How do we know that our own actions belong to us? How are we able to distinguish self-generated sensory events from those that arise externally? In this paper, I will briefly discuss experiments that were designed to investigate these questions. In particularly, I will review psychophysical and neuroimaging studies that have investigated how we recognise the consequences of our own actions, and why patients with delusions of control confuse self-produced and externally produced actions and sensations. Studies investigating the failure of (...) this 'self-monitoring' mechanism in patients with delusions of control will be discussed in the context of the hypothesis that overactivity in the parietal cortex and the cerebellum contribute to the misattribution of an action to an external source (). (shrink)

Sustained attention, a key cognitive skill that improves during childhood and adolescence, tends to be worse in some emotional and behavioural disorders. Sustained attention is typically studied in non-affective task contexts; here, we used a novel task to index performance in affective versus neutral contexts across adolescence (N = 465; ages 11–18). We asked whether: (i) performance would be worse in negative versus neutral task contexts; (ii) performance would improve with age; (iii) affective interference would be greater in younger adolescents; (...) (iv) adolescents at risk for depression and higher in anxiety would show overall worse performance; and (v) would show differential performance in negative contexts. Results indicated that participants performed more poorly in negative contexts and showed age-related performance improvements. Those at risk of depression performed more poorly than those at lower risk. However, there was no difference between groups as a result of affective context. For anxiety there was no difference in performance as a function of severity. However, those with higher anxiety showed less variance in their reaction times to negative stimuli than those with lower anxiety. One interpretation is that moderate levels of emotional arousal associated with anxiety make individuals less susceptible to the distracting effects of negative stimuli. (shrink)

The ability to notice and reflect on distressing internal experiences from an objective perspective, often called psychological decentering, has been posited to be protective against mental health difficulties. However, little is known about how this skill relates to age across adolescence, its relationship with mental health, and how it may impact key domains such as affective executive control and social cognition. This study analysed a pre-existing dataset including mental health measures and cognitive tasks, administered to adolescents in Greater London and (...) Cambridge (mean age (SD) = 14.4 (1.77) years, N = 553). A self-report index of decentering based on available questionnaire items in the dataset was developed. Multiple linear regression was used to examine associations between decentering and mental health, affective executive control (measured using an affective Stroop Task, affective Working Memory Task, and affective Sustained Attention to Response Task) and social cognition. Higher decentering was significantly associated with lower depression and anxiety scores and higher psychological wellbeing. Results did not indicate significant relationships between decentering, affective executive control and social cognition. Further research is needed to discover cognitive mechanisms associated with this process, which could allow for optimisation of existing psychological therapy and reveal new avenues of intervention. (shrink)

Introspection, or metacognition, is the capacity to reflect on our own thoughts and behaviours. Here, we investigated how one specific metacognitive ability develops in adolescence, a period of life associated with the emergence of self-concept and enhanced self-awareness. We employed a task that dissociates objective performance on a visual task from metacognitive ability in a group of 56 participants aged between 11 and 41 years. Metacognitive ability improved significantly with age during adolescence, was highest in late adolescence and plateaued going (...) into adulthood. Our results suggest that awareness of one’s own perceptual decisions shows a prolonged developmental trajectory during adolescence. (shrink)

Signs of mankind's solidarity, by J. R. Nelson.--Mankind, Israel and the nations in the Hebraic heritage, by M. Greenberg.--Christian insights from biblical sources, by C. Maurer.--Muhammad and all men, by D. Rahbar.--The impact of New World discovery upon European thought of man, by E. J. Burrus.--The effects of colonialism upon the Asian understanding of man, by J. G. Arapura.--Religious pluralism and the quest for human community, by S. J. Samartha.--From Confucian gentleman to the new Chinese 'political' man, by D. A. (...) Robinson.--The scientific revolution and the unity of man, by B. Towers.--Language and communication, by E. A. Nida.--Man and the son of man, by J. Moltmann.--The potentiality of conciliarity: communion, conscience, council, by W. B. Blakemore.--Oneness must mean wholeness, by J. R. Nelson. (shrink)

In Wollstonecraft’s early writings, she articulates the foundational theological and philosophical principles that would underpin her work throughout her career. One difference between her early and later work lies in the way that the values to which she refers are combined. Whereas Wollstonecraft at first appeals to the separate ideals of independence, equality, and virtue, from the 1790s onwards she integrates these into a characteristic republican framework that was in common use amongst dissenting theorists at the time. The set of (...) values on which Wollstonecraft draws, and the version of the republican framework that she develops, closely resemble those of Richard Price with whose work she was familiar. Examining the structural similarities between their respective models, I argue, gives us an insight into the systematic manner of aspects of Wollstonecraft’s own thought. It also allows us to see how Wollstonecraft goes beyond the republicanism of Price and others as she develops her own feminist solutions to the problems of structural domination. (shrink)

Republicans are divided on the question of whether domination is best understood in terms of capacities to act intentionally or of certain structural aspects of society. I offer a model combining each aspect derived from Frederick Douglass’s philosophy. Douglass referred to slavery in both interpersonal terms (to individuals) and structural (to the community), focussing on the unique and pervasive role played by social prejudice which distorts public reason thereby disabling the functioning of republican institutions. While Douglass’s insights constitute a significant (...) contribution to neo-republican theory in their own right, they also offer a slave’s perspective on the central republican concept of domination and shows how historic African American writers made innovative theoretical contributions to republicanism. Both of these have long been overlooked by republican scholars to the philosophical detriment of the tradition. (shrink)

En física, el infinito aparece vinculado al problema de lo continuo de las representaciones matemáticas usadas por las diversas teorías y, por lo tanto, a la posibilidad de la infinita divisibilidad y de la infinita extensión de la geometría del espaciotiempo y de los conceptos y magnitudes físicas mensurables. El modelo estándar de las partículas considera que las partículas elementales son «infinitamente» pequeñas, donde surgen cálculos con resultados infinitos para determinadas cantidades físicas y, para eliminarlos, se utilizan métodos de renormalización, (...) usados también en la cosmología clásica y en el modelo estándar cosmológico del Big Bang con la finalidad de domesticar los infinitos. La investigación en gravedad cuántica considera que el espacio no sea infinitamente divisible y los modelos de multiversos suponen tiempos y espacios infinitos para el Universo. Siendo nuestras teorías siempre limitadas y perfectibles, parece que no podemos probar, en física, que el Universo sea físicamente infinito. (shrink)

Menander's lost comedyThaiswith its famous protagonist, thehetairalover of Ptolemy I Soter and perhaps Alexander himself, was plainly well known at Rome, and is alluded to several times in Latin poetry of the Augustan and later periods, as Ariana Traill has shown. My purpose here is to argue that the literary characterisation of Thais in Menander's play underlies certain aspects of Lesbia as presented in the poetry of Catullus; that Catullus' poetry uses the plays of Menander has been demonstrated by Richard (...) Thomas, arguing that Catullus 8 shows clear traces of Demea's monologue in theSamia(325–56). (shrink)

Peter Marshall has done what all those concerned with manuscripts dream of doing: he has turned up a substantial lost portion of an ancient text. His discovery is related, with great modesty, in an article in Manuscripta 37 , 3–20, where he prints for the first time Tiberius Claudius Donatus' commentary on Virgil, Aeneid 6.1–157, edited from a gathering written in the sixteenth century and now bound into Vaticanus Latinus 8222 ff. 2r–9v. We offer here some emendations to the text (...) he prints; we are grateful to Prof. M. D. Reeve and Dr S. J. Heyworth for their suggestions, which we have incorporated in what follows. The bold figures represent the lines of Aeneid 6. (shrink)

Problem: Mitterer's critique of the central argumentations of radical constructivists has been mostly neglected until today. The paper presents and evaluates his criticism and, in the second part, outlines a format of constructivism that tries to draw appropriate consequences. Solution: In his critique Mitterer explains why the radical constructivism represented above all by Maturana, Varela, von Glasersfeld or Roth still remains in a dualistic format. In his view Neurobiology is used in their writings as the indisputable basis for deriving far-reaching (...) epistemological consequences. Therefore constructivism evades self-application. To overcome this serious critique a different approach to constructivist thinking is sketched that operates without using any biological or psychological theories, tries to avoid dualism, and elaborates Mitterer's basic argument that the description of an object and the object under description are the same. Benefits: The paper shows what constructivism can learn from a serious critique and how it can be rewritten in a non-dualistic way. (shrink)

Gaston Fessard employs Hegel’s dialectical logic to clarify how St. Ignatius’s _Spiritual Exercises_ envisage and prepare the decisions and choices between contrasting options or major turning points in spiritual life, in moments of what Ignatius would call _Election_.

The present article has three sections. The first one discusses the relationship of the theological theory of transubstantiation to that of transignification (change of meaning) and transfinalization (change of finality), ideas that were introduced just before the time of Vatican II by northern European theologians. The second section develops a holistic view of the nature of matter. Our present scientific knowledge seems to require that we abandon the Aristotelian theory of hylomorphism in favor of a theory in which real beings (...) of a certain level ‘sublate’ real but subordinate beings of lower levels. For example, a human being is a substance that includes within itself many smaller substances. When he was in the flesh, the physical body of Christ included within itself a vast number of interconnected atoms and molecules. The third section discusses ideas of Teilhard de Chardin about the relationship of Christ to matter. (shrink)

This book explores an undeveloped area in postmodern thought: organizational ethics. Ethical debates and analyses usually focus on a particular act or action, an actor, and/or how a secular society should address any of those particular persons or events. In the Post Modern age, ethical decisions and policies are characterized by moral and cultural pluralism. However, there is a second factor that complicates ethical and policy decisions even further. This book argues that in the postmodern age ethical decisions often need (...) to be understood as part of the decision making of organizations and bureaucracies. Organizational decisions often have direct bearing on the choices made by individuals. Two areas that exemplify postmodern issue are the areas of health care and education. For example the decision making of Admissions Officers in American higher education, are influenced by decisions that have been made by the university about the size of the class and the diversity of the class. Health Care organizations make policy decisions that affect every aspect of a patient’s care from admission to treatment and the types of care that are or are not offered. Both education and health care are the object of the significant investment of resources, both areas are value laden in postmodern, pluralistic societies, and yet we do not have a comprehensive method to understand them or evaluate them. This book is of interest to bioethicists, physicians, nurses, health care policy students, educational policy experts, students and government regulators. (shrink)

Horace's Asterie ode has been somewhat neglected by critics. Fraenkel, uninterested in the erotic odes, fails to mention it, and others see it as merely counterbalancing the preceding six Roman Odes by its frivolity and light irony. However, it is one of Horace's most subtle and best-organized erotic odes, matching the more obvious conventions of Latin love-elegy with a romanticized Odyssey as an underlying framework.

In examining Ennead VI 4[22], we find Plotinus in conflict with modern, i.e., Cartesian or Kantian, assumptions about the relation of soul and body and the identification of the self with the subject. Curiously, his images and exposition are more in tune with Twentieth Century notions such as wave and field. With these as keys, we are in a position to unlock the subtlety of Plotinus' analysis of the way soul and body are present together, with sensation structured through the (...) body and judgment coming from the soul. The problem of the self concerns not only the unity of the self in terms of body and soul, but also how the self is constituted in relation to other selves, both keeping its individuality and sharing its experiences at the same time. (shrink)

"This fine book is ideal for introductory courses in philosophy, and it is executed and backed up by careful, sophisticated philosophical analysis and insight." —_W. Norris Clarke, S.J., Fordham University_ _ _ _Human Knowing_ is a clearly written, brief introduction that guides the reader through an exploration of sense perception, ordinary knowing, scientific knowing, and philosophic knowing. This journey culminates in a justification of philosophy as a genuine form of knowing and thus a natural prelude to metaphysics. Though Felt manages (...) to avoid technical language, the development of his argument is a genuine exercise in philosophic thinking. The outcome is a contemporary expression of a position similar to that of Thomas Aquinas, significantly enriched by insights from Bergson, Whitehead, and phenomenology. (shrink)

The ‘death’ of German Idealism has been decried innumerable times since its revolutionary inception, whether it be by the 19th-century critique of Western metaphysics, phenomenology, contemporary French philosophy, or analytic philosophy. Yet in the face of two hundred years of sustained, extremely rigorous attempts to leave behind its legacy, German Idealism has resisted its philosophical death sentence. For this exact reason it is timely ask: What remains of German Idealism? In what ways does its fundamental concepts and texts still speak (...) to us? Drawing together new and established voices from scholars in Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, this volume offers a fresh look on this time-honoured tradition. It uses myriad of recently developed conceptual tools to present new and challenging theories of its now canonical figures. (shrink)