Formal Coherence Research Articles

The Effect of Coherence Level and Assumption Form on the Wason Selection Task Solution

The Wason selection task is designed as a refutation attitude and based on the K. Popper principle of falsificationism. The numerous studies have revealed that specific forms of the task are solved better than abstract ones. However, researchers explain this phenomenon differently. The aim of the study is to introduce and explain the better solution effect by varying the coherence level and the assumption form of selection task conditions. The notion of “coherence” is introduced in the theory-theory concept approach to denote the connection between two concepts, as well as between the attributes of one concept. We have introduced three levels of coherence: formal coherence means the absence of any meaningful connection, external coherence implies the presence of an external “context”, and internal coherence includes the causal connection between the assumption concepts as well. Based on the selection task modifications analysis, it was found that conditions are implicitly formulated in the form of rules or hypotheses, which implies different testing strategies. The following hypotheses were tested: 1) the selection task solving efficiency will increase with the growth in the assumption attributes coherence level; 2) tasks with rules will be solved better than tasks with hypotheses on the same assumption attributes coherence level. The sample includes 193 subjects (median age 23 years, 60% female, 51% with higher education). Selection task modifications were used as stimulus material, where the coherence levels and the assumption form were varied. As a result, both hypotheses found statistical support. The novelty of this paper lies in the methodological separation of selection task modifications both by the assumption form — rules or hypo - theses, and by the coherence level of the tested assumption — formal, external and internal. The introduction of two forms and three levels of assumption coherence allows us to integrate the selection task solution factors revealed in different studies within a single explanation of the inclusion of the tested assumption in different kinds of theories.

Philosophizing Time in Sinitic Opera

This article grapples with the question: how do huangmei opera and kua-a opera listeners experience formal coherence? Both opera traditions abound with changing phrase lengths that subvert the anticipatory listening strategies familiar to Anglo-American theorists. However, these temporal variabilities do not appear to disturb local listeners’ sense of formal coherence. Instead, ethnographic interviews and musical analyses suggest that the temporal sensibilities of huangmei opera and kua-a opera listeners anchor in the cadence of linguistic sounds and, more broadly, in “timeways”—ideas and practices relating to how a community experiences, measures, and expresses time—that stem from a Dao-centered paradigm of worldmaking. The latter yields a conception of musical time that embraces changeability and the pursuit of auspicious timings.

Infrastructures of Aging: Form and Institutional Care in Dementia Fiction

Abstract The fictional representation of the cognitive experience of people with dementia is often credited with providing an occasion for readerly empathy and a privileged mimetic account of dementia experience. This essay draws on recent scholarship by Caroline Levine and Anna Kornbluh that expands the notion of form to include infrastructures, institutions, and other entities that provide sustenance and continuity to offer a different account of the cultural work such fictions do. The essay argues that two canonical works of fiction about dementia— J. Bernlef's Out of Mind and B. S. Johnson's House Mother Normal—do not merely offer a mimesis of dementia experience (the focus of existing research). These works take seriously dementia experience's challenge to formal coherence as they (however ambivalently) displace the task of providing continuity and sustenance to caring institutions rather than to residual ratiocinative capacities. Both novels repurpose the ellipses and blanks that are typical of the representation of dementia “mind styles” for something other than an indication of deficient subjectivity: in Bernlef, they become an indicator of lyrical and timeless sustenance and suspension; in Johnson, they point to regularities that invite the reader to coconstruct an imaginative space that sustains the lives the novel evokes.

Die Integration prosodischen und syntaktischen Wissens bei der Ermittlung der Textkohärenz im schriftlichen Textverstehen

Reading is a highly complex cognitive process. From a neurobiological point of view, it involves at least six linguistic sub-competences including orthographic, semantic, syntactic, phonetic and prosodic competence. Each of these skills is required of the reader to extract different types of information from the text, ranging from the perceptual and the syntactic to the lexical and pragmasemantic one. Based on the main results of cognitive-oriented research on text and reading, this paper illustrates how prosodic competence, combined with formal coherence patterns, can be considered and employed as a reading strategy, enabling the reader to progressively grasp the meanings of a text. In the first part particular attention will be paid to the description of the syntax-prosody interface as well as of its function as a means of encoding of information structure in German. With regard to the teaching of German as a foreign language, the second part of the paper will present a method to train intonational reading. This approach aims to raise foreign language readers’ awareness of prosodic features of written texts and to introduce them to melodic patterns which can be encountered while reading. Such a practical training may prove to be advantageous, as the most typical and apparently “uncorrectable” errors committed by foreign language learners when speaking and reading German texts are almost always related to the domains of phonology and prosody.

Husserl and Non-Formal Ethics

From its very beginnings, Husserl’s philosophical life was characterised by the interweaving between ethical reflection and logical-argumentative rigour. It is not just a matter of the constant efforts that were put into a theoretical formulation that was always aimed at constant formal coherence, but also and above all, of the progressive association of a rigorous ethics with the value of the individual-personal dimension. The phenomenological analysis of the values – intertwined with those of perceptive-intellective experiences, feeling and volition – gradually find a common denominator that progressively takes shape in the ethical-non-formal theme of personal motivation.

من بلاغة التناسب فی الفاصلة القرآنیة فاصلة نفی الظلم بــ ( لا ) عن الله تعالى نموذجًا

من بلاغة التناسب فی الفاصلة القرآنیة فاصلة نفی الظلم بــ ( لا ) عن الله تعالى نموذجًا

Review: Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture: A Critical Reconsideration, edited by Matthew A. Cohen and Maarten Delbeke

Book Review| December 01 2020 Review: Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture: A Critical Reconsideration, edited by Matthew A. Cohen and Maarten Delbeke Matthew A. Cohen and Maarten Delbeke, eds. Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture: A Critical Reconsideration Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2018, 600 pp., illus. $125/€102.50 (cloth), ISBN 9789087282776 Michela Rossi Michela Rossi Politecnico di Milano Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2020) 79 (4): 478–479. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.4.478 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Michela Rossi; Review: Proportional Systems in the History of Architecture: A Critical Reconsideration, edited by Matthew A. Cohen and Maarten Delbeke. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 December 2020; 79 (4): 478–479. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2020.79.4.478 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search The history of Western architecture is marked by ample attention to the concept of proportion, a concern that has affected both architectural theory (ever searching for aesthetic recipes for harmony) and architectural practice (seeking to balance loads and structure). In fact, the term proportion expresses a quantitative relationship between measurable elements and is therefore intrinsic to the geometric forms commonly employed in building designs. According to Western classical traditions, humans have always aspired to the perfection of natural forms; this helps to explain the enduring fascination with proportional systems in architectural design. For a long time, geometry and proportion represented secret and sacred tools that assured formal coherence and structural balance. Through them, early modern thinkers such as Galileo sought to establish the foundations of experimental science and to demonstrate thresholds of validity for structural principles. According to Goethe's famous aphorism, “Provision has been made to keep trees from growing... You do not currently have access to this content.

Worlds Enough: The Invention of Realism in the Victorian Novel. Elaine Freedgood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pp. xxii+152.

<i>Worlds Enough: The Invention of Realism in the Victorian Novel</i>. Elaine Freedgood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pp. xxii+152.

(Per)forming Open Form: A Case Study with Earle Brown’s Novara

Most accounts of Earle Brown’s open form compositions focus on the notated qualities of individual events in the score. However, the conductor’s role in ensuring continuity and formal coherence within a performance is rarely acknowledged. In this article, I analyze recordings of three performances of Brown conducting his composition Novara (1962), two with the Virtuoso Ensemble in 1966 and one with a group of Dutch musicians in 1974. The conductor’s interventions in each performance embody a range of strategies used to suggest structural function and organize the time of performance. The multiplicity of musical processes in play within—and between—performances in turn suggests a parallel with Jonathan Kramer’s concept of multiply-directed linear time.

A corpus-based quantitative analysis of twelve centuries of preterite and past participle morphology in Dutch

AbstractGermanic preterite morphology has been the subject of a bewildering number of studies, looking especially at the competition between the so-called strong inflection (operating with ablaut), and the so-called weak inflection (operating with suffixation). In this study over 250,000 observations from twelve centuries of Dutch were analyzed in a generalized linear mixed-effect model gauging the effects of a multitude of language-internal factors, ranging from various frequency measures to various form-related factors and how they interact with each other. This study confirms the well-known effects of token and type frequency, finding that formal similarities can be both a driving and conservative force in language change and demonstrates that not all members (i.e., preterites and past participles) of a verb paradigm change at the same time, which is both an effect of their frequency and their formal coherence within the paradigm.

Spinoza's counter-aesthetics

ABSTRACTSpinoza says very little about art or literature in his work; a fact which partly explains the absence of references to him by the German initiators of aesthetics in the eighteenth century, including Baumgarten, Kant and Hegel. Spinoza's resolute opposition to teleology, however, provides an even more compelling reason for his absence, given the teleological conception of literary and artistic form common to the notion of aesthetics at the time of its emergence. Is it possible to fashion a counter-aesthetics from the materials provided by Spinoza's philosophy? I argue that his reading of the great Spanish Baroque writers, especially Luis de Góngora and Baltasar Gracián (whose works were found in his library), provided him with an alternative conception of literary form based on a rejection of formal coherence and closure in favor of constitutive incompleteness and an opening to the infinite.

Vernünfteln

AbstractKant attempted to answer the question of whether immoral actions result from a mere lack or failing of reason, or whether they consist in a certain form of rationality, i. e. in immoral reasons. The paper addresses this question by concentrating on Kant’s conception of “rationalising” (“Vernünfteln”). This concept is the key for understanding how immoral actions can be based on reasons and are thus imputable. According to Kant, by rationalising, the moral agent constructs a formal coherence of his maxims that pretends to conform with the moral law but actually follows motives such as self-love or self-conceit. This activity of constructing a rational illusion, which derives from a dialectic of reason, can be imputed to the moral agent. Finally, the paper addresses strategies that Kant develops in order to circumvent the rationalising trap.

Analysing Mozart's Fantasia K.475 through Intersections of Schematic and Schenkerian Thought

This article orientates an investigation of the late eighteenth-century fantasia around a case study of Mozart's Fantasia in C Minor K.475, relating its findings to an array of historical contexts generating new insights into a genre, which remains 'an inherently problematic object of study' compared to formally closed genres of sonata and rondo (Richards 2001:15). Musicological literature on the subject has focused mainly on keyboard fantasias by C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788) as well as on nineteenth-century fantasias by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt et al. The dearth of analytical engagement with the Mozartian model is perplexing, given its potential impact on the genre’s development; unlike the preceding free fantasias of C.P.E. Bach, K.475 combines structural logic and formal coherence with quasi-fantastical effects more typical of the Bachian fantasia.&#x0D; To this end, the article first provides a brief overview of musicological, theoretical and analytical contexts, drawing out conceptual frameworks in the work of Annette Richards (2001) and Matthew Head (2014), which have not yet been employed in a study of the Mozartian fantasia. The case-study analysis of K.475 that follows, engages critically with two established methodologies: Robert Gjerdingen's schema theory (2007) and Schenkerian Analysis. Lastly, analytical discourse remains sensitive to the performance process, with a view to discovering if and how theoretical knowledge gained through analysis translates into a fantasia performance, and scrutinising ways in which performative introspection continues to influence a theoretical understanding of the piece.

The Active Learner’s Construction-Combinatory Thesaurus: user-driven principles of compiling (a cognitive linguistic approach)

This article discusses the design of a new type of dictionaries, the Active Learner’s Construction-Combinatory Thesaurus (ALCCT) intended for adult learners of the second (foreign) language. The ALCCT is an ideographic dictionary where phrases, understood as instantiations of constructions, are arranged in accordance with the cognitive ontology of a particular conceptual thematic field. As such, the ALCCT is a project compatible with cognitive lexicography, a contemporary branch of dictionary-making that adopts the findings of cognitive science, cognitive linguistics in particular. The article proposes a cognitive profile of the dictionary’s target user, and makes it a departure point in elaborating the principles of compiling the ALCCT. They are defined as the principles of data selection, arrangement, and application. Data selection regards their thematic and formal coherence, their authenticity, and their prominence, or frequency. Data arrangement implies their relational coherence, and their elaboration. Relational coherence is realized through the lexicographic code, or the dictionary’s overall design that develops at three hierarchical levels: those of macrostructure (a conceptual ontology of the theme), mediostructure (the key words evolving into phrasal sets), and microstructure (description of phrasal lemmas). Elaboration of the data is provided via the overarching structure mapped onto the three hierarchical structures of the lexicographic code, and concerned with etymological, cultural, grammatical, and phraseological (metaphorical) extensions. Data application reaches out to the communicative situations in which the ALCCT’s resources can be used.

Rethinking Subjectivity after Postmodernism: The Many Faces of Henry James in the Contemporary Literary Imagination

ABSTRACTThe early 2000s have confronted the literary world with a plethora of fictions responding to the person, life, and legacy of Henry James. Seeking to explain this phenomenon, previous studies have focused almost exclusively on biofictional James novels (Lodge, Tóibín), highlighting their supposed potential for invoking the author after Barthes without offending postmodern sensibilities. This article challenges this faith in the reconciliatory potential of biofictional “returns,” arguing that their life-writing frame remains inhibitive to their project. By contrast, works evoking James by interrogating his stylistic legacy (Banville, Hollinghurst, Ozick) manage a return of the subject that is uniquely compatible with a postmodern critique of humanist subjectivity. By examining each text’s distinct approach to James, this article demonstrates that representing the author’s subjectivity as clusters of stylistic choices and aesthetic sensibilities offers a productive way of working through the creative stasis of postmodernism. In turning to James, these fictions mobilize a modernist aesthetic that postmodernity declared impossible, thus replacing a lack of faith in the sign with renewed optimism for the potential of particular aesthetics and of formal coherence. Thus, they suggest distinct possibilities for overcoming a postmodern “crisis of representation” without rejecting its theoretical and formal legacies.

ORALITY AND PAULINE ‘CHRISTOLOGY’: SOME HERMENEUTICAL IMPLICATIONS

The main thesis of this essay is that Paul’s Christological expressions have been decisively influenced by the oral culture from which they stem. The argument is defined that an awareness of Paul’s orality enables the reader to understand the formal coherence between the symbolical, historical and psychological aspects of his Christology, thus providing the reader with an invaluable hermeneutical tool. The hermeneutical model which emerges can be described as follows: on a symbolic level the salvational deeds of Christ are contextualized within a concrete situation by means of language symbols. On a historical level the salvational deeds are placed within the framework of an escalating salvational history. On a psychological level a comprehensive solidarity is established between the proclaimed Christ, the speaker and the audience. For its theory of orality the paper is indebted mainly to Walter J Ong (Orality and Literacy’ 1982). The implications of this theory for Pauline Christology are explored on a sustained debate with JC Beker and D Patte.

Contemporary Drift: Genre, Historicism, and the Problem of the Present, by Theodore Martin; Minor Characters Have Their Day: Genre and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace, by Jeremy Rosen

Contemporary Drift: Genre, Historicism, and the Problem of the Present, by Theodore Martin; Minor Characters Have Their Day: Genre and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace, by Jeremy Rosen

Updating the descriptive biopsychosocial approach to fit into a formal person-centred dynamic coherence model. The ‘social’ part

Updating the descriptive biopsychosocial approach to fit into a formal person-centred dynamic coherence model. The ‘social’ part

Experiencing Time in Brian Cherney’s String Quartet No. 4 (1994)

Brian Cherney’s Fourth String Quartet (1994), in one movement lasting half an hour, is striking for its formal coherence and diversity of materials. The work achieves large-scale cohesion not only through an intricate interplay of three simultaneously unfolding “main structures”—four attacca movements in one, on one level, seven sections forming certain temporal proportions, on another, and four cycles of “breathing rhythms” derived from the same proportions on a third level, as documented in the manuscript sources—but also through the continually fluctuating tension we experience throughout the movement between ontological and psychological time. Pierre Souvtchinsky’s notion of a “counterpoint” between “ontological time” (i.e., clock or real time) and a particular music’s inherent time shaped by “the material and technical means by which [the] music is expressed” is referenced to demonstrate how in Cherney’s quartet fixed proportions and slow, stable polyrhythms active in the background afford space for foreground activity that has its own sense of time. The article further explores the notion of time in a second, metaphorical dimension, as concerns intertextual allusions in the quartet.

Romanticism, Self-Canonization, and the Business of Poetry. Michael Gamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. vii+307.

<i>Romanticism, Self-Canonization, and the Business of Poetry</i>. Michael Gamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. vii+307.