Blindsight is the term commonly used to describe visually guided behaviour elicited by a stimulus falling within the scotoma (blind area) caused by a lesion of the striate cortex. Such is normally held to be unconscious and to be mediated by subcortical pathways involving the superior colliculus. Blindsight is of considerable theoretical importance since it suggests that destriate man is more like destriate monkey than had been previously believed and also because it supports the classical notion of two visual systems. (...) It is also of potential clinical importance, since it has been claimed recently that systematic practice in blindsight can lead to the recovery of normal visual function in patients with cortical lesions. From a review of the literature it is concluded that all of the phenomena of blindsight can be attributed either to light scatter into unimpaired parts of the visual field or to residual vision resulting from spared striate cortex. The possible contribution f other factors is also considered. It is concluded that blindsight studies have generally failed to control for such nonblindsight interpretations partly because of poor methodology and partly because of difficulties in defining the term. (shrink)

In the problem of Meaning and Error, Epistemology, Logic, Psychology, and Etymology, all find an inevitable point of contact. It is necessary to go back little more than half a century to see something of the changes which have resulted in the present epoch of disintegration.

Reflection Principles are commonly thought to produce only strong axioms of infinity consistent with V = L. It would be desirable to have some notion of strong reflection to remedy this, and we have proposed Global Reflection Principles based on a somewhat Cantorian view of the universe. Such principles justify the kind of cardinals needed for, inter alia , Woodin’s Ω-Logic.

This is an informative dossier on research work published since 2001 and connected with the field of rumors and urban legends. It includes reviews of eight French publications, seven publications in English, including two encyclopedias, two works from Mexico and one each from Italy and Sweden. The reviews are provided by a range of international scholars.

Evolutionary fitness threats and rewards are associated with subjectively unpleasant and pleasant sensations, respectively. Initially, these correlations appear explainable via adaptation by natural selection. But here I analyse the major metaphysical perspectives on consciousness – physicalism, dualism, and panpsychism – and conclude that none help to understand the adaptive-seeming correlations via adaptation. I also argue that a recently proposed explanation, the phenomenal powers view, has major problems that mean it cannot explain the adaptive-seeming correlations via adaptation either. So the mystery (...) – call it the evolutionary paradox of consciousness – remains. Some have used this mystery to argue for non-naturalistic (e.g. theistic) explanations. But I propose a naturalistic, non-adaptive explanation of the adaptive-seeming correlations: namely, ‘sensational associative learning’ during development. In this perspective, pairing of particular sensations with unconditioned stimuli – fitness rewards or threats – cause the sensations themselves to come to be interpreted as good or bad, respectively. Sensations, like colours, that are not reliably paired with either fitness rewards or threats remain largely unvalenced. Sensational associative learning also provides explanations for adaptive-seeming structural aspects of sensations, such as the observation that sounds of different pitch are experienced as ordinal in correspondence to their wavelengths while the same is not true of colours of different hue. The sensational associative learning perspective appears compatible with physicalism, panpsychism, and dualism (though not epiphenomenalism). (shrink)

This note presents an outline of the social and intellectual conditions accounting for the rise of “conspiracy entrepreneurs”, that is these heterodox thinkers who make a living from their denunciations and revelations on the malevolent organisations and characters who really lead the universe. A special attention has been focused on the reports concerning conspiracy entrepreneurs in the media, which describe them as eccentric and thus entertaining. After the presentation of some studies of David Icke's reptilian hypothesis, a question is raised: (...) is it not legitimate to assert that academics studying conspiracy theories are themselves conspiracy entrepreneurs through their role in the spread of the subject of their studies. (shrink)

The interaction between cavity modes and optical transitions leads to new coupled light-matter states in which the energy is periodically exchanged between the matter states and the optical mode. Here we present experimental evidence of optical strong coupling between modes of individual sub-wavelength metamaterial nanocavities and engineered optical transitions in semiconductor heterostructures. We show that this behaviour is generic by extending the results from the mid-infrared to the near-infrared. Using mid-infrared structures, we demonstrate that the light-matter coupling occurs at the (...) single resonator level and with extremely small interaction volumes. We calculate a mode volume of 4.9 × 10 from which we infer that only ~2,400 electrons per resonator participate in this energy exchange process. (shrink)

We show that the Lascar group $\operatorname {Gal}_L$ of a first-order theory T is naturally isomorphic to the fundamental group $\pi _1|)$ of the classifying space of the category of models of T and elementary embeddings. We use this identification to compute the Lascar groups of several example theories via homotopy-theoretic methods, and in fact completely characterize the homotopy type of $|\mathrm {Mod}|$ for these theories T. It turns out that in each of these cases, $|\operatorname {Mod}|$ is aspherical, i.e., (...) its higher homotopy groups vanish. This raises the question of which homotopy types are of the form $|\mathrm {Mod}|$ in general. As a preliminary step towards answering this question, we show that every homotopy type is of the form $|\mathcal {C}|$ where $\mathcal {C}$ is an Abstract Elementary Class with amalgamation for $\kappa $ -small objects, where $\kappa $ may be taken arbitrarily large. This result is improved in another paper. (shrink)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Why do women have more difficulty pursuing research careers than men? Although this topic has been extensively investigated in industrialized countries, prior studies provide little comparative evidence from less-developed areas. Based on a survey of 293 scientists in Ghana, Kenya, and the Indian state of Kerala, this article examines gender differences on a variety of individual, social, and organizational dimensions. The results show small or nonexistent differences between women and men in individual characteristics, professional resources, and the organizational conditions under (...) which research is conducted. The article argues that a combination of educational and research localism increases the likelihood of restricted professional networks for women. Gender inequality in the research systems of the developing world may be based on systemic deficits in the acquisition of social rather than material resources. The most important implication is that educational policy for development should focus on international opportunities for women in the near future. (shrink)

인간의 이성적 의식과 법의 관계를 밝히고 법의 해석 과 판단에 인간의 의식이 어떻게 작용하는가를 고찰 한 저술. 제1부에서는 법의 형이상학적인 측면에서 법의 실체, 그리스의 법, 데카르트의 법, 로크와 법, 칸트와 법, 헤겔과 법, 아담스미스의 법의 경제, 중국의 도덕과 법사상을 다루었다. 제2부에서는 심리학적 분석으로 헌법의 심리학적 해석, 법의 판결절차, 증거법, 형법과 죄, 청소년과 가족법, 조세법, 플라톤의 법, 칸트의 도덕론의 경험적 확인, 헤겔의 자아와 노동법, 법의 4차원에 대해 다뤘다.

Inleidend overzicht van de wijsgerige ethiek.

Let T be the theory of dense cyclically ordered sets with at least two elements. We determine the classifying space of $\mathsf {Mod}(T)$ to be homotopically equivalent to $\mathbb {CP}^\infty $. In particular, $\pi _2(\lvert \mathsf {Mod}(T)\rvert )=\mathbb {Z}$, which answers a question in our previous work. The computation is based on Connes’ cycle category $\Lambda $.

This influential study of Kant in which Strawson seeks to detach the true analytical and critical achievement of Kant's work from the unacceptable metaphysics with which it is entangled. This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information.Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.

Pothos's analysis is difficult to relate to real human mental processes. He tackles four quite different areas of psychology and adduces evidence from a large number of paradigms. Yet despite this very large scope, he employs a single, simplistic descriptive framework. An epistemological analysis, supported by illustrations from real world decision-making, shows that this steers us away from, rather than towards, an understanding of real human cognitive processes.

Rejecting information-processing-based theory permits the merging of a top-down analysis of visual search tasks with a bottom-up analysis of brain structure and function. This reveals the true nature of the functional visual field and its precise role in the conduct of visual search tasks. The merits of such analyses over the traditional methods of the authors are described.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 692, August 2012.

Contrary to the narrative of collapse that attends much of the discussion of the humanities today, recent data suggest that for many programs in the United States, at least, stagnation is the real challenge. Committed to teaching models that support faculty rather than student needs, graduate programs, in particular, are struggling to extend their reach beyond an established constituency of students interested in traditional disciplinary specialization and academic research. By emphasizing the teaching of empathy and communication, which underlie the various (...) humanities disciplines, pursuing inter- and transdisciplinary teaching within and beyond the humanities, and securing administrative support for academic innovation, programs can find and serve a larger graduate student audience. Facing unique financial pressures, smaller colleges may prove more open to such innovation and merit greater attention in the discussion of the future of humanities graduate education. (shrink)