HANS ABRAHAMSEN AND A RECURRENT ‘CHILDLIKE’ RHYTHM

Hans Abrahamsen has reused the same rhythm across four pieces spanning 33 years: in his Ten Studies, for solo piano, and Six Pieces, for horn trio (both from 1984), in Schnee (2008) and in Three Pieces, for orchestra (2017). Because self-borrowing is crucial to Abrahamsen's compositional practice, this rhythm provides a case study in his compositional priorities, particularly in the role canonic techniques play in his music. Although the rhythm's formal properties lend it a marked asymmetry at the foreground, it is presented in Schnee as part of a canon with highly symmetric pitch materials. But despite this apparent conflict between symmetries and asymmetries, Abrahamsen's music freely combines different approaches to the rhythm, as long as it is linked to a high-register shimmer, suggesting that Abrahamsen's noted uses of canons are largely for textural ends.

Living in a pandemic: changes in mobility routines, social activity and adherence to COVID-19 protective measures

Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), aimed at reducing the diffusion of the COVID-19 pandemic, have dramatically influenced our everyday behaviour. In this work, we study how individuals adapted their daily movements and person-to-person contact patterns over time in response to the NPIs. We leverage longitudinal GPS mobility data of hundreds of thousands of anonymous individuals to empirically show and quantify the dramatic disruption in people’s mobility habits and social behaviour. We find that local interventions did not just impact the number of visits to different venues but also how people experience them. Individuals spend less time in venues, preferring simpler and more predictable routines, also reducing person-to-person contacts. Moreover, we find that the individual patterns of visits are influenced by the strength of the NPIs policies, the local severity of the pandemic and a risk adaptation factor, which increases the people’s mobility regardless of the stringency of interventions. Finally, despite the gradual recovery in visit patterns, we find that individuals continue to keep person-to-person contacts low. This apparent conflict hints that the evolution of policy adherence should be carefully addressed by policymakers, epidemiologists and mobility experts.

THE AWARDING OF POST-DIVORCE MAINTENANCE TO A MUSLIM EX-WIFE AND CHILDREN IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN COURTS: THE INTERACTION BETWEEN DIVINE AND SECULAR LAW

The article discusses the differences between the South African civil law and Islamic law with specific reference to post-divorce spousal maintenance as well as postdivorce maintenance of children in light of recent case law, Mahomed v Mahomed [2009] JOL 23733 (ECP). The issue of post-divorce spousal maintenance is especially controversial and it is noted that in both systems the issue should not beseen in isolation, but in conjunction with the other protection possibilities within each of these systems. The apparent conflict between the South African constitutional principles and the principles of Islam is noted and compared to the Indian legal and constitutional experience, although reference is also made to the Algerian legal position. Drawing an analogy with the South African legal developments vis-à-vis customary marriages, the article concludes and submits that any enactment by the South African legislature, dealing with the maintenance of spouses and children after divorce, whether in the format of the Muslim Marriage Bill as set out in the 2003 South African Law Reform Commission Report, or in any other format, should take cognizance of the rulings and teachings of Islam.

Engaging Children in Story Co-Creation for Effective Serious Games

Despite a growing interest in player-centred methods for serious games, little is known on how to achieve this goal in practice when prospective users are children. Foundational questions remain unanswered, such as to which design dimensions children should contribute, and how and when they should be engaged. This paper presents the methods and results of two studies that inspired Skies of Manawak, a game for developmental dyslexia remediation. The first study engaged 60 children (age 8–13) in 15 ideation workshops to highlight the story and aesthetics of the game. The second study engaged 258 children (age 8–11) in the comparative evaluation of the game demo with a commercial cognitive training system. The results proved the importance and complexity of the early involvement of children in design. Children strongly appreciated the demo, particularly the story their peers contributed to shaping. However, this story deviated from their desires in several critical dimensions. It had to reconcile gender stereotypes and the violence embedded in their narratives with the game’s purpose. An apparent conflict between designers and children’s values emerged, supporting the idea that children’s engagement in serious game design requires effective mediation to avoid compromising the purposes they intend to achieve.

Priority care with the statute of the person with a disability and the principle of priority in real estate registration

The present study aims to analyze the apparent conflict between the priority care of the status of the person with disabilities and the principle of priority of the registration of real estate, that is, if this legal guarantee, gives the person with disabilities priority when noting rights in Notatories. With regard to the methodology used, it is noteworthy that, regarding the purposes of this study, this study is classified as descriptive and explanatory and, as for the means, it is classified as bibliographic, using materials such as books, articles, magazines and reports on the subject. The research is also characterized as a qualitative approach. It was intended to demonstrate that the person with disabilities has the right guaranteed under Law 13.143/2015 to be served quickly, effectively and individually, including in Real Estate Records Registry, but does not enjoy privileges in view of the registral priority in view of the principle of registration priority. From decisions taken by the registered courts of São Paulo, as a result, it is found that the specific provision of Law No. 6,015/1973 prevails in relation to the right of priority care of certain publics, Law 13,143/2015, since it is a material right of priority, and it is understood that granting priority care outside the requirements of art. 186 of Law No. 6,015/1973, is understood to grant priority care outside the requirements of Art. 186 of Law No. 6,015/1973, would represent undeniable affront to legal dictates, which would compromise the service of the right to equality, a premise also of the Statute of persons with disabilities.

THE MEDIATION OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN ADVOCACY

This article aims to study mediation and its various approaches and forms of action, to identify its applicability in the professional legal arena. It has been with the assumption the existence of an apparent conflict that permeates this profession whose human actions already are established, but that have been impacted by the actions not human (technology) based on the economics of information and knowledge. It is questionable C atom to Information mediation can act in the transformations suffered by law in face of the changes that the Information and Communication Technologies-ICT have caused in society. We opted for research of an applied nature, contemplating intervention in social reality, with a qualitative approach, with an exploratory objective, whose method is the inductive one, as the general conclusion is based on a set of particular observations from the literature. As a result, important theoretical elements were identified for the debate on mediation and its ability to lead in the transformation processes of advocacy.

Hobbes's Political Philosophy

Hobbes’s Political Philosophy: Interpretation and Interpretations extends a position first explained in The Two Gods of Leviathan (1992). Hobbes presented what he believed would be a science of politics, a set of timeless truths grounded in definitions. In chapters on the laws of nature, authorization and representation, sovereignty by acquisition, and others, the author explains this science of politics. In addition to the timeless science, Hobbes had two timebound projects: (1) to eliminate the apparent conflict between the new science of Copernicus and Galileo and traditional Christian doctrine, and (2) to show that Christianity, correctly understood, is not politically destabilizing. The strategy for accomplishing (1) was to distinguish science from religion and to understand Christianity as essentially belief in the literal meaning of the Bible. The strategy for accomplishing (2) was to appeal to biblical teachings such as “Servants, obey your masters,” and “All authority comes from God.” Criticisms of the author’s interpretations are the occasion for (a) fleshing out Hobbes’s historical context and (b) describing the nature of interpretation in dialogue with opposing interpretations by scholars such as Jeffrey Collins, Edwin Curley, John Deigh, and Quentin Skinner. Interpretation is updating one’s network of beliefs in order to re-establish an equilibrium upset by a text. Interpretations may be judged according to prima facie properties of good interpretations such as completeness, consistency, simplicity, generality, palpability, and defensibility.

Individuals, Communities, and Groups in Thomas Kuhn’s Model of Scientific Development

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn resorts to concepts from several disciplines in order to describe the general patterns of scientific development. This blend of disciplines can be explained in part by Kuhn's intellectual path, from physics to history and then to philosophy of science; but it also points to a deeper methodological problem, which is the question of what is the real unity of analysis in his model of science. The primary intention of this article is, thus, to give a solution to this difficulty. The answer, I believe, rests on identifying three fundamental units present in Kuhn's theory of scientific development. They are, respectively, the individual, responsible for producing evidence, spreading information, and choosing theories; the community, a set of scientists investigating a series of phenomena; and the groups, individuals with similar behavior but with looser institutional or social ties — a usually neglected category in Kuhnian literature, but equally fundamental for the final outcome of scientific debates. After investigating these categories in detail, I propose a way of integrating them into a general model for explaining the resolution of scientific controversies. Finally, I try to resolve the apparent conflict among disciplinary vocabularies by offering an account of the function of sociological, psychological, and epistemological concepts for describing controversies, and some of the methodologies appropriate for each of these tasks.

Introduction

This Introduction outlines the central focus of Philosophy of Psychedelics: the therapeutic use of psychedelics in psychiatry and its apparent conflict with philosophical naturalism. The chapter briefly describes recent findings that controlled psychedelic administration can have lasting psychological benefits for healthy subjects and for psychiatric patients. It then cites evidence that these psychological benefits are mediated by ‘mystical-type’ experiences. For those sympathetic to naturalism, the philosophical view that only the natural world exists, this prompts a concern: do psychedelics cause therapeutic benefits by inducing non-naturalistic beliefs in a cosmic consciousness or divine Reality? This Introduction outlines a plan to answer this ‘Comforting Delusion Objection’ in subsequent chapters. The basic strategy is to argue that, even if naturalism is true, psychedelic therapy is still acceptable because (i) its epistemic risks are smaller than they might appear, and (ii) it also has epistemic benefits that are consistent with naturalism.

Philosophy of Psychedelics

Philosophy of Psychedelics is the first scholarly monograph in English devoted to the philosophical analysis of psychedelic drugs. Its central focus is the apparent conflict between the growing use of psychedelics in psychiatry and the philosophical worldview of naturalism, which holds that the natural world is all that exists. The book reviews scientific evidence that psychedelics such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin can be given safely in controlled conditions, and can cause lasting psychological benefits with one or two administrations. Supervised psychedelic sessions can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, and improve well-being in healthy volunteers for months or even years. But these benefits seem to be mediated by ‘mystical’ experiences of cosmic consciousness, which prompts a philosophical concern: Do psychedelics cause psychological benefits by inducing false or implausible beliefs about the metaphysical nature of reality? The author integrates empirical evidence and philosophical considerations in the service of a simple conclusion: This ‘Comforting Delusion Objection’ to psychedelic therapy fails. Exotic metaphysical ideas do sometimes come up, but they are not the central driver of change in psychedelic therapy. Psychedelics cause lasting psychological benefits by altering the sense of self and changing how people relate to their minds—not by changing their beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality. The upshot is that a traditional conception of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality can be reconciled with naturalism. Controlled psychedelic administration can lead to genuine knowledge gain and spiritual growth, even if no cosmic consciousness or divine Reality exists.