Natality or Birth? Arendt and Cavarero on the Human Condition of Being Born

This essay offers a critical analysis of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality through the lens of Adriana Cavarero's feminist philosophy of birth. First, I argue that the strength of Arendtian natality is its rootedness in an ontology of uniqueness, and a commitment to human plurality and relationality. Next, I trace with Cavarero three critical concerns regarding Arendtian natality, namely that it is curiously abstract; problematically disembodied and sexually neutral; and dependent on a model of vulnerability that assumes equality rather than asymmetry. This last issue is further developed in the final section of the essay, where I examine the idea that birth, for Cavarero, becomes the very concept by which we can distinguish and normatively differentiate acts of care and love from acts of wounding and violence. Upholding the normative distinction here depends on a conceptual distinction between vulnerability and helplessness. To maintain the ethical potential of the scene of birth, I argue that we have to insist on the very characteristics Cavarero attributes to it—ones, as this essay aims to show, that are ultimately missing in the Arendtian account thereof.     

Critique of modernity in the philosophy of Nishitani Keiji

This article analyses Nishitani Keiji’s persistent critique of modernity and how it intertwines with other issues—such as nihilism, science and religion—in his philosophy. While Nishitani gained some notoriety for his views on overcoming modernity during WWII, this article will look at his relationship with the issue more in the scope of his whole philosophical career. Pulling together various strands that weave through Nishitani’s treatment of modernity, its relation to nihilism and his views for overcoming both, we find that it motivates his themes of Heideggerian critique of technology and Nietzschean redemption of tradition that combine with a reverse-Hegelian search for an originary ground that is grasped via existential realisation revealed through religious praxis. However, Nishitani’s approach raises some problematic questions on the social level due to the way it conceptualises modernity through a Nietzschean lens that leaves little room for modernity as a social and political phenomenon.     

The Value of Sacrifices

ABSTRACT

Most authors who discuss the normative impact of sacrifices do so with regards to the impact that a sacrifice can have on the practical reasons of the agent who makes it. A different and underappreciated phenomenon of sacrifices is their other-regarding normative impact: the sacrifice of person A can have an impact on the practical reasons of person B, either by generating practical reasons for B to act in certain ways or by intensifying existing reasons of B for specific courses of action. This paper asks when and why sacrifices have such other-regarding normative impact and argues that sacrifices can have other-regarding normative impact because sacrifices can be intrinsically good. The intrinsic value of sacrifices is explained by the recursive account of value: sacrifices are intrinsically good if and because they are appropriate responses to intrinsic values, and appropriate responses to intrinsic values are themselves intrinsically good. Furthermore, sacrifices are difficult to make, and successful pursuit in difficult activities can also be intrinsically good.     

Impact of Tactile Sensation on Dexterity: A Cross-Sectional Study of Patients With Impaired Hand Function After Stroke

The authors sought to explore the impact of tactile sensation on manual dexterity and the validity of the strength-dexterity test in subjects with chronic impairments after stroke in a cross-sectional study of 24 patients with impaired hand function after stroke. Dexterity was assessed by the strength-dexterity test, Box and Blocks, and Nine-Hole Peg Test, and the ABILHAND questionnaire. Sensation was measured by pinprick, cotton-wool, graphesthesia, and 2-point discrimination tests. Sensation in the paretic hand had strong association with paretic hand performance in the strength-dexterity test and Nine-Hole Peg Test and explained 13% of the variance. Sensation in the nonparetic hand was associated with the results of the ABILHAND questionnaire. Among sensory tests, 2-point discrimination had the strongest association with dexterity tests. No significant correlations between sensation, pinch force, and dexterity tests were found for the nonparetic hand. The strength-dexterity test exhibited strong correlations with the other dexterity measures and with pinch force. There is an association between tactile sensation and dexterous performance in the paretic hand; activity level performance is associated with sensation in the nonparetic hand. The study supports the validity of the strength-dexterity test when applied in subjects in the chronic stage after stroke.     

The role of syllables in word recognition among beginning Finnish readers: Evidence from eye movements during reading

The eye movements of Finnish first and second graders were monitored as they read sentences where polysyllabic words were either hyphenated at syllable boundaries, alternatingly coloured (every second syllable black, every second red) or had no explicit syllable boundary cues (e.g., ta-lo vs. talo vs. talo = “house”). The results showed that hyphenation at syllable boundaries slows down reading of first and second graders even though syllabification by hyphens is very common in Finnish reading instruction, as all first-grade textbooks include hyphens at syllable boundaries. When hyphens were positioned within a syllable (t-alo vs. ta-lo), beginning readers were even more disrupted. Alternate colouring did not affect reading speed, no matter whether colours signalled syllable structure or not. The results show that beginning Finnish readers prefer to process polysyllabic words via syllables rather than letter by letter. At the same time they imply that hyphenation encourages sequential syllable processing, which slows down the reading of children, who are already capable of parallel syllable processing or recognising words directly via the whole-word route.     

Investigating Individual Differences in Toddler Search with Mixture Models

Children's performance on cognitive tasks is often described in categorical terms in that a child is described as either passing or failing a test, or knowing or not knowing some concept. We used binomial mixture models to determine whether individual children could be classified as passing or failing two search tasks, the DeLoache model room task and the Berthier et al. door task. The data support categorical classification of the children and suggest that the increase in average proportion correct with age is the result of an increasing proportion of children who can solve the tasks. Performance on the two tasks was concordant, and improving performance could be due to advances in a single psychological ability, such as cognitive control. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On Having a Goal: Goals as Representations or Behavior

The Psychological Record - The present article discusses the concepts of having a goal and of goal-directed behavior from a behavior-analytic perspective. In clinical psychology as well as in the...     

The emotional male victim: Effects of presentation mode on judged credibility

The emotional victim effect (EVE, i.e., that the emotionality of a victim's demeanor affects perceived credibility) is a robust research finding for female victims of rape but much less explored for other types of victims and crimes. In this article, we investigate the EVE with a male assault complainant. In addition, we vary the presentation mode via which the complainant is shown to the assessors. A sample of law students (N = 81) participated in an experiment where they viewed and assessed credibility of a male complainant who appeared either live or on video. The complainant behaved either in an emotional or a neutral manner. Result showed that the presentation mode but not the EVE affected the assessors' credibility assessments: The complainant was perceived as more truthful when communicating live, as opposed to via video. Practical implications, as well as the generality of the EVE, are discussed.     

Central load reduces peripheral processing: Evidence from incidental memory of background speech

Is there a trade‐off between central (working memory) load and peripheral (perceptual) processing? To address this question, participants were requested to undertake an n‐back task in one of two levels of central/cognitive load (i.e., 1‐back or 2‐back) in the presence of a to‐be‐ignored story presented via headphones. Participants were told to ignore the background story, but they were given a surprise memory test of what had been said in the background story, immediately after the n‐back task was completed. Memory was poorer in the high central load (2‐back) condition in comparison with the low central load (1‐back) condition. Hence, when people compensate for higher central load, by increasing attentional engagement, peripheral processing is constrained. Moreover, participants with high working memory capacity (WMC) – with a superior ability for attentional engagement – remembered less of the background story, but only in the low central load condition. Taken together, peripheral processing – as indexed by incidental memory of background speech – is constrained when task engagement is high.