One of the fundamental problems in the philosophy of psychology is to determine the relation between personal and subpersonal explanations of human behavior. The problem of determining the relation between the personal and subpersonal levels is called the “interface problem”. This paper has two goals. The first is to introduce the domestic reader to the interface problem from the perspective of the philosophy of psychology. The second goal is to show that insufficient focus on the interface problem and its potential (...) solutions can lead to uncritical and fallacious reasoning that can have significant consequences for particular debates in philosophy of medicine and philosophy of law. (shrink)

In the light of our recently performed experiments, revealing the anisotropy of light velocity in any frame moving with respect to absolute space, we show that the Lorentz transformation, where the relativity of light velocity is given implicitly through the relativity of the time coordinates, must be treated from an absolute point of view if one seeks to preserve its adequacy to physical reality. Then we propose a new transformation (which is to be considered as a legitimate companion of the (...) Lorentz transformation) wherein the relativity of light velocity is given explicitly and the time coordinates are absolute. (shrink)

Supporters of eliminative connectionism have argued for a pattern association-based explanation of language learning and language processing. They deny that explicit rules and symbolic representations play any role in language processing and cognition in general. Their argument is based to a large extent on two artificial neural network (ANN) models that are claimed to be able to learn the past tenses of English verbs (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986, Parallel distributed processing, Vol. 2, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; MacWhinney & Leinbach, 1991, (...) Cognition, 40, 121-157). In this article we critically review Rumelhart and McClelland's as well as MacWhinney and Leinbach's ANN models and conclude that they do not succeed in the assigned task of learning the past tenses of English verbs. In order to answer their challenge to the symbolic processing approach, we present our symbolic pattern associator (SPA)-a general-purpose pattern associator that can learn to associate arbitrary discrete patterns. We carried out several experiments with the SPA using the same set of verbs that was used in MacWhinney and Leinbach's simulation with more realistic training and testing procedures. The SPA outperformed the connectionist models by a wide margin in the accuracy of learning, and successful inductive generalizations to unseen verbs. Our SPA has very natural and psychologically realistic explanations to many psychological effects such as U-shaped learning curve, and is much closer to human subjects in predicting past tense of the pseudo-verbs. In contrast to ANNs, whose internal representations are entirely opaque, the SPA can represent the acquired knowledge in the form of production rules that allow for further higher-level processing and integration, resulting in linguistically realistic associative templates for irregular verbs and production rules for regular verbs. In the light of these findings, we conclude that eliminative connectionists' vision of cognition as simple pattern association and pattern recognition without symbolic representation is inadequate. Pattern association as such does not imply rule-less or cue-based models of language acquisition or of human learning in general. (shrink)

How to reconcile the theory of evolution with existing religious beliefs has occupied minds since Darwin's time. The majority of the discourse on the subject is still focused on the Darwinian version of evolutionary theory, or at best, the mid-twentieth century version of the Modern Synthesis. However, evolutionary thought has moved forward since then with the insights provided by the advent of comparative genomics in recent decades having a particularly significant impact. A theology that successfully incorporates evolutionary biology needs to (...) take such developments into account, because range of truly viable options among the many versions of theistic evolution that have been proposed in the past may narrow down when this is done. Here I present these previously underappreciated strains of contemporary evolutionary thought and discuss their potential theological impact. (shrink)

We consider the light Doppler effect within the framework of our absolute spacetime theory, which proceeds from the aether conception for light propagation. We show that for the cases of “observer at rest, source moving” and “source at rest, observer moving” the formulas for the received frequency are the same, but the formulas for the wavelength are different. This is in a drastic contradiction with the formulas given by contemporary physics, which proceeds from the principle of relativity. Our recently performed (...) “coupled-mirrors” experiments show that only our formulas can adequately describe physical reality. The experiment for the measurement of the transverse light Doppler effect proposed by us in another paper is reconsidered and we point out how it can be realized as a compensation experiment. The so-called “rotor” and “rotor-rotor” experiments are analyzed. We show why the rotor experiment carried out with the aim of establishing an aether drift has failed to give any positive result. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article deals with the communicational aspects of Aristotle’s theory of signification as laid out in the initial chapters of the De Interpretatione (Int.).1 We begin by outlining the reception and main interpretations of the chapters under discussion, rather siding with the linguistic strand. We then argue that the first four chapters present an account of verbal communication, in which words signify things via thoughts. We show how Aristotle determines voice as a conventional and hence accidental medium of signification: (...) words as ‘spoken sounds’ are tokens of thoughts, which in turn are signs or natural likenesses of things. We argue that, in this way, linguistic expressions may both signify thoughts and refer to things. This double account of signification also explains the variety of ontological, logical and psychological interpretations of the initial chapters of Int. (shrink)

We consider the historic Harress-Sagnac experiment in the light of our absolute space-time theory, proposing two modifications, and we give an account of its recent practical performance. We show that the effect of the rotating disk experiment is a direct result of the light velocity's direction dependence and we point out that our recently performed coupled-mirrors experiment, with whose help for the first time we have measured the Earth's absolute velocity, can be considered as a logical result of the rotating (...) disk experiment. (shrink)

The article criticises the attempt to establish connectionism as an alternative theory of human cognitive architecture through the introduction of thesymbolic/subsymbolic distinction (Smolensky, 1988). The reasons for the introduction of this distinction are discussed and found to be unconvincing. It is shown that thebrittleness problem has been solved for a large class ofsymbolic learning systems, e.g. the class oftop-down induction of decision-trees (TDIDT) learning systems. Also, the process of articulating expert knowledge in rules seems quite practical for many important domains, (...) including common sense knowledge.The article discusses several experimental comparisons betweenTDIDT systems and artificial neural networks using the error backpropagation algorithm (ANNs usingBP). The properties of one of theTDIDT systemsID3 (Quinlan, 1986a) are examined in detail. It is argued that the differences in performance betweenANNs usingBP andTDIDT systems reflect slightly different inductive biases but are not systematic; these differences do not support the view that symbolic and subsymbolic systems are fundamentally incompatible. It is concluded, that thesymbolic/subsymbolic distinction is spurious. It cannot establish connectionism as an alternative cognitive architecture. (shrink)

We find the relation between the frequencies received by two observers placed at a given parallel with 180° difference in longitude when they observe a distant light (radio) source. This relation depends on the absolute velocity of the Earth; however, because of the occurrence of aberration, the effect cannot be registered in practice.

This article presents counter evidence against Smolensky's theory that human intuitive/nonconscious congnitive processes can only be accurately explained in terms of subsymbolic computations carried out in artificial neural networks. We presentsymboliclearning models of two well‐studied, complicated cognitive tasks involving nonconscious acquisition of information: learning production rules and artificial finite state grammars. Our results demonstrate that intuitive learning does not imply subsymbolic computation, and that the already well‐established, perceived correlation between “conscious” and “symbolic” on the one hand, and between “nonconscious” and (...) “subsymbolic” on the other, does not exist. (shrink)

Quantal penetration through a (stationary) one-dimensional potential barrier is considered as a time evolution of an initially prepared wave packet. The large-time asymptotics of the process is concerned. Locality of the potential imposes certain analytical properties of the interaction amplitudes in the energy representation. The results are presented in terms of development of the phase-space (Wigner's) quasi-distribution. The phase-space evolution kernel is constructed, and it is shown that in the presence of a positive potential no part of the distribution is (...) transported faster than the free particle. For the case of a small initial momentum uncertainty, the deformation of the coordinate density is considered, including a possible advance of its maximum, which would not mean any noncausal signal transport. (shrink)

A review of Porphyre, Sentences. Études d’introduction, texte grec et traduction française, commentaire par l’Unité Propre de Recherche n°76 du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,avecunetraductionanglaise de John Dillon. Travaux édités sous la responsabilité de Luc Brisson. J. Vrin, Paris, 2005.

Aristotle has interpreted research done by empirical methods using metaphysical concepts extensively. According to some authors, his metaphysically intoned philosophy of biology is compatible with the modern theory of evolution and with some of the essential topics of ecological ethics. We will try to show how the interpretation of the substantial whole, under the aspect of the notion of potentiality, is Aristotle’s contribution to the debates of eco-ethical holism. Furthermore, we will show how Hans Jonas also finds the possibility of (...) valuing the individual organic substance in Aristotle’s works, which are not only representatives of the human species. Hans Jonas pleads for a revision of the modern theory of evolution, which, combined with some of Aristotle’s metaphysical elements, could avoid the reductionism to which it was exposed after Descartes. (shrink)

I defend the opinion that Cavalleri and Spinelli, who in the last years abandoned many of the relativity dogmas and embraced many of the absolute conceptions, are still very far from an adequte understanding and interpretation of physical reality.

This study develops and tests an integrated model that explains how Schwartz’s higher order personal values of Openness to Change, Conservation, Self-Transcendence and Self-Enhancement influence the ethical behavior of accountants. The study further explores the influence of ethics training, gender and religiosity on ethical behavior. A survey instrument was administered to 252 accounting students and the findings reveal that some of the higher order personal values are significant in explaining the ethical behavior of accounting students. The findings also reveal that (...) gender and ethical training influence ethical behavior, and that effect of the personal value Self-Transcendence differs depending on participant gender and also religiosity. The implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

A quintessential challenge for any perceptual system is the need to focus on task-relevant information without being blindsided by unexpected, yet important information. The human visual system incorporates several solutions to this challenge, one of which is a reflexive covert attention system that is rapidly responsive to both the physical salience and the task-relevance of new information. This paper presents a model that simulates behavioral and neural correlates of reflexive attention as the product of brief neural attractor states that are (...) formed across the visual hierarchy when attention is engaged. Such attractors emerge from an attentional gradient distributed over a population of topographically organized neurons and serve to focus processing at one or more locations in the visual field, while inhibiting the processing of lower priority information. The model moves towards a resolution of key debates about the nature of reflexive attention, such as whether it is parallel or serial, and whether suppression effects are distributed in a spatial surround, or selectively at the location of distractors. Most importantly, the model develops a framework for understanding the neural mechanisms of visual attention as a spatiotopic decision process within a hierarchy and links them to observable correlates such as accuracy, reaction time, and the N2pc and PD components of the EEG. This last contribution is the most crucial for repairing the disconnect that exists between our understanding of behavioral and neural correlates of attention. (shrink)

It is shown that the equation deduced by Marinov for the gravitational frequency shift does not follow from his assumptions. The correct equation is deduced. It is pointed out that the result of Marinov's absolute spacetime theory concerning the gravitational frequency shift is contained in general relativity as an approximate description. The need for experiments testing the validity of Marinov's measurements is emphasized.

Marinov's experiment was analyzed in terms of his own assumptions, and the resultant critique has been welcomed by him as fair and constructive.

Marinov''s critique I argue, is vitiated by its failure to recognize the distinctive role of superposition within the distributed connectionist paradigm. The use of so-called subsymbolic distributed encodings alone is not, I agree, enough to justify treating distributed connectionism as a distinctive approach. It has always been clear that microfeatural decomposition is both possible and actual within the confines of recognizably classical approaches. When such approaches also involve statistically-driven learning algorithms — as in the case of ID3 — the fundamental (...) differences become even harder to spot. To see them, it is necessary to consider not just the nature of an acquired input-output function but the nature of the representational scheme underlying it. Differences between such schemes make themselves best felt outside the domain of immediate problem solving. It is in the more extended contexts of performance DURING learning and cognitive change as a result of SUBSEQUENT training on new tasks (or simultaneous training on several tasks) that the effects of superpositional storage techniques come to the fore. I conclude that subsymbols, distribution and statistically driven learning alone are indeed not of the essence. But connectionism is not just about subsymbols and distribution. It is about the generation of whole subsymbol SYSTEMS in which multiple distributed representations are created and superposed. (shrink)

The essential second half of Marinov's experiment, neglected by Prokhovnik, is discussed.

It is suggested that the existence of a preferred cosmological reference frame has a number of generally unrecognized implications which are by no means inconsistent with the assumptions and consequences of special relativity. Indeed, the assumption that there exists a cosmological fundamental reference frame for light propagation leads to an intelligible interpretation of relativistic effects and of the null observations of Michelson-Morley-type experiments. Hence all such experiments are impotent for the detection of any such fundamental frame, and it is shown (...) that this applies also to the ingenious coupled-mirrors experiment proposed by S. Marinov. Only astronomical observation allied to cosmological theory can reveal the existence of this frame. (shrink)

From Mendeleev’s time on, the Periodic Table has been an attempt to exhaust all the chemical possibilities of the elements and their interactions, whether these elements are known as actual or are not known yet as such. These latter elements are called “eka-elements” and there are still some of them in the current state of the Table. There is no guarantee that they will be eventually discovered, synthesized, or isolated as actual. As long as the actual existence of eka-elements is (...) predicted, they cannot be considered as actual but only as purely possible. Given that eka-elements are chemical pure possibilities, a possibilist approach, entitled “panenmentalism,” can gain support as well as an important implication. (shrink)

Nondualism, ontology, and anthropology -- Anthropology and the synthetic a priori: Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty -- Blind faith and the binding of Isaac: the Akedah -- Excursus I: sacrifice as human existence -- Counter-sacrifice and instrumental reason: the Holocaust -- Bourdieu's anti-dualism and "generalized materialism" -- Habermas's anti-dualism and "communicative rationality" -- Technological efficacy, mythic rationality, and non-contradiction -- Epistemic efficacy, mythic rationality, and non-contradiction -- Contradiction and choice among the Dinka and in Genesis -- Contradiction in Azande oracular practice (...) and in psychotherapeutic interaction -- Epistemic and ethical gain -- Transcending dualism and amplifying choice -- Excursus II: what good, ethics? -- Anthropology and the generative primacy of moral order -- Conclusion: Emancipatory selfhood and value-rationality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kings and Gods as Ecological Agents:From Reciprocity to Unilateralism in the Management of Natural ResourcesSimon Simonse (bio)1. IntroductionThe questions this article addresses are as follows: do non-Western societies have a qualitatively better, more balanced relationship with nature than modern Western societies? Can the difference between the two be described in terms of an opposition between a reciprocal and an exploitative relationship? What difference does the Judeo-Christian tradition make in (...) shaping the modern relationship with nature?To answer these questions I will give brief descriptions of the way in which three cultural traditions have structured the relationship between man and nature: societies that are ruled by sacred kings, societies where power over nature is attributed to divinities, and the Old Testament tradition. As cases of sacred kinship, I present ethnographic material taken from my anthropological fieldwork among the Lulubo, Lokoya, and Lotuho peoples from the East Bank of the Nile in Southern Sudan. I will use the term "Eastern Nilotic" as shorthand for this complex of peoples. For the societies where divinities play the central role, I take the Western Nilotic Dinka, Nuer, and Atuot living in the flood plains of the Nile north of the kingship societies.In comparing these three traditions my point of departure is René Girard's analysis of culture as a mechanism to resolve conflict by directing the aggression of the members of society onto a victim and so achieving a new consensus. We shall see that in the kingship societies what we call natural phenomena play an integral part in culturally staging the scapegoat mechanism. They are the stage of human rivalries and their resolution. Among the polytheistic Western Nilotes they are the instrument through which the gods make their power felt and demand attention from humans. In the Old Testament, natural phenomena remain the domain of God's power. Humans should not try to interfere. Their mission is to combat human evil as defined in Mosaic law. [End Page 31]2. Kings as Ecological AgentsThe survival of the communities of the Lokoya and Lulubo on the East Bank of the Nile who traditionally live in well-fortified village-polities, counting in the precolonial period between 1500 and 2500 inhabitants, is dependent on forces that are unpredictable (Simonse 1992). As agriculturists they are dependent on regular rains. However, the rains in their area are erratic and localized. As a result there is always a risk that the harvest may fail. The soil is of varying quality, giving varying yields in different places. The birth rate is another major concern. It determines the security of the community in its relationship to neighboring, frequently hostile, communities. There is the concern for epidemics, crop-eating insects and birds, and root-eating worms. Violent winds may destroy the crop, and lions and leopards may kill humans and cattle. A concern of a different order is the extent of the effectiveness of weapons, spears, and bows and arrows, in assuring security.When adversity affects the community, the first question asked by those affected is that regarding its cause. Frequently the cause is a breach of the social rules: an act of violence and a failure to perform or properly perform a ritual of purification necessitated by the violence. It may also be unconscious resentment on the part of a person or group that feels excluded from benefits enjoyed by others. It may be the cry of a neglected relative. It may be incest. It may be an attack by outsiders.Among the Lulubo and Lokoya, responsibility for the various aspects of the natural environment that can be critical for community survival is allocated to the different clans. In the case of a crisis (drought, infertility) the clan associated with the problem is the target of investigations. The main investigation strategy is to check, one by one, the quarrels in which members of that clan have been involved. When a conflict has been identified, a solution is suggested by way of reconciliation or restitution. Of particular interest are attempts to provoke the responsible clan official. If a settlement of the dispute fails to bring the required result, there will be more rounds of investigation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Day I Touched JesusJeffery L. DealShe deserved better. They all do.I met her early on a morning that promised to be hot and wet, as Sudan tended to be at that time of year. Hot all the time. Hot and wet in the summers. I touched her for the briefest of moments, felt her leg move against my hand and caught a fleeting glimpse of a foot that (...) was barely the size of my fingertip. I was there because a missionary asked me to come, told me stories of conditions in Sudan and convinced me that I could save lives. He was right.Her twin brother was born eight hours earlier, sometime around midnight. The birth attendants managed the delivery as well as anyone could in the same situation. The last time I had attempted to manage such a problem delivery was almost twenty years earlier when I had been a Navy Lieutenant fresh out of my surgical internship on temporary assignment to a Marine Corps battle group in the Philippines. On that deployment, a corpsman brought me to a grass hut where a woman who looked barely more than a child herself labored against a breach delivery. I spent the day examining her while her family brought me things to eat that I do not believe should be eaten. After six hours of no progress, I radioed for a helicopter to take her to Clark Air Force base where they had operating rooms and obstetricians. In South Sudan, we had no such resources.My oldest daughter, a premed student at the time who had worked with me in Sudan on other occasions, sat in the corner with her classmates and watched as I put my hand inside the mother. She was of the Dinka ethnic group and was a large, robust woman who sweated profusely and occasionally caught her breath, but otherwise seemed unmoved by her contractions. Fluids gushed over my gloved hand and the students gasped. I felt the baby's leg retract slightly as if she resented my intrusion.I could not get past the baby's hip—she was wedged tightly in the uterus. I had some medicines that were used to hasten delivery and, not really knowing if it was the right thing to do, I gave the mother some through her IV. Still I could not dislodge the child. I told the students and birth attendants that we would give her one hour while I rounded on the other patients in our remote and poorly equipped clinic. If she did not deliver by that time we would take her to a facility run by a Catholic relief agency several hours drive from us—a drive that due to war, weather, or mechanical problems we could not always complete.I saw the rest of the patients in a hurry while browsing through all of the medical texts and the few books we kept at the clinic. This child's only hope of surviving was for her mother to have a cesarean section, and as quickly as possible. After determining that none of our other patients were in imminent danger, we loaded the mother, the first-born twin, and the grandmother into our vehicle for the long ride. One of the medical students, who at the time of this writing was completing her residency in obstetrics and gynecology, asked me if I shouldn't pray for the woman while we drove. I felt guilty for not praying out loud without being prompted, so I reached back and placed my hand on the mother's abdomen and prayed while I drove. I felt a slight movement. It could have been the rough road or the mother shifting, but I believe to this [End Page 81] day that I felt the child move. I would not feel her again. I drove as fast as the rough, bomb-cratered dirt road allowed.Mother and unborn child were doing well when we finally arrived three hours later. I knew the facility and many of the workers so I drove past the guard and directly to the obstetrics ward. Two nurses rushed out to meet us with... (shrink)

Au 1er janvier 2014 le personnel scientifique était composé de Alexandre Farnoux, directeur, de Julien Fournier, directeur des études antiques et byzantines et de Maria Couroucli directeur des études modernes et contemporaines. Étaient membres à cette date : 4e année : Guillaume Biard, Cécile Oberweiler, Tchavdar Marinov ;3e année : Sylvain Perrot ;2e année : Antoine Chabrol, Maria Xénaki et Basma Zerouali ;1re année : Anna Cannavò, Yannis Kalliontzis, Ludovic Thély.Étaient membres étrangers...

One of the most difficult contemporary issues facing the bioethics of clinical research is balancing the maintaining of a universality of ethics standards with a sensitivity to cultural issues and differences. The concept of “vulnerability” for research subjects is especially apt for investigating the ethical and cultural issues surrounding the conduct of genetic research among new immigrants to the United States, using the Sudanese Nuer and Dinka tribes, recently settled in the Midwest, as an example. Issues of cultural vulnerability (...) arise for some immigrants, related to relationship to the earth and to kinship issues, that threaten the narrative richness of a subject's life as well as the way she situates herself in the world. (shrink)

The magnetic dipole moment of the Kerr–Newman metric, defined by mass \, electrical charge \ and angular momentum \, is \, corresponding, for all values of \, to a gyromagnetic ratio \, which is also the value of the intrinsic gyromagnetic ratio of the electron, as first noted by Carter. Here, we argue that this result can be understood in terms of the particle-wave complementarity principle. For \ can only be defined at asymptotic spatial infinity, where the metric appears to (...) describe a spinning point particle, and therefore setting \, \, we necessarily have a model of the electron. From the Dirac equation we can construct a covariantly conserved four-current \ that is the source of the electromagnetic field generated by the charge \. The result \ then follows from the minimal gauge principle \ which is implicit in the formulation of the spinorial wave equation, and which can also be justified from the line action for a spin-1/2 point particle interacting with an external electromagnetic field, due to Berezin and Marinov. By contrast, analysis of the gyrogravito-magnetic effect, investigated classically by Wald and quantum mechanically by Adler et al., yields the result \ in all non-relativistic cases, which can be explained from the principle of equivalence. The results are in accord with the correspondence principle. (shrink)

Voigt's 1887 explanation of the Michelson-Morley result as a Doppler effect using absolute space-time is examined. It is shown that Doppler effects involve two wave velocities: (1) the phase velocity, which is used to account for the Michelson-Morley null result, and (2) the velocity of energy propagation, which, being fixed relative to absolute space, may be used to explain the results of Roemer, Bradley, Sagnac, Marinov, and the 2.7° K anisotropy.

Uncoupling the mirrors in Marinov's (1) coupled-mirrors experiment allows them to be separated as far apart as desired, and orders of magnitude improvement in accuracy can be obtained for the determination of the absolute velocity of the closed laboratory.

The impetus for this volume developed from the 1982 University of Western Ontario Learnability Workshop, which was organized by the editors and sponsored by that University's Department of Philosophy and the Centre for Cognitive Science. The volume e~plores the import of learnability theory for contemporary linguistic theory, focusing on foundational learning-theoretic issues associated with the parametrized Government-Binding framework. Written by prominent re searchers in the field, all but two of the eight contributions are pre viously unpublished. The editor's introduction provides (...) an overview that interrelates the separate papers and elucidates the foundational issues addressed by the volume. Osherson, Stob, and Weinstein's "Learning Theory and Natural Language" first appeared in Cognition ; Matthews's "The Plausi bility of Rationalism" was published in the Journal of Philosophy. The editors would like to thank the publishers for permission to reprint these papers. Mr. Marin Marinov assisted with the preparation of the indices for the volume. VB ROBERT 1. MATTHEWS INTRODUCTION: LEARNABILITY AND LINGUISTIC THEORY 1. INTRODUCTION Formal learning theory, as the name suggests, studies the learnability of different classes of formal objects under different formal models of learning. The specification of such a model, which specifies a learning environment, a learn ing strategy, and a criterion for successful learning, determines a class of formal objects, namely, the class that can be acquired to the level of the specified success criterion by a learner implementing the specified strategy in the specified enviroment. (shrink)