Husserl and Stein on the phenomenology of empathy: perception and explication

Within the phenomenological tradition, one frequently finds the bold claim that interpersonal understanding is rooted in a sui generis form of intentional experience, most commonly labeled empathy (Einfühlung). The following paper explores this claim, emphasizing its distinctive character, and examining the phenomenological considerations offered in its defense by two of its main proponents, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein. After offering in section 2 some preliminary indications of how empathy should be understood, I then turn to some characterizations of its distinctive structure, considering, in section 3, the Husserlian claim that certain forms of empathy are perceptual in nature, and in section 4, Stein’s insistence that empathetic experience frequently involves explicating the other’s own intentional experiences. Section 5 concludes by assessing the extent to which their analyses lead support to a conception of empathy as an intuitive experience of other minds

Wolves among us: some brief reflections on the bona fides of gendered violence in computer game art

The classification of computer games in Australia is a subject of expert discourse, but is not, itself, an expert function. It is carried out by community representatives (the classifiers), speaking for the community of reasonable people and applying their standards, while assessing the impact of classifiable elements on both reasonable people and the especially vulnerable. It is an inherently personal analysis, but the personal is an imagined space (the reasonable person or reasonable adult ). This blog or reflection-type article brings the personal back to a real space, of flesh and blood: the author\u27s. It starts from the author\u27s experience of discomfort playing three computer games featuring violence against women or girls: The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead: Season Two, and The Last of Us. It breaks down the author\u27s response to understand why he reacted the way he did, focusing, in particular, on his assessment of whether the violence was justified. It then offers some brief suggestions on how such a response could influence classification, given the existing rules: at least if the author\u27s experience is identifiable with the, or a, reasonable person

Coronal stripping in supersaturated stars

A recent unambiguous detection of X-ray rotational modulation of the supersaturated star VXR45 (P = 0.223 days) has shown that its corona has discrete dark and bright X-ray regions. We suggest that due to the rapid rotation, the X-ray emitting corona has been centrifugally stripped away, creating open field regions that are dark in X-rays. This leads naturally both to a significant rotational modulation in X-rays but also to the lower X-ray luminosity of supersaturated stars compared to those rotating more slowly. To demonstrate the effect, we take as an example a more slowly rotating star for which surface magnetograms are available. We extrapolate the potential coronal magnetic field based on these magnetograms and determine for a hydrostatic, isothermal atmosphere the structure of the density and of the optically-thin X-ray emission. We show that if the rotation rate of this star were increased, the magnitude of the X-ray luminosity would decrease while its rotational modulation would increase in a way that is consistent with the recent observations of VXR45.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be published in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Fibre sequences and localization of simplicial sheaves

In this paper, we discuss the theory of quasi-fibrations in proper Bousfield localizations of model categories of simplicial sheaves. We provide a construction of fibrewise localization and use this construction to generalize a criterion for locality of fibre sequences due to Berrick and Dror Farjoun. The result allows a better understanding of unstable A^1-homotopy theory.Comment: 23 pages, completely revised versio

Comment on the Nature of the Ds1∗(2710)D_{s1}^*(2710) and DsJ∗(2860)D_{sJ}^*(2860) Mesons

Two charm-strange mesons, the $D_{s1}^*(2710)$ and the $D_{sJ}^*(2860)$, have recently been observed by several experiments. There has been speculation in the literature that the $D_{s1}^*(2710)$ is the $2^3S_1(c\bar{s})$ state and the $D_{sJ}^*(2860)$ is the $1^3D_1(c\bar{s})$ state. In this paper we explore this and other explanations in the context of the relativized quark model and the pseudoscalar emission decay model. We conclude that the $D_{s1}^*(2710)$ is most likely the $1^3D_1 (c\bar{s})$ state and the $D_{sJ}^*(2860)$ is most likely the $1^3D_3 (c\bar{s})$ state with the $1D_2$ resonances also contributing to the observed signals and explaining the observed ratios of branching ratios to $D^*K$ and $DK$ final states. We point out that measuring the $D_{sJ}^*(2860)$ spin can support or eliminate this explanation and that there are six excited $D_s$ states in this mass region; the $2^3S_1$, $2^1S_0$, $1^3D_1$, $1^3D_3$ and two $1D_2$ states. Observing some of the missing states would help confirm the nature of the $D_{s1}^*(2710)$ and the $D_{sJ}^*(2860)$ states.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

The special linear version of the projective bundle theorem

A special linear Grassmann variety SGr(k,n) is the complement to the zero section of the determinant of the tautological vector bundle over Gr(k,n). For a representable ring cohomology theory A(-) with a special linear orientation and invertible stable Hopf map \eta, including Witt groups and MSL[\eta^{-1}], we have A(SGr(2,2n+1))=A(pt)[e]/(e^{2n}), and A(SGr(2,2n)) is a truncated polynomial algebra in two variables over A(pt). A splitting principle for such theories is established. We use the computations for the special linear Grassmann varieties to calculate A(BSL_n) in terms of the homogeneous power series in certain characteristic classes of the tautological bundle.Comment: Some misprints corrected, slightly revised notatio

On a stochastic model for the spin-down of solar type stars

Modeling the rotation history of solar-type stars is still an unsolved problem in modern astrophysics. One of the main challenges is to explain the dispersion in the distribution of stellar rotation rate for young stars. Previous works have advocated dynamo saturation or magnetic field localization to explain the presence of fast rotators and star-disk coupling in pre-main sequence to account for the existence of slow rotators. Here, we present a new model that can account for the presence of both types of rotators by incorporating fluctuations in the solar wind. This renders the spin-down problem probabilistic in nature, some stars experiencing more braking on average than others. We show that random fluctuations in the loss of angular momentum enhance the population of both fast and slow rotators compared to the deterministic case. Furthermore, the distribution of rotational speed is severely skewed towards large values in agreement with observations