Subject Ontology Research Articles

Trauma, technology and the ontology of the modern subject

For later Heidegger, in the human sciences, technology involves enframing or ordering of human being into standing reserve, or resource, for the ends of a calculative rationality. With some similarity, Foucault takes up technology as a ‘grid of intelligibility’ for power/knowledge, and in those practices deploying the subject’s own ethical self-understanding. This article integrates dimensions of modern subjectivity articulated by Heidegger and Foucault, hermeneutically inquiring into the emergent intelligibility of modern subjectivity as depicted in psychological accounts of trauma in Janet, Freud, Caruth and others. It is argued that trauma, as a dispositif, technologically refashions the masterful subject that fell into crisis after the early Enlightenment. It is also suggested that technological enframing of trauma as the collapse of memory and language underwrites the subject’s own space of reflexivity, while concealing the subject’s fractured ontological and temporal horizon.

Theory of mind and Darwin’s legacy

We do not have an adequate theory of consciousness. Both dualism and materialism are mistaken because they deny consciousness is part of the physical world. False claims include (i) behaviorism, (ii) computationalism, (iii) epiphenomenalism, (iv) the readiness potential, (v) subjectivity, and (vi) materialism. Ontological subjectivity does not preclude epistemic objectivity. Observer relative phenomena are created by consciousness, but consciousness is not itself observer relative. Consciousness consists of feeling, sentience, or awareness with (i) qualitativeness, (ii) ontological subjectivity, (iii) unified conscious field, (iv) intentionality, and (v) intentional causation. All conscious states are caused by lower level neurobiological processes in the brain, and they are realized in the brain as higher level features. Efforts to get a detailed scientific account of how brain processes cause consciousness are disappointing. The Darwinian revolution gave us a new form of explanation; two levels were substituted: a causal level, where we specify the mechanism by which the phenotype functions, and a functional level, where we specify the selectional advantage that the phenotype provides. Sociobiology attempted to explain general features of human society, ethics, etc. It failed. For the incest taboo, it confuses inhibition with prohibition. It did not explain the moral force of the taboo. To explain the function of consciousness we cannot ask, "What would be subtracted if we subtracted consciousness but left everything else the same?" We cannot leave everything else the same because consciousness is necessary for higher functions of human and animal life. The unified conscious field gives the organism vastly increased power.

O conceito funcional de pessoa na bioética secular

Defende-se que, nos dilemas bioéticos, o fundamental é decidido no âmbito ontológico. É fundamental responder a interrogações sistemáticas tais como: o que é uma pessoa? Quem é pessoa? A estas questões correspondem respostas de duas tendências opostas: uma tendência reducionista, no contexto de uma bioética secular, devedora do primado da ação, que argumenta em favor de uma separabilidade entre pessoa, ser humano e vida humana; e outra tendência, no contexto de uma bioética metafísica, que sustenta uma intrínseca identidade entre pessoa, ser humano e vida humana. A primeira faz o ser da pessoa coincidir com o exercício de uma determinada capacidade, uma função não é uma hipostatização abstrata, mas é inseparável do sujeito ontológico que é a sua condição de possibilidade. A segunda remete ao substancialismo e ao hilemorfismo como explicações do ser humano real, permitindo justificar a presença no homem de um princípio específico ontológico de unificação das propriedades e de permanência das funções e dos atos, presente, independentemente, da sua manifestação exterior atual, e reconhecer o estatuto atual da pessoa no ser humano, inclusive, em condições de potencialidade ou de privação.

Strategic Management Research in Developing Nations: How Relevant?

The genre of enquiry that has dominated the field of Strategic Management has been of the quantitative scientific type, comprising measurement and observation, experimentation and hypothesis testing (Popper 1959, Summer et al. 1990). This dominance, coupled with heavy reliance on nomothetic methodology may not be problematic if the domain of the research is confined only to western settings since its epistemic nature and subjective ontology are not contentious issues. However, as business continues to be conducted across national borders, these methodological issues may become more problematic. This is particularly true in the case of many emerging market countries (EMCs) where cultures tend to be context-specific and where attributes such as collegiality, trust, compassion and sense of duty to society play a more prominent role. This is significantly different than in the Anglo-Saxon world, which are predominantly content-specific and participants are largely motivated by rational instrumentality and self-interest. In this paper we will explore the direction that the Strategic Management field should take and address the vexing issue of how research methodology should be adapted to be better able to reflect the reality on the ground in EMCs.

How to Talk About Nature When There Is No More Nature to Talk About: Toward a Sustainable Universal

How to Talk About Nature When There Is No More Nature to Talk About: Toward a Sustainable Universal

Determining the relevance of Strategic Management research in developing countries.

The genre of enquiry that has dominated the field of Strategic Management has been of the quantitative scientific type, comprising measurement and observation, experimentation and hypothesis testing (Popper 1959, Summer et al. 1990). This dominance, coupled with heavy reliance on nomothetic methodology may not be problematic if the domain of the research is confined only to western settings since its epistemic nature and subjective ontology are not contentious issues. However, as business continues to be conducted across national borders, these methodological issues may become more problematic. This is particularly true in the case of many emerging market countries (EMCs) where cultures tend to be context-specific and where attributes such as collegiality, trust, compassion and sense of duty to society play a more prominent role. This is significantly different than in the Anglo-Saxon world, which are predominantly content-specific and participants are largely motivated by rational instrumentality and self-interest. In this paper we will explore the direction that the Strategic Management field should take and address the vexing issue of how research methodology should be adapted to be better able to reflect the reality on the ground in EMCs.

Mapping out the subject of Brazilian social psychology in the production of the national association of research and post-graduate studies in psychology

This paper problematizes the Brazilian Social Psychology and its knowledge production on the registers of the Work Group (WG) of symposiums of the National Association of Research and Post-Graduation in Psychology (ANPEPP), during 1988 to 2010. Using Michel Foucault's archeo-genealogical perspective and the contributions by Ian Hacking about the historical ontology of subjects, we analyzed technologies of power and knowledge in the disciplines of Social Psychology. We selected the WG abstracts in which circulate the utterances that make up the discursive field of Brazilian Social Psychology. Using the narrative of WGs we outlined a discursive formation of identities/technologies of the subject. The knowledges of Social Psychology in the history of the ANPEPP's WGs contribute to the constitution of categories and psychological classifications which objectivize subjects. We think Social Psychology, in its criticisms related to psychological and social concepts comprises practices and regimes of truth about the subject of Social Psychology.

ПОСТСОБЫТИЙНОСТЬ И СУБЪЕКТ ОТСУТСТВИЯ В ОБЪЕКТИВНОЙ ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИИ АЛЕНА БАДЬЮ

The article considers the ontological significance of the objective phenomenology of Alain Badiou, as it is presented in his works «Logic of worlds» and «Second manifesto for philosophy». The author compares Badiou’s phenomenology with the phenomenological projects of Husserl and Heidegger, noting its subject less character. The dissolution of the ontological subject in related reaction to the events by diverse strategies implemented in the subjectivity is performed in the objective phenomenology of Badiou by eliminating of the instance of contemplation in favor of ethical and political practice. Special attention is paid to the relationship of ontology and mathematics, as well as to the analysis of the concepts of the subject and post-eventuality in the context of traditional ontological categories of the one and the multiple. The conclusion is that in the modern ontological theory of the transition from the analysis of isolated nature of the phenomenon to the analysis of a single set–much.

Types of Predication in Aristotle (Posterior Analytics I 22)

Predication is a complex entity in Aristotelian thought. The aim of the present essay is to account for this complexity, making explicit the diverse forms it assumes. To this end, we turn to a crucial chapter of the Posterior Analytics (1 22), where, in the most complete and developed manner within the corpus, Aristotle proceeds to systematize this topic. From the analysis, it will become apparent that predication can assume, generically, five forms: 1) the predication of essence (to autôi einai katêgoresthai), that is of the genus and the specific differentia; 2) essential predication (to autôi einai katêgoresthai), that is either of the genus or of the differentiae (or their genera); 3) the predication of accidents per se; 4) the predication of simple accidents (hôs sumbebêkota katêgoresthai); 5) accidental predication (kata sumbebêkos katêgoresthai). However, only types 2-4 are forms of strict predication (haplôs ). In effect, the “predication” of essence is not a genuine predication, but a formula for identity, constituting, technically, the statement of the essence of the subject (or its definition). On the other hand, accidental “predication” can only be conceived of as such equivocally, since it results from a linguistic accident through which the ontological subject of the attribution suffers a displacement to the syntactic position of the predicate, which is not, by nature, its own. In neither case does the phrase bring about any legitimate predication. The study concludes with a discussion of Aristotle’s thesis according to which no substance can be a predicate, which is implied by its notion of accidental predication, a thesis which has been – and in our opinion wrongly so – challenged in modern times.

The Governmental Topologies of Database Devices

In business and government, databases contain large quantities of digital transactional data (purchases made, services used, finances transferred, benefits received, licences acquired, borders crossed, tickets purchased). The data can be understood as ongoing and dynamic measurements of the activities and doings of people. In government, numerous database devices have been developed to connect such data across services to discover patterns and identify and evaluate the performance of individuals and populations. Under the UK’s New Labour government, the development of such devices was part of a broader policy known as ‘joined-up thinking and government’. Analyses of this policy have typically understood joining up as an operation of adding together distributed data about subjects, which can then be used in the service of government surveillance, the database state or informational capitalism. But rather than such technical or managerialist analytics, I argue that topological analytics capture what these database devices enact and do: they materialize the ‘individuality’ of subjects in intensified, distributed and fluctuating ways and materialize and intensify a logic of what Deleuze describes as modulating controls. Through examples of UK New Labour social policy initiatives over the past decade, I argue that topological analytics can account for these as immanent rather than exceptional properties of database devices and, as such, part and parcel of a governmental logic and ontology of subjects.

FRSAD and the Ontology of Subjects of Works

Critics of the Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD) model have argued that the Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records (FRSAR) Working Group failed to make explicit the ontological assumptions underlying the model, and/or failed to make explicit the reasoning behind the choices that were made among competing conceptions. In this article, the philosophical assumptions underlying the design of the FRSAD model are identified and precisely described; the full range of alternatives are discussed and evaluated; and the implications of the Working Group's choices among those alternatives are clarified.

Some unsettled problems in behavioral neuroscience research

The goal of behavioral neuroscience is to map psychological concepts onto physiological and anatomical concepts and vice versa. The present paper reflects on some of the hidden obstacles that have to be overcome in order to find unique psychophysiological relationships. These are, among others: (1) the different status of concepts which are defined in the two domains (ontological subjectivity in psychology and ontological objectivity in physiology); (2) the distinct hierarchical levels to which concepts from the two domains may belong; (3) ambiguity of concepts, because-due to limited measurement resolution or definitional shortcomings-they sometimes do not cover unique states or processes; (4) ignored context dependencies. Moreover, it is argued that due to the gigantic number of states and state changes, which are possible in a nervous system, it seems unlikely that neuroscience can provide exact causal explanations and predictions of behavior. Rather, as in statistical thermodynamics the transition from the microlevel of explanations to the macrolevel is only possible with probabilistic uncertainty.

Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the Literary Imagination

Reviewed by: Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the Literary Imagination David Green (bio) Scott, Darieck . Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the Literary Imagination. New York: New York UP, 2010. For scholars interested in fresh approaches to the study of race, gender, and sexuality, Darieck Scott's brilliantly written Extravagant Abjection is mandatory. Scott provides an effective model to approach the cultural and historical relationships that firmly situate/ [End Page 815] define/separate African American studies, queer studies, history, and literary theory as interdependent fields of study. Extravagant Abjection argues that by historicizing the relationship between blackness and abjection we find not a history of shame, defeat, or humiliation that must be resisted, but instead, by embracing these histories, we are endowed with "counterintuitive power." Counterintuitive power reinterprets Black Power (and?) cultural nationalism through a lens of sexual freedom. Scott finds that in their efforts to resist white hegemony and to affirm black pride, leaders of the Black Power Movement utilized cultural nationalism that precluded sexual freedom. Counterintuitive power is, Scott writes, "that which is not-power according to the ego-dependent, ego-centric (and masculine and white) 'I' definitions we have of power" (23). Thus, counterintuitive Black Power at once encompasses racial, political, national, psychic, cultural, and sexual sovereignty from the hegemonic, imperial, and colonial West. Scott's methodology demands that we see historical excavation and literature as necessary when studying both blackness and sexuality. As Scott writes in the introduction: My aim here is not to seek the revelations of history but to emphasize that key component of the work of historical excavation that involves the construction of the past: that is, to work imaginatively with—and rework, and work over, and maybe, if we are lucky, work through—the material that history provides (10). Legitimizing himself as a historian is not Scott's goal. Scott is a literary theorist who employs historical method to demonstrate, especially in the Americas, how race and sexuality are mutually constitutive. "Examining queer blackness" Scott avers, provides "opportunities to consider how the history that produces blackness is a sexual history" (8). Here, Scott is in direct conversation with Kathryn Bond Stockton's Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where "Black" Meets Queer (2006). In her text, Stockton treats blackness and sexuality as discrete categories of analysis and she links the two through debasement. Such a move, Scott asserts, assumes a historical difference between race and sexuality; and this assumption further establishes an exclusionary boundary between race and sexuality as ontological subject formations (16). Scott's critical optic of analysis is the rape of black men in canonical twentieth-century African American literature. Throughout the text, Scott signals penetration not as a sign of weakness and passivity but as a source of power and agency. In chapter 1, "Fanon's Muscle: Black Power Revisited," Scott articulates the book's theoretical framework. By mining and juxtaposing Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Black Skin, White Masks (1952) alongside Black Power rhetoric of cultural nationalism, Scott finds that black radical thought often champions ideas of freedom that resist the history of pain endured by enslaved blacks. The practice of forgetting is not ahistoric. Due to the social construction of blackness through a process that Fanon theorizes as "sociogenesis," blackness is psychologically internalized and racially demarcated as the social Other. In Scott's reading of Fanon's theory, sociogenesis is a "psychoanalytic and phenomenological rendering of the cultural construction of blackness" as humiliation and defeat (38). According to Scott, internalizing blackness as Other resulted in Fanon and Black Power leaders viewing defeat [End Page 816] as "to be defeated" (72). This view robs Africans, African Americans and (post) Colonial suffering bodies of their agency and subtle strategies of resistance to colonial subjugation. Defeat, Scott insists, must be "worked with and worked through" if obtaining freedom is the goal for black radical intellectuals and current "inheritors" of the black experience. In his efforts to work with and "through defeat," Scott deploys Fanon's metaphorical "muscle tension" to interpret how colonized subjects perform certain "powers in the midst of debility" (64). As Scott explains: "Muscle tension in Fanon is a state of death...

The constitutive element of probabilistic agency in risk: a semantic analysis of risk, danger, chance, and hazard

Defining central concepts with accuracy is crucial to any scientific discipline. A recent debate over risk definitions in this journal illustrates the far reaching consequences of divergent definitions. Aven and Renn define risk as a social construct while Rosa defines risk as an ontological fact. Both claim that their definition reflects the common usage of the word risk. Through a semantic analysis this paper points to a constitutive element of what is termed probabilistic agency in the risk concept. In this respect, risk is distinct from danger, and because Rosa’s main argument is based on the apparent synonymy between risk and danger, the premises for his risk ontology are not valid. The paper furthermore argues that Aven and Renn’s attempt to bridge between epistemology and ontology is based on a distinction between a conceptual level of risk and its practical application which is impossible to uphold if a risk definition is to be in accordance with the ordinary usage of the word. The paper concludes by arguing that risks are only real within a subjective ontology.

Keyword clustering for user interest profiling refinement within paper recommender systems

To refine user interest profiling, this paper focuses on extending scientific subject ontology via keyword clustering and on improving the accuracy and effectiveness of recommendation of the electronic academic publications in online services. A clustering approach is proposed for domain keywords for the purpose of the subject ontology extension. Based on the keyword clusters, the construction of user interest profiles is presented on a rather fine granularity level. In the construction of user interest profiles, we apply two types of interest profiles: explicit profiles and implicit profiles. The explicit profiles are obtained by relating users’ interest-topic relevance factors to users’ interest measurements of these topics computed by a conventional ontology-based method, and the implicit profiles are acquired on the basis of the correlative relationships among the topic nodes in topic network graphs. Three experiments are conducted which reveal that the uses of the subject ontology extension approach as well as the two types of interest profiles satisfyingly contribute to an improvement in the accuracy of recommendation.

Implementation features a university data portal using the Semantic Web technology

The paper describes realization of a university information storage and retrieval system using Semantic Web technology. A portal is designed on the base of the Research Institute platform provided by the Russian Academy of Sciences. The subject domain ontology developed by the author, the system architecture, its resources and services are described.

Optics, Gender, and the Eighteenth-Century Gaze: Looking at Eliza Haywood's Anti-Pamela

Eliza Haywood's 1741 novel narrativizes the object-centered discourse of the visual field as described by contemporary optical theory. In eighteenth-century visual theory, the "object" of the gaze is not the one who is seen but the one who sees. Such a notion seems counter-intuitive; we have naturalized the theory of the dominant/male gaze. Anti-Pamela explores, first, the gendered implications that attended assumptions about vulnerable "subjects" and empowered "objects," and, second, the material (as well as symbolic) limits to the kind of empowerment that intromittist theories about vision and ontology seemed to promise to women in real social spaces. This essay makes a twofold contribution. First, it fashions a fresh theoretical lens from optical philosophy; as theorized by Isaac Newton and his contemporaries, the dialectics of the visual field, informed by the empirically generated nexus of seeing, knowing, and being, exceeds modern equations between sight and agency. Second, this essay focuses in on a particular text, Anti-Pamela, to show how this novel's attention to the nature of visual exchange is informed by contemporary optical theory and popular (as well as urban / material) contexts. Anti-Pamela explores the empirical and narrative implications—and the symbolic and gendered / material limitations—of the theory that the seen object occupies a primary, causal status in its ability to transform the seeing subject's ontology.

MULTI‐LAYERED KNOWLEDGE‐BASED ARCHITECTURE OF THE ADAPTABLE DISTANCE LEARNING SYSTEM

The quality of the distance learning courses is largely influenced by competently prepared educational resources and an effective study support system. One of the possible ways to improve distance learning infrastructure and increase its effectiveness is to extend the architecture of present e‐learning systems by the components for adaptable and sustainable learning. This research work is devoted to developing the service‐oriented distance learning environment adaptable to the user's needs. The proposed adaptable communication environment of distance learning is constructed by integration of new components of communication scenarios generation, adaptable for student's goals, multilayered domain ontology of learning subject and forming intelligent agents’ framework possible. The paper presents the knowledge‐based component architecture of the distance learning system, which enables a better adaptation of learning resources to students. The paper analyses the possibilities of integrating ontology into the e‐learning system. The issues of decomposing ontology into different levels of understanding are discussed in order to adapt to learner's tasks and goals. A conceptual approach is proposed for extending the existing distance learning system architecture by intelligent and deeper knowledge layers. Santrauka Nuotolinių studijų kokybė daugiausia priklauso nuo kompetentingai parengtų mokomųjų priemonių ir veiksmingai veikiančios studijų paramos sistemos. Ieškant priemonių, kaip pagerinti nuotolinių studijų sistemos infrastruktūrą ir padidinti jos darbo efektyvumą, nagrinėjamos galimybės praplėsti tradicinės nuotolinio mokymo sistemos architektūrą komponentėmis, kurios leistų išplėtoti adaptuotą ir darnų mokymosi procesą. Šio tyrimo uždaviniai skirti paslaugoms, skirtoms išvystyti nuotolinio mokymo aplinką. Siekiant sukurti tinkamą kompiuterizuotą bendradarbiavimo aplinką, lanksčiai prisitaikoma prie kintančių vartotojo poreikių studijų procese. Architektūra projektuojama integruojant naujas komponentes bendravimo scenarijams generuoti, daugelio lygių dalykinės srities ontologijai naudoti ir sudarant sąlygas automatizuotam intelektinių agentų bendravimui. Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos galimybės integruoti dalykinės srities ontologiją į tradicinės nuotolinio mokymo sistemos aplinką. Ontologijos detalizavimo pagal studento supratimo lygmenis klausimai nagrinėjami siekiant pateikti koncepcinį tokios nuotolinės adaptuotos sistemos darbo modelį.

Teaching as disciplined enquiry

This paper is designed to raise issues around how we view teaching and some of the implication that has for thinking about teaching as a discipline. The paper is built around the concept of ‘noticing’ from some of my earlier work and aims to push ideas about teaching in ways that are intended to provoke readers into thinking more deeply about how they conceptualise teaching and all that that involves. The paper is organised in such a way as to invite critique using the idea of teaching as disciplined enquiry because teaching, in its full sense, requires ongoing study of oneself in order to be sensitive to learners, ongoing enquiry as to the sense that learners are making, and ongoing enquiry into the subject matter of the discipline. This enquiry involves multiple domains: subject epistemology and ontology; pedagogic strategies and didactic tactics; and psychosocial specifics of situations involving human beings, who can be agentive in exercising their will as to what they attend to, and how. Put another way, in order to remain fresh and sensitive to learners, it is essential for teachers to refresh their sense of the disciplined ways in which natural human powers are employed in the subject, of the role of fundamental themes, practices and awarenesses which comprise the subject and its discipline, and of the particularities of the learners in their historical‐cultural and institutional setting. Thus, teaching is fundamentally enquiry in the domain of human attention and awareness.

Building grounded theory in action research through the interplay of subjective ontology and objective epistemology

In this article, I contribute to the discourse on building theory within the context of action research. Specifically, drawing on advaita (non-dualism) philosophy from Hinduism, I describe a holistic framework which views life as holistic, that is, comprising both subjective and objective views of reality and thus promoting interplay between ontological subjectivity and epistemological objectivity. I illustrate with examples, how anchored in a holistic paradigm, I used principles of constant comparison in developing the theoretical category of sacredness in its various dimensions. I also describe two dimensions that characterized this process: researcher as insider-outsider and researcher's affirmations and ambivalences.