Paul Churchland proposed a conceptual framework for translating reflectance profiles into a space he takes to be the color qualia space. It allows him to determine color metamers of spectral surface reflectances without reference to the characteristics of visual systems, claiming that the reflectance classes that it specifies correspond to visually determined metamers. We advance several objections to his method, show that a significant number of reflectance profiles are not placed into the space in agreement with the qualia solid, and (...) produce two sets of counterexamples to his claim for metamers. (shrink)

Reflectance and spectral power functions are poor predictors of color experiences. Only in completely relativized conditions (single observer, non-metameric set of stimuli, and single set of viewing conditions) is the relationship close. Variation in reflectance of Munsell chips experienced by color-normal observers as having a unique green hue encompasses approximately sixty percent of the complete range of hues falling under the category “green”; and in recent determinations of unique hues, ranges of yellow and green as well as green and blue (...) unique hues overlap. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the ordering of color percepts, and starts by presenting an overview of the critical issues surrounding the topic and by examining the relationship between stimuli and percepts. Certain types of variability were found by experimental psychology in the relationship between stimulus and response as a result of observation conditions. In the twentieth century, the view that the normal human color-vision system has a standard implementation and that all perceptual data are appropriately treated with normal statistical distribution methodology (...) became the standard paradigm. However, the idea that the large number of color percepts humans can experience must fit into some kind of ordering system is an old one, going as far back to Aristotle and his proposed color categories based on a scale of chromatic colors between white and black. The strengths and limitations of the more recently developed kinds of color order systems are also touched upon here. (shrink)

The degree to which physiology and culture have affected the formation of primitive color categories continues to be a matter of discussion. In this paper the degree of agreement between the ranges of individual color term foci for the four hue-based color categories yellow, green, blue, and red and individual choices of Munsell samples representing for the observers Hering's four unique hues is investigated. The color term focus range data are extracted from the survey results of the 110 unwritten languages (...) of the World Color Survey, also in terms of the Munsell color order system. Agreement of approximately 90% between the two has been found, indicating the likelihood of a strong color vision system related physiological component in the formation of these four primitive hue categories. (shrink)

Berlin & Kay hue-related basic color categories are compared with the ISCC-NBS system of object color categorization. Though independently derived, categories of the former form a small subset of the latter. A conjecture is proposed that explains the absence of yellow-green and blue-green basic hue categories and the potential for a violet category as the result of constraints on primitive hue category formation due to considerable variation in stimuli selected by color-normal observers as representing for them unique hues.

This commentary raises the possibility of recent discussion on the issue of basic color terms suffering from the "stimulus error," first described by the English psychologist E. B. Titchener. It refers to confusion of the psychological experience with the physical description of the stimulus. Such confusion is routine in everyday language in situations where private sensory experiences are involved that cannot be objectively described, but is harmful in fundamental discussions about experiences.

The data from the World Color Survey of 110 un-written languages have been analyzed in regard to individual focal choices. A total of 46 major color terms have been identified. Of these 24 can be defined in terms of English color terms, while 22 cannot. The most important color term in terms of usage is red, followed by white and black. In the 110 languages, 73 different arrangements of major color terms have been found. The six Hering fundamental colors, presumably (...) closely related to the workings of the color vision system, occur preferentially but not consistently in languages with 6 or more major terms. They represent the top six categories in terms of major usage. WCS indicates usage of major color terms to be complex and clearly also influenced by cultural choices. (shrink)

In their article ‘In defense of incompatibility, objectivism, and veridicality about color’ P. Roberts and K. Schmidtke offer the results of an experiment supposed to show that if selection of colored samples representing unique hues for subjects has a greater inter-subject variability than identification of sample pairs with no perceptual difference between them the result provides support for the philosophical concept of color realism. On examining the results in detail, we find that, according to standard statistical methodology, the relative magnitude (...) of inter-subject variability in the matching experiment is for both tested colors larger than that in the naming experiment, thus invalidating their claims. In addition, we point out several serious shortcomings in the experiment. (shrink)

Depuis le début du XXI e siècle, la globalisation est devenue un thème central dans les sciences humaines, même si la mondialisation croissante des discours dans les sciences humaines apparaît en réalité dès le XX e siècle. Dans le domaine de la philosophie, la mondialisation du cadre thématique a été encouragée en particulier par les Congrès mondiaux de philosophie depuis 1900. Sous l’impulsion de ces évolutions, les histoires de différentes philosophies ont émergé à travers le monde et dans de nombreuses (...) langues différentes. En outre, des ouvrages d’histoires globales de la philosophie se multiplient depuis une vingtaine d’années. Pour faire face à cette diversité thématique dans la philosophie d’aujourd’hui, l’approche d’une phénoménologie transformative est abordée à la fin de l’article. (shrink)

A brilliant collection of short essays on literary subjects--e.g. Beckett, Balzac, Proust, Thomas Mann, Dickens, Goethe, Heine, the lyric, realism, the essay, and the contemporary novel--by the great social theorist (1903-1969), originally published in 1958 as Noten zur literature (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main), and here translated by Adorno's former student, Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

A brilliant collection of short essays on literary subjects e.g. Beckett, Balzac, Proust, Thomas Mann, Dickens, Goethe, Heine, the lyric, realism, the essay, and the contemporary novel by the great social theorist (1903-1969), originally published in 1958 as Noten zur literature (Suhrkamp Verlag, F.

The object of this essay is to discuss two problems and to present solutions to them, which do not quite agree with what is generally said of them. The first problem concerns the history of methods for reaching firm historical knowledge. In three methodological manuals for historians, written by J. G. Droysen, E. Bernheim, and C.-V. Langlois and C. Seignobos and first published in the late nineteenth century, the task of the historian was said to be how to obtain firm (...) knowledge about history. The question is how this message should be understood. The second problem concerns the differences between the three manuals. If their common goal is firm historical knowledge, are there any major differences of opinion? The answer given in this article is yes, and the ground is sought in their theories of truth. (shrink)

This essay deals with the function of Kant’s category of the Apperzeption in what we today call the “new metaphysics” of German Idealism. It is an important question because Kant’s thought is well known for his critique of metaphysics. But the category was essentially problematical and triggered answers provided in the emerging “new metaphysics.” The essay will follow the guidance to that Kantian category in Martin Bondeli’s book of 2006, Apperzeption und Erfahrung. Kants transzendentale Deduktion im Spannungsfeld der frühen Rezeption (...) und Kritik. In my discussion it will become apparent at what critical points various new departures, e.g., those taken by Jacobi, Schlegel, Schelling, and Hegel, have led to well-profiled positions in the movement which is today known as “German Idealism,” and anyone familiar with its influence should also be able to discern how those positions influenced the future of Continental thought. (shrink)

In this volume, Dieter Henrich provides an invaluable guide to the better understanding of the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. That well-known book was published in 1821, but the manuscript was finished on June 25, 1820, in other words, in immediate proximity to the Berlin lectures on the same topic, published here with Henrich’s extensive editorial introduction and comment. Furthermore, the Grundlinien of 1821 were intended to be an aid to the listeners of his lectures: in these published lectures on (...) the same topic of 1819/20 such a printed aid was not available to students. Hence the lectures have a directness, freshness, and attention to systematic detail that is missing both in the later lecture notes by Hotho and by D. F. Strauss, as also in the Grundlinien. This difficult publication of 1821 was to be interpreted by the later lectures, whereas in those of 1819/20 Hegel had to develop the theoretical foundation in the lectures themselves. They show an admirable cohesiveness in the flow of argumentation, and have some similarity to the popular editions of the lectures on the philosophy of history, aesthetics, and religion. (shrink)

The professions of nursing and nurse education are currently experiencing a crisis of confidence, particularly in the UK, where the Francis Report and other recent reviews have highlighted a number of cases of nurses who no longer appear willing or able to ‘care’. The popular press, along with some elements of the nursing profession, has placed the blame for these failures firmly on the academy and particularly on the relatively recent move to all‐graduate status in England for pre‐registration student nurses. (...) This has come to be known in the UK as the ‘too‐posh‐to‐wash’ argument, that there is an incommensurability between being educated to degree level and performing basic nursing tasks. I will argue in this paper that the diagnosis of the problem is substantively correct, but the formulation and the prescription are misguided and dangerous. I will suggest that the growing emphasis on research‐based and evidence‐based practice is the logical conclusion of an inappropriate scientific paradigm for nursing which is underpinned by the social sciences, by technical rationality, and by a focus on people. In contrast, I will suggest that a more fruitful way of thinking about and practising nursing and nurse education is to consider it as a human science with a focus on persons in which evidence for practice derives largely from practice itself. The history of the idea of a human science is traced from its roots in nineteenth century hermeneutics to the work of Gadamer and R.D. Laing in the 1960s, and I attempt to imagine a paradigm for nursing practice, scholarship, and education based on Laing's ‘existential–phenomenological’ approach with a focus on the endeavour to understand and relate to individual persons rather than to make broad prescriptions for practice based on statistical and other generalizations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 448-449 [Access article in PDF] James Van Cleve. Problems from Kant. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xii + 340. Cloth, $45.00. The author acknowledges his debt to the "great Kant books of the 1960s, Jonathan Bennett's Kant's Analytic, and P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense."Their analytical spirit lives on in this book, but the analyses are (...) fresh, take surprising turns, and make unexpected connections to current concerns. In seventeen chapters Van Cleve deals with necessity and the a priori, space and geometry, incongruent counterparts, time, the ideality of matter, experience and objects, substance in the First Analogy, the Second Analogy, noumena, problems of the self, rational theology, and Kant and contemporary irrealism. To sustain the flow of argument, the discussion of certain details, often important, is postponed and taken up in fifteen appendices, and there are nearly seventy pages of careful notes.Chapter 10, "Noumena and Things in Themselves," (134 ff.) criticizes in detail the prevailing "one world" or "double aspect" view of objects, namely that Kant allows just one set of objects, but two ways of "considering" them. Things in themselves are the very same objects as appearances, but considered as they are independent of our experience of them, a view developed in Henry Allison's Kant's Transcendental Idealism. Against this Van Cleve maintains (and I concur) that "appearances are intentionalia, and that intentionalia are constructions out of states of perceivers" (150). The distinction is between two separate universes of discourse, "not between two ways of discoursing [End Page 448] about the same objects" (ibid.). There is no space to report the sharply argued detail that led him to hold the double aspect view to be unfathomable and incoherent. He takes Kant to be a phenomenalist but holding to a version far removed from the reductionist phenomenalism of Russell, Broad, Price, and others. Here the basic elements are not made out to be indubitable givens, but are, rather, sensations. The structures built on them are, according to Van Cleve, "virtual objects" in the sense in which Quine speaks about "virtual classes." To say that something is an element of a class {F:Fx} is only to say that it is F. So, likewise, to say that, e.g., a patch of red exists is short for saying that a certain representation occurs. Carnap's Kantian masterpiece, TheLogical Structure of the World (The Aufbau) could have been consulted as a comprehensive guide to the kind of virtuality here envisaged.It is Van Cleve's stated aim never to discuss Kantian arguments without making their premise and conclusion structure clear (viii). Quite a few of them he finds persuasive; in other cases the arguments are valid, but one or the other premise doubtful. Sometimes he sides with Kant against his critics, sometimes the opposite, and occasionally, as in the case of the Second Analogy, it remains unclear what Kant's argument was. He has shown in this and earlier publications that all reconstructions are flawed, so that either Kant had no good argument, or his argument has not yet been discovered.The title Problems from Kant must be taken seriously. The book rarely deals with textual problems, historical context, or translation difficulties. Rather, the focus is on perennial and still compelling problems. Themes from the First Critique are tracked to and connected with current concerns and sometimes recently ventilated issues are traced back to Kant, as in the last chapter, where the question is raised if Kant was an internal realist in the style of Putnam, or perhaps an anti-realist like Dummett. The contrast with Kant shows that like all complex positions, these are shopping baskets with several goods in them, some in Kant's inventory, others not.Logical notation is used sparingly, and only where it clarifies—no attempt here to shoehorn arguments into unneeded symbolism. Deft examples, Kant's weakness, are a strength of this book. To explain the logic of considering Van Cleve asks, "Consider me apart from my shoes, am I barefoot... (shrink)

ROLFE G. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 98–106 [Epub ahead of print]Cardinal John Henry Newman and ‘the ideal state and purpose of a university’: nurse education, research and practice development for the twenty‐first centuryCardinal John Henry Newman’s book, The Idea of a University, first published in the mid nineteenth century, is often invoked as the epitome of the liberal Enlightenment University in discussions and debates about the role and purpose of nurse education. In this article I will examine Newman’s book in (...) greater detail and with a more critical eye than is generally the case in the writing of nurse academics. In particular, I will focus on the claims that Newman was a champion of the Enlightenment University of the nineteenth century, that he promoted the idea of ‘disinterested’ universal knowledge for its own sake, that he was an early advocate of the pursuit of knowledge through scientific research, and the supposition that he would have welcomed the discipline of nursing into the University. In each case, I will suggest that these claims are based on an extremely selective reading of Newman’s work. I will conclude by employing the example of practice development to propose an alternative way for nursing to find its place in the modern University that does not involve a retreat into what I will argue is an outdated and nostalgic view of the aims and purpose of higher education. (shrink)

The use of figurate numbers (e. g. in the context of elementary number theory) can be considered a heuristic in the field of problem solving or proving. In this paper, we want to discuss this heuristic from the perspectives of the semiotic theory of Peirce (“diagrammatic reasoning” and “collateral knowledge”) and cognitive psychology (“schema theory” and “Gestalt psychology”). We will make use of several results taken from our research to illustrate first-year students’ problems when dealing with figurate numbers in the (...) context of proving. The considerations taken from both theoretical perspectives will help to partly explain such phenomena. It will be shown that the use of figurate numbers must not be considered to be any kind of help for learners or some way of ‘easy’ mathematics. Working in this representational system has to be learned and practiced as another kind of knowledge is necessary for working with figurate numbers. The named findings also touch upon the concept of ‘proofs that explain’. Finally, we will highlight some implications for teaching and point to a number of demands for future research. (shrink)

If two stimuli need different times to be processed, this difference should in principle be reflected both by response times (RT) and by judgments of their temporal order (TOJ). However, several dissociations have been reported between RT and TOJ, e.g., RT is more affected than TOJ when stimulus intensity decreases. One account for these dissociations is to assume differences in the allocation of attention induced by the two tasks. To test this hypothesis, different distributions of attention were induced in the (...) present study between two stimulus positions (above and below fixation). Only bright stimuli appeared in one position and either bright or dim stimuli in the other. In the two RT experiments, participants had to respond to every stimulus appearing in one of the two positions. Reaction times to bright stimuli were faster when they appeared in the position where dim stimuli were likely to occur. This finding suggests that the allocation of attention was adapted to the asymmetrical arrangement of stimuli, not suggested by explicit instruction. In the two TOJ experiments, the temporal order of stimuli appearing in the two positions had to be judged. Although bright stimuli appearing at the bright-and-dim location were judged to be earlier, this effect was small and insignificant. Further, the intensity dissociation between RT and TOJ was insensitive to random vs blockwise presentations of intensities, therefore was not modified by attentional preferences. Thus, asymmetrical arrangement of stimuli has an impact on the allocation of attention, but only in the RT task. Therefore dissociations between TOJ and response times cannot be accounted for by an attentional bias in the TOJ task but probably by different use of temporal information in the two tasks. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 448-449 [Access article in PDF] James Van Cleve. Problems from Kant. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xii + 340. Cloth, $45.00. The author acknowledges his debt to the "great Kant books of the 1960s, Jonathan Bennett's Kant's Analytic, and P. F. Strawson's The Bounds of Sense."Their analytical spirit lives on in this book, but the analyses are (...) fresh, take surprising turns, and make unexpected connections to current concerns. In seventeen chapters Van Cleve deals with necessity and the a priori, space and geometry, incongruent counterparts, time, the ideality of matter, experience and objects, substance in the First Analogy, the Second Analogy, noumena, problems of the self, rational theology, and Kant and contemporary irrealism. To sustain the flow of argument, the discussion of certain details, often important, is postponed and taken up in fifteen appendices, and there are nearly seventy pages of careful notes.Chapter 10, "Noumena and Things in Themselves," (134 ff.) criticizes in detail the prevailing "one world" or "double aspect" view of objects, namely that Kant allows just one set of objects, but two ways of "considering" them. Things in themselves are the very same objects as appearances, but considered as they are independent of our experience of them, a view developed in Henry Allison's Kant's Transcendental Idealism. Against this Van Cleve maintains (and I concur) that "appearances are intentionalia, and that intentionalia are constructions out of states of perceivers" (150). The distinction is between two separate universes of discourse, "not between two ways of discoursing [End Page 448] about the same objects" (ibid.). There is no space to report the sharply argued detail that led him to hold the double aspect view to be unfathomable and incoherent. He takes Kant to be a phenomenalist but holding to a version far removed from the reductionist phenomenalism of Russell, Broad, Price, and others. Here the basic elements are not made out to be indubitable givens, but are, rather, sensations. The structures built on them are, according to Van Cleve, "virtual objects" in the sense in which Quine speaks about "virtual classes." To say that something is an element of a class {F:Fx} is only to say that it is F. So, likewise, to say that, e.g., a patch of red exists is short for saying that a certain representation occurs. Carnap's Kantian masterpiece, TheLogical Structure of the World (The Aufbau) could have been consulted as a comprehensive guide to the kind of virtuality here envisaged.It is Van Cleve's stated aim never to discuss Kantian arguments without making their premise and conclusion structure clear (viii). Quite a few of them he finds persuasive; in other cases the arguments are valid, but one or the other premise doubtful. Sometimes he sides with Kant against his critics, sometimes the opposite, and occasionally, as in the case of the Second Analogy, it remains unclear what Kant's argument was. He has shown in this and earlier publications that all reconstructions are flawed, so that either Kant had no good argument, or his argument has not yet been discovered.The title Problems from Kant must be taken seriously. The book rarely deals with textual problems, historical context, or translation difficulties. Rather, the focus is on perennial and still compelling problems. Themes from the First Critique are tracked to and connected with current concerns and sometimes recently ventilated issues are traced back to Kant, as in the last chapter, where the question is raised if Kant was an internal realist in the style of Putnam, or perhaps an anti-realist like Dummett. The contrast with Kant shows that like all complex positions, these are shopping baskets with several goods in them, some in Kant's inventory, others not.Logical notation is used sparingly, and only where it clarifies—no attempt here to shoehorn arguments into unneeded symbolism. Deft examples, Kant's weakness, are a strength of this book. To explain the logic of considering Van Cleve asks, "Consider me apart from my shoes, am I barefoot... (shrink)

Several reaction time (RT) studies report faster responses when responses to temporal information are arranged in a spatially congruent manner than when this arrangement is incongruent. The resulting space–time congruency effect is commonly attributed to a culturally salient localization of temporal information along a mental timeline (e.g., a mental timeline that runs from left to right). The present study aims to provide a compilation of the published RT studies on this time–space association in order to estimate the size of its (...) effect and the extent of potential publication bias in this field of research. In this meta-analysis, three types of task are distinguished due to hitherto existing empirical findings. These findings suggest that the extent to which time is made relevant to the experimental task has a systematic impact on whether or not the mental timeline is activated. The results of this meta-analysis corroborate these considerations: First, experiments that make time a task-relevant dimension have a mean effect size of d = 0.46. Second, in experiments in which time is task irrelevant, the effect size does not significantly deviate from zero. Third, temporal priming studies have a surprisingly high mean effect size of d = 0.47, which, however, should be adjusted to d = 0.36 due to publication bias. (shrink)

A. Kenny, Frege, an introduction to the founder of modern analytic philosophy. London:Penguin, 1995. viii-h223pp. £7.99 T. Willamson, Vagueness. London:Routledge, 1994. xiii-f-325 pp. £35.00 TOM BU...

The editors of the invaluable "Philosophische Bibliothek" perceived the need of providing readers of German with translations of both the Prior and the Posterior Analytics, two volumes in their edition of the Organon that had been out of print for some time. Having lost hope—so they tell us in the Vorwort—of obtaining fresh versions of them in the near future, they decided to reprint the old Rolfes translation of the Posteriora which had appeared in the series for the first time (...) in 1922. In spite of Rolfes’s undeniable merits as a translator of Aristotle, the solution seems to be unsatisfactory. On the one hand, the quality of the Greek text and our understanding of Aristotelian idioms and terminology in this treatise have been improved considerably in the last fifty years. A landmark in this type of studies is doubtless the edition with an extensive and valuable commentary by Sir David Ross. On the other hand, contemporary developments in logic and philosophy of science have led to new and sometimes more accurate assessments of Aristotelian ideas on demonstrative science. There is in fact an excellent English translation with notes by Jonathan Barnes conceived along these lines. One token example of the disadvantages of a translation that cannot take into account scholarly work done after 1922 can be seen at 89b25-26 where Aristotle speaks about "putting into number" a certain type of question. Both Ross and Barnes warn us that the phrase is curious, that it is bizarre, and we may easily infer that not much weight should be put on it in interpreting the passage. Rolfes, on the contrary, has an uncritical attitude towards the expression. He translates it literally and then goes on to comment on it as if it were normal Aristotelian usage. Needless to say, this can easily mislead the unexperienced student of Aristotle to pursue a chain of false problems. But the tendency to translate as literally as possible has its advantages, and it is fair to say that Rolfes’s translation is sufficiently accurate to be of considerable help in many difficult passages. (shrink)

We provide first-order axioms for the theories of finite trees with bounded branching and finite trees with arbitrary (finite) branching. The signature is chosen to express, in a natural way, those properties of trees most relevant to linguistic theories. These axioms provide a foundation for results in linguistics that are based on reasoning formally about such properties. We include some observations on the expressive power of these theories relative to traditional language complexity classes.

Die Studie «Sittlichkeit und Verbrechen bei Hegel» analysiert den Komplex von Sittlichkeit, Verbrechen und Strafe bei Hegel. Sie verfolgt, wie Hegel das Verbrechen vom Standpunkt der Sittlichkeit aus einerseits als etwas davon Abweichendes beurteilt und andererseits die Strafe als die Realisation des Willens des Verbrechers deduzieren will. Dabei werden die logischen Abstraktionen, unter die Hegel das Verbrechen subsumiert, ebenso einer selbständigen Untersuchung unterzogen wie bei der Untersuchung der Sittlichkeit der Standpunkt der Sittlichkeit. Der Abschnitt der Hegelschen «Rechtsphilosophie» «Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft» (...) wird nachgezeichnet als eine Folge jeweils besonders bestimmter Existenzweisen der Begriffsbestimmungen der Idee der Sittlichkeit. (shrink)