This book argues that Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra employs circular and cyclical (diurnal and seasonal) symbols to communicate both the life-affirmative and the cosmological aspect of "recurrence" as a unifying idea. It shows that twelve day cycles, which run throughout the book's narrative, and the one full annual cycle, which encompasses the circular and the diurnal images in a continuous cycle of life affirmation, track Zarathustra's ever-changing identity throughout the text. In representing the eternal recurrence, the circular and the cyclical (...) symbols respectively convey the book's central message: Zarathustra comes into being in order to affirm existence as the teacher of eternal recurrence in an endlessly repeating cosmos. The study complements recent findings that Nietzsche's book is on eternal recurrence by establishing the unity among its language, structure, and fundamental conception, which solves the century-old problem of the communication or location of the doctrine within the text. The book is designed for the specialised audience of Nietzsche studies. It would also appeal to both students and professors in various disciplines across humanities and social sciences, as well as to anyone interested in understanding the basic tenets of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (shrink)

Identifying, classifying, and analyzing arguments in legal discourse has been a prominent area of research since the inception of the argument mining field. However, there has been a major discrepancy between the way natural language processing (NLP) researchers model and annotate arguments in court decisions and the way legal experts understand and analyze legal argumentation. While computational approaches typically simplify arguments into generic premises and claims, arguments in legal research usually exhibit a rich typology that is important for gaining insights (...) into the particular case and applications of law in general. We address this problem and make several substantial contributions to move the field forward. First, we design a new annotation scheme for legal arguments in proceedings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that is deeply rooted in the theory and practice of legal argumentation research. Second, we compile and annotate a large corpus of 373 court decisions (2.3M tokens and 15k annotated argument spans). Finally, we train an argument mining model that outperforms state-of-the-art models in the legal NLP domain and provide a thorough expert-based evaluation. All datasets and source codes are available under open lincenses at https://github.com/trusthlt/mining-legal-arguments. (shrink)

If we are to believe the proponents of the Theory of Practice and of Rational Choice, the gap between these two paradigmatic approaches cannot be bridged. They rely on ontological premises, theories of motivations and causal models that stand too far apart. In this article, I argue that this theoretical antinomy loses much of its edge when we take as objects of sociological investigation processes of historical change, that is, when we try to specify in theoretical terms how and in (...) which conditions historical actors enact and endorse shifts in patterns of relations as well as shifts in the symbolic and cognitive categories that make these relations significant. I substantiate this argument in light of the distinction between two temporalities of historical change: first, the long waves of gradual change and, second, the short waves of moments of breaks and ruptures. Along the way, I develop an argument about the conditions of emergence of self-limiting norms and the centrality of epistemic beliefs in situations of high disruption. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPeople hiss and swear when they make errors, frown and swear again when they encounter conflicting information. Such error- and conflict-related signs of negative affect are found even when there is no time pressure or external reward and the task itself is very simple. Previous studies, however, provide inconsistent evidence regarding the affective consequences of resolved conflicts, that is, conflicts that resulted in correct responses. We tested whether response accuracy in the Eriksen flanker task will moderate the effect of trial (...) incongruence using affective priming to measure positive and negative affect. We found that responses to incongruent trials elicit positive affect irrespective of their accuracy. Errors, in turn, result in negative affect irrespective of trial congruence. The effects of conflicts and errors do not interact and affect different dimensions of affective priming. Conflicts change the speed of evaluative categorisation while errors are reflected in categorisation accuracy... (shrink)

During the 1980s Illich added another dimension to his thought through the study of Medieval history. In the current volume he aims to demonstrate the extent to which the groundwork for the institutions that characterize our world today was laid in the twelfth century.

El texto explora el papel que juegan los argumentos de naturaleza filosófica y religiosa en la razón pública, trayendo a colación el debate acerca del aborto, tema en el que John Rawls pone a prueba su propuesta. La tesis es que en el liberalismo rawlsiano, los argumentos filosóficos y religiosos juegan un papel semi-público, es decir, están referidos básicamente a la razón social, la cual se encuadra en la sociedad civil.

Like any other regime, authoritarian regimes mutate. Many of these mutations depend upon the upshot of internecine elite conflicts. These condition the ability of a ruler or would-be ruler to seize state resources and acquire the capacity to exercise violence. It is therefore crucial to investigate the factors that shape the dynamics and outcomes of contention among elite groups in authoritarian regimes. This article pursues this line of investigation by examining from a micro-analytical, process-oriented, and phenomenological perspective how institutions of (...) collective leadership affect power struggles in oligarchic power configurations. Drawing on the case of Serbia in the late 1980s, the following inquiry lays bare three institutional effects. First, collective organs of deliberation and decision-making channel intra-elite contention by defining the arenas in which elite members expect contention to take place (channeling effect). Second, by exacerbating actors’ mutual awareness and coordination dilemma, the forum setting of these collective organs lends itself to the emergence of open-ended situations (indeterminacy effect). Third, the verdicts delivered by institutions of collective leadership shape elite members’ expectations about group allegiance (collective alignment effect). In conjunction with this sequential argument about impact, the present article engages the conceptualization of authoritarian regimes, the analysis of institutional effects, and the study of delegitimation in an interactional setting. (shrink)

In 1976, Richard Dawkins coined the term meme as a way to metaphorically project bio-evolutionary principles upon the processes of cultural and social development. The works of Dawkins and of some other enthusiasts had contributed to a rise in popularity of the concept of memetics (“study of memes”), but the interest to this new field started to decline quite soon. The conceptual apparatus of memetics was based on a number of quasi-biological terms, but the emerging discipline failed to go beyond (...) those initial metaphors. This article is an attempt to rebuild the toolkit of memetics with the help of the more fundamental concepts taken from semiotics and to propose a synthetic conceptual framework connecting genetics and memetics, in which semiotics is used as the transdisciplinary methodology for both disciplines. The concept of sign is used as the meta-lingual equivalent for both the concepts of gene and meme. In the most general understanding, sign is a thing which stands for another thing. In genetics, this translates into gene that is a section of DNA that stands for the algorithm of how a particular biomolecule is built. In memetics, the similar principle works in meme that is a thing that stands for the rules of how a particular cultural practice is performed. (shrink)

¿Estuvo la cultura de autoría impresa fuera del alcance de las mujeres antes de 1887 en Costa Rica? El propósito principal de este artículo es ofrecer una primera respuesta a dicha pregunta con base en una revisión preliminar de periódicos y revistas que permiten considerar el problema planteado desde una perspectiva más amplia.En breve, el argumento central que se va a desarrollar es que la construcción de esa autoría pasó por tres etapas: en la primera, durante las décadas de 1840 (...) y 1850, tal proceso se basó en la redacción de anuncios comerciales; en la segunda, centrada en los decenios de 1860 y 1870, predominaron los discursos de alumnas y maestras relacionados con actividades de enseñanza; y en la tercera, ubicada a partir de 1885, se dieron dos tendencias paralelas. Por un lado, algunas docentes comenzaron a dar a conocer sus producciones literarias; y por el otro, el Estado, en vísperas de la reforma educativa de 1886, implementó una política para que las educadoras oraran informes de sus actividades escolares y los enviaran a una revista especializada para ser publicados. (shrink)

In this work, we propose a meaningful extension of description logics for non-monotonic reasoning. We introduce \, a logic allowing for the representation of and reasoning about both typical class-membership and typical instances of a relation. We propose a preferential semantics for \ in terms of partially-ordered DL interpretations which intuitively captures the notions of typicality we are interested in. We define a tableau-based algorithm for checking \ knowledge-base consistency that always terminates and we show that it is sound and (...) complete w.r.t. our preferential semantics. The general framework we here propose can serve as the foundation for further exploration of non-monotonic reasoning in description logics and similarly structured logics. (shrink)

Several independent lines of research in neurobiology seem to support the phenomenologically-grounded view of the dreaming brain/mind as a useful model for psychosis. Hallucinatory phenomena and thought disorders found in psychosis share several peculiarities with dreaming, where internally generated, vivid sensorimotor imagery along with often heightened and incongruous emotion are paired with a decrease in ego functions which ultimately leads to a severe impairment in reality testing. Contemporary conceptualizations of severe mental disorders view psychosis as one psychopathological dimension that may (...) be found across several diagnostic categories. Some experimental data have shown cognitive bizarreness to be equally elevated in dreams and in the waking cognition of acutely psychotic subjects and in patients treated with pro-dopaminergic drugs, independent of the underlying disorder. Further studies into the neurofunctional underpinnings of both conditions will help to clarify the use and validity of this model. (shrink)

¿Estuvo la cultura de autoría impresa fuera del alcance de las mujeres antes de 1887 en Costa Rica? El propósito principal de este artículo es ofrecer una primera respuesta a dicha pregunta con base en una revisión preliminar de periódicos y revistas quepermiten considerar el problema planteado desde una perspectiva más amplia. En breve, el argumento central que se va a desarrollar es que la construcción de esa autoría pasó por tres etapas: en la primera, durante las décadas de 1840 (...) y 1850, tal proceso se basó en la redacción de anuncios comerciales; en la segunda, centradaen los decenios de 1860 y 1870, predominaron los discursos de alumnas y maestras relacionados con actividades de enseñanza; y en la tercera, ubicada a partir de 1885, se dieron dos tendencias paralelas. Por un lado, algunas docentes comenzaron a dar a conocer sus producciones literarias; y por el otro, el Estado, en vísperas de la reforma educativa de 1886, implementó una política para que las educadoras elaboraran informes de sus actividades escolares y los enviaran a una revista especializada para ser publicados. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze Robert Putnam’s and Francis Fukuyama’s theses and the views of many other their adherents about trust and social capital. At the beginning, basic concepts are defined, and a brief characterization of the arguments is offered. But in its major part, the article is critical. Firstly, a series of empirical research results are presented, which do not go together with and are even in direct contradiction to the points of the ideas under discussion. (...) Secondly, an analysis is offered, presenting their theoretical setbacks: exaggeration of the role of trust and “free associations” in economic and political life, which in its turnleads to reversing causal relationships and concealing real problems; incorrect use of the idea of culture and the values linked to it where major parameters of power relationships remain concealed. (shrink)

Consideration of the property of action is proposed to provide a more meaningful definition of efficient energy use and sustainable production in ecosystems. Action has physical dimensions similar to angular momentum, its magnitude varying with mass, spatial configuration and relative motion. In this article, the relationship of action to thermodynamic processes such as the spontaneous increase in entropy of the second law is explained and the utility of action for measuring changes in energy and material distribution is promoted. In particular, (...) the view that increases in entropy and action are equivalent to disorder is challenged. Given that the development of action states may be assigned an economic value and the various sources of free energy assigned a price, action theory may provide a novel mechanism for the economic allocation of resources. The importance of the diversity and redundancy of energy resources and work processes to optimize action is highlighted. (shrink)

Статтю присвячено дослідженню радянської політики щодо німецьких релігійних конфесій на території Криму в 20-30-ті рр. ХХ ст. Проаналізовано законодавство, висвітлено етапи ліквідації церкви, антирелігійну пропаганду, поведінку німців у нових історичних реаліях.

Neste artigo apresentamos as análises fenomenológicas sobre a dor que Jan Patočka desenvolveu nos anos 40. Nelas, o filósofo aponta para uma posição interessante sobre a dor como uma experiência do mal. Em particular, a dor é uma intenção negativa, onde existe um objeto peculiar que aniquila todos os objetos possíveis aos quais os desejos humanos aspiram. Esta tese do filósofo checo, além de esclarecer todo o seu trabalho, enquadra-‑se plenamente nos atuais debates filosóficos e interdisciplinares sobre a dor.

Em Facticidade e Validade, a forma-direito é um conceito central que possibilita a Habermas: enfocar a dimensão institucional do direito; elucidar a problemática da legitimação do direito; realizar uma abordagem funcionalista do direito propícia a reconstrui-lo racionalmente; e explicitar o sistema dos direitos fundamentais. Entretanto, Habermas não procede a uma análise sistemática do nexo funcional entre a forma-direito e o modo de produção de mercadorias. Por isso, ele deixa de prover uma compreensão mais abrangente e mais crítica da forma-direito e (...) das possibilidades emancipatórias na sociedade capitalista. (shrink)