Disambiguating the Stream/Bounce Illusion With Inference

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 453-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. Grove ◽  
Caitlin Robertson ◽  
Laurence R. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Processing ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
Visual Display ◽  
The Other ◽  
Collision Point ◽  
Parsimonious Explanation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cognitive Inference

The ‘stream/bounce’ illusion refers to the perception of an ambiguous visual display in which two discs approach each other on a collision course. The display can be seen as two discs streaming through each other or bouncing off each other. Which perception dominates, may be influenced by a brief transient, usually a sound, presented around the time of simulated contact. Several theories have been proposed to account for the switching in dominance based on sensory processing, attention and cognitive inference, but a universally applicable, parsimonious explanation has not emerged. We hypothesized that only cognitive inference would be influenced by the perceptual history of the display. We rendered the display technically unambiguous by vertically offsetting the targets’ trajectories and manipulated their history by allowing the objects to switch from one trajectory to the other up to four times before the potential collision point. As the number of switches increased, the number of ‘bounce’ responses also increased. These observations show that expectancy is a critical factor in determining whether a bounce or streaming is perceived and may form the basis for a universal explanation of instances of the stream/bounce illusion.

“So cool, right?”: Canadian English Entering the 21st Century

2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 309-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sali A. Tagliamonte
Keyword(s):  
Communication Technology ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Mobility ◽  
Canadian English ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Stratified Sample ◽  
History Of

AbstractA socially stratified sample—the Toronto English Corpus—together with the construct of apparent time (with speakers aged 10–90 years) reveal that certain features are declining, including future will, deontic have got to, possessive have got, intensifier very, and the sentence tag you know. On the other hand, some features are on the rise, including future going to, deontic have to, possessive have, intensifiers really and so, and sentences tags such as whatever, so, and stuff like that. The younger generation is pushing these changes forward more rapidly. While some developments date back hundreds of years in the history of English, they are not particular to Canada, and are consistent with research on other English corpora. Other changes appear to be progressing in a unique way in Canada, including deontic and possessive have. I argue that the broader socio-historical context is a critical factor: geographic and economic mobility as well as changes in communication technology may explain the rapid acceleration of certain types of linguistic change.

Theodor W. Adorno

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colby Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In his somewhat controversial book Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben makes brief reference to Theodor Adorno’s apparently contradictory remarks on perceptions of death post-Auschwitz, positions that Adorno had taken concerning Nazi genocidal actions that had seemed also to reflect something horribly errant in the history of thought itself. There was within such murderous acts, he had claimed, a particular degradation of death itself, a perpetration of our humanity bound in some way to affect our perception of reason itself. The contradictions regarding Auschwitz that Agamben senses to be latent within Adorno’s remarks involve the intuition ‘on the one hand, of having realized the unconditional triumph of death against life; on the other, of having degraded and debased death. Neither of these charges – perhaps like every charge, which is always a genuinely legal gesture – succeed in exhausting Auschwitz’s offense, in defining its case in point’ (RA 81). And this is the stance that Agamben wishes to hammer home quite emphatically vis-à-vis Adorno’s limitations, ones that, I would only add, seem to linger within Agamben’s own formulations in ways that he has still not come to reckon with entirely: ‘This oscillation’, he affirms, ‘betrays reason’s incapacity to identify the specific crime of Auschwitz with certainty’ (RA 81).

The World after the End of the World

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kas Saghafi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
End Of The World

In several late texts, Derrida meditated on Paul Celan's poem ‘Grosse, Glühende Wölbung’, in which the departure of the world is announced. Delving into the ‘origin’ and ‘history’ of the ‘conception’ of the world, this paper suggests that, for Derrida, the end of the world is determined by and from death—the death of the other. The death of the other marks, each and every time, the absolute end of the world.

Med. Dr. Adalbert Wraný (1836–1902) – doctor of medicine, mineral collector and donor to the National Museum in Prague

2019 ◽  
Vol 188 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-146
Author(s):  
Martin Bohatý ◽  
Dalibor Velebil
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Industrial Chemistry ◽  
Pediatric Pathology ◽  
Geological Institute ◽  
History Of ◽  
Precious Stones

Adalbert Wraný (*1836, †1902) was a doctor of medicine, with his primary specialization in pediatric pathology, and was also one of the founders of microscopic and chemical diagnostics. He was interested in natural sciences, chemistry, botany, paleontology and above all mineralogy. He wrote two books, one on the development of mineralogical research in Bohemia (1896), and the other on the history of industrial chemistry in Bohemia (1902). Wraný also assembled several natural science collections. During his lifetime, he gave to the National Museum large collections of rocks, a collection of cut precious stones and his library. He donated a collection of fossils to the Geological Institute of the Czech University (now Charles University). He was an inspector of the mineralogical collection of the National Museum. After his death, he bequeathed to the National Museum his collection of minerals and the rest of the gemstone collection. He donated paintings to the Prague City Museum, and other property to the Klar Institute of the Blind in Prague. The National Museum’s collection currently contains 4 325 samples of minerals, as well as 21 meteorites and several hundred cut precious stones from Wraný’s collection.

La ética del Otro: una introducción al pensamiento de Emmanuel Lévinas

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Carlos Alvaréz Teijeiro
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Essential Question ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
First Philosophy

Emmanuel Lévinas, the philosopher of ethics par excellence in the twentieth century, and by own merit one of the most important ethical philosophers in the history of western philosophy, is also the philosopher of the Other. Thereby, it can be said that no thought has deepened like his in the ups and downs of the ethical relationship between subject and otherness. The general objective of this work is to expose in a simple and understandable way some ideas that tend to be quite dark in the philosophical work of the author, since his profuse religious production will not be analyzed here. It is expected to show that his ideas about the being and the Other are relevant to better understand interpersonal relationships in times of 4.0 (re)evolution. As specific objectives, this work aims to expose in chronological order the main works of the thinker, with special emphasis on his ethical implications: Of the evasion (1935), The time and the Other (1947), From the existence to the existent (1947), Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (1961) and, last, Otherwise than being, or beyond essence (1974). In the judgment of Lévinas, history of western philosophy starting with Greece, has shown an unusual concern for the Being, this is, it has basically been an ontology and, accordingly, it has relegated ethics to a second or third plane. On the other hand and in a clear going against the tide movement, our author supports that ethics should be considered the first philosophy and more, even previous to the proper philosophize. This novel approach implies, as it is supposed, that the essential question of the philosophy slows down its origin around the Being in order to inquire about the Other: it is a philosophy in first person. Such a radical change of perspective generates an underlying change in how we conceive interpersonal relationships, the complex framework of meanings around the relationship Me and You, which also philosopher Martin Buber had already spoken of. As Lévinas postulates that ethics is the first philosophy, this involves that the Other claims all our attention, intellectual and emotional, to the point of considering that the relationship with the Other is one of the measures of our identity. Thus, “natural” attitude –husserlian word not used by Lévinas- would be to be in permanent disposition regarding to the meeting with the Other, to be in permanent opening state to let ourselves be questioned by him. Ontology, as the author says, being worried about the Being, has been likewise concerned about the Existence, when the matter is to concern about the particular Existent that every otherness supposes for us. In conclusion it can be affirmed that levinasian ethics of the meeting with the Other, particular Face, irreducible to the assumption, can contribute with an innovative looking to (re)evolving the interpersonal relationships in a 4.0 context.

Policy analysis and complexity – a non-equilibrium approach for integrated water management

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 301-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Govert D. Geldof
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Control System ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
The Other ◽  
Integrated Water Management ◽  
Equilibrium Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Groundwater Policy ◽  
Non Equilibrium

In integrated water management, the issues are often complex by nature, they are capable of subjective interpretation, are difficult to express in standards and exhibit many uncertainties. For such issues, an equilibrium approach is not appropriate. A non-equilibrium approach has to be applied. This implies that the processes to which the integrated issue pertains, are regarded as “alive”’. Instead of applying a control system as the model for tackling the issue, a network is used as the model. In this network, several “agents”’ are involved in the modification, revision and rearrangement of structures. It is therefore an on-going renewal process (perpetual novelty). In the planning process for the development of a groundwater policy for the municipality of Amsterdam, a non-equilibrium approach was adopted. In order to do justice to the integrated character of groundwater management, an approach was taken, containing the following features: (1) working from global to detailed, (2) taking account of the history of the system, (3) giving attention to communication, (4) building flexibility into the establishing of standards, and (5) combining reason and emotions. A middle course was sought, between static, rigid but reliable on the one hand; dynamic, flexible but vague on the other hand.

On the nature of chemistry

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric R. Scerri
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Recent History ◽  
History Of Chemistry ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Fundamental Unity ◽  
The 19Th Century

<span>The very nature of chemistry presents us with a tension. A tension between the exhilaration of diversity of substances and forms on the one hand and the safety of fundamental unity on the other. Even just the recent history of chemistry has been al1 about this tension, from the debates about Prout's hypothesis as to whether there is a primary matter in the 19th century to the more recent speculations as to whether computers will enable us to virtually dispense with experimental chemistry.</span>

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anh Q. Tran
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Vietnamese Studies

The Introduction gives the background of the significance of translating and study of the text Errors of the Three Religions. The history of the development of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism in Vietnam from their beginning until the eighteenth century is narrated. Particular attention is given to the different manners in which the Three Religions were taken up by nobles and literati, on the one hand, and commoners, on the other. The chapter also presents the pragmatic approach to religion taken by the Vietnamese, which was in part responsible for the receptivity of the Vietnamese to Christianity. The significance of the discovery of Errors and its impact on Vietnamese studies are also discussed.

Epidemics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Psychological Consequences ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Race Ethnicity

This book challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics. From an interdisciplinary array of scholars, a consensus has emerged: invariably, epidemics in past times provoked class hatred, blame of the ‘other’, or victimization of the diseases’ victims. It is also claimed that when diseases were mysterious, without cures or preventive measures, they more readily provoked ‘sinister connotations’. The evidence for these assumptions, however, comes from a handful of examples—the Black Death, the Great Pox at the end of the sixteenth century, cholera riots of the 1830s, and AIDS, centred almost exclusively on the US experience. By investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics, reaching back before the fifth-century BCE Plague of Athens to the eruption of Ebola in 2014, this study traces epidemics’ socio-psychological consequences across time and discovers a radically different picture. First, scholars, especially post-AIDS, have missed a fundamental aspect of the history of epidemics: their remarkable power to unify societies across class, race, ethnicity, and religion, spurring self-sacrifice and compassion. Second, hatred and violence cannot be relegated to a time when diseases were mysterious, before the ‘laboratory revolution’ of the late nineteenth century: in fact, modernity was the great incubator of a disease–hate nexus. Third, even with diseases that have tended to provoke hatred, such as smallpox, poliomyelitis, plague, and cholera, blaming ‘the other’ or victimizing disease bearers has been rare. Instead, the history of epidemics and their socio-psychological consequences has been richer and more varied than scholars and public intellectuals have heretofore allowed.

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