Two semantic paradoxes, the Liar and Curry’s paradox, are analysed using a newly developed conception of procedural semantics (semantics according to which the truth of propositions is determined algorithmically), whose main characteristic is its departure from methodological realism. Rather than determining pre-existing facts, procedures are constitutive of them. Of this semantics, two versions are considered: closed (where the halting of procedures is presumed) and open (without this presumption). To this end, a procedural approach to deductive reasoning is developed, based on (...) the idea of simulation. As is shown, closed semantics supports classical logic, but cannot in any straightforward way accommodate the concept of truth. In open semantics, where paradoxical propositions naturally ‘belong’, they cease to be paradoxical; yet, it is concluded that the natural choice—for logicians and common people alike—is to stick to closed semantics, pragmatically circumventing problematic utterances. (shrink)

This article presents the results of an experiment that completely measures the utility function and probability weighting function for different positive and negative monetary outcomes, using a representative sample of N = 1,935 from the general public. The results confirm earlier findings in the lab, suggesting that utility is less pronounced than what is found in classical measurements where expected utility is assumed. Utility for losses is found to be convex, consistent with diminishing sensitivity, and the obtained loss-aversion coefficient of (...) 1.6 is moderate but in agreement with contemporary evidence. The estimated probability weighting functions have an inverse-S shape and they imply pessimism in both domains. These results show that probability weighting is also an important phenomenon in the general population. Women and lower educated individuals are found to be more risk averse, in agreement with common findings. In contrast to previous studies that ascribed gender differences in risk attitudes solely to differences in the degree utility curvature, however, our results show that this finding is primarily driven by loss aversion and, for women, also by a more pessimistic psychological response toward the probability of obtaining the best possible outcome. (shrink)

In this, the first comprehensive survey of the phonological system of Dutch, Geert Booij lays particular stress on the relation between morphology, syntax, and prosodic structure at both word- and sentence-level. His primary aim is to provide an overview of the system as a whole, based in part on a number of more detailed studies of particular aspects of Dutch phonology. As a reference work, the book directs the reader to the available literature. The book is not primarily intended (...) as a contribution to phonological theory; however, it is couched in terms of present-day non-linear generative phonology, and the author's analyses are relevant for a number of current issues in phonological theory such as the principles of syllable structure, the interaction of phonology and morphology, underspecification, rule typology, the domain specification of phonological rules, cliticization, and the role of rhythm in word stress. (shrink)

This article presents a systematic exposition of how the basic ideas of Construction Grammar and the Parallel Architecture of grammar provide the framework for a proper account of morphological phenomena, in particular word formation. This framework is referred to as Construction Morphology. As to the implications of CxM for the architecture of grammar, the article provides evidence against a split between lexicon and grammar, in line with CxG. In addition, it shows that the PA approach makes it possible to be (...) explicit about what happens on which level of the grammar, and thus to give an insightful account of interface phenomena. These interface phenomena appear to require that various types of information are accessible simultaneously, and it is argued that constructional schemas have the right format for expressing these mutual dependencies between different types of information. (shrink)

This book supplies the need for an authoritative account of the morphology of Dutch in English and at the same time will make an important contribution to current theoretical discussions of word formation; the interactions between morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology; and morphological change. The author is the leading scholar in the field.

Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) by request and/or based on an advance directive are legal in The Netherlands under strict conditions, thus providing options for patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and other neurodegenerative diseases to stay in control and choose their end of life. HD is an inherited progressive disease characterised by chorea and hypokinesia, psychiatric symptoms and dementia. From a qualitative study based on interviews with 15 physicians experienced in treating HD, several ethical issues emerged. Consideration of these aspects (...) leads to a discussion about the professional role of a physician in relation to the personal autonomy of a patient. Such a discussion can raise awareness that talking about end-of-life wishes with an HD patient is part of the legal, professional and moral responsibility of the physician, and that a letter of intent on behalf of the physician can improve active participation in the process. Discussion of these issues can help to advance the debate on euthanasia and PAS in HD and other neurodegenerative diseases. (shrink)

Clahsen's claim that output forms of productive processes are never listed in the lexicon is a consequence of the rule/list fallacy, empirically incorrect, and not necessary for the hypothesis that the human language faculty has a dual structure, that is, a lexicon and a set of rules.

Origin of life models based on “energized assemblages of building blocks” are untenable in principle. This is fundamentally a consequence of the fact that any living system is in a physical state that is extremely far from equilibrium, a condition it must itself build and sustain. This in turn requires that it carries out all of its molecular transformations–obligatorily those that convert, and thereby create, disequilibria–using case‐specific mechanochemical macromolecular machines. Mass‐action solution chemistry is quite unable to do this. We argue (...) in Part 2 of this series that this inherent dependence of life on disequilibria‐converting macromolecular machines is also an obligatory requirement for life at its emergence. Therefore, life must have been launched by the operation of abiotic macromolecular machines driven by abiotic, but specifically “life‐like”, disequilibria, coopted from mineral precipitates that are chemically and physically active. Models grounded in “chemistry‐in‐a‐bag” ideas, however energized, should not be considered. (shrink)

A morally perfect God necessarily desires that all rational agents behave morally. An omnipotent and omniscient God has the power and knowledge to ensure that all rational agents have sufficient moral knowledge to do what morality requires. So, if God exists, there are no rational moral agents who lack sufficient moral knowledge to act morally. However, there has been a wide range of moral agents who, without blame, have lacked the moral knowledge to behave morally. Therefore, God does not exist. (...) The preceding argument from non-blameable moral ignorance of our fundamental moral obligations is resistant to some of the standard theistic responses to the problem of evil and divine hiddenness. Moreover, some of the standard theistic responses to the traditional arguments for God’s non-existence lend support to the argument from blameless moral ignorance. (shrink)

This book is a feminist analysis of Greek myth and tragedy that reimagines the structures of Freudian theory. The objective of this analysis is political—by revealing the structures that undergird patriarchal oppression, feminist thinkers can work to transform these symbolic constellations through the work of sabotage, parody, and imagination. Jessica Elbert Decker attempts here to read Freudian theory through a wider lens of Ancient Greek culture, since our contemporary philosophical and social culture has inherited many of its symbolic structures (...) (e.g., patriarchy, binary thinking). The major argument of the book is that our Western philosophical, social, and symbolic systems are, as they were in the Ancient Greek world, suffused with a set of values that reflect one version of masculinity and androcentrism, and that those values are destructive to human beings as well as the non-human world, including other beings. -/- . (shrink)

In this chapter, I will read Ancient Greek origin myths using the tools of psychoanalytic practice that Freud invented and demonstrate how the mythical edifice is slyly transported into ‘philosophy,’ and so interludes with Plato or Aristotle will show how unconscious fantasy winds its way into ‘truth’ as it is codified in a metaphysical or a scientific system. The chapter explores five feminine figures that appear as foundational to the Olympian cosmos, as their tales exemplify androcentric fantasy at work: Aphrodite, (...) Pandora, Hekate, Metis, and Athena. Close analysis of these narratives demonstrates the ways in which myth makes birth a masculine power and consistently undermines or erases feminine (or queer, or non-binary) agency, while simultaneously making feminine links or lineage impossible. War is the heart of androcentric fantasy, and this is confirmed by the manner in which birth is imagined in these myths, ambiguating birth and war in androcentric imagination. (shrink)

This analysis will proceed in three sections: first, I will examine the presentations of Aphrodite in the mythopoetic tradition (Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, and Empedocles), then I will demonstrate the manner in which Plato splits Aphrodite into two in Symposium and all the while erases her by shifting androcentric worship to a male god, Eros. Plato utilizes myth but deliberately bends it to his philosophical wishes and seems to emphasize a binary structure and furthermore, one that reflects androcentric fantasy in its (...) hierarchical values (e.g., Aphrodite Ouranos is superior to Aphrodite Pandemos). Finally, through a close reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, I will demonstrate the way in which Freud follows the playbook of Plato and splits eros into two by defining libido solely as masculine while casting female desire into masochism and the death instincts. (shrink)

This chapter explores the strange borderland between bios (life) and techne in the symbolic constellations of Ancient Greek myth. Through analysis of the figure of Hera, I demonstrate that monstrosity represents feminine sexual sovereignty and the feminine agency of creation that is repressed by androcentric imagination. Through an exploration of Freud’s notion of the uncanny in its relation to the maternal body, I argue that this category of the uncanny reveals androcentric fantasies about the maternal body as monstrous. In Freudian (...) theory, this powerful mother is often described as the “phallic mother” since the only form of power that androcentric fantasy can imagine must be understood as “phallic.” Androcentric fantasy cannot fathom feminine agency, so any feminine agency that is nevertheless perceived is dismissed as accidental—and thus takes on the character of the uncanny. The strange and irrational belief in the phenomenon of ‘maternal imagination’ reveals that the feminine power of creation that is repressed by androcentric fantasy is not only the power to create life through birth but also a radical power of imagination. (shrink)

This introductory chapter outlines the methodology and the trajectory of analysis in the chapters that follow. Like every chapter of this book, it begins with a fragment of Sappho that will frame the analysis—here, Sappho’s fragment 188 reads μυθόπλοκον, which means ‘myth-weaver’ as imagination in the creation of narratives is a primary objective of this project. The images of ‘motherless daughters’ and ‘female monsters’ are explored in the context of the Ancient Greek myths that will be studied throughout the book, (...) and the narrative of Athena winning the Olympian throne is introduced as a guiding theme. Unlike the tradition of patricide that precedes her, I suggest that Athena will win the Olympian throne from Zeus through cunning rather than bloodshed. Complicit with her mother, Metis, the first wife that Zeus swallowed, Athena will use her metis—which translates to ‘cunning resourcefulness’ as her birthright from her mother and outwit Zeus. Each chapter closely studies a concept, theme, or text in Freudian theory in order to reveal the patterns of androcentric fantasy that underlie them; this introduction ends with a short summary of each chapter’s themes and arguments. (shrink)

So many threads to be woven together: Ariadne’s thread, the umbilical, the string in playing “Fort-Da!,” Arachne’s multiple weavings of the rapes of women by male gods, Penelope’s use of metis in weaving and unweaving the shroud as a ruse to defer the suitors until Odysseus’ return. This final chapter will be the most hysterical of all, winding multiple ways through narratives and charting new directions. Linear composition is unimaginative and lacks depth and texture: one snip and whoops, there goes (...) the whole thing! Weavers and poets know the strategy of multiplicity, as does the unconscious wish: only through the weavings of so many others does any fabric come to fruition. This concluding chapter traces multiple paths through imaginative structures in order to express the multiplicity of meaning that is accessible when the imagination is not rigidly tamed by binary structures and androcentric fantasy. (shrink)

My close reading of Freud’s “The Economic Problem of Masochism” focuses on his claim that masochism is natural to the feminine constitution and challenges this assumption by demonstrating that the cultural oppression of women creates this alleged masochism. Through a study of women in Euripides’ tragedies, I demonstrate that women in Ancient Greek culture were subject to a “cultural suppression of the instincts” and made to sacrifice their lives through compulsory marriage and childbirth. Androcentric fantasy uses this smokescreen—that women are (...) ‘natural’ masochists—in an attempt to justify the enforced servitude and lack of agency women are afforded in androcentric cultures. Ancient Greek marriage practices reveal that marriage was understood as a means of ‘taming’ maidens in order to control their supposedly excessive sexuality and destructive instincts. I argue that androcentric fantasy imagines the feminine to be helpless and infantile as a counter-formation to the abject fear of powerful women and mothers with agency, particularly because women have been associated with death in the androcentric imagination. “The Athena Complex” refers to Zeus’ swallowing of Metis as representation of the “cultural suppression of the instincts” that is inflicted on women in androcentric cultures, making them appear helpless and masochistic. (shrink)

This chapter explores Sappho’s model of eros as egalitarian reciprocity between lovers that adopts many of the values associated with Ancient Greek practices of hospitality, where both lovers offer respect and unconditional receptivity to one another and attend to each other’s needs with precise awareness. Sappho’s model of eros sharply contrasts with the androcentric model of eros that emphasizes hierarchical value and competition, conquest, possession, and mastery over the love object. Reading the Freudian cases of Gretl (“The Psychogenesis of a (...) Case of Homosexuality in a Woman”) and Dora (Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria), I will demonstrate that androcentric fantasy cannot fathom lesbian eros and violently responds to it as a threat to the illusion of male control over women. In the cases of Gretl and Dora, Freud’s blindness to the possibility of lesbian eros reveals many of the androcentric fantasies that are built up to ensure the dominance of the father over the daughter and the primacy of the phallus and phallic desire as the only possible form of active sexuality. Dora and Gretl, as patients of Freud, speak through their case histories and show the way toward “hysterical” communication and the validity of bodily, and feminine experience. (shrink)

This chapter is a close reading of the case of Little Hans, Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy, and presents the case history as a young boy’s initiation into androcentric fantasy. Freud’s case histories often privilege the role of the father and leave the mother in the shadows, and the case of Little Hans is exemplary because Freud uses it as confirmation of his castration theory and the Oedipus Complex. Little Hans has a phobia: he is afraid that (...) a horse is going to bite him. Despite Little Hans’ repeated identification of the horse as his mother in the case history, Freud and Hans’ father craft a narrative that gives the phallus primacy and subverts the role of the mother in the creation of children. Hans is made to accept, as his initiation into the patriarchal culture, the ‘fact’ of female castration and to believe in male parthenogenesis—precisely the symbolic patterns that were explored in the Ancient Greek myths in Chap. 2. (shrink)

In this essay, the reminiscences of Margaret Fuller, feminist activist and member of the American Transcendentalist movement, from her journey to the Great Lakes region, entitled Summer on the Lakes (1844), are considered in the light of EcoGothic considerations. The essay shows how Fuller’s journey disillusioned her about progress and led to abandoning the serene vision of nature and landscapes reflected in the works of Transcendentalists. The destruction of nature and landscape verging on an ecological catastrophe is presented by Fuller (...) in the perspective of the Gothic, as a price for the technological development driven by the capitalist economy. The Gothic character of Summer on the Lakes derives from the mental condition of the writer and a pessimistic vision arising from the debunking of the myth of America as a virgin land. Fuller’s work constitutes an EcoGothic tribute to the indigenous inhabitants of America—but also a Gothic live burial of the Native Americans who do still live in the regions she visits—as well as to Mariana and Frederica, unusual and gothicized women excluded from society. By bringing together Fuller’s observations about nature, indigenous peoples and marginalized women, the essay shows how Fuller’s text prophetically announces the beginning of the end of the American environment. (shrink)

The effects of clonazepam (0.25–4.0 mg/kg) and phenobarbital (10–80 mg/kg) were examined in pigeons responding under a multiple fixed-ratio 50 fixed-interval 90-sec schedule of food delivery. When given acutely 30 min prior to testing, the lowest dose of each drug generally increased responding under both components of the multiple schedule, whereas high doses decreased responding. Time-course determinations revealed maximum rate-reducing effects when phenobarbital was given 30 min prior to testing; 15- and 30-min presession intervals were similarly effective with clonazepam. When (...) a 120-min presession interval was used, responding generally exceeded control rates for clonazepam, but not for phenobarbital. (shrink)

He shows how these new scientific insights inevitably affect our traditional ideas about the soul." "For anyone who is at all uncertain, Are Souls Real? offers an alternative to the views of a spiritual advisor. Various experts, from biblical scholars to neuroscientists, have gathered information that allows soul beliefs to be judged more skeptically. This book brings these conclusions together, offering a new perspective on whether supernatural souls really exist."--BOOK JACKET.

Borders are essentially imaginary structures, but their effects are very real. This volume explores both geopolitical and conceptual borders through an interdisciplinary lens, bridging the disciplines of philosophy and literature. With contributions from scholars around the world, this collection closely examines the concepts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality in order to reveal the paradoxical ambiguities inherent in these seemingly solid binary oppositions, while critiquing structures of power that produce and police these borders. As a political paradigm, liminality may be (...) embraced by marginal subjects and communities, further blurring the boundaries between oppressive distinctions and categories. (shrink)

The Hebbian view of word representation is challenged by findings of task (level of processing)-dependent, event-related potential patterns that do not support the notion of a fixed set of neurons representing a given word. With cross-language phonological reliability encoding more asymmetrical left hemisphere activity is evoked than with word comprehension. This suggests a dynamical view of the brain as a self-organizing, connectivity-adjusting system.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Genetic and early environmental factors are interwoven in the etiology of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Epigenetic mechanisms offer the molecular machinery to adapt to environmental conditions. There are gaps in the knowledge about how epigenetic mechanisms are involved in the effects of early affective environment, development of BPD, and psychotherapy response. We reviewed the available evidence of the effects of psychotherapy on changes in DNA methylation and conducted a pilot study in a sample of 11 female adolescents diagnosed with BPD, (...) exploring for changes in peripheral DNA methylation of FKBP5 gene, which encodes for a stress response protein, in relation to psychotherapy, on symptomatology and underlying psychological processes. For this purpose, measures of early trauma, borderline and depressive symptoms, psychotherapy outcome, mentalization, and emotional regulation were studied. A reduction in the average FKBP5 methylation levels was observed over time. Additionally, the decrease in FKBP5 methylation observed occurred only in those individuals who had early trauma and responded to psychotherapy. The results suggest an effect of psychotherapy on epigenetic mechanisms associated with the stress response. The finding that epigenetic changes were only observed in patients with early trauma suggests a specific molecular mechanism of recovery. The results should be taken with caution given the small sample size. Also, further research is needed to adjust for confounding factors and include endocrinological markers and therapeutic process variables. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Schelling und Nietzsche" verfügbar.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Medusa Complex:Matricide and the Fantasy of CastrationJessica Elbert MayockThe theoretical structures of psychoanalysis have excluded the female subject by placing her outside of the Symbolic, and feminist theorists' responses to this problem have been divided. Some theorists (such as Kristeva) accept the notion of an unalterable Lacanian Symbolic, while others (such as Irigaray) maintain that the current Symbolic is a manifestation of male fantasy, and suggest that (...) feminist thinkers explore the possibility of reorganizing the Symbolic. Amber Jacobs, in her recent work On Matricide (2007), takes up this challenge by analyzing matricide in myth in order to reveal matricide as latent content untheorized within psychoanalysis. Jacobs claims that the structure of the Lacanian Symbolic illegitimately asserts the "law of the father" as the only possible law, excluding any possibility of a "law of the mother" by erasing the maternal role in theory and symbolization. Her project, following Irigaray, is to make visible those unconscious contents excluded by the patriarchal imaginary in order to "be able to intervene into psychoanalysis for the purpose of working toward theorization of unconscious structures that are not reducible to the structure of Oedipus alone" (Jacobs 2007, x). If Jacobs's suggestion is correct, then analysis of Freud's evidence for the Oedipus Complex (and its accompanying concepts) will reveal repressed contents and traces of these untheorized unconscious structures—particularly those associated with the maternal body.With these considerations in mind, I take up the Freudian case of Little Hans, where Freud finds his most seminal evidence for castration anxiety [End Page 158] and the Oedipus Complex. I will demonstrate Freud's systematic occlusion of the maternal body through his overvaluation of the male body/the phallus in order to expose the elements of male fantasy that construct the Oedipus Complex. I organize these psychical elements in a configuration called "The Medusa Complex," since Freud uses the image of Medusa to explain his theory of castration. In rereading the details of this case, a powerful male fantasy begins to emerge: the desire to appropriate the female generative power. This is achieved through the theory of castration, which the decapitation of Medusa symbolizes, and the unconscious wish for male parthenogenesis—one product of this wish is the Lacanian Symbolic structure, where only the male principle of the phallus is generative. The Medusa Complex is comprised of the two intertwined male fantasies of female castration and male parthenogenesis, as well as the associated resistances that result from initiation into this paradigm. The theory of castration and the Oedipus Complex are attempts to conceal the powerful maternal body and assert male superiority and dominance.In the case of Little Hans, "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five Year Old Boy" (1909), Little Hans develops a fear of horses (especially biting horses) and is afraid to go out into the street. Hans's treatment is undertaken by his father, a medical doctor, who keeps careful notes and acts under Freud's supervision (mostly via letters). The boy's phobia begins around the time his little sister Hanna is born, as Freud and the father eventually admit, though her role in their narrative is nonexistent.1 They interpret Hans's phobia as a classic Oedipal triangle in which he desires his mother and fears the hostility of his father; his fear is translated into fear of the castrating father. Throughout the case, Freud and the father emphasize the boy's alleged awe of the adult male genital organ. In this paper, I will revisit the case (preserved in careful detail by the boy's father) and systematically return the maternal body to its rightful place within the narrative, shifting both the structure and the meaning of the phobia.I am here reading the case as an example of manifest content—like the surface content of a dream—in order to expose the male desires that create it. The current Symbolic is essentially a dream of the male imaginary, and my method is to reveal the latent content of the dream, especially the fantasies that inform it. Desire is the generating force behind this dream, and until we encounter and understand this desire, it will continue to compulsively... (shrink)

Examines traditional sites of binary thinking in ancient Greek texts and culture to demonstrate surprising ambiguity, especially with regard to sexual difference.

A meal is often a gathering: a group of people coming together to share food. A meal is always a "gathering" in the sense that Bruno Latour uses the word to describe a way of understanding any one "thing" as the result of a choreography of various participants, both animate and inanimate, material and discursive (233). Innumerable participants (cooks, eaters, agriculturalists, ingredients, methods, cookware, utensils, dishes, the table, the room, even the weather) come together to produce the thing (a meal) (...) as a gathering. These entanglements reveal themselves in the wake of events that occasion "the merging of matters of fact into highly complex, historically situated, richly diverse matters of concern" (237).... Read More. (shrink)

Double speak refers to two parallel devices that are often deployed together: simple repetition, which is frequently used as both emphasis and as an indicator of double speak, and ambiguous syntax such that the phrase uttered may have multiple meanings at once. This paper explores the use of double speak in early Ancient Greek poetic texts, beginning with Homer and tracing its use through the texts of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles. Double speak seems to be employed in order to mediate (...) between mortal and divine, creating a double audience: a god or goddess is capable of speaking in two registers at once, so a mortal listening will infer one meaning, while from the perspective of the god or goddess speaking, the statement will have another meaning supplemental to the first. This paper demonstrates the manner in which these Presocratic thinkers employ double speak as a means of disrupting human binary habits of thinking and creating a “quantum awareness” where the subject is able to perceive the relationships and paradoxes that exist between the knower and the seeming objects of knowledge, as well as the habits of thinking and perceiving that nourish the repetition and growth of those patterns. (shrink)

This paper explores Heraclitus’s linguistic method as a structural expression of his cosmological philosophy. Through an analysis of the various kinds of motion that Heraclitus describes, including the crucial motion between opposites, this essay delineates the meaning of ‘everliving fire’ as emblematic of his cosmos. The image of the synapse frames this analysis as it is simultaneously a motion and an expression uniting two poles; ‘syn’ also invokes Heraclitus’s notion of ‘shared logos’ as xynon, contrasted with human incomprehension as axynetoi. (...) The divine principle of Zeus and his thunderbolt serve as a source of motion; these motions of fire govern not only the cosmos, but human perception and thought. (shrink)

Contemporary Western thinkers recognise the destructive effects of long-standing attitudes of mastery over nature and the dualistic and hierarchical thinking that informs them. Heraclitus’ metaphysical position is ideal for reframing these traditional stances for several reasons: first, Heraclitus’ concept of identity is dynamic and relies on a sophisticated understanding of opposites that recognises ambiguity; secondly, his philosophical position produces a model of truth as multiple rather than univocal; and finally, in Heraclitus’ self-making kosmos, human beings are not separate from the (...) processes of physis but inextricably entangled in them. Heraclitus’ philosophy offers relevant avenues for reimagining contemporary philosophical issues, particularly theories of identity, the multiplicity of truth, and the proper ethical human relation to nature. (shrink)

Schellings Mythologie enthalt den Schlussel zum Verstehen seines Spatwerks. Der erste Teil der Arbeit untersucht die Beziehung von Schopfung, Fall, Erlosung und Mythologie; der zweite Teil legt die Mythologie aus; der dritte Teil handelt von der 'Mythologie der Gegenwart'; der letzte Teil bietet eine Ubersicht uber die Mythologie in den fruheren Werken Schellings.

Heraclitus has often been read through Aristotelian and Stoic paradigms that do not contextualize his text in the poetic tradition with which his fragments engage. This paper is a close study of Heraclitus’s DK 1 as a demonstration of his poetic methods, and argues that Heraclitus’s text is an example of what Marcel Detienne calls magico-religious speech. Heraclitus’s logos is a living thing, not only words but ‘works,’ as Heraclitus refers to his logos in DK 1, using the Homeric formula (...) “words and works.” Heraclitus’s teaching is experiential, and depends on memory as the antidote to oblivion and forgetting, often associated with sleeping and death. In reading DK 1 and following the paths that it traces to other fragments, Heraclitus’s teaching as a method of escaping the private world is revealed. (shrink)

Objective: Persuasive messages regarding fruit and vegetable consumption often meet defensive reactions from recipients, which may lower message effectiveness. Individual differences in emotion regulation and gender are expected to predict these reactions. In the working memory account of persuasion, inducing voluntary eye movements during the processing of the auditory persuasive information might prevent defensiveness and thereby increase message effectiveness.Methods: Participants in two independently recruited samples from the general population listened to a negatively framed auditory persuasive message advocating fruit and vegetable (...) consumption. Half of them were asked to keep following a regularly moving stimulus on their screen with their eyes. At pretest, the individual differences of cognitive self-affirmation inclination and gender were assessed to predict defensive reactions.Results: In Study 1, induced eye movements significantly increased self-reported consumption after 2 weeks when CSAI was low, but only in males, as indicated by a significant three-way interaction. With negative self-evaluative emotions as dependent variable, this three-way interaction was also significant, suggesting that induced eye movements prevented defensiveness in low CSAI males. Study 2 did not assess consumption but replicated the latter three-way interaction.Conclusion: The studies replicated our earlier findings regarding the moderating effects of individual differences in emotion regulation on persuasion, but they also revealed gender differences in persuasion that are related to the working memory. The working memory account of persuasion provides new theoretical as well as practical angles on persuasion to target individuals in persuasion to increase fruit and vegetable consumption. (shrink)

Nunez is to be applauded for putting forward a theoretical brain model. In order to improve any model it needs to be experimentally testable. The model presented in the target article suffers from insufficient clarity as to how new experimental designs could be derived. This is a consequence of neglecting the purpose of the brain, which is to produce effective and adaptive behavior. It might be possible to overcome this drawback by including Hebb-based modeling.