scholarly journals Agency and the Successive Structure of Time-Consciousness

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camden Alexander McKenna

AbstractI argue for constraining the nomological possibility space of temporal experiences and endorsing the Succession Requirement for agents. The Succession Requirement holds that the basic structure of temporal experience must be successive for agentive subjects, at least in worlds that are law-like in the same way as ours. I aim to establish the Succession Requirement by showing non-successively experiencing agents are not possible for three main reasons, namely that they (1) fail to stand in the right sort of causal relationship to the outcomes of their actions, (2) exhibit the wrong sort of epistemic status for agency, and (3) lack the requisite agentive mental attitude of intentionality. I conclude that agency is incompatible with non-successive experience and therefore we should view the successive temporal structure of experience as a necessary condition for agency. I also suggest that the Succession Requirement may actually extend beyond my main focus on agency, offering preliminary considerations in favor of seeing successive experience as a precondition for selfhood as well. The consequences of the Succession Requirement are wide-ranging, and I discuss various implications for our understanding of agency, the self, time consciousness, and theology, among other things.

2020 ◽  
pp. 8-22
Author(s):  
Ihor Yudkin

Eidetic abstractions based upon individuation together with heuristic programs for the examination of conjectures are the forms of intentional reflection developed within the intuitive thought. The initial point of such development is parcellation of cultural texts that is to be marked where the introduced relation “the whole – the parts” passes further to the relation “the inner – the outer” and “text – epoch” with the principle of subjective activity and the inner textual transformation in reflection that gain importance. It is textual spatial and temporal structure where eidetic and heuristic elements come into interaction most effectively; in particular, the construction of depth in a pictorial plane serves as the model for the cognition of historical reality that cannot be observed immediately. The model of labyrinth in which frames of the heuristic searches are displayed determines their procedures as the sequence of alternative choices where the continuous correction of hypotheses takes place. The premises for the development of heuristic programs are those of ambiguity and indefiniteness of eidetic images together with the self-denial of the automatism of rhetoric conventions. It is due to heuristics that the prototypes for textual eidetic images are to be found. Prototypes function as the eidetic abstractions of personal characters addressed to scenic interpretation. Textual cyclic structure builds up the necessary condition for the disclosure and mediation of distance between the text and history, from closed episodes to the epoch.


Author(s):  
M. Sato ◽  
Y. Ogawa ◽  
M. Sasaki ◽  
T. Matsuo

A virgin female of the noctuid moth, a kind of noctuidae that eats cucumis, etc. performs calling at a fixed time of each day, depending on the length of a day. The photoreceptors that induce this calling are located around the neurosecretory cells (NSC) in the central portion of the protocerebrum. Besides, it is considered that the female’s biological clock is located also in the cerebral lobe. In order to elucidate the calling and the function of the biological clock, it is necessary to clarify the basic structure of the brain. The observation results of 12 or 30 day-old noctuid moths showed that their brains are basically composed of an outer and an inner portion-neural lamella (about 2.5 μm) of collagen fibril and perineurium cells. Furthermore, nerve cells surround the cerebral lobes, in which NSCs, mushroom bodies, and central nerve cells, etc. are observed. The NSCs are large-sized (20 to 30 μm dia.) cells, which are located in the pons intercerebralis of the head section and at the rear of the mushroom body (two each on the right and left). Furthermore, the cells were classified into two types: one having many free ribosoms 15 to 20 nm in dia. and the other having granules 150 to 350 nm in dia. (Fig. 1).


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Sayigh

Colonialism deprives colonised peoples of the self-determined histories needed for continued struggle. Scattered since 1948 across diverse educational systems, Palestinians have been unable to control their education or construct an authentic curriculum. This paper covers varied schooling in the Palestinian diaspora. I set this state of ‘splitting through education’ as contradictory to international declarations of the right of colonised peoples to culturally relevant education. Such education would include histories that explain their situation, and depict past resistances. I argue for the production of histories of Palestine for Palestinian children, especially those in refugee camps as well as in Israel and Jerusalem, where curricula are controlled by the settler-coloniser. Black and Native Americans have dealt with exclusion from history in ways that offer models for Palestinians.


This book addresses different linguistic and philosophical aspects of referring to the self in a wide range of languages from different language families, including Amharic, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Newari (Sino-Tibetan), Polish, Tariana (Arawak), and Thai. In the domain of speaking about oneself, languages use a myriad of expressions that cut across grammatical and semantic categories, as well as a wide variety of constructions. Languages of Southeast and East Asia famously employ a great number of terms for first-person reference to signal honorification. The number and mixed properties of these terms make them debatable candidates for pronounhood, with many grammar-driven classifications opting to classify them with nouns. Some languages make use of egophors or logophors, and many exhibit an interaction between expressing the self and expressing evidentiality qua the epistemic status of information held from the ego perspective. The volume’s focus on expressing the self, however, is not directly motivated by an interest in the grammar or lexicon, but instead stems from philosophical discussions of the special status of thoughts about oneself, known as de se thoughts. It is this interdisciplinary understanding of expressing the self that underlies this volume, comprising philosophy of mind at one end of the spectrum and cross-cultural pragmatics of self-expression at the other. This unprecedented juxtaposition results in a novel method of approaching de se and de se expressions, in which research methods from linguistics and philosophy inform each other. The importance of this interdisciplinary perspective on expressing the self cannot be overemphasized. Crucially, the volume also demonstrates that linguistic research on first-person reference makes a valuable contribution to research on the self tout court, by exploring the ways in which the self is expressed, and thereby adding to the insights gained through philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.


ICL Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-105
Author(s):  
Markku Suksi

Abstract New Caledonia is a colonial territory of France. Since the adoption of the Nouméa Accord in 1998, a period of transition towards the exercise of self-determination has been going on. New Caledonia is currently a strong autonomy, well entrenched in the legal order of France from 1999 on. The legislative powers have been distributed between the Congress of New Caledonia and the Parliament of France on the basis of a double enumeration of legislative powers, an arrangement that has given New Caledonia control over many material fields of self-determination. At the same time as this autonomy has been well embedded in the constitutional fabric of France. The Nouméa Accord was constitutionalized in the provisions of the Constitution of France and also in an Institutional Act. This normative framework created a multi-layered electorate that has presented several challenges to the autonomy arrangement and the procedure of self-determination, but the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee have resolved the issues regarding the right to vote in manners that take into account the local circumstances and the fact that the aim of the legislation is to facilitate the self-determination of the colonized people, the indigenous Kanak people. The self-determination process consists potentially of a series of referendums, the first of which was held in 2018 and the second one in 2020. In both referendums, those entitled to vote returned a No-vote to the question of ‘Do you want New Caledonia to attain full sovereignty and become independent?’ A third referendum is to be expected before October 2022, and if that one also results in a no to independence, a further process of negotiations starts, with the potential of a fourth referendum that will decide the mode of self-determination New Caledonia will opt for, independence or autonomy.


Author(s):  
XIANG LI ◽  
BAODING LIU

Possibility measures and credibility measures are widely used in fuzzy set theory. Compared with possibility measures, the advantage of credibility measures is the self-duality property. This paper gives a relation between possibility measures and credibility measures, and proves a sufficient and necessary condition for credibility measures. Finally, the credibility extension theorem is shown.


2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomoyo Morita ◽  
Shoji Itakura ◽  
Daisuke N. Saito ◽  
Satoshi Nakashita ◽  
Tokiko Harada ◽  
...  

Individuals can experience negative emotions (e.g., embarrassment) accompanying self-evaluation immediately after recognizing their own facial image, especially if it deviates strongly from their mental representation of ideals or standards. The aim of this study was to identify the cortical regions involved in self-recognition and self-evaluation along with self-conscious emotions. To increase the range of emotions accompanying self-evaluation, we used facial feedback images chosen from a video recording, some of which deviated significantly from normal images. In total, 19 participants were asked to rate images of their own face (SELF) and those of others (OTHERS) according to how photogenic they appeared to be. After scanning the images, the participants rated how embarrassed they felt upon viewing each face. As the photogenic scores decreased, the embarrassment ratings dramatically increased for the participant's own face compared with those of others. The SELF versus OTHERS contrast significantly increased the activation of the right prefrontal cortex, bilateral insular cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and bilateral occipital cortex. Within the right prefrontal cortex, activity in the right precentral gyrus reflected the trait of awareness of observable aspects of the self; this provided strong evidence that the right precentral gyrus is specifically involved in self-face recognition. By contrast, activity in the anterior region, which is located in the right middle inferior frontal gyrus, was modulated by the extent of embarrassment. This finding suggests that the right middle inferior frontal gyrus is engaged in self-evaluation preceded by self-face recognition based on the relevance to a standard self.


Author(s):  
Matthew Watson

The market has no independent objective existence beyond the practices that are embedded within particular market institutions. Those practices, in turn, involve learning particular techniques of performance, on the assumption that each market environment rewards a corresponding type of market agency. However, the ability to reflect what might be supposed the right agential characteristics is not an instinct that is hardwired into us from birth. Instead it comes from perfecting the specific performance elements that allow people to recognize themselves as potentially competent actors in any given market context. This chapter takes the reader back to some of the earliest accounts of these performance elements, showing that important eighteenth-century debates about how to flourish as a market actor revolved around little else. In the early eighteenth century, Daniel Defoe emphasized the need for market actors to create convincing falsehoods, hiding their true feelings behind a presentation of self where customers’ whims were always catered to. In the late eighteenth century, Adam Smith was still wrestling with the dilemma of how genuinely the self could be put on display within market environments, believing that customers had a responsibility to curb excessive demands so that merchants’ interests could be respected. This meant not forcing them into knowingly false declarations, so that moral propriety and economic expedience were not necessarily antagonistic forces in the development of merchants’ character.


2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (07-08) ◽  
pp. 530-535
Author(s):  
T. Miebach ◽  
M. Schmidt ◽  
P. Prof. Nyhuis

Der Fachbeitrag stellt eine Methode vor, mit der sich Bibliotheken von Instandhaltungsmaßnahmen selbstlernend gestalten lassen. Die „Intelligenz“ solcher Systeme bietet mehrfachen Nutzen, einerseits durch die Auswahl der passenden Instandhaltungsmethode zum richtigen Zeitpunkt, andererseits durch die damit verbundene Erhöhung des kompletten Abnutzungsvorrates. Die Ergebnisse sind im Sonderforschungsbereich 653 „Gentelligente Bauteile im Lebenszyklus – Nutzung vererbbarer, bauteilinhärenter Informationen in der Produktionstechnik“ entstanden.   This article describes a method to design a self-learning maintenance library. The benefit derived from the intelligence of those systems refers to the right choice of maintenance measures at the right time and the enhancement of the whole wear margin. The results are part of the Collaborative Research Centre 653: Gentelligent components in their lifecycle – Utilization of inheritable component information in product engineering.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Everett L. Worthington

I examine religious humility, which is one content area of intellectual humility. Intellectual humility is the subtype of humility that involves taking a humble stance in sharing ideas, especially when one is challenged or when an idea is threatening. I position religious humility within the context of general humility, spiritual humility, and relational humility, and thus arrive at several propositions. People who are intensely spiritually humble can hold dogmatic beliefs and believe themselves to be religiously humble, yet be perceived by others of different persuasions as religiously dogmatic and even arrogant. For such people to be truly religiously humble, they must feel that the religious belief is core to their meaning system. This requires discernment of which of the person’s beliefs are truly at the core. But also the religiously humble person must fulfill the definition of general humility, accurately perceiving the strengths and limitations of the self, being teachable to correct weaknesses, presenting oneself modestly, and being positively other-oriented. Humility thus involves (1) beliefs, values, and attitudes and (2) an interpersonal presentational style. Therefore, intellectually humble people must track the positive epistemic status of their beliefs and also must present with convicted civility.


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