This collection of previously unpublished essays is a celebration of the life and thought of a beloved professor who died of cancer in 1983. (pb).

The present issue of Mind and Matter on the concept of 'pragmatic information' has originated from a frutiful collaboration with Peter beim Graben,whose active involvement as a co-editor was decisive for its pro- duction and is greatly appreciated. The following extended editorial intro- duces the topic within a broader background. In particular,the concept of pragmatic information will be related to the study of complex systems and to concepts of complexity that are not in detail addressed in the in- dividual (...) contributions to the issue.Finally,possible connections to an epistemically understood distinction of mental and material domains of discourse will be indicated. (shrink)

My thesis addresses a puzzle concerning Hegel's notion of the value of beauty. On the one hand, the contemplation of beauty, in particular artistic beauty, has the same status for Hegel as philosophical knowledge, since through both, we come to grasp the absolute truth: the unity of spirit and nature, or of the human individual and the world it lives in. On the other hand, Hegel thinks that the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature is in some way deficient, when (...) compared to the unity we come to grasp through philosophical knowledge. Thus Hegel claims that philosophy and art have the same content, while philosophy is higher than art. I suggest that this puzzle can be dissolved if we consider that beautiful art, for Hegel, is associated with a form of life, in which the aesthetic unity of spirit and nature becomes social and political reality: the ancient Greek polis. Since the social and political structure of the polis inevitably leads to tragic collisions, Hegel concludes that the value of beauty provides no ground for establishing an ultimate unity of the human individual and the world it lives in. In Hegel's view, it is only philosophical reflection, and the social and political institutions which emerge from such reflection, which can provide an adequate ground for ultimate reconciliation. Nevertheless, I argue, the contemplation of beauty remains a perfectly adequate way of grasping, if not establishing, this unity. Hence according to the interpretation I propose, philosophy is higher than art in a twofold sense for Hegel. On the one hand, it serves a critical function with respect to the value of beauty: it points out the limits of beauty, in particular the fact that beauty is incapable of making the unity of spirit and nature concrete and real, by turning it into social and political reality. On the other hand, philosophy redeems the promise which is left unfulfilled by beauty: to establish an ultimate unity of spirit and nature, of human individual and the world it lives in. (shrink)

The possibility of ideography is an empirical question. Prior examples of graphic codes do not provide compelling evidence for the infeasibility of ideography, because they fail to satisfy essential cognitive requirements that have only recently been revealed by studies of representational systems in cognitive science. Design criteria derived from cognitive principles suggest how effective graphic codes may be engineered.

Individual differences in the strategies that control sequential behavior were investigated in an experiment in which participants memorized sentences and then wrote them by hand, in a non‐cursive style. Thirty‐two participants each wrote eight sentences, which had hierarchical structures with five levels. The dataset included over 31,000 letters. Despite the deliberately constrained nature of the task and stimuli, 23 patterns of behavior were identified from the durations of pauses that occurred before the inscription of letters at four chunk levels, spanning (...) letters, words, phrases, and sentences. A critical path task analytic model, Graphical Production of Memorized Sentences (GPoMS), shows that the control of writing relies on cues that continuously switch between motor actions and chunk retrievals in a just‐in‐time fashion at the level of letter information. GPoMS explains the individual differences in terms of variants of a motor production mechanism and variants of a chunk retrieval mechanism, which involve varying degrees of parallelism between cognitive actions and motor actions. A graphical technique for constructing GPoMS models was developed that enabled the estimation of ongoing working memory demands during production. (shrink)

Six characteristics of effective representational systems for conceptual learning in complex domains have been identified. Such representations should: (1) integrate levels of abstraction; (2) combine globally homogeneous with locally heterogeneous representation of concepts; (3) integrate alternative perspectives of the domain; (4) support malleable manipulation of expressions; (5) possess compact procedures; and (6) have uniform procedures. The characteristics were discovered by analysing and evaluating a novel diagrammatic representation that has been invented to support students' comprehension of electricity—AVOW diagrams (Amps, Volts, Ohms, (...) Watts). A task analysis is presented that demonstrates that problem solving using a conventional algebraic approach demands more effort than AVOW diagrams. In an experiment comparing two groups of learners using the alternative approaches, the group using AVOW diagrams learned more than the group using equations and were better able to solve complex transfer problems and questions involving multiple constraints. Analysis of verbal protocols and work scratchings showed that the AVOW diagram group, in contrast to the equations group, acquired a coherently organised network of concepts, learnt effective problem solving procedures, and experienced more positive learning events. The six principles of effective representations were proposed on the basis of these findings. AVOW diagrams are Law Encoding Diagrams, a general class of representations that have been shown to support learning in other scientific domains. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant included -What May I Hope?- as one of the three basic questions which human reason asks. "Kant's Philosophy of Hope" presents the first book-length study of this theme which was so important for his views. Dr. Peters's work links together Kant's philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and philosophy of history in an exciting, new way and gives a new importance both to his philosophy of religion and to his theory of hope.".

Six characteristics of effective representational systems for conceptual learning in complex domains have been identified. Such representations should: (1) integrate levels of abstraction; (2) combine globally homogeneous with locally heterogeneous representation of concepts; (3) integrate alternative perspectives of the domain; (4) support malleable manipulation of expressions; (5) possess compact procedures; and (6) have uniform procedures. The characteristics were discovered by analysing and evaluating a novel diagrammatic representation that has been invented to support students' comprehension of electricity—AVOW diagrams (Amps, Volts, Ohms, (...) Watts). A task analysis is presented that demonstrates that problem solving using a conventional algebraic approach demands more effort than AVOW diagrams. In an experiment comparing two groups of learners using the alternative approaches, the group using AVOW diagrams learned more than the group using equations and were better able to solve complex transfer problems and questions involving multiple constraints. Analysis of verbal protocols and work scratchings showed that the AVOW diagram group, in contrast to the equations group, acquired a coherently organised network of concepts, learnt effective problem solving procedures, and experienced more positive learning events. The six principles of effective representations were proposed on the basis of these findings. AVOW diagrams are Law Encoding Diagrams, a general class of representations that have been shown to support learning in other scientific domains. (shrink)

Truth diagrams are introduced as a novel graphical representation for propositional logic. To demonstrate their epistemic efficacy a set of 28 concepts are proposed that any comprehensive representation for PL should encompass. TDs address all the criteria whereas seven other existing representations for PL only provide partial coverage. These existing representations are: the linear formula notation, truth tables, a PL specific interpretation of Venn Diagrams, Frege’s conceptual notation, diagrams from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, Pierce’s alpha graphs and Gardner’s shuttle diagrams. The comparison (...) of the representations succeeds in distinguishing ideas that are fundamental to PL from features of common PL representations that are somewhat arbitrary. (shrink)

The representational epistemic approach to the design of visual displays and notation systems advocates encoding the fundamental conceptual structure of a knowledge domain directly in the structure of a representational system. It is claimed that representations so designed will benefit from greater semantic transparency, which enhances comprehension and ease of learning, and plastic generativity, which makes the meaningful manipulation of the representation easier and less error prone. Epistemic principles for encoding fundamental conceptual structures directly in representational schemes are described. The (...) diagrammatic recodification of probability theory is undertaken to demonstrate how the fundamental conceptual structure of a knowledge domain can be analyzed, how the identified conceptual structure may be encoded in a representational system, and the cognitive benefits that follow. An experiment shows the new probability space diagrams are superior to the conventional approach for learning this conceptually challenging topic. (shrink)

In all respects, Mao has succeeded in creatively developing Marxism in such a way that Mao thought seems adequate to the Chinese situation and superior to the Soviet version.

In all respects, Mao has succeeded in creatively developing Marxism in such a way that Mao thought seems adequate to the Chinese situation and superior to the Soviet version.

Using a paradigm that allows a quasi-continuous tracking of memory performance over time, two experiments were designed to test the hypotheses that persons with a cognitively avoidant style of coping with threat manifest a dissociation between short-term and long-term retrieval of aversive information and persons with a vigilant coping style recall aversive information particularly well after long retention intervals, provided they are free to think about aversive events. Study 1 showed that avoiders manifest a poor memory for aversive pictures after (...) long retention intervals only. Study 2 replicated this finding. In addition, manipulation of the cognitive load during the retention interval influenced vigilants’ recall of aversive information in the predicted way. Results indicate that processes occurring during the retention interval are essential for individual difference in memory for aversive information and require similar attention as encoding, appraisal, and retrieval processes. (shrink)