The Friends of Jones\u27 Paintings: A Case of Explanation in the Republic of Art

All too often the agenda for discussion of institutional accounts of art has been set by George Dickie\u27s (putative) institutional definition of art. To offer a new beginning, the paper addresses the question of explanation with an institutional framework modeled as Terry Diffey’s Republic of Art. In exploring the argumentative resources here, it meets the objection that institutionalism cannot explore the case of so-called ‘first art’: objects created before the concept art came into being. In particular, the paper uses an example to consider how disputes within the Republic might be resolved through rational means, while still maintaining the institutional character of such discussions. For we need not assume that institutionalism has no mechanisms for rational self-correction nor that one, timeless resolution is always possible. Instead, we can find rational activity in the disputes among art critics, as well as contrasting their (broadly contemporary) perspective on the case with the detachment of the (philosophical) aesthetician

An Old Dog Rants Backwards: 1

Those familiar with my more general views will be unsurprised to find me ranting about the need to find philosophical room for the normative, as well as the causal. In this respect, this typical thread in my ranting aligns in effect with two points made by Frege (1984 p. 351) in noting that “[e]rror and superstition have causes just as much as correct cognition.”  Now, it seems to me that in the fairly recent past there has arisen a new way of making a similar mistake

Efficacy of group conversation intervention in individuals with severe profiles of aphasia

The present study examines the efficacy of group conversation intervention for Individuals with Severe Aphasia (IWSA) in a preliminary case study of five participants. IWSA are particularly marginalized from society as a result of profound communication deficits. Current efficacious treatment strategies for IWSA are compensatory in nature however, IWSA have the same goals of less severe profiles with regard to rengagement in social and community life. IWSA are commonly excluded from research regarding participation based treatment due to their complex profiles. Aims of the study were to determine if IWSA improved in discrete linguistic measures, functional and quality of life measures and targeted elements of discourse production as a result of 20 total hours of group conversation therapy. Results of evaluations conducted at pre-treatment, post-treatment and maintenance intervals revealed significant improvements on standardized linguistic measures from pre to post treatment for two of the five participants. Group analysis of functional measures showed no change across testing intervals, however when individual clinically significant change scores were calculated on one measure, three of five participants demonstrated clinically significant increase in self-reported communicative effectiveness at maintenance testing. Results of discourse analysis were variable by participant and dependent on targeted outcome measures/individualized goals. Overall, results should be interpreted with caution, due to the variability in the participant’s profiles, lack of a standard measurement tool for narrative samples and small sample size. Patterns in results prompt further research regarding efficacy of conversation therapy for IWSA

An Alternate Approach to Ecosystem Mapping: Fusing Orthophotography with LANDSAT ETM+ Data for a Object-Based Classification, South Eastern Arkansas.

Maintaining representative sampling of biologically rich and rare ecosystems has become an important means to preventing biodiversity loss. A limitation in indentifying and quantifying ecosystems is the cost of obtaining high resolution imagery necessary for a high resolution land cover assessment. This research shows how free, different resolution imagery (orthoimages and LANDSAT ETM+) could be combined to produce a hybrid dataset with enhanced spectral, spectral and temporal properties, and processed to obtain a object-based classification of land cover of bottomland and pine hardwood forest in south eastern Arkansas. Three classification techniques were evaluated: 1) a human derived, rule based method, 2) A nearest neighbor classification using only the infrared orthoimage (SRGB), and 3) A nearest neighbor classification using the infrared orthoimage and LANDSAT ETM+ derived multitemporal NDVI values (SNDVI). Overall accuracy of the rule based method and SNDVI were comparable, and significantly higher (~10-20%) than the SRGB. Further, when compared to existing land cover maps, both the rule based method and SNDVI had far greater visual appeal and accuracy

An Oral History of Lucille Denny: A One-Room School Teacher

A transcript of an oral history of Lucille Denny, a one-room school teacher. In partial fulfillment of the requirements for Education 803.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/ors/1288/thumbnail.jp