Motor inhibitory control, the ability to suppress unwanted actions, has been previously shown to rely on domain-general IC processes that are involved in a wide range of IC tasks. Nevertheless, the existence of effector-specific regions and activation patterns that would differentiate manual vs. oculomotor response inhibition remains unknown. In this study, we investigated the brain dynamics supporting these two response effectors with the same IC task paradigm. We examined the behavioral performance and electrophysiological activity in a group of healthy young (...) people with a Go/NoGo task using the index finger for the manual modality and the eyes for the oculomotor modality. By computing topographic analysis of variance, we found significant differences between topographies of scalp recorded potentials of the two response effectors between 250 and 325 ms post-stimulus onset. The source estimations localized this effect within the left precuneus, a part of the superior parietal lobule, showing stronger activity in the oculomotor modality than in the manual modality. Behaviorally, we found a significant positive correlation in response time between the two modalities. Our collective results revealed that while domain-general IC processes would be engaged across different response effectors in the same IC task, effector-specific activation patterns exist. In this case, the stronger activation of the left precuneus likely accounts for the increased demand for visual attentional processes in the oculomotor Go/NoGo task. (shrink)

Henry Sedgewick's The Methods of Ethics challenges comparison, as no other work in moral philosophy, with Aristotle's Ethics in the depth of its understanding of practical rationality, and in its architectural coherence it rivals the work of Kant. In this historical, rather than critical study, Professor Schneewind shows how Sidgewick's arguments and conclusions represent rational developments of the work of Sidgewick's predecessors, and brings out the nature and structure of the reasoning underlying his position.

Argues that educators should help students piece together authentic narratives about themselves and about society, and not to focus so much on teaching students to process information.

Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors-...

Is jealousy eliminable? If so, at what cost? What are the connections between pride the sin and the pride insisted on by identity politics? How can one question an individual's understanding of their own happiness or override a society's account of its own rituals? What is wrong with incest? These and other questions about what sustains and threatens our identity are pursued using the resources of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and other disciplines. The discussion throughout is informed and motivated by the Spinozist (...) hope that understanding our lives can help change them, can help make us more free. (shrink)

Bruner sets forth nothing less than a new agenda for the study of the mind. He examines the irrepressibly human acts of imagination that allow us to make experience meaningful; he calls this side of mental activity the “narrative mode,” and his book makes important advances in the effort to unravel its nature.

Mgr Félix Hedde (1879-1960), o.p., est un personnage-clé de la mission des dominicains de Lyon dans le Haut-Tonkin. Son long ministère au Việt Nam (1926-1960) en fit un témoin privilégié d’une période dramatique de l’histoire du pays. Il a connu les années prospères de la colonisation française jusqu’en 1940, les souffrances de ses compatriotes pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et la guerre d’Indochine, leur humiliation face à la décolonisation forcée, et enfin la persécution ouverte ou larvée des chrétiens sous le (...) régime communiste. Chez Félix Hedde, l’amour pour la mission du Tonkin, le désir d’y implanter l’Église, se conjuguait à sa volonté d’honorer ses traditions familiales et nationales. L’épreuve de l’occupation japonaise, de la guerre d’Indochine, des défaites de l’armée française, autant que le réconfort de la fidélité des chrétiens vietnamiens de la mission dans une situation de plus en plus critique, détachant Mgr Hedde de ses rêves patriotiques, le conduisirent à l’accomplissement de sa vocation missionnaire. Les conditions particulières de son territoire de mission, où les ethnies montagnardes sont très largement majoritaires, l’amenèrent cependant à proposer pour lui succéder le Français André Jacq, privant ainsi d’évêque les chrétiens du lieu, de 1958 à 1990. (shrink)

This book, the product of a lifetime of research by one of the founders of developmental psychology, takes on the powerful assumptions behind these questions- ...

Surely since the Enlightenment, if not before, the study of mind has centered principally on how man achieves a “true” knowledge of the world. Emphasis in this pursuit has varied, of course: empiricists have concentrated on the mind’s interplay with an external world of nature, hoping to find the key in the association of sensations and ideas, while rationalists have looked inward to the powers of mind itself for the principles of right reason. The objective, in either case, has been (...) to discover how we achieve “reality,” that is to say, how we get a reliable fix on the world, a world that is, as it were, assumed to be immutable and, as it were, “there to be observed.”This quest has, of course, had a profound effect on the development of psychology, and the empiricist and rationalist traditions have dominated our conceptions of how the mind grows and how it gets its grasp on the “real world.” Indeed, at midcentury Gestalt theory represented the rationalist wing of this enterprise and American learning theory the empiricist. Both gave accounts of mental development as proceeding in some more or less linear and uniform fashion from an initial incompetence in grasping reality to a final competence, in one case attributing it to the work out of internal processes or mental organization, and in the other to some unspecified principle of reflection by which—whether through reinforcement, association, or conditioning—we came to respond to the world “as it is.” There have always been dissidents who challenged these views, but conjectures about human mental development have been influenced far more by majoritarian rationalism and empiricism than by these dissident voices. Jerome Bruner is research professor of psychology at New York University, where he is also serving as Meyer Visiting Professor of Law. His most recent book, Acts of Meaning, appeared in 1990. In 1987 he received the Balzan Prize for “a lifetime contribution to the study of human psychology.”. (shrink)

Much of our understanding of human thinking is based on probabilistic models. This innovative book by Jerome R. Busemeyer and Peter D. Bruza argues that, actually, the underlying mathematical structures from quantum theory provide a much better account of human thinking than traditional models. They introduce the foundations for modelling probabilistic-dynamic systems using two aspects of quantum theory. The first, 'contextuality', is a way to understand interference effects found with inferences and decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The second, 'quantum entanglement', (...) allows cognitive phenomena to be modeled in non-reductionist ways. Employing these principles drawn from quantum theory allows us to view human cognition and decision in a totally new light. Introducing the basic principles in an easy-to-follow way, this book does not assume a physics background or a quantum brain and comes complete with a tutorial and fully worked-out applications in important areas of cognition and decision. (shrink)

A theory that treats language not as an abstract symbol system but as a function of our brains and experience, integrating recent findings from biology, ...

Closely related to this is Mr. Bruner's "evolutionary instrumentalism," his conception of instruction as the means of transmitting the tools and skills of a ...

Does Freud still have something to teach us? The premise of this volume is that he most certainly does. Approaching Freud from not only the philosophical but also historical, psychoanalytical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives, the contributors show us how Freud gave us a new and powerful way to think about human thought and action. They consider the context of Freud's thought and the structure of his arguments to reveal how he made sense of ranges of experience generally neglected or misunderstood. (...) All the central topics of Freud's work, from sexuality and neurosis to morality, art, and culture are covered. (shrink)

The purpose of the work is to compare aquinas and merleau-Ponty and see whether the thought of thomas is relevant today. It is, As presenting a different insight into being. They agree in their purposes, But seek reality differently. Thomas looks for ultimate cause, Eternal truths, And claims the soul of man is an independent, Spiritual entity; merleau-Ponty looks to phenomena to find essences, Sees truth as elusive, And claims the soul is developmental. Both affirm the unity of man, However.

L'homme ne se rapporte droitement a lui-meme qu'en se rapportant a la totalite du monde qui l'entoure. Ce monde qui est unique selon Platon, sans qu'il soit double par le monde intelligible dont parlera le neoplatonisme, est rendu possible par la rencontre de l'intelligible et du sensible. Ainsi, le logos, par quoi l'homme a acces aux Formes, est ce qui permet d'operer la deliaison proprement philosophique du corps et de l'ame, selon les termes du Phedon, sans qu'il faille poser un (...) dualisme cosmique qui se retrouverait dans l'homme. De meme que le sensible s'intelligibilise par la Participation et ainsi se maintient comme phenomene stable, de meme l'homme peut avoir un usage harmonieux de son corps et de ses sensations. Deliaison n'est pas rupture. L'enfance, la sexuation, le sommeil, les reves, la mort et la parole, ici interroges, montrent que l'anthropologie de Platon ne condamne ni le plaisir, ni le corps. La vie de la pensee ne s'absente pas des mouvements corporels qu'elle accompagne. C'est pourquoi le corps est le signe de l'ame. (shrink)

In examining the puzzle of experience, and its possible solutions, Valberg discusses relevant views of Hume, Kant, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Strawson, as well as ideas from the recent philosophy of perception. Finally, he describes and analyzes a manifestation of the puzzle outside philosophy, in everyday experience.

This paper presents a general computational treatment of how mammals are able to deal with visual objects and environments. The model tries to cover the entire range from behavior and phenomenological experience to detailed neural encodings in crude but computationally plausible reductive steps. The problems addressed include perceptual constancies, eye movements and the stable visual world, object descriptions, perceptual generalizations, and the representation of extrapersonal space.The entire development is based on an action-oriented notion of perception. The observer is assumed to (...) be continuously sampling the ambient light for information of current value. The central problem of vision is taken to be categorizing and locating objects in the environment. The critical step in this process is the linking of visual information to symbolic object descriptions; this is calledindexing, from the analogy of identifying a book from index terms. The system must also identifysituationsand use this knowledge to guide movement and other actions in the environment. The treatment focuses on the different representations of information used in the visual system.The four representational frames capture information in the following forms: retinotopic, head-based, symbolic, and allocentric. The functional roles of the four frames, the communication among them, and their suggested neurophysiological realization constitute the core of the paper. The model is perforce crude, but appears to be consistent with all relevant findings. (shrink)

Three experiments explored the effects of word problem cueing on debiasing versions of the bat-and-ball problem. In the experimental condition order, participants solved a simpler isomorphic version of the problem prior to solving a standard version that, critically, had the same item-and-dollar amounts. Conversely, in the control condition order, participants solved the standard version prior to solving the isomorph. Across the first 2 experiments, participants cued with the isomorph were more likely to correctly solve the standard version of the problem. (...) In the third experiment, this cueing effect was not replicated, but importantly cued participants were more likely to correctly solve the standard version of the problem with other item-and-dollar amounts, indicating near transfer. Far transfer was evident in faster response times to other problems in the Cognitive Reflection Test following practice. Along with providing converging evidence for the cueing account, these results are consistent with recent attentional debiasing findings. (shrink)

First published in 1977, Emotion, Thought and Therapy is a study of Hume and Spinoza and the relationship of philosophical theories of the emotions to psychological theories of therapy. Jerome Neu argues that the Spinozists are closer to the truth; that is, that thoughts are of greater importance than feelings in the classification and discrimination of emotional states. He then contends that if the Spinozists are closer to the truth, we have the beginning of an argument to show that Freudian (...) or analytic therapies make philosophic sense. Throughout the book, careful attention is paid to modern discussions in philosophy of mind and psychology, and materials from anthropology and other relevant disciplines are considered. At the centre of the discussion is the notion of ‘thought-dependence’. Therapies for psychological disorders are placed along a spectrum in accordance with the role they assign to thoughts. The Spinozist view of the emotions can be seen as at the extreme thought end of a corresponding spectrum of theories of the emotions. The book suggests that this stream may help explain the spectrum of therapeutic theories and the possibilities that exist for psychological development and change. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy, psychology and counselling. (shrink)

Asymmetric cell division generates cell diversity and contributes to cellular aging and rejuvenation. Here, we review the molecular mechanisms enabling budding yeast to recognize spindle pole bodies (SPB, centrosome equivalent) based on their age, and guide their non‐random mitotic segregation: SPB inheritance requires the distinction of old from new SPBs and is regulated by the SPB‐inheritance network (SPIN) and the mitotic exit network (MEN). The SPIN marks the pre‐existing SPB as old and the MEN recognizes these marks translating them into (...) spindle orientation. We next revisit other molecules and structures that partition depending on their age rather than their abundance at mitosis as, for example, DNA, centrosomes, mitochondria, and histones in yeast and other systems. The recurrence of this differential behavior suggests a functional significance for numerous cell types, which we then discuss. We conclude that non‐random segregation may facilitate asymmetric cell fate determination and thereby indirectly aging and rejuvenation. (shrink)

Human beings are endowed by the Source of their existence on earth with those inalienable rights which all members of humanity ought to respect. Freedom, in all its basic forms, is the root of these rights, but sadly, it is not the patrimony of all the people of the world. Political, societal, even domestic situations often deprive persons of this personal endowment. Basically, a philosophy of life, construed on a set of false premises, rejects some persons and/or peoples as unworthy (...) of the freedom which is their right. (shrink)

En los últimos años la historiografía incrementó su interés por el análisis comparado entre estados y evoluciones político-sociales, una excelente perspectiva para el análisis de la historia contemporánea. Las diferentes manifestaciones de clientelismo político que se desarrollaron en la Europa mediterránea desde el último cuarto del siglo XIX, caso del caciquismo español, el opportunisme francés y el transformismo italiano, vienen a ser la plasmación del pragmatismo político independientemente de la condición ideológica, y además, sirvieron de puente entre el fin del (...) liberalismo y la instauración de las democracias. Pero estas relaciones de poder oficiosas también fueron el intento de las élites y notables por fortalecer su posición ante los nuevos movimientos e ideologías que eclosionan con la sociedad de masas. Con esta comunicación pretendemos reflejar cómo las políticas clientelares desarrolladas en la Europa mediterránea en la transición del siglo XIX al XX permitieron: a) la estabilidad necesaria para iniciar reformas en un ambiente sociopolítico todavía en formación; b) fueron sistemas donde se hicieron visibles las contradicciones entre el marco legal, fundamentado en los principios liberales, y la aplicación de los mismos por parte de unas élites que pretendían mantener un orden político y social que les era favorable. (shrink)