Image and identity: Religious symbols and symbolic representation on European Masonic nineteenth-century certificates

Masonic certificates have a fascinating and unique iconography. Many of the documents possess great artistic value. Other certificates, like the one drawn during the Napoleonic wars by a French prisoner of war in Okehampton, Devon, testify to how readily the language of Masonic symbolism was used and understood during this time. The spiritual, mystical and extremely eclectic character of Freemasonry presented a challenge for artists who tried to give the ideas of the Craft artistic form. It became their charge to develop a whole new iconographic system in order to present the unique social and moral identity of this fraternal society, and they drew their inspiration from sources as varied as Egyptian, Jewish, Christian, Greek and Roman mythology, religion and architecture.     

The Medical Vestment and Surgical Instruments of Saint Cosmas and Damian on Sinai Icons From the Seventh to the Eighteenth Century

The iconography of the doctor saints Cosmas and Damian and the artistic representations of their miracles are important sources for the history of medicine. Within the sphere of physician-saints, Cosmas and Damian have the greatest number of iconographic depictions in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art. In most of their representations, they wear long robes as a sort of professional mantles and carry surgical instruments and boxes indicating their status as doctors. The progress of Byzantine surgery could be attested by these objects, some of them mentioned in collections of miracle stories and documented in medical sources.     

The Image of Mary

Abstract

This article explores the significance of the shifting styles of image by which Mary has been presented in the history of Christian devotion. It begins with an account of how power became attached to static forms of her iconography and their association with a miraculous character as not made by human hand. In Western devotion the impact of artistic imagination on this convention opened the way for exploration of more creative modes of interpretation that offer other expressions of ambiguity, but that are also capable of manipulation. The ambiguity revealed by artistic imagination and manipulated in the Counter-Reformation is explored as a subversion of social and ecclesiastical structures of power in nineteenth-century Europe. Finally, images of human identity that belong to the nature of what is assumed from Mary in the incarnation are considered in questions about how her image might function disturbingly today as a source of power.     

图标形象度影响早期识别进程: 来自ERP的证据

人们主观上认为形象图标容易识别,然而以反应时为指标的行为实验发现,随着熟悉度增加,形 象优势逐渐消失。本研究采用事件相关电位(ERPs)技术,记录分析了 17 名熟练用户在识别图标时的识别电 位(RP)。结果显示:图标形象度对 RP 在潜伏期无显著差异,但形象图标反应时比抽象图标短,且形象图标 的RP波幅显著小于抽象图标。这一结果说明识别形象图标在类别分拣进程中处理的特征信息量较抽象图标少。     

Is Iconic Memory Iconic?

Short-term memory in vision is typically thought to divide into at least two memory stores: a short, fragile, high-capacity store known as iconic memory, and a longer, durable, capacity-limited store known as visual working memory (VWM). This paper argues that iconic memory stores icons, i.e., image-like perceptual representations. The iconicity of iconic memory has significant consequences for understanding consciousness, nonconceptual content, and the perception–cognition border. Steven Gross and Jonathan Flombaum have recently challenged the division between iconic memory and VWM by arguing against the idea of capacity limits in favor of a flexible resource-based model of short-term memory. I argue that, while VWM capacity is probably governed by flexible resources rather than a sharp limit, the two memory stores should still be distinguished by their representational formats. Iconic memory stores icons, while VWM stores discursive (i.e., language-like) representations. I conclude by arguing that this format-based distinction between memory stores entails that prominent views about consciousness and the perception–cognition border will likely have to be revised.     

婴儿数量表征的客体档案和类比模型

人对数量的表征及其发展是心理学研究的重要问题之一。20世纪70年代以来,国外对婴儿数量表征的研究取得了一系列理论和方法的进步。文章简要介绍了婴儿数量辨别和推理能力的研究方法,对婴儿数量表征相关的理论进行了重点讨论。大量详实的证据表明,婴儿拥有一个“天生的”数量机制,这为人数学能力的发展提供了基础。     

Light at the End of the Tunnel? Philosophy of Religion and the Near Death Experience

This article argues that currently many aspects of the Near Death Experience (NDE) remain a mystery, even after the more than two decades of discussion and analysis triggered by the publication of Raymond Moody's ground‐breaking study, Life After Life in 1975. It suggests that one reason for this continuing mystery is connected to the current under‐representation of studies of the phenomenon from within philosophy generally, and philosophy of religion in particular. It questions why this under‐representation should exist, suggesting that the very complexity of the NDE demands a thoroughgoing philosophical analysis, and arguing that philosophy and philosophy of religion have a crucial and rightful role alongside other disciplines within any attempt to gain a total understanding of what NDEs, in essence, are.     

反馈延迟对信息整合类别学习的影响：视觉项目精准性的调节作用

研究旨在探究更精确的视觉项目表征能否消除延迟反馈对信息整合学习的损害。实验采用2（视觉项目表征精确性：精确/非精确）×2（反馈延迟：即时反馈/延迟反馈）组间设计,结果发现无论有无延迟反馈,精确的项目表征条件下类别学习成绩都显著高于非精确条件,精确性与反馈延迟存在交互作用。采用状态痕迹分析进一步证明精确性显著影响信息整合类别学习的稳定性。在反馈延迟条件下,精确的视觉项目表征能提高信息整合类别学习的成绩。     

Head position and parsing ambiguity

A strongly principle-based model of parsing seeks to employ principles of the competence grammar directly in language processing. Within grammatical theory, the Projection Principle holds that each level of syntactic representation is a uniform projection of the lexical properties of heads. With respect to parsing this suggests that a phrasal node cannot be projected until the occurrence of its head and thus constitutes a strong empirical hypothesis concerning the fundamental nature of human language processing. This paper contrasts some cross-linguistic predictions made by a specific Grammarderived parsing model against those of a well-known top-down model whose functional motivation is decidedly nonlinguistic. This latter Minimal Attachment model is found to predict significant difficulty with respect to the processing of languages such as Japanese, which display rather different surface properties than English. This problem is not encountered in a model which recognizes the crucial role of heads in licensing argument structure with respect to Processing as well as Grammar. Cross-linguistic parsing differences are attributed to the linear and structural positions of licensing heads which constitute the primary locus of the cross-linguistic variation which is therefore ultimately to be ascribed directly to the Projection Principle.     

Creative style,personality, and artistic endeavor

Research has shown that creative style, as measured by the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI; M. J. Kirton, 1976), is correlated with more than 30 different personality traits. In this article, the author demonstrates that many of these correlations can be understood within the framework of the Five-Factor Model of personality and shows that the predominant correlates of creative style are personality indicators in the domains of the factors Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, and, to a lesser extent, Extraversion. These findings provide a basis for comparing the personality traits associated with creative style and occupational creativity. High scorers on the KAI (innovators) differ from both average and creative scientists but have personality characteristics similar to those of artists. This finding suggests that the artistic personality may be more common than is generally supposed and that common factors might underlie both artistic endeavor and creative style.     

Multiple meanings in South Indian temple worship

The survival of the cosmos is said to depend upon proper performance of the complex daily liturgy in large Hindu temples. This paper describes such daily worship in the Murukan temple at Kalugumalai, South India. After considering the significance of the principal stages—unction, decoration, food‐offering, and lamp‐showing—in the pūja rite which forms the basis of worship in Saivite temples, it seeks to understand this liturgy with reference to Hindu metaphysics, iconography and mythology, and notions of divine sovereignty. It is argued that such multi‐thematic analyses, which combine ethnographic and indological approaches, are essential for understanding contemporary Hindu practice.     

逻辑图表的发展

长期以来,逻辑图表被逻辑学家们仅仅视为教学辅助工具;但逻辑图表从Euler图到Venn图再到存在图表和概念图表的发展表明,它已经超越出教学工具这一狭隘界限,从而获得了更为深刻,广泛的意义,实际上逻辑图表是与我们标准数理逻辑记法相区别的另一种有效的逻辑记法,而且有着更强的直观性和可应用性。     

Realism and Representation: The Case of Rembrandt's Hat

Some artistic representations—the painting of a hat in a famous picture by Rembrandt is an example—are able to present vividly the character of what they represent precisely by calling attention to their medium of representation. There is a puzzle about this whose structure, I argue, is analogous to that of a familiar Kantian problem for traditional realism. I offer a precise characterization of the puzzle, before arguing that an analogue for the case of representation to the Kantian solution to the problem for traditional realism is implausible. I offer an alternative solution to the puzzle about representation which also explains why we should be interested in artistic representation in the first place. I close with the outline of a possible realist response to the traditional Kantian problem.     

Characterization of statistical persistence in joint angle variation during walking

The objective of this study was to characterize joint angle variation across strides. Specifically, the statistical persistence of variations were quantified using the Hurst exponent. If a time series exhibits statistical persistence, then a parameter which is smaller (or larger) than average will tend to be followed by additional values that are also smaller (or larger) than average. Human walking has statistical persistence between stride durations. Variation in stride duration must arise from variation in the motion of the leg segments during walking. It is unclear, however, if the joint angle variation also exhibits statistical persistence. This study examined kinematic data collected from nine healthy adults walking for 10 min at a self-selected comfortable speed on a treadmill. The joint angle variation in the lower limbs was parameterized using first-order Fourier series which in turn were described by frequency and magnitude coefficients for each stride. To determine if the joint angle variation exhibited statistical persistence, the Hurst exponent was found for each coefficient at each joint. The mean Hurst exponents were 0.54 for the frequency coefficients and 0.61 for the magnitude coefficients. Neither the frequency or magnitude coefficients exhibited statistically significant persistence, although some of the magnitude coefficients were close to reaching statistical significance. This suggests that joint angle variability in healthy adults does not directly produce the statistical persistence observed in stride duration fluctuations.     

Learning and transfer of relational matching-to-sample by pigeons

We trained pigeons on a relational matching-to-sample task to see whether a nonprimate species can discriminate higher-order “relations between relations.” We required the birds to relationally match arrays of 16 items that were chosen from five nonoverlapping sets of 20 colored computer icons. On each trial, randomly selected icons from one set were placed into a 4×4 grid to form a sample; onsame trials, all 16 icons were identical to each other, whereas ondifferent trials, all 16 icons were different from each other. After 10-20 pecks, 16-itemsame anddifferent testing arrays were presented that were created from an entirely different icon set. Because no icons were common to the sample and testing arrays, discriminating higher-order relations was required for success on the tests. As have primates in similar tasks, pigeons successfully learned and transferred this relational discrimination, suggesting that both birds and mammals possess the cognitive antecedents of analogical reasoning.     

Gender and Race Representation in Casual Games

This paper examines gender and race representation in casual games through content analysis. Study 1 looks at gender and race representation in a random sample (N?=?200) of casual games retrieved from the websites of the largest five casual game distributors. Study 2 looks at the most popular games on websites of the same five multinational distributors (N?=?54) and analyzes how primary characters are portrayed in terms of appearance and personality. Females are overly represented as primary characters but chi-square analyses indicate no significant differences between sexes in terms of how they are portrayed: of note, neither males nor females are depicted in a sexual manner. These results conflict with previous studies of gender representation in game characters: this paper suggests that sampling methodology and the relatively new trend of casual games excluded this subset of games from prior research. Implications are discussed using a social cognitive framework.     

Evidence for a conceptual account of same-different discrimination learning in the pigeon

We trained pigeons to peck two different buttons in response to 16-iconsame arrays versus 16-icondifferent arrays. In thesame arrays, the icons were all the same as one another, whereas in thedifferent arrays, the icons were all different from one another. In Experiment 1, we upset the spatial regularities of the displays by disarranging the icons—randomly displacing each icon to reduce the degree of perceptual order. The pigeons’ discriminative performance was unaffected by disarranging. In Experiment 2, spatial regularities were disturbed by varying the rotation of the icons within a display. Again, no disruption in discriminative performance was observed. These and other findings suggest that pigeons treat the 16 icons as either the same or different despite changes in the spatial organization or orientation of the icons, thus implicating a conceptual rather than a perceptual process in same—different discrimination.     

Artistic Value and Copies of Artworks

In a recent paper, Nicholas Stang argues that (i) artworks are not valuable for their own sake in virtue of their artistic value, (ii) artworks have artistic value in virtue of the final value of the experiences they afford, and (iii) the only appropriate objects of appreciation are worktypes. All of these arguments rest on claims about the artistic value of copies of artworks that provide a radical challenge to the views that many philosophers have about copies. Here I argue that Stang's arguments are unsuccessful. The argument for (i) is mistaken about what one is committed to if one thinks artworks are valuable for their own sake in virtue of their artistic value. The defense of (ii) fails to explain what it is supposed to explain. The argument for (iii) overgeneralizes from one kind of case. Finally, the basic claim Stang makes about the artistic value of copies is false. I defend an alternative view. I conclude by discussing the implications of my arguments for experientialism (thesis (ii)). Reflection on the cases Stang considers, far from leading us to embrace experientialism, in fact reveals problems that experientialists need to confront.     

The Many Senses of Imagination and the Manifestation of Fiction: A View from Husserl’s Phenomenology of Phantasy

The systematic importance of the eidetic account of phantasy for Husserlian phenomenology in general is undisputed, but whether this account can be relevant for Aesthetics has often been put into question. In this paper I argue that Husserl’s rich phenomenology of phantasy, and in particular his account of perceptual phantasy, can nevertheless significantly enhance our understanding of how we recognize and imaginatively participate in artistic fictions. Moreover, I show how Husserl’s peculiar formulation of a non-intuitive phantasy at stake in artistic representation anticipates some uses of the imagination in Aesthetics suggested by Ernst Gombrich and Kendall Walton.