Websites (e.g. intervention websites targeting health risk behaviors) can be effective in achieving their goals if they are used. The actual use, however, is often very low. This study aimed to assess the effect of visual complexity on intention to use websites, by using within-subjects manipulations of visual complexity and cognitive load (1097 trials, N = 93). The results indicate that high visual complexity has a negative effect on intention to use websites ( F (1, 1095) = 14.81, p < (...) .001), but this is fully mediated through attitude towards the website based on the first impression ( F (1, 1094) = 13.41, p < .001). This clearly demonstrates the powerfulness of a first impression before interacting with a website and stresses the need for evidence-based insight into how this first impression is constituted. Keywords: visual complexity; websites; intention to use. (shrink)

Websites can be effective in achieving their goals if they are used. The actual use, however, is often very low. This study aimed to assess the effect of visual complexity on intention to use websites, by using within-subjects manipulations of visual complexity and cognitive load. The results indicate that high visual complexity has a negative effect on intention to use websites = 14.81,p<.001), but this is fully mediated through attitude towards the website based on the first impression = 13.41,p<.001). This (...) clearly demonstrates the powerfulness of a first impression before interacting with a website and stresses the need for evidence-based insight into how this first impression is constituted. Keywords: visual complexity; websites; intention to use. (shrink)

Websites can be effective in achieving their goals if they are used. The actual use, however, is often very low. This study aimed to assess the effect of visual complexity on intention to use websites, by using within-subjects manipulations of visual complexity and cognitive load. The results indicate that high visual complexity has a negative effect on intention to use websites = 14.81, p <.001), but this is fully mediated through attitude towards the website based on the first impression = (...) 13.41, p <.001). This clearly demonstrates the powerfulness of a first impression before interacting with a website and stresses the need for evidence-based insight into how this first impression is constituted. Keywords: visual complexity; websites; intention to use. (shrink)

Beylikler devri Türk-İslam ciltleri hem tezyînatları hem de üzerlerindeki dini içerikli ibareler, dua ve mücellid mühürleri vasıtasıyla cilt sanatı araştırmacılarının yayınlarına konu olmuştur. Ancak ciltlerdeki dua ifadelerini müstakil olarak konu edinen yayın sayısı oldukça azdır. Türk-İslam ciltlerinin gerek kapak yüzeyinde gerekse kapak içlerinde dua içerikli ibarelere rastlamak mümkündür. Makalenin konusu, Beylikler devrinde üretilen Türk-İslam ciltlerinin deri kaplı kapak içlerinde yer alan el-İzzü’d-Dâim ve’l-İkbâl (العزّ الدّائم والإقبال) yazısı, bu yazının yer aldığı desen kompozisyonu ve yazının analizidir. Makaledeki amaç, şimdiye kadar cilt (...) literatüründe müstakil olarak ele alınmamış el-İzzü’d-Dâim ve’l-İkbâl yazılı cilt kapak içi tezyînatı hakkında tespit edilebilen örneklerin detaylı desen ve yazı analizleriyle bilimsel birikim oluşturabilmek ve aynı ya da benzer ibarenin yer aldığı diğer İslam sanat eserlerini tespit ederek bu dua ibaresinin ciltlerdeki kullanım amacını ve kullanıldığı dönemleri belirlemeye çalışmaktır. Cilt sanatı literatürü ve yazma eser kütüphanelerinde yaptığımız araştırmalar neticesinde, Beylikler dönemine ait ciltlerin altı tanesinin kapak içinde el-İzzü’d-Dâim ve’l-İkbâl ibaresi tespit edilmiştir. Bu tespitlerin sayısı, yapılacak yeni araştırmalarla artabilecektir. Tespit edilen yazma eserler; Amasya YEK: 217, İnebey YEK Hüseyin Çelebi: 481 ve Ulu Cami: 318, Kastamonu YEK: 2856 ve 3435 ve Süleymaniye YEK Fatih: 5004’tür. Ciltlerin kapak, sertâb ve mikleb yüzeylerindeki tezyînatları, Beylikler dönemi cilt sanatı üslûbunu yansıtan süslemelerdir. Ciltlerin teknik ve tezyînatları, -mevcut olanların- istinsâh kayıtları incelendiğinde üç örneğin (Amasya YEK: 217, Kastamonu YEK: 2856 ve 3435) 14. yüzyıl tarihli olduğu ya da tarihlendirildiği, üç örneğin (İnebey YEK Hüseyin Çelebi: 481 ve Ulu Cami: 318, Süleymaniye YEK Fatih: 5004) ise 15. yüzyıl tarihli olduğu ya da tarihlendirildiği görülmektedir. Ciltlerin kapak içi deseni, bitkisel ve rûmî motiflerle bezeli tam zemin geometrik bir tasarıma sahiptir. Geometrik desenin içerisindeki altıgen paftalarda el-İzzü’d-Dâim ve’l-İkbâl (العزّ الدّائم والإقبال) yazısı yer almaktadır. İbarenin, cilt kapak içlerine tek satırda (İnebey YEK Ulu Cami: 318, Kastamonu YEK: 3435) ve çift satırda -½ oranında ters simetrik- (Amasya YEK: 217, İnebey YEK Hüseyin Çelebi: 481, Kastamonu YEK: 2856, Süleymaniye YEK Fatih: 5004) olmak üzere iki türde yazıldığı tespit edilmiştir. Her iki tasarımda da sülüs yazı çeşidi tercih edilmiştir. İnebey YEK Hüseyin Çelebi: 481 envanter numaralı 15. yüzyıla ait cildin kapak içinde ise diğer örneklerden farklı olarak yazı paftalarının bazılarında mücellit kitabesi bulunmaktadır. Kitabede, “Amel-i Mücellid Haydar b. Turbegî” yazılıdır. Kapak içi tezyînatının aynı olması nedeniyle, Kastamonu YEK: 2856 ve Süleymaniye YEK Fatih: 5004 envanter numaralı ciltlerin de Haydar b. Turbegî adlı mücellidin eseri olma ihtimali vardır. Ciltlerin kapak içlerinin tümü, çeşitli tonlarda kahverengi sahtiyanla kaplıdır. Derilerin gözenek türü bunu ispat eder niteliktedir. Süsleme tekniği, tüm kapak içlerinde soğuk baskı tekniğidir. Bu teknik adını, uygulanması esnasında altının kullanılmamasından almaktadır. Soğuk baskı tekniğinde, desenin deriye genellikle sıcak pres uygulaması yapılarak aktarıldığı bilinmektedir. Uygulamada yüzeyinde motif veya desenin yer aldığı kalıp, çivi ve diğer ciltçilik aletleri kullanılmaktadır. Çalışma kapsamındaki ciltlerde kapak içi deseninin kalıpla uygulandığı, deri üzerindeki desenin kesintili çizgilerden anlaşılmaktadır. Kapak içi tezyînâtını oluşturan desenin simetrik bir parçası, kalıba işlenmiş ve kalıp deri üzerine simetrik bir şekilde, boşluk bırakılmadan basılmıştır. Yapılan incelemelerden anlaşıldığı kadarıyla kalıbın basıldığı deri, kapak içine yapıştırıldıktan sonra kapak kenarlarından cilt ebadına uygun şekilde kesilmiş olmalıdır. Kalıbın bazı örneklerde hatalı basıldığı da görülmektedir. Bu da desenin devamlılığını kısmen bozmuştur. Soğuk baskı tekniğinde, desenin deriye genellikle sıcak pres uygulaması yapılarak aktarıldığı bilinmektedir. Desenin deri renginden daha açık olması, uygulamanın ısıyla yapılmış olduğunu doğrulamaktadır. Ciltlerin kapak yüzeylerinin kullanıma bağlı olarak yıprandığı ve bu nedenle desenlerin deforme olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Ancak kapak içleri böyle bir yıpranmaya maruz kalmadıkları için korunarak günümüze ulaşmıştır. el-İzzü’d-Dâim ve’l-İkbâl (العزّ الدّائم والإقبال) ibaresi Arapça bir terkip olup “sonsuz güç ve yüksek mevki” anlamına gelmektedir. Terkip; güç, kudret ve ihtişam anlamına gelen العزّ ve ferah, parlak ve yüksek mevki anlamındaki الإقبال kelimelerinden oluşmaktadır. İbare dua, temenni vb. maksatlarla kullanılmış olmalıdır. Çalışma kapsamındaki ciltler ve diğer İslam sanatı örneklerinden anlaşıldığı kadarıyla İslam sanat eserleri üzerinde el-İzzü’d-Dâim ve’l-İkbâl ibaresine 12. yüzyıldan 15. yüzyıla kadar geniş bir dönemde yer verilmiştir. (shrink)

This paper shows that the resources mobilized by recent arguments against individualism in the philosophy of mind also suffice to construct a good argument against a Humean-style skepticism about our knowledge of extra-mental reality. The argument constructed, however, will not suffice to lay to rest the attacks of a truly global skeptic who rejects the idea that we usually know what our occurrent mental states are.

The way Cambodian patients and health professionals judge the priority of HIV-infected patients in relation to the allocation of antiretroviral drugs was examined. Participants were either HIV-infected patients attending the HIV/AIDS Care and Support Centre for People Living with HIV/AIDS in Phnom Penh (29 females and 21 males) or members of the staff (9 physicians, 6 pharmacists and 15 health counsellors and health educators). They were presented with stories of a few lines depicting a patient's situation and were instructed to (...) judge the extent to which the patient should be given priority for HIV drugs. The stories were composed according to a four within-subject factor design: (a) the patient's family responsibilities, (b) the severity of infection, (c) the time elapsed since the first consultation, and (d) the financial difficulties of the family. Most patients expressed the view that the drugs should be used for the patients who are most important from a familial point of view, namely, when the family contains small children and/or is already in a precarious financial condition. (shrink)

The ten essays in this collection were written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the lectures which became Wilfrid Sellars's Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, one of the crowning achievements of 20th-century analytic philosophy. Both appreciative and critical of Sellars's accomplishment, they engage with his treatment of crucial issues in metaphysics and epistemology. The topics include the standing of empiricism, Sellars's complex treatment of perception, his dissatisfaction with both foundationalist and coherentist epistemologies, his commitment to realism, and the status (...) of the normative. The volume shows how vibrant Sellarsian philosophy remains in the 21st century. (shrink)

This publication deals with the practical philosophy in Barhebraeus's enclyclopaedia of Aristotelian wisdom "Butyrum sapientiae". The three Syriac books on Ethics, Politics and Economy are unique and the only specimens of its kind, surviving in the Syriac language and literature.

This publication deals with the practical philosophy in Barhebraeus's enclyclopaedia of Aristotelian wisdom "Butyrum sapientiae". The three Syriac books on Ethics, Politics and Economy are unique and the only specimens of its kind, surviving in the Syriac language and literature.

Cervical spinal cord injuries often lead to loss of motor function in both hands and legs, limiting autonomy and quality of life. While it was shown that unilateral hand function can be restored after SCI using a hybrid electroencephalography/electrooculography brain/neural hand exoskeleton, it remained unclear whether such hybrid paradigm also could be used for operating two hand exoskeletons, e.g., in the context of bimanual tasks such as eating with fork and knife. To test whether EEG/EOG signals allow for fluent and (...) reliable as well as safe and user-friendly bilateral B/NHE control, eight healthy participants as well as four chronic tetraplegics performed a complex sequence of EEG-controlled bilateral grasping and EOG-controlled releasing motions of two exoskeletons visually presented on a screen. A novel EOG command performed by prolonged horizontal eye movements to the left or right was introduced as a reliable switch to activate either the left or right exoskeleton. Fluent EEG control was defined as average “time to initialize” grasping motions below 3 s. Reliable EEG control was assumed when classification accuracy exceeded 80%. Safety was defined as “time to stop” all unintended grasping motions within 2 s. After the experiment, tetraplegics were asked to rate the user-friendliness of bilateral B/NHE control using Likert scales. Average TTI and accuracy of EEG-controlled operations ranged at 2.14 ± 0.66 s and 85.89 ± 15.81% across healthy participants and at 1.90 ± 0.97 s and 81.25 ± 16.99% across tetraplegics. Except for one tetraplegic, all participants met the safety requirements. With 88 ± 11% of the maximum achievable score, tetraplegics rated the control paradigm as user-friendly and reliable. These results suggest that hybrid EEG/EOG B/NHE control of two assistive devices is feasible and safe, paving the way to test this paradigm in larger clinical trials performing bimanual tasks in everyday life environments. (shrink)

Advanced Cell Technology's Ethics Advisory Board has been called window dressing for a corporate marketing plan. But the scientists and managers have paid attention, and the lawyers have gone along.

In the following dialogue between TT - a foundationalist - and WdeV - a Sellarsian, we offer our differing assessments of the principle for observational knowledge proposed in Wilfrid Sellars's 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind'. Sellars writes: 'For a Konstatierung "This is green" to "express observational knowledge", not only must it be a symptom or sign of the presence of a green object in standard conditions, but the perceiver must know that tokens of "This is green" are symptoms of (...) the presence of green objects in conditions which are standard for visual perception.' In the ensuing dialogue, TT argues that it sets the bar too high when knowledge about perceptual conditions is required for ordinary observational knowledge - that young children, for example, are implausibly excluded as knowers given Sellars's principle. WdeV defends Sellars's metaknowledge requirement against these charges. Results from developmental psychology are surveyed for what they show about the actual capabilities of young children. The implications of these results for the success of Sellars's principle are debated. (shrink)

A review of Lycan's Book "Consciousness".

Wilfrid Sellars has been called "the most profound and systematic epistemological thinker of the twentieth century". He was in many respects ahead of his time, and many of his innovations have become widely acknowledged, for example, his attack on the "myth of the given", his functionalist treatment of intentional states, his proposal that psychological concepts are like theoretical concepts, and his suggestion that attributions of knowledge locate the knower "in the logical space of reasons". However, while many philosophers have begun (...) to acknowledge Sellars's inspiration in their work, their interpretation of his thought has not always been the most accurate. His writings are difficult. Individually, his essays are complex and sometimes rely on doctrines and arguments he put forward elsewhere. Each of his articles is deepened and strengthened by seeing it in its systematic context, but he never wrote a unified exposition of his system, which therefore has to be pieced together from numerous disparate sources. Willem deVries addresses these difficulties specifically and provides a careful reading and remarkable overview of Sellars's systematic philosophy that will become the standard point of reference for all philosophers seeking to understand Sellars's hugely significant body of work. (shrink)

Boundary Images investigates the political, material, and visual work that images do to cross and blur the boundaries between the technological and biological and between humans, machines, and nature. Exploring the limits of the visual and beyond what can be seen, Boundary Images posits these boundaries as starting points for the production of new and radically different ways of knowing about the world.

Overview of Wilfrid Sellars's philosophy.

This is a careful explication of and commentary on Wilfrid Sellars's classic essay "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" [EPM]. It is appropriate for upper-level undergraduates and beyond. The full text of EPM is included in the volume.

A dialogue between someone who finds Sellars's Rylean myth in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" quite implausible and another who defends it.

An interpretation of Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit showing its continued relevance to contemporary issues in the philosophy of mind.

Though Wilfrid Sellars portrayed himself as a latter-day Kantian, I argue here that he was at least as much a Hegelian. Several themes Sellars shares with Hegel are investigated: the sociality and normativity of the intentional, categorial change, the rejection of the given, and especially their denial of an unknowable thing-in-itself. They are also united by an emphasis on the unity of things—the belief that things do ‘‘hang together.’’ Hegel’s unity is idealist; Sellars’ is physicalist; the differences are substantial, but (...) so are the resonances. (shrink)

Sellars claims completeness for both the “manifest” and the “scientific images” in a way that tempts one to assume that they are independent of each other, while, in fact, they must share at least one common element: the language of individual and community intentions. I argue that this significantly muddies the waters concerning his claim of ontological primacy for the scientific image, though not in favor of the ontological primacy of the manifest image. The lesson I draw is that we (...) need to reassess the aims of ontology. (shrink)

An analysis of Hegel's chapter on teleology in the Science of Logic. Hegel argues that the 'intentional model' of teleology assumed by Kant actually presupposes a natural or organic teleology more like along Aristotelian lines.

Leading philosophers from both sides of the Atlantic present essays on Wilfrid Sellars's Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, one of the crowning achievements of 20th-century analytic philosophy. They discuss empiricism, perception, epistemology, realism, and normativity, showing how vibrant Sellarsian philosophy remains in the 21st century.

this essay argues that John McDowell's argument that sensations are a useless 'fifth wheel' in Wilfrid Sellars' philosophy of experience fails.

Robert Brandom makes several mistakes in his discussion of Sellars's "Two-Ply" account of observation. Brandom does not recognize the difference in "level" between observation reports concerning physical objects and 'looks'-statements. He also denies that 'looks'-statements are reports or even make claims. They then demonstrate a more correct reading of Sellars on 'looks'-statements.

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

Robert B. Brandom’s From Empiricism to Expressivism ranges widely over fundamental issues in metaphysics, with occasional forays into epistemology as well. The centerpiece is what Brandom calls ‘the Kant-Sellars thesis about modality’. This is ‘[t]he claim that in being able to use ordinary empirical descriptive vocabulary, one already knows how to do everything that one needs to know how to do, in principle, to use alethic modal vocabulary – in particular subjunctive conditionals’. Despite claiming descent from Sellars, Brandom defends here (...) a version of modal realism and tries hard to limit Sellarsian nominalism, all in the service of elaborating Brandom’s own version of pragmatism. The range of issues Brandom addresses defies adequate consideration in a critical notice, so I confine myself here to a single issue: What is.. (shrink)

Though Wilfrid Sellars portrayed himself as a latter-day Kantian, I argue here that he was at least as much a Hegelian. Several themes Sellars shares with Hegel are investigated: the sociality and normativity of the intentional, categorial change, the rejection of the given, and especially their denial of an unknowable thing-in-itself. They are also united by an emphasis on the unity of things—the belief that things do “hang together.” Hegel’s unity is idealist; Sellars’ is physicalist; the differences are substantial, but (...) so are the resonances. (shrink)

I argue that John McDowell’s attempt to refute Wilfrid Sellars’s two-component analysis of perceptual experience and substitute for it a conception according to which perceptual experience is the “conceptual shaping of sensory consciousness” fails. McDowell does not recognize the subtle dialectic in Sellars’s thought between transcendental and empirical considerations in favor of a substantive conception of sense impressions, and McDowell’s own proposal seems to empty the notion of sensory consciousness of any real significance.

Sellars was committed to the irreducibility of the semantic, the intentional, and the normative. Nevertheless, he was also committed to naturalism, which is prima facie at odds with his other theses. This paper argues that Sellars maintained his naturalism by being linguistically pluralistic but ontologically monistic . There are irreducibly distinct forms of discourse, because there is an array of distinguishable functions that language and thought perform, but we are not ontologically committed to the array of apparently non-natural entities or (...) relations mentioned in the metalanguage. However, there is an underlying relation between language and world presupposed by all empirically meaningful language. In his early work Sellars sought to describe this relation in linguistic terms as a form of 'pure description', but inadequacies in that notion drove him towards the naturalistic relation between language and world that he came to call 'picturing'. (shrink)

The is a reading of Hegel's chapter on teleology in the Science of Logic. It argues that inadequacies in the intentional model of teleology that dominated both pre-Kantian and Kantian thought about teleology force us to recognize a much more Aristotelian conception of natural teleology that must be presupposed to make sense of the teleology of intentions.

For years, Robert B. Brandom has been working on a book on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Earlier versions of its chapters were available for scrutiny at Brandom’s website. But the book itself is...

Can epistemologies anchor processes of social inequality? In this paper, we consider how epistemological dominance in science, engineering, and health fields perpetuates disadvantages for students who enter higher education with alternative epistemologies. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Native American students enrolled at two US research universities who adhere to or revere indigenous epistemologies, we find that epistemological dominance in SE&H degree programs disadvantages students through three processes. First, it delegitimizes Native epistemologies and marginalizes and silences students who value them. Second, (...) in the process of imparting these dominant scientific epistemologies, SE&H courses sometimes require students to participate in pedagogical practices that challenge indigenous ways of knowing. Third, students encounter epistemological imperialism: most students in the sample are working to earn SE&H degrees in order to return to tribal communities to “give back,” yet, because the US laws regulating the practice of SE&H extend onto tribal lands, students must earn credentials in epistemologies that devalue, delegitimate, and threaten indigenous knowledge ways to practice on tribal lands. We examine how students navigate these experiences, discuss the implications of these findings for SE&H education, and describe how epistemological dominance may serve as a mechanism of inequality reproduction more broadly. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars has often be proclaimed the father of the "theory theory" of psychological knowledge. This article exposes what is true and and what is false in this claim.