Researching subjective wellbeing in an (interior)architectural context: Apparent, less apparent and illusionary differences between two fields of expertise

One could state that the aim of wellbeing has long been implicitly present in architecture and interior architecture but is now emerging, maybe not yet as an explicit design approach but at least as an explicit goal of research within these domains. Generating knowledge on ways in which the built environment can contribute to the subjective wellbeing of its residents, however, entails the merging of expertise from fields that are quite distinct. Although researching the possible interactions of the physical environment (architecture and interior architecture) and more subjective, human-related aspects (social and behavioural sciences) is of course hardly a novel paradigm in itself, the practical, methodological and epistemological properties commonly associated with these two fields can be very different and the new research domain of “designing for subjective wellbeing” tends to push these differences to their extremes. In this contribution, I provide a personal account, from the perspective of a researcher in (interior) architecture with a background in psychology, of what I consider apparent, less apparent but sometimes also illusionary differences between these two fields of expertise and how these impact our ongoing process to establish and develop a research program on ‘Designing for More’

What We All Know: Community in Moore's "A Defence of Common Sense"

I defend an account of Moore's conception of Common Sense—as it figures in "A Defence of Common Sense"—according to which it is based in a vision of the community of human beings as bound and unified by a settled common understanding of the meaning of our words and statements. This, for Moore, is our inalienable starting point in philosophy. When Moore invokes Common Sense against idealist (and skeptical) philosophers, he is reminding them that they too are bound by this common understanding, which cannot just be left behind as they confusedly believe. On Moore's conception, Common Sense becomes nothing other than the affirmation that there is such a common understanding—that there is Common Sense—which yields a specific body of Common Sense knowledge. This yields a more principled account of Common Sense than a mere tallying of what contingently happens to be believed (or known) by all

Why did Frege reject the theory of types?

I investigate why Frege rejected the theory of types, as Russell presented it to him in their correspondence. Frege claims that it commits one to violations of the law of excluded middle, but this complaint seems to rest on a dogmatic refusal to take Russell’s proposal seriously on its own terms. What is at stake is not so much the truth of a law of logic, but the structure of the hierarchy of the logical categories, something Frege seems to neglect. To come to a better understanding of Frege’s response, I proceed to investigate his conception of the nature of the logical categories, and how it differs from Russell’s. I argue that, for Frege, our grasp of the logical categories cannot be severed from our grasp of the Begriffsschrift notation itself. Russell, on the other hand, attaches no such importance to notation. From Frege’s point of view, Russell has not succeeded in presenting an alternative conception of the logical hierarchy, since such a conception must go in tandem with the development of a notation. Moreover, Frege has good reasons to think that Russell’s proposal does not admit of a suitable notation

A database of whole-body action videos for the study of action, emotion, and untrustworthiness

We present a database of high-definition (HD) videos for the study of traits inferred from whole-body actions. Twenty-nine actors (19 female) were filmed performing different actions—walking, picking up a box, putting down a box, jumping, sitting down, and standing and acting—while conveying different traits, including four emotions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness), untrustworthiness, and neutral, where no specific trait was conveyed. For the actions conveying the four emotions and untrustworthiness, the actions were filmed multiple times, with the actor conveying the traits with different levels of intensity. In total, we made 2,783 action videos (in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional format), each lasting 7 s with a frame rate of 50 fps. All videos were filmed in a green-screen studio in order to isolate the action information from all contextual detail and to provide a flexible stimulus set for future use. In order to validate the traits conveyed by each action, we asked participants to rate each of the actions corresponding to the trait that the actor portrayed in the two-dimensional videos. To provide a useful database of stimuli of multiple actions conveying multiple traits, each video name contains information on the gender of the actor, the action executed, the trait conveyed, and the rating of its perceived intensity. All videos can be downloaded free at the following address: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~neb506/databases.html. We discuss potential uses for the database in the analysis of the perception of whole-body actions

‘Een mogelijk teken moet ook kunnen betekenen’. Hacker over onzin en verkeerd gebruik in Wittgensteins Tractatus

This paper critically discusses Hacker’s reading of nonsense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus in terms of his notion of misuse, which is taken to consist in the violation of rules of logical syntax. I argue that Hacker’s reading relies on an equivocation between sign and symbol: what is ‘misused’ is a mere sign, but the verdict of nonsensicality relies on seeing it as a symbol. Although Hacker seeks to distance himself from resolute readings – according to which nonsense always consists in nothing but a failure to assign meaning to one’s sentences – I argue that his own verdicts of nonsensicality have their ultimate grounds in exactly the same sort of assessment, i.e. whether meaning has been assigned to a sentence. The rules of logical syntax, contrary to his own intentions, do no real work in determining whether a sentence is nonsensical or not

Some Problems with the Anti‐Luminosity‐Argument

I argue that no successful version of Williamson's anti‐luminosity‐argument has yet been presented, even if Srinivasan's further elaboration and defence is taken into account. There is a version invoking a coarse‐grained safety condition and one invoking a fine‐grained safety condition. A crucial step in the former version implicitly relies on the false premise that sufficient similarity is transitive. I show that some natural attempts to resolve this issue fail. Similar problems arise for the fine‐grained version. Moreover, I argue that Srinivasan's defence of the more contentious fine‐grained safety condition is also unsuccessful, again for similar reasons

Frege’s Conceptions of Elucidation

I argue that discussions of Frege’s conception of elucidation have suffered from a conflation of two distinct issues: elucidation of primitive scientific terms, and elucidation of the logical categories. The former seeks to bring us to grasp the Bedeutung of terms that stand at the beginning of the chain of definitions of a scientific system. The latter cannot be understood on the model of securing agreement in Bedeutung at all. I show how existing discussions of Fregean elucidation insufficiently take this difference into account. I adumbrate what I take to be a more accurate understanding of Fregean elucidation of the logical categories, starting from the observation that Frege, when engaged in such elucidation, consistently reverts to talking about signs. Frege, I argue, takes signs to possess logical features, and it is these logical features which his elucidations are meant to help us to grasp. For Frege, the nature of the logical categories lies in the signs. In this way, I argue, Frege’s approach to elucidating the logical categories is incompatible with a realist conception according to which there is a logical order of reality that is prior to the logical order of language

Frege’s Conceptions of Elucidation

I argue that discussions of Frege’s conception of elucidation have suffered from a conflation of two distinct issues: elucidation of primitive scientific terms, and elucidation of the logical categories. The former seeks to bring us to grasp the Bedeutung of terms that stand at the beginning of the chain of definitions of a scientific system. The latter cannot be understood on the model of securing agreement in Bedeutung at all. I show how existing discussions of Fregean elucidation insufficiently take this difference into account. I adumbrate what I take to be a more accurate understanding of Fregean elucidation of the logical categories, starting from the observation that Frege, when engaged in such elucidation, consistently reverts to talking about signs. Frege, I argue, takes signs to possess logical features, and it is these logical features which his elucidations are meant to help us to grasp. For Frege, the nature of the logical categories lies in the signs. I argue that this reveals that Frege’s approach to elucidating the logical categories is incompatible with a realist framework according to which there is a logical order of reality that is prior to the logical order of language

The editorial policy of the review Archivum and its influence on the archival community

André Vanrie, glavni urednik časopisa ARCHIVUM, u ovom članku prikazuje razvoj ovog časopisa te analizira njegovu ulogu u razvoju arhivske znanosti. Pri tome se osvrće na specifičnost ARCHIVUMA u odnosu na druge arhivske časopise, njegovu uređivačku politiku, a sve to dajući presjek sadržaja brojeva Archivuma kroz 50 godina izlaženja, naglašavajući ujedno i probleme s kojima su urednici bili suočavani. Na kraju se bavi rasprostranjenošću te samim tim i utjecajem ARCHIVUMA na svjetsku arhivsku zajednicu.ARCHIVUM was born in 1950 in order to be the review of the ICA and has lead its existance principally in the National Archives of France. That means an international review on archives, created in Europe by Europeans in the aim to help the archivists of the whole world by collecting scattered informations and comparing the archival methods of the different countries in order to solve similar problems. In order to analyse the editorial policy of ARCHIVUM, Andre Vanrie has examined the content of the ARCHIVUM volumes during 50 years of its existance: 14 volumes have been dedicated to the Proceedings of the Interantional Congresses, 10 volumes to archival bibliography, 7 volumes to archival legislation, 4 volumes constituted the ever updated international directories, 14 volumes are collections of contributions dedicated to particular themes in the context of international inquiries. The editorial will could be also resumed: to compare the varieties and the slight differences of meaning, to work inside a compared archival science and to create for the whole archival profession practical tools. And a couple of words of the influence of ARCHIVUM : in the opinion of Andre Vanrie, this review could have had an influence on the solution of each of the archival problems because the Journal is present in each country and in its pages one can find articles written in a well known language and dealing with practical subjects in a way accessible to all