This textbook on vision reflects the integrated computational approach of modern research scientists, combining psychological, computational and neuroscientific perspectives.

The relations among consciousness, brain, behavior, and scientific explanation are explored in the domain of color perception. Current scientific knowledge about color similarity, color composition, dimensional structure, unique colors, and color categories is used to assess Locke.

This book offers an introduction to the way art is perceived, interpreted, and felt and approaches these mindful events from a multidisciplinary perspective.

In this Response, I defend the notion of intrinsic qualities of experience, discuss the distinction between relational experience and relational structure, clarify the difference between narrow and broad interpretations of color experience, argue against externalist approaches to color experience, defend the concept of isomorphism as a limitation in understanding color experiences, examine critiques of the color machine and color room arguments, and counter objections to within-subject experiments based on memory limitations.

This book proposes replacing the philosophical tradition inaugurated by Descartes and Locke which is inherently idealist and, says the author, prone to impoverished notions of rationality and creativity with human ontology. This latter understands human being as nothing but the complex inter-relations between its biological constitution and the natural, social and linguistic worlds in which it is embedded and the emergent properties such as conciousness, subjectivity and selfhood which arise from these. Drawing on the phenomenologies of Merleau Ponty and Heidegger (...) but placing them in this naturalistic context the study shows how knowledge, rationality and creativity arise from within the human relationship to the world. Only on such a basis, it is argued, can the existence of a world independent of human conciousness be sustained along with the rationality of science and coherent theories of the self and truth. (shrink)

Clinical trials for acute conditions such as myocardial infarction and stroke pose challenges related to informed consent due to time limitations, stress, and severe illness. Consent processes shou...

How does the visual system recognize images of a novel object after a single observation despite possible variations in the viewpoint of that object relative to the observer? One possibility is comparing the image with a prototype for invariance over a relevant transformation set. However, invariance over rotations has proven difficult to analyze, because it applies to some objects but not others. We propose that the invariant transformations of an object are learned by incorporating prior expectations with real-world evidence. We (...) test this proposal by developing an ideal learner model for learning invariance that predicts better learning of orientation dependence when prior expectations about orientation are weak. This prediction was supported in two behavioral experiments, where participants learned the orientation dependence of novel images using feedback from solving arithmetic problems. (shrink)

We investigated cultural differences between U.S. and Japanese color preferences and the ecological factors that might influence them. Japanese and U.S. color preferences have both similarities and differences. Complex gender differences were also evident that did not conform to previously reported effects. Palmer and Schloss's weighted affective valence estimate procedure was used to test the Ecological Valence Theory's prediction that within-culture WAVE-preference correlations should be higher than between-culture WAVE-preference correlations. The results supported several, but not all, predictions. In the (...) second experiment, we tested color preferences of Japanese–U.S. multicultural participants who could read and speak both Japanese and English. Multicultural color preferences were intermediate between U.S. and Japanese preferences, consistent with the hypothesis that culturally specific personal experiences during one's lifetime influence color preferences. (shrink)

We investigated how color preferences vary according to season and whether those changes could be explained by the ecological valence theory. To do so, we assessed the same participants’ preferences for the same colors during fall, winter, spring, and summer in the northeastern United States, where there are large seasonal changes in environmental colors. Seasonal differences were most pronounced between fall and the other three seasons. Participants liked fall-associated dark-warm colors—for example, dark-red, dark-orange, dark-yellow, and dark-chartreuse—more during fall than other (...) seasons. The EVT could explain these changes with a modified version of Palmer and Schloss’ weighted affective valence estimate procedure that added an activation term to the WAVE equation. The results indicate that color preferences change according to season, as color-associated objects become more/less activated in the observer. These seasonal changes in color preferences could not be characterized by overall shifts in weights along cone-contrast axes. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page W12-W13.

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

By addressing specific global problems and placing them within an ethical context, "The Environment in Question" provides the reader with both a theoretical and practical understanding of environmental issues. The contributors are internationally known figures drawn from the various disciplines which bear upon these issues, such as geography, psychology, social policy, and philosophy. The contributions range from those tackling individual concrete issues (such as nuclear waste and the threat to the rain forest) to those addressing matters of policy, principle and (...) attitude (such as our obligations to future generations and the nature of technological risk). "The Environment in Question" is designed as a text for students of philosophy, environmental science, environmental education, ecology, and teacher education. It can be used as an inter-disciplinary, self-contained course book or in conjunction with relevant material. In addition, as the essays directly and controversially address current environmental debates in a non-technical manner, it is of great interest both to professionals in those areas and to readers who care about the planet's future. The substantial cross-section of concerns and approaches will enable all readers to develop the necessary level of understanding required to initiate and sustain debate on environmental issues. Contributors: Robert Allsion, David E. Cooper, Barry S. Gower, F. G. T. Holliday, C. A. Hooker, Mary Midgley, Philip Neal, Joy A. Palmer, Robert Prosser, Holmes Rolston III, Mark Sagoff, Vandana Shiva, Stephen Sterling, Rosemary J. Stevenson, Jennifer Trusted. (shrink)

Parapsychologists have never been entirely satisfied with their technical vo- cabulary, and occasionally their discontent leads to attempts at terminological reform.1 Recently, a number of prominent parapsychologists, led by Ed May, have regularly abandoned some of parapsychology’s traditional and central categories in favor of some novel alternatives (see, e.g., May, Utts, and Spot- tiswoode, 1995a, 1995b; May, Spottiswood, Utts, and James, 1995). They rec- ommend replacing the term ª ESPº with ª anomalous cognitionº (or AC) and ª psychokinesis (PK)º with (...) ª anomalous perturbationº (or AP). Advocates of these new terms also propose replacing the term ª psiº or ª psi phenomenaº with ª anomalous mental phenomena.º Superf icially at least, these proposals seem merely to be modest extensions of parapsychology’s increasingly fre- quent use of the term ª anomalousº as a substitute for ª paranormal,º a practice which (although controversial) is not without merit, and which Palmer has vigorously defended (1986, 1987, 1992). But in my view, the proposed new terminology creates more problems than it solves. (shrink)

The Pittsburgh Survey was part of the survey movement. The movement was characterized in three key documents of self-interpretation: the fi rst, an article by Paul U. Kellogg, Shelby Harrison, and George Palmer in the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in 1912; the second, a paper by Kellogg and Neva Deardorff presented to an international social work convention in 1928; and the third, Shelby Harrison’s introductory essay to the catalogue of surveys constructed by Allen Eaton in 1930. (...) Ordinarily, such documents provide the beginning of historical analysis and are critically revised by later historians. However, there has been relatively little written about the surveys and the survey movement since it expired. So these texts give shape to a kind of dim memory of a movement to promote social reform through sociological research, which, for mysterious reasons, disappeared. (shrink)

The making of music has been sufficiently deep and widespread diachronically and geographically to suggest a genetic imperative. C.G. Jung's 'Collective Unconscious' and the accompanying archetypes suggest that music is a psychic necessity because it is part of the brain structure. Therefore, the present view of aesthetics may need drastic revision, particularly on views of music as pleasure, ideas of disinterest, differences between so-called high and low art, cultural identity, cultural conditioning, and art-for-art's sake.All cultures, past and present, show evidence (...) of music making. Music qua music has been a part of human expression for at least some forty-thousand years and it could well be speculated that the making of music accompanied the arrival of the first human beings. As Curt Sachs states, "However far back we tracemankind, we fail to see the springing-up of music. Even the most primitive tribes are musically beyond the first attempts".Why do humans continuahy create music and include it as an integral part of culture? What is music's driving force? Why do cultures endow music with extraordinary powers? Why do human beings, individuahy and as societies, exercise preferences for specific works and genres of music? In probing these questions, I chose one aspect of Jungian psychology, that of the Collective Unconscious with its accompanying archetypes, as the basis upon which to speculate a world aesthetics of music. Once we dispense with the mechanistic and designer idea of human origins, we have only the investigations of the human psyche to mine for data that could explain the myriad forms of artistic activity found the world over. An examination of human beings, I believe, must lead one ultimately to the study of human behavior and motivations, in short, to the psychology of human ethos. This study wih take the following course: first, a discussion of consciousness and the Collective Unconscious, plus a discussion of archetypes; then, a description of musical archetypal substance; and finally, what I beheve is implied to form a world aesthetics of music.By comparison to Jung, Freud gives us little in the way of understanding artistic substance because for him, all artistic subject matter stems purely from the personal experiences of the artist. In comparing Freud and Jung, Stephen Larsen states that "Where Freud was deterministic, Jung was teleological; where Freud was historical, Jung was mythological". Jung drew on a much wider cross-cultural experiential and intellectual base than Freud. His interests in so-cahed primitive peoples led him to Tunis, the Saharan Desert, sub-Saharan Africa, and New Mexico in the United States to visit the Pueblo Indians; visits to India and Ceylon and studies of Chinese culture all contributed to his vast knowledge of human experience. Jung constructed the cohective unconscious as a major part of the psyche with the deepest sense of tradition and myth from around the world. He was criticized because of his interests in alchemy, astrology, divination, telepathy and clairvoyance, yoga, spiritualism, mediums and seances, fortunetelling, flying saucers, religious symbolism, visions, and dreams. But he approached these subjects as a scientist, investigating the human psyche and what these subjects revealed about mental process, particularly what might be learned about the collective unconsciousness. Jung's ideation, in my view, is sufficiently comprehensive to support the probe of a world aesthetics of music. (shrink)

A review of Stephen E. Palmer´s and Arthur P. Shimamura´s (eds.) Aesthetic Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, xii + 408 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-973214-2).

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, (...) if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter? In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships. (shrink)

In this ambitious and highly original study, McCabe presents an intricately structured argument designed to demonstrate Plato’s concern with fundamental issues of rationality and personhood. In doing so, she pursues themes announced in her Plato’s Individuals and in Form and Argument in Late Plato, a collection she co-edited with Christopher Gill. The development of her position via consideration of the philosophical importance of characterization and the dialogue form in the Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus leads her to focus in particular (...) on Plato’s depiction of his predecessors. These include, firstly, the Theaetetus’s Protagoras and Heraclitean flux theorists and the Sophist’s Parmenides and materialist giants, all “mean-minded opponents” whose views threaten the very possibility of rational inquiry. Refutation of them, accordingly, is Plato’s means of establishing certain basic principles of reason. (shrink)

This is a truly remarkable first book, based on a Ph.D. thesis. It brilliantly manages to address both the general reader and the experts, is skillfully written and beautifully illustrated. The fate of Epicureanism during the Renaissance has recently drawn considerable attention and produced a series of important monographs by such established authors as Catherine Wilson, Alison Brown, and Stephen Greenblatt. Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance is such a welcome addition to the existing literature because of its special methodology: (...) Palmer concentrates on the marginalia preserved in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts and early editions of De Rerum Natura, a first complete manuscript of.. (shrink)

This important textbook introduces the six great arguments for the existence of God, as found in a wealth of primary sources from classic and contemporary texts. It requires no specialist knowledge of philosophy, and is ideally suited to students and teachers at school or university level. Sections include: * The Ontological Argument * The Cosmological Argument * The Argument from Design * The Argument from Miracles * The Moral Argument * The Pragmatic Argument. Additional features include: * revision questions * (...) key reading for each chapter and an extensive bibliography * illustrated biographies of key thinkers and their works * marginal notes and summaries of arguments. (shrink)

During a clinical ethics fellow’s first week of independent supervised service, two unhoused patients on the same floor were resisting the medical team’s recommendations to discharge. In the team’s view, both were medically stable and no longer required hospitalization in an acute setting. The medical team suspected malingering for both. The social worker and case manager had employed their usual means of gentle persuasion and eliminating psychosocial barriers to no avail. Rather than call the police, the attending physician, social worker, (...) and case manager decided to call ethics. These cases lead the fledgling fellow to consider the appropriate role for ethicists in difficult discharge cases. The article analyzes each case, evaluates their similarities and differences in the context of suspected malingering, and comments on ethical issues surrounding cases of suspected malingering. Finally, I reflect on the value and importance of developing and maintaining epistemic and professional independence. (shrink)

Michael Palmer provides a detailed account of two of the most important theories of religion in the history of psychology--those of Freud and Jung. The book first analyzes Freud's claim that religion is an obsessional neurosis, a psychological illness fueled by sexual repression. He then considers Jung's rejection of Freud's theory, and his own assertion that it is the absence of religion, not its presence, which leads to neurosis.

Stephen Davies presents a fascinating exploration of the idea that art, and our aesthetic sensibilities more generally, should be understood as an element in human evolution. He asks: Do animals have aesthetics? Do our aesthetic preferences have prehistoric roots? Is art universal? What is the biological role of aesthetic and artistic behaviour?

There is increased recognition of a common suite of global challenges that hamper food system sustainability at the community scale. Food price volatility, shortages of basic commodities, increased global rates of obesity and non-communicable food-related diseases, and land grabbing are among the impediments to socially just, economically robust, ecologically regenerative and politically inclusive food systems. While international political initiatives taken in response to these challenges and the groundswell of local alternatives emerging in response to challenges are well documented, more attention (...) is needed to the analysis of similarities between community approaches to global pressures. While we are not suggesting the application of a template set of good practices, the research reported in this paper point to the benefits of both sharing good practices and enabling communities to adopt good practices that are suited to their place-based capacities. The work also suggests that sharing community-derived good practices can support and reinforce global networks of sustainable community food systems, foster knowledge co-creation and ultimately cement collective action to global pressures. In turn these networks could enhance the sustainability and resilience of community food systems and facilitate wide scale food system transformation. (shrink)

Recent philosophical discussion about the relation between fiction and reality pays little attention to our moral involvement with literature. Frank Palmer's purpose is to investigate how our appreciation of literary works calls upon and develops our capacity for moral understanding. He explores a wide range of philosophical questions about the relation of art to morality, and challenges theories that he regards as incompatible with a humane view of literary art. Palmer considers, in particular, the extent to which the (...) values and moral concepts involved in our understanding of human beings can be said to enter into our understanding of, and response to, fictional characters. The scope of his discussion encompasses literary aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology, and he makes extensive reference to literary examples. (shrink)

Images of nature abound in the practice of international environmental law but their significance in law is unclear. Drawing on visual jurisprudence, and interpretative methods for visual art, this book analyses photographs for their representations of nature's aesthetic value in treaty processes that concern world heritage, whales and biodiversity. It argues that visual images should be embraced in the prosaic practice of international law, particularly for treaties that demand judgements of nature's aesthetic value. This environmental value is in practice conflated (...) with natural beauty, ethical and cultural values, and displaced by economic and scientific values. Interpretations of visual images can serve instead to critique and conceive sensory, imaginative and emotional appreciations of nature from different cultural perspectives as proposed by philosophers of environmental aesthetics. Addressing questions of value and the visual, this landmark book shows how images can be engaged by nations to better protect the environment under international law. (shrink)

What makes a visually appealing landscape? How can the design and use of a landscape be harmonised? In this significantly revised and updated third edition of Simon Bell's seminal text, he further explores the answers to these questions by interrogating a range of design principles, applications and ideas. Written for students, instructors and professionals, the book unveils a visual design vocabulary for anyone involved with landscape aesthetics including landscape architects, architects, planners, urban designers, landscape managers, foresters, geographers and ecologists. Structured (...) around key design terms, which are explained and illustrated using an extensive range of examples from around the world, including North America, Europe and Asia, this book enables you to describe, debate and design the visual landscape. It starts with basic elements, before moving onto variable design components, and then the ways these elements are organized into compositions, in order to demonstrate how landscapes are created and how meanings and patterns are perceived within them. This new full colour edition contains over 240 images; an updated introduction; examples from China, Vietnam, and central Asia; a chapter on how to read and understand visual design elements in the landscape; a teaching model for instructors; and expanded appendix materials including a glossary, references and further reading. (shrink)

This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others.

In Return to Reason, Stephen Toulmin argues that the potential for reason to improve our lives has been hampered by a serious imbalance in our pursuit of ...