In several recent experiments we have found that the eyes are often captured by the appearance of a sudden onset in a display, even though subjects intend to move their eyes elsewhere. Very brief fixations are made on the abrupt onset before the eyes complete their intended movement to the previously defined target. These results indicate concurrent programming of a voluntary saccade to the defined saccade target and an involuntary saccade to the sudden onset. This is inconsistent with the idea (...) that a single salience map determines the location of a saccade in a winner-take-all fashion. Other results indicate that subjects attend to more than one location in a display during saccade preparation, contrary to the claim that covert attentional scanning plays no role in saccade generation. (shrink)

Purpose: Studies of reactive and proactive modes of inhibitory control tend to show age-related declines and are accompanied by abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex. We explored which mode of inhibitory control would be more amenable to change and accrue greater benefits following engagement in a 4-week theater acting intervention in older adults. These gains were evaluated by performance on the AX-CPT task. We hypothesized that an increase in proactive control would relate to an increase in AY errors and a decrease (...) in BX errors. In contrast, an increase in reactive control would be associated with a decrease in AY errors, no change in AY reaction time, and an increase in BX response time. Further, we posited that an increase in behavioral proactive control would accompany greater cue versus probe activity for previously identified regions in the prefrontal cortex. In contrast, an increase in behavioral reactive control would be accompanied by greater probe activation in these identified brain areas.Materials and Methods: The participants were 179 community-dwelling adults aged 60–89 years who were on average, college-educated. Participants were pseudo-randomly assigned to either an active-experiencing acting intervention condition or the active control condition ; participant assignment was subject to time of enrollment. Participants in both groups were trained by theater-actor researchers with expertise in acting interventions. In contrast to the active control participants who attended a course on theater acting, the acting-intervention group was required to consistently deploy proactive and reactive control mechanisms. Both groups met two times/week for 75-min for 4 weeks. Participant brain-behavioral performance on the AX-CPT task was evaluated prior to and after this four-week period.Results: No intervention effects were found in favor of proactive control. Behavioral evidence in favor of reactive control was weak. Brain-related benefits to reactive control was illustrated by greater probe-activation in Brodmann areas 6 and 8, relative to controls and pre-intervention.Conclusion: We found some evidence for improvements in reactive control via brain measures, attributed to engagement in the acting intervention. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of akrasia over the last fifteen years have focused on certain skeptical arguments which purport to question the possibility of a kind of akratic action which, following Pears, I call 'last ditch akrasia' (Pears [38]). An agent, succumbing to last ditch akrasia, freely, knowingly, and intentionally performs an action A against his better judgment that an incompatible action B is the better thing to do. (See Audi [1] for a detailed analysis.) Last ditch akrasia is not the only (...) kind that has been discussed. Some philosophers (Mele [32], Scaltas [48]) have been concerned with a more extreme form of akratic action, viz. one in which the agent not only judges that action B is best, but in addition intends (chooses, decides) to B. Some have even questioned whether freely acting against one's better judgment is sufficient for akratic action (Schiffer [49]: 201-3).1 Weaker types of akratic action have been discussed, though to a much lesser extent, since they are thought less problematic. Pears distinguishes last ditch akrasia from what he calls, "motivated irrational action" ([38]: 160). In cases of the latter, the akrates' rebellious desire infects his prior reasoning and thinking in such a way that his contemplated action seems to him warranted, and he acts accordingly. (For a taxonomy of cases of akratic action, see Rorty ([44])). Nor has the discussion of akrasia been restricted to akratic action. Philosophers have discussed whether akrasia can be exhibited in the formation of intentions, wants (See Audi [1]: 181-185), and beliefs (Mele [32]: ch. 8; Heil [19]). The primary focus in this paper is on last ditch akratic action. (shrink)

What I have tried to do here is to provide a historical example of the interdependence between nature and culture that is one of the themes of this conference. To sum up: Scientific descriptions of the world emerge out of a complex interaction between nature, economic production, and the legal system. “Science” consists of a struggle among scientists, and between scientists and citizens, over what counts as “reality.” Lawmaking, in turn, consists of a struggle between people who want to allocate (...) access to resources for particular purposes, whether for commercial use, recreational use, or “natural” uses. Production, for its part, is a complicated function of technology, the sociology of user groups, the structure of legal entitlements to access, and the availability of resources. Nature, finally, is at any point, to no small degree, the product of past and present human impacts on it — which impacts, in turn, are determined in no small way by the sociology and the legal structure of the market.Each process takes place in continual conversation with all the others. As John Muir put it, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”45 Historically, resource managers have gotten into trouble when they have unconsciously assumed that such is not the case — yet such, assumptions are powerful because they are made instinctively, unthinkingly, at the level of people's basic understanding of the world and their place in it. Lots of them persist.On the other hand, in a few experimental cases in the United States and Canada where government and users have shared power and responsibility for resources management, including long-range planning for recovery and enhancement, here have been some notable improvements. The strategy goes under the name of “co-management” and involves negotiated agreements for shared decision-making between central authority and local groups. Typically, both government and industry resist such arrangements because they involve restructuring the power relations between different sectors in the industry; the result is that the few experiments in co-management that we have seen in the United States have come in areas, typically fisheries and wildlife, where the resource is in serious crisis and all of the parties to the agreement have had to abandon the positions they held previously.Examples of successful co-management regimes include those among American tribes in the Pacific Northwest, among commercial salmon fishers in Alaska, and in a project to rehabilitate the clam industry in New Jersey. Government employees and local groups share responsibility for gathering scientific data about the resources, for developing plans to manage them, and for enforcing regulations. Successful experiments at co-management seem to generate better scientific data about their resources than traditional management regimes do; they significantly reduce enforcement costs; and they enhance the economic power of the resource users. Most importantly, they nurture among the user groups a sense of control over their own destinies, and a willingness to share both costs and benefits of managing the resources rationally and to develop lasting, stable mechanisms for conflict resolution. The process is both democratic and ecologically rational. The key is to link the day-to-day work of producers to their long-range interests as residents in their communities and as working parts of the ecological systems in which they live.45At a minimum, it is clear that objective certainty about the state of the resources or the likely effect of whatever regulations we do impose is simply not attainable. This is partly because of the important role that random shocks play in the environment (and should play in our thinking about it), and also because of the sheer complexity of the system in which we are embedded. There will always be something that even the most complete model leaves out; and in any event the total system of ecology, production, and management will change every time something changes in any part of it.The policy lesson to be derived from all of this, finally, is that what we ought to sustain when we approach conservation problems is not the size of a particular resource, or even the prosperity of a particular harvesting group, but the long-term health of the interaction between nature, the economy, and the political system. We can recognize that the balance of the system, our attempted insurance against an uncertain future, democracy among user groups, and our moral duty to avoid extinguishing species — all of these things being difficult to quantify — do play integral roles in the conversation between nature and humankind, and perhaps more significant roles than the more objective measures to which we usually look for guidance. We can recognize, as John Muir did, that because everything in the universe is hitched to everything else, every step we take will change the total system in some way. When we make choices, then, we can keep an eye on what kind of conversation we want to have with the rest of Creation and make our choices accordingly. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00014 *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00015. (shrink)

Pope John Paul II promulgated his first major social encyclical, Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”), in September 1981. The encyclical, evoked many favorable reactions, even from Marxists. One such writer even argued that on social issues at least, John Paul II stands as “a sturdy and reliable ally.” The Pope often speaks in categories more familiar to Marxists than to Catholics. Another commentator even indicated doubts whether U.S. Catholics realize the importance of the encyclical because “The pope's concerns are the (...) concerns of Marx, his categories and history are those of Marx.” Yet, the Pope seems to identify Marxism with Marxist-Leninism. (shrink)

Marx spent his life propagating ideas, Yet in theory he treated ideas as mere reflections of economic situations. The article takes a closer look at the young marx's views and concludes that marx recognized the importance of ideas where they 1) express the real needs of the people, 2) lead to effective action, And 3) correspond to conditions which permit their realization.

Human skin is the one authentic criterion of the universe which philosophers recognize when they appraise knowledge under their professional rubric, epistemology. By and large—except for a few of the great Critics and Sceptics—they view knowledge as a capacity, attribute, possession, or other mysterious inner quality of a “knower”; they view this knower as residing in or at a “body”; they view the body as cut off from the rest of the universe by a “skin”; all of which holds for (...) philosophizing physicists and physiologists even as for the professionals of the arcanum itself. If this assertion seems crude, one may recall that there are times when a bit of crudity is a fair physic for an inflamed subtlety. In the case before us the factual crudity lies in the use of “skin” for a criterion, not in our calling attention to the fact. The “skin” that is so used is, indeed, that of ancient anatomical schematism, unaffected by the transformation of understanding which modern physiological research has brought about. Yet if philosophers cease thus crudely to employ it, all their issues of epistemology will vanish, and the very type of attack they make on cognition will be discredited; whereupon the task of determining the status of knowledge itself will pass from their hands to those of the scientists who have taken over so many regions of philosophical arrogation in the past. This is what I propose here to show. (shrink)

Certain examples involving negatively relevant evidence are trouble for reliabilists, since they show that reliability is not sufficient for justification. Two approaches for dealing with these examples within the reliabilist framework have been taken. Neither approach, however, can account for all cases involving nre. This I will argue. I will explain the two approaches briefly, then describe a counter example which calls for a difference approach. To handle the case I describe, one needs torequire that the agent's belief be ‘internally (...) acceptable’ as well as reliable.Many examples show that reliability is insufficient. Consider a modification of an example by Goldman, which he used to make a different point. Driving through the country, Andy looks to the right, sees a barn, and comes to believe that the object he sees is a barn. His belief, however, is not justified because he possesses nre, viz., his false, but justified, belief that the majority of bam-like objects in the area are barn facsimiles which, under the present visual circumstances, are almost indistinguishable from real barns. (shrink)

To stress the subjectivity of the analyst is to accept the centrality of countertransference in the analytic relationship. Psychoanalysts have long recognized the importance of transference in the analytic setting—that is, the analysand's way of relating to the analyst in terms of his strong, ambivalent unconscious feelings for earlier figures , a process whose successful resolution constitutes the psychoanalystic "cure." But, since the patient's transference is only experienced by the analyst through his countertransference responses, recent theorists have come to emphasize (...) the importance of countertransference in psychoanalysis. In what Otto Kernberg calls its "totalistic" definition, countertransference refers to "the total emotional reaction of the psychoanalyst to the patient in the treatment situation."1 It is, therefore, a source of both empathic understanding and defensive misunderstanding, of distortion and insight. Hans Loewald remarks: "Since a psychoanalytic investigation can be carried out only by a human mind, we cannot conceive of one in which the analyst's [counter] transference and resistance are not the warp and woof of his activity."2 · 1. Otto Kernberg, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism , p. 49. · 2. Hans Loewald, "Psychoanalytic Theory and the Psychoanalytic Process," The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 25 : 56. Cf. Heinz Kohut, "Introspection, Empathy, and Psychoanalysis," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 7 : 459-83. For a clear discussion of the background of the countertransference concept in Freud, see Humberto Nagera, et. al., Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on Metapsychology, Conflicts, Anxiety and Other Subjects , pp. 200-206. Two surveys of the literature on the topic are particularly useful: Douglas Orr, "Transference and Countertransference: A Historical Survey," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 2 : 621-70, and Kernberg, pp. 49-66. Arthur F. Marotti, associate professor of English at Wayne State University, has written a number of essays on Ben Jonson, John Donne, Thomas Middleton, and Edmund Spenser. He is completing a book-length social-historical and psychoanalytic study of Donne's poetry and a book on Jonson; some of the theoretical assumptions behind both projects are discussed in this article. See also: "Psychoanalysis and the Marionette Theater: Interpretation is Not Depreciation" in Vol. 5, No. 1. (shrink)

One is tempted to look upon the positive and the logical somewhat as one looks upon the quick and the dead. Yet the issue is hardly that sharp. Viability has strange possibilities and varied forms, and must often be appraised with an eye directed as much towards the environment as towards the claimant organism. Stretching the application of the word ‘viable’ to complexes of behavior such as the philosophies and theories of knowledge, we may ask: Is the combination of the (...) positive and the logical in logical positivism viable? And is this logical positivism itself as it stands either positive or logical? (shrink)