El presente artículo tiene por objeto exponer cómo la lógica modal de Saúl Kripke, abordada principalmente en su libro Naming and Necessity, trata el concepto de propiedad esencial y las falencias o inconsistencias que esto acarrea.

In people with chronic low back pain, maladaptive structural and functional changes on a cortical level have been identified. On a functional level, somatosensory cortical excitability has been shown to be reduced in chronic pain conditions, resulting in cortical disinhibition. The occurrence of structural and/or functional maladaptive cortical changes in people with CLBP could play a role in maintaining the pain. There is currently no measurement protocol for cortical excitability that employs stimulation directly to the lower back. We developed a (...) protocol for the measurement of single pulse somatosensory evoked potential waveforms and paired-pulse behavior generated from sensory nerves of the lower back and quantified its test–retest reliability in a sample of 30 healthy individuals to gain insights into the normal variability of cortical responses, which could then be compared to results from people with CLBP. We investigated cortical excitability by measuring SEPs and PPB. PPB was defined as the ratio of the amplitude of the second cortical response divided by the first cortical response. A2s was determined by subtracting the response to single-pulse stimuli from the paired pulse stimuli response to account for linear superposition effects. The test–retest reliability of the protocol was very poor with no evidence of systematic bias but a high amount of random variability between sessions. There was no significant difference in the right side PPB for session 1 and session 2 ; mean session difference [ = −0.44 ; t = −1.17, p = 0.26]. The ICC3.1 for the outlier-removed right side PPB were 0.19 and 0.43 for left side PPB. This finding potentially has wider implications for PPB protocols. If these findings were replicated in other groups and other nerves, it would question the validity of this measure more generally. However, these findings are restricted to healthy people and sensory nerves of the lower back and may not be generalizable. (shrink)

In this work, on the one hand, we examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and empathy and, on the other, the relationship between emotional intelligence and nonverbal sensitivity, through two independent studies. The first study analyzed the relationship between dimensions of emotional intelligence and aspects of empathy, in a sample of 856 participants who completed two measures of EI, the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS) and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue), and a measure of empathy, The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (...) (IRI). The results showed a similar pattern of significant positive relations in all the EI domains with empathic Perspective-taking, and significant negative relationships with empathic Personal Distress, except for the EI domain of Attention, which had a positive relationship. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that the dimension that best predicted empathic Perspective-taking and Empathic Concern was the Emotionality Factor; whereas Attention best predicted empathic Fantasy; and the Self-Control Factor best predicted Personal Distress, although negatively. Gender emerged as a predictor of three empathic aspects, Fantasy, Empathic Concern, and Personal Distress, with women obtaining higher scores than men in all of them. Age was the only predictor of Fantasy, with a negative relationship. The second study involved 646 people who completed the same measures of EI as the participants of the first study and the Mini-Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (Mini-PONS). The results showed some significant relationships between EI dimensions and the channels and quadrants of the MiniPONS. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that very few EI dimensions predicted nonverbal sensitivity, with Attention obtaining the best result. Both gender and age emerged as predictors, some in unique cases, of channels, quadrants and of the total score of nonverbal sensitivity; age had a negative relationship, and women obtained higher scores than men. (shrink)

As we go to press, the threat of biological or chemical warfare in the Persian Gulf is no longer imminent. Yet the questions raised by the proposed use of “investigational drugs,” without informed consent, to protect U.S. troops remain. The article by Edmund G. Howe and Edward D. Martin presents the arguments that informed the Pentagon's thinking on the subject. It and the commentaries, by George J. Annas and Michael A. Grodin, and Robert J. Levine, explore, among others, issues of (...) informed consent, of distinguishing ‘research’ and ‘treatment,’ and of the nature and extent of the autonomy of military personnel.—B‐JC, HLN. (shrink)

Listening to someone from some distance in a crowded room you may experience the following phenomenon: when looking at them speak, you may both hear and see where the source of the sounds is; but when your eyes are turned elsewhere, you may no longer be able to detect exactly where the voice must be coming from. With your eyes again fixed on the speaker, and the movement of her lips a clear sense of the source of the sound will (...) return. This ‘ventriloquist’ effect reflects the ways in which visual cognition can dominate auditory perception. And this phenomenological observation is one what you can verify or disconfirm in your own case just by the slightest reflection on what it is like for you to listen to someone with or without visual contact with them. (shrink)

Martin E. Rosenberg -/- The Gift of Silence: Towards an Anthropology of Jazz Improvisation as Neuro-Resistance. -/- ABSTRACT: -/- This essay addresses how the complex processes that occur during jazz improvisation enact behaviors that resemble the logic of gift exchange first described by Marcel Mauss. It is possible to bring to bear structural, sociological, political economical, deconstructive or even ethical approaches to what constitutes gift exchange during the performance of jazz. Yet, I would like to shift from focusing this (...) analysis of jazz improvisation with reference to the language of music as symbolic action (which all of these approaches require), to grounding improvisation in embodied and distributed cognition, the performance of which begins with a ritual gift of silence. By silence, I refer to the embodied, yet shared pure duration as felt synchrony within an individual performer, that extends to the members of an ensemble. Thus, I refer to both aesthetic and micro-political implications of embodied, yet also distributed musical cognition in real time. -/- For jazz musicians, embodied silence becomes the initial condition for processes of cognitive bifurcation. For it is bifurcation that attracts us to jazz in the first place. Here I expand my previous work establishing similarities in the behavior of bifurcating systems in physical and cognitive sciences to the unfolding of ambiguity in real time during improvisation with respect to polyphony, polytonality and polyrhythms in the history of jazz from Charlie Parker to Ornette Coleman. We can therefore re-conceptualize jazz improvisation as a subversive antidote for processes of determination identified in a sub-discipline of cultural studies called “cognitive capitalism.” By examining silence from this anthropological perspective, we can conceive of jazz performance as a ritualized resistance to top-down cognitive control immanent with social and digital networks. The ritual enactment that is jazz improvisation points towards an aesthetics of bifurcation that is simultaneously a micro-politics of neuro-resistance. In other words, I argue that freedom of thought requires freedom from thought as an initial condition. -/- Yet, I emphasize the empirical rather than mystical grounds to this gift of silence. The valorization of silence by jazz musicians is not simply etiquette, an ethics of reciprocity for performers exchanging “riffs,” but an initial condition that jazz performers (and, I would argue, listeners) experience in their bodies, thus linking embodied cognition to a collective field of cultural production that emerges from each embodied individual, and yet also pervades the ensemble in ways reminiscent of feedback loops in complex systems. The recent and remarkable research on music and the brain has demonstrated that it is now possible to describe jazz improvisation as possessing both embodied and distributed cognitive properties. The emergent neuronal ensemble behavior within the individual that is visible in jazz improvisors, discovered by the neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins led by Charles Limb, bears striking resemblance to the interactive behaviors of the jazz ensemble itself. Thus, it is by recourse to recent research by myself and others into the cognitive neuroscience of music generally, and jazz improvisation specifically, that the empirical grounds for an anthropology of neuro-resistance become visible. (shrink)

Experimental studies have suggested that variables such as aptness or conventionality are predictors of people’s preference for expressing a particular topic–vehicle pair as either a metaphor or a simile. In the present study, we investigated if such variables would also be predictive within a more naturalistic context, where other variables, such as the intention to include an explanation, may also influence people’s decision. Specifically, we investigated the production of metaphor and simile expressions on the Internet via the Google search engine (...) and checked for accompanying explanations, as well as the properties they expressed, to examine whether ratings such as aptness, conventionality, as well as participants’ own stated preference or the intention to produce an explanation, would predict which topic–vehicle pairs appeared more often as metaphor. We found that participants’ stated preference predicted metaphor dominance on the Internet, and that apt topic–vehicles occurred more often as metaphors. The explanations collected, however, occurred 82% of the time after similes, and familiar expressions were the most explained. Finally, comparing the properties expressed in these explanations to normed property lists, we found that simile explanations typically expressed a novel conception of the topic–vehicle relationship. Therefore, we found that Internet posters use metaphors to convey an apt relationship, as found in previous laboratory studies, but prefer using a simile frame when they want to express a relationship that readers will find novel. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

Why do we watch and like horror films? Despite a century of horror film-making and en-tertainment, little research has examined the human motivation to watch fictional horror and how horror film influences individuals’ behavioural, cognitive and emotional re-sponses. This review provides the first synthesis of the empirical literature on the psy-chology of horror film using multi-disciplinary research from psychology, psychotherapy, communication studies, development studies, clinical psychology, and media studies. The paper considers the motivations for people’s decision to watch horror, why (...) people enjoy horror, how individual differences influence responses to, and preference for, hor-ror film, how exposure to horror film changes behaviour, how horror film is designed to achieve its effects, why we fear and why we fear specific classes of stimuli, and how lik-ing for horror develops during childhood and adolescence. The literature suggests that (1) low empathy and fearfulness are associated with more enjoyment and desire to watch horror film but that specific dimensions of empathy are better predictors of people’s re-sponses than are others; (2) there is a positive relationship between sensation-seeking and horror enjoyment/preference but this relationship is not consistent; (3) men and boys prefer to watch, enjoy and seek our horror more than do women and girls; (4) women are more prone to disgust sensitivity or anxiety than are men and this may mediate the sex difference in the enjoyment of horror; (5) younger children are afraid of symbolic stimuli whereas older children become afraid of concrete or realistic stimuli; (6) in terms of coping with horror, physical coping strategies are more successful in younger children; priming with information about the feared object reduces fear and increases children’s enjoyment of frightening television and film. A number of limitations in the literature are identified, including the multifarious range of horror stimuli used in studies, disparities in methods, small sample sizes, and a lack of research on cross-cultural differences and similarities. Ideas for future research are explored. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

From ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy to the Modern period, the classical ideal, with its elusive goal of perfecting nature, has held a tenacious grip on Western culture. Nowhere has its hold on the artistic imagination been more pervasive than in France between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The art and life of Raphael formed the bedrock of the classical tradition in French art, yet no comprehensive study of Raphael's impact on the art theory, criticism, and practice of classicism exists. (...) This book fills that gap. Transcending limited notions of artistic influence, the book demonstrates that Raphael had as much impact as a symbol as he did as a paradigm of the classical tradition. Focusing on French art and theory from the classical to the Romantic era, _Raphael and France_ is part of the ongoing revision of views of that period which has been taking place for the last twenty years. The book demonstrates that the shifts from classical to Rococo to neoclassical aesthetics were not as abrupt or as all-encompassing as has been assumed. By tracing the continuity and transformation of the classical ideal, with Raphael's art and image as central paradigms, Rosenberg achieves a broader, more accurate, and comprehensive view of French artistic developments during this period. Rosenberg draws on careful readings of primary sources, including the correspondence and lectures of the French Academy, some of which are unpublished; most of the major theoretical treatises by French and foreign authors; and contemporary criticism and works of art. In the process, he strikes a methodological balance between traditional art-historical approaches and insights provided by more contemporary approaches, such as semiotics and post-structuralism. As the notion of isolated genius as the prime force in art has given way to a broader, more contextual view of art and history, interest in past traditions once regarded as outmoded or dead has grown tremendously. This book makes a timely contribution to this widening area of inquiry. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore psychosis and schizophrenia as prototype disturbances, where mentalizing failures are widely seen. We attempt to describe how the process of rekindling mentalizing within attachment relationships (here, the patient-therapist relationship) can have a protective effect not just on the onset of the disturbance, but also when psychosis is already actively installed. We start by discussing mentalizing in training, practice and supervision. We also try to understand it contextually, as a relational concept, within the history of psychological (...) therapies. (shrink)

A common objection to sense-datum theories of perception is that they cannot give an adequate account of the fact that introspection indicates that our sensory experiences are directed on, or are about, the mind-independent entities in the world around us, that our sense experience is transparent to the world. In this paper I point out that the main force of this claim is to point out an explanatory challenge to sense-datum theories.

The disjunctive theory of perception claims that we should understand statements about how things appear to a perceiver to be equivalent to statements of a disjunction that either one is perceiving such and such or one is suffering an illusion (or hallucination); and that such statements are not to be viewed as introducing a report of a distinctive mental event or state common to these various disjoint situations. When Michael Hinton first introduced the idea, he suggested that the burden of (...) proof or disproof lay with his opponent, that what was needed was to show that our talk of how things look or appear to one.. (shrink)

As coronavirus disease 2019 made its way across the world in 2019, health systems began to develop guidelines to allocate what was expected to be a scarcity of medical resources. Considerable attention was given to triaging intensive care resources such as ventilators. While there was general agreement among bioethicists and policymakers that it may be permissible to withhold life-sustaining interventions from patients with poor prognoses in order to make them available to patients with better prognoses, there was disagreement about the (...) permissibility of withdrawing such interventions for this purpose. Some maintained that the doctrine of double effect (DDE) revealed the intrinsic wrongness of such acts of reallocation. This article argues that so long as there is transparency and effective ongoing communication, the DDE may permit the discontinuation of life-sustaining interventions from patients who may still benefit from them in order to make them available to patients with more favorable prognoses. (shrink)

Biotechnology is one of the fastest-growing areas of scientific, technical and industrial innovation and one of the most controversial. As developments have occurred such as genetic test therapies and the breeding of genetically modified food crops, so the public debates have become more heated and grave concerns have been expressed about access to genetic information, labelling of genetically modified foods and human and animal cloning. Across Europe, public opinion has become a crucial factor in the ability of governments and biotech (...) industries to exploit the new technology. This 2002 book presents the results of a unique cross-national and cross-disciplinary study of the relationship between the development of new biotechnology and public perception, media coverage and policy formulation. It outlines a conceptual framework for understanding these issues and contains a number of empirical studies including studies of the international controversies surrounding the cloning of Dolly the sheep and GM Soya. (shrink)

Disjunctivism about perceptual appearances, as I conceive of it, is a theory which seeks to preserve a naïve realist conception of veridical perception in the light of the challenge from the argument from hallucination. The naïve realist claims that some sensory experiences are relations to mind-independent objects. That is to say, taking experiences to be episodes or events, the naïve realist supposes that some such episodes have as constituents mind-independent objects. In turn, the disjunctivist claims that in a case of (...) veridical perception like this very kind of experience that you now have, the experiential episode you enjoy is of a kind which could not be occurring were you having an hallucination. The common strategy of arguments from hallucination set out to show that certain things are true of hallucinations, and hence must be true of perceptions. For example, it is argued that hallucinations must have non-physical objects of awareness, or that such states are not relations to anything at all, but are at best seeming relations to objects. In insisting that veridical perceptual experience is of a distinct kind from hallucination, the disjunctivist denies that any of these conceptions of hallucination challenges our conception of veridical perceptions as relations to mind-independent objects. More specifically, I assume that the disjunctivist advocates naïve realism because they think that this position best articulates how sensory experience seems to us to be just through reflection. If the disjunctivist is correct in this contention, then anyone who accepts the conclusion of the argument from hallucination must also accept that the nature of sensory experience is other than it seems to us to be. In turn, one may complain that any such error theory is liable to lead to sceptical consequences. A Humean scepticism about the senses launches a challenge about our knowledge of the world through questioning the conception we have of what sense experience is, and how it can provide knowledge of the world. (shrink)