My claim has been that text reading involves moments of active meaning constitution of units that are mostly not tied to each other in a conscious manner. This assumes that single moments of consciousness can only have a single thematic content, at least in hindsight. The chapter opens with a probing and qualified endorsement of this assumption, widely shared among investigators of consciousness. It examines certain aspects of how meanings-designate become explored in hindsight, and explores the important topic of re-reading, (...) which later chapters will also deal with. There follows an examination of discussions among readers, and the special features of meetings and conversations which are based on the participants’ prior reading of the same text. Gadamer’s and Bakhtin’s views on the role of dialogical thinking in text reading are considered. An illustrative protocol of reading experiences addresses an excerpt from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The aim of the protocol is to identify both conscious and previously unconscious dimensions of my experience of reading this text for the first time. (shrink)

Passive synthesis encompasses not only adjacent passages, but also distant locations in the same text. Readers can discover in prompted reflection connections and associations between many different themes, regardless of where they were mentioned. This is also how readers can encounter inconsistencies involving passages that are located far apart from each other, an ability no less fundamental for academic source criticism as it is for reading detective stories. What do such prompts to reflection show about the nature of passive synthesis (...) (or whatever alternative model of latency one prefers)? The current chapter explores this with the help of the idea of a ‘world’. ‘World’ is here defined as the pre-disposition of readers to interconnect text meanings and other meaning experiences as belonging to a mundane unity and density. These are tacit expectations which prefigure, as their occasional discovery in the reader’s reflection shows, what themes in the text they have seen as ‘belonging together’ in any world. The chapter will show that such tacit expectations imply that in reading, the reader takes the text to project a ‘world’. (shrink)

I have repeatedly had the following experience. I take a walk through an unfamiliar part of town, willing myself to pay attention to the buildings, the plants, the people and the road, but find myself nevertheless always first noticing and reading written signs within my visual field. Yet both the signs and the objects are in principle perceived by me in the same sweeping glance. Perhaps the density of meaning that writing promises to someone interested in language attracts the glance (...) more quickly than spatio-temporal objects do. Certainly, text reading needs to be examined on its own terms. As the case of the difference between proofreading and reading for understanding illustrates, the event of understanding what is meant by what we read appears not to arise from perceiving the shapes of written signs as shapes, but from an experience of ‘aboutness’. Yet, how different is the perception of language that underlies reading from the perception of things in other respects? This chapter explores the commonalities between perception in reading and the perception of spatio-temporal objects by treating both as acts of meaning formation. I argue that the sensible engagement with things, too, can be analyzed as ultimately constituting itself only as meaning formation, as an encounter with meaningfulness situated in a context. This includes a malleability of spatio-temporal ‘essences’, as well as an openness to the future. The chapter also explores the contribution of the act of naming things to their perception. (shrink)

This chapter examines historical reconstruction and literary structures of rabbinic texts using the Leviticus Rabbah as an example. It explains that Leviticus Rabbah is a commentary on the Book of Leviticus which now forms part of Midrash Rabbah. It proposes ten theses about the special problems which the literary structures of rabbinic texts pose for the historian and analyses a section of the amoraic work of Leviticus Rabbah to describe some of those literary structures. The findings suggest that it is (...) impossible to explain how the textuality of rabbinic sources worked and that many rabbinic works fill the same functional position in a text more than once. (shrink)

There has long been communication between phenomenology and the study of literature, especially regarding literary art. This has produced phenomenological accounts of reading by Ingarden, Sartre, Gadamer and Dufrenne, and influenced many other theories of literature. More recently, phenomenological concepts have sometimes been fused with assumptions from empirical psychology, cognitive linguistics, computation or neuroscience, as in the work of Monika Fludernik, David Herman, Paul Armstrong, Brook Miller and Anežka Kuzmičová. The current chapter will explore the assumptions of these approaches in (...) the light of a phenomenological framing of experience. It will criticize certain reductive approaches to text reading. These can neglect the role which a synthesis of temporal difference must play in reading, or explain the unconscious by ascribing to bodily processes (e.g., neural networks) the ability to act as independent agents with their own goals. (shrink)

Readers may discover that components of the text world have become passively combined from parts of meaning units, rather than from whole meaning units, e.g., whole sentence meanings. These unit parts can also be textually distant from each other. The chapter illustrates this ‘analytical’ phenomenon by using some lines from Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’. The exploration addresses the difference between a ‘first’ reading and later re-readings, and the role of the reader’s knowledge of the text’s context. A passive reinforcement of text (...) themes experienced as repeated, as well as certain kinds of ‘forgetting’, emerge as crucial. The chapter also addresses the best way to understand what passive synthesis ‘is’. (shrink)

Earlier chapters have argued that readers understand a text through the largely passive synthesis of a plurality of discrete acts by which they have actualized the meaning of perceived text units. The passively synthesized togetherness of these unit meanings accounts for key features of text reading. One of these features, explored in the current chapter, is the fact that the reader is passively invested in the protained continuity of text meanings as that continuity arises from their perception of spatial togetherness. (...) This is a non-deliberate up-front investment in the ‘flow’ of the text which can be so strong that readers can surprise themselves, as it were, by their encounter with an unexpected meaning unit, as that encounter arises from that unit’s wording. Since their commitment to understanding outruns their encounter with the wording, readers routinely expose themselves to text meanings. (shrink)

Understanding a text means allowing oneself to become affected by the meaningfulness of what one perceives, when receiving the text’s sensible aspects. If the text consists of more than a single line or sentence, this happens in discrete, often sequential acts. The reader’s synthesis of this temporal dispersion is part of the way all text meaning becomes constituted. This chapter explores the nature of the meaning units involved, such as sentences or poetic lines. It examines the reader’s dynamic sense of (...) the text in which unit meanings are non-deliberately interconnected. This build-up of a sense of the text is the largely latent or pre-conscious synthesis of meaning experiences. It does not consist of an additive preservation of linguistic signs or of pieces of verbal information. It can become partially reflected with hindsight. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, I present ten propositions on the natureof early rabbinic hermeneutics. These propositions focus on the factthat the rabbis treat the meaning of a text from the past as unfoldingin the present. Specifically, rabbinic hermeneutics ties biblicalmeaning to human action, the horizon of which is the present and theprojected future. The fixed verbal structures of the biblical text arecontextualised in that action-oriented rabbinic present, somewhat akinto the ``fulfilment'' in a present which give prophecy or (...) proverb theirfull meaning. Also, the institution of a weekly reading of Scripturemust have created random hermeneutic contextualisations of the biblicaltext through the reader's present. The rabbinic homily, however, doesnot contextualise the biblical text through a rabbinic present butthrough a biblical past, albeit an exemplary one. This amounts to anarticulation of the rabbinic present through the language of Scripture.The biblical text thus was on the one hand the unquestionable languagethrough which the salient features of the present were constituted (andtheir perception limited); and on the other hand, it was the target ofan objectification which problematised linguistic meaning. In the secondpart of the paper, I attempt to identify some of the modern conceptswhich underpin the ten propositions, concentrating largely ontwentieth-century philosophy. (shrink)

In last chapter’s protocol of meaning experiences, I was concerned with a sequence of text units which I took to hang together by thematic ‘simultaneous’ relationships. Darwin’s text is neither a history nor a story. Therefore it does not invite the reader to position meaning units vis-à-vis particular points of time in the world that the text projects. Such non-narrative prose has attracted labels like ‘thematic’, ‘expository’, ‘descriptive’ and ‘discursive’ in modern academic discourse. Readers experience the way sequence matters in (...) such ‘thematic’ texts differently from the way it matters in narrative. The current chapter makes a start with exploring such differences. It examines the role of the perceived spatial contiguity of text parts, most centrally the contiguity of any two adjacent meaning units (e.g., sentences). In this light, I will address the experiences of reading certain kinds of ‘Introductions’, the format of commentary, the syllogism and the narrative. (shrink)

When readers reflect on their sense of a narrative text, they can usually distinguish a time, relative to other times, of when they learned of something happening or existing in the text world, from the time when that something is meant to have happened or existed in the text-world. Thus, reflection can intermittently encounter multiple dimensions of progressive temporality, including also the separate epistemic horizons of different characters. Using Bühler’s idea of origo, the chapter examines how the reader undergoes a (...) ‘plot’ of cognition in learning about the text world during a first reading. Readers are capable of experiencing a ‘shock’ at understanding something ‘too late’ that happened in the text world, e.g., in Faulkner’s novels. This shows that passive synthesis does not insulate the temporality of the text from that the reader. It also clarifies some experiences of lyrical poetry. The concluding sections examine memorization, forgetting and a reader’s ‘systematic’ exploration of their motivating associations, e.g., for academic purposes. (shrink)

Reading a text involves the perception of letters on a screen or a page, or some other perceptive pathway. But it does not usually consist of thematizing the letters, as might happen in proofreading. This chapter investigates various types of perception which an engagement with writing can involve, concentrating on visual perception.

Reading a text involves the synthesis of the reader’s understanding of multiple juxtaposed meaning units. Their meanings become interrelated through this largely passive synthesis of experience. The case of a narrative text is then of special interest. For, in a narrative text, characters experience their own world, hence must be assumed to synthesize their experiences. Understanding a narrative then involves synthesizing in the reader’s experience a character’s synthesis of experience. Modern narratives often foreground the character’s synthesis of their experience by (...) indicating directly or indirectly the ‘inner life’ of a character. This chapter explores various scenarios of how readers might passively synthesize a text which verbalizes, or treats in silence, the synthesis of experience of a character or a narrator. (shrink)

Passive synthesis has been shown to be the reader’s non-deliberate adjustment of experienced text meanings to each other’s co-presence. This unconscious dimension of reading cannot be reified as consisting of merely shadowy acts of inference. The reader’s exploration of their earlier experiences as motivating their current understanding of the text produces encounters with hitherto latent meanings, not with acts. This encounter is open to the future, and underlies explicit interpretations, including those of a text’s in/coherence.

The current chapter addresses links-designate that the reader can discover as having arisen from associating with each other formal-material, at times ‘poetic’, features of the text. These connections do not indicate directly any text-world features. They may arise from word choices, morpheme meanings, layouts, rhymes and limitless other formal or material facets of the text. The reader may encounter them in reflection on the basis of passive synthesis. A protocol of my reading of certain lines in Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’ documents (...) the process of a reader discovering that they have lived through such formal-material relationships. The chapter explores the encounter with ‘metaphorical’ meanings through related categories. (shrink)

What the text is experienced as saying about its world is always exceeded by the density and number of connections which passive synthesis seems to prepare for reflective discovery, the argument made in Chaps. 10 and 11. As the reader encounters passive interconnections in reflective hindsight, they may become aware of the conformity of these connections, at least to some extent, with assumptions prevailing in their own culture about how any world works. The current chapter addresses such cultural dispositions for (...) passively connecting certain text world features with certain others. These culturally privileged connections are likely to diverge between differently situated readers. Thus, what prompts readers to reflection, because it seems conspicuously (dis-)connected by the text, may also differ between readers. Additionally, the unity of the text world as such can become problematical to the reader. This experience is invited deliberately by some modernist literary art, and the chapter will use a work by Edmond Jabès as an illustration. Yet the level at which passive synthesis prompts the reader to reflect can adjust itself by habituation to ‘unrealistic’ world features, to features that are factual but new to the reader, and also to ‘weak’ world densities. The sensitivity with which acts of reflection respond to prompts from passive synthesis can undergo change, and the text itself can contribute to such changes. (shrink)

Reading a text constitutes a daily activity for millions of people around the world. Yet the processes involved are largely opaque to readers, and many questions on text reading puzzle even philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists and scholars of literature. What role does the unconscious play in text reading? How is reading a text different from merely looking at a page full of writing? How is it possible for texts to connect to their readers’ lives, sometimes even against their will? Are we (...) like computers when we read? This chapter will propose a new way of looking at reading which connects hitherto fragmented answers to these questions. It will claim that one needs to examine the reader’s synthesis of experience if one wishes to understand how a plurality of meaning experiences can constitute the activity of ‘reading a text’. (shrink)

This text is the first comprehensive attempt in decades to integrate reading into the philosophical discussion of the synthesis of experience more generally. It offers a comprehensive critique of three disciplinary approaches to reading: philosophical, literary and empirical/neuroscientific, while developing an innovative and unifying phenomenological account. It discusses texts from a variety of contemporary and historical contexts. It is inclusive, treating non-fiction alongside fiction, literary art alongside everyday texts, and narrative alongside thematic discourse. It addresses all reading practices found today: (...) casual and unreflective reading, close and scholarly reading with re-reading, the analysis of literary art, and sacred text study and memorization. In the current intellectual landscape, the book is unique in bringing all these aspects together in a philosophically coherent discussion. The book provides a critique of philosophical accounts of text meaning and linguistic experience by philosophers from Husserl and Ingarden to Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Gadamer and Derrida, and examines the positions of contemporary ‘naturalizing’ phenomenologists, such as Varela and Thompson. Also treated are neuroscientists such as Dehaene, and theorists of consciousness such as Kintsch, Flanagan and Dennett. Finally, this volume engages with psychological, linguistic, structuralist, ‘theory of mind’ and ‘experiential’ approaches in literary studies, from Bühler and Hamburger to Fludernik, Herman and Kuzmičová. It appeals to students and researchers working in these fields. (shrink)

The reader’s sense of a text can dynamically change even within the space of a single first reading, let alone in repeated readings. The current chapter provides illustrations of this. The analysis reveals, among other things, the role in reading of assumptions, usually culturally anchored, of what constitutes text coherence. As in the case of other dimensions of the reading process, the reader may encounter such assumptions in their reflective response to prompts from passive synthesis. Speaking generally, readers passively protain (...) that the text and the world it projects will turn out to hang together somehow; and that understanding any new passage will constitute an epistemic gain on some aspect of the text-projected world, whether taken as factual or fictional. This protention of coherence explains how readers can notice certain kinds of errors in their reading, and also how they can learn from the text ‘for life’. Since passive synthesis includes the meaning experiences both of the reader’s ‘life’ and of the text, the text meanings are sensitive to historical differences between reader contexts and reading practices. (shrink)

This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of ten Turkish theology journals indexed in the “Religion” category in Web of Science (WoS). The main objective of the study is to examine the research performance of these journals in the international academic platform, to evaluate their visibility and impact, and to offer some solutions. As in other fields, bibliometric analyses has become increasingly important in the field of theology in recent years. Such analyses help to monitor and measure publication quality as (...) well as academic performance. However, there is no comprehensive bibliometric analysis on theological journals in Türkiye. In this context, this study aims to determine the international visibility and impact of WoS-indexed theological journals in Türkiye. The study is expected to contribute to similar bibliometric analyses in the field of theology and to fill the gaps in the literature. All data used in the study were obtained from the WoS database. The raw data extracted from the database were checked and made ready for analysis after the necessary data cleaning. Bibliometrix (R software package) and VOSviewer, which are professional applications in this field, were used to perform bibliometric analysis of these data. The data were evaluated based on various metrics, such as the number and type of published articles, number of citations, and author collaboration. In addition, details such as the annual growth rates of the journals and the most cited articles were also analyzed. The key findings of the study are as follows: As a result of the profiles and comparative analyses of the journals, it was found that Türkiye is one of the leading countries with ten journals, ranking sixth among the countries with journals indexed in the WoS “Religion” category. The inclusion of new theological journals in the WoS index in recent years shows that Türkiye is well positioned in international academic journalism in the field of theology, with a growing influence through collective experience. The fact that all the journals are open access (through the DergiPark system) enables the articles in these journals to reach a wide readership in the international academic community. The national and international collaborative networks of authors publishing in these journals, influential articles and the development processes of the journals were analyzed in detail. Accordingly, names such as Ali Ayten, Ayfer Gedikli and Seyfettin Erdoğan stand out among the most influential writers. Sakarya Univ., Cumhuriyet Univ., and Erciyes Univ. are the prominent institutions in terms of the total number of publications. At the same time, Sakarya Univ., Marmara Univ., and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Univ. are the institutions with the highest number of cooperation networks. While Azerbaijan, the USA and Kyrgyzstan stand out as countries with international cooperation in publishing, the article emphasizes the need to increase the rate of publications with international cooperation and the importance of journals being included in higher indexes. In addition, the lack of studies on gender distribution analysis was highlighted and the importance of this issue for journals in the future was mentioned. The study mentions the total publication-citation ratio and the cumulative number of publications of the journals by years and includes the most influential articles. Again, the language of publication in these journals was examined and it was found that articles written in English were slightly more effective and had a higher citation potential. The study also carried out keyword analyses of these articles. Issues such as which topics are covered more, which concepts are used more frequently, and how often they are used are discussed. All these findings show how the theological journals in Türkiye have gained a place in the academic community worldwide. As a result, the international academic performance of Turkish theological journals has been comprehensively evaluated and it has been revealed that these journals have an important place in the academic community. (shrink)

Accreditation refers to the periodic evaluation of an institution by independent agencies. Widely implemented across various fields, including education, accreditation processes in Türkiye are carried out by the Higher Education Quality Council (YÖKAK) and independent accreditation bodies authorized by this council. In this context, the Islamic Sciences Accreditation Agency (İAA) was established to oversee the accreditation processes of higher religious education institutions and accredited Sakarya University Faculty of Theology for the first time in 2022. The aim of this study is (...) to evaluate the level of accreditation awareness among students and academic staff at Sakarya University Faculty of Theology. The main research question is: What is the level of awareness among academic staff and students regarding accreditation processes at an accredited higher religious education institution? This study employs a quantitative descriptive survey model and uses a survey as the data collection tool. The sample, selected through stratified random sampling, consists of 327 students from different academic years and 50 academic staff members. Frequency (n), percentage (%), and chi-square test were used in the analysis of the findings. The findings reveal that a significant proportion of participants are aware of the meaning of accreditation [Student (S) 72%, Academic Staff (AS) 100%], and almost all of them (S %96, AS %100) are aware of their faculty’s involvement in the accreditation process. Furthermore, most participants agree that accreditation facilitates national and international recognition (S %87, AS %86), enhances the faculty’s image (S %90, AS %86), and functions as a tool for institutional evaluation (S %81, AS %86). However, some participants also believe that accreditation does not have the same level of impact in all areas. Student responses indicate lower levels of agreement (%52) regarding accreditation’s contribution to participatory governance and post-graduation employment opportunities. Likewise, academic staff show relatively low agreement (%54) on the contribution of accreditation to improving educational and research competencies. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of ensuring student and academic staff participation in accreditation processes. Additionally, the findings highlight the need for further research on stakeholder engagement and the potential impact of accreditation on graduates’ employment prospects. (shrink)

Bilişsel Psikoloji başlığıyla bu yazıda değerlendirmeye konu olan eser, alanın önde gelen isimlerinden biri olan John Best tarafından kaleme alınmıştır. Bilişsel psikoloji, ikinci dünya savaşından sonra bilgisayar teknolojisi ve bilgi işlem teorileri alanında yaşanan gelişmelere paralel olarak gelişmiş bir alandır. Bu alanın temel hedefi, zihinsel süreçleri, davranışların altta yatan nedenlerinden yola çıkarak incelemektir. Değerlendirmeye konu olan eser, bu bağlamda, bilişsel psikoloji ile akademik düzeyde ilgilenenlere yönelik alternatif bir kaynak sunmak üzere telif edilmiştir. Değerlendirmemizde eserin konu ve amacı, dil ve üslubu, (...) yöntem ve içeriği gibi alt başlıklar üzerinden sistematik bir inceleme yapılacaktır. Eserde müellifin takip ettiği tasnif, üslup ve yöntem dikkate alındığında söz konusu eserin özellikle ders kitabı olarak öğrencilere ve bilişsel psikoloji ile akademik düzeyde ilgilenen kişilere hitap ettiği anlaşılmaktadır. (shrink)

One of the most important issues for the ideal transmission of hadith texts and isnāds is that there is no error in the writing of these expressions. For this purpose, it is seen that the hadith scholars try to create an awareness about the mistakes in the hadiths and the names of the narrators and try to minimize the mistakes by writing works. The most important examples of this literature seems to have been given in IV. /X century. In this (...) study, the reasons for the increase in the literature of hadith taṣḥīf in the IV./X century will be tried to be analyzed periodically and regionally. When the reasons for this increase are taken into consideration, it can be stated that the main factors come to the fore as the active transmission of works in the relevant period, the development of narrator literature, the decline in the profile of the narrator in this century, and the need of the Ahl al-Hadith living in the ʿAd̲j̲am regions on the subject. It is seen that the hadith scholars’ special requests from Arabic language experts for writing works also affected the formation of taṣḥīf literature. Their display of such an attitude is also important in terms of pointing out the existence of inter-scientific communication and a self-criticism about incompetent fields. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay develops a dialogue between Zhu Xi's thirteenth-century Neo-Confucian thought and Levinas' twentieth-century Western philosophy, around the notion of interrelatedness between individuals, between self and other. Despite the fact that Zhu Xi and Levinas belong to diff erent cultural universes and to diff erent philosophical spiritualities, and lived in diff erent historical times, they share the same interest in exploring, interpreting, and building interrelatedness, and therefore in ethics and ethical relationships. Through an intertextual and hermeneutical approach, the essay builds (...) a dialogue between diff erent cultural presuppositions underlying the essence of ethics and of ethical relationship: otherness and sameness. This dialogue allows one to become aware of the existence of transcultural concepts such as interrelatedness, and of their diff erent, cross-cultural meanings (e.g., interrelatedness is grounded in "sameness" in Zhu Xi's Confucian context and in "otherness" in Levinas' thought). (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to demonstrate what the construct of God means in Heidegger’s thought, how it relates to the structure of fundamental ontology, and in what way—given Heidegger’s principal claim in his critique of metaphysics as onto-theology—it leads to failure and self-subversion, thereby rendering his philosophical "turn" both necessary and justifiable. The inquiry proceeds in three stages: first, an interpretation of Heidegger’s critique of the metaphysical construct of God as pure presence, under which the self-referential and reflective structure (...) of presence reduces the sameness of Being and intellect to their equality. Second, an interpretation of the construct of God based on temporality, as developed in Heidegger’s pre-turn understanding of temporality as the Clearing (Lichtung) and origin of ontology. By positing existential sameness in the structural unity of Dasein’s existence as temporality, Heidegger remains entangled in the reflective model of pure presence. Thus, for him, the construct of God retains validity and meaning only within the realm of faith, not philosophy. The third part explores the failure of existential sameness and the necessity of Heidegger’s transcendence —after the turn— from temporality as the origin of ontology toward the precedence of the Clearing over Dasein, and the resulting transformation in his understanding of divinity. (shrink)

Many countries throughout the globe function in a system that allows the usage of more than one language. Such a multilingual social reality’s construction, especially in societies like the one in which I am living, is perceived in many different ways: attempting thus to provide for the process of differentiating identity’s oneness and sameness into various cultural subcategories, which already represent new realities. Due to newly created social realities, semiotics naturally discusses the differences and/or oppositions that can contribute to (...) various cultures’ mutual exclusivity or inclusivity, in terms of various heterogeneous “transformations,” which would thus overcome dualities, and be viewed as single acts of signs, or as a result of a process of singularization of their constituent components. I shall also attempt using a semiotic style that may enact a semiotics of action, grounded on the semiotics of passions, through a way of producing semantic taxonomies as pride versus humiliation, hegemony versus subordination, etc., obtainable due to disjunctive and/or conjunctive semiotic relations such as contextualization versus de-contextualization. (shrink)

In 2008, Graff Fara presented relative-sameness semantics, a semantics for a first-order modal and temporal language with the explicit aim of being able to render true certain contingent/temporary identity claims (relative to certain contexts). Graff Fara achieves this aim by abandoning a straightforward analysis of de re modal/temporal claims in terms of identity. Instead, such a claim is analyzed in terms of her relative-sameness relations (which need not be the identity relation), with the relevant relative-sameness relations in (...) play determined by context and individual terms occurring in the claim. However, there is a significant problem for relative-sameness semantics concerning (i) iterated modality/temporality, and (ii) existence that renders it an inappropriate account of our modal and temporal talk. In this paper, I present that problem and a solution to it. (shrink)

The fundamental relations that underlie cognitive comparisons—“same” and “different”—can be defined at multiple levels of abstraction, which vary in relational complexity. We compared response times to decide whether or not two sequentially‐presented patterns, each composed of two pairs of colored squares, were the same at three levels of abstraction: perceptual, relational, and system (higher order relations). For both 150 ms and 5 s inter‐stimulus intervals (ISIs), both with and without a masking stimulus, decision time increased with level of abstraction. (...) class='Hi'>Sameness at lower complexity levels contributed to decisions based on the higher levels. The pattern of comparison times across levelswas not predictable solely from encoding times. The results indicated that relations at multiple levels of complexity can be abstracted and compared in working memory, with higher complexity levels requiring more processing time. We simulated the impact of relational complexity on response time using Learning and Inference with Schemas and Analogies (LISA), a computational model of relational comparisons based on dynamic binding of elements into roles in a relational working memory. (shrink)

The sun is in fact the same thing as the brightest object in the sky, but it would seem that the sun and the brightest object might have been different. Socrates may now be the same thing as the seated thing (because Socrates is now seated), but it would seem that Socrates and the seated thing will later be different (once Socrates rises). Now Aristotle’s usual way of describing such situations is to say that such pairs of entities are accidentally (...) the same or accidentally one,Aristotle writes both of sameness and of unity, and, though it is not clear that the terms can be used interchangeably, the accounts of each are too similar to ignore and so I shall move freely between the two notions. the idea being that the sun and the brightest objectIt is worth pointing out that a correlate of ‘object’ or ‘thing’ does not standardly appear in Aristotle’s Greek descriptions of such cases. Greek allows the nominalization of any adjective merely by prefixing a definite article to it. Thus Aristo.. (shrink)

In dialogue with the most famous myth for the origin of different languages - The Tower of Babel - A Psychoanalytic Exploration on Sameness and Otherness: Beyond Babel provides a series of timely reflections on the themes of sameness and otherness from a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective. How are we dealing with communication and its difficulties, the confusion of tongues and loss of common ground within a European context today? Can we move beyond Babel? Confusion and feared loss of (...) shared values and identity are a major part of the daily work of psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Bringing together an international range psychoanalytic practitioners and researchers, the book is divided into six parts and covers an array of resonant topics, including: language and translation; cultural identity; families and children; the cyber world; the psychotherapeutic process; and migration. Whereas the quest for unity, which underpins the myth of Babel, leads to mystification, simplification and the exclusion of people or things, multilingual communities necessitate mutual understanding through dialogue. This book examines those factors which further or threaten communication, aiming not to reduce but to gain complexity. It suggests that diversification enriches communication and that, by relating to others, we can create something new. As opposed to cultural and linguistic homogeneity, Babel is not only a metaphor for mangled communication, alienation, and distraction, it is also about the acceptance or rejection of differences between self and other. This book will be of great interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists and researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds. (shrink)

In dialogue with the most famous myth for the origin of different languages - The Tower of Babel - A Psychoanalytic Exploration on Sameness and Otherness: Beyond Babel provides a series of timely reflections on the themes of sameness and otherness from a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective. How are we dealing with communication and its difficulties, the confusion of tongues and loss of common ground within a European context today? Can we move beyond Babel? Confusion and feared loss of (...) shared values and identity are a major part of the daily work of psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Bringing together an international range psychoanalytic practitioners and researchers, the book is divided into six parts and covers an array of resonant topics, including: language and translation; cultural identity; families and children; the cyber world; the psychotherapeutic process; and migration. Whereas the quest for unity, which underpins the myth of Babel, leads to mystification, simplification and the exclusion of people or things, multilingual communities necessitate mutual understanding through dialogue. This book examines those factors which further or threaten communication, aiming not to reduce but to gain complexity. It suggests that diversification enriches communication and that, by relating to others, we can create something new. As opposed to cultural and linguistic homogeneity, Babel is not only a metaphor for mangled communication, alienation, and distraction, it is also about the acceptance or rejection of differences between self and other. This book will be of great interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists and researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds. (shrink)

I argue that there is a hitherto unrecognized connection between Henry of Ghent’s general theory of real relations and his Trinitarian theology, namely the notion of numerical sameness without identity. A real relation (relatio) is numerically the same thing (res) as its absolute (non-relative) foundation, without being identical to its foundation. This not only holds for creaturely real relations but also for the divine persons’ distinguishing real relations. A divine person who is constituted by a real relation (relatio) and (...) the divine essence is numerically the same thing (res) as the divine essence without being identical to it. Further, I compare Mark Henninger’s and Jos Decorte’s interpretations of Henry’s general theory of real relations and show that Henninger’s is to be preferred and how it is consistent with my interpretation. I argue that the difficulty with Decorte’s interpretation stems, in part, from his misrepresentation of Henry’s Trinitarian theology. Subsequently, I fill in some missing pieces to Decorte’s presentation of Henry’s Trinitarian theology, and this in turn shows why Henninger’s interpretation in conjunction with mine is to be preferred. (shrink)

It is an intimate experience for us to think, to understand and to perceive things as being identical to themselves, and to suppose, consequently, that things are truly “what” they are. Something is always conceived as itself. The given is given full of itself in all its modifications. For instance, I can think or perceive partially some lips, I can see them almost in their whole or in some of their aspects, or just see them disappear. But it does not (...) seem to be possible to think or to perceive a given as almost itself, as an aspect or as part of itself. It is the aim of this work to study the assumptions and conditions for the original position of sameness in experience, just as it occurs in the synthesis of the datum singular and distinct. The polarization of single tone (einstimmig) intentional rays in an αvτó already contains the aporiae peculiar to the experience of the identical, whose revelation shall lead us, on the one hand, to one of the nuclei of the analysis of passive synthesis, and, on the other hand, to point up how critical revision of the numerical or extensional model of self-identity is for the unity of meaning. Then, it will be a question of pointing out the reasons why in a phenomenology of identity, the renunciation of the phenomenological legitimacy of the αvτó as a guarantee for the different positions of identity must be observed. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-3464-4_13 . (shrink)

Occasions of Identity is an exploration of timeless philosophical issues about persistence, change, time, and sameness. Andre Gallois offers a critical survey of various rival views about the nature of identity and change, and puts forward his own original theory. He supports the idea of occasional identities, arguing that it is coherent and helpful to suppose that things can be identical at one time but distinct at another. Gallois defends this view, demonstrating how it can solve puzzles about persistence (...) dating back to the Ancient Greeks, and investigates the metaphysical consequences of rejecting the necessity and eternity of identities. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titles: I II III IV.

____Race/Sex__ is the first forum for combined discussion of racial theory and gender theory. In sixteen articles, avant-garde scholars of African American philosophy and liberatory criticism explore and explode the categories of race, sex and gender into new trajectories that include sexuality, black masculinity and mixed-race identity.

What is the impact of genetics and genomics on issues of identity and what do we mean when we speak of identity? This paper explores how certain concepts of identity used in philosophy can be brought together in a multi-layered concept of identity. It discusses the concepts of numerical, qualitative, personal and genetic identity-over-time as well as rival concepts of genomic identity-over-time. These are all understood as layers in the multi-layered concept of identity. Furthermore, the paper makes it clear that (...) our understanding of genomic identity and the importance attached to genomic sameness-over-time matters for the ethical questions raised by certain new gene technologies. (shrink)

This paper examines the problem of sameness in terms of being it the classical problem of personal identity and various philosophical positions on the existence of the self as a substantive subject. I call this subject an ethical Self, which involves different notions of ego, being, substance, and personhood. The denial of the existence of a permanent self by philosophers like Hume and Buddhists does not seem justified in regard to one's identity or sameness over time. The no-self (...) theorists do not provide any strong ground for how to explain the notion of personhood and one's actions in a moral space without accepting a substantive self as a doer that continues over time. They certainly seem to have failed in establishing a logical connection between their no-self theories on the one hand and the necessity of an ethical self in their philosophical accounts on the other. Rejecting the no-self theory in defense of the self (soul) theory of personal identity, I conclude this paper with a note that sameness of a person over time is the prerequisite of morality, law, and present and future plans and that there is no harm in considering a permanent self, as Jīva of Jainism, to solve the problem of personal identity. There is also no harm in preferring the self theory over the no-self theory since the former, unlike the latter, does give a meaning to spirituality and transcendence. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger was reported to have considered his work Identity and Difference (based on two seminars delivered in 1957) to be “the most important thing he … published since [his magnum opus] Being and Time.” (Heidegger, 1969, 7) While Being and Time begins with the human being (Da- sein; being-there), aiming to proceed to an understanding of the Being of beings, in Identity and Difference the focus is on the very “relation” between the human being and Being. (Ibid., 8) The (...) present work highlights the intertwined and entangled sameness/difference between beings and Being. This entanglement and belonging, as we shall see, is also one of the most foundational concepts and prominent themes by the renowned and highly influential Muslim mystic Ibn Arabi (1165-1240). We particularly focus on his important compendium of mystical teachings, Fusus al-Hikam (Bezels of Wisdom). We also touch upon the sameness/difference of thoughts between these two thinkers. (shrink)

With its implicit vilification of materiality, the notion of objectification has failed to produce a coherent and effective ethical analysis of heterosexual sex work. The concept of derivatization, grounded in an Irigarayan model of embodied intersubjectivity, is more effective. However, queer sex work poses new and different ethical challenges. This paper argues that although queer sex work can entail both objectification and derivatization, the former is not ethically objectionable, and the latter, although the cause for some justified ethical concern, must (...) be analyzed within the context of structural sexual injustice. (shrink)

The potential of the soil to hold plant nutrients is governed by the cation-exchange capacity of any soil. Estimating soil CEC aids in conventional soil management practices to replenish the soil solution that supports plant growth. In this study, a multiple model integration scheme supervised with a hybrid genetic algorithm-neural network was developed and employed to predict the accuracy of soil CEC in Tabriz plain, an arid region of Iran. The standalone models and extreme learning machine ) were implemented for (...) incorporation into the MM-GANN. In addition, it was tested to enhance the prediction accuracy of the standalone models. The soil parameters such as clay, silt, pH, carbonate calcium equivalent, and soil organic matter were used as model inputs to predict soil CEC. With the use of several evaluation criteria, the results showed that the MM-GANN model involving the predictions of ELM and ANN models calibrated by considering all the soil parameters as inputs provided superior soil CEC estimates with a Nash Sutcliffe Efficiency = 0.87, Root Mean Square Error = 2.885, Mean Absolute Error = 2.249, Mean Absolute Percentage Error = 12.072, and coefficient of determination = 0.884. The proposed MM-GANN model is a reliable intelligence-based approach for the assessment of soil quality parameters intended for sustainability and management prospects. (shrink)