Recent data indicate that under a specific posthypnotic suggestion to circumvent reading, highly suggestible subjects successfully eliminated the Stroop interference effect. The present study examined whether an optical explanation could account for this finding. Using cyclopentolate hydrochloride eye drops to pharmacologically prevent visual accommodation in all subjects, behavioral Stroop data were collected from six highly hypnotizables and six less suggestibles using an optical setup that guaranteed either sharply focused or blurred vision. The highly suggestibles performed the Stroop task when naturally (...) vigilant, under posthypnotic suggestion not to read, and while visually blurred; the less suggestibles ran naturally vigilant, while looking away, and while visually blurred. Although visual accommodation was precluded for all subjects, posthypnotic suggestion effectively eliminated Stroop interference and was comparable to looking away in controls. These data strengthen the view that Stroop interference is neither robust nor inevitable and support the hypothesis that posthypnotic suggestion may exert a top-down influence on neural processing. (shrink)

This paper investigates what the source of time asymmetry is in thermodynamics, and comments on the question whether a time-symmetric formulation of the Second Law is possible.

Presents, with interpretative comments, the concurring and dissenting opinions in 71 recent crucial court decisions. All but seven are supreme court cases, relating to constitutional provisions for civil and political liberties.--R. H.

According to Guyer, Kant’s entire aesthetic theory rests on the imputation of intersubjectivity to judgments of taste. Empiricist theories could not establish intersubjectivity; rationalist ones could do so only by construing aesthetic judgment as confused cognitive or moral judgment. But even in the pre-Critical aesthetics, which Guyer teases out of Reflexionen, letters, and student notes, anticipations of a duality in intersubjectivity’s aesthetic function can be found. The first version and the printed version of the Critique of Judgment’s Introduction, in differentiating (...) aesthetic judgment from determinant and teleological judgment, reveal that intersubjectivity must both cause aesthetic pleasure and ground aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

Contains the author's lectures on the socialization process, given in the past ten years, with the addition of some recent research results. Genuine love, he argues, is the best solution to most if not all human problems. He is aware of the danger of oversimplification, but believes the importance of the subject warrants its general presentation apart from much of the supporting evidence.--R. H.

A careful and extensively annotated translation of the Metalogicon, the first to be made into a modern language. The translation, besides being accurate, succeeds in communicating some of the poetic and rhetorical devices used by John of Salisbury in his defense of the study of the Linguistic arts. --R. H.

A comprehensive and rather technical critical summary of psychological theories of perception. The notion of "dynamic structure" underlies the critical discussion and serves, in the final chapter, as the central concept in a general theory of behavior.--R. H.

A clearly argued judgment of Polybius' thought, in relation to Greek and Roman political history. The author is not concerned so much with criticism as with understanding, and the result is a book which illuminates basic problems of political theory and practice. In his conclusion, the author makes a sharp and searching criticism of the Hobbesean theory of sovereignty.--R. H.