Working memory is the system responsible for maintaining and manipulating information, in the face of ongoing distraction. In turn, WM span is perceived to be an individual-differences construct reflecting the limited capacity of this system. Recently, however, there has been some evidence to suggest that WM capacity can increase through training, raising the possibility that training can functionally alter the neural structures supporting WM. To address the hypothesis that the neural substrates underlying WM are targeted by training, we conducted a (...) meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of WM training using Activation Likelihood Estimation. Our results demonstrate that WM training is associated exclusively with decreases in blood oxygenation level-dependent responses in clusters within the fronto-parietal system that underlie WM, including the bilateral inferior parietal lobule, middle and superior frontal gyri, and medial frontal gyrus bordering on the cingulate gyrus. We discuss the various psychological and physiological mechanisms that could be responsible for the observed reductions in the BOLD signal in relation to WM training, and consider their implications for the construct of WM span as a limited resource. (shrink)

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

Insight is Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. It aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, a comprehensive view of knowledge and understanding, and to state what one needs to understand and how one proceeds to understand it. In Lonergan's own words: 'Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed base, and invariant pattern, opening upon all further developments of (...) understanding.' The editors of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan have established the definitive text for Insight after examining all the variant forms in Lonergan's manuscripts and papers. The volume includes introductory material and annotation to enable the reader to appreciate more fully this challenging work. (shrink)

The work of 6th century Indian logician Dharmakirti is explored in detail in series of twelve articles analyzing deviant logic, subject failure, andther important aspects of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist logical tradition.riginal.

Recent studies :98–144, 2002; Weismann, J Bus Ethics 88:615–66, 2009) revealed that in the first 28 years of its existence, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was not enforced by the federal government. The Weismann study further concluded that the FCPA, designed by Congress as a self-regulatory model of corporate governance, failed to achieve the regulatory goal of deterring global bribery by U.S. companies. The current article addresses the reasons that the FCPA remains an ineffective measure to control bribery as a (...) global market entry strategy despite the highly publicized 2006 Department of Justice initiative to increase prosecutions and tighten enforcement efforts. The failure arises out of both the increased use of informal dispositions of case prosecutions,, which has made “getting caught” merely an increased “cost of doing business” and the failure to close the regulatory gaps in the statute that permit violators to slip through the enforcement net. The article updates and compiles the case prosecution data for every reported case prosecuted between 1977 and 2011. That data are then compared to the results of a 2010 integrity risk survey performed by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services and Forbes which reveal a widely held global business perception that compliance and integrity risks appear to be rising sharply and that the FCPA is ineffective in deterring bribery and corruption in foreign markets. The article aims to serve as a predictive tool for policy makers and business professionals in assessing risk in the global markets, particularly as commerce intensifies in the BRIC countries, notable for bribery and corruption. (shrink)

“Confucianism⋯ is a universal ethic in which the rules and imperatives of behavior hold for all individuals.” (Peter F. Drucker, Forbes, 1981). Peter Drucker is credited as the founder of modern American management. In his distinguished career he has written widely and authoritatively on the subject and to a large extent his work possesses a distinctive ethical tone. This paper will argue that Confucian ethics underlie much of Drucker's writing. Both Drucker and Confucius view power as the central ethical (...) issue in human relations. They emphasize authority, leadership, legitimacy, hierarchy, interdependence and individual ethical responsibility in their analysis of human affairs. Drucker views the development of large-scale formal organizations and the concomitant rise of the managerial class as the most significant developments of the 20th century, which makes the management of interdependent roles and relationships a central ethical challenge. Confucius, and the early Confucians, understood human relationships as based upon hierarchy, interdependence and personal ethics. The paper will analyze Drucker's work in light of the early Confucian Classics (The Analects, The Mencius, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean). Drucker, himself, considers The End of Economic Man (1939), The Future of Industrial Man (1942), Concept of the Corporation (1983), and The Essential Drucker (2001) as his most important and influential works. The paper will analyze these along with other works by Drucker as appropriate. (shrink)

This Handbook documents the main trends in current research between logic and language, including its broader influence in computer science, linguistic theory and cognitive science. The history of the combined study of Logic and Linguistics goes back a long way, at least to the work of the scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages. At the beginning of this century, the subject was revitalized through the pioneering efforts of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Polish philosophical logicians such as Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. Around (...) 1970, the landmark achievements of Richard Montague established a junction between state-of-the-art mathematical logic and generative linguistic theory. Over the subsequent decades, this enterprise of Montague Grammar has flourished and diversified into a number of research programs with empirical and theoretical substance. This appears to be the first Handbook to bring logic-language interface to the fore. Both aspects of the interaction between logic and language are demonstrated in the book i.e. firstly, how logical systems are designed and modified in response to linguistic needs and secondly, how mathematical theory arises in this process and how it affects subsequent linguistic theory. The Handbook presents concise, impartial accounts of the topics covered. Where possible, an author and a commentator have cooperated to ensure the proper breadth and technical content of the papers. The Handbook is self-contained, and individual articles are of the highest quality. (shrink)

Expert skill in music performance involves an apparent paradox. On stage, expert musicians are required accurately to retrieve information that has been encoded over hours of practice. Yet they must also remain open to the demands of the ever-changing situational contingencies with which they are faced during performance. To further explore this apparent paradox and the way in which it is negotiated by expert musicians, this article profiles theories presented by Roger Chaffin, Hubert Dreyfus and Tony and Helga Noice. For (...) Chaffin, expert skill in music performance relies solely upon overarching mental representations, while, for Dreyfus, such representations are needed only by novices, while experts rely on a more embodied form of coping. Between Chaffin and Dreyfus sit the Noices, who argue that both overarching cognitive structures and embodied processes underlie expert skill. We then present the Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes (AIR) approach?a differently nuanced model of expert skill aligned with the integrative spirit of the Noices? research. The AIR approach suggests that musicians negotiate the apparent paradox of expert skill via a mindedness that allows flexibility of attention during music performance. We offer data from recent doctoral research conducted by the first author of this article to demonstrate at a practical level the usefulness of the AIR approach when attempting to understand the complexities of expert skill in music performance. (shrink)

When we understand that something is a pot, is it because of one property that all pots share? This seems unlikely, but without this common essence, it is difficult to see how we could teach someone to use the word "pot" or to see something as _a_ pot. The Buddhist apoha theory tries to resolve this dilemma, first, by rejecting properties such as "potness" and, then, by claiming that the element uniting all pots is their very difference from all non-pots. (...) In other words, when we seek out a pot, we select an object that is not a non-pot, and we repeat this practice with all other items and expressions. Writing from the vantage points of history, philosophy, and cognitive science, the contributors to this volume clarify the nominalist apoha theory and explore the relationship between apoha and the scientific study of human cognition. They engage throughout in a lively debate over the theory's legitimacy. Classical Indian philosophers challenged the apoha theory's legitimacy, believing instead in the existence of enduring essences. Seeking to settle this controversy, essays explore whether apoha offers new and workable solutions to problems in the scientific study of human cognition. They show that the work of generations of Indian philosophers can add much toward the resolution of persistent conundrums in analytic philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

In elite sport, the advantages demonstrated by expert performers over novices are sometimes due in part to their superior physical fitness or to their greater technical precision in executing specialist motor skills. However at the very highest levels, all competitors typically share extraordinary physical capacities and have supremely well-honed techniques. Among the extra factors which can differentiate between the best performers, psychological skills are paramount. These range from the capacities to cope under pressure and to bounce back from setbacks, to (...) the knowledge of themselves, opponents, and the domain, which experts access and apply in performance. In the companion chapter on breadth and depth of knowledge in expert sport (see Chapter 11), we discussed the forms or kinds of knowledge deployed by elite athletes, and described some lines of research which seek to tap and study such expert knowledge (McPherson & MacMahon, 2008; McRobert, Ward, Eccles & Williams, 2011). In this chapter we focus more directly on questions about methods for measuring or more accurately assessing expert knowledge, in particular addressing a wider range of methods to help us understand what experts know. Suggesting that sport researchers can productively adopt and adapt existing qualitative methodologies for integration with more standard quantitative methods, we introduce and survey a number of areas of qualitative research in psychology. (shrink)

This article explores atheist meaning-making by employing a multidimensional model of meaning operationalized by the Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire. When compared to a representative sample of “religionists” and “nones”, atheists show lower degrees of meaningfulness, but they do not suffer from crises of meaning more frequently. However, subsequent cluster analysis reveals that heterogeneity within atheism has to be taken into account. Three types of atheists are identified. ‘Low-commitment’ atheists are characterised by generally low commitment; they report (...) very low meaningfulness and a high frequency of crises of meaning. ‘Broad-commitment’ atheists exhibit considerably higher levels of meaningfulness and rare crises of meaning. They evidence, in particular, high scores on the dimension of well-being and relatedness. The third type, primarily committed to “selfactualization,” exhibits moderate levels of meaningfulness, with crises of meaning being literally absent. Common to most atheists is a particular commitment to self-knowledge, freedom, knowledge, individualism, and comfort. In comparing male and female atheists, gendered patterns of commitment are discovered. (shrink)

Critical notice of Tom Sorell's Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with Science.

RésuméKarl Popper, dans La logique de la découverte scientifique, a généralisé et formalisé, sans le savoir, les grands principes méthodologiques formulés par Claude Bernard dans son Introduction àľétude de la médecine expérimentale.Cette analogie est frappante lorsqu'on rapproche du faillibilisme poppérien ľ affirmation du physiologiste selon laquelle les progrès de la méthode expérimentale consistent en ce que la somme des vérités augmente à mesure que la somme des erreurs diminue.Ľ intérêt que ľ on porte à cette analogie dépasse la simple curiositéérudite (...) car certaines difficultés du poppérianisme sont déjà sensibles dans la méthodologie bernardienne.En effet, si ľ un et ľ autre insistent sur le caractère hypothético‐déductif de la démarche scientifique, ni ľ un ni ľ autre n'aborde le difficile problème des décisions épistémiques qu'elle requiert. C'est notamment au niveau des hypothèses falsifiantes destinées àéviter les coïncidences constituent un des écueils les plus graves que rencontre la méthode expérimen‐tale qu'est sensible cette difficulté.SummaryIn his Logic of Scientific Discovery Karl Popper, nor realizing the fact, has generalized and formalized the main methodological principles formulated by Claude Bernard in his Introduction àľ Etude de la Médecine Expérimentale.This analogy is especially noticeable when one brings together Popper's “faillibilism” and the physiologist's affirmation according to which “progress in the experimental method consists in the fact that the more the total error decreases, the more the total truth increases”.The interest in this analogy goes far beyond erudite curiosity since some of Popper's difficulties are already perceptible in Bernard's methodology.As a matter of fact, if both stress the hypothetical‐deductive nature of the scientific progress, none approaches the difficult problem of the epistemic decisions required. This difficulty is particularly perceptible at the level of the falsifying hypotheses intended to avoid the “coincidences being one of the most serious pitfalls of the experimental method” .ZusammenfassungOhne es zu wissen, hat Karl Popper in der Logik der Forschung die methodischen Prinzipien, die Claude Bernard in seiner Introduction àľ Etude de la Médecine Experimental formuliert, verallgemeinert und formalisiert.Die Analogie tritt besonders deutlich hervor, wenn man Poppers Faillibilismus mit der Behauptung des Physiologen konfrontiert, wonach der Fortschritt darin bestehen soll, dass die Summe der Wahrheiten in dem Masse zunimmt, wie die Summe der Irrtümer abnimmt.Das Interesse an dieser Analogie ist insofern nicht ein rein historisches, als gewisse Schwie‐rigkeiten, denen Popper begegnet, sich schon in Bernards Ansatz bemerkbar machen.Wenn auch beide besonderes Gewicht auf den hypothetisch‐deduktiven Charakter des wis‐senschaftlichen Vorgehens legen, so gehen sie beide nicht auf das schwierige Problem der erkenntnistheoretischen Entscheide ein, diedamit verbunden sind. Dieser Mangel macht sich vor allem bei Poppers falsifizierenden Hypothesen bemerkbar, die, wie schon Bernard formuliert, dazu dienen sollen, die Hauptschwierigkeit der experimentellen Methode, namlich das zufällige Zusammentreffen von Ereignissen, zu vermeiden. (shrink)

The biochemistry of geotropism in plants and gravisensing in e.g. cyanobacteria or paramacia is still not well understood today [1]. Perhaps there are more ways than one for organisms to sense gravity. The two best known relatively old explanations for gravity sensing are sensing through the redistribution of cellular starch statoliths and sensing through redistribution of auxin. The starch containing statoliths in a gravity field produce pressure on the endoplasmic reticulum of the cell. This enables the cell to sense direction. (...) Alternatively, there is the redistribution of auxin under the action of gravity. This is known as the Cholodny-Went hypothesis [2], [3]. The latter redistribution coincides with a redistribution of electrical charge in the cell. With the present study the aim is to add a mathematical unified field explanation to gravisensing. (shrink)

The German philosophical culture of the Middle Ages is inextricable linked to the thought of Albert the Great. This volume brings together 14 papers, which deal with Albert's influence from the points of view of mysticism, philosophy, and the history of universities.

This volume explores the different aspects of the thinking of Marsilius of Inghen . It is devoted to the background of his philosophy and theology, to the significance of his many writings, and to the impact of his thought.

"Summary of the 73rd Meeting of the Bureau of the SIEPM (Palermo, 19 September 2007)." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, 49(), pp. 361–362.

Here we prove that if T and T′ are strongly minimal theories, where T′ satisfies a certain property related to triviality and T does not, and T′ is model complete, then there is no computable embedding of Mod(T) into Mod(T′). Using this, we answer a question from [4], showing that there is no computable embedding of VS into ZS, where VS is the class of infinite vector spaces over Q, and ZS is the class of models of Th(Z, S). Similarly, (...) we show that there is no computable embedding of ACF into ZS, where ACF is the class of algebraically closed fields of characteristic 0. (shrink)

The temporal behaviour of the nonlinear compartmental model we have developed for rat calcium metabolism is discussed with respect to the theoretical properties of the self-oscillating autocatalytic subunit around which the model is constructed. Depending on the approximations made, this subunit is described by a minimal two-variable model, SU2, or by a three-variable one, SU3. The diversity of the theoretical dynamic behaviours possible with SU2 is greatly increased with SU3. But the identification of SU3 parameter values in three different experimental (...) situations reveals that biological constraints efficiently preserve a simple circadian rhythm for bone metabolism. This analysis indicates the significant contribution of the available bone crystal pool to the dynamic organization of this tissue, and hence to extracellular calcium homeostasis. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of age in scientific practice from an ethical perspective. In social perception, people tend to categorise others rather automatically along three major dimensions: race, sex, and age.1 Much empirical and theoretical attention has been devoted to the study of racism and sexism, but comparatively little research in the social and behaviural sciences has been directed at understanding what some refer to as the third ‘-ism’: ageism.2 For a serious understanding of the implications of ageism in (...) science, it is necessary to discuss, first, the conflicting relationships between classical and modern concepts of time and calendar age, and thereafter the concept of ageism. (shrink)

Computable structures of Scott rank ${\omega_1^{CK}}$ are an important boundary case for structural complexity. While every countable structure is determined, up to isomorphism, by a sentence of ${\mathcal{L}_{\omega_1 \omega}}$ , this sentence may not be computable. We give examples, in several familiar classes of structures, of computable structures with Scott rank ${\omega_1^{CK}}$ whose computable infinitary theories are each ${\aleph_0}$ -categorical. General conditions are given, covering many known methods for constructing computable structures with Scott rank ${\omega_1^{CK}}$ , which guarantee that the (...) resulting structure is a model of an ${\aleph_0}$ -categorical computable infinitary theory. (shrink)

In this article I shall argue for an interpretation of Odyssey 19.393–466 as a flash-back taking place in the mind of Eurykleia at the moment she recognises Odysseus' scar. That Eurykleia somehow forms the connection between main story and digression has been suggested before, but so far other interpretations have been defended with more fervour. Most famous of these interpretations is the one given by E. Auerbach in the first chapter of his Mimesis. He had chosen 19.393–466 to illustrate his (...) thesis that in Homer everything is ‘fully externalized’ and that there is no background, only a ‘uniformly illuminated’ foreground. According to Auerbach the digression on the scar stands in complete isolation to its context. It is meant to ‘relax the tension’, to make the hearer/reader ‘forget what had just taken place during the footwashing’, and although it might have been presented as a recollection of Odysseus , this ‘subjectivisticperspectivistic procedure, creating a foreground and background’ was not chosen, being ‘entirely foreign to the Homeric style’. Some twenty years later this interpretation was challenged by A. Köhnken, who, however, stuck to the idea that the digression is not told from the restricted perspective of one of the characters but from the perspective of the omniscient narrator; he claims that foreground and background are marked as such through a difference in narrative style: ‘berichtende Erzählung’ for the digression itself and ‘szenische Darstellung’ for the context. I disagree with both points. (shrink)