Primordial emotions are the subjective element of the instincts which are the genetically programmed behaviour patterns which contrive homeostasis. They include thirst, hunger for air, hunger for food, pain and hunger for specific minerals etc.There are two constituents of a primordial emotion—the specific sensation which when severe may be imperious, and the compelling intention for gratification by a consummatory act. They may dominate the stream of consciousness, and can have plenipotentiary power over behaviour.It is hypothesized that early in animal evolution (...) complex reflex mechanisms in the basal brain subserving homeostatic responses, in concert with elements of the reticular activating system subserving arousal, melded functionally with regions embodied in the progressive rostral development of the telencephalon. This included the emergent limbic and paralimbic areas, and the insula. This phylogenetically ancient organization subserved the origin of consciousness as the primordial emotion, which signalled that the organisms existence was immediately threatened. Neuroimaging confirms major activations in regions of the basal brain during primordial emotions in humans. The behaviour of decorticate humans and animals is discussed in relation to the possible existence of primitive awareness.Neuroimaging of the primordial emotions reveals that rapid gratification of intention by a consummatory act such as ingestion causes precipitate decline of both the initiating sensation and the intention. There is contemporaneous rapid disappearance of particular regions of brain activation which suggests they may be part of the jointly sufficient and severally necessary activations and deactivations which correlate with consciousness [Crick, F. & Koch, C. . A framework for consciousness. NatureNeuroscience,6, 119–126]. (shrink)

The vegetation eaten by animals on large areas of several continents is deficient in phosphate and deleterious effects on physiology, particularly reproduction, ensue. Records on bone chewing behaviour by both pastoral andwild game animals extend over two centuries. In laboratory investigation of this apt behaviour it has been shown that the appetite for bones is innate and specific and cued predominantly by olfactory stimuli. It is suppressed by rapidly increasing the plasma phosphate concentration to normal but not influenced by increasing (...) the phosphate concentration in cerebrospinal fluid. The central organization of this genetically programmed behaviour appears to differ from systems subserving thirst and sodium appetite. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand RussellPeter H. DentonNicholas Griffin, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 550. Cloth, $75.00. Paper, $26.00.It is a daunting task to conceive of a single companion to Bertrand Russell, who in life as in thought was never content with a single anything. Nicholas Griffin has brought his customary expertise to the project, and in (...) snaring fourteen other contributors to this volume, has produced a welcome addition to an academic's library of Russell materials.The shape of the volume, its contents and its presentation, however, unfortunately reflect the lopsided nature of current Russell studies. One hopes for a companion volume that has the breadth of the earlier volume edited fifty years ago by Paul Schilpp, but in vain. This book is overwhelmingly about Russell before 1918, almost entirely about philosophy of mathematics, epistemology and logic, and several of the pieces easily could have been included in a festschrift for Frege instead.What is included is well done, but to call it "the most convenient and accessible guide to Russell available" is to speak in comparative terms. To be fair, it sets out to focus on a narrow definition of Russell's contributions to modern philosophy, and the contributors accomplish this task. Ian Grattan-Guinness writes on "Mathematics in and behind Russell's Logicism, and its Reception," a subject that continues into "Bertrand Russell's Logicism" by Martin Godwyn and Andrew D. Irvine. The roots of analytic philosophy are of primary concern in this volume, so Richard L. Cartwright explores "Russell and Moore, 1898-1905" and Michael Beaney relates "Russell and Frege." "The Theory of Descriptions" by Peter Hylton sets up two pieces on "Russell's Substitutional Theory" (Gregory Landini) and "The Theory of Types" (Alasdair Urquhart), while Paul Hager's "Russell's Method of Analysis" leads into "Russell's Neutral Monism" (R.E.Tully) and "The Metaphysics of Logical Atomism" (Bernard Linsky).The next portion of the book expands the intellectual focus somewhat, with "Russell's Structuralism and the Absolute Description of the World" by William Demopoulos—perhaps [End Page 349] the best in a series of good papers—and "From Knowledge by Acquaintance to Knowledge by Causation" by Thomas Baldwin. Approaching the end of the book, Anthony Grayling's essay on "Russell, Experience, and the Roots of Science" remains firmly planted in the pre-1918 milieu, though his tentative commentary on Human Knowledge at least glimmers the extension of Russell's intellectual life into the post-Great War period.Effectively the entire second half of Russell's life is left to the final contributor, Charles Pidgen, for commentary. Author of Russell on Ethics, much of Pigden's short essay here ("Bertrand Russell: Moral Philosopher or Unphilosophical Moralist?") somewhat plaintively directs the reader to his book for an elaboration of why Russell is worth reading after 1918, at least on the subject of ethics. Of the other authors, only Hager (317) observes the extent to which Russell's post-War work mistakenly has been ignored.The book concludes with a selective bibliography. The audience, for the most part, is a specialist one, with only some essays accessible to the general reader. On that score, Griffin's introduction and his own essay, "Russell's Philosophical Background," are easily the most readable. At the risk of quibbling, I was disturbed by the uneven production of the book, as each author set his own standard for footnotes, endnotes and bibliography (creating a jumble of styles). Even within individual contributions, there are a number of inconsistencies in notation as well as typographical errors.By the end, I was left hoping there might be a second companion volume for Bertrand Russell, one that reflects what he spent the last fifty years of his life thinking, writing, and doing. In the absence of such material (which is of far greater popular interest today just as it was in Russell's lifetime), this book by itself is more of a companion to current Russell studies than to Bertrand Russell himself.Peter H. DentonThe University of WinnipegCopyright © 2004 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

McKay & Dennett (M&D) have done an admirable job of distinguishing among various forms of misbelief and evaluating the idea that they stem from evolved mental mechanisms. We argue that a complete account of misbeliefs must attend to the role that others play in creating and maintaining positive illusions.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
iscussion “WELL WIDE OF THE MARK”: RESPONSE TO STONE’S REVIEW OF THE ABC OF ARMAGEDDON P H. D History, Philosophy and Religious Studies / U. of Winnipeg Winnipeg, , Canada   .@. hether or not it is wise to defend one’s first book against the slings and Warrows of outrageous fortune, Bertrand Russell was never one to let indignities pass without response, and I will take my example (...) from him. Peter Stone’s review of my The ABC of Armageddon: Bertrand Russell on Science, Religion and the Next War, – is so irretrievably muddled that when he concludes “a thoroughly confused book ends on a thoroughly confused note”, this state of confusion most accurately represents the condition of the reviewer. The problem here is not an author and his book “adrift at Armageddon”, as the title of Stone’s review maintains, but a reviewer rowing furiously with one oar. Whatever inadequacies there are in The ABC of Armageddon, they are not those Stone so enthusiastically catalogues in his series of speculations as to what I might have done, but didn’t. In awaiting this review in Russell, I worried about how my various suggestions about Russell’s writing in the interwar period—even my definition of what the interwar period was—would be received. To list a few: the idea that the Great War constituted a dividing line in his work, and why; that his work in the interwar period should be judged as a whole; that his work in the interwar period was worth evaluating, not simply being dismissed as evidence of early philosophical dotage; the way Russell’s published ideas were entwined with those of his Anglo-American contemporaries; the theme of the “old savage in the new civilization” in Russell’s work, and in that of his contemporaries; the dimension of “rhetorical performance” and Russell’s deliberate stance as a  Russell, n.s.  (): – (at ). russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (summer ): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  -  Discussion preacher; the differences between The Prospects of Industrial Civilization and The Scientific Outlook, on the one hand, and Religion and Science and Power: a New Social Analysis, on the other; the possible influence of Albert Schweitzer on the value of “an operational metaphysic” that allowed an older Russell to act as though ideas like “reverence for life” were true, even if they could not be proven. The list could continue. Stone overlooks all of these ideas, preferring instead to demonstrate my inability to hit targets at which he feels I should have aimed, characterizing my approach and my intentions in some unhelpful ways that are well wide of the mark. I was astounded to learn, for example, that I “assume the role of a political theorist towards Russell’s work”, and thus I “attempt to lay out an argument by Russell and critique it, so as to leave behind a stronger argument in its wake” (p. ). Because I am a political theorist, Stone concludes, “this book is simply a failure as a work of history” (p. ). Instead, being an historian he says, would have involved “situating Russell’s views in the personal and social context in which they emerged.” Writing as a “political theorist” himself (out of the Political Science department at Rochester University, where he is adjunct faculty), Stone’s defence of the historical approach is no doubt well intentioned. Had he followed his own prescription, however, he would have found this book to be substantially the same text as my dissertation (“The Old Savage and the Scientific Outlook: Science, Religion and Social Ethics in the Writings of Bertrand Russell, – ” [McMaster, ]). In the prefatory material appropriate to dissertations in Religious Studies (but not to books intended to sell) Stone would have found some of the acknowledgements and explanations whose absence he found the most irksome. Having dubbed me a political theorist, he excoriates me for an inadequate understanding of utilitarianism, instrumentalism, pragmatism and so on, utterly  In an editorial note discouraged by my editors at  Press but still permitted here, I cannot resist responding to Stone’s editorial notes disparaging the “highly inadequate” citations of Russell studies literature. I am well aware of Philip Ironside’s... (shrink)

Many different aspects of science intersect with Christian spirituality. Some of these points of intersection are apparent in astronomy, cosmology, quantum physics, genetics, neuroscience, organic evolution, chemical evolution, technological advances, and environmental science. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between organic evolution and Christian spirituality. It is important to note that Christian spirituality has varying significances throughout Christendom. For the purpose of this paper, I will treat Christian spirituality as the study of the experience of Christian (...) faith and discipleship. This definition will be helpful because it is specific enough to make direct correlations with how one can understand science from a Christian spiritual (faith) perspective. (shrink)

Revisiting African philosophy’s classic questions, D. A. Masolo advances understandings of what it means to be human—whether of African or other origin. Masolo reframes indigenous knowledge as diversity: How are we to understand the place and structure of consciousness? How does the everyday color the world we know? Where are the boundaries between self and other, universal and particular, and individual and community? From here, he takes a dramatic turn toward Africa’s current political situation and considers why individual rights and (...) freedoms have not been recognized, respected, demanded, or enforced. Masolo offers solutions for containing socially destructive conduct and antisocial tendencies by engaging community. His unique thinking about community and the role of the individual extends African philosophy in new, global directions. (shrink)

In debates about criteria for human death, several camps have emerged, the main two focusing on either loss of the "organism as a whole" (the mainstream view) or loss of consciousness or "personhood." Controversies also rage over the proper definition of "irreversible" in criteria for death. The situation is reminiscent of the proverbial blind men palpating an elephant; each describes the creature according to the part he can touch. Similarly, each camp grasps some aspect of the complex reality of death. (...) The personhood camp, in contrast to the mainstream "organism" camp, recognizes that a human organism can still be a biological living whole even without brain function. The mainstream camp, in contrast to the personhood camp, recognizes that a person can be permanently, even irreversibly unconscious, and still be a living person so long as his/her body is alive. The author proposes that hylomorphic dualism incorporates both these key insights. But to complete the picture of the entire "death elephant," a fundamental paradigm shift is needed to make sense of other seemingly conflicting insights. The author proposes a "semantic bisection" of the concept of death, analogous to the traditional distinction at the beginning of life between "conception" and "birth." To avoid the semantic baggage associated with the term "death," the two new death-related concepts are referred to as "passing away" (or "deceased") and "deanimation," corresponding, respectively, to sociolegal ceasing-to-be (mirror image of birth) and ontological/theological ceasing-to-be of the bodily organism (mirror image of conception). Regarding criteria, the distinguishing feature is whether the cessation of function is permanent (passing away) or irreversible (deanimation). If the "dead donor rule" were renamed the "deceased donor rule" (both acronyms felicitously being "DDR"), the ethics of organ transplantation from non–heart-beating donors could, in principle, be validly governed by the DDR, even though the donors are not yet ontologically "deanimated." Thus, the paradigm shift satisfies both those who insist on maintaining the DDR and those who claim that it has all along been receiving only lip service and should be explicitly loosened to include those who are "as good as dead." Even so, a number of practical caveats remain to be worked out for non–heart-beating protocols. (shrink)

Lexical Semantics is about the meaning of words. Although obviously a central concern of linguistics, the semantic behaviour of words has been unduly neglected in the current literature, which has tended to emphasize sentential semantics and its relation to formal systems of logic. In this textbook D. A. Cruse establishes in a principled and disciplined way the descriptive and generalizable facts about lexical relations that any formal theory of semantics will have to encompass. Among the topics covered in depth are (...) idiomaticity, lexical ambiguity, synonymy, hierarchical relations such as hyponymy and meronymy, and various types of oppositeness. Syntagmatic relations are also treated in some detail. The discussions are richly illustrated by examples drawn almost entirely from English. Although a familiarity with traditional grammar is assumed, readers with no technical linguistic background will find the exposition always accessible. All readers with an interest in semantics will find in this original text not only essential background but a stimulating new perspective on the field. (shrink)

Physicians have developed a number of implicit and explicit approaches to complex medical decisions. Decision analysis is an explicit, quantitative method of clinical decision making that involves the separation of the probabilities of events from their relative values, or utilities. Its use can help physicians make difficult choices in a manner that promotes true patient participation. Decision analysis also provides a framework for the incorporation of data from multiple sources and for the assessment of the impact of uncertain data on (...) the final decision. Although this approach is imperfect, it represents a significant advance in clinical decision making. (shrink)

" -- Africa Today "The excellence of this book lies in the wealth of perspectives that it brings to the discussion on what constitutes philosophy, rationality, ...

A three-valued propositional logic is presented, within which the three values are read as ?true?, ?false? and ?nonsense?. A three-valued extended functional calculus, unrestricted by the theory of types, is then developed. Within the latter system, Bochvar analyzes the Russell paradox and the Grelling-Weyl paradox, formally demonstrating the meaninglessness of both.

Bainbridge’s well known “Ironies of Automation” Analysis, design and evaluation of man–machine systems. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 129–135, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-029348-6.50026-9) laid out a set of fundamental criticisms surrounding the promises of automation that, even 30 years later, remain both relevant and, in many cases, intractable. Similarly, a set of ironies in technologies for sensor driven self-quantification is laid out here, spanning from instrumental problems in human factors design to much broader social problems. As with automation, these ironies stand in the way (...) of many of the promised benefits of these wearable technologies. It is argued here that without addressing these ironies now, the promises of wearables may not come to fruition, and instead users may experience outcomes that are opposite to those which the designers seek to afford, or, at the very least, those which consumers believe they are being offered. This paper describes four key ironies of sensor driven self-quantification: know more, know better versus no more, no better; greater self-control versus greater social control; well-being versus never being well enough; more choice versus erosion of choice. (shrink)

Signals to the brain from the flows of energy around the body, varied primarily by declining amounts of food energy in the stomach, can explain the pattern of meals in the laboratory rat, the differences between dark and light phases, and the development of obesity ion the rat wioth VMH lesions but normal sating.

Justice will once take the place which the Magians are keeping now, for it is they who lord it over the world.

This paper presents a new formal model for D–N explanation that gives intuitive criteria of acceptability, avoids the known trivializations, and links explanation with confirmation theory. Although set in the twenty-five year tradition of attempts to formalize D–N explanation, it proposes a new direction for the model that is to be distinguished from the syntactical and informational approaches by its introduction of restrictions which derive from the use which the D–N model can have in hypothesis testing. This model, illustrating the (...) verificational approach, revises the classic H–O requirements and amends the notion of partial self-explanation to meet a criticism to which the H–O notion is vulnerable. (shrink)

Traditional explanations of multistable visual phenomena (e.g. ambiguous figures, perceptual rivalry) suggest that the basis for spontaneous reversals in perception lies in antagonistic connectivity within the visual system. In this review, we suggest an alternative, albeit speculative. explanation for visual multistability - that spontaneous alternations reflect responses to active, programmed events initiated by brain areas that integrate sensory and non-sensory information to coordinate a diversity of behaviors. Much evidence suggests that perceptual reversals are themselves more closely related to the expression (...) of a behavior than to passive sensory responses: (1) they are initiated spontaneously, often voluntarily, and are influenced by subjective variables such as attention and mood; (2) the alternation process is greatly facilitated with practice and compromised by lesions in non- visual cortical areas; (3) the alternation process has temporal dynamics similar to those of spontaneously initiated behaviors; (4) functional imaging reveals that brain areas associated with a variety of cognitive behaviors are specifically activated when vision becomes unstable. In this scheme, reorganizations of activity throughout the visual cortex, concurrent with perceptual reversals, are initiated by higher, largely non- sensory brain centers. Such direct intervention In the processing of the sensory input by brain structures associated with planning and motor programming might serve an important role in perceptual organization, particularly in aspects related to selective attention. (shrink)

A Lasting tradition among the ancients marked Sicily as the birthplace and Tisias and Corax as inventors of the art of rhetoric: and in this tradition, legendary though it became, there is a stricter truth than in most of the stories related about the foundation of invented arts. We, with more elaborate historical views, shall still say of rhetoric that it was created at a certain epoch; and can still point to the Sicilians Tisias and Corax as its authors. Oratory, (...) to be sure, has existed almost as long as speech. Its beginnings are prehistoric, and must in any case be imperceptible; and if by rhetorician we meant no more than one who uses speech with more than common effect, we might set the origin of rhetoric as far back as we chose, and could hardly bring it lower than the beginning of recorded literature. Indeed we are told that under the Antonine Emperors the eminent scholar Telephus of Pergamum wrote a book on Rhetoric in Homer, in which he illustrated from the Poet the whole contemporary system of the art down to the thirteen constitutions of Minucian; and in the same spirit the Venerable Bede, resenting the claim of the Greeks to have invented tropes and figures of speech, wrote a short work to show that they could all be found in Holy Scripture. But such inquiries, even when conducted less foolishly than by Telephus and less incompetently than by Bede, are irrelevant to the proper history of rhetoric. Let the practice of oratory have begun when it may, the first attempts known to us in Classical Antiquity to formulate a series of principles for the art of speech were made in the fifth century before Christ. These earliest systems were naturally very imperfect: they could not immediately be either comprehensive or well organized. But they were something that had not existed at all before: methodical principles for speaking. At the moment when these were first set out the art of rhetoric began. (shrink)

It is characteristic of A. to use words that occur only once in Homer, and such a word is ρρητος. In Od. 14. 466 it describes the remark that is better left unspoken, πέρ τ' ρρητον μεινον. But it has the distinction of occurring once also in Hesiod, and this time it is used of men without fame, ητοί τ' ρρητοί τε Διòς μεγάλοιο κατι . It is clearly this line in Hesiod's proem that A. is echoing in his own, (...) and in the same kind of sense, though, as Martin points out, A. ‘renverse en quelque sorte une expression d'Hésiode’. In the Phaenomena it is Zeus who is always being celebrated by men. The idiom with ν and negative is used by Plato, Lg. 793 b, οτε νόμους δε προσαγορεύειν ατ οτε ρρητα ν, and it may have been a familiar expression. But here in A., with the emphatic οδέποτε, it does seem rather contrived, and this may account for the fanciful explanation in the scholia that Zeus here represents the air we use every time we speak. The phrasing is certainly designed to give the maximum emphasis to ρρητον, which comes in enjambement at the beginning of the second line and is then followed by a strong sense pause. It is tempting, therefore, to suggest that the poet is indulging in a kind of pun on the sound of his own name, which usually has a long α in its first syllable and sometines η in its second: e.g. Call. Epigr. 27. 4 ρήτου σύντονος γρυπνίη, and Leonidas, A.P. 9. 25. 1 γράμμα τόδ' ρήτοιο δαήμονος. Other Hellenistic poets have contrived puns on the derivation oftheir names: Philodemusin A.P. 5. 115, Meleager in A.P. 12. 165, and Crates in A.P. 11. 218. 4. Closer to A. is the story recorded in the ancient biographical tradition of Antigonus complimenting the poet with the pun εδοξóτερον ποιες τòν Eδοξον. (shrink)