This book is a must-read for researchers interested in taking a high-level, non-mechanistic approach to answering age-old fundamental questions in the brain ...

In an earlier paper my colleagues and I put forth a theory called “perceiving-the-present” that predicts a systematic pattern across a large variety of illusions, and we presented evidence that the systematic pattern exists. Briscoe puts forth arguments against the theory and the existence of the systematic pattern. Here I provide counterarguments to his criticisms of the theory, and I explain why his arguments do not bear on the existence of the systematic pattern.

Over the history of the study of visual perception there has been great success at discovering countless visual illusions. There has been less success in organizing the overwhelming variety of illusions into empirical generalizations (much less explaining them all via a unifying theory). Here, this article shows that it is possible to systematically organize more than 50 kinds of illusion into a 7 × 4 matrix of 28 classes. In particular, this article demonstrates that (1) smaller sizes, (2) slower speeds, (...) (3) greater luminance contrast, (4) farther distance, (5) lower eccentricity, (6) greater proximity to the vanishing point, and (7) greater proximity to the focus of expansion all tend to have similar perceptual effects, namely, to (A) increase perceived size, (B) increase perceived speed, (C) decrease perceived luminance contrast, and (D) decrease perceived distance. The detection of these empirical regularities was motivated by a hypothesis, called “perceiving the present,” that the visual system possesses mechanisms for compensating neural delay during forward motion. This article shows how this hypothesis predicts the empirical regularity. (shrink)

New success criteria of inductive inference in computational learning theory are introduced which model learning total (not necessarily recursive) functions with (possibly everywhere) imprecise theories from (possibly always) inaccurate data. It is proved that for any level of error allowable by the new success criteria, there exists a class of recursive functions such that not all f are identifiable via the criterion at that level of error. Also, necessary and sufficient conditions on the error level are given for when more (...) classes of functions may be identified. (shrink)

This paper investigates the semantic treatment of conditional obligation, explicit permission (often called positive permission), and prohibition based on models with agents and branched time. In such models branches (rather than moments) are taken as basic, and the branching provides a way to represent the indeterminism which is normally presupposed by talk of free will, responsibility, action and ability. Careful treatment of the relation between ability and responsibility avoids many common problems with accounts of conditional obligation. Recognition of the generality (...) often involved in conditional obligations makes possible a sensitive way of expressing some kinds of general prohibitions, which in turn makes it possible to account for the special role of explicit permission. (shrink)

This essay examines the ways that the terms "self and "no-self can illuminate the views of classical Chinese thinkers, particularly Confucians such as Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, and the Daoist thinker Zhuangzi. In particular, the use of the term "no-self" to describe Zhuangzi's position is defended. The concepts of self and no-self are analyzed in relation to other terms within the thinkers' "concept clusters" - specifically temporality, nature, and social roles - and suggestions are given for constructing typologies that sort (...) out the range of meanings of self and no-self based on the characteristics of the relations among terms within the concept clus- ters. The essay focuses on the way that the Confucians and Zhuangzi use concepts of self and no-self, respectively, as soteriological strategies that aim at making connections with larger systems or wholes, and it concludes that different connections are emphasized by the Confucians and Zhuangzi precisely because the various connections are made possible and sustained by different conceptions of self, temporality, nature, and social roles. (shrink)

The hypothesis that there has been selection pressure for mechanisms which enable us to perceive the present tends to be conflated with the hypothesis that there has been selection pressure for mechanisms that compensate for inevitable neural delay. The relationship between the two is more subtle, because increases in neural delay can be advantageous for building more useful perceptions.

Evidence for instances of astrophysical 'fine tuning' (or 'coincidences') is thought by some to lend support to the design argument (i.e. the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). We assess some of the relevant empirical and conceptual issues. We argue that astrophysical fine tuning calls for some explanation, but this explanation need not appeal to the design argument. A clear and strict separation of the issue of anthropic fine tuning on one hand and any form of (...) Eddingtonian numerology and teleology on the other, may help clarify arguably the most significant issue in the philosophy of cosmology. (shrink)

An innocent form of emergence—what I call "weak emergence"—is now a commonplace in a thriving interdisciplinary nexus of scientific activity—sometimes called the "sciences of complexity"—that include connectionist modelling, non-linear dynamics (popularly known as "chaos" theory), and artificial life.1 After defining it, illustrating it in two contexts, and reviewing the available evidence, I conclude that the scientific and philosophical prospects for weak emergence are bright.

Weak emergence has been offered as an explication of the ubiquitous notion of emergence used in complexity science (Bedau 1997). After outlining the problem of emergence and comparing weak emergence with the two other main objectivist approaches to emergence, this paper explains a version of weak emergence and illustrates it with cellular automata. Then it explains the sort of downward causation and explanatory autonomy involved in weak emergence.

: Can passing antidiscrimination laws ever be a bad idea? Yes, if broad policy reform is abandoned in favor of genetic-specific legislation. But in spite of its serious flaws, both in concept and in practice, genetic-specific legislation is sometimes worth passing anyway—sometimes a bad idea is reasonable.

Huston Smith has argued that the universal source of wholeness, which he refers to as the primordial tradition, is essential to a meaningful life. Indeed embracing this tradition is, said Smith, an act of rejoining the human race. Our current forms of organized religion offer us ritualized expressions of this tradition, yet often fail to provide us with transpersonal growth; it is this transpersonal growth that reconnects us with the source of religion. This essay differentiates mainstream religion from a way (...) that we can begin to construct a physical theory of the primordial tradition–a necessary first step toward reclaiming the source of religion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 61-72 [Access article in PDF] From Personal to Social Transaction:A Model of Aesthetic Reading in the Classroom Mark A. Pike This article seeks to define more precisely the nature of the individual transaction that occurs between reader and text and the potential for aesthetic reading in literature classrooms by relating knowledge of the way pupils engage in literary transactions to theoretical (...) perspectives that address the issue. The validity of Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of the literary work, expounded in Literature as Exploration and The Reader, The Text, The Poem, and its relevance for contemporary educators, particularly in the field of English education, has recently been reasserted by Jeanne Connell in her timely and cogent article in this journal. 1 The present article, however, seeks to refocus debate by problematizing and subsequently developing some aspects of key theories such as Rosenblatt's while examining the individual and social nature of reading in schools. Rosenblatt's view that aesthetic experiences can have both social origin and effect certainly deserves further theorizing if aesthetic experience in school communities and classrooms is to flourish.The influence of John Dewey's Art as Experience upon Rosenblatt is evident as this seminal text conceives of our primary task as the restoration of "continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and everyday events." 2 Such continuity with experience is vital because, for Dewey, "experience is the fulfillment of an organism in its struggles and achievements in a world of things, it is art in germ." 3 Applying such a notion to education in schools, Rosenblatt saw the aim of literature lessons as the growth of experience rather than the acquisition of knowledge. Yet, despite such progress, in the United Kingdom, teachers of English are in the unenviable position of having to deliver an extensive body of knowledge prescribed by the National Curriculum and also to focus explicitly upon the features of certain types of text as they teach the National Literacy Strategy. 4 In Rosenblatt's work the emphasis on our experience of [End Page 61] literary works provides a much needed alternative to positions such as that adopted by New Criticism where "it is never what a poem says which matters, but what it is" because we acknowledge we can only ever gain access to what a poem says as "the sentence that seems to need no interpretation is already the product of one." 5 Clearly, understanding the reader's transaction with texts is where we must begin if we wish to foster aesthetic reading in our classrooms.Transactional theory also appears to be closely related to Martin Heidegger's thought in Being and Time where Dasein (givenness, existence, being) is seen as a distinctive characteristic of the human being as our consciousness projects things of the world and is also subjected to the things of the world which belong to us, in some sense, only as long as our consciousness is projecting them. 6 The validity of Dewey's view, where experience is not separated from art, can be seen when we acknowledge that we can "never adopt an attitude of detached contemplation, looking down on the world as if from a mountain top" for we are "inevitably merged with the very object of our consciousness." 7Such a view reflects Hans-Georg Gadamer's position in Truth and Method in which Heidegger's explanation of situation is applied to literary theory because, for Gadamer, the literary work cannot appear as a packaged and completed artefact in which meaning is neatly wrapped because it is influenced by a particular reader's actions at a particular moment. 8 Rosenblatt's realistic conception that "each reading involves a particular person at a particular time and place" is developed in this article as it seems that, even now, many reader response critics and curriculum designers "write as though people read literature in a vacuum or in a generalized kind of academic setting" which often does not apply... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 61-72 [Access article in PDF] From Personal to Social Transaction:A Model of Aesthetic Reading in the Classroom Mark A. Pike This article seeks to define more precisely the nature of the individual transaction that occurs between reader and text and the potential for aesthetic reading in literature classrooms by relating knowledge of the way pupils engage in literary transactions to theoretical (...) perspectives that address the issue. The validity of Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of the literary work, expounded in Literature as Exploration and The Reader, The Text, The Poem, and its relevance for contemporary educators, particularly in the field of English education, has recently been reasserted by Jeanne Connell in her timely and cogent article in this journal. 1 The present article, however, seeks to refocus debate by problematizing and subsequently developing some aspects of key theories such as Rosenblatt's while examining the individual and social nature of reading in schools. Rosenblatt's view that aesthetic experiences can have both social origin and effect certainly deserves further theorizing if aesthetic experience in school communities and classrooms is to flourish.The influence of John Dewey's Art as Experience upon Rosenblatt is evident as this seminal text conceives of our primary task as the restoration of "continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and everyday events." 2 Such continuity with experience is vital because, for Dewey, "experience is the fulfillment of an organism in its struggles and achievements in a world of things, it is art in germ." 3 Applying such a notion to education in schools, Rosenblatt saw the aim of literature lessons as the growth of experience rather than the acquisition of knowledge. Yet, despite such progress, in the United Kingdom, teachers of English are in the unenviable position of having to deliver an extensive body of knowledge prescribed by the National Curriculum and also to focus explicitly upon the features of certain types of text as they teach the National Literacy Strategy. 4 In Rosenblatt's work the emphasis on our experience of [End Page 61] literary works provides a much needed alternative to positions such as that adopted by New Criticism where "it is never what a poem says which matters, but what it is" because we acknowledge we can only ever gain access to what a poem says as "the sentence that seems to need no interpretation is already the product of one." 5 Clearly, understanding the reader's transaction with texts is where we must begin if we wish to foster aesthetic reading in our classrooms.Transactional theory also appears to be closely related to Martin Heidegger's thought in Being and Time where Dasein (givenness, existence, being) is seen as a distinctive characteristic of the human being as our consciousness projects things of the world and is also subjected to the things of the world which belong to us, in some sense, only as long as our consciousness is projecting them. 6 The validity of Dewey's view, where experience is not separated from art, can be seen when we acknowledge that we can "never adopt an attitude of detached contemplation, looking down on the world as if from a mountain top" for we are "inevitably merged with the very object of our consciousness." 7Such a view reflects Hans-Georg Gadamer's position in Truth and Method in which Heidegger's explanation of situation is applied to literary theory because, for Gadamer, the literary work cannot appear as a packaged and completed artefact in which meaning is neatly wrapped because it is influenced by a particular reader's actions at a particular moment. 8 Rosenblatt's realistic conception that "each reading involves a particular person at a particular time and place" is developed in this article as it seems that, even now, many reader response critics and curriculum designers "write as though people read literature in a vacuum or in a generalized kind of academic setting" which often does not apply... (shrink)

Child soldiers are generally perceived as faultless, passive victims. This ignores that the roles of child soldiers vary, from innocent abductee to wilful perpetrator. This book argues that child soldiers should be judged on their actions and that treating them like a homogenous group prevents them from taking responsibility for their acts.

Abstract:Moral imagination is a reasoning process thought to counter the organizational factors that corrupt ethical judgment. We describe the psychology of moral imagination as composed of the four decision processes identified by Rest (1986), i.e., moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behavior. We examine each process in depth, distilling extant psychological research and indicating organizational implications. The conclusion offers suggestions for future research.The majority of men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others—terribly objective sometimes—but the real (...) task is in fact to be objective toward one’s self and subjective toward all others. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack's theory defines temporal behavior from an awareness of time, but lacks one critical element: the impact of “psychological presence” in the “moment now.” Central to experience of temporal non-stationarity: “Nowness” links future with past in the context of time flow. Does this differ between species? Evidence suggests not: Different temporal experiences between species requires greater critical evaluation.

Prompted by the development of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (Jones et al, 2009), recent years has witnessed a considerable increase in research examining challenge and threat in sport. This manuscript provides a critical review of the literature examining challenge and threat in sport, tracing its historical development and some of the current empirical ambiguities. In an attempt to reconcile some of these ambiguities, and utilising neurobiological evidence associated with approach- and avoidance-motivation (cf. Elliot & Covington, (...) 2001), this paper draws upon the Evaluative Space Model (ESM: Cacioppo et al., 1997) and considers the implications for understanding challenge and threat in sport. For example, rather than see challenge and threat as opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum, the ESM implies that individuals could be (1) challenged, (2) threatened, (3) challenged and threatened, or (4) neither challenged or threatened by a particular stimulus. From this perspective it could be argued that the appraisal of some sport situations as both challenging and threatening could be advantageous, whereas the current literature seems to imply that the appraisal of stress as a threat is maladaptive for performance. In drawing upon the ESM, we outline the Evaluative Space Approach to Challenge and Threat and provide several testable hypotheses for advancing understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). We also outline a number of cardiovascular and experiential measures that can be used to examine these hypotheses. In sum, this paper provides a significant theoretical, empirical and practical contribution to our understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). (shrink)

For more than a quarter of a century, Hubert L. Dreyfus has been the leading voice in American philosophy for the continuing relevance of phenomenology, particularly as developed by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Dreyfus has influenced a generation of students and a wide range of colleagues, and these volumes are an excellent representation of the extent and depth of that influence.In keeping with Dreyfus's openness to others' ideas, many of the essays in this volume take the form (...) of arguments with various of his positions. The essays focus on the dialogue with the continental philosophical tradition, in particular the work of Heidegger, that has played a foundational role in Dreyfus's thinking. The sections are Philosophy and Authenticity; Modernity, Self, and the World; and Heideggerian Encounters. The book concludes with Dreyfus's responses to the essays.Contributors : William D. Blattner, Taylor Carman, David R. Cerbone, Dagfinn Føllesdal, Charles Guignon, Michel Haar, Beatrice Han, Alastair Hannay, John Haugeland, Randall Havas, Jeff Malpas, Mark Okrent, Richard Rorty, Julian Young, Michael E. Zimmerman. (shrink)

The Blackwell Companion to Heidegger is a complete guide to the work and thought of Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Considers the most important elements of Heidegger’s intellectual biography, including his notorious involvement with National Socialism Provides a systematic and comprehensive exploration of Heidegger’s work One of the few books on Heidegger to cover his later work as well as Being and Time Includes key critical responses to Heidegger’s philosophy Contributors include many of (...) the leading interpreters of, and commentators on, the work of Heidegger. (shrink)

This book includes ten essays that trace the notion of unconcealment as it develops from Heidegger's early writings to his later work, shaping his philosophy of truth, language and history. 'Unconcealment' is the idea that what entities are depends on the conditions that allow them to manifest themselves. This concept, central to Heidegger's work, also applies to worlds in a dual sense: first, a condition of entities manifesting themselves is the existence of a world; and second, worlds themselves are disclosed. (...) The unconcealment or disclosure of a world is the most important historical event, and Heidegger believes there have been a number of quite distinct worlds that have emerged and disappeared in history. Heidegger's thought as a whole can profitably be seen as working out the implications of the original understanding of unconcealment. (shrink)

Calling for an expanded framework of EuroAmerican science's methodology whose perspective acknowledges both quantitative/etic and qualitative/emic orientations is the broad focus of this article. More specifically this article argues that our understanding of shamanic and/or other related states of consciousness has been greatly enhanced through ethnographic methods, yet in their present form these methods fail to provide the means to fully comprehend these states. They fail, or are limited, because this approach is only a “cognitive interpretation” or “metanarrative” of the (...) actual experience and not the experience itself. Consequently this perspective is also limited because the researcher continues to assess his or her data through the lens of their symbolic constructs, thereby preventing them from truly experiencing shamanic and psi/spirit approaches to knowing since the data collection process does not “in and of itself” affect the observer. We, therefore, need expanded ethnographic methods that include within their approaches an understanding of methods and techniques to experientially encounter these states of consciousness—and become transformed by them. Our becoming transformed and then recollecting our ethnoautobiographical experiences is the means toward a new kind of science and its methods of inquiry that this article seeks to encourage. (shrink)

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

Teaching graduate students how to do research can be a challenge for many instructors because "research education" is not an established field of research like other areas of teaching such as mathematics education, nursing education, science education, and statistics education. There are no scholarly journals devoted solely to teaching research methods; these sources are instead scattered across disciplines and journals (e.g., Nurse Researcher, Volume 13, Number 2, 2005; Sociology, Volume 15, Issue 4, 1981; and Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Volume (...) 49, Issue 1, 2005). Furthermore, even though research methods courses are a staple in most graduate training programs, instructors were rarely taught how to teach research methods as part of their own graduate programs. Left to their own devices, instructors of research courses must rely on a network of peers, scattered research literature, and much trial-and-error as they develop and improve upon their own research methods courses. (shrink)

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

S. Kierkegaard argued that our highest task as humans is to realize an “intensified” or “developed” form of subjectivity—his name for self-responsible agency. A self-responsible agent is not only responsible for her actions. She also bears responsibility for the individual that she is. In this paper, I review Kierkegaard’s account of the role that our capacity for reflective self-evaluation plays in making us responsible for ourselves. It is in the exercise of this capacity that we can go from being subjective (...) in a degraded sense—merely being an idiosyncratic jumble of accidental and arbitrary attitudes and affects—to being a subject in the ideal or eminent sense. The latter requires the exercise of my capacity for reflective self-evaluation, since it involves recognizing, identifying with, and reinforcing those aspects of my overall make-up that allow me to express successfully a coherent way of being in the world. Kierkegaard argues that taking immortality seriously is one way to achieve the right kind of reflective stance on one’s own character or personality. Thus, Kierkegaard argues that immortality as a theoretical posit can contribute to one’s effort to own or assume responsibility for being the person one is. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom and many published histories of “Green Chemistry” describe its start as being a result of governmental and/or regulatory actions at the US Environmental Protection Agency during the early 1990’s. But there were many Real World industrial examples of environmentally friendly commercial processes in the oil and commodity chemicals industries for decades prior to the 1990s. Some early examples of commercial “Green Chemistry” are briefly described in this article. The Boots/Hoechst Celanese Ibuprofen process was one of the earliest multiple-award-winning (...) examples of industrial “Green Chemistry” in the fine chemical/pharmaceutical industry. The author, who conceived the BHC Ibuprofen synthetic strategy in 1984, reveals and documents that the BHC Ibuprofen process was not primarily a result of governmental or regulatory mandates, or environmentalist or political motivations. The BHC ibuprofen process, and probably many other early industrial “green” inventions, evolved from, and their development and commercialization motivated and guided by, a long prior industrial culture of both scientific and technical evolution. The invention and commercialization of these early industrial commercialized processes, and the BHC Ibuprofen process were also guided by both competitive and economic market needs, personal human motivations, and a low waste culture of “Quality” and “Continuous Improvement” that the commodity chemical industry internally promoted in the 1980’s. The author comments on some perceptions of the status of Green Chemistry now, and directions it should consider going in the future. The author recommends that young Green Chemists and/or Green Engineers reconsider “Quality” approaches in order to genuinely lead Society toward a Greener future. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is now in its seventh year. The goals of this National Center for Biomedical Computing are to: create and maintain a repository of biomedical ontologies and terminologies; build tools and web services to enable the use of ontologies and terminologies in clinical and translational research; educate their trainees and the scientific community broadly about biomedical ontology and ontology-based technology and best practices; and collaborate with a variety of groups who develop and use ontologies and (...) terminologies in biomedicine. The centerpiece of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a web-based resource known as BioPortal. BioPortal makes available for research in computationally useful forms more than 270 of the world's biomedical ontologies and terminologies, and supports a wide range of web services that enable investigators to use the ontologies to annotate and retrieve data, to generate value sets and special-purpose lexicons, and to perform advanced analytics on a wide range of biomedical data. (shrink)

In De Anima II.6, Aristotle divides the objects of perception into three kinds: “special perceptibles" (idia aisthêta) such as colours, sounds and flavours, which can be perceived in their own right by only one sense; “common perceptibles" (koina aisthêta) such as shapes, sizes and movements, which can be perceived in their own right by multiple senses; and “incidental perceptibles,” such as the son of Diares, which can be perceived only “incidentally” (kata sumbebêkos). In this paper, I examine this division of (...) perceptibles and consider what it amounts to. First, I argue that Aristotle’s distinction between perceiving something in its own right (kath' hauto) and perceiving it incidentally marks a causal distinction: what is perceived in its own right causes perception as such, whereas what is perceived incidentally coincides with what is perceived in its own right. Second, I argue that for Aristotle special perceptibles, unlike common perceptibles, belong to homogeneous bodies on account of their chemical composition. Finally, I explain the primacy Aristotle assigns to special perceptibles and his claim that perception of them alone is free from error. I conclude with some brief remarks on Aristotle and the primary/secondary quality distinction. (shrink)