For a long time, researchers in the fields of psychology and neuroscience have been interested in discovering ways to boost productivity in traditionally "healthy," "clinical," and "military" populations. However, one of the biggest challenges in reaching this objective is developing personalised performance phenotypes that can be used to build interventions that are specifically catered to each individual's needs. Impact: Thanks to AI's recent advancements, we can now create individualised training, preparation, and recovery plans that are tailored to each person's unique (...) cognitive and biological profile. Concurrent AI advancements, especially in the psychological and neurological sciences, have demonstrated the importance of incorporating domain expertise and stakeholder inputs into the development of trustworthy AI. Value: This Patterns themed issue seeks original empirical work, literature reviews, and methodological papers that establish and validate precision artificial intelligence methods for human performance optimization, with a focus on modelling individual differences via state-of-the-art computational methods. (shrink)

This book makes two principal claims: that Mead is misinterpreted by being aligned with Dewey, and that Mead's influence upon sociology has been exaggerated and misinterpreted. The latter claim is argued for on the basis of student reminiscences and citation counts, and seems plausible. The former rests upon a recategorization of Mead and Peirce as "realistic" pragmatists, and of James and Dewey as "nominalistic" ones, and also upon the claim that Dewey's thought was "biologistic" rather than "social." Both of these (...) premises are rather dubious. Lewis and Smith accept Peirce's account of the nature and significance of scholastic realism quite uncritically, and then use the Peircian notion of "the reality of thirdness" as a bridge of Mead's notion of symbol systems. The similarities between Mead and Dewey are downplayed wherever possible--e.g., by interpreting the Meadlike passages in Experience and Nature as unconscious plagiarism from Mead. The tone of the book is suggested by the following passage: "... the problem was a deep-rooted incommensurability between the James-Darwin biologistic philosophy and the social realism of Peirce and Mead. Perhaps it was due to his Hegelian heritage that Dewey had a tolerance for asserting essentially incompatible ideas". Those who see Dewey as offering a plausible synthesis of the biological and the social will find Lewis and Smith's treatment of Dewey cavalier. However, those who see Peirce's discussion of signs as the high point of pragmatism may find their treatment of American philosophy sympathetic.--R.R. (shrink)

One of the Studies in Modern European Literature and Thought, this surprisingly comprehensive study of Bergson attempts to remove a number of misunderstandings of his intuition. Alexander holds that "Bergson's, far from being a philosophy of instinct, is a philosophy of consciousness and reflection."--R. R. E.

The first chapter of this short book consists of Goodman's well-known article of 1946 on "The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals." The next two chapters present persuasive arguments showing that the problems of counterfactuals, nomologicality, dispositional predicates, and the status of the possible are aspects of a single problem--that of the rules of inductive validity. The final chapter presents criteria for the projectibility of statements. These criteria, based on the view that our past linguistic behavior determines the structure of our present (...) inductions, are presented in a manner which is perhaps too sketchy and informal to inspire complete confidence.--R. R. (shrink)

A detailed exposition of Kant's theory of perceptual objects and persons, from the point of view of contemporary analysis. The attempt is made to clarify Kant's theory for readers who approach Kant from that point of view. Of special value are the criticisms of phenomenalist interpretations of Kant's doctrine of physical objects, and the comparison with Strawson's account of persons.--R. R. E.

Although the style is a bit flamboyant, this entry in the Studies in Modern European Literature provides a valuable introduction to Buber's I and Thou and an extended study of his relation to Hasidism. --R. R. E.

Moser investigates the relevance of metaphysics to contemporary natural science and technology. He includes an analysis of the Aristotelian and scholastic concept of metaphysics, a discussion of Heidegger and Hartmann, and an exploration of a possibility of a metaphysics of nature and technology along Aristotelian lines. --R. R. E.

This book is a study of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology with especial reference to the problem of the possibility of a philosophical articulation of the pre-linguistic world of perception. The return to beginnings of which Sallis speaks is the return to the "wild being" of the world of perception at a deeper and more original level than thought and language. Sallis appears skeptical of a philosophy rooted in a world prior to thought and language. "That return to beginnings in which beginning is (...) pre-understood as identical with the perceptual dimension proves to be such that, when brought to its fulfillment, as in The Visible and the Invisible, it abolishes its own standpoint". (shrink)

Develops an account of man's contemporary situation based on Ortega's view that "human life is radical reality." In an effort to avoid "the absolutism of the intellect," the author uses "the method of vital reason," presenting a philosophical anthropology which insists that a man's thought and action have meaning only when seen in the light of his historical situation. Although its basic approach is by now familiar, and despite its non-systematic character, the book is suggestive and rich in insight; it (...) makes an original contribution in consciously attempting to avoid the pitfalls of extreme subjectivism by developing a view strongly reminiscent of Dewey's theory of "transactions."--R. R. (shrink)

A wide-ranging collection of excerpts from classical and contemporary writers on a variety of topics associated with religion, e.g., "The Destiny of Man," "The Mystery of Evil," and "Religious Language."--R. R. E.

This book is a collection of essays on various aspects of perceptual and linguistic experience, with the first half of the book focusing on the perceptual, the second half on the linguistic. It contains some fine phenomenological description of auditory experience and the sense of touch; and it is in his discussion of "sense" that he remains at the genuinely phenomenological perspective. The discussions of language and meaning tend to be "second level" comparisons of a wide range of diverse approaches (...) rather than actual phenomenological work. The main issue of the book, the relation of perception to language, is not resolved; rather the question is posed in terms of a number of contemporary thinkers: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Quine, Heidegger, Wittgenstein. The differences between the analytic and phenomenological traditions are wider than Ihde seems to recognize. Instead of all of this cross-cultural comparison, one would have wished that he had directed his attention to a phenomenology of language with the perceptiveness with which he addresses the phenomenology of sound and touch.—R.R.E. (shrink)

In these essays Shils gives an account of the course which sociology has followed from its beginnings in the early years of the century until the present. He argues that the discipline has shown genuine growth, but admits that it is not as yet, in any full sense, a science. He takes a middle course between those who smugly assume that any discipline as well-entrenched and well-funded as sociology must necessarily be doing valuable work and those who are content to (...) repeat Poincaré's gibe that sociology produces a new methodology every year but never any results. He thinks that sociology has not yet produced anything that could clearly count as a scientific "law," but insists that the greatest sociologists have done work comparable to the best in any field of learning. He notes that in the last few decades the intellectuals have accepted sociology as legitimate and important and comments: "I myself think that this recent reception of sociology is a historically unique phenomenon which corresponds to a great movement, and even progress, of the human race. Sociology has found its reception because it is an organ of the experience of a broader life, a life which reaches out towards other human beings". Shils is extraordinarily informative about the filiations between various figures in the history of sociology in different countries. His account of the institutionalization of the discipline is full of academic gossip of the best sort, and gives one a splendid synoptic picture of the kind of people, and the kind of motives and interests, which brought the discipline into being and led it through its various transmutations. Shils sets his face against the "radical" criticism of sociology, and of social science generally, as bound up with the prevailing institutions of capitalist society. He gives a refreshing defense of old-fashioned objectivity. This is a wise and civilized book, which distills an enormous amount of information into limpid prose.--R.R. (shrink)