This is the first of a two-volume monograph on the Unification of Artificial Intelligence and Psychology. It unifies the topics of representation, meaning, thinking, communication, and understanding. Such a unification requires the establishment of a novel, fully explicated, theoretical construct —noémon system— that replaces all the inadequately developed concepts that historically have been used as constitutive notions of cognitive science. The space of noémon systems encompasses an awe-inspiring variety of noémon species and an increasing variety of artificially noémon entities and (...) hybrid noémon systems. As such, it is a superspace of the space of phenomena addressed by cognitive science. The theory of noémon systems (TNS) described in this two-volume monograph is envisaged as the first step towards an emerging science of noémon systems. (shrink)

This study investigates how background music influences learning with respect to three different theoretical approaches. Both the Mozart effect as well as the arousal-mood-hypothesis indicate that background music can potentially benefit learning outcomes. While the Mozart effect assumes a direct influence of background music on cognitive abilities, the arousal-mood-hypothesis assumes a mediation effect over arousal and mood. However, the seductive detail effect indicates that seductive details such as background music worsen learning. Moreover, as working memory capacity has a crucial influence (...) on learning with seductive details, we also included the learner’s working memory capacity as a factor in our study. We tested 81 college students using a between-subject design with half of the sample listening to two pop songs while learning a visual text and the other half learning in silence. We included working memory capacity in the design as a continuous organism variable. Arousal and mood scores before and after learning were collected as potential mediating variables. To measure learning outcomes we tested recall and comprehension. We did not find a mediation effect between background music and arousal or mood on learning outcomes. In addition, for recall performance there were no main effects of background music or working memory capacity, nor an interaction effect of these factors. However, when considering comprehension we did find an interaction between background music and working memory capacity: the higher the learners’ working memory capacity, the better they learned with background music. This is in line with the seductive detail assumption. (shrink)

The Lord of the Fourteen worlds is manifest here. Questioner: For whom is the title 'Dada Bhagwan' used? Dadashri: For 'Dada Bhagwan.' Not for me. I am a 'Gnani Purush A. M. Patel.' 'Dada Bhagwan' is the Lord of the fourteen worlds. He dwells within you also, but He has not awakened yet, he remains unmanifested. Here within me, He is fully awakened and manifest. He is capable of awakening the Lord within you.

Background: The magnitude of bullying and harassment among psychiatrists is reportedly high, yet no peer-review published studies addressing this issue could be found. Therefore, it was decided to conduct a pilot study to assess the degree of the problem, the types of bullying/harassment and to provide some insights into the situation.Methods and Principal Findings: Following multiple focus group meetings, a yes/no response type questionnaire was developed to assess the degree and type of bullying and harassment experienced by psychiatrists. Over a (...) 3-month period the questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 60 psychiatrists. 57 out of the 60 psychiatrists reported harassment and bullying. Frequencies of the following response variables are presented in descending order: rumours 40% ; defamation 20% ; passing remarks 20% ; false accusations 15% ; threats 13.3% ; verbal abuse 13.3% ; unjustified complaints 13.3% ; promotion blocked 13.3% ; humiliation 13% ; bad reference given 10% ; credentials questioned 8.3% ; physical attacks 5% ; termination 5% ; derogatory remarks 1.7% and 1.7% were subjected to personal work. As a result of being subjected to harassment, 66.7% of the psychiatrists did not take any action, whereas 33.3% confronted the person they believed responsible. Asked whether the bullying and harassment caused distress, 18.3% of the psychiatrists did not report any effect, 30% reported mild distress, 40% moderate distress and severe distress was reported by 11.7%.Conclusions: It was concluded that the magnitude of bullying and harassment among psychiatrists may be quite high, as evidenced by this pilot study. There is a need for extensive systematic studies on this subject and to establish strategies to prevent and address this issue at a national and regulatory level. (shrink)

The theme running through these cooperative studies is the relation between automated fields of communication and control, and the various strata of human behavior. The question of the stratification of behavior is beginning to receive serious attention from the standpoints of ecology and cybernetics. One can only welcome the explorations of this imaginative group of authors in areas as promising as those of form, information, and life ; communication, information, and poetic language ; the role of information in the human (...) sciences ; physics and information ; and knowledge and information. Once again E. Paci is the one who scans the largest territory.—A. M. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify E- Learning strategies and their relation to the efficiency of research performance in foreign and Palestinian universities (University of Ottawa, Munster, Suez Canal, Al-Azhar, Islamic, Al-Aqsa). The analytical descriptive approach was used for this purpose, and relying on the questionnaire as a main tool for data collection. The study society is from the senior management, where the number of senior management in the universities in question is 206. The random stratified sample was selected and (SPSS) (...) was used for statistical data analysis. The study found a significant relationship between E- Learning strategies and the efficiency of research performance in universities. It also reached the participation of senior management in the research that develops the university performance in the Palestinian universities. The senior management indicated that they do not care to follow the policies of implementing the development of scientific research. While the senior management in foreign universities indicated that they are interested in following up the policies of implementing the development of scientific research. The study also showed that senior management in Palestinian universities does not care about providing the appropriate budget for E- Learning. The study recommended that the senior management of Palestinian universities should provide an E- Learning budget and encourage employees to continue using E- Learning strategies. The administration in the Palestinian universities should adopt and support outstanding research, and the need to encourage interest in the implementation of policies for the development of scientific research. (shrink)

The dominant position in Philosophy of Science contends that downward causation is an illusion. Instead, we argue that downward causation doesn’t introduce vicious circles either in physics or in biology. We also question the metaphysical claim that “physical facts fix all the facts.” Downward causation does not imply any contradiction if we reject the assumption of the completeness and the causal closure of the physical world that this assertion contains. We provide an argument for rejecting this assumption. Furthermore, this allows (...) us to reconsider the concept of diachronic emergence. (shrink)

Objectives: Evidence based patient choice seems based on a strong liberal individualist interpretation of patient autonomy; however, not all patients are in favour of such an interpretation. The authors wished to assess whether ideals of autonomy in clinical practice are more in accordance with alternative concepts of autonomy from the ethics literature. This paper describes the development of a questionnaire to assess such concepts of autonomy.Methods: A questionnaire, based on six moral concepts from the ethics literature, was sent to aneurysm (...) patients and their surgeons. The structure of the questionnaire was assessed by factor analysis, and item reduction was based on reliability.Results: Ninety six patients and 58 surgeons participated. The questionnaire consisted of four scales. Two of the scales reflected the paternalistic and consumerist poles of the liberal individualist model, one scale reflected concepts of Socratic autonomy and of procedural independence, and the fourth scale reflected ideals of risk disclosure.Discussion: The Ideal Patient Autonomy Scale is a 14 item normative instrument. It is clearly distinct from the generally used psychological preference questionnaires that assess preferences for physician-patient roles. (shrink)

A. M. Ritchie; XII—Can Animals See? A Cartesian Query, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 64, Issue 1, 1 June 1964, Pages 221–242, https://doi.org/.

The nature of quantum computation is discussed. It is argued that, in terms of the amount of information manipulated in a given time, quantum and classical computation are equally efficient. Quantum superposition does not permit quantum computers to ''perform many computations simultaneously'' except in a highly qualified and to some extent misleading sense. Quantum computation is therefore not well described by interpretations of quantum mechanics which invoke the concept of vast numbers of parallel universes. Rather, entanglement makes available types of (...) computation processes which, while not exponentially larger than classical ones, are unavailable to classical systems. The essence of quantum computation is that it uses entanglement to generate and manipulate a physical representation of the correlations between logical entities, without the need to completely represent the logical entities themselves. (shrink)

In the years 1878 and 1879 the American physicist Alfred Marshall Mayer published his experiments with floating magnets as a didactic illustration of molecular actions and forms. A number of physicists made use of this analogy of molecular structure. For William Thomson they were a mechanical illustration of the kinetic equilibrium of groups of columnar vortices revolving in circles round their common centre of gravity . A number of modifications of Mayer's experiments were described, which gave configurations which were more (...) or less analogous to Mayer's arrangements. It was Joseph John Thomson who, in publications between 1897 and 1907, used Mayer's results to obtain a good deal of insight into the general laws which govern the configuration of the electrons in his atomic model. This article is mainly concerned with Mayer's experiments with floating magnets and their use by a number of physicists. Through his experiments Mayer made a significant, although small, contribution to the theory of atomic structure. (shrink)

Whether it is fair to use personal responsibility of patients for their own health as a rationing criterion in healthcare is a controversial matter. A host of difficulties are associated with the concept of personal responsibility in the field of medicine. These include, in particular, theoretical considerations of justice and such practical issues as multiple causal factors in medicine and freedom of health behaviour. In the article, personal responsibility is evaluated from the perspective of several theories of justice. It is (...) argued that in a healthcare system based on both equality of opportunity and solidarity, responsible health behaviour can—in principle—be justifiably expected. While the practical problems associated with personal responsibility are important, they do not warrant the common knee-jerk refusal to think more deeply about responsibility for health as a means of allocating healthcare resources. In conclusion, the possibility of introducing personal responsibility as a fair rationing criterion is briefly sketched. (shrink)

The problem of antimicrobial resistance is so dire that people are predicting that the era of antibiotics may be coming to an end, ushering in a ‘post-antibiotic’ era. A comprehensive policy response is therefore urgently needed. A part of this response will require framing the problem in such a way that adequately reflects its nature as well as encompassing an approach that has the best prospect of success. This paper considers framing the problem as a slowly emerging disaster, including its (...) potential benefits and difficulties, from a conceptual and policy perspective. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to the subject status of the discipline “Philosophy of Sociology”. Philosophy of sociology is an interdisciplinary direction focusing on the main preconditions of sociological knowledge development as well as cognitive value of sociological facts, theories and conceptions. Its subject can be divided into “philosophical foundations of sociology” and “philosophical problems of sociology”. “Sociologism” as the concept of substitution of social philosophy by sociology as a science which is better empirically oriented and is able to give more (...) exact and proved picture of social reality also poses danger to social philosophy. “Sociologism” presents a positivist attack on social philosophy. Indeed, sociology is no less speculative science than social philosophy is, which is well illustrated by a lot of divergences among its theoretical constructions and empirical data. The main functions of philosophy of sociology in the world of contemporary social-humanitarian knowledge are critical function, integrative function and axiological function. (shrink)

The complicated colonial history of the Philippines impacts notions of gender in the Islands. Specifically, institutions with strong foreign roots, such as universities, maintain and challenge gender relations. The Philippines sees multiple gender issues in universities despite government-mandated gender mainstreaming policies for education (CMO-1), yet the influence of colonial values remains overlooked. This article contributes to philosophising Philippine education by providing the history of the country’s universities and their role in shaping gender relations. A threefold model of gender structures, relations (...) of power, production and cathexis (emotional attachment), frames historical literature during the Philippines’ Spanish and American colonial periods and contextualises the country’s gender order. The interplay of religion and higher education during the Philippines’ Spanish colonial period reveals why sexuality remains policed by education institutions. The gendering of courses during the American Colonial period details the feminisation of certain disciplines and occupations. Harmful manhood practices adopted during this period continue to affect men in university systems through Philippine fraternities. Lastly, private education perpetuates and maintains power among the elite. The evolution of the Philippine university provides points for analysis for gender issues. These become building blocks to the discourse surrounding the Filipino philosophy of education, by understanding facets of Filipino identity construction, and proposing avenues to explore when decolonising the university. (shrink)

In the light of the remarkable changes of political colour which Aeschylus has undergone in the hands of scholars, there is a certain amusing irony about the fact that the satyr-play which followed the Oresteia was the Proteus. Sadly, we know too little of the Proteus to say whether it would have resolved this debate about the Oresteid's political stance, though one may have one's doubts.

Many writers have emphasized the importance which the problem of progressive evolution in biological phenomena has for the theory of evolution and for philosophy, and have pointed to the need to treat it. This is precisely the problem which, because of many objective difficulties, has not yet found a satisfactory solution. The aim of the present article is to examine this question.

Purpose. To consider the uniqueness of Descartes’ way of interpreting poetry as a type of philosophizing that makes it possible to comprehend the metaphysical nature of man. Its implementation involves the consistent solution of the following tasks: a) understanding methodological changes in the philosophy of the 20th century in the process of actualization of anthropological interest; b) argumentation of the importance of poetic thinking for early Descartes in the process of addressing modern historians of philosophy and the thinker’s texts. Theoretical (...) basis. I rely on the conceptual positions of phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics. Originality. Finding of the study is that poetic thinking is the most authentic way of meaningful comprehension of the metaphysicity of man. The paper outlines the nature of the expression of this correlation in the philosophizing of the 20th-21th centuries and substantiates the thesis about the importance of the poetic principle for understanding the phenomenon of man in early works by Descartes. Conclusions. The paper examined the methodological shifts in anthropologically oriented philosophizing of the 20th-21th centuries and focused on the manifestations of related moments in the philosophical legacy of Descartes. The latter demonstrates the existence of a still underestimated version of interpreting the metaphysical foundations of human existence, the form of understanding of which is poetic thinking. It is a form of caring for the humane in man. (shrink)