The Priority of the Stuttgart–Liège–Zurich Harmonies

Among witnesses to the Diatessaron, eastern ones better preserve Tatian’s narrative sequence. Western witnesses typically evince the same order. But when they differ, Codex Fuldensis is typically assumed to preserve the most primitive narrative sequence, since it is the oldest extant western manuscript. This chapter challenges that fundamental assumption. Paratextual data in Fuldensis offers valuable clues about the codex’s material production. In rare, yet significant cases, Victor of Capua and his scribe omitted or repositioned short Gospel episodes. The placement of such material in the much younger Stuttgart, Liège, and Zurich harmonies shows that they occasionally take priority over Fuldensis. In support of an earlier tenet in Diatessaron studies, these medieval Dutch and German harmonies sometimes independently attest the same Old Latin harmony underlying Codex Fuldensis.

A major new dimension in the problem of brain injury

Evidence that neurohormones contribute to the contralateral effects of unilateral brain injury challenges a fundamental assumption of basic neuroscience and clinical neurology.

Negotiation Impasses: Types, Causes, and Resolutions

Although impasses are frequently experienced by negotiators, are featured in newspaper articles, and are reflected in online searches and can be costly, negotiation scholarship does not appear to consider them seriously as phenomena worth explaining. A review of negotiation tasks to study impasses reveals that they bias negotiators toward agreement. We systematically organize past findings on impasses and integrate them in the impasse type, cause, and resolution model (ITCR model). Our fundamental assumption is that a positive bargaining zone does not imply symmetric preferences for an agreement. One or both negotiators may prefer an impasse over an agreement despite a positive bargaining zone. We argue that it is beneficial for management research to distinguish between three impasse types: If both negotiators perceive benefit from an impasse, they are wanted; if one negotiator perceives benefits from an impasse, they are forced; and if both do not perceive benefits from the impasse, they are unwanted. We review structural (e.g., bargaining zone, communication channels), interpersonal (e.g., tough tactics, emotions), and intrapersonal (e.g., biases, available information, and framing) factors as the likely antecedents of the three impasse types. We also examine evidence that suggests that wanted impasses can be resolved by changing the negotiation structure for both parties, forced impasses can be resolved through persuasion, and unwanted impasses can be overcome by debiasing both parties. Finally, we review current methodological guidance and provide updated recommendations on how scholars should deal with impasses in both study designs and data analyses.

Coexistence of dynamical delocalization and spectral localization through stochastic dissipation

Anderson’s groundbreaking discovery that the presence of stochastic imperfections in a crystal may result in a sudden breakdown of conductivity1 revolutionized our understanding of disordered media. After stimulating decades of studies2, Anderson localization has found applications in various areas of physics3–12. A fundamental assumption in Anderson’s treatment is that no energy is exchanged with the environment. Recently, a number of studies shed new light on disordered media with dissipation14–22. In particular it has been predicted that random fluctuations solely in the dissipation, introduced by the underlying potential, could exponentially localize all eigenstates (spectral localization)14, similar to the original case without dissipation that Anderson considered. We show in theory and experiment that uncorrelated disordered dissipation can simultaneously cause spectral localization and wave spreading (dynamical delocalization). This discovery implies the breakdown of the commonly known correspondence between spectral and dynamical localization known from the Hermitian Anderson model with uncorrelated disorder.

Dispute Processing beyond the Courts: New Complexity, Old Problems

Nearly four decades after Frank E.A. Sander addressed the Pound Conference, his conception of the role alternative dispute resolution (ADR) can and should play in the American legal system remains profoundly influential. Sander’s remarks focused on alleviating overburdened courts and questioning the fundamental assumption that judges hold a monopoly on resolving disputes. He developed a matrix that crossed dispute characteristics—the nature of a dispute, the relationship between disputants, the amount in dispute, litigation costs, and need for speedy resolution—with different methods of dispute resolution, ranging from courtroom litigation to less formal alternatives such as mediation and negotiation. Sander envisioned a court of the future that considered carefully the interplay of dispute characteristics in order to match dispute types with methods of dispute resolution. By “fitting the forum to the fuss,” courts could lighten judges’ dockets, better serve disputants, and improve the delivery of justice. This idea, that courts could facilitate dispute resolution without judges, was revolutionary....

Wittgenstein and Islamic Ethics: The Interpretation of Intention

This article contains an analysis of the idea of intention in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It evaluates capabilities of his conception in the development of Ethics in the «Islamic context». Author shows that Wittgenstein’s conception reveals a remarkable similarity to the fundamental assumption of Islamic Ethics, that is to «direct connection (bind, cohesion, connectedness) between intention and action». It is shown that an adequate understanding of this connection requires consideration of the Wittgensteinian idea of internal relations. It is proved that intention is not a manifestation of a «soul substance», «perception» or «feeling». Interpretation of «intention» provides additional refinement while defining specific intention ad hoc. In conclusion author puts forward a hypothesis asserting utility of late Wittgenstein’s conception in the development of Islamic ethical theory.

Lições de um Xamã Yanomami para a Construção de uma Identidade Pós-Antropocêntrica

Western culture's imaginary positions human figure as exceptional and identified with cosmological wholeness: "humanity" is taken for granted in the construction of people's identity, while non-human beings are assigned a condition of non-subjects. This paper departs from the assumption that this worldview is supported by a fundamentally mythical structure, which has, as an important representant, world creation narrative expressed in the Hebrew-Christian Bible. Thus, this paper proposes an analysis of the relations between humanity and animality that are expressed in The Book of Genesis, first book of the Bible, comparing them with the way those same relations are expressed in an Amerindian creation myth: The Falling Sky: Words from a Yanomami shaman, from indigenous leader and shaman David Kopenawa. The results are interpreted from a dialogue between anthropology of the imaginary and cultural psychology and show that, unlike Western narrative, in Amerindian animality and humanity figure like parts of the same whole, immanently present in all beings: the contact with spiritual ancestors is only possible through animal mediation, which makes "nature" a fundamental dimension of the "divine" in Yanomami cosmology. I discuss the implications of these findings for a fundamental assumption of psychological thought: the notion of humanity Palavras-chave : Imaginary; Cultural Psychology; Myths; Anthropocentrism; Identity.

Linguistic Relativity and Flexibility of Mental Representations: Color Terms in a Frame Based Analysis

This paper connects the issue of the influence of language on conceptual representations, known as Linguistic Relativity, with some issues pertaining to concepts’ structure and retrieval. In what follows, I present a model of the relation between linguistic information and perceptual information in concepts using frames as a format of mental representation, and argue that this model not only accommodates the empirical evidence presented by the linguistic relativity debate, but also sheds some light on unanswered questions regarding conceptual representations’ structure. A fundamental assumption is that mental representations can be conceptualised as complex functional structures whose components can be dynamically and flexibly recruited depending on the tasks at hand; the components include linguistic and non-linguistic elements. This kind of model allows for the representation of the interaction between linguistic and perceptual information and accounts for the variable influence that color labels have on non-linguistic tasks. The paper provides some example of strategy shifting and flexible recruitment of linguistic information available in the literature and explains them using frames.

“Thinking Politically, Seeing Historically”. Hannah Arendt on the Method of Political Thinking

"In my paper, I try to summarize Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the method of political thinking, following them through their genesis. My fundamental assumption is that although she had been preoccupied with the issue before (at least from 1957), she became more seriously interested in it after the controversy following the publication of the Eichmann volume. It is generally known that Arendt believed to have found the pattern for the method of political thinking in Kant’s third critique, the one about judgment; more precisely in the Kantian description of the reflective judgment. This served as a pattern for Arendt for what she sometimes called representative thinking or opinion. If, on the other hand, we examine Arendt’s referring thoughts in their genesis we also come to realize why that was the case. In my opinion, Arendt looked in Kant’s work for a form of political thinking that remained impartial, in other words, it was not committed to one political cause or another, yet did not break its relations to politics, remaining entirely political. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, Immanuel Kant, impartiality, political thinking, ideology, reflective judgment, representative thinking."

Writing Upwards: Letters to Robert Menzies, Australian Prime Minister, 1949–1966

Robert Gordon Menzies received approximately 22,000 letters during his record-breaking second term of office as Australia’s Prime Minister (1949–66). This article examines the corpus as an example of “writing upwards,” a distinctive epistolary genre in which the weak wrote to the powerful, to praise them, berate them, abuse them, or perhaps wish them a happy birthday. From this perspective, the Menzies correspondence takes its place alongside the correspondence of other twentieth-century leaders that has already attracted scholarly and popular interest (the Belgian monarchy, Hitler, Mussolini, Mitterrand, Obama). After surveying this literature and establishing the Australian context, I give a brief presentation of the corpus as a whole. I then focus on one fundamental assumption of letter writers engaged in “writing upwards”: they believed their leader or superior was directly accessible and that they could establish a personal connection with him. By cutting through bureaucratic red tape and by using the epistolary hotline to the top, they could solve a problem or at least make their grievance heard. I indicate the difficulties and illusions they experienced, and outline the tactics deployed by Menzies’s secretariat in responding to their letters.