1,263 research outputs found

    Cultures of Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century: Literary and Cultural Perspectives on a Legal Concept

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    In the early twenty-first century, the concept of citizenship is more contested than ever. As refugees set out to cross the Mediterranean, European nation-states refer to "cultural integrity" and "immigrant inassimilability," revealing citizenship to be much more than a legal concept. The contributors to this volume take an interdisciplinary approach to considering how cultures of citizenship are being envisioned and interrogated in literary and cultural (con)texts. Through this framework, they attend to the tension between the citizen and its spectral others - a tension determined by how a country defines difference at a given moment

    Introduction to Psychology

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    Introduction to Psychology is a modified version of Psychology 2e - OpenStax

    Investigating the learning potential of the Second Quantum Revolution: development of an approach for secondary school students

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    In recent years we have witnessed important changes: the Second Quantum Revolution is in the spotlight of many countries, and it is creating a new generation of technologies. To unlock the potential of the Second Quantum Revolution, several countries have launched strategic plans and research programs that finance and set the pace of research and development of these new technologies (like the Quantum Flagship, the National Quantum Initiative Act and so on). The increasing pace of technological changes is also challenging science education and institutional systems, requiring them to help to prepare new generations of experts. This work is placed within physics education research and contributes to the challenge by developing an approach and a course about the Second Quantum Revolution. The aims are to promote quantum literacy and, in particular, to value from a cultural and educational perspective the Second Revolution. The dissertation is articulated in two parts. In the first, we unpack the Second Quantum Revolution from a cultural perspective and shed light on the main revolutionary aspects that are elevated to the rank of principles implemented in the design of a course for secondary school students, prospective and in-service teachers. The design process and the educational reconstruction of the activities are presented as well as the results of a pilot study conducted to investigate the impact of the approach on students' understanding and to gather feedback to refine and improve the instructional materials. The second part consists of the exploration of the Second Quantum Revolution as a context to introduce some basic concepts of quantum physics. We present the results of an implementation with secondary school students to investigate if and to what extent external representations could play any role to promote students’ understanding and acceptance of quantum physics as a personal reliable description of the world

    The Epistemic Value of Resonance: Intuitive Thinking in Theoretical Understanding

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    We commonly say that an explanation for something we do not quite understand ‘resonates’. And we seem to take the resonance of the explanation to count epistemically in its favor. What is resonance and what is its epistemic value? I propose that resonance is a psychological state in which a consciously considered explanation coheres with the unconscious representational content in the mind of an individual, and that this psychological state is metacognitively signaled by a feeling which we also call ‘resonance’. This account of resonance implies that theoretical understanding, rather than knowledge, is the epistemic domain of its functioning. That is, when an explanation resonates, the usual case is that a consciously considered explanatory framework coheres with a rich, unconscious representational nexus associated with the object purportedly explained. I pursue the question of the value of resonance by developing the features of theoretical understanding. Theoretical understanding of an object, I take it, is when an individual grasps an accurate explanatory framework for that object. Hence, understanding is normed by both accuracy and grasping. Accuracy, however, is secured through warrant. Resonance, I argue, can increase one’s warrant, but not very much. Grasping, on the other hand, is a stop-and-go process of integrating explanations and representational content in long-term memory. Resonance, I argue, improves grasping by ensuring coherence and motivating persistence. Further, resonance seems to be practically necessary to theoretical understanding, insofar as understanding aims toward an aspirational mastery. Resonance enables us to invest cognitive resources in explanatory frameworks we do not yet understand and it prevents us from becoming rigidly attached to a familiar but failing explanatory framework. I conclude by addressing three worries about the epistemic value of resonance: (1) that the feeling of resonance cannot be distinguished from similar, non-epistemic feelings, (2) that the pleasantness of this feeling conflicts with the accuracy norm for understanding, and (3) that an explanatory framework might resonate with false unconscious beliefs, thus inhibiting accuracy in one’s understanding. Of these, the last is the most worrisome and suggests that attuning to resonance is only one part of a virtuous epistemic life

    Exemplars as a least-committed alternative to dual-representations in learning and memory

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    Despite some notable counterexamples, the theoretical and empirical exchange between the fields of learning and memory is limited. In an attempt to promote further theoretical exchange, I explored how learning and memory may be conceptualized as distinct algorithms that operate on a the same representations of past experiences. I review representational and process assumptions in learning and memory, by the example of evaluative conditioning and false recognition, and identified important similarities in the theoretical debates. Based on my review, I identify global matching memory models and their exemplar representation as a promising candidate for a common representational substrate that satisfies the principle of least commitment. I then present two cases in which exemplar-based global matching models, which take characteristics of the stimulus material and context into account, suggest parsimonious explanations for empirical dissociations in evaluative conditioning and false recognition in long-term memory. These explanations suggest reinterpretations of findings that are commonly taken as evidence for dual-representation models. Finally, I report the same approach provides also provides a natural unitary account of false recognition in short-term memory, a finding which challenges the assumption that short-term memory is insulated from long-term memory. Taken together, this work illustrates the broad explanatory scope and the integrative and yet parsimonious potential of exemplar-based global matching models

    New Music for a New World: Robert Ashley’s Television Operas

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    Robert Ashley defined the majority of his works as “television operas”—spoken narrative music for television broadcast. Analyzing Ashley’s works through their cross-disciplinarity, this thesis addresses the development of Ashley’s chosen medium; assesses his use of visual, linguistic, and musical structures; and interprets their basis in American cultural identity

    Problems of Style in Philosophy. Stanley Cavell and Bernard Williams

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    In the dissertation's four main chapters (Chapter Two, Three, Four and Five), I investigate three problems of style that emerge from the five criteria of Emersonian perfectionist writing discussed in Chapter One. These criteria are: 1. a prose in which the boundaries between literature and philosophy are blurred; 2. metaphorical and allegorical precision; 3. the revival of embodied figures of philosophical dialogue (such as the friend, or, at the opposite extreme, the scoundrel); 4. the restitution of our repressed thoughts; 5. the importance of — or, as Cavell occasionally expresses it, the emphasis on every single word. All these criteria (along with several others) are functional to Emerson’s main aspiration according to Stanley Cavell: the aspiration to represent the human. Emerson’s prose is thus charged with accounting for our human condition. It is the aim of the first chapter of the dissertation, called “Emersonian Perfectionist Writing in Philosophy”, to see if these criteria are instantiated in Stanley Cavell’s and Bernard Williams’s major works: The Claim of Reason (1979) and Ethics and the limits of Philosophy (1985). By “problems of style” I mean some questions that a philosopher may encounter in philosophical writing. One does not have to be an Emersonian perfectionist to run into stylistic problems in philosophy. In this sense, the problems of style that will be discussed in this dissertation will be much more general and widespread than those raised by Emersonian perfectionism in philosophy. However, to start off with the discussion of Emersonian perfectionism as a question of style (Introduction and Chapter One) reveals to be useful not just for the subsequent derivation of just any problems of style; it is mainly useful for the extraction of specific, and deep, problems of style. In fact, a philosopher could encounter many problems of style in one’s writing and there could be problems that are less deep, more superficial, than those raised by the discussion of Emersonian perfectionist writing in philosophy. For instance, one could encounter various practical problems of style if one would like to publish as much as possible, or if one would like to connect with a predefined audience. These are practical or institutional problems of style that do not concern the present dissertation (trivially, because both Cavell and Williams obtained a permanent job in philosophy very early, and did not have to think about those tiresome and more practical issues). So it is just fitting that the discussion begins with Stanley Cavell first and then continues with Bernard Williams. The former philosopher, in fact, carries with him a sense of seriousness and of depth, of emotional intensity, and, for an author like him, the fact that he tackled problems of style in the deep sense is clearer, and more predictable. In the case of Williams, however, though there are some declarations of him on the importance of style, just from reading his own writing one would not immediately think or expect an analogous intensity and reflection on deeper problems of style like those that could be inspired by an Emersonian perfectionist attitude. Even though the questions encountered are deep and not superficial, in this specified sense, I nevertheless call them “problems” because the name itself emphasises the fact that these difficulties require some kind of resolution. And, more importantly, that they can be solved. Like mathematical problems, which may admit different solutions, in style problems what matters is that a solution is found. Then that solution may be more or less effective, of course, but, as in the best existential problems, admitting that you have a problem is half the solution. Talking about problems, thus, will also make it easier to consider the various resistances that have been exercised to these stylistic difficulties. The way in which they have been ignored, avoided, or actively suppressed by some of Williams’s and Cavell’s contemporary analytical philosopher will, in fact, constitute a rather significant part of the dissertation: prominently, in Chapter Two, where Cavell’s and Williams’s polemical targets are criticised precisely because of their inattention to the problem of style posed by writing examples; more indirectly, but nonetheless present, in Chapter Three, when some possible resistances will be enumerated from considering the problem of style (i.e., that in philosophy every word matters) as really a problem. Finally, the concluding two chapters, and especially their introduction, will consider the doubts advanced by Cavell and Williams that, in contemporary times, only one type of philosopher is permitted, licit, and respectable in philosophy: the academic philosopher, guided by a professional, cautious, and serious super-ego. In response to this levelling of the figure of the philosopher, reduced to a single possible type, Cavell and Williams respond in a unique, personal, and idiosyncratic way (showing an idiomatic style): Cavell constructing himself as a figure outsider to the strictly philosophical sphere, but in dialogue with it, from a human point of view and with a spirit that is playful and adventurous, intimate and psychoanalytic; Williams constructing himself as a figure independent of those who would have him as a strictly academic and professional philosopher, reflective and cautious, but also as a figure independent of those who would have him instead as the exact opposite, the philosopher as a chaotic exceptional thinker, deep and inaccessible, emotional and contemptuous of any more institutional claims. The types of philosophers constructed by Cavell and Williams, moreover, thanks to the insights of Chapter Five, will be able to show how, in the final analysis, some problems of style have a strongly existential charge, in which at stake is not only the choice of a better or worse expedient, of a more or less and effective solution, but of an existence and a profession more or less worthy of being exercised or maintained. Having said that, let us go on to see, more specifically, the three style problems that I will investigate in the dissertation's chapters. In Chapter Two, I will focus on the writing of examples by Cavell and Williams. In particular, I will do this through the analysis of two case studies, that is, two concrete cases in which these philosophers tried to solve this specific problem of style; and I will see how the use of examples is not a marginal or secondary aspect in both authors, but is central to their philosophical stance. In fact, the way in which the two philosophers wrote specific examples was built in open contrast to two philosophical outlooks of the time: the emotivism of Charles Leslie Stevenson and the utilitarianism of J. J. C. Smart. The problem of examples emerges directly from the first criterion of perfectionist writing, namely the blurred boundaries between literature and philosophy. In order to write examples that adhere to the complexity of moral life, in fact, both Cavell and Williams need a philosophical style somewhere between literature and philosophy. Only a compromise between the two registers allows them to adequately describe the moral issues at stake in philosophical reflection. In Chapter Three, I will focus on what I have called the stylistic methods of Cavell and Williams. I understand as a stylistic method a systematic use of a writing style for philosophical purposes. In this chapter, the philosophical purpose investigated in Cavell and Williams is maximal: namely, to show that style matters in philosophy. This is why, pleonastically, Chapter Three speaks of the problem of style (and not just of one problem among others). The stylistic methods found and cultivated by Cavell and Williams in their philosophical production constitute an argument in favour of stylistic awareness — against those analytical philosophers who believe that “in philosophy one has to get it right first, and then add the style afterwards” (B. Williams, “Philosophical as a Humanistic Discipline”, 2000). The problem of stylistic methods thus emerges from the main criterion: that is, from the fact that (in Emersonian perfectionist writing) every word matters in philosophy. If every word did not count, in fact, one could add style later and lose nothing of relevance within one’s philosophical production. Cavell and Williams both think that style cannot be added afterwards, and that every word counts, and in this chapter we shall see why and how. In Chapter Four, I will focus on the types of philosophers Cavell and Williams embodied in their work, that is, as the chapter title goes, “The Outsider and the Maverick”. However, to succeed in this difficult task I will follow a rather indirect route. In fact, I will focus on two different fictional accounts that both philosophers chose as representatives of their own philosophical style. In Cavell’s case, it is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter; in Williams’s case, it is Denis Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew. I believe that, from this analysis, the differences between the philosophical styles of Cavell and Williams emerge well; such differences will be highlighted in particular in the Introduction to Chapters Four and Five. Moreover, the question of what types of philosophers Cavell and Williams represent, precisely because of the way it is discussed, i.e. through the analysis of two literary texts such as The Purloined Letter and Rameau’s Nephew, has links with the second and the third criteria of Emersonian perfectionist writing listed above: respectively, metaphorical and allegorical precision and the presence of embodied figures in the philosophical dialogue. Finally, Chapter Five is a quantitative chapter. I will take a closer look at the problem of the type of philosophers through a quantitative investigation. In Section 5.1, the investigation will focus on the use of parentheses in Stanley Cavell’s work: through the results of this investigation, it will be shown how the fabric of Cavell's writing, thanks to parentheses, is enriched with a multiplicity of voices and tones, without which his philosophy would not be recognisable and would be severely impoverished. In Section 5.2., the investigation will instead focus on the analysis of the authors cited by Williams in two corpora into which his work can be divided: a more academic corpus and a more cultural one. Here, in brief, it will be shown how in the academic corpus Williams brings cultural elements, and how in the cultural corpus Williams does not renounce the academic guise. In short, he always finds a way to enter into a dialectical relationship with each sphere. Interestingly, both parts of this final chapter will have a direct relation to one of the most elusive criteria of Emersonian perfectionist writing: namely, the fact that such a work gives us back our repressed thoughts. In the case of Section 5.1, we will see how Cavell uses the parenthetical space to insert voices that he would otherwise have repressed from the philosophical work (voices and tones that generally tend to be repressed by more academic philosophers). In the case of Section 5.2, we will see how Williams inserts cultural references into the academic work that risk being repressed by technicality and specialisation; and vice versa, how he approaches the cultural work in the — somewhat unexpected — guise of the academic philosopher, rich in references to the professional philosophy contemporary to him. These two parts (Section 5.1 and Section 5.2) will yield an ending up to the difficulty of the problems of style addressed in this dissertation. Both, in fact, show how crucial it is to combine quantification and interpretation in order to achieve interesting and comprehensive results regarding a philosopher’s style. Moreover, these last two parts will be able to show the continuity (along with the various inevitable slippages) in the formation of marked and self-conscious philosophical styles such as those of Cavell and Williams; especially in an intellectual world like that of anglo-american analytical philosophy, which rarely acknowledged the importance of style in philosophy

    Machine Learning Algorithm for the Scansion of Old Saxon Poetry

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    Several scholars designed tools to perform the automatic scansion of poetry in many languages, but none of these tools deal with Old Saxon or Old English. This project aims to be a first attempt to create a tool for these languages. We implemented a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) model to perform the automatic scansion of Old Saxon and Old English poems. Since this model uses supervised learning, we manually annotated the Heliand manuscript, and we used the resulting corpus as labeled dataset to train the model. The evaluation of the performance of the algorithm reached a 97% for the accuracy and a 99% of weighted average for precision, recall and F1 Score. In addition, we tested the model with some verses from the Old Saxon Genesis and some from The Battle of Brunanburh, and we observed that the model predicted almost all Old Saxon metrical patterns correctly misclassified the majority of the Old English input verses
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