This commentary discusses three main requirements for models of vision, namely, translation and scale invariance, scalability, and hierarchy. Edelman's Chorus model falls short of fulfilling these requirements because it ignores the highly dynamic nature of vision. Incorporating an attentional mechanism and assuming geon-like prototype representations may enhance Chorus's plausibility as a model of human object recognition.

The natural input memory (NIM) model is a new model for recognition memory that operates on natural visual input. A biologically informed perceptual preprocessing method takes local samples (eye fixations) from a natural image and translates these into a feature‐vector representation. During recognition, the model compares incoming preprocessed natural input to stored representations. By complementing the recognition memory process with a perceptual front end, the NIM model is able to make predictions about memorability based directly on individual natural stimuli. We (...) demonstrate that the NIM model is able to simulate experimentally obtained similarity ratings and recognition memory for individual stimuli (i.e., face images). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Daoism, Practice, and Politics:From Nourishing Life to Ecological PraxisEric S. Nelson (bio)I. Daoism's Multiple ModelsManhua Li, Yumi Suzuki, and Lisa Indraccola have offered evocative insights, questions, and alternatives in their contributions concerning the arguments of Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life (Nelson 2021). The present brief response and sketch of the book will not address every point in their essays, but I will strive to reply, directly and indirectly, (...) to their primary concerns.First, it should be noted that I take a pluralistic conception of 'Daoisms' as my point of departure. This is necessary since Daoist studies have been hampered by overly ahistorical and one-sided definitions that prioritize one philosophical or religious moment (such as skepticism or mysticism) in historically complex and varied transmissions that encompass a multiplicity of texts and perspectives. Due to the fact of the plurality of incompatible kinds of Daoism in Chinese antiquity and in subsequent history, my text considers a range of early Daoist and Daoist-related perspectives in the context of their potential consequences for environmental philosophy, ethics, and politics. Consequently, my approach is primarily philosophical without limiting any text to being exclusively philosophical, religious, or rigidly committed to one perspective, which would be untrue to the sources themselves.Second, examining distinctive tendencies (modifying Graham 1989 and Liu 1994) in the Daodejing 道德經, the Zhuangzi 莊子, and related texts enables us to articulate distinctive and conflicting ecological, ethical, and political paradigms. In place of constructing a mythologizing ideological construction of 'Chinese culture' and Daoism as intrinsically 'Green', a familiar essentializing tendency that has provoked skepticism regarding the very possibility of Daoist environmental philosophy, my book provides a different 'critical Daoist' strategy. This alternative entails that Daoist exemplars can be deployed as therapeutic models in the present, while at [End Page 792] the same time confronting their ideological codifications and uses. Early Daoist sources have roamed on long intercultural journeys. The Daodejing and the Zhuangzi have provided elements for European thinking about civilization, technology, and nature from Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger (Nelson 2017) to Peter Sloterdijk's 'Euro-Taoism' (Sloterdijk 1989) to contemporary progressive Green movements (Joshi 2022) and even ecofascism (Lubarda 2020). Similarly, in the current Chinese context, Green Daoism has both critical and authoritarian ideological functions in visions of 'ecological civilization' (shengtai wenming 生態文明) (Schönfeld and Chen 2019) and fears of a 'green leviathan'. Accordingly, it is not accidental that my anarchistic and participatory democratic interpretation of one key thread, which I call 'ziranist' and clarify below, in early Daoist and Wei-Jin mysterious-learning (xuanxue 玄學) discourses, has led to the most intense discussions and controversies about this book. These include the contributions by Li, Suzuki, and Indraccola that propose questions and alternative possibilities concerning agency and responsiveness, authority and self-determination, freedom and fate, and adaptation and intervention, as well as purposive techniques and anti-purposive uselessness.Third, this hermeneutical strategy points toward the tertiary aspect of our preliminary definition of Daoism. It does not primarily name a philosophical theory or a religious worldview. It concerns shifting, overlapping, and diverging ensembles of discourse and practice. This is not the vague ahistorical idea of 'a way of life' but rather refers to how philosophy is enacted through a specific configuration of—to adopt early Greek expressions—logos as dis-course (e.g., argumentation, hermeneutics, logic, rhetoric), ethos (e.g., comportment, orientation, a way of dwelling), and praxis (practices of the self, with others, and with things and nature). Thus, the Laozi 老子 and Zhuangzi collections can be analyzed textually and conceptually as having multiple threads (drawing on a variety of authors and sources) that form constellations in the received texts with better and worse historical, practical, and conceptual readings. My interpretive strategy in this discussion, which does not exclude other approaches, is that these texts express forms of practical instead of merely speculative philosophy. They are suggestive of an ethos of relational freedom, irreducible to rules and techniques, which dismantles hypostatized experiential and linguistic fixations, including moralistic fixations, in order to freely encounter the myriad things and enact and practice the dao in one's own singular way.'Critical Daoism', therefore, serves as a pluralistic, diagnostic, and practical designation... (shrink)

The notion of digital virus covers, in our view, two points: computer viruses that infect our computers and technological solutionism, the unreasonable passion that consists in considering that the solution to all social problems lies in the digital world. Yet the digital world is as vulnerable as the biological world. Moreover, it is dangerous because it pushes us into a digital bondage that undermines democracy. The solution to the crisis is not less democracy, but more democracy. More precisely, we will (...) argue that digital devices do not strengthen democratic communication, they promote a digital connection that hinders deliberation and threatens the very idea of democracy. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: “You're Right. There's No Earth. It's All a Legend” “I'm Not a Cylon!…Maybe, But We Just Can't Take That Chance” “You Have to Have Something to Live For. Let it be Earth” Notes.

In this essay, I want to argue that the existence of gender most times translated as gender binary, is a biological fact. What is at stake is a framework for transcending unequal gender binary to gender complementarity. Here, I propose to use Chimakonam’s Ezumezu logic as a mechanism for disclosing gender complementarity. The illogical, irrational and subjective perspectives on lopsided gender differences between men and women will be challenged in this essay. I will analyze the thrust of Ezumezu logic, its (...) major principles, structures, and pillars of thought. I will also demonstrate its global and contextual relevance. I will submit that Ezumezu logic can ground gender complementarity across global cultures. I argue that regardless of the physical differences between males and females, it is illogical to exploit such differences to promote gender stereotype. Keywords: Gender equality, Ezumezu Logic, Gender Complementarity, Jonathan Chimakonam. (shrink)

Two conditions for internal peace : absolutism and identification --Four approaches to Leviathan -- Outline of a new approach -- Reason, natural law, and absolutism -- The role of part 1 in Leviathan -- The metaphysical conception of human nature -- The state of nature -- The argument for absolutism -- Criteria for the identification of the sovereign -- Natural law -- Reason, revelation, and the interpretation of scripture -- Historical background : sola scriptura and biblical criticism -- Hobbes and (...) sola scriptura -- Sola scriptura and revelation -- Principles of biblical interpretation -- Metaphysics and eschatology -- Metaphysics : body and spirit -- The kingdom of God -- Eschatology -- Church and state -- Politics and the problem of double vision -- Politics and metaphysics -- Case A and the kingdom of God -- Case B and the argument for the identification of the true sovereign according to scripture -- The theological-philosophical argument for absolutism -- Hobbes and the kingdom of darkness -- The kingdom of darkness -- Misinterpretations of Scripture -- The false foundations of church tradition -- The kingdom of fairies -- The religious sincerity of Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

Chafe argues that Wagner's Tristan and Isolde is a musical and dramatic exposition of metaphysical ideas inspired by Schopenhauer. The book is a critical account of Tristan, in which the drama is shown to develop through the music.

Luther's struggle with the forces and influences of late medieval culture for what he believed contributed to the birth of a new age.

A full understanding of emotion necessitates the bridging of disciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches. This special section uses emotional development as a foil to illustrate how suc...

Cette étude met en évidence la spécificité et l'évolution de la philosophie de Natorp (1854-1924). Sa psychologie critique est d'abord une méthodologie s'interrogeant sur les conditions d'une connaissance scientifique des processus cognitifs. Puis Natorp en vient à considérer dans ses derniers textes que la question fondamentale est celle de l'être.

English summary: Michael Haneke social criticism in his cinematographic work leaves no one indifferent. His films shed cruel light on the pathologies violence, medias, genres of neoliberal society. Each of his films examines the gaze he brings upon his subjects, one that places him in the very world he critiques. French description: Pourquoi l'oeuvre cinematographique de Michael Haneke ne laisse-t-elle aucun de nous indifferent? Parce qu'il y pratique a l'envi, et de maniere frontale, la critique sociale. Ses films mettent cruellement (...) au jour ces figures du mal qui fondent les pathologies de la societe neoliberale - la violence, les medias, les genres, etc. Prend-il pour autant quelque facile position de surplomb? Pas du tout. Chacun de ses films interroge le regard meme qu'il porte sur son objet - la critique a beau etre radicale, en effet, son auteur fait bel et bien partie du monde qu'il met en question. (shrink)

Cet article vise à éclairer le concept d’« essence générique » (Gattungswesen) contenu dans les Manuscrits de 1844 de Karl Marx. Procédant d’abord à une critique du commentaire de Michel Henry à ce sujet, nous reconstruisons ensuite la filiation de ce concept de Ludwig Feuerbach à Marx en passant par Moses Hess. Nous insistons ainsi sur le sens spécifique et original qu’il revêt chez Marx, soit comme capacité inventive reconnue à l’activité humaine ou encore comme détermination de nouveaux objets d’usage (...) auxquels correspondent toujours de nouvelles pratiques de production et de consommation. (shrink)

Ancient perspectives on wholeness -- Illusion and the paradox of being human -- Merging humanness with love -- The cherished human -- Grace -- Mindfulness, soulfulness and equanimity -- The brain: logic, presence and emotional intelligence -- The empathy paradox -- Human incorruptibility -- The promise of wholeness.

'Sure in the independence, confident of the future of Britain, the Daily Express is rooted in the hearts of the people. It is Britain's greatest newspaper.' Daily Express 31 December 1960 -/- Discuss the possible criteria for this claim. -/- With this kind of homely exercise the reader of this entertaining Pelican is encouraged to practise the strokes of philosophy… The author initiates the beginner into the world of ideas and words with an examination of the use of language, and (...) in subsequent chapters deals with the handling of concepts, considers the fundamental step of asking the right question, and examines the nature of value judgements. It is only in the last two chapters that the reader is very gently led up to the brink of more difficult problems in the discussions of Appearance and Reality and of Free Will and Determinism. -/- In short, [this book] with its lively selection of quotations from very varied sources, provides a 'think-it-yourself handbook' for the application of logic and philosophy in daily life. -/- Publisher's Blurb . (shrink)