593 research outputs found
Kidnapping an ugly child: is Willliam James a pragmaticist?
No full textSince the term ‘pragmatism’ was first coined, there have been debates about who is or is not a ‘real’ pragmatist, and what that might mean. The division most often drawn in contemporary pragmatist scholarship is between William James and Charles Peirce. Peirce is said to present a version of pragmatism which is scientific, logical and objective about truth, whereas James presents a version which is nominalistic, subjectivistic and leads to relativism. The first person to set out this division was in fact Peirce himself, when he distinguished his own ‘pragmaticism’ from the broad pragmatism of James and others. Peirce sets out six criteria which defines ‘pragmaticism’: the pragmatic maxim; a number of ‘preliminary propositions’; prope-positivism; metaphysical inquiry; critical common-sensism; and scholastic realism. This paper sets out to argue that in fact James meets each of these criteria, and should be seen as a ‘pragmaticist’ by Peirce’s own lights.© 2019, BSHP. The attached document (embargoed until 04/03/2019) is an author produced version of a paper published in BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self- archiving policy. The final published version (version of record) is available online at the link below. Some minor differences between this version and the final published version may remain. We suggest you refer to the final published version should you wish to cite from it
Polyphony and the anxiety of influence in the fiction of Henry James
No full textJames's fiction, especially in the Middle Phase, centres
on the figure of the artist and is characterized by, the two
interrelated aspects which previous criticism has largely
overlooked: the Bakhtinian 'polyphonic' -creation of
'author-thinkers'; and the conflict between ephebes and
precursors, for which Harold-Bloom's concept of 'the-anxiety of
influence' is the most illuminating model. Polyphony is the
narrative mode, and influence is the intra-artistic, theme.
These, as the Introduction to the thesis makes clear, are
rehearsed in James's inaugural novel, Roderick Hudson. Rowland
Mallet is an author-thinker, and his failure is caused by
authorial limitations. His monologism -is impaired by his
mistaking empathy for the authorial sympathy. Likewise,
Hudson's failure does not arise from a mercurial temperament,
but from a polyphonic shortcoming: not possessing the power of
fiction to contain the fiction of power in, his mentor. And the
relationships among the three artists - Gloriani, Hudson and
Singleton - perfectly exemplify the Bloomian-theme. It is these
two concepts, polyphony and influence, which are the major
preoccupation in the Middle Phase; as, the works chosen
demonstrate. These are a novella, a novel, and a number of
short stories all of which have been unjustifiably neglected.
Chapter One, on The Aspern Papers, argues that Tina Bordereau,
far from being, the artless victim seen by many critics,
actually challenges and defeats the narrator by the very form
of her narrative. Her 'realist' discourse undermines his
language of 'romance', and shows up its internal unstability.
Chapter Two is an extensive study of the critical reception of
The Tragic Muse. The most common areas of critical attention
have been its contemporary topicality, its relation to previous
novels on similar themes, and the possible genealogy of Gabriel
Nash. Those have all missed the core of the work. - Chapter Three
demonstrates how polyphony and the anxiety of influence make
the novel what it really is. Influence arises from the
juxtaposition of, and the wrestling between, artistic ephebes
and their precursors (Nick and Nash,, Miriam and Madame Carre).
The dialogic quality defined by Bakhtin is crucial to the
proper, and even-handed, characterization of all, the conflicts
in the novel. And since most of James's tales in the eighties
and nineties -are about 'masters - and acolytes, the anxiety of
influence remains central. Chapter Four is a study of 'The
Author of Beltraffiol' and 'The Lesson of the Master'. Again the
characters' manipulations are a crucial focus in a way that
G6rard Genette's terminology helps to illuminate. The fact that
the ephebe is the author-thinker emphasizes the inextricability
of the Bakhtinian and the Bloomian in James. Just as
polyphony offers a different focus for explicating the poetics
of James's fiction; so the ephebal conflict provides the basis
for a fresh perception of James's own artistic struggle
The invisible artist: Arrangers in popular music (1950-2000): Their contribution and techniques
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University.This thesis is based on the research conducted by the author for the series,
Richard Niles' History of Pop Arranging, seven thirty-minute documentary
programmes for BBC Radio 2, researched, written and presented by the author and
broadcast in 2003. It also draws on interviews conducted by the author (and other
research) between 2002 and 2007 both for the radio series and for this thesis and on
the author's experience as a professional arranger in popular music working with
many of the genre's significant recording artists including Paul McCartney, Ray
Charles, Cher, Tina Turner, Westlife, Tears For Fears, Dusty Springfield, James
Brown, Pet Shop Boys, Kylie Minogue and producers including Trevor Hom, Steve
Lipson, Steve Mac and Steve Anderson.
It will be argued that the role of the arranger in popular music has often been
undervalued and that during a critical period of popular music history (1950-2000)
arrangers played a significant part in the evolution of musical content. This thesis is,
to the best of the author's knowledge, the first time (apart from the above mentioned
documentary) the subject has ever been examined. The arranger is "invisible" because musical arrangers are often un-credited on
record liner notes or in books or articles concerning popular music. A considerable
amount of research has been necessary to determine who wrote many of the
arrangements considered herein. Motown's Berry Gordy purposely kept the names of
musicians and arrangers off the records because he feared others might 'poach' the
trademark 'Motown Sound'. Other record labels considered the job of the arranger to
be reminiscent of an earlier era, diluting the Rock 'n' Roll image of emotion and
spontanaeity they wished to promote. Some producers and recording artists disliked
sharing credit for their work. Motown arranger David Van dePitte told the author that
arranging was "thankless and anonymous - a very service-oriented profession where
others often take credit for what you've done." Arranging has therefore remained an
intrinsically unseen art created by 'invisible' artists. By analyzing many recordings,
revealing the techniques and concepts they have used in their work to create popular
records, arrangers and their art will be made more 'visible'
Politics Tactics Pragmatic Antics: James Kelman’s Everyday Strategy
No full textThis article posits that the literary work of author and activist James Kelman might be understood as the work of a proactive 'strategist' and not that of a reactive 'tactician', contra recent publication on the issue by Johnny Rodger and Mitch Miller
Maximizing Research Impact Through Institutional and National Open-Access Self-Archiving Mandates
No full textNo research institution can afford all the journals its researchers may need, so all articles are losing research impact (usage and citations). Articles made “Open Access,” (OA) by self-archiving them on the web are cited twice as much, but only 15% of articles are being spontaneously self-archived. The only institutions approaching 100% self-archiving are those that mandate it. Surveys show that 95% of authors will comply with a self-archiving mandate; the actual expe-rience of institutions with mandates has confirmed this. What institutions and funders need to mandate is that (1) immediately upon acceptance for publication, (2) the author’s final draft must be (3) deposited into the Institutional Repository. Only the depositing needs to be mandated; set-ting access privileges to the full-text as either OA or Restricted Access (RA) can be left up to the author. For articles published in the 93% of journals that have already endorsed self-archiving, access can be set as OA immediately; for the remaining 7%, authors can email the eprint in re-sponse to individual email requests automatically forwarded by the Repository
Dissimilarity is used as evidence of category membership in multidimensional perceptual categorization: a test of the similarity-dissimilarity generalized context model
No full textIn exemplar models of categorization, the similarity between an exemplar and category members constitutes evidence that the exemplar belongs to the category. We test the possibility that the dissimilarity to members of competing categories also contributes to this evidence. Data were collected from two 2-dimensional perceptual categorization experiments, one with lines varying in orientation and length and the other with coloured patches varying in saturation and brightness. Model fits of the similarity-dissimilarity generalized context model were used to compare a model where only similarity was used with a model where both similarity and dissimilarity were used. For the majority of participants the similarity-dissimilarity model provided both a significantly better fit and better generalization, suggesting that people do also use dissimilarity as evidence
Millisecond accuracy video display using OpenGL under Linux
No full textTo measure people’s reaction times to the nearest millisecond, it is necessary to know exactly when
a stimulus is displayed. This article describes how to display stimuli with millisecond accuracy on a
normal CRT monitor, using a PC running Linux. A simple C program is presented to illustrate how this
may be done within X Windows using the OpenGL rendering system. A test of this system is reported
that demonstrates that stimuli may be consistently displayed with millisecond accuracy. An algorithm
is presented that allows the exact time of stimulus presentation to be deduced, even if there are relatively
large errors in measuring the display time
Dear Neil Armstrong: Letters to the First Man from All Mankind
No full textIn the years between the historic first moon landing by Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, and his death at age 82 on August 25, 2012, Neil Armstrong received hundreds of thousands of cards and letters from all over the world, congratulating him, praising him, requesting pictures and autographs, and asking him what must have seemed to him to be limitless—and occasionally intrusive—questions. Of course, all the famous astronauts received fan mail, but the sheer volume Armstrong had to deal with for more than four decades after his moon landing was staggering.
Today, the preponderance of those letters—some 75,000 of them—are preserved in the archives at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Dear Neil Armstrong: Letters to the First Man from All Mankind publishes a careful sampling of these letters—roughly 400—reflecting the various kinds of correspondence that Armstrong received along with representative samples of his replies. Selected and edited by James R. Hansen, Armstrong’s authorized biographer and author of the New York Times best seller First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, this collection sheds light on Armstrong’s enduring impact and offers an intimate glimpse into the cultural meanings of human spaceflight. Readers will explore what the thousands of letters to Neil Armstrong meant not only to those who wrote them, but as a snapshot of one of humankind’s greatest achievements in the twentieth century. They will see how societies and cultures projected their own meanings onto one of the world’s great heroes and iconic figures.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_previews/1036/thumbnail.jp
Working Towards A Better Nation: Innovation and Entrapment in the fiction of Alasdair Gray
No full textThis paper examines the seeming contradiction between the disavowal of moralizing in literature which Gray makes in his comments on Agnes Owens, and the extent to which Gray\u27s critics have asserted a political message as a key constituent in his own work. In exploring this issue, focus falls in a large part on the less than positive appraisal of the \u27radicalism\u27 of Gray\u27s politics offered by Alison Lumsden. Following on from several of Gray\u27s commentators, the principle vehicle for Gray\u27s political commentary within fiction is taken to be his explicit representation, in both realist and allegorical modes, of the political realities in which he writes. This grounding for his project is then shown to be incompatible with the politically radical message which Lumsden seems to imply as a necessary yet absent factor in Gray\u27s work, while allowing some form of political intervention to be made without contradicting the rules Gray himself has suggested for political fiction. Important to this is the notion of an as-yet unrealised freedom beyond - both thematically and temporally - Gray\u27s immediate focus, and of the individual actions within and against each entrapping political system which Gray\u27s fiction recurrently represents and valorises
Neil Armstrong—The Astronaut as Icon: Myth-Busting the Life of The First Man on the Moon
No full textAs the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing made by American spacecraft Apollo 11, on July 20, 1969, the man who took those historic first steps, Neil Armstrong, has become the subject of renewed fascination. In this talk historian James R. Hansen, author of the only authorized biography of Armstrong, explores the many ways that the iconic Apollo 11 commander has been misunderstood. Hansen, who has spent 20 years studying, thinking, writing, and lecturing about Armstrong will explain how Armstrong, because he was such a private and introspective man who was so hard to know, turned out in later years to be myth personified, an enigma prime to be filled with meaning by others. Armstrong died in 2012, but his legend—as well as the myths—live on
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