As humans we are constantly engaging not only with other humans but with plants, animals, and matter. This article examines the way we view our engagement with the materiality of the world around us, by looking at the work of philosopher Jane Bennet on vibrant materiality and author Tove Jansson. Bennet presents an argument that matter can be analysed as active and vibrant. While Western philosophers are used to viewing matter as passive and dead, seeing it as active makes space (...) for different engagement with matter. One of the ways we can start engaging with matter, once we stop thinking of it as passive and dead, is through the lens of ethics. Jansson in her children’s book Moominpappa at Sea shows a possibility for looking at the material world through this ethical lens. This article will put these works in conversation by reading both as philosophical works that have nuanced engagement with the topic of how we can be in community with the things that surround us. Jansson’s work provides a helpful addition to Vibrant Matter by showing how we are inextricably entangled in harm, and providing a possible way to live with this reality. (shrink)

In The Empire of Chance, historians of science Gigerenzer et al. argue that statistical thinking has been “second to no other area of scientific endeavor” in its influence on “modern life and thought”. This article describes how quantitative descriptions of risk associated with industrialization and technological change became part of the mentality of ordinary Americans. It explains why Americans began counting accidents, tells what kinds of accidents they counted and how they counted them, and shows how statistical representations of risk (...) were used to justify prescriptions for public policy and individual behavior. On this frontier of the empire of chance, safety experts and self-styled “practical statisticians” were the principal colonizers. Distant from the centers of academic statistical science, they compromised rigorous scientific standards of methodology and accurate prediction in order to make convincing arguments outside their circles of expertise. To convey their point of view to audiences who were not literate in the field of statistics, they created a public language that conveyed statistical ideas through metaphors, graphic representations, and other rhetorical devices. They also engaged non-experts in collecting and analyzing data and, by the 1920s, even used quantitative self-measurement as a device to convince members of the public to alter their own risk-taking behaviors. (shrink)

Although big-data research has met with multiple controversies in diverse fields, political and security implications of big data in life sciences have received less attention. This paper explores how threats and risks are anticipated and acted on in biobanking, which builds research repositories for biomedical samples and data. Focusing on the biggest harmonisation cluster of biomedical research in Europe, BBMRI-ERIC, the paper analyses different logics of risk in the anticipatory discourse on biobanking. Based on document analysis, interviews with ELSI experts, (...) and field research, three types of framing of risk are reconstructed: data security, privacy, and data misuse. The paper finds that these logics downplay the broader social and political context and reflects on the limits of the practices of anticipatory governance in biobanking. It argues that this regime of governance can make it difficult for biobanks to address possible future challenges, such as access to biomedical data by authorities, pressures for integrating biobank data with other type of personal data, or their use for profiling beyond medical purposes. To address potential controversies and societal implications related to the use of big data in health research and medicine, the paper suggests to expand the vocabulary and practices of anticipatory governance, in the biobanking community and beyond. (shrink)

In a clinic-wide approach to establish liberal policies, a closed psychiatric ward was planned to be opened. The leaders of the multi-professional team of this ward requested continuous ethics support during the first few months after the transition from their previously closed ward into an open one. During the process of accompanying the team through this ethically sensitive period of institutional change, several variations of ethics consultation were developed: the ‘context-adjusted’ clinical ethics support. Some ethics consultations focused on a retrospective (...) evaluation of a patient case, in other ethics consultations consolidation of a previous case discussion was worked out, and/or reflections on fundamental ethical issues were included. Based on our experiences and the feedback of the team, we consider this context-adjusted clinical ethics support as feasible and effective. (shrink)

Dissident circles during the Czechoslovak communist regime were organized in semi-private islands of resistance. They saw themselves as a parallel polis in line with Arendt’s notion of political action by pursuing “life in truth,” authentic experience, and ultimately freedom. The heroes of these circles were that society’s pariahs. In their quest for authenticity, they turned to the past to find meaning, to understand the nature of their communities and the needs for political action towards the future. As such, they sought (...) what Heidegger would label authentic public interpretations. After 1989, these heroes shaped and adapted to the constitutional design of the new polis and often experienced a transformation from pariah to inauthentic hero to at least the potential to become strong man, maintaining varying degrees of authenticity. (shrink)

M.H.L. is a theatrical production dedicated to the first Slovak professional female director Magda Husáková-Lokvencová, which combines documentary theatre and performance. Sláva Daubnerová wrote the script and scene concept and is director and plays the sole character in the play. She portrays the private and professional life of M.H.L. in a chronologically sequenced and mosaic-like fashion. M.H.L. is portrayed as an educated, broad-minded and intelligent woman who knows her own mind. She graduated in law and then took up theatre direction. (...) Her private and professional life represented a series of ups and downs. Initially happy at the side of her husband, Gustáv Husák—successful early on as a politician, and flourishing in the theatre, she later had to struggle to survive and make a comeback to the theatre. Performer Daubnerová, enhanced the performance by using video art and sound design as important elements in the production. (shrink)

M.H.L. is a theatrical production dedicated to the first Slovak professional female director Magda Husáková-Lokvencová, which combines documentary theatre and performance. Sláva Daubnerová wrote the script and scene concept and is director and plays the sole character in the play. She portrays the private and professional life of M.H.L. in a chronologically sequenced and mosaic-like fashion. M.H.L. is portrayed as an educated, broad-minded and intelligent woman who knows her own mind. She graduated in law and then took up theatre direction. (...) Her private and professional life represented a series of ups and downs. Initially happy at the side of her husband, Gustáv Husák—successful early on as a politician, and flourishing in the theatre, she later had to struggle to survive and make a comeback to the theatre. Performer Daubnerová, enhanced the performance by using video art and sound design as important elements in the production. (shrink)

In Cold War Freud Dagmar Herzog uncovers the astonishing array of concepts of human selfhood which circulated across the globe in the aftermath of World War II. Against the backdrop of Nazism and the Holocaust, the sexual revolution, feminism, gay rights, and anticolonial and antiwar activism, she charts the heated battles which raged over Freud's legacy. From the postwar US to Europe and Latin America, she reveals how competing theories of desire, anxiety, aggression, guilt, trauma and pleasure emerged and (...) were then transformed to serve both conservative and subversive ends in a fundamental rethinking of the very nature of the human self and its motivations. Her findings shed new light on psychoanalysis' enduring contribution to the enigma of the relationship between nature and culture, and the ways in which social contexts enter into and shape the innermost recesses of individual psyches. (shrink)

Článek ukazuje pohled na utváření novověké koncepce pokroku v dílech Bernarda Le Boviera de Fontenelle. Idea pokroku byla poprvé přesně zformulována právě ve Fontenellových pracích. Podnětem pro Fontenellovy úvahy byla intelektuální debata querelle des anciens et des modernes. Tato diskuze měla rozhodnout o nadřazenosti novověku nad antikou nebo naopak. Fontenelle se debaty účastnil a závěry, k nimž došel, dovršily jeho teorii pokroku, jíž se věnoval nejen téměř ve všech pracích, ale též ve chvalořečích.

This book offers a critical assessment of Axel Honneth’s complex and growing opus in social and political philosophy. It examines this in the context of the history and future of the Frankfurt School and in its relation to contemporary analytic approaches to social and political philosophy as well as postmodernist critics.

In this article I will show how the goal-directed proof procedure for the propositional fragment of the 'inconsistency-adaptive' logic CLuN(r)from Batens (2005, J. Appl. Logic, 3, 221-250) called pCLuN(r) allows for generating sensible abductive explanations from finite inconsistent theories. Before this is shown, I give a more general account on how goal-directed proof procedures contribute to the study of abduction as backward reasoning. Between these two parts, I describe the goal-directed proof procedure for the propositional fragment of the 'inconsistency-adaptive' logic (...) CLuNr from Batens (2005, J. Appl. Logic, 3, 221-250). (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 1 Seiten: 1-33.

While the effects of pattern learning on language processing are well known, the way in which pattern learning shapes exploratory behavior has long gone unnoticed. We report on the way in which individual differences in statistical pattern learning affect performance in the domain of language along multiple dimensions. Analyzing data from healthy monolingual adults' performance on a serial reaction time task and a self‐paced reading task, we show how individual differences in statistical pattern learning are reflected in readers' knowledge of (...) linguistic co‐occurrence patterns and in their exploration and exploitation of content‐specific and task‐general information. First, we investigated the extent to which an individual's pattern learning correlates with his or her sensitivity to systematic morphological and syntactic co‐occurrences, as evidenced while reading authentic sentences. We found that the stream of morphological and syntactic information has a more pronounced effect on the reading speed of, as we will label them, content‐sensitive learners in that the more probable the co‐occurrence pattern, the faster their reading of that pattern will be. Next, we investigated how differences in pattern learning are reflected in the ways in which individuals approach the reading task itself and adapt to it. Casting this relation in terms of exploration/exploitation strategies, known from Reinforcement Learning, we conclude that content‐sensitive learners are also more likely to initially probe (explore) a wider range of directly relevant patterns, which they can later use (exploit) to optimize their reading performance further. By affecting exploratory behavior, pattern learning influences the information that is gathered and becomes available for exploitation, thereby increasing the effect pattern learning has on language cognition. (shrink)

The contributions in this grammar-theoretical volume examine current developmental trends in German under the aspect of changing coding techniques. These tendencies include morpho-syntactical changes in the realization of aspect, tense and mode as well as tendencies to omit the article and the processes resulting from this and also purely syntactic changes like the distance position of pronominal adverbs.

O objetivo deste artigo é um estudo da virtude em Aristóteles. O termo areté é frequentemente traduzido como “virtude”, mas sua real significação remete-nos à ideia de “excelência”. Cada atividade humana, prática, possui uma areté particular. No domínio político, além da deliberação, Aristóteles expõe a noção de phronesis. Esta última é a excelência do líder político.

This paper is the result of encounters with cinema in a course entitled Cultural Activities, a required class in the undergraduate education program of the School of Education at Brazil’s Fluminense Federal University. The goal was to produce aesthetic experiences with the moving images of cinematic language that would go beyond the usual didactic and utilitarian ways of exemplifying course content. We counted on the power of moving images to produce affective images, an aesthetic device that drives the relation between (...) thought and language, thereby contributing to a pause in time, thereby allowing us the opportunity to examine more carefully the existential human condition as historically constituted in the world today. This paper was thus the result of using cinema as a tool of social analysis and a methodological resource for the training of undergraduate education students. The cinematic artifact presented here is an animated feature whose story unfolds through the eyes of a child confronting a world tainted by the misfortunes of capitalism. For theoretical support, we focus on authors who analyze the capitalist political and socioeconomic model and its effects on the human condition. Through O menino e o mundo, a student and teacher share their different, but nonetheless powerful, ideas about the field of education, work, and the consumerism and alienation that result from current modes of production. It is particularly important to emphasize that the paper itself is a byproduct of the methodological approach of the course. (shrink)

This Handbook assembles state-of-the-art insights into the co-evolutionary and precarious relations between science and public policy. Beyond this, it also offers a fresh outlook on emerging challenges for science (including technology and innovation) in changing societies, and related policy requirements, as well as the challenges for public policy in view of science-driven economic, societal, and cultural changes. In short, this book deals with science as a policy-triggered project as well as public policy as a science-driven venture.

Although there is a broad consensus that both the procedural and declarative memory systems play a crucial role in language learning, use, and knowledge, the mapping between linguistic types and memory structures remains underspecified: by default, a dual-route mapping of language systems to memory systems is assumed, with declarative memory handling idiosyncratic lexical knowledge and procedural memory handling rule-governed knowledge of grammar.We experimentally contrast the processing of morphology (case and aspect), syntax (subordination), and lexical semantics (collocations) in a healthy L1 (...) population of Polish, a language rich in form distinctions. We study the processing of these four types under two conditions: a single task condition in which the grammaticality of stimuli was judged and a concurrent task condition in which grammaticality judgments were combined with a digit span task. Dividing attention impedes access to declarative memory while leaving procedural memory unaffected and hence constitutes a test that dissociates which types of linguistic information each long-term memory construct subserves.Our findings confirm the existence of a distinction between lexicon and grammar as a generative, dual-route model would predict, but the distinction is graded, as usage-based models assume: the hypothesized grammar–lexicon opposition appears as a continuum on which grammatical phenomena can be placed as being more or less “ruly” or “idiosyncratic.” However, usage-based models, too, need adjusting as not all types of linguistic knowledge are proceduralized to the same extent. This move away from a simple dichotomy fundamentally changes how we think about memory for language, and hence how we design and interpret behavioral and neuroimaging studies that probe into the nature of language cognition. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 4 Seiten: 447-463.

A number of studies report that frequency is a poor predictor of acceptability, in particular at the lower end of the frequency spectrum. Because acceptability judgments provide a substantial part of the empirical foundation of dominant linguistic traditions, understanding how acceptability relates to frequency, one of the most robust predictors of human performance, is crucial. The relation between low frequency and acceptability is investigated using corpus- and behavioral data on the distribution of infinitival and finite that-complements in Polish. Polish verbs (...) exhibit substantial subordination variation and for the majority of verbs taking an infinitival complement, the that-complement occurs with low frequency. These low-frequency that-clauses, in turn, exhibit large differences in how acceptable they are to native speakers. It is argued that acceptability judgments are based on configurations of internally structured exemplars, the acceptability of which cannot reliably be assessed until sufficient evidence about the core component has accumulated. (shrink)

We examined how language supports the expression of temporality within sentence boundaries in English, which has a rich inventory of grammatical means to express temporality. Using a computational model that mimics how humans learn from exposure we explored what the use of different tense and aspect combinations reveals about the interaction between our experience of time and the cognitive demands that talking about time puts on the language user. Our model was trained on n-grams extracted from the BNC to select (...) the TA combination that fits the context best. It revealed the existence of two different sub-systems within the set of TA combinations, a “simplex” one that is supported lexically and is easy to learn, and a “complex” one that is supported contextually and is hard to learn. The finding that some TA combinations are essentially lexical in nature necessitates a rethink of tense and aspect as grammatical categories that form the axes of the temporal system. We argue that the system of temporal reference may be more fruitfully thought of as the result of learning a system that is steeped in experience and organised along a number of functional principles. (shrink)

This study contextualizes Konrad of Megenberg’s “Book of Natural Things” within the natural philosophy practiced by the Faculty of Arts in the 14th century. Albert the Great and texts of ps.-Albert emerge as significant in this interpretation.

Breastfeeding policies and the production of motherhood: a historical–cultural approach This paper revisits some of the aspects that allow us to situate historically the process that has been called the ‘politicization of women's breasts’. It is part of a broader research project being undertaken in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, which is studying information from the educational material used in the National Campaign for the Incentive of Breastfeeding. The methodological approach used is cultural analysis, and its theoretical basis is informed (...) by feminist studies and cultural studies, from a poststructuralist perspective. Knowledges and practices that produce notions of maternity are problematized to argue that current political and economic arrangements have necessitated a redefinition of motherhood. This re‐signification of motherhood has transferred to women the duty of solving an array of problems that were previously considered government's responsibility, in particular those related to the physical and emotional development of infants. (shrink)

A number of studies report that frequency is a poor predictor of acceptability, in particular at the lower end of the frequency spectrum. Because acceptability judgments provide a substantial part of the empirical foundation of dominant linguistic traditions, understanding how acceptability relates to frequency, one of the most robust predictors of human performance, is crucial. The relation between low frequency and acceptability is investigated using corpus‐ and behavioral data on the distribution of infinitival and finite that‐complements in Polish. Polish verbs (...) exhibit substantial subordination variation and for the majority of verbs taking an infinitival complement, the that‐complement occurs with low frequency (<0.66 ipm). These low‐frequency that‐clauses, in turn, exhibit large differences in how acceptable they are to native speakers. It is argued that acceptability judgments are based on configurations of internally structured exemplars, the acceptability of which cannot reliably be assessed until sufficient evidence about the core component has accumulated. (shrink)

This essay examines the status of events of 1989 in Czechoslovakia from an Arendtian perspective, focusing on whether they qualify as a revolution or even, precisely speaking, a modern event. For Arendt, revolutions are decidedly modern in that they expand freedom to all equally, an expansion conceivable because history can be thought of as rectilinear and because new ideas can be introduced into the secular world. Leaving aside the importance of violence as a criterion, we find that 1989 in Czechoslovakia (...) does not live up to her other criteria, nor does it make sense to call it either modern or postmodern. We thus claim that it is an ‘immodern’, non-revolutionary event. In concluding, we nd that its immodernity is why it failed to be a revolution. (shrink)

Résumé La réception des Lumières en République démocratique allemande (RDA) était particulière. D’une part, la tradition marxiste a découvert la pensée matérialiste dans l’histoire des idées allemande et a reproché à juste titre à la « bourgeoisie idéaliste » de l’avoir marginalisée. D’autre part, l’usage dogmatique de l’ouvrage de Lénine concernant l’épistémologie de Ernst Mach, Matérialisme et empiriocriticisme, empêcha d’apprécier convenablement des penseurs importants comme Jean Le Rond D’Alembert. De plus, la structure répressive de la vie académique en RDA a (...) paralysé la renaissance de la pensée matérialiste. Au lieu de se consacrer aux conditions concrètes de la production du savoir, la pensée matérialiste était entravée par l’obligation de recourir à l’interprétation économique. (shrink)

Populärwissenschaftliche Analyse des alten und neuen Ehrbegriffs in der Bundesrepublik anhand aktueller Beispiele aus Politik, Wirtschaft und Internet.

Does the polis face the demos with hostility? Do citizens contest the city? Is a people in opposed separation from its political institutions? A multidisciplinary collection on people and the institutions they find themselves in and under, the essays here engage questions of the individual , communities, leadership, populism, citizenship, social media, and technology. The collection includes work by philosophers, political scientists, and political theorists using quantitative, historical, and hermeneutical methodologies to take on some of the most pressing issues of (...) our historical moment. (shrink)

After the fall of an oppressive regime, public interpretation of the past provides the normative backbone for the new society’s institutional framework. This narrative also molds temporality on a collective level, elevating some events and eras above the floating river of time, while omitting or suppressing others. In all societies, collective memory, and the temporality embedded within it, are mediated within the public domain. This paper argues that the hyper-accelerated time of transition leaves its mediating function vulnerable and prone to (...) slip into manipulation. By monopolizing the public interpretation of the past and manipulating public temporality, political regimes undermine the processes of healing and reconciliation, which require us to recognize different voices and interpretations. A manipulated temporality, that clashes with the personal temporality of lived experience, may violate personal identity and dignity and impede the democratic project. (shrink)

Was ist zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts von einer Auseinandersetzung mit der Philosophie Johann Gottlieb Fichtes zu erwarten, die sich darum bemuht, die Konstitution von Subjektivitat herauszuarbeiten? Kann es nach dem 'Tod des Subjektes' und der neurobiologischen Erforschung des Bewusstseins ein Interesse an Fichte geben, das mehr als ein historisches ist? Das Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, anhand Fichtes Kritik an dem psychologischen Konzept der Seele seine Konstitution von Subjektivitat als mogliche Grundlage fur systemisches Denken und Arbeiten zu erweisen. (...) Zwingende Vorraussetzung, um Fichtes Philosophie zur heutigen Subjektivitats-Debatte hin zu offnen, ist es dabei allerdings, immer noch weit verbreitete Missverstandnisse uber die Wissenschaftslehre zu beheben: Einschatzungen wie 'Grossenwahn' oder 'Narzissmus' gilt es zu widerlegen, um eine neue Lesart der Wissenschaftslehre zu fordern, um damit wiederum ihr volles Potential frei zu legen. (shrink)