Aging is accompanied by changes in general cognitive functioning which may impact the learning rate of older adults; however, this is often not controlled for in cognitive aging studies. We investigated the contribution of differences in learning rates to age-related differences in landmark knowledge acquired from route learning. In Experiment 1 we used a standard learning procedure in which participants received a fixed amount of exposure to a route. Consistent with previous research, we found age-related deficits in associative cue and (...) landmark sequence knowledge. Experiment 2 controlled for differences in learning rates by using a flexible exposure learning procedure. Specifically, participants were trained to a performance criterion during route learning before being tested on the content of their route knowledge. While older adults took longer to learn the route than younger adults, the age-related differences in associative cue knowledge were abolished. The deficit in landmark sequence knowledge, however, remained. Experiment 3 replicated these results and introduced a test situation in which a deficit in landmark sequence knowledge yielded an increased likelihood of disorientation in older adults. The findings of this study suggest that age-related deficits in landmark associative cue knowledge are attenuated by controlling for learning rates. In contrast, landmark sequence knowledge deficits persist and are best explained by changes in the learning strategy of older adults to acquire task essential associative cue knowledge at the expense of supplementary sequence knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I critically examine the implications of the uncodifiability thesis for principlism as a pluralistic and non-absolute generalist ethical theory. In this regard, I begin with a brief overview of W.D. Ross’s ethical theory and his focus on general but defeasible prima facie principles before turning to 2) the revival of principlism in contemporary bioethics through the influential work of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress; 3) the widespread adoption of specification as a response to the indeterminacy of abstract (...) general principles and the limitations of balancing and deductive approaches; 4) the challenges raised to fully specified principlism by the uncodifiability thesis and 5) finally offer a defense of the uncodifiability thesis against various critiques that have been raised. (shrink)

Kleist viewed anew as a major contributor to the tradition of post-Kantian thought.

At any given time, a subject has a multiplicity of conscious experiences. A subject might simultaneously have visual experiences of a red book and a green tree, auditory experiences of birds singing, bodily sensations of a faint hunger and a sharp pain in the shoulder, the emotional experience of a certain melancholy, while having a stream of conscious thoughts about the nature of reality. These experiences are distinct from each other: a subject could experience the red book without the singing (...) birds, and could experience the singing birds without the red book. But at the same time, the experiences seem to be tied together in a deep way. They seem to be unified, by being aspects of a single encompassing state of consciousness. (shrink)

Contemporary epistemology has been moving away from classical foundationalism—the thesis that our empirical knowledge is grounded in perceptual beliefs we know with certainty. McGrew reexamines classical foundationalism and offers a compelling reconstruction and defense of empirical knowledge grounded in perceptual certainty. He articulates and defends a new version of foundationalism and demonstrates how it meets all the standard criticisms. The book offers substantial rebuttals of the arguments of Kuhn and Rorty and demonstrates the value of the classical analytic approach to (...) philosophy. 'Foundations' will interest philosophers of science, language, and the mind. (shrink)

Disorders of volition are often accompanied by, and may even be caused by, disruptions in the phenomenology of agency. Yet the phenomenology of agency is at present little explored. In this paper we attempt to describe the experience of normal agency, in order to uncover its representational content.

We discuss three varieties of affective dynamics. In each case, we suggest how these affective dynamics should be operationalized and measured in daily life using time-intensive methods, like ecological momentary assessment or ambulatory assessment, and recommend time-sensitive analyses that take into account not only the variability but also the temporal dependency of reports. Studies that explore how these affective dynamics are associated with psychological disorders and symptoms are reviewed, and we emphasize that these affective processes are within a nexus of (...) other components of emotion regulation. (shrink)

Is a coherent worldview that embraces both classical Christology and modern evolutionary biology possible? This volume explores this fundamental question through an engaged inquiry into key topics, including the Incarnation, the process of evolution, modes of divine action, the nature of rationality, morality, chance and love, and even the meaning of life. Grounded alike in the history and philosophy of science, Christian theology, and the scientific basis for evolutionary biology and genetics, the volume discusses diverse thinkers, both medieval and modern, (...) ranging from Augustine and Aquinas to contemporary voices like Richard Dawkins and Michael Ruse. Aiming to show how a biologically informed Christian worldview is scientifically, theologically, and philosophically viable, it offers important perspectives on the worldview of evolutionary naturalism, a prominent perspective in current science–religion discussions. The authors argue for the intellectual plausibility of a comprehensive worldview perspective that embraces both Christology and evolution biology in intimate relationship. (shrink)

In this paper we defend the doxastic conception of delusions against the metacognitive account developed by Greg Currie and collaborators. According to the metacognitive model, delusions are imaginings that are misidentified by their subjects as beliefs: the Capgras patient, for instance, does not believe that his wife has been replaced by a robot, instead, he merely imagines that she has, and mistakes this imagining for a belief. We argue that the metacognitive account is untenable, and that the traditional conception of (...) delusions as beliefs should be retained. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Drawing upon the collective action model of institutional change, I reconceptualize moral imagination as both a social process and a cognitive one. I argue that moral outcomes are not produced by individual actors alone; rather, they emerge from collective action processes that are influenced by political conditions and involve behaviors that include issue framing and resource mobilization. I also contend that individual moral imagination involves the integration of moral sensitivity with consideration of collective action dynamics. I illustrate my arguments with (...) a case study of the Chad-Cameroon oil project. The paper suggests new directions in teaching and research on moral imagination. (shrink)

Previous research has suggested that bodily signals from internal organs are associated with diverse cortical and subcortical processes involved in sensory-motor functions, beyond homeostatic reflexes. For instance, a recent study demonstrated that the preparation and execution of voluntary actions, as well as its underlying neural activity, are coupled with the breathing cycle. In the current study, we investigated whether such breathing-action coupling is limited to voluntary motor action or whether it is also present for mental actions not involving any overt (...) bodily movement. To answer this question, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), and respiratory signals while participants were conducting a voluntary action paradigm including self-initiated motor execution (ME), motor imagery (MI), and visual imagery (VI) tasks. We observed that the voluntary initiation of ME, MI, and VI are similarly coupled with the respiration phase. In addition, EEG analysis revealed the existence of readiness potential (RP) waveforms in all three tasks (i.e., ME, MI, VI), as well as a coupling between the RP amplitude and the respiratory phase. Our findings show that the voluntary initiation of both imagined and overt action is coupled with respiration, and further suggest that the breathing system is involved in preparatory processes of voluntary action by contributing to the temporal decision of when to initiate the action plan, regardless of whether this culminates in overt movements. -/- . (shrink)

On method, discursive logics, and epistemology -- Questions of medieval discursive practice -- From the middle ages to the (w)hole of Utopia -- Kepler, his Dream, and the analysis and pattern of thought -- Campanella and Bacon: concerning structures of mind -- The masculine birth of time -- Cyrano and the experimental discourse -- The myth of sun and moon -- The difficulty of writing -- Crusoe rights his story -- Gulliver's critique of Euclid -- Emergence, consolidation, and dominance of (...) a discourse. (shrink)

Abstract:In this article I stage an encounter between Adriana Cavarero's account of uniqueness and Hortense Spillers's account of the flesh. Doing so is valuable for two reasons: First, it forces Cavarero's thought to consider not only the exclusion of women from the Western tradition, but also the anti-Blackness foundational to this tradition. This both expands and contorts Cavarero's thought, affirming her key claims while also altering them in the process. Second, reading Cavarero and Spillers together allows me to explore the (...) way forms of life that evade representation can be known. Both uniqueness and the flesh are evasive of representation; by reading them together—supplementing Cavarero's consideration of the embodied character of uniqueness with Spillers's distinction between body and flesh—I develop an account of apprehension that emphasizes touch as a way of knowing apart from representation. Apprehension takes seriously the ambivalence in Spillers's account of the flesh, whereby it is both revealed through violence as well as through practices of care, which, as Saidiya Hartman has made clear, are often in a proximate relation in the ongoing legacies of transatlantic slavery. (shrink)

Secondary education around the world has been significantly disrupted by covid-19. Students have been forced into new ways of independent learning, often using remote technologies, but without the social nuances and direct teacher interactions of a normal classroom environment. Using data from the School Attitudes Survey—which surveys students regarding the perceived level of difficulty, anxiety level, self-efficacy, enjoyability, subject relevance, and opportunities for creativity with regards to each of their school subjects—this study examines students' responses to this disruption from two (...) very different schools with two very different experiences of the pandemic. This paper reports on the composite attitudinal profiles of students in the senior secondary levels at each school. The findings challenged our expectation that the increased difficulty and anxiety caused by the disruption would reduce perceived opportunities for creativity. Indeed, our analyses showed that the students at both schools demonstrated generally positive attitudes toward their learning and strongly associated opportunities for creativity with other attitudinal constructs including enjoyability, subject relevance, and self-efficacy. These complex associations made by the students appear to have buffered the impacts of the disruption, and they may even have supported creative resilience. (shrink)

My fundamental thesis is that Rachels dismisses the traditional Western account of the morality of killing without offering a viable replacement. In this regard, I will argue that the substitute account he offers is deficient in at least eight regards: (1) he fails to justify the foundational principle of utilitarianism, (2) he exposes preference utilitarianism to the same criticisms he lodges against classical utilitarianism, (3) he neglects to explain how precisely one performs the maximization procedure which preference utilitarianism requires, (4) (...) his account of the sanctity of life is subject to the very criticism he levels against the traditional position, (5) he cannot justify the exceptions he makes to his interpretation of the sanctity of life, (6) his account could easily be used to justify murder, (7) his embrace of autonomy as an ethical principle undermines his preference utilitarianism, and (8) he cannot maintain the moral identification of acts of killing and letting die. (shrink)

We will introduce a partial ordering $\preceq_1$ on the class of ordinals which will serve as a foundation for an approach to ordinal notations for formal systems of set theory and second-order arithmetic. In this paper we use $\preceq_1$ to provide a new characterization of the ubiquitous ordinal $\epsilon _{0}$.

Two long-standing arguments in cognitive science invoke the assumption that holistic inference is computationally infeasible. The first is Fodor’s skeptical argument toward computational modeling of ordinary inductive reasoning. The second advocates modular computational mechanisms of the kind posited by Cosmides, Tooby and Sperber. Based on advances in machine learning related to Bayes nets, as well as investigations into the structure of scientific and ordinary information, I maintain neither argument establishes its architectural conclusion. Similar considerations also undermine Fodor’s decades-long diagnosis of (...) artificial intelligence research as confounded by an inability to circumscribe the amount of information relevant to inferential processes. This diagnosis is particularly inapposite with respect to Bayes nets, since one of their strengths as machine learning systems has been their capacity to reason probabilistically about large data sets whose size overwhelms the capacities of individual human reasoners. A general moral follows from these criticisms: Insights into artificial and human cognitive systems are likely to be cultivated by focusing greater attention on the structure and density of connections among items of information that are available to them. (shrink)

This article addresses a difficult case at the intersection of philosophical theology and truthmaker theory. I show that three views, together, lead to difficultiesin providing truthmakers for truths of contingent predication, such as that the bread is white. These three views are: the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, astandard truthmaker theory, and a trope (or accident) view of properties. I present and explain each of these three views, at each step noting their connections to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. After (...) presenting the three views, I show why they entail a difficulty for providing truthmakers for truths of contingent predication,drawing on two cases that are not impossible, for all we know. I then present four ways that one can respond to this difficulty, afterward noting some shortcomingsof those responses. (shrink)

We will investigate patterns of resemblance of order 2 over a family of arithmetic structures on the ordinals. In particular, we will show that they determine a computable well ordering under appropriate assumptions.

Neurovascular coupling (NVC), the transient regional hyperemia following the evoked neuronal responses, is the basis of blood oxygenation level-dependent techniques and is generally adopted across physiological conditions, including the intrinsic resting state. However, the possibility of neurovascular dissociations across physiological alterations is indicated in the literature. To examine the NVC stability across sleep–wake states, we used electroencephalography (EEG) as the index of neural activity and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as the measure of cerebrovascular response. Eight healthy adults were recruited (...) for simultaneous EEG-fMRI recordings in nocturnal sleep. We compared the cross-modality (EEG vs. fMRI) consistency of functional indices (spectral amplitude and functional connectivity) among five states of wakefulness and sleep (state effect). We also segregated the brain into three main partitions (anterior, middle and posterior) for spatial assessments (regional effect). Significant state effects were found on δ, α and fMRI indices and regional effects on the α and fMRI indices. However, the cross-state EEG changes in spectral amplitude and functional connectivity did not consistently match the changes in the fMRI indices across sleep–wake states. In spectral amplitude, the δ band peaked at the N3 stage for all brain regions, while the fMRI fluctuation amplitude peaked at the N2 stage in the central and posterior regions. In regional connectivity, the inter-hemispheric connectivity of the δ band peaked at the N3 stage for all regions, but the bilateral fMRI connectivity showed the state changes in the anterior and central regions. The cross-modality inconsistencies across sleep–wake states provided preliminary evidence that the neurovascular relationship may not change in a linear consistency during NREM sleep. Thus, caution shall be exercised when applying the NVC presumption to investigating sleep/wake transitions, even among healthy young adults. (shrink)

Neural activity varies continually from moment to moment. Such temporal variability (TV) has been highlighted as a functionally specific brain property playing a fundamental role in cognition. We sought to investigate the mechanisms involved in TV changes between two basic behavioral states, namely having the eyes open (EO) or eyes closed (EC) in vivo in humans. To these ends we acquired BOLD fMRI, ASL, and [18F]-fluoro-deoxyglucose PET in a group of healthy participants (n = 15), along with BOLD fMRI and (...) [18F]-flumazenil PET in a separate group (n = 19). Focusing on an EO- vs EC-sensitive region in the occipital cortex (identified in an independent sample), we show that TV is constrained in the EO condition compared to EC. This reduction is correlated with an increase in energy consumption and with regional GABAA receptor density. This suggests that the modulation of TV by behavioral state involves an increase in overall neural activity that is related to an increased effect from GABAergic inhibition in addition to any excitatory changes. These findings contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying activity variability in the human brain and its control. (shrink)

Objective Manic and depressive phases of bipolar disorder (BD) show opposite psychomotor symptoms. Neuronally, these may depend on altered relationships between sensorimotor network (SMN) and subcortical structures. The study aimed to investigate the functional relationships of SMN with substantia nigra (SN) and raphe nuclei (RN) via subcortical-cortical loops, and their alteration in bipolar mania and depression, as characterized by psychomotor excitation and inhibition. -/- Method In this resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study on healthy (n = 67) and BD (...) patients (n = 100), (1) functional connectivity (FC) between thalamus and SMN was calculated and correlated with FC from SN or RN to basal ganglia (BG)/thalamus in healthy; (2) using an a-priori-driven approach, thalamus-SMN FC, SN-BG/thalamus FC, and RN-BG/thalamus FC were compared between healthy and BD, focusing on manic (n = 34) and inhibited depressed (n = 21) patients. -/- Results (1) In healthy, the thalamus-SMN FC showed a quadratic correlation with SN-BG/thalamus FC and a linear negative correlation with RN-BG/thalamus FC. Accordingly, the SN-related FC appears to enable the thalamus-SMN coupling, while the RN-related FC affects it favoring anti-correlation. (2) In BD, mania showed an increase in thalamus-SMN FC toward positive values (ie, thalamus-SMN abnormal coupling) paralleled by reduction of RN-BG/thalamus FC. By contrast, inhibited depression showed a decrease in thalamus-SMN FC toward around-zero values (ie, thalamus-SMN disconnection) paralleled by reduction of SN-BG/thalamus FC (and RN-BG/thalamus FC). The results were replicated in independent HC and BD datasets. -/- Conclusions These findings suggest an abnormal relationship of SMN with neurotransmitters-related areas via subcortical-cortical loops in mania and inhibited depression, finally resulting in psychomotor alterations. (shrink)

The doctrine of the Incarnation, that Jesus Christ was both truly God and truly human, is the foundation and cornerstone of traditional Christian theism. And yet this traditional teaching appears to verge on incoherence. How can one person be both God, having all the perfections of divinity, and human, having all the limitations of humanity? This is the fundamental philosophical problem of the Incarnation. Perhaps a solution is found in an analysis of what the traditional teaching meant by person, divinity, (...) and humanity, or in understanding how divinity and humanity were united in a single person. This Element presents that traditional teaching, then returns to the incoherence problem to showcase various solutions offered to it. (shrink)

In this article, I critically engage Adriana Cavarero’s account of uniqueness via an analysis of her work on narrativity and violence. I suggest there is an ambivalence in Cavarero’s account of uniqueness: Cavarero argues both that uniqueness is susceptible to destruction, and that it cannot finally be annihilated. To make this clear I use Cavarero’s account to read a narrative offered by Miklós Nyiszli, of a woman who survived an Auschwitz gas chamber. I contrast this to Cavarero’s reading of Eurydice (...) and Orpheus, arguing that the ambivalence in Cavarero’s account can be resolved by thinking an excess proper to uniqueness. (shrink)

The neurotransmitters GABA and glutamate have been suggested to play a role in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) through an imbalance between cortical inhibition and excitation. This effect has been highlighted in higher brain areas, such as the prefrontal cortex, but has also been posited in basic sensory cortices. Based on this, magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) was used to investigate potential changes to GABA+ and glutamate+glutamine (Glx) concentrations within the occipital cortex in MDD patients (n = 25) and healthy controls (n (...) = 25). No difference in occipital GABA+ or Glx concentrations, nor in the GABA+/Glx ratio, was found between groups. An analysis of an extended MDD patient and unmatched control dataset (n = 90) found no correlation between metabolite concentrations and depressive symptoms. These results were integrated with prior studies through metabolite-specific meta-analyses, revealing no difference in occipital GABA and Glx concentrations between patients and controls. An effect of publication year on GABA group differences was found, suggesting that previously reported results may have been artifacts of measurement accuracy. Taken together, our results suggest that, contrary to some prior reports, MRS measurements of occipital GABA and Glx do not differ between MDD patients and controls. (shrink)

New insights into the microbiome, epigenetics, and cognition are radically challenging our very idea of what it means to be 'human', while an explosion of neo-materialist thinking in the humanities has fostered a renewed appreciation of the formative powers of a dynamic material environment. The Matter of History brings these scientific and humanistic ideas together to develop a bold new post-anthropocentric understanding of the past, one that reveals how powerful organism and things help to create humans in all their dimensions, (...) biological, social, and cultural."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

A notation for an ordinal using patterns of resemblance is based on choosing an isominimal set of ordinals containing the given ordinal. There are many choices for this set meaning that notations are far from unique. We establish that among all such isominimal sets there is one which is smallest under inclusion thus providing an appropriate notion of normal form notation in this context. In addition, we calculate the elements of this isominimal set using standard notations based on collapsing functions. (...) This provides a capstone to the results in [2, 6, 8, 9, 7], using further refinement of ordinal arithmetic developed in [8] which then both allows for a simple characterization of normal forms for patterns of order one and will play a key role in the arithmetical analysis of pure patterns of order two, [5]. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Denying the Body? Memory and the Dilemmas of History in DescartesTimothy J. ReissIn an essay first published in The New York Review of Books in January 1983, touching her apprenticeship as writer, the Barbadian /American novelist Paule Marshall described the long afternoon conversations with which her mother and friends used to relax in the family kitchen. She recalled how they saw things as composed of opposites; not torn, but (...) completed and made whole by them.Theirs was not a Manichean brand of dualism that sees matter, flesh, the body, as inherently evil, because they constantly addressed each other as “soully-gal”—soul: spirit; gal: the body, flesh, the visible self. And it was clear from their tone that they gave one as much weight and importance as the other. They had never heard of the mind/body split. 1This closing claim is surely less than self-evident. Whether or not the companions had heard of the mind/body split depends on the meaning given to the verb “hear.” Certainly it was embedded in their language, however much the phrase “soully-gal” might recombine its parts.Did the split come from Descartes and early European debates, linguistically colonizing all those who came within its sphere—Africans, Barbadians, Brooklynites? Did it come from a Christian heritage, with its haggling over bodily mortality and immortality of soul? Who knows? A first point is that it is still an everyday experience, deeply buried in language and so in the ideas, feelings, and meanings expressed in language. A second point is that the post-Cartesian debates—to simplify for a moment with an overly heavy [End Page 587] hand—were and are themselves but a variant within a much longer received wisdom. Nonetheless, such wisdom is now bound to that variant, which, willy-nilly, does give one set of parameters to a common experience—at least, to that of those of us who dwell under Western hegemonies. It gives them also, no doubt, to many who live within them at once less clearly and more contentiously.I would like to offer a further powerful instance here, simply to emphasize what and how much is at stake in the questions to be addressed. It occurs in a writing by the Guyanese novelist Wilson Harris, his Palace of the Peacock. First in a tetralogy, this novel recounts something like a journey away from a life of colonial and postcolonial violence and oppression towards a hoped-for rebirth in “fulfilment and understanding.” 2 Early on, the harsh protagonist, Donne, mocks the narrator, his mysterious “double” and “brother,” Dreamer, who has remarked their distance from “the folk.” “Is it a mystery of language and address?” asks Donne. Slightly bewildered, Dreamer struggles to suggest that the obstacle is less of language than of a deeper disjunction:“it’s an inapprehension of substance,” I blurted out, “an actual fear of the substance of life, fear of the substance of the folk, a cannibal blind fear in oneself. Put it how you like,” I cried, “it’s a fear of acknowledging the true substance of life. Yes, fear I tell you, the fear that breeds bitterness in our mouth, the haunting sense of fear that poisons us and hangs us and murders us. And somebody,” I declared, “must demonstrate the unity of being, and show...” I had grown violent and emphatic... “that fear is nothing but a dream and an appearance....” 3Recovery of unity might become a way to defeat political and historical violences. In the next novel in the sequence, one of two self-indulgently whining characters, accused of pining for a woman who has run away to seek education, explodes: “I don’t believe you can begin to see how some body like they born seeking for mind.” 4 For peoples of the colonized Americas, imbued with “the great civilization of the American Indian,” this urge, Harris then wrote in a critical essay, was simply the personal form of a social and political necessity to recover still-living elements of a culture for which “matter truly bore the imprint of genius,” refusing “the taboo of spirituality removed from sensuous direction.” 5 Recently, Harris has worried this... (shrink)