Visual working memory is a construct hypothesized to store a small amount of accurate perceptual information that can be brought to bear on a task. Much research concerns the construct's capacity and the precision of the information stored. Two prominent theories of VWM representation have emerged: slot-based and continuous-resource mechanisms. Prior modeling work suggests that a continuous resource that varies over trials with variable capacity and a potential to make localization errors best accounts for the empirical data. Questions remain regarding (...) the variability in VWM capacity and precision. Using a novel eye-tracking paradigm, we demonstrate that VWM facilitates search and exhibits effects of fixation frequency and recency, particularly for prior targets. Whereas slot-based memory models cannot account for the human data, a novel continuous-resource model does capture the behavioral and eye tracking data, and identifies the relevant resource as item activation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to trace in Leibniz’s drafts the sketched outline of a conceptual framework he organized around the key concept of ‘requisite’. We are faced with the project of a semi-formal theory of conditions, whose logical skeleton can have a lot of different interpretations. In particular, it is well suited to capture some crucial relations of ontological dependence. Firstly the area of ‘mediate requisites’ is explored - where causal and temporal relations are dealt with on the (...) basis of a general theory of ‘consequence’.Then the study of ‘immediate requisites’ is taken into account - a true sample of mereological inquiry, where Leibniz strives for a unitary treatment of part-whole relation, conceptual inclusion and inherence. Far from simply conflating these relations one with another and with causality, therefore, Leibniz tried to spell them out, while at the same time understanding them within a single conceptual framework. (shrink)

Research on sleep loss and vigilance both focus on declines in cognitive performance, but theoretical accounts have developed largely in parallel in these two areas. In addition, computational instantiations of theoretical accounts are rare. The current work uses computational modeling to explore whether the same mechanisms can account for the effects of both sleep loss and time on task on performance. A classic task used in the sleep deprivation literature, the Psychomotor Vigilance Test, was extended from the typical 10-min duration (...) to 35 min, to make the task similar in duration to traditional vigilance tasks. A computational cognitive model demonstrated that the effects of time on task in the PVT were equivalent to those observed with sleep loss. Subsequently, the same mechanisms were applied to a more traditional vigilance task—the Mackworth Clock Task—providing a good fit to existing data. This supports the hypothesis that these different types of fatigue may produce functionally equivalent declines in performance. (shrink)

Leibniz's treatment of the concept of res should be considered in the context of his semantic-ontological reflections on the relationship of language, thought and reality, profoundly shaped by a no...

Although most of us know that human beings cannot and should not be replaced by computers, we have great difficulties saying why this is so. This paradox is largely the result of institutionalizing several fundamental misconceptions as to the nature of both trustworthy objective and moral knowledge. Unless we transcend this paradox, we run the increasing risks of becoming very good at counting without being able to say what is worth counting and why. The degree to which this is occurring (...) is the degree to which the computer revolution is already over — and the degree to which we human beings have lost. (shrink)

Based on social-cognitive theory, this article proposes a model that seeks to explain why high status organizational members engage in unethical behavior. We argue that status differentiation in organizations creates social isolation which initiates activation of high status group identity and a deactivation of moral identity. We further argue that high status group identity results in insensitivity to the needs of out-group members which, in turn, results in lessened motivation to selfregulate ethical decision making. As a result of this identity (...) activation, we demonstrate how high status individuals will be more vulnerable to engaging in unethical activities. Individual-level moderators of the relationships are also discussed. (shrink)

In his well-known Discourse on Metaphysics , Leibniz puts individual substance at the basis of metaphysical building. In so doing, he connects himself to a venerable tradition. His theory of individual concept, however, breaks with another idea of the same tradition, that no account of the individual as such can be given. Contrary to what has been commonly accepted, Leibniz’s intuitions are not the mere result of the transcription of subject-predicate logic, nor of the uncritical persistence of some old metaphysical (...) assumptions. They grow, instead, from an unprejudiced inquiry about our basic ontological framework, where logic of truth, linguistic analysis, and phenomenological experience of the mind’s life are tightly interwoven. Leibniz’s struggle for a concept capable of grasping concrete individuals as such is pursued in an age of great paradigm changes – from the Scholastic background to Hobbes’s nominalism to the Cartesian ‘way of ideas’ or Spinoza’s substance metaphysics – when the relationships among words, ideas and things are intensively discussed and wholly reshaped. This is the context where the genesis and significance of Leibniz’s theory of ‘complete being’ and its concept are reconstrued. The result is a fresh look at some of the most perplexing issues in Leibniz scholarship, like his ideas about individual identity and the thesis that all its properties are essential to an individual. The questions Leibniz faces, and to which his theory of individual substance aims to answer, are yet, to a large extent, those of contemporary metaphysics: how to trace a categorial framework? How to distinguish concrete and abstract items? What is the metaphysical basis of linguistic predication? How is trans-temporal sameness assured? How to make sense of essential attributions? In this ontological framework Leibniz’s further questions about the destiny of human individuals and their history are spelt out. Maybe his answers also have something to tell us. This book is aimed at all who are interested in Leibniz’s philosophy, history of early modern philosophy and metaphysical issues in their historical development. (shrink)

The 1648 exchange between Descartes and Arnauld focuses on several distinct but intertwined topics concerning Descartes’s philosophy of mind. Descartes’s acknowledgment of thinking as the essence of the mind implied a strong ‘actualist’ view of this essential activity. Arnauld’s objcetions reveal the problematic implications of this ontology of mind, from the role of memory and the temporal nature of our thought to the radical challenge of giving the status of an essence to such a temporal activity.

C i lewis, regarding himself as a pragmatist, repeatedly attempts to identify truth with verification. it is here argued, however, that a correspondence or semantic theory is required by (1) lewis's interpretation of objective judgments in terms of "possible experience" and of possible experience in terms of counterfactual conditions; (2) his distinction between the justification of knowledge and the truth of knowledge; and (3) his logical analysis of truth in terms of the extension (known or unknown) of propositions. it is (...) then argued that verification determines knowledge but reality determines truth, and that lewis himself emphasizes "the transcendence by reality of our present knowledge of it.". (shrink)

The Ancrene Wisse, a guide for female recluses written in the West Midlands in the early thirteenth century, and the closely related religious works of the `Katherine Group', offer a vivid insight into the religious life of the time, and their rich and varied prose style blends Latin and native English stylistic traditions with remarkable skill and assurance. The difficulty of their language, however, has made them largely inaccessible except to experts in Middle English, and this edition is designed to (...) introduce them to a wider audience, including undergraduates with limited experience of Middle English and specialists in other disciplines, particularly history, theology, and women's studies. It provides a representative selection in new and readable critical texts, with a general introduction, notes, a select glossary, and interleaved translations. (shrink)

Michelle Bella & Giovanni Maddalena – Many Peirce scholars wonder about what is going on with the publication of the Writings? André De Tienne – The answer is at once, almost nothing, but a lot! We are in a state of quasi-limbo, and so people do notice that we have not been publishing any volume for the last 10 years and the universal question is, what is happening to the Peirce Edition Project? It is a question that I keep asking (...) myself! But I am glad to share this more publicly, so that peo... (shrink)

Michela Bella & Anna Boncompagni – This conversation will focus on your role and your position with respect to pragmatism; those who you consider allies and enemies in the field; and then finally your ideas about the future of philosophy and the future of pragmatism. You worked with famous philosophers like Carnap, Reichenbach and many others. But let us start from the beginning. Hilary Putnam – My alma mater was the University of Pennsylvania. The first teacher who really influenced me (...) there... (shrink)

Michela Bella & Matteo Santarelli – What was the state of Pragmatism studies when you first encountered pragmatism? Larry A. Hickman – After completing my undergraduate degree in psychology I decided that I wanted to study philosophy. In order to prepare for graduate school, I spent a year taking philosophy courses at the University of Texas in Austin. The faculty included Charles Hartshorne, who was co-editor of the Peirce Collected Papers. There was also David L. Miller and George Gentry, b...

Présentation des articles qui suivent sur la réception européenne de la psychologie de William James. Comment la contribution de ce « philosophe américain » à l’édification conceptuelle de la « psychologie » a-t‑elle été reçue, traduite et discutée en son temps dans les espaces universitaires européens non anglophones : italophone, francophone et germanophone? Quelles définitions de la psychologie impliquaient les appropriations conceptuelles de différentes disciplines (médecine, sciences, lettres)? Pourquoi James s’est-il peu à peu imposé commune figure nodale de ce nouveau (...) savoir? (shrink)

Michela Bella & Matteo Santarelli – What did you know about Pragmatism when you started? Where did you start as a student? Charlene Haddock Seigfried – I came to pragmatism by way of existentialism. During the late sixties, I took my first graduate class at the University of Southern California – an introduction to empiricism – which I didn’t like at all, and I also attended a lecture on existentialism, which intrigued me. But I was always interested in social and (...) political issues and I was m... (shrink)

In an attempt to extract a coherent and still relevant structure of thought from its obsolete encumbrances, some of the recent interpretations of Kant have been needlessly hampered by neglect of the important concept of ‘possible experience’. Failure to make the full use of this concept that Kant himself made has inevitably been damaging to the Kantian doctrine of phenomenal objectivity; and any version of Kant that is so damaged falls drastically short of the original. I should like, therefore, after (...) making the problem a little clearer, to examine the concept of possible experience as Kant presents it; to attempt a clarification of difficulties in his presentation that may have contributed to the tendency to neglect the concept; and finally to indicate briefly the unfortunate consequences of this neglect in some recent instances. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to trace in Leibniz’s drafts the sketched outline of a conceptual framework he organized around the key concept of ‘requisite’. We are faced with the project of a semi-formal theory of conditions, whose logical skeleton can have a lot of different interpretations. In particular, it is well suited to capture some crucial relations of ontological dependence. Firstly the area of ‘mediate requisites’ is explored - where causal and temporal relations are dealt with on the (...) basis of a general theory of ‘consequence’.Then the study of ‘immediate requisites’ is taken into account - a true sample of mereological inquiry, where Leibniz strives for a unitary treatment of part-whole relation, conceptual inclusion and inherence. Far from simply conflating these relations one with another and with causality, therefore, Leibniz tried to spell them out, while at the same time understanding them within a single conceptual framework. (shrink)

The idea of self-fashioning that Stephen Greenblatt presents in his book Renaissance Self-Fashioning can be very useful in an effort to understand Christine de Pizan's work. Specifically, a reading of The Treasure of the City of Ladies or The Book of the Three Virtues in the light of self-fashioning may help explain the book's intent. In writing The Treasure, Christine is often criticized for what appears to be a departure from her vigorous defense of women presented in The City of (...) Ladies. The article argues, however, that quite the contrary is the case in the later book. Christine uses self-fashioning in The Treasure as a strategy of survival for herself and other women. For example, she frames an argument in which she casts the male literary establishment as well as the misogynistic texts produced by that establishment as Other. Consequently, what appears to be submission in The Treasure is really a textual strategy, a subversion which is aimed at giving women an identity and protecting them against the many dangers of a male-dominated world. (shrink)

The thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse is one of the major works of early Middle English prose, and was repeatedly revised and adapted for different audiences. It has attracted much attention from students of church history and women's studies as a highly influential, important example of pastoral guidance for women religions. This is the first edition to bring together the full manuscript evidence, and to set it in its broader cultural and institutional context. Volume II will be published in 2006.

The issue of the emergence of genuinely new events in a paradigm of natural continuity has been analyzed in different fields by Pragmatists authors like Peirce, Dewey, and Mead. Another way to consider the problematic relationship between novelty and continuity is by considering William James’s understanding of causal connections. This article addresses the concept of causality that James repeatedly addressed and deeply rethought throughout his career. I believe that the concept of causality provides an excellent platform from which to view (...) the various aspects that have made James’s epistemological and metaphysical thinking so influential in the history of theories of emergence, and which is experiencing currently a major revival. (shrink)