Examines the philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience behind visual experience. Chapters on attention, illusions, aftereffects, binocular rivalry, hemispheric differences, attentional blink, agnosias and other disorders. Particular attention paid to consciouseness. The systematic review of key topics and the multitude of perspectives make this book an ideal primary or ancillary text for graduate courses in perception, vision, consciousness, or philosophy of mind.

We live in the digital age where our sense of self and identity has moved beyond the body to encompass hardware and software. Cyborgs, online representations in social media, avatars, and virtual reality extend our notion of what it means to be human. This approachable book looks at the progression of self from the biological to the technological using a multidisciplinary approach. It examines the notion of personhood from philosophical, psychological, neuroscience, robotics, and artificial intelligence perspectives, showing how the interface (...) between bodies, brains, and technology can give rise to new forms of human identity. Jay Friedenberg presents the content in an organized and easy-to-understand fashion to facilitate learning. A gifted researcher, author, and classroom teacher, he is one of the most influential voices in the field of artificial psychology. (shrink)

What is art? What is beauty? Why are we driven to create? People have been struggling with the answers to these questions for millenia. In this book Jay Friedenberg examines age old and contemporary responses to the perceptual and performative side of aesthetics. The work is wide-ranging in scope, addressing all forms of art including painting, photography, writing, film, music, theater, dance, and more. Issues are examined from multiple perspectives with separate chapters on history, philosophy, mathematics, physics, psychology, and (...) neuroscience. This beautifully illustrated book can be read by a general audience or used as an undergraduate or graduate textbook for courses in art history, aesthetics, or media studies. (shrink)

What does it mean to be human? Philosophers and theologians have been wrestling with this question for centuries. Recent advances in cognition, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and robotics have yielded insights that bring us even closer to an answer. There are now computer programs that can accurately recognize faces, engage in conversation, and even compose music. There are also robots that can walk up a flight of stairs, work cooperatively with each other and express emotion. If machines can do everything we (...) can, does that mean we are machines? -/- This book examines whether an artificial person can be constructed and if so, what that might tell us about our future and ourselves. Different human capacities such as perception, creativity, consciousness, social behavior, and free will are described in separate chapters. Technological advances in these areas are summarized and compared to our own abilities. The book adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, with a naturalistic perspective drawn from biology and psychology matched against a technological perspective based on computer science and robotics. (shrink)

An introductory text on cognitive science from an interdisciplinary perspective. Containing chapters on philosophy, psychology, cognition, neuroscience, the network and evolutionary approaches. Covers theories and models of mind looking at all major information processing categories: perception, attention, language, emotions, social, and artificial intelligence.

A summary of topics and theoretical approaches to dynamical systems and psychology. Includes chapters on physical systems, self-organization, state space and dimensionality, networks, neurodynamics, fractals and how such concepts help to explain cognition and the mind.

Calculations are made for the components of the field for electrostatic models of a fixed charge and dipole square sheet. The contributions to the field in certain nonaxial positions indicate that the components of the fieldincrease as a function of distance until they reach amaximum where they thendecrease in the normal manner. In the axial position, the field decreases as a function of position confirming analyses described in previous articles of comparisons of axial symmetric charge and dipole fields.On a fait (...) des calculations des components d'un champ dans une modèle electrostatique avec des charges et des dipoles stabiles d'un plan quadrangulair. En position non-axiale speciale les contributions à la champ indiquent que les components croissent en relation de la distance jusqu'à une maximum et après-la ils diminuent normallement. En position axiale les components diminuent en relation de la position, conformant l'analyse décrit dans les publications prochaines.Es sind Berechnungen für die Komponenten eines Feldes in einem elektrostatischen Modell mit stabiler Ladung und Dipol in einem Quadrat gemacht. Die Beiträge dieser Komponenten bei gewissen nicht axialen Stellungen zeigen dass diese Komponenten heranwachsen mit zunehmendem Abstand bis einem Maximum ist erreicht; nachdem findet eine normale Abnahme statt. In axialer Stellung nehmen die Komponenten mit zunehmender Abstand ab, was eine Bestätigung der frühere Untersuchungen ist. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays written on a variety of topics relevant to the future of humankind. The chapters are organized foundationally starting with how it is we can know and understand reality. This is followed by descriptions of future technologies and the new science that will drive them. Then we take a look at ourselves, how smart we are and how intelligent our machines may become. The final sections paint a larger picture, examining civilization with a focus (...) on what we’ve done wrong historically and how we may correct such mistakes. (shrink)

In empirical modeling, mathematics has an important utility in transforming descriptive representations of target system into calculation devices, thus creating useful scientific models. The transformation may be considered as the action of tools. In this paper, I assume that model idealizations could be such tools. I then examine whether these idealizations have characteristic properties of tools, i.e., whether they are being adapted to the objects to which they are applied, and whether they are to some extent generic.

Julie Houts has cultivated a devoted following as "Instagram's favourite illustrator" (Vogue) by lampooning the conflicting messages and images women consume and share with the world every day. A collection of darkly comic illustrated essays, Literally Me chronicles the daily exploits of "slightly antisocial heroines" (Refinery29) in vivid, excruciatingly funny detail, including: -The beauty routine of a deranged bride who aspires to be "truly without flaws" on her wedding day -What happens when Kylie Jenner has an existential crisis and (...) can no longer "step out" -A journey to Coachella by the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse -The true dating confessions of a fembot -The terrifying description for Alice Staunch's book How to be the Perfect Feminist -The diary of Fiddle Ficus, a tree that lives inside a CÉLINE store, and much more. Literally Me marks the launch of a brilliant new social satirist. Julie's singular voice and beautiful illustrations reveal the truth about the absurdity of life in the social media age: the line between becoming a total `Girlboss' and a 21st-century American Psycho is razor-thin."--Dust jacket. (shrink)

Some interesting exceptions notwithstanding, the traditional logic of economic efficiency has long favored hierarchical forms of organization and disfavored democracy in business. What does the balance of arguments look like, however, when values besides efficient revenue production are brought into the picture? The question is not hypothetical: In recent years, an ever increasing number of corporations have developed and adopted socially responsible behaviors, thereby hybridizing aspects of corporate businesses and social organizations. We argue that the joint pursuit of financial and (...) social objectives warrants significant rethinking of organizational democracy’s merits compared both to hierarchy and to non-democratic alternatives to hierarchy. In making this argument, we draw on an extensive literature review to document the relative lack of substantive discussion of organizational democracy since 1960. And we draw lessons from political theory, suggesting that the success of political democracy in integrating diverse values offers some grounds for asserting parallel virtues in the business case. (shrink)

This article discusses what is involved in having full moral status, as opposed to a lesser degree of moral status and surveys different views of the grounds of moral status as well as the arguments for attributing a particular degree of moral status on the basis of those grounds.

We define two maps, one map from the set of conditional probability systems (CPS’s) onto the set of lexicographic probability systems (LPS’s), and another map from the set of LPS’s with full support onto the set of CPS’s. We use these maps to establish a relationship between strong belief (defined on CPS’s) and assumption (defined on LPS’s). This establishes a relationship at the abstract level between these two widely used notions of belief in an extended probability-theoretic setting.

"Faith Has Its Reasons" shows readers how struggles, heartache, and tears can transform from a nightmare into a ministry. This book contains the encouragement to take the first steps out of grief and climb the mountain out of the valley of the shadow of death. This book will also inspire those that may question heaven. A child's amazing visits to heaven gave him the courage to tell others about Jesus. His bravery and boldness after dying and losing his father will (...) open your eyes to how God can use an unthinkable tragedy for His glory. If you have endured a catastrophic loss and questioned God, this book will show you how to persevere and find happiness again. (shrink)

This book is the most comprehensive and rigourous critique of the ways disciplinary boundaries still inhibit knowledge-production and integration.

Globalizing Feminist Bioethics is a collection of new essays on the topic of international bioethics that developed out of the Third World Congress of the International Association of Bioethics in 1996. Rosemarie Tong is the primary editor of this collection, in which she, Gwen Anderson, and Aida Santos look at such international issues as female genital cutting, fatal daughter syndrome, use of reproductive technologies, male responsibility, pediatrics, breast cancer, pregnancy, and drug testing.

A 2011 National Academies of Sciences report called for an “Information Commons” and a “Knowledge Network” to revolutionize biomedical research and clinical care. We interviewed 41 expert stakeholders to examine governance, access, data collection, and privacy in the context of a medical information commons. Stakeholders' attitudes about MICs align with the NAS vision of an Information Commons; however, differences of opinion regarding clinical use and access warrant further research to explore policy and technological solutions.

From the Supreme Court to the bedroom, privacy is an intensely contested interest in our everyday lives and privacy law. Some people appeal to privacy to protect such critical areas as abortion, sexuality, and personal information. Yet, privacy skeptics argue that there is no such thing as a right to privacy. I argue that we cannot abandon the concept of privacy. If we wish to avoid extending this elusive concept to cover too much of our lives or shrinking it to (...) cover too little, we must come to understand it. After exploring the privacy arguments of philosophers and constitutional and tort privacy law, I argue for a new definition of privacy and an explanation of its value that clarifies and resolves many of our conflicts. Privacy is critical because it allows us to protect a realm in which we can have intimate relations with others. (shrink)

Acknowledgments THROUGHOUT this book I cite the many people who have provided information on individual programs and activities. ...

In the recent methodological individualism-holism debate on explanation, there has been considerable focus on what reasons methodological holists may advance in support of their position. We believe it is useful to approach the other direction and ask what considerations methodological individualists may in fact offer in favor of their view about explanation. This is the background for the question we pursue in this paper: Why be a methodological individualist? We start out by introducing the methodological individualism-holism debate while distinguishing two (...) forms of methodological individualism: a form that says that individualist explanations are always better than holist accounts and a form that says that providing intervening individualist mechanisms always makes for better explanations than purely holist ones. Next, we consider four lines of reasoning in support of methodological individualism: arguments from causation, from explanatory depth, from agency, and from normativity. We argue that none of them offer convincing reasons in support of the two explanatory versions of individualism we consider. While there may well be occasions in which individualists’ favorite explanations are superior, we find no reason to think this always must be the case. (shrink)

This collection of papers investigates the most recent debates about individualism and holism in the philosophy of social science. The debates revolve mainly around two issues: firstly, whether social phenomena exist sui generis and how they relate to individuals. This is the focus of discussions between ontological individualists and ontological holists. Secondly, to what extent social scientific explanations may and should, focus on individuals and social phenomena respectively. This issue is debated amongst methodological holists and methodological individualists. -/- In social (...) science and philosophy, both issues have been intensively discussed and new versions of the dispute have appeared just as new arguments have been advanced. At present, the individualism/holism debate is extremely lively and this book reflects the major positions and perspectives within the debate. This volume is also relevant to debates about two closely related issues in social science: the micro-macro debate and the agency-structure debate. -/- This book presents contributions from key figures in both social science and philosophy, in the first such collection on this topic to be published since the 1970s. -/- . (shrink)

The National Institutes of Health and other federal health agencies are considering establishing a national biobank to study the roles of genes and environment in human health. A preliminary public engagement study was conducted to assess public attitudes and concerns about the proposed biobank, including the expectations for return of individual research results. A total of 141 adults of different ages, incomes, genders, ethnicities, and races participated in 16 focus groups in six locations across the country. Focus group participants voiced (...) a strong desire to be able to access individual research results. Recognizing the wide range of possible research results from a large cohort study, they repeatedly and spontaneously suggested that cohort study participants be given ongoing choices as to which results they received. (shrink)

The problem of theorizing privacy moves on two levels, the first consisting of an inadequate conceptual vocabulary and the second consisting of an inadequate institutional grammar. Privacy rights are supposed to protect individual subjects, and so conventional ways of understanding privacy are subject-centered, but subject-centered approaches to theorizing privacy also wrestle with deeply embedded contradictions. And privacy’s most enduring institutional failure modes flow from its insistence on placing the individual and individualized control at the center. Strategies for rescuing privacy from (...) irrelevance involve inverting both established ways of talking about privacy rights and established conventions for designing institutions to protect them. In terms of theory, turning privacy inside out entails focusing on the conditions that are needed to produce sufficiently private and privacy-valuing subjects. Institutionally, turning privacy inside out entails focusing on the design, production, and operational practices most likely to instantiate and preserve those conditions. (shrink)

In this mixed methods study we identify and assess ethical and pragmatic issues and dilemmas surrounding e-health technologies in the context of primary care, including what is already in the literature. We describe how primary healthcare professionals can access reliable and accurate data, improve the quality of care for patients, and lower costs while following institutional guidelines to protect patients. Using qualitative and quantitative methodologies we identify several underlying ethical and pragmatic burdens and benefits of e-health technologies. The 41 study (...) participants reported more burdens than benefits, and were generally ambivalent about their level of satisfaction with their institutions’ ehealth technologies, their general knowledge about the technologies, and whether e-health can improve team-based communication and collaboration. Participants provided recommendations to improve e-health technologies in primary care settings. (shrink)

In this case, Brian, a 42-year-old patient with decision-making capacity and a history of non-adherence to treatment, refuses to leave the hospital due to concerns about a bothersome rash on his ar...

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 44-46, December 2011.

Poseidon has recently benefited from renewed scholarly attention, contributing to re-evaluate his role in ancient Greek imaginary. By opening the research previously limited to literary evidence to the archaeological and topographical evidence, new perspectives on “Poseidonian landscapes” have emerged. Arcadia, a land-locked region where Poseidon Hippios is celebrated with fervour, is here taken as a case study to try and go further in identifying the god’s realm of action. Areas with floods seem to be his preferred worship places, while in (...) other areas he plays a crucial part in myths but is hardly worshipped alone. There also seems to be a connection between his patronage over freshwater and horses. Overall, natural observation seems to have been instrumental in choosing the location of his worship places. (shrink)

We investigate if private family firms have a greater environmental performance focus than nonfamily firms, and if this relationship is moderated by the strength of the firms’ social embeddedness. We empirically test these issues using a representative sample of 1452 private Australian small and medium-sized enterprises. Contrary to prevailing assumptions and previous indicative findings in the public firm context, our results show that family firms have a lower environmental performance focus than nonfamily firms. However, in cases where the firm is (...) highly embedded in the social community, we find that family firms have a higher environmental performance focus. We explain our unexpected results by considering the role of financial risk in publicly held family firms. Accordingly, we posit that prior findings in the public firm context may be evidence of families expropriating wealth from nonfamily shareholders rather than altruistic pro-environmental behavior. (shrink)

Recent debates about inequality have focused almost exclusively on the distribution of wealth and disparities in income, but little notice has been paid to the distribution of free time. Free time is commonly assumed to be a matter of personal preference, a good that one chooses to have more or less of. Even if there is unequal access to free time, the cause and solution are presumed to lie with the resources of income and wealth. In Free Time, Julie (...) Rose argues that these views are fundamentally mistaken. First, Rose contends that free time is a resource, like money, that one needs in order to pursue chosen ends. Further, realizing a just distribution of income and wealth is not sufficient to ensure a fair distribution of free time. Because of this, anyone concerned with distributive justice must attend to the distribution of free time. On the basis of widely held liberal principles, Rose explains why citizens are entitled to free time—time not committed to meeting life's necessities and instead available for chosen pursuits. The novel argument that the just society must guarantee all citizens their fair share of free time provides principled grounds to address critical policy choices, including work hours regulations, Sunday closing laws, public support for caregiving, and the pursuit of economic growth. Delving into an original topic that touches everyone, Free Time demonstrates why all citizens have, in the words of early labor reformers, a right to "hours for what we will.". (shrink)

This paper is the first of two in a series. In this paper, we identify mental health needs and challenges in the age of COVID-19 among Nepali-speaking, Bhutanese resettled refugees in the USA. We argue for a public health justice framework that looks critically at social determinants impacting mental health (SDIMH) barriers, which negatively impact our Bhutanese population, and serves as a theoretical foundation toward public policy and law that will inform healthcare decisions and fair treatment of resettled refugees at (...) the clinical bedside and in the community. We first describe our Bhutanese refugee population and the critical mental health issues that, for many, originated during political persecution and violent ethnic cleansing initiatives, or while living in refugee camps prior to resettlement to the USA. We present a social justice framework emerging from an extensive literature review and incorporating core social determinants specific to mental health in the age of COVID-19, which are guided by the social determinants of economic stability; neighborhoods and physical environment; education; nutrition and exercise; community and social context; healthcare system; and legal system. We illustrate specific SDIMH of our resettled Bhutanese refugees during the pandemic, followed by a second paper that details recommendations for applying the SDIMH in a collective effort to address specific barriers to mental healthcare and support. (shrink)