This paper presents a general computational treatment of how mammals are able to deal with visual objects and environments. The model tries to cover the entire range from behavior and phenomenological experience to detailed neural encodings in crude but computationally plausible reductive steps. The problems addressed include perceptual constancies, eye movements and the stable visual world, object descriptions, perceptual generalizations, and the representation of extrapersonal space.The entire development is based on an action-oriented notion of perception. The observer is assumed to (...) be continuously sampling the ambient light for information of current value. The central problem of vision is taken to be categorizing and locating objects in the environment. The critical step in this process is the linking of visual information to symbolic object descriptions; this is calledindexing, from the analogy of identifying a book from index terms. The system must also identifysituationsand use this knowledge to guide movement and other actions in the environment. The treatment focuses on the different representations of information used in the visual system.The four representational frames capture information in the following forms: retinotopic, head-based, symbolic, and allocentric. The functional roles of the four frames, the communication among them, and their suggested neurophysiological realization constitute the core of the paper. The model is perforce crude, but appears to be consistent with all relevant findings. (shrink)

A theory that treats language not as an abstract symbol system but as a function of our brains and experience, integrating recent findings from biology, ...

He draws on recent philosophy, but assumes no knowledge of the texts or terminology. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Jerome A. Popp examines the role of Dewey-based pragmatism in the past, present, and future of philosophy of education.

Although its roots go back at least to Spinoza, religious naturalism is once again becoming a self–conscious option in religious thinking. This article seeks to (1) provide a generic notion of religious naturalism, (2) sketch my own “minimalist” variety of religious naturalism, and (3) view the science–religion dialogue from both of these perspectives. This last will include reflection on the nature of scientific practices, the contributions of religious traditions to moral reflection, and Ursula Goodenough's “religiopoiesis.”.

_Examines John Dewey’s ideas in the context of evolutionary theory._.

First paper introducing probabilisitic decision theory methods to AI problem solving.

Volume 26/27 begins with publication of _The Annual's_ first prize essay, Samuel Abrams's "How Child and Adult Analysis Inform and Misinform One Another." This is followed by a series of papers originally prepared for a symposium honoring John E. Gedo. These papers span the clinical topics of obsessiveness, sublimation, dreams and self-analysis, and analyzability, and also delve into applied psychoanalysis and art history, with two studies of Vincent van Gogh and another of Alberto Giacometti. These papers not only convey the (...) impressive range of Gedo's own interests, but embody the high scholarly and clinical standards that Gedo has long held, both for himself and for the field in general. Section III offers original contributions to clinical analysis in the form of the consideration of the role of affective engagement in the analyst's "usability"; thoughtful assessment of the perils of parental projection in child analytic work; and comparison of a failed and successful supervision in the same psychoanalytic case. Section IV examines psychoanalysis and the arts, with two further studies of van Gogh, an analytic reading of Nabokov's _Lolita_, and more general examinations of psychoanalysis in relation to dramatic art and film analysis. The volume closes with two provocative scholarly essays bearing on the roots of psychoanalysis: the correspondence between Mabel Dodge and her analysts Smith Ely Jelliffe and A. A. Brill as a vehicle for reviewing the issue of extra- and postanalytic contact between analyst and patient; and an examination of Freud, Lacan, and the uneasy relationships among literature, psychoanalysis, and the female subject. Volume 26/27 offers readers a rich harvest of contemporary insights about psychoanalysis, including its history and evolution, its continuing clinical refinement, and its scholarly applications outside the consulting room. (shrink)

_Psychoanalysis and Women_, Volume 32 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis_, is a stunning reprise on theoretical, developmental, and clinical issues that have engaged analysts from Freud on. It begins with clinical contributions by Joyce McDougall and Lynne Layton, two theorists at the forefront of clinical work with women; Jessica Benjamin, Julia Kristeva, and Ethel Spector Person, from their respective vantage points, all engage the issue of passivity, which Freud tended to equate with femininity. Employing a self-psychological framework, Christine Kieffer returns (...) to the Oedipus complex and sheds new light on the typically Pyrrhic oedipal victory of little girls. Section III broadens the historical context of contemporary theorizing about women by offering the personal reminiscences of Nancy Chodorow, Carol Gilligan, Brenda Solomon, and Malkah Notman. A final section, dedicated to "women who shared psychoanalysis," features historical essays on Ida Bauer, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Edith Jacobson, and Therese Benedek, along with Linda Hopkins's revealing interview of Marion Milner. Of special note is Marian Tolpin's examination of three women - Bauer, Helene Deutch, and Anna Freud - who helped shape Freud's notion of the "femail castration complex," and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's exploration of how two women - Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham - developed parent-infant observation. _Psychoanalysis and Women_ is an extraordinary chronicle of the distance traveled since Freud characterized women's sexual life as "the dark continent." The contributors vitalize a half century of theory with the lessons of biography, and they broaden clinical sensibilities by drawing on recent developmental, gender-related, and socio-psychological research. In doing so, they attest to the ongoing reconfiguration of Freud's dark continent and show the psychoanalytic psychology of women to be very much a revolution in progress. (shrink)

Because most chemical reactions, by definition, cannot avoid breaking of bonds, weakly bonded species exist fleetingly in almost every chemical change. Historically, chemical quantum mechanics was aimed at explaining the nature of strong bonds. The theory involved a number of approximations to the full solution of the Schrödinger equation. The study of non‐Kekulé molecules provides an opportunity to test whether modern quantum chemical computations are competent to deal with the nature of molecules with very weak bonds. †To contact the author, (...) please write to: Department of Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT: 06520‐8107; e‐mail: jerome[email protected]. (shrink)

Seldom have I read a book so scholarly and yet so delightful. It takes us to view major concepts of both God and the good life of philosophical and religious writers of the world from the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle to philosophers of India and China. Besides the usual figures, there are studies of Augustine, Maimonides, al-Farabi, and al-Ghazali. As a bonus, Lobel also touches on recent figures such as Iris Murdoch, Alfred North Whitehead, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor. While (...) I am not competent to judge the accuracy of the author’s treatment of Maimonides, the Muslims, and Murdoch, I found the rest of her analyses to be accurate. She has previously... (shrink)

Originally developed by Alcoholics Anonymous, the Twelve Step program now provides life direction for the millions of people worldwide who are recovering from addiction and undergoing profound personal transformation. Yet thus far it has received surprisingly little attention from philosophers, despite the fact that, like philosophy, the program addresses all-important questions regarding how we ought to live. In Sobering Wisdom, Jerome A. Miller and Nicholas Plants offer a unique approach to the Twelve Step program by exploring its spirituality from (...) a philosophical point of view. Drawing on a variety of thinkers from Aristotle to William James and from Nietzsche to Foucault, as well as a diverse range of philosophical perspectives including naturalism, Buddhism, existentialism, Confucianism, pragmatism, and phenomenology, the contributors to this volume address such questions as the relation of personal responsibility to an acknowledgment of powerlessness, the existence of a "higher power," and the role of virtue in recovery. Ranging in tone from deeply scholarly to intensely personal, their essays are written in an accessible way for a broad audience that includes not only philosophers, theologians, and psychologists but also spiritual directors, health professionals, and addiction counselors. Perhaps most important, the book is also conceived for those involved in Twelve Step programs whose lives are being transformed by the experience. (shrink)

Abstract The views of eleven writers who develop a naturalized spirituality, from Baruch Spinoza and George Santayana to Sam Harris, André Comte-Sponville, Ursula Goodenough, and Sharon Welch and others are presented. Then the writer's own theory is developed. This is a pluralistic notion of sacredness, an adjective referring to unmanipulable events of overriding importance. The difficulties in using traditional religious words, such as God and spiritual are addressed.

This article opens with two generic definitions of religious naturalism in general: one by Jerome Stone and one by Rem Edwards used by Charley Hardwick. Two boundary issues, humanism and process theology, are discussed. A brief sketch of my own “minimalist” and pluralist version of religious naturalism follows. Finally, several issues that are, or should be, faced by religious naturalists are explored.

What is it that turns a new observation into a true scientific discovery? And who may claim the credit? Theoreticians of science, the foremost thinkers of their times among them, have tried to answer these fundamental questions about the nature of scientific progress and discovery. With clear insight and the chemical as well as philosophical wisdom gained from over fifty years as a practising chemist, Jerome Berson puts their theories to the test. The development of chemistry into a "modern" (...) science during the last two centuries provides him with ample cases to illustrate the way scientific progress really happens. Kekul?'s struggle to arrive at a structure for benzene, the paradigm change that was necessary to accept the reality of molecular rearrangements, and other episodes are retold here from the philosopher's as well as from the practitioner's perspective, shedding light on the way scientists think and act. Berson's account of the rather unphilosophical way in which scientific discoveries are made includes the realization that even a false hypothesis, such as Woodward's ideas about the biosynthesis of strychnine, may help rather than hinder scientific progress. Scientists of all ages, as well as many non-scientists, will find this a highly readable and unusual book. (shrink)

Recruiting nurses from other countries is a long-standing practice. In recent years many countries in the developed world have more frequently recruited nurses from the developing world, causing an imbalance in the health services in often already impoverished countries. Despite guidelines and promises by developed countries that the practice should cease, it has largely failed to do so. A consortium of authors from countries that have experienced significant nurse poaching consider the ethical aspects behind this continuing practice.

Is a Christian naturalism possible? It sounds like a contradiction in terms. However, depending on the meaning of the terms, it is not only possible but highly desirable. The purpose of this article is to sketch the possibility of a Christian naturalism, drawing on a number of twentieth- and twenty-first-century theologians. Naturalism is a contrast term, like “left” or “up,” which gets its meaning partly from opposition to another term, in this case “supernaturalism” or sometimes “supranaturalism.” It is a set (...) of beliefs which focuses on this world. (Of course, there is no other world, according to naturalism, but since Christians and others have often spoken of God, soul, and/or heaven as distinct from .. (shrink)

Advances in behavioral and brain sciences have engendered wide ranging efforts to help understand consciousness. The target article suggests that abstract computational models are ill-advised. This commentary broadens the discussion to include mysteries of subjective experience that are inconsistent with current neuroscience. It also discusses progress being made through demystifying specific cases and pursuing evolutionary considerations.

This closely reasoned philosophical study develops two metaethical positions: a pragmatist view of truth in ethics and a pragmatist view of principles in moral inquiry. To reach these notions Heney gives a close reading of Peirce, James, Dewey, and C. I. Lewis. In the process she engages with current debates in ethical theory.Heney makes a strong case for the importance of metaethics, the inquiry into the meaning of and justification for ethical terms and propositions. She focuses on the primacy of (...) practice, which implies consideration of how groups and individuals deal with moral discourse, moral disagreement, and value-laden experience.I will first elucidate her constructive position in... (shrink)

Religious naturalism encompasses thinkers from Baruch Spinoza, George Santayana, John Dewey, Henry Nelson Wieman, and Ralph Burhoe to recent writers. I offer a generic definition of religious naturalism and then outline my own version, the “minimalist vision of transcendence.” Many standard issues in the science‐and‐religion dialogue are seen to fade in significance for religious naturalism. I make suggestions for our understanding of science, including the importance of transcognitive abilities, the need for a revised notion of rationality as an alternative to (...) extreme versions of postmodernism, the value of rational dissensus, and the education of appreciation. Finally, I suggest ways to interpret the religious traditions of the world by religious naturalism. (shrink)

This is a set of fourteen technical articles by leading American philosophers from a conference at the Center for Inquiry/Transnational (an institutional home of secular humanism) in 2007. They are about the future direction that philosophy in a naturalistic vein should take.In their preface the editors state: "Naturalism seeks to apply the methods of the empirical sciences to explain natural events without reference to supernatural causes; and it derives ethical values from human experience, not theological grounds" (7). This definition of (...) naturalism hides a rift in the conception of naturalism. Some writers, following Quine, think that the method of philosophy should be that of the empirical sciences. Others .. (shrink)

In 1958 William L. Langer, in a well-known presidential address to the American Historical Association, declared the informed use of psychoanalytic depth psychology as "the next assignment" for professional historians. _Psychoanalysis and History_, volume 31 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis_, examines the degree to which Langer's directive has been realized in the intervening 45 years. Section I makes the case for psychobiography in the lives of historical figures and exemplifies this perspective with analytically informed studies of the art of Wassily (...) Kandinsky; the films of Stanley Kubrick; and the anti-Semitism of Adolf Hitler. Section II reviews Freud's own psychohistorical contributions and then considers the relevance to historical inquiry of the more recent perspectives of Winnicott, Kernberg, and Kohut. Section III explores an intriguing tributary of psychobiographical inquiry: the impact of the biographer's own subjectivity on his or her work. Section IV turns to a topic of perennial interest: the psychobiographical study of American presidents. Section V turns to the special challenges of applying psychoanalysis to topics of religious history and includes topical studies of religious figures as disparate as the 15th century Asian Drukpa Kunley and Osama bin Laden. Section VI focuses on the recent extension of psychohistorical inquiry to groups of people and to cultural phenomena more generally: an investigation of the youth movement in pre-Nazi Germany; consideration of how societies, no less than individuals, reenact and work through traumas over time; and an outline of the role of analysis in constructing a depth-psychological "social psychology" of use to historians. These papers, no less than those that precede them, are compelling testimony to the claim with which editors James William Anderson and Jerome A. Winer begin the volume, to wit, that "Psychoanalysis would seem to be a resource indispensable to the study of history.". (shrink)

Growth, the central concept in Dewey's ethical naturalism, is typically ignored in commentary on his philosophic analyses. When growth is overlooked, as it is by some of Dewey's most competent reviewers, his treatment of other concepts such as democracy and equality cannot be fully appreciated or understood. Underestimating the pivotal role of growth in Dewey's thinking weakens his account of philosophic naturalism, in which there is current interest in the philosophic literature. It is Dewey's concept of growth and the analyses (...) radiating from it that makes his work significant for the present century. (shrink)

John Dewey’s analysis of the role of emotion in moral reasoning, presented in the later Ethics, led him to conclude that our development of moral reasoning should be less focused on the secondary interest of attention to ourselves or others, and attend to the more complete interests of the welfare and integrity of the social groups in which we participate. In that analysis, Dewey identified the essential role of empathic understanding in moral decisions, referred to by neuroscientists as social intelligence. (...) Dewey’s discussion of the essential role of emotion in these decisions is further supported by research in neuroscience which has established that general intelligence is located in an area of the brain distinct from the area that supports social intelligence, our capacity for empathic experience. These findings suggest that the presence of individuals with developed social intelligence in the groups in which we participate provide increased opportunities for growth. (shrink)

This paper is a rejoinder to a critique by richard hull in a previous issue. hull denied the legitimacy of moving from the thesis that there are certain one-to-one correlations between mental and physical properties to the thesis that the mental and physical are one and the same. i argue that the move can be justified if it is taken not as deductive but as inductive. given the right sort of correlations, it may be fruitful to conceive of the mental (...) as identical with the physical. (shrink)

Examines John Dewey’s ideas in the context of evolutionary theory.