Studies in the psychology of visual expertise have tended to focus on a limited set of expert domains, such as radiology and athletics. Conclusions drawn from these data indicate that experts use parafoveal vision to process images holistically. In this study, we examined a novel, as-of-yet-unstudied class of visual experts—architects—expecting similar results. However, the results indicate that architects, though visual experts, may not employ the holistic processing strategy observed in their previously studied counterparts. Participants (n = 48, 24 architects, 24 (...) naïve) were asked to find targets in chest radiographs and perspective images. All images were presented in both gaze-contingent and normal viewing conditions. Consistent with a holistic processing model, we expected two results: (1) architects would display a greater difference in saccadic amplitude between the gaze- contingent and normal conditions, and (2) architects would spend less time per search than an undergraduate control group. We found that the architects were more accurate in the perspectival task, but they took more time and displayed a lower difference in saccadic amplitude than the controls. Our research indicates a disjunctive conclusion. Either architects are simply different kinds of visual experts than those previously studied, or we have generated a task that employs visual expertise without holistic processing. Our data suggest a healthy skepticism for across-the-board inferences collected from a single domain of expertise to the nature of visual expertise generally. More work is needed to determine whether holism is a feature of all visual expertise. (shrink)

A common assumption is that the gods define what constitutes a purposeful life. Many followers of the gods are convinced that a purposeful life cannot exist without the gods to guarantee it; hence, denying the gods’ importance is equivalent to acknowledging that life is unpurposeful. Lavelle’s dilemma examines this consensus through the application of what is known as Euthyphro’s dilemma. The supporters of the Lavelle Consensus face a powerful dilemma: either a purposeful life rests on the gods’ arbitrary (...) decisions, or the gods are not the originators of a purposeful life and life is therefore subject to an independent reality. Both horns of the dilemma compromise the need for the gods’ existence or reduce them to dictators without any right to command. Lavelle’s dilemma thus concerns itself with human beings’ freedom and purpose in life. If powerful beings command human beings, then they are not free; if powerful beings dictate purpose in life, then it is ipso facto not human beings’ purpose but their purpose. Thus, either an objective purposeful life exists, leaving science and philosophy to explain the content of this purpose, or a purposeful life is something all human beings are free to create themselves. (shrink)

One of Fabio Rossi’s most important works analyses the themes of evil and suffering in 20th-century French philosophy. Among others, Rossi presents Louis Lavelle’s contribution on such themes and his reading of the mutual influences between philosophical reflection, emotional experience and religious transcendence. The article aims to make use of some of the conceptual tools made available by Rossi and Lavelle in order to understand François Mauriac’s treatment of evil and suffering in some of his novels, namely Le (...) Mystère Frontenac, Noeud de vipères and Le Mal. The role of family bonds, social rules, the body and its weaknesses, and nature are among the themes around which Mauriac centers his reflection about suffering and its inevitable presence in human life. (shrink)

This paper situates Einstein's theory of relativity within broader networks of communication. The speed of light, explained Einstein, was an unsurpassable velocity if , and only if , it was considered in terms of »arbitrary« and »voluntary« signals. Light signals in physics belong within a broader set of signs and symbols that include communication and military signals, understood by reference to Helmholtz, Saussure, media philosophies from WWII to '68 (Lavelle, Ong, McLuhan) and Derrida. Once light signals in physics are (...) considered in relation to semaphore, print, telegraph, radio, computers and tape recorders, Kittler and Habermas provide us with conflicting ways for understanding science and technology, rationality and consensus. We conclude with a study of »flash and bang« in popular accounts of relativity theory to understand the role of theoretical science in the transmission of information and violence. (shrink)