A study of Islamic preaching in France

Since the beginning of the 1980s France has witnessed intensive preaching activity in Muslim quarters. It is impossible to understand the significance of this phenomenon of the reislamization and mobilization of the community without first paying attention to the function of liturgical preaching in Islam, i.e. the khutba. In France the selection of the preachers is determined not only by the rules of supply and demand but also by the dynamics of external spheres of influence. This focus on the spoken word is manifested in many different ways within the very heart of the Muslim community. All the same, the western context in which it evolves modifies it palpably. A process of inculturation can already be noticed.     

Fish and microchips: on fish pain and multiple realization

Philosophical Studies - Opponents to consciousness in fish argue that fish do not feel pain because they do not have a neocortex, which is a necessary condition for feeling pain. A common...     

The internal clock: Electroencephalographic evidence for oscillatory processes underlying time perception

It has been proposed that temporal perception and performance depend on a biological source of temporal information. A model for a temporal oscillator put forward by Treisman, Faulkner, Naish, and Brogan (1990) predicted that if intense sensory pulses (such as auditory clicks) were presented to subjects at suitable rates they would perturb the frequency at which the temporal oscillator runs and so cause over- or underestimation of time. The resulting pattern of interference between sensory pulse rates and time judgments would depend on the frequency of the temporal oscillator and so might allow that frequency to be estimated. Such interference patterns were found using auditory clicks and visual flicker (Treisman & Brogan, 1992; Treisman et al., 1990). The present study examines time estimation together with the simultaneously recorded electroencephalogram to examine whether evidence of such an interference pattern can be found in the EEG.

Alternative models for the organization of a temporal system consisting of an oscillator or multiple oscillators are considered and predictions derived from them relating to the EEG. An experiment was run in which time intervals were presented for estimation, auditory clicks being given during those intervals, and the EEG was recorded concurrently. Analyses of the EEG revealed interactions between auditory click rates and certain EEG components which parallel the interference patterns previously found. The overall pattern of EEG results is interpreted as favouring a model for the organization of the temporal system in which sets of click-sensitive oscillators spaced at intervals of about 12.8 Hz contribute to the EEG spectrum. These are taken to represent a series of harmonically spaced distributions of oscillators involved in time-keeping.     

Memory of imagined actions: Imagining oneself or another person

Summary In two experiments, three modes of action encoding were compared: overt enactment, self-imagination, and imagination of another person performing the actions. Overt enactment and imagining self-performance of an action are mainly assumed to involve motor-kinesthetic representations, whereas imagining another person is thought to place more demands on the visual representational system. Previous paired-associate learning data on memory of action verbs showed that motor-kinesthetic imagery hinders pair integration, but that pair integration is facilitated by visual imagery. The comparison of free and cued recall of actions learned from lists of concrete nouns supports the assumption that the representational properties of overt enactment and self-imagination differ from those involved in the imagining of another person.     

“I was and still am”: Narratives of Bisexual Marking in the #StillBisexual Campaign

This research investigated narratives of bi-erasure and bisexual marking by considering 53 video confessionals associated with the #StillBisexual campaign. #StillBisexual is a web-based campaign that targets myths about bisexuality and promotes bisexual identity visibility. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify emergent themes regarding the ways that individuals mark and make known their bisexuality. Three major themes of bisexual demarcation emerged including the enduring nature of bisexuality, defining bisexuality, and defining the self as a bisexual being. Discussion focuses on describing bisexual marking approaches by #StillBisexual participants and by analyzing the way bisexual demarcation challenges assumptions of monosexism and cisgenderism inherent to cultural conceptualizations of sexuality.