Humans' voice offers the widest variety of motor phenomena of any human activity. However, its clinical evaluation in people with movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease lags behind current knowledge on advanced analytical automatic speech processing methodology. Here, we use deep learning-based speech processing to differentially analyze voice recordings in 14 people with PD before and after dopaminergic medication using personalized Convolutional Recurrent Neural Networks and Phone Attribute Codebooks. p-CRNN yields an accuracy of 82.35% in the binary classification of ON (...) and OFF motor states at a sensitivity/specificity of 0.86/0.78. The PAC-based approach's accuracy was slightly lower with 73.08% at a sensitivity/specificity of 0.69/0.77, but this method offers easier interpretation and understanding of the computational biomarkers. Both p-CRNN and PAC provide a differentiated view and novel insights into the distinctive components of the speech of persons with PD. Both methods detect voice qualities that are amenable to dopaminergic treatment, including active phonetic and prosodic features. Our findings may pave the way for quantitative measurements of speech in persons with PD. (shrink)

In reference to historical developments, this article introduces the topic of this special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, that is, the relationship(s) between theory and practice. The authors emphasize the need for scientific research in this neglected area for the sake of both clinical practice and medical education.

There can be little doubt, I think, that the quality and texture of recent scientific and philosophical thought mark a greater break with the past than any innovations such as were introduced by a Gallileo or a Newton, a Descartes or a Kant. The switch over from the logicality and essential rationality of these men to the irrationalisms, the anti-intellectualisms, and the new logics of the moderns, is not at all on the same footing as that deepening of our concepts (...) of knowledge and reality which we associate with the masters of thought, more particularly with the critical philosophy of Kant. Strong and significant as these earlier changes were, they marked but the onward strides of an art of thinking which remained in its essence the same in spite of them. But the thinkers in the public eye to-day are exploring in unknown regions, and it may turn out that they have got beyond their depth. Whatever their fate, it seems undeniable that the experiments that they have made and are making constitute, at points at least, and for the time being, a veritable revolution. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I critically examine the philosophy of transcendental empiricism. Transcendental empiricism is, among other things, a philosophy of mental content. It attempts to dissolve an epistemological dilemma of mental content by splitting the difference between two diametrically opposed accounts of content. John McDowell's minimal empiricism and Richard Gaskin's minimalist empiricism are two versions of transcendental empiricism. Transcendental empiricism itself originates with McDowell's work. This dissertation is divided into five parts. First, in the Introduction, I state the Wittgensteinian metaphilosophical (...) orientation of transcendental empiricism. This metaphilosophical approach provides a plateau upon which much of the rest of this work may be examined. Second, I offer a detailed description of McDowell’s minimal empiricism. Third, I critique Gaskin's critique and modification of McDowell's minimal empiricism. I argue that (1) Gaskin's critiques are faulty and that (2) Gaskin's minimalist empiricism is very dubious. Fourth, I scrutinize the alleged credentials of McDowell's minimal empiricism. I argue that McDowell's version of linguistic idealism is problematic. I then comment on a recent dialogue between transcendental empiricism and Hubert Dreyfus's phenomenology. The dialogue culminates with Dreyfus's accusation of the “Myth of the Mental.” I argue that this accusation is correct in which case McDowell's direct realism is problematic. I conclude that minimal empiricism does not dissolve the dilemma of mental content. Finally, I argue that Tyler Burge successfully undermines the doctrine of disjunctivism, but disjunctivism is crucial for transcendental empiricism. Ultimately, however, I aim to show that transcendental empiricism is an attractive alternative to philosophies of mental content. (shrink)

The term metaphysics was formed at a time when physics and the physical categories constituted the whole of natural science and to describe the field of thought beyond physics. With the development of other fields of knowledge such as the biological and the historical, it has of necessity acquired a much broader meaning. It describes a field of speculative thought which lies beyond the categories of any of these sciences. In the present context the metaphysical is the meta-historical.