On agreed actions without agreed notions

In his plea for consensual democracy in Africa, Kwasi Wiredu recommends unanimity about what is to be done, not what ought to be done, or unanimity on action rather than unanimity of values, beliefs and opinion. I caution the use of this procedural instrument by showing that some issues are so value-laden that a group decision cannot be value-neutral. It may sometimes be more productive to entertain value differences to keep them from going underground and becoming dangerous. However, the ability to locate some common interest or ground seems to be crucial for such value confrontation.     

Pressure-induced structural transition in UGa2

High-pressure X-ray diffraction has been performed on UGa₂ up to 20?GPa using a diamond anvil cell. UGa₂ exhibits the AlB₂-type structure with space group P6/mmm at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. At about 16?GPa a reversible structural transformation to a tetragonal phase was observed. The bulk modulus of the AlB₂-type phase has been determined to be ～100?GPa, which is comparable to rare earth digallides like TmGa₂ and HoGa₂.     

Stability in ordered and icosahedral aluminium–transition metal alloys

Abstract

We present calculated electron state densities for A1T (T is a transition metal) compounds and icosahedral Al₈₆T₁₄ alloys which suggest that the relative stability of different short-range atomic arrangements varies inversely with the electron state density at the Fermi level. Using this argument, we show that the absence ofstable highly coordinated configurations is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the existence of icosahedral Al₈₆T₁₄ alloys.     

The All‐Seeing: Fraternity and Vision of God in Nicholas of Cusa

“I am because you look upon me.” This phrase from Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei sive De icona is enough to sum up the stakes and originality of this treatise sent in 1453 to the Tegernsee monks. “Speaking in order to see,” “seeing in order to speak,” and “hearing in order to believe” chart the different stages of this unique experience, at once aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual, and mystical. Whereas one might have believed that the mere call to transcendence would be enough to justify gathering together before God, the collective contemplation of Rogier van der Weyden’s painting by the community of monks instead allows one to see and even hear that “the revelation of the witness” (and thus “the revelation of the brother”) validates the truth of this communally shared experience. Reaching the “wall of paradise” does not so much mean “escaping through the wall” or “getting over the wall” as it does “inhabiting the boundary” where opposites “coincide” and man and God meet within a human community.     

What lies behind postnatal depression: is it only a mood disorder?

Postnatal depression (PND) is a common condition that has been extensively researched specifically because of its negative impact on the mother-infant relationship. Psychiatric research has looked at comorbidity of major depressive disorder and found it to be strongly associated with Axis II disorders. This study's principal aim was to investigate whether there is a greater incidence of personality disorder (PD) among a PND population than among a non-PND population at 3 months postpartum. A secondary aim was to define the different types of PD. Depression was assessed with the Montgomery and Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), and PD was assessed with the Structured Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (SIDP-IV) in 109 women with their 12-week-old infants. Twice as many depressed mothers had PD. The PND group presented a greater number of severe clinical symptoms than the nondepressed group (p < .002). Further research is necessary to reexamine the heterogeneity of PND and reassess its impact on infant development.     

Adding part-of-speech information to the SUBTLEX-US word frequencies

The SUBTLEX-US corpus has been parsed with the CLAWS tagger, so that researchers have information about the possible word classes (parts?\of?\speech, or PoSs) of the entries. Five new columns have been added to the SUBTLEX-US word frequency list: the dominant (most frequent) PoS for the entry, the frequency of the dominant PoS, the frequency of the dominant PoS relative to the entry??s total frequency, all PoSs observed for the entry, and the respective frequencies of these PoSs. Because the current definition of lemma frequency does not seem to provide word recognition researchers with useful information (as illustrated by a comparison of the lemma frequencies and the word form frequencies from the Corpus of Contemporary American English), we have not provided a column with this variable. Instead, we hope that the full list of PoS frequencies will help researchers to collectively determine which combination of frequencies is the most informative.     

How autonomous can art be?: Philosophical remarks on photorealism and postmodern-aesthetics

A slightly different German version of his article has been published in D. Kamper and W. v. Reijen (eds.), Die unvollendete Vernunft: Moderne versus Postmoderne (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1987), pp. 403–426.     

The perception of foreground and background as derived from structural information theory

Subjects were instructed to order stimuli, consisting of a white and a black part, in accordance with the perceived foreground-strength of the white (or black) part. It appeared that this task can be carried out consistently. The order is explained on the basis of Structural Information Theory. It is argued that this task involves central processes, and that the strength depends on the preference for an interpretation, in which the white (black) part is a foreground on a black (white) background, with respect to the opposed interpretation in which the white (black) part is the background and the black (white) part is foreground.     

Free choice and contextually permitted actions

We present a solution to the paradox of free choice permission by introducing strong and weak permission in a deontic logic of action. It is shown how counterintuitive consequences of strong permission can be avoided by limiting the contexts in which an action can be performed. This is done by introducing the only operator, which allows us to say that only is performed (and nothing else), and by introducing contextual interpretation of action terms.This author gratefully acknowledges the hospitality of Linköping University during revision of this paper.This research of J.-J.Ch.Meyer and R.J.Wieringa is partially supported by ESPRIT BRWG project No.8319 ModelAge.