore, the implications of a given nativist claim in one scientific context can be remarkably different from another nativist claim’s implications in some other scientific context. Secondly, I explain how the development of innate, heritable and genetically caused traits can be determined in different and often unexpected ways by our environment and experiences. I demonstrate that the content of a concept that is considered innate by cognitive scientists can be determined by what the organism that possesses the concept has experienced. I also show that even a trait which is 100% heritable can at the same time be a socially constructed trait. (shrink)

As the world has been left reeling by the large and continuous loss of human lives due to the current pandemic, Pope Francis offered "Urbi et Orbi" (To the City and the World) in his blessings. He led a recitation of the Lord's Prayer on the feast of the Annunciation which was live streamed around the world, renewing his invitation to pray incessantly for the cure of the sick as well for the medical caregivers. As places of worship across the (...) world are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people of faith need to either offer prayers within the restricted walls of their homes or make use of the virtual platforms available. One way to sustain communal worship is to rely on technology and that is how some of the temples and Gurudwaras in India are engaging with their communities. They have resorted to audio kirtan (call and response chanting) and songs through which they are delivering sermons and messages to their devotees. Whilst many temples have remained closed, some temples and Gurudwaras are still not ready to follow the restrictions implemented against gatherings. Flouting lockdown, several devotees have assembled outside the local temples of West Bengal and Patna on the occasion of Ram Navami and to offer Pujas (prayer rituals) seeking relief from COVID19. However, the annual festivals to honour Lord Ram at Ayodhya – where thousands gather – have been called off. (shrink)

Drawing on phenomenological literature author presents understanding of the aesthetic experience of the musical work pointing to several things: 1. the deep grounding of the experience in myth and Orphic tradition, 2. to the metaphor of building worlds and 3. to being in the moment as one of the most important description of the experience of musical work. Further on author underlines the dynamic as well as fickle character of the experience of musical work, suspended between the sensual audio (...) experience and the conscious mental one. Phenomenological descriptions capture the aesthetic experience of musical work as processual, subjective, emotional, quality based and unfinished, in which they realize perfectly the complexity of the experience, claims the author. (shrink)

Szmimary.—The present report investigated the question of how individual differences in self-consciousness devdop. Rimé and LeBon proposed that high self-consciousness follows a history of frequent exposure to selffocusing stimuli, i.e., mirrors, audiences, audio and video devices, and cameras. To explore this hypothesis private and public self-consciousness and past exposure to self-focusing stimuli were assessed in 438 subjects. Analysis indicated that history of frequent exposure to self-focusing stimuli is significantly but weakly related to high private self-consciousness in men and to (...) high public self-consciousness in women. This supports previous observations suggesting that the routes to the development of selfconsciousness seem to differ for the two sexes. (shrink)

The noise factor is the ratio of signal to noise of an input signal to that of the output signal. Noise can block or interfere with the meaning of a message in both human and electronic communication. But in Information Theory, noise is still considered to be information. By refining the definition of noise as that which addresses us outside of our preferred comfort zone, Joseph Nechvatal's Immersion Into Noise investigates multiple aspects of cultural noise by applying the audio (...) understanding of noise to the visual, architectural and cognitive domains. Nechvatal expands and extends our understanding of the function of cultural noise by taking the reader through the immersive and phenomenal aspects of noise into algorithmic and network contexts, beginning with his experience in the Abside of the Grotte de Lascaux. -/- Immersion Into Noise is intended as a conceptual handbook useful for the development of a personal-political-visionary art of noise. On a planet that is increasingly technologically linked and globally mediated, how might noises break and re-connect in distinctive and productive ways within practices located in the world of art and thought? Joseph Nechvatal explores this intriguing question in Immersion Into Noise. (shrink)

Minóy provides an introduction and overview to the important noise music artist Minóy — the pseudonym of American electronic art musician and sound artist Stanley Keith Bowsza (1951-2010). Minóy’s audio compositions, often conjuring up an enigmatic world of almost dreadful depth, earned him a key position in the homemade independent cassette culture scene of the 1980s.

In a society that is constantly changing and transforming, in which new aspects of reality always tend to replace older forms, traditional communities are beginning to lose both their place and the role they have played in history for a long time. Traditional Romanian values acknowledgement and promotion through modern means of mass communication, present and used on a global scale in the modern world, must become both a necessity and priority in order to confirm and preserve the identity, form (...) new generations and reintegrate our national culture into the great universal culture, to which it has always belonged to. In today’s global society we can speak of an increasing dependence of people on media systems. There is an interdependent relationship created between people and the media system as a whole or with certain parts of media. This relationship does not bear only one significance, but it also concerns the way in which media system depends more and more on the resources controlled by others. Without being the only modern means used to achieve certain goals, media facilitates their understanding, orientation and fulfilment. The consumption of a media product depends both on the context in which it is broadcast and on the product itself. The study of media in Romania must start from the Romanian realities, a country which has undergone from totalitarianism to democracy. This has also been reflected and illustrated by the way in which the Romanian media are perceived both locally and in Europe. Radio and television continue to play an important role in this process, along with other modern means of mass communication. The analysis of the Romanian audio-visual media contributes to outline an overview on the impact that media have on the society which we live in. (shrink)

The study was conducted to explore teachers’ experiences in the delivery of science subjects during the first school year of implementation of distance learning. The teachers’ experiences in the delivery of science subjects served as a reference for formulating innovation to make learning effective in distance learning modality. The data for this study were collected through an interview schedule. It was done through one-on-one in-depth interviews with each participant with the observance of COVID-19 safety protocols. The interviews with all participants (...) were audio-recorded. The data were transcribed verbatim by repeatedly listening to the recorded audio recording. Transcribed verbatim responses were then translated into English. After that, significant statements were determined from all participants’ responses. Lastly, themes and sub-themes were generated from the participants’ significant statements. Based on the result of this study, the following themes have been generated: preparation experiences, adjustment experiences, and unpleasant experiences. Preparations experienced by the participants were professional development, learning resource preparations, and aligning lessons to MELCs. The participants also had adjustment experiences, including content modification and ICT utilization. Also, unpleasant experiences by the participants were an overwhelming workload, complex communication, problems with assessment, and poor student learning. All the teachers’ experiences identified by the Hilongos National Vocational School junior high school teachers serve as the basis for formulating an innovation project. An innovation project for the new normal will address the unpleasant experiences of the teachers. Hence, the innovation project on improving students’ learning for science subjects in a distance learning modality must be utilized to cater to the needs of the school’s clients, the learners. The study concluded that an innovation project on improving students’ learning of science subjects is necessary to equip the Science Teachers of Hilongos National Vocational School with skills to improve the delivery of science subjects in the new normal. It is also recommended to alleviate teachers’ workload, strengthen communications, address problems in assessment, and improve students’ learning. (shrink)

Literature frequently describes how ineffective implementation of instructional policy frameworks can make distance learning a lonely and unrewarding academic pursuit, characterized by high student drop-out rates, high failure rates and academic exclusion. In trying to mitigate this catastrophe, academic departments in distance learning institutions utilize learning management systems (LMSs) to stimulate students’ learning experiences. In keeping with techno-progressivism, the researchers (and authors of this paper) turned to extant documentary policy and literature to review – qualitatively – how the University of (...) South Africa’s (Unisa’s) Open Distance Learning Policy (ODLP) promotes academic inclusion and learning agency as cornerstones of student success and social justice, especially in an unequal society like South Africa. The findings revealed the following: 1) Unisa’s ODLP position has the impetus to influence the deployment of the LMS to promote academic inclusion; 2) Practical means of promoting inclusion were mirrored in the provision of manual or electronic learning material, computer laboratories and free internet connectivity in regional centres across all nine provinces of South Africa, as well as in the provision of laptops for National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS)-funded students, 30 gigabytes of free monthly mobile data to all students, and assistive technologies for students with disabilities; 3) Practical utilization of an LMS to foster self-regulated learning occurred through problem-based individual activities supplemented by asynchronous demonstrative learning material (e.g. audio, video), while collaborative learning agency was enabled through e-tutoring, which afforded students the opportunity to interact with e-tutors and their peers about the learning content; 4) Drawbacks in the use of the LMS stemmed from the insufficiency of assistive learning technologies that are required for students with disabilities to participate fully in online learning, and a corpus of students’ irregular attendance at and participation in e-tutoring discussions and their projection of a negative attitude towards the e-tutors. -/- . (shrink)

This paper focuses on reciprocity among the nomadic hunter-gatherer Rāute and sedentary groups, ie farmers and artisans. The Rāute’s reciprocal relation depends on social contracts, trust, territorial relations and residential propinquity. These facets of reciprocity can be accepted, denied or even cancelled. I argue that the Rāute are economically prosperous because of their regular exchange of woodenwares for grains and other necessary items, though they refrain from storing resources, earning cash incomes, and eschew agricultural production and animal husbandry. Sharing, exchange, (...) gift and counter-gift engagements are obligatory or compulsory, free and voluntary, ensuring their reciprocity with neighbouring populations – which has been regulated by seasonality, foraging and population density around the vicinities of their camps. Qualitative research was employed, with informal interviews, observations, personal accounts, audio and video recording, as well as field diaries. (shrink)

From the Scientific Revolution to the present era, the natural sciences have developed remarkably and recorded colossal success in different areas such as genetic engineering, cloning, hybrid technology, health and food technologies, space travel, audio-visual technology, among others. These evidences are indications of the growth of scientific knowledge. Accordingly, this paper raises the question of what is responsible for the growth of scientific knowledge. Inherent in this question is the pool of diverse conceptions of what the nature and method (...) of science is. Consequently, some significant contours in the construct of the problem of demarcation will be imported into this discourse as a means of assembling some pivotal conceptions of the growth of scientific knowledge. With this, the paper aims to consider Karl Popper’s fundamental conception of the growth of scientific knowledge and its associated criticisms, and from it, attempt to respond to the question of what is responsible for the growth of scientific knowledge. This will help to eliminate the confusion and complications surrounding the growth of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of these works (Mitchell/Snyder and others), we propose an analysis of films with and about blind or visually disabled individuals that aims at exploring different modes of world perception. In our view, such an examination should not only discuss the question of “giving voice” and visibility to those who were formerly only represented in or by the media, or the fact that films belonging to what might be considered a “new disability documentary cinema” are dedicated to the (...) experience of disability from the point of view of those who deal with it. Rather, we examine films that do not restrict their field of vision to institutional context as cultural productions. These films allow the viewer to get to know different practices of seeing in the daily life of both blind or visually disabled and sighted people. In approaching these productions, we are interested in focusing on how the audio-visual regimes produce and structure our visual experience, translate it into a filmic grammar and thus not only create filmic patterns of blind perception but, at the same time, the cinematographic aesthetic of a so-called normal sightedness. (shrink)