In recent years, a rising interest in scientific imaging has become apparent, in art production and in thematic exhibitions, as well as in popular media and advertising. Images captured by, and supposedly read through, machines open up a new era – not only for an as-yet-undefined aesthetic journey, but also to reveal insight into a normally invisible layer of reality. A wide range of techniques is already well established – not only in science, but also in an artistic context. Based (...) on an overview of different media and their applications, the term phasmagraphy is introduced to be applied to the expanded boundaries of the visible photographic spectrum to the adjacent wavelengths beyond full-spectrum photography. (shrink)

Hysteria, a mysterious disease known since antiquity, is said to have ceased to exist. Challenging this commonly held view, this is the first cross-disciplinary study to examine the current functional neuroimaging research into hysteria and compare it to the nineteenth-century image-based research into the same disorder. Paula Muhr's central argument is that, both in the nineteenth-century and the current neurobiological research on hysteria, images have enabled researchers to generate new medical insights. Through detailed case studies, Muhr traces how different images, (...) from photography to functional brain scans, have reshaped the historically situated medical understanding of this disorder that defies the mind-body dualism. (shrink)

I argue that authentic photography is not able to develop to the full as a communicative representational art. Photography is authentic when it is true to its self-image as the imprinting of images. For an image to be imprinted is for its content to be linked to the scene in which it originates by a chain of sufficient, mind-independent causes. Communicative representational art (in any medium: photography, painting, literature, music, etc.) is art that exploits the resources of (...) representation to achieve artistically interesting communication of thought. The central resources of representation are content, vehicle properties, and the interplay between these two. Whereas painting and other representational arts are able to exploit all three to communicate thought, authentic photography can exploit interplay only to a very limited degree. However, the exploitation of interplay is the culmination of communicative representational art: the natural endpoint in its development. (shrink)

This article is about an intervention or approach in mental health care that has been developed from hermeneutics, more specifically the hermeneutics of Ricoeur. In this intervention photography is used as a means to assist patients in a process of meaning making from experiences in their life world. It aims at empowerment and strengthening the agency of patients. It does so by facilitating storytelling. Mimesis, as interpreted by Ricoeur, was found to be a central concept with which we could (...) explain the therapeutic working of the approach and legitimize its ethical claims of empowerment and recovery. Another aspect is the concordance between narrative and action, as described by Ricoeur, which has a pendant in the goal orientation of the photography intervention. At the same time demonstrations and experiences from professional practice (nurses applying the intervention) will give us feedback on the theory and enrich it with new insights, e.g. on ‘iconic representation’. (shrink)

Images are double agents. They receive information from the world, while also projecting visual imagination onto the world. As a result, mind and world tug our thinking about images, or particular kinds of images, in contrary directions. On one common division, world traces itself mechanically in photographs, whereas mind expresses itself through painting.1 Scholars of photography disavow such crude distinctions: much recent writing attends in detail to the materials and processes of photography, the agency of photographic artists, and (...) the social determinants of the production and reception of photographs. As such writing makes plain, photographs cannot be reduced to mechanical traces.2 Yet background conceptions of photography as trace or index persist almost by default, as no framework of comparable explanatory power has yet emerged to replace them. A conception of photography adequate to developments in recent scholarship is long overdue. Rather than constructing such a conception top-down, as philosophers are wont to do, this paper articulates it by examining selected works by James Welling.3 There are several reasons for this: Welling’s practice persistently explores the resources and possibilities of photography, the effect of these explorations is to express a particular metaphysics of the mind’s relation to its world, and appreciating why this metaphysics is aptly expressed by exploring photography requires a revised conception of what photography is. In as much as it provides a framework for a richer interpretation of Welling, the new conception is also capable of underwriting a wide range of critical and historical approaches to photography. (shrink)

According to the causal theory of photography (CTP), photographs acquire their depictive content from the world, whereas handmade pictures acquire their depictive content from their makers’ intentional states about the world. CTP suffers from what I call the Problem of the Missing Agent: it seemingly leaves no room for the photographer to occupy a causal role in the production of their pictures and so is inconsistent with an aesthetics of photography. In this paper, I do three things. First, (...) I amend CTP with Fred Dretske’s distinction between triggering and structuring causes, thereby overcoming the Problem of the Missing Agent. Second, I argue that CTP so amended in fact illuminates two aesthetic interests that we may take in photographs, focussing on photographic portraiture and street photography. Third, I show how reflection on the aesthetics of photography serves to support aesthetic anti-empiricism: the view that the aesthetic value of artworks consists, at least in part, in achievement rather than sensory pleasure. (shrink)

This chapter focusses on Martin Lang's ongoing practiced-based research project "The Truth in Painting 1993" which employs painting, photography and digital manipulation brought together in pictures that depict events from 1993. Each painting in the series contains an amalgamation of "analogue" painterly marks, printed scans of paintings and digital painting. The projects anticipates that both the lack of certainty around the mediums used, and the occasions depicted in the works, will spur viewers to question notions of socially constructed and (...) mind-independent truths connected to incidents of that time. In this essay, Lang frames his work in relation to ideas of slippage of the work of art as a single, unique, entity in Jacques Derrida's "The Truth in Painting" (1978) and Enrico Terrone's concept of "standards of correctness" in "The Post-truth in Painting" (2019). This positions Lang's project in a "post-truth world", where "the truth is out there", but which cannot always be clearly defined and understood. (shrink)

This study develops the approach by Minh & Khanh [1] to the classic Barro and Sala-i-Martin method [2], [3] named “expanded Barro regression method”, and applies this approach in analyzing the convergence of provincial per capita GDP in Vietnam over the period of 1991-2007. Different aspects of provincial convergence are considered in this paper. The estimated result on conver-gence from our model is compared to other models.

In reading Barbara Koslowski's "Theory and Evidence: The Development of Scientific Reasoning", one may be convinced that the ancient debate between classical rationalists and empiricists is alive. And like most people who carefully investigate the ability of either rationalism or empiricism truly to account for all of our ability to know, Koslowski arrives at the position of saying that knowledge (in this case scientific knowledge) is a product of both: "neither theory nor data alone is sufficient to achieve scientific success; (...) each must be evaluated in the context of, and constrained by, the other". The problem, according to Koslowski, for those who insist upon empiricism as being the only type of understanding which counts as science, is that we then exclude much of the productive thought in children empiricism champions itself as being theory-independent. The theory-independent notion of science uses covariation as its exclusive criterion for scientific reasoning. "In short, the empiricist aim of rationally reconstructing scientific inquiry in terms of theory-independent principles went along with an (all but exclusive) emphasis on the role of Humean indices. And this, in turn, brought with it a corresponding emphasis on hypothesis testing rather than hypothesis discovery and revision". Consequently, according to Koslowski, if we are willing to expand our notion of scientific reasoning to go beyond testing for covariation, then we will find that many more children and adults can be seen to reason in a manner which would be called "scientific". (shrink)

An original analysis of the parallels between the arrested moment in photography and in the traumatized psyche.

Evidence-Based Medicine has little consideration for mechanisms and philosophers of science and medicine have recently made pleas to increase the place of mechanisms in the medical evidence hierarchy. However, in this debate the notions of mechanisms seem to be limited to 'mechanistic processes' and 'complex-systems mechanisms,' understood as 'componential causal systems'. I believe that this will not do full justice to how mechanisms are used in biological, psychological and social sciences and, consequently, in a more biopsychosocial approach to medicine. Here, (...) I propose, following (Kuorikoski, 2009), to pay more attention to 'abstract forms of interaction' mechanisms. The present work scrutinized review articles on depression and medically unexplained pain, which are considered to be of multifactorial pathogenesis, for their use of mechanisms. In review articles on these disorders there seemed to be a range of uses between more 'abstract forms of interaction' and 'componential causal system' mechanisms. I therefore propose to expand the notions of mechanisms considered in medicine to include that of more 'abstract forms of interaction' to better explain and manage biopsychosocial disorders. (shrink)

Manifestationalism holds that science aims only to give us theories that are correct about what has been observed thus far. Several philosophers, including Bas van Fraassen, have argued that manifestationalism cannot make sense of the scientific impetus to make new observations, since such observations only risk turning manifestationally adequate theories into inadequate ones. This paper argues that a strikingly similar objection applies to van Fraassen’s own constructive empiricism, the view that science aims only to find theories that are empirically adequate. (...) Roughly, the objection is that constructive empiricism cannot make sense of the scientific impetus to expand the limits of what can be observed, since such expansions only risk turning empirically adequate theories into inadequate ones. (shrink)

An essay on non-discursive forms of knowledge that inhabit art photography. A version of this essay appeared in Gavin Keeney, "Else-where": Essays in Art, Architecture, and Cultural Production 2002-2011 (CSP, 2011), pp. 209-26.

Seeking to expand on previous theories, this paper explores the AIR (Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes) approach to expert performance previously outlined by Geeves, Christensen, Sutton and McIlwain (2008). Data gathered from a semi-structured interview investigating the performance experience of Jeremy Kelshaw (JK), a professional musician, is explored. Although JK’s experience of music performance contains inherently uncertain elements, his phenomenological description of an ideal performance is tied to notions of vibe, connection and environment. The dynamic nature of music performance advocated (...) by the AIR approach is illustrated by the strategies that JK implements during performance. Through executing these strategies, JK attempts to increase the likelihood of vibe and connection by selectively exercising agency over performance variables within his control. In order to achieve this, JK must engage in ongoing monitoring of his performance, whereby the spotlight of his attention pans across a vast array of disparate performance processes (and levels within these processes) in order to ascertain how he can most effectively meet the specific demands of a given performance situation. It is hoped that future research compiling data from numerous interviews and sources as well as using different research methodologies will further unlock the potential that the AIR approach holds for understanding expert performance. (shrink)

We ask how to use machine learning to expand observability, which presently depends on human learning that informs conceivability. The issue is engaged by considering the question of correspondence between conceived observability counterfactuals and observable, yet so far unobserved or unconceived, states of affairs. A possible answer lies in importing out of reference frame content which could provide means for conceiving further observability counterfactuals. They allow us to define high-fidelity observability, increasing the level of correspondence in question. To achieve high-fidelity (...) observability, we propose to use generative machine learning models as the providers of the out of reference frame content. From an applied point of view, such a role of generative machine learning models shows an emerging dimension of human-machine cooperation. (shrink)

What makes a photograph an artwork, as opposed to a mere document? I defend a cluster account such that aesthetic value, aptness to interpretation, the artist’s intention and institutional uptake may contribute to the arthood of a body of photographs, with no single condition being necessary. With regard to Lawler’s works, I suggest that Lawler’s intention that they be art plays a definitive role because of the works’ resemblance to non-art photography. For some of her photographs, however, it appears (...) that such an intention is absent; and if this is correct, then, given their other features, those photographs are not artworks. (shrink)

In this commentary, I suggest expanding the deliberative aspects of critical care policy development in two ways. First, critical-care policy development should expand the scope of deliberation by leaving fewer issues up to expertise or private choice. For instance. it should allow deliberation about the relevance of age, disability, social position, and psychological well-being to allocation decisions. Second, it should broaden both the set of costs considered and the set of stakeholders represented in the deliberative process. In particular, it should (...) consider efforts to reduce the cost of end-of-life care and to redirect resources away from the provision of costly interventions, and should expand the set of individuals included in deliberation to include stakeholders outside the health-care system. (shrink)

Hawley introduced the idea of the client's perspective on knowledge, which she used to illuminate knowing-how and cases of epistemic injustice involving knowing-how. In this paper, I explore how Hawley's idea might be used to illuminate not only knowing-how, but other forms of knowledge that, like knowing-how, are often claimed to be distinct from mere knowing-that, focusing on the case studies of moral understanding and ‘what it is like’-knowledge.

Developed through a series of conceptual analyses (Edmund Husserl, Vilém Flusser, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Walter Benjamin) and case studies (Fernando Lopes’s Belarmino and Jeff Wall’s Mimic), this article delves into the relationship between gesture, attunement and atmosphere and how it unfolds in photographic works dealing with urban space. The first section focuses on the role played by photography in the film Belarmino, which raises questions about both the representation of urban phenomena and issues related to expression and gesture in (...) boxing. The second section discusses Husserl’s thinking on image consciousness and his surprising reference to a “photograph” of a boxer, which reveals the relevance of his phenomenological approach when it comes to defining the aesthetic properties of gesture-images. The third section examines the principles of Flusser’s philosophy of gestures, focusing on the semantic field of attunement and its connection with various elements related to photography, gesture, moods and affects. The question of gesture in photography—both the gestures of the photographed and those of the photographer—can be articulated with the notions of attunement and atmosphere, which go beyond semiological, psychological and communicational approaches and are important for our understanding of aesthetic and artistic experiences. Finally, if photography is a privileged way of studying atmospheres and gestures (as suggested by the Benjaminian notion of optical unconscious) and their connection with the inner life of the subject, in relation to urban space this study often acquires an intersubjective, social and political dimension, as in Jeff Wall’s Mimic. (shrink)

Many great authors claim that reading literature can expand your phenomenal imagination and allow you to imagine experiences you have never had. How is this possible? Your phenomenal imagination is constrained by your phenomenal concepts, which are in turn constrained by the phenomenology of your own actual past experiences. Literature could expand your phenomenal imagination, then, by giving you new phenomenal concepts. This paper explains how this can happen. Literature can direct your attention to previously unnoticed phenomenal properties of your (...) own past experiences, as brought to mind by involuntary memory. This process gives you the opportunity to notice those phenomenal properties for the first time, and so also to form phenomenal concepts of those properties. Forming a new phenomenal concept strictly expands the range of your phenomenal imagination. It gives you the capacity to imagine more than you could have before, including certain specific kinds of experience that you yourself have never enjoyed firsthand. Literature’s capacity to expand your phenomenal imagination in this way is central to its social, moral, and epistemic value. (shrink)

Neuron diagrams are heavily employed in academic discussions of causation. Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum, however, offer an alternative approach employing vector diagrams, which this paper attempts to develop further. I identify three ways in which dispositionalists have taken the activities of powers to be related: stimulation, mutual manifestation, and contribution combination. While Mumford and Anjum do provide resources for representing contribution combination, which might be sufficient for their particular brand of dispositionalism, I argue that those resources are not (...) flexible enough to further accommodate either stimulation or mutual manifestation. Representational tools are provided to address these limitations, improving the general value of the vector model for dispositionalist approaches to causation. (shrink)

This article expands on the concept of aura, within the frame of art ontology, and based on neurophilosophy, the stages of human thought, and peak experiences. Aura, generally signifying the subjective value of a work of art, is in this work associated with peak experiences and neurobiological impacts. In this context, the concept of aura involves an effort to understand the effects that a work of art has on the viewer and how these effects form a peak experience. This study (...) investigates how aura and peak experiences have changed and evolved in different cultural and historical contexts, considering the stages of human thought. In the end, the thesis presents a broader definition of the concept of aura; stating that aura shows variability according to conditions, periods, and spaces, and it is a concept that enables the subject to reach peak experiences. (shrink)

To nudge is to design choice contexts in order to improve choice outcomes. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein emphatically endorse nudging but reject more restrictive means. In contrast, I argue that the behavioral psychology that motivates nudging also motivates what may be called jolting — i.e. the design of choice content. I defend nudging and jolting by distinguishing them from the sometimes oppressive means with which they can be implemented, by responding to some common arguments against nudging, and by showing (...) how respect for preferences over option sets and their aggregate properties may require the trimming of option sets, as well as helpful choice contexts. (shrink)

Philosophical counselling, a contemporary movement in practical philosophy, continually expands its discourse by introducing novel philosophical ideas and different traditions. Nevertheless, a conspicuous silence persists regarding the introduction of African philosophies in its discourse. This issue becomes apparent when the question “How might one live?”—a fundamental question that the philosophical counsellor deals with—is adequately investigated. However, its current formulation suffers greatly from a much-needed nuance concerning temporal and contextual awareness. To address and transcend this shortcoming, I turn to two distinct (...) African philosophies, namely, the hermeneutic philosophy of Tsenay Serequeberhan and the conversational method of philosophising advocated by Jonathan O. Chimakonam. By incorporating these philosophies, my aim is twofold: first, to promote an interpretative actualisation situated within a conversational framework that might lead to the creation of new concepts and/or the disclosing of different ways of being/becoming, and second, to draw attention to an underlying assumption that might maintain the neglect of philosophical traditions beyond Western philosophy. (shrink)

This essay aims to appreciate the evolution of the problems regarding the ontological understanding of the photographic image and its derivative, the film, in the face of the sophistication of the apparatus of its production. The creative freedom in making images through optical machines is inversely proportional to their credibility as documents. Since its appearance in the human landscape, as a cultural object, the technology of recording images with lights has brought with it a complex of aporias about what would (...) the nature of the image produced by cameras be: a document or an artistic object, intentionally produced and with created meaning? Consequently: are they denotative or, necessarily, connotative? The development of automatic image capture in the 1980s represented the first update of the question. To what extent, and for how long, will it be possible to trust photography and film as documents through which man aims to access reality? The question now seems to be settled, definitively, in the face of the invention of artificial photography made by algorithms. (shrink)

Human societies and civilizations have been built on countless innovations, and the role of creativity is indispensable in generating such innovations. Therefore, creativity training is the top priority of many organizations and institutions. Two researchers from Ohio State University, Angus Fletcher and Mike Benveniste, have recently proposed a new method for training creativity. The training method is based on the narrative theory, which focuses on the narrative, its structure, and how these can generate cause-and-effect in human minds.

We argue that attempts to extrapolate moral motives for non-egoistic behavior in organizational behavior often interpret results empathically or deontically, while leaving other moral motivational frames, such as the utilitarian and virtue ethical, under-examined. We encourage the creation of experimental measures to distinguish various philosophical frames.

In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply to any of thefield theories, or any other neural theory, of consciousness, their explanatory power is limited. As discussed in detail herein, the matter is complicated further by the facts than any scientifically operational definition of consciousness is inevitably partial, and that the phenomenon has no spatial (...) dimensionality. Under the light of insights from research on meditation and expanded consciousness, chronic pain syndrome, healthy aging, and eudaimonic well being, we may conceive consciousness as a source of potential energy that has no clearly defined spatial dimensionality, but can produce significant changes in others and in the world, observable in terms of changes in time. It is argued that consciousness may have evolved to enable the human species to generate such changes in order to cope with unprecedented and/or unpredictable adversity. Such coping could, ultimately, include the conscious planning of our own extinction when survival on the planet is no longer an acceptable option. (shrink)

There have been rumblings for some time to the effect that the neo-darwinian synthesis of the early twentieth century is incomplete and due for a major revision. In the past decade, several authors have written books to articu- late this feeling and to begin the move towards a second synthesis. David Rollo, in his book Phenotypes (Kluwer, 1994), was among the first to attempt to bring the focus back to the problems posed by phenotypic evolution. In Phenotypic Evolution (Sinauer, 1998), (...) Carl Schlichting and I framed the debate in terms of the integration of development, environ- ment and genetics by articulating the concept of “developmental reaction norms”. (shrink)

Two problems are considered here. One relates to who has moral status, and the other relates to who has moral responsibility. The criteria for mattering morally have long been disputed, and many humans and nonhuman animals have been considered “marginal cases,” on the contested edges of moral considerability and concern. The marginalization of humans and other species is frequently the pretext for denying their rights, including the rights to health care, to reproductive freedom, and to bodily autonomy. There is broad (...) agreement across cultural and philosophical traditions about the capacities and responsibilities of moral agents. I propose an inclusive and expansive way of thinking about moral status, situating it not in the characteristics or capacities of individuals, but in the responsibilities and obligations of moral agents. Moral agents, under this view, are not privileged or entitled to special treatment but rather have responsibilities. I approach this by considering some African communitarian conceptions of moral status and moral agency. I propose that moral agency can also be more expansive and include not just individual moral agents but collective entities that have some of the traits of moral agents: power, freedom, and the capacity to recognize and act on the demands of morality and acknowledge and respect the rights of others. Expanding who and what is a moral agent correspondingly extends moral responsibility for respecting rights and fostering the conditions for the health and well-being of humans and animals onto the collective entities who uniquely have the capacity to attend to global-scale health threats such as pandemics and human-caused climate change. (shrink)

Construction of self and group often incorporates the use of objects associated with "expression," including videos, films, and photographs. In this article, I describe four different sites for construction of groups (group portraiture, courtrooms, video-assisted group therapy, and videoconferencing). I discuss potential aspects of shifts in the way we use and talk about media on what it is like to participate in a group. The eras of video, film, and photography as "silent witnesses" to group interaction are gradually passing. (...) For example, technology that enables the digital retouching of photographs has afforded means for enhancing or dramatically altering photographic images. Those who employ these media as epistemological companions, supplementing their vision and memories of various events and interactions, are increasingly doing so from a critical (and somewhat cautious) perspective.. (shrink)

What constitutes a scientific discovery? What role do discoveries play in science, its dynamics and social practices? Must every discovery be attributed to an individual discoverer (or a small number of discoverers)? The paper explores these questions by first critically examining extant philosophical explications of scientific discovery—the models of scientific discovery, propounded by Kuhn, McArthur, Hudson, and Schindler. As a simple, natural and powerful alternative, we proffer the “change-driver model”: in a nutshell, it takes discoveries to be cognitive scientific results (...) that have epistemically advanced science. The model overcomes the shortcomings of its precursors, whilst preserving their insights. We demonstrate its intensional and extensional superiority, especially with respect to the link between scientific discoveries and the dynamics of science, as well as the award system of science. Both as an illustration, and as an application to a recent scientific and political controversy, we apply the considered models of discovery to one of the most momentous discoveries of science: the expansion of the universe. We oppose the 2018 proposal of the International Astronomers’ Union as too simplistic vis-`a-vis the historical complexity of the episode. The change- driver model yields a more nuanced and circumspect verdict: (i) The redshift-distance relation shouldn’t be named the “Hubble-Lemaître Law”, but “Slipher-Lundmark-Hubble-Humason Law”; (ii) Its interpretation in terms of an expanding universe, however, Lemaître ought to be given credit for; but (iii) The establishment of the expansion of the universe, as an evidentially sufficiently warranted result, is a communal achievement, emerging in the 1950s or 1960s. (shrink)

Bazin, Cavell and other prominent theorists have asserted that movies are essentially photographic, with more recent scholars such as Carroll and Gaut protesting. Today CGI stands as a further counter, in addition to past objections such as editing, animation and blue screen. Also central in debates is whether photography is transparent, that is, whether it allows us to see things in other times and places. I maintain photography is transparent, notwithstanding objections citing digital manipulation. However, taking a cue (...) from Cavell—albeit one poorly outlined in his work—I argue this is not so much because of what photography physically is, but because of what “photography” has come to mean. I similarly argue digital technologies have not significantly altered what cinematic media “are” because they have not fundamentally modified what they mean; and that cinema retains a photographic legacy, even when it abandons photographic technologies to digitally manufacture virtual worlds. (shrink)

Trust has a great potential for furthering our understanding of organizational change and learning. This potential however remains largely untapped. It is argued that two reasons as for why this potential remains unrealized are: (i) A narrow conceptualization of change as implementation and (ii) an emphasis on direct and aggregated effects of individual trust to the exclusion of other effects. It is further suggested that our understanding of the effects of trust on organizational change, should benefit from including effects of (...) trust on the formulation stage. It should also benefit from exploring the structuring effects of trust in organizations. Throughout this chapter, ways to extend current research on trust in organizations are suggested. The chapter also provides examples of relevant contributions where available. In order to capture organizational effects of trust, it is suggested that trust should be studied over longer time intervals, and include several referents of trust, spanning both horizontal and vertical relationships in the organization. (shrink)

This article examines and rejects the view that nonhuman animals cannot be recipients of justice, and argues that the main reasons in favor of universal human rights and global justice also apply in the case of the international protection of the interests of nonhuman animals. In any plausible theory of wellbeing, sentience matters; mere species membership or the place where an animal is born does not. This does not merely entail that regulations of the use of animals aimed at reducing (...) their suffering should be implemented. It actually supports the end of such use, as well as other positive steps to provide help and to promote what is good not only for domesticated animals, but also for those living in the wild. Another reason to bring the protection of animals' interests into the international arena is that it is at this level that numerous animal exploitation industries enjoy the protection of different agreements and institutions. It does not follow from this that changing international law should be animal advocates' first priority, but it does follow that they should conduct their work internationally and not limit it to their own countries. (shrink)

The GCC proposed expanding its membership to other countries such as Jordan. The article discusses this proposal.

In [5], Béziau provides a means by which Gentzen’s sequent calculus can be combined with the general semantic theory of bivaluations. In doing so, according to Béziau, it is possible to construe the abstract “core” of logics in general, where logical syntax and semantics are “two sides of the same coin”. The central suggestion there is that, by way of a modification of the notion of maximal consistency, it is possible to prove the soundness and completeness for any normal logic. (...) However, the reduction to bivaluation may be a side effect of the architecture of ordinary sequents, which is both overly restrictive, and entails certain expressive restrictions over the language. This paper provides an expansion of Béziau’s completeness results for logics, by showing that there is a natural extension of that line of thinking to n-sided sequent constructions. Through analogical techniques to Béziau’s construction, it is possible, in this setting, to construct abstract soundness and completeness results for n-valued logics. (shrink)

I discuss the early history of holography and explore how perceptions, applications, and forecasts of the subject were shaped by prior experience. I focus on the work of Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) in England,Yury N. Denisyuk (1927-2005) in the Soviet Union, and Emmett N. Leith (1927–2005) and Juris Upatnieks (b. 1936) in the United States. I show that the evolution of holography was simultaneously promoted and constrained by its identification as an analog of photography, an association that influenced its assessment (...) by successive audiences of practitioners, entrepreneurs, and consumers. One consequence is that holography can be seen as an example of a modern technical subject that has been shaped by cultural influences more powerfully than generally appreciated. Conversely, the understanding of this new science and technology in terms of an older one helps to explain why the cultural effects of holography have been more muted than anticipated by forecasters between the 1960s and 1990s. (shrink)

In recent years, environmental education has increasingly focused on the role of nonhuman animals in our ecosystems. However, even with growing research, animals are still not a central part of environmental education. Instead, the focus remains on human-centered issues. This reflects a larger societal problem, where influential groups—such as businesses and political or religious institutions—resist changes that might challenge human dominance. -/- A recent study points out that environmental education, shaped by the idea of “sustainable development,” often overlooks the ethical (...) treatment of animals. This happens partly because the concept of sustainability is vague, allowing economic growth and management goals to take priority over animal welfare. Moreover, many educational systems consider biocentrism—the belief that all living beings deserve respect—as optional rather than fundamental. (shrink)

According to D. Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, a particle always has a well-defined spatial trajectory. A change in boundary conditions can nonlocally change that trajectory. In this note we point out a striking instance of this phenomenon that is easy to understand qualitatively.

Masculinities: Liberation through PhotographyBarbican Art Gallery, 20 February–17 May 2020.

This article wants to analyze how Man Rayin his photographs, engages a poetry of silenceusing this medium as a poetic communication technology. To understand the functioning of this poetic language, we will adopt the Groupe μ analysis method (both the General Rhetoricand the Treatise on the Visual Sign). Whereas the language is manifold as the forms of representation, and it present in all media, whatever the lack of speech -silence -would find its richest form in both directions through the metaphors (...) and metonymy engaged in metasememes of the photos studied. (shrink)

This relationship between human and Cosmos, is what Meillassoux refers as “correlationism”. Humans can only establish a correlation with the world through representational structures, but never can they access the in itself. But if one can only experience the world from their own perspective and understand it through synthetic categories via languages, then what is reality “as such”? This is part of what a speculative realist attempts to answer. It is also here, as what pertains to this “real”, where Meillassoux (...) intervenes the discourses of Descartes, Hume, Kant, and 20th century philosophers like Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

There is a widespread view that well-learned skills are automated, and that attention to the performance of these skills is damaging because it disrupts the automatic processes involved in their execution. This idea serves as the basis for an account of choking in high pressure situations. On this view, choking is the result of self-focused attention induced by anxiety. Recent research in sports psychology has produced a significant body of experimental evidence widely interpreted as supporting this account of choking in (...) certain kinds of complex sensorimotor skills. We argue against this interpretation, pointing to problems with both the empirical evidence and the underlying theory. The experimental research fails to provide direct support for the central claims of the self-focus approach, contains inconsistencies, and suffers from problems of ecological validity. In addition, qualitative studies of choking have yielded contrary results. We further argue that in their current forms the self-focus and rival distraction approaches both lack the theoretical resources to provide a good theory of choking, and we argue for an expanded approach. Some of the elements that should be in an expanded approach include accounts of the features of pressure situations that influence the psychological response, the processes of situation appraisal, and the ways that attentional control can be overwhelmed, leading to distraction in some cases, and in others, perhaps, to damaging attention to skill execution. We also suggest that choking may sometimes involve performance-impairing mechanisms other than distraction or self-focus. (shrink)

Initially, in this article, we present the foundation on which current science stands. Next, we explain the main stream of modern science, the “Popperian Falsificationism”, and show why the current criticism to the system is flawed. Later, we will prove that the “falsificationism” is logically inconsistent and we will propose a new concept of science, unifying it with philosophy.

A shared narrative in the literature on the evolution of cooperation maintains that social _learning_ evolves early to allow for the transmission of cumulative culture. Social _norms_, whilst present at the outset, only rise to prominence later on, mainly to stabilise cooperation against the threat of defection. In contrast, I argue that once we consider insights from social epistemology, an expansion of this narrative presents itself: An interesting kind of social norm — an epistemic coordination norm — was operative in (...) early and important instances of specialised social learning. I show how there’s a need for such norms in two key social learning strategies and explain how this need is constituted. In assessor-teaching (e.g. Castro et al., 2019b, 2021), epistemic coordination norms allow agents to coordinate around the _content_ of social learning, i.e., what is to be known and how this is to be done. These norms also allow agents to coordinate around the form of cultural learning in what’s sometimes called strategic social learning (Laland, 2004; Hoppitt & Laland, 2013; Heyes, 2018, Chap. 5) and elsewhere. Broadly speaking, this concerns how cultural learning is organised within the social group. The upshot is that the evolution of social learning and social norms are intertwined in important and underappreciated ways from early on. The above matters as it informs our views about the evolution of social norms more generally. Truly _social_ norms emerged to coordinate a plurality of complex behaviours and interactions, amongst them specialised social learning. I substantiate this view by contrasting it with Jonathan Birch’s views on the evolution of norms. What results is a general but cohesive narrative on the early evolution of social norms. (shrink)