Plastic changes in spinal cord function like neuronal wind-up and increased receptive field are too short-lived to explain chronic pain without structural changes. It is possible that learning could be a mechanism for longlasting changes in nociceptive regulation. A learning process localized to the spinal cord has been shown to be important for the development of tolerance to the analgetic effect of ethanol, suggesting that nociceptive control systems may be changed by learning. Long term potentiation (LTP) is regarded as a (...) useful model of learning and memory. LTP-like changes have been observed in invitro preparations from the spinal cord and in spinal cord field potentials. Recently a long term increase in spinal A-[beta] and C-fibre evoked responses after painful stimulation has been observed. [coderre & katz, dickenson, wiesenfeld-hallin et al.]. (shrink)

Creativity is the hallmark of human intelligence. Roli et al. (Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 9:806283, 2022) state that algorithms cannot achieve human creativity. This paper analyzes cooperation between humans and intelligent algorithmic tools to compensate for algorithms’ limited creativity. The intelligent tools have functionality from the neocortex, the brain’s center for learning, reasoning, planning, and language. The analysis provides four key insights about human-tool cooperation to solve challenging problems. First, no neocortex-based tool without feelings can achieve human creativity. Second, (...) an interactive tool exploring users’ feeling-guided creativity enhances the ability to solve complex problems. Third, user-led abductive reasoning incorporating human creativity is essential to human-tool cooperative problem-solving. Fourth, although stakeholders must take moral responsibility for the adverse impact of tool answers, it is still essential to teach tools moral values to generate trustworthy answers. The analysis concludes that the scientific community should create neocortex-based tools to augment human creativity and enhance problem-solving rather than creating autonomous algorithmic entities with independent but less creative problem-solving. (shrink)

The article describes the founding principles, work program, and accomplishments of a Reference Group with both expert and layperson stakeholders for the corrosion of copper canisters in a proposed deep repository in Sweden for spent nuclear fuel. The article sets the Reference Group as a participatory effort within a broader context of stakeholder and public participation. It is argued that for the future it will be necessary to more precisely define the roles of different approaches to public participation in relation (...) to the actual societal decision-making procedures, and the issue is raised whether an increasing level of their institutionalization is required. In particular, the focus is set on the safe-space approach to stakeholder participation designed to suit situations where independence and autonomy are crucial elements for the participants. To illustrate this we compare experiences from Sweden and the Czech Republic. (shrink)

Recensie van: Geert Jan Blanken, Kierkegaard. Een inleiding in zijn leven en werk (Amsterdam: Ambo, 2012).

The sociology of research and knowledge use, argue the authors, could be a way of linking important parts of sociology, such as organization studies, the sociology of science to each other. In the article, they discuss the idea that organizational responses to environments are related to research utilization. Based upon an empirical investigation of city welfare departments, four empirical “utilization strategies” are presented and shown to be related to power and control patterns. While negative utilization strategies are hostile to uncontrolled (...) research utilization and enhance the formation of bureaucratic expertise, conflict-oriented strategies are discursively productive and reinforce research use and alliance formation with social scientists to control the environment. (shrink)

In the pursuit of a dramaturgy of telematics as a compositional practice, the author builds a position on technology as externalized technique, develops a dramaturgic strategy with notions of an extended theatre practice and reports on a realized telematized performance where a practical implementation was explored.The theatrical site is viewed as a construct of attention, generated by the performers through the performance composition. The composition determines the audience experience, orchestrated by how the construction of the site manages their perspectives, and (...) how the performers are situated in the consciousness site of the audience.In the performed event the performers articulate as a collective extended entity, incorporating the transformation of the performance site via the articulation strategies implemented in the staging. Telematics is argued to be a technology facilitating specific modes of thinking, generating specific modes of actions and presence, which enable new performance sites and new modes of situating performance. (shrink)

It is suggested how one can imaginatively use a design strategy utilizing performers as tools in the creation of augmented, performative artwork. In order to establish meaningful constructions of performative and augmentative technology, one can use the formal methodologies of advanced formal body language as a tool in the creation process, and thereby have ‘the actual experience’ present in the process as a monitor and a constructive tool. To use a human being as a design tool is a method that (...) uses the skilled performer as a ‘super-’ or ‘extra-’ human tool to investigate through action and analysis. It is a way to test how realities occur under fluid and dynamic conditions within a controlled environment of time and space. This ‘technical’ use of the body as an extra-human behavioural entity, involves the total complex spectrum of intellect, emotions, desires, memory, actions, etc. as a formalized ‘machine’. (shrink)

When information activated in memory involves emotional associations, the ability to shift attention away from an emotional cue is impaired compared to an emotionally neutral cue. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how emotional stimuli modulate attentional processes, and how this is reflected in localised brain electrical activity. Eight emotion and eight neutral words served as cues in a covert attention spatial orienting task. The cues were either valid or invalid indicators of which hemifield the target would (...) be presented to. In the remaining trials, no cue was presented prior to the target. Twenty subjects were instructed to manually respond to the target as fast as possible. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed an enhanced P3 component to the emotion words. The ERPs to the target showed enhanced P1 and P3 components on invalid trials, with emotional cues. There were faster reaction times (RTs) to validly cued targets, but only when the emotion words served as cues. The results demonstrated that the emotional cues elicited sustained focused attention, facilitating an engage mechanism of spatial orienting. (shrink)

The intellectual relationship between Carl Schmitt and Max Weber has been a point of controversy for at least half a century. At the 1964 convention of the German Sociological Association, in honor of Weber's centenary, Schmitt was famously referred to as Weber's ?legitimate student.? This article uses the chapter Schmitt specifically wrote for an edited volume in Weber's memory, published in 1923, as the starting point for juxtaposing the two scholars, and then expands the analysis to encompass a range of (...) sources and commentaries. The comparison focuses on the approach of each of the two scholars to methodology and didactics, theory and conceptual use, as well as to the society/social science nexus. The article concludes by arguing that Schmitt performed a double rhetorical move: while styling himself as Weber's student, he then drew on that authority to assault Weber's liberalism and concept of scientific integrity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.3 (2002) 285-286 [Access article in PDF] Depersonalization and Feelings of Unreality:Significant Symptoms With a Variety of Meanings Kjell Modigh Evaluations and diagnostic procedures in clinical psychiatry depend mainly on how the patient communicates his or her subjective experiences and on the psychiatrist's ability to understand that message. This is critical not only for understanding and offering proper treatment, but also for developing diagnostic (...) classifications. Hence the paper by Radovic and Radovic deals with an important topic, aiming to clarify the variety of meanings of the closely related terms unreality and depersonalization. The latter occurs as a symptom in connection to some psychiatric disorder and also constitutes a separate syndromeI agree with the authors that the rather intense renewing of the diagnostic criteria is seldom balanced by corresponding ambitions to analyze and improve the distinctness of the words for the experiences and symptoms which define the diagnoses.It is indeed a difficult task to demarcate what should be included in the concepts feelings of unreality and depersonalization and even to decide whether they are synonyms or distinguishable. There is at least one clear agreement in the different diagnostic systems: psychotic, delusional experiences are excluded. The border between unreality feelings with largely intact reality-testing ability and psychotic disorders with grossly disturbed reality-testing is, however, not absolute and patients with psychotic disorders may of course experience feelings of unreality or depersonalizationThe authors present a useful scheme by which different meanings of derealization are separated and that also points out the differences between depersonalization and derealization, although they are mutually dependant. Category (a), which come closest to depersonalization, includes experiences related to the self, whereas category (c) refers to impressions that the external world is unreal. Category (b), in their scheme, refers to altered bodily sensations: "the body part of the self" (Are there any body parts of the self? Perhaps all psychoanalysts would not agree).In my view, this scheme is useful and corresponds to clinical realities. Symptoms belonging to category (a) can, for instance, occur in affective disorders of almost psychotic depth, due to a [End Page 285] pathologically changed self-esteem. Symptoms belonging to category (b)—experiences of having moved outside one's own body—mainly belong to the diagnostic category dissociative disorders and can be understood as defense reactions to earlier traumatic experiences. The self escaped from the body during repeated experiences of sexual abuse. The diagnosis of depersonalization disorder consequentlybelongs to the group of dissociative disorders. Conditions where the outer world seems unreal (category [c]) can occur when the amount of internal stimuli is increased beyond what is possible to handle and therefore the capacity to recognize the environment is limited. So is the case in severe panic anxiety. Feelings of unreality as part of grief reactions may also belong, at least partly, to category (c): when dramatic and emotionally unacceptable events occur in the environment. As the authors point out, expressions of unreality feelings during grief more often can be understood as metaphors or existential reflections. In conclusion, categories -(a) and (c) can serve to separate depersonalization experiences with different psychopathologic origin, although they are closely related.As a second step, the authors examine how the terms unreal and feels unreal can be understood. Two interpretations of unreal, "nonexistent" and "artificial," have high psychiatric relevance; a third meaning, relating to "quality," mainly has linguistic connections to the experiences on unreality and depersonalization. The word feels communicates the experience of something that appears unreal although the subject has an intact ability of reality testing.The authors propose an additional interpretation, which they describe as a quasisensory experience. They give the example that dreams with unrealistic contents in some meaning, probably related to their intensity, appear "real." A further connection to dreams is that a situation, when awake, may have dreamlike qualities because of intensity or similarities to fragments of dreams. Events that occur in an unusual sequences, for example, corresponding to ones aims and wishes ("to good to be true") perhaps have similarities to dreamlike experiences. One may... (shrink)

This article analyzes rent seeking with multiple additive efforts for each of two players. Impact on rent seeking occurs even when a player exerts only one effort. This contrasts with models of multiplicative efforts with impact on rent seeking only when a player exerts all its available efforts. An analytical solution is developed when the contest intensities are below one, and equal to one for one effort. Then, additional efforts causing interior solutions give players higher expected utilities and lower rent (...) dissipation, which contrasts with earlier findings for multiplicative efforts. Players cut back on the effort with contest intensity equal to one, and exert alternative efforts instead. Accounting for solutions which have to be determined numerically, a Nash equilibrium selection method is provided. For illustration, an example with maximum two efforts for each player is provided. Equilibria are shown where both players choose both efforts, or one player withdraws from its most costly effort. Both players may collectively prefer to exclude one of their efforts, though in equilibrium, they may prefer both efforts. When all contest intensities are equal to one or larger than one, only the one most cost-effective effort is exerted, due to the logic of linear or convex production. Rent dissipation increases in the contest intensity, and is maximum when the players are equally advantaged determined by unit effort cost divided by impact. (shrink)

Axelord’s [(1970), Conflict of Interest, Markham Publishers, Chicago] index of conflict in 2 × 2 games with two pure strategy equilibria has the property that a reduction in the cost of holding out corresponds to an increase in conflict. This article takes the opposite view, arguing that if losing becomes less costly, a player is less likely to gamble to win, which means that conflict will be less frequent. This approach leads to a new power index and a new measure (...) of stubbornness, both anchored in strategic reasoning. The win probability defined as power constitutes an equilibrium refinement which differs from Harsanyi and Selten’s [(1988), A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games, MIT Press, Cambridge] refinement. In contrast, Axelrod’s approach focuses on preferences regarding divergences from imaginary outmost rewards that cannot be obtained jointly. The player who is less powerful in an asymmetric one-shot game becomes more powerful in the repeated game, provided he or she values the future sufficiently more than the opponent. This contrasts with the view that repetition induces cooperation, but conforms with the expectation that a more patient player receives a larger share of the pie. (shrink)

Knut Olav Almås. Solum, 1994. 295 s. ISBN 82-560-0936-5 Den østerrrikske filosofen Wittgenstein var ikke bare opptatt av den norske vestlandsnaturen, men også fascinert av menneskene som levde der. Denne bio-grafien om ham har hans forhold til Norge som hovedtema. Her har en sett på hans bakgrunn for gjentatte Norges-besøk, og dokumentert hans relasjoner tilSkjolden-bygda i Sognefjorden. Her kan en presentere en rekke korrespondansemed mennesker fra Skjolden, alt for å kaste lys over Wittgenstein som både filosof og person. Det norske (...) filosofiske miljøet er svært preget av Witt- gensteins tenkning. (shrink)

Different types of well-being are likely to be associated with different kinds of behaviors. The first objective of this study was, from a subjective well-being perspective, to examine whether harmony in life and satisfaction with life are related differently to cooperative behaviors depending on individuals’ social value orientation. The second objective was, from a methodological perspective, to examine whether language-based assessments calledcomputational language assessments(CLA), which enable respondents to answer with words that are analyzed using natural language processing, demonstrate stronger correlations (...) with cooperation than traditional rating scales. Participants reported their harmony in life, satisfaction with life, and social value orientation before taking part in an online cooperative task. The results show that the CLA of overall harmony in life correlated with cooperation (all participants:r= 0.18,p 0.05). No significant correlations (measured by the CLA or traditional rating scales) were found between satisfaction with life and cooperation. In conclusion, our study reveals an important behavioral difference between different types of subjective well-being. To our knowledge, this is the first study supporting the validity of self-reported CLA over traditional rating scales in relation to actual behaviors. (shrink)

Excerpt from Grundriß zu Einem System der Politik Die übergang53eit wirb gan3 natürli About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated (...) in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

The quest for causes behind health and sickness proposes deeper causes like per- sonality and general view of life. Two such concepts have been shown to associate with health indicators in a systematic way, sense of coherence and view of life. Sense of coherence is defined as the sum of three factors, comprehensibility, manage- ability, and meaningfulness. View of life consists of three components, general theories of man and the world, a central value system, and a basic attitude. Two em- (...) pirical studies are summarized where the concepts are related to bereavement and health, respectively. It is concluded that there are many similarities between the two concepts. They both emphasize integration and coherence and connote basic struc- tures in belief systems. They can be related to personality structure and the coping process. The concepts differ in scope and depth. SOC can be considered as part of the connotation of VOL. SOC is quantitatively measurable while VOL presumes qualitative methods of assessment. In studies of health, where factors pertaining to world view or sense of coherence are not in focus, but studied rather as possible confoun- ders, methodological simplicity points to use of the SOC concept. In studies of health where the deeper causal structures are in focus, VOL should also be used, since it per- mits greater depth of analysis. Ideally, both concepts should be applied for a full un- derstanding between man's inner processes and health. (shrink)

I present an analysis of Free Choice Items (FCIs), based on Scandinavian, where FCIs are complex and distinct from polarity sensitive items. Scandinavian FCIs are argued to have two components. One is a universal quantifying into modal contexts. The other is an operator mapping a type (s,t) expression onto itself, adjoining to the closest type t or (s,t) expression. Thus invoking Intensional Functional Application, this operator requires the presence of a modal in the scope of the universal quantifier. Facts concerning (...) ‘essential connections’ and ‘existential import’ are accounted for by assuming that the FC determiner has the option of acting like a quantifier. (shrink)

In this article I attack the scandalous one-sidedness of traditional philosophical epistemology. I make clear its total dependence on one and only one paradigm of knowledge – propositional knowledge. Such knowledge presupposes that we are always capable of fully articulate our knowledge verbally or notationally and support it by empirical or formal reasons. On this basis it becomes quite impossible to say anything sensible about, for instance, professional knowledge, not to speak of aesthetical or moral knowledge. Some of us have (...) been aware of this for quite a while as Michael Polanyi already in 1958 pointed it out in his book Personal Knowledge. His most famous statement is: «We know more than we can tell». And he argues that we possess a great amount of tacit knowledge. Therefore we need appropriate categories for handling the various kinds of knowledge which cannot be articulated as propositional knowledge. And that is Polanyi’s weak spot. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s remark in Philosophical Investigations § 78 concerning knowing and saying how high Mont Blanc is, how the word «game» is used and how a clarinet sounds, I have developed an alternative approach where becomes propositional knowledge, becomes various forms of practical knowledge and becomes various kinds of knowledge by familiarity. is a sort of first person knowledge which we are quite unable to express verbally to someone who is unfamiliar with the instruments of the Western musical tradition. On this basis I sketchily analyse the paradigm of knowledge in traditional philosophical epistemology and point out a series of its shortcomings. In the second part of my article I take a close look at a rather new contribution to the discussion of tacit knowledge, written by one of the leading figures within the research field called «the sociology of scientific knowledge» – Harry Collins. His book is called Tacit and Explicit Knowledge and was published in 2010. And his primary aim of the book is to «reconstruct the idea of tacit knowledge from first principles so that the concept’s disparate domains have a common conceptual language». I perform a close reading of his development of the common conceptual language and conclude that he does not succeed. He creates a monstrous terminology which just alienates us from the subject instead of making us see the connections between the «disparate domains» of tacit knowledge. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to use an anaphoric notion of presupposition for solving the problem of zero argument anaphora. Since Shopen (1973) it has been known that many missing arguments have an anaphoric interpretation, but it has not been known how this interpretation arises. I argue that these arguments are involved in presuppositions. On an anaphoric account of presuppositions as in van der Sandt (1992) or Kamp and Roßdeutscher (1992), it can be shown that the zero arguments acquire (...) an anaphoric interpretation through the presuppositions. The analysis rests on the principle that the Discourse Representation Structure for the presupposition is proper, so that the discourse referents for the zero arguments are in its universe and must be anchored to discourse referents in the context. (shrink)

Im Europa des 17. Jahrhundert entstand eine "Kultur der Evidenz", die mit neuen Formen der Erforschung und Darstellung der Natur gegen bislang gültiges Wissen antrat. Durch bloßen Augenschein, der vielfach ein wohlkalkulierter und inszenierter war, sollte es möglich werden, tradierte Lehrmeinungen und gewohnte Ansichten zu überwinden. Mit Fokus auf das Licht als Gegenstand der Naturforschung und als Medium der Formierung des Sehens untersucht die vorliegende Studie Praktiken der Evidenzproduktion in höfischer Kultur, Theater, Schauexperimenten, illustrierten Büchern, in der Anatomie und der (...) Kontroverse um das Vakuum. (shrink)

Enormous gaps between HIV burden and health care availability in low-income countries raise severe ethical problems. This article analyzes four HIV-priority dilemmas with interest across contexts and health systems. We explore principled distributive conflicts and use the Atkinson index to make explicit trade-offs between health maximization and equality in health. We find that societies need a relatively low aversion to inequality to favor treatment for children, even with large weights assigned to extending the lives of adults: higher inequality aversion is (...) needed to share resources equally between high-cost and low-cost treatment; higher inequality aversion is needed to favor treatment rather than prevention, and the highest inequality aversion is needed to favor sharing treatment between urban and rural regions rather than urban provision of treatment. This type of ethical sensitivity analysis may clarify the ethics of health policy choice. (shrink)

It is argued in this article that the concept of practice is one of the key concepts in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. It partly replaces his earlier talk about the inexpressible. ?The practice has to speak for itself, as Wittgenstein succinctly puts it. The concept of practice not only points to the ways in which the unity of our concepts are underpinned, as Gordon Baker has it, it also comprises the skills involved in handling the conceptualized phenomena, our prereflective familiarity with (...) them, expressed in the sureness in our behaviour towards them, and the judgmental power exercised in applying or withholding a given concept on a particular occasion. These factors are all relevant to the establishment of knowledge, but they cannot themselves be fully and straightforwardly articulated by verbal means. Nevertheless, they represent what we go by when we apply concepts and other types of rules. To follow a rule is what Wittgenstein calls a practice. The sketched analysis of this concept makes us understand better how it is possible to apply a rule without the support of another rule. It also makes us realize in what sense one is justified in talking about tacit knowledge in connection with the application of concepts and rule?following in general. Quite a lot hangs on seeing the world aright at this point. (shrink)

This paper discusses the interrelationship between wisdom, science and craft from the perspective of the Wittgenstein concept of tacit knowledge. It challenges the notion of the ‘rules-model’ as put forward by Logical Positivists, and shows the limitation of this model for describing the tacit dimension of knowledge. The paper demonstrates the crucial role of practice in ‘rule-following’ in the real world. It is held that ‘to follow a rule’ is to practice a custom, a usage or an institutional practice. Hence, (...) rules can only exist as a link in social life.The dream of the ‘precise’ language can only be realised in a closed scientific world. It is inadequate for reflecting the user's relationship to language and its content and practice in varied ‘use situations’. It is only through examples that we learn to deal with, describe, interpret and learn from the new situations.The rule-based models which are used to acquire and describe human knowledge in syntactic and propositional forms are, in effect, an impoverishment of the description of reality. It is argued that expert knowledge and linguistic knowledge are linked together and emerge as two sides of the same subject as the pragmatic perspective of reality. The tacit dimension of expert knowledge is, in many cases, more significant than the linguistic knowledge, especially in the case of the vocational and aesthetic world.The challenge to AI researchers, therefore, is to recognise that knowledge based systems which ignore the tacit dimension of expert knowledge not only distance the user from reality but also impoverish the learning process itself. (shrink)