What are the processes, from conception to adulthood, that enable a single cell to grow into a sentient adult? Neuroconstructivism is a pioneering 2 volume work that sets out a whole new framework for considering the complex topic of development, integrating data from cognitive studies, computational work, and neuroimaging.

The current study examined the effects of cardiorespiratory fitness, identified with a continuous graded cycle ergometry, and aerobic exercise on cognitive functioning and entropy of the electroencephalogram (EEG) in 30 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 14 years. Higher and lower fit participants performed an executive function task after a bout of acute exercise and after rest while watching a film. EEG entropy, using the sample entropy measure, was repeatedly measured during the 1500ms post-stimulus interval to evaluate changes in (...) entropy over time. Analysis of the behavioural data for lower and higher fit groups revealed an interaction between fitness levels and acute physical exercise. Notably, lower fit, but not higher fit, participants had higher error rates for NoGo relative to Go trials in the rest condition, whereas in the acute exercise condition there were no differences in error rates between groups; higher fit participants also had significantly faster reaction times in the exercise condition in comparison with the rest condition. Analysis of EEG data revealed that higher fit participants demonstrated lower entropy post-stimulus than lower fit participants in the left frontal hemisphere, possibly indicating increased efficiency of early stage stimulus processing and more efficient allocation of cognitive resources to the task demands. The results suggest that EEG entropy is sensitive to stimulus processing demands and varies as a function of physical fitness levels, but not acute exercise. Physical fitness, in turn, may enhance cognition in adolescence by facilitating higher functionality of the attentional system in the context of lower levels of frontal EEG entropy. (shrink)

What are the processes, from conception to adulthood, that enable a single cell to grow into a sentient adult? The processes that occur along the way are so complex that any attempt to understand development necessitates a multi-disciplinary approach, integrating data from cognitive studies, computational work, and neuroimaging - an approach till now seldom taken in the study of child development. Neuroconstructivism is a major new 2 volume publication that seeks to redress this balance, presenting an integrative new framework for (...) considering development. In the first volume, the authors review up-to-to date findings from neurobiology, brain imaging, child development, computer and robotic modelling to consider why children's thinking develops the way it does. They propose a new synthesis of development that is based on 5 key principles found to operate at many levels of descriptions. They use these principles to explain what causes a number of key developmental phenomena, including infants' interacting with objects, early social cognitive interactions, and the causes of dyslexia. The "neuroconstructivist" framework also shows how developmental disorders do not arise from selective damage to the normal cognitive system, but instead arise from developmental processes that operate under atypical constraints. How these principles work is illustrated in several case studies ranging from perceptual to social and reading development. Finally, the authors use neuroimaging, behavioural analyses, computational simulations and robotic models to provide a way of understanding the mechanisms and processes that cause development to occur. (shrink)

Alexandre Dikovsky is born in Leningrad, Russia on August 9, 1945. He died in Nantes, France in the beginning of 2014. He is well known for his significant contributions to the fields of Mathematics, Linguistics, and Informatics. In the course of his career, he published over 100 research papers, 12 book chapters, and participated in numerous national and international projects.

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

A common view about the phenomenology of episodic remembering has it that when we remember a perceptual experience, we can relive or re-experience many of its features, but not its characteristic presence. In this paper, we challenge this common view. We first say that presence in perception divides into temporal and locative presence, with locative having two sides, an objective and a subjective one. While we agree with the common view that temporal and objective locative presence cannot be relived in (...) remembering, we argue that subjective locative presence – the feeling of being immersed in a certain scene – can be so. Our argument for this claim starts by determining independently the underpinning mechanisms of subjective locative presence in quasi-perceptual imagination. These mechanisms are self-projection, imaginative pretence, and attentional focus. We then proceed to establish that they have been found to underpin conscious states of episodic remembering too. We conclude that episodic remembering can bring us to relive the subjective locative presence characteristic of a perceptual experience, and that the common view is mistaken. Our view – ‘mnemonic immersivism’ – has important consequences regarding the relationships between memory and imagination and the phenomenology of episodic remembering. (shrink)

Late in 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology (lIT) received a grant of more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum.! Enough has now been accomplished to draw some tentative conclusions. I am the grant's principal investigator. In this paper, I shall describe what we at lIT did, what we learned, and what others, especially philosophers, can learn (...) from us. We set out to develop an approach that others could profitably adopt. I believe that we succeeded. (shrink)

Seventeen philosophical thinkers ask: What is creativity? What are the criteria of creativity? Should we assign logical priority to creative persons, processes, or products? How do various forms of creativity relate to different domains of human activity?

We argue that are no such things as literal categories in human cognition. Instead, we argue that there are merely temporary coalescences of dimensions of similarity, which are brought together by context in order to create the similarity structure in mental representations appropriate for the task at hand. Fodor contends that context‐sensitive cognition cannot be realised by current computational theories of mind. We address this challenge by describing a simple computational implementation that exhibits internal knowledge representations whose similarity structure alters (...) fluidly depending on context. We explicate the processing properties that support this function and illustrate with two more complex models, one applied to the development of semantic knowledge , the second to the processing of simple metaphorical comparisons . The models firstly demonstrate how phenomena that seem problematic for literal categorisation resolve to particular cases of the contextual modulation of mental representations; and secondly prompt a new perspective on the relation between language and thought: language affords the strategic control of context on semantic knowledge, allowing information to be brought to bear in a given situation that might otherwise not be available to influence processing. This may explain one way in which human thought is creative, and distinctive from animal cognition. (shrink)

In this response, we consider four main issues arising from the commentaries to the target article. These include further details of the theory of interactive specialization, the relationship between neuroconstructivism and selectionism, the implications of neuroconstructivism for the notion of representation, and the role of genetics in theories of development. We conclude by stressing the importance of multidisciplinary approaches in the future study of cognitive development and by identifying the directions in which neuroconstructivism can expand in the Twenty-first Century.

Michael Psellos ist ein Philosoph, der wie kein anderer für die byzantinische Epoche steht. Das Denken dieses Großintellektuellen – der in subtilen Auseinandersetzungen mit antiken und spätantiken Positionen in Theologie, Ontologie und Ethik eine selbständige christliche Philosophie formuliert – findet in diesem Band erstmalig eine monographische Gesamtdarstellung. Die Arbeit liefert durch ihren systematischen Charakter, durch die Einbeziehung bisher nicht interpretierter Texte, durch die Darlegung der bisherigen Forschungsergebnisse und durch die Aufdeckung von Traditioinslinien eine wichtige Grundlage für die weitere Erforschung (...) der byzantinischen Philosophie. (shrink)

Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition proposes a unifying framework for the study of cognitive development that brings together (1) constructivism (which views development as the progressive elaboration of increasingly complex structures), (2) cognitive neuroscience (which aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behavior), and (3) computational modeling (which proposes formal and explicit specifications of information processing). The guiding principle of our approach is context dependence, within and (in contrast to Marr [1982]) between levels of organization. We propose that three (...) mechanisms guide the emergence of representations: competition, cooperation, and chronotopy; which themselves allow for two central processes: proactivity and progressive specialization. We suggest that the main outcome of development is partial representations, distributed across distinct functional circuits. This framework is derived by examining development at the level of single neurons, brain systems, and whole organisms. We use the terms encellment, embrainment, and embodiment to describe the higher-level contextual influences that act at each of these levels of organization. To illustrate these mechanisms in operation we provide case studies in early visual perception, infant habituation, phonological development, and object representations in infancy. Three further case studies are concerned with interactions between levels of explanation: social development, atypical development and within that, developmental dyslexia. We conclude that cognitive development arises from a dynamic, contextual change in embodied neural structures leading to partial representations across multiple brain regions and timescales, in response to proactively specified physical and social environment. (shrink)

This book builds on the idea that pragmatics and philosophy are strictly interconnected and that advances in one area will generate consequential advantages in the other area. The first part of the book, entitled ‘Theoretical Approaches to Philosophy of Language’, contains contributions by philosophers of language on connectives, intensional contexts, demonstratives, subsententials, and implicit indirect reports. The second part, ‘Pragmatics in Discourse’, presents contributions that are more empirically based or of a more applicative nature and that deal with the pragmatics (...) of discourse, argumentation, pragmatics and law, and context. The book presents perspectives which, generally, make most of the Gricean idea of the centrality of a speaker’s intention in attribution of meaning to utterances, whether one is interested in the level of sentence-like units or larger chunks of discourse. (shrink)

The first results of my Phd-thesis regarding Michael Psellos’ practical philosophy, namely his approach on brotherly love and cosmopolitism. I will analyze passages from several texts and present first translations. Secondly I will put his arguments in context with the classical pagan, late antique and Christian ways of understanding virtue, cosmopolitism and brotherly love as well as work out his proper innovation. Michael Psellos is representative for the byzantine way of thought and its unique mixture that just begins (...) to be analyzed by modern scholars. (shrink)

Is it ever fair to limit treatment for diseases like glioblastoma for which prognosis is poor? Because resources are finite and health care spending limits the other possible uses for those resources, limiting access to an intervention that does not generate benefits is ethically sound. Ignoring the balance of benefits and burdens associated with treatment ignores opportunity costs and leads us to treat some lives as more valuable than others. It also ignores evidence that patients and families, when presented with (...) adequate information about the benefits and burdens of aggressive treatment compared with palliative care, often prefer the palliative care option.Should the limitations we set on the availability of care be greater for older people than younger people? Since the 1980s, scholars have called for strong age rationing of medical care in which Medicare would not pay for anything other than palliative care after they have achieved average life expectancy. (shrink)

The increased use of human biological material for cell-based research and clinical interventions poses risks to the privacy of patients and donors, including the possibility of re-identification of individuals from anonymized cell lines and associated genetic data. These risks will increase as technologies and databases used for re-identification become affordable and more sophisticated. Policies that require ongoing linkage of cell lines to donors’ clinical information for research and regulatory purposes, and existing practices that limit research participants’ ability to control what (...) is done with their genetic data, amplify the privacy concerns. (shrink)

An argumentative passage that might appear to be an instance of denying the antecedent will generally admit of an alternative interpretation, one on which the conditional contained by the passage is a preface to the argument rather than a premise of it. On this interpretation. which generally is a more charitable one, the conditional plays a certain dialectical role and, in some cases, a rhetorical role as well. Assuming only a very weak principle of exigetical charity, I consider what it (...) would take to justify the less charitable interpretation. I then present evidence that those conditions are seldom met. Indeed, I was unable to find a single published argument that can justifiably be charged with denying the antecedent. (shrink)

The Byzantine philosopher Michael Psellos describes in his ethics two kinds of virtue: practical and intellectual virtues. Practical virtues are defined as a middle term between two extremes as is known from the Aristotelian tradition. His innovation is to define also a middle regarding the intellectual virtues. He says that the highest object of knowledge is not graspable for the human intellect because it exceeds his powers. Whoever strives to understand the highest object of knowledge, the essence of god, (...) is determined to fail. Thus, the best objects that the human intellect can contemplate are situated below god, in the “middle”. The concept of the middle is thus present twice in Psellos’ ethics: once in the practical virtues and once in the intellectual virtues. (shrink)

The ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez has reignited debate in Latin America and internationally on the questions of socialism and revolution. This forum brings together six leading intellectuals from different revolutionary traditions and introduces their reflections on class-struggle, the state, imperialism, counter-power, revolutionary parties, community and communes, workplaces, economy, politics, society, culture, race, gender, and the hopes, contradictions, and prospects of ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ in contemporary Venezuela.

This paper defends Mereological Universalism(the thesis that, for any set S of disjoint objects, there is an object that the members of S compose. Universalism is unpalatable to many philosophers because it entails that if there are such things as my left tennis shoe, W. V. Quine, and the Taj Mahal, then there is another object that those three things compose. This paper presents and criticizes Peter van Inwagen's argument against Universalism and then presents a new argument in favor of (...) Universalism. It turns out that the most reasonable way to resist the argument for Universalism is to deny the existence of artifacts; thus, if we believe in artifacts, we have no real choice other than to embrace Universalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: According to Michael Dummett, Wittgenstein rejects in the Philosophical Investigations the “realist” approach of the Tractatus, and replaces it with the idea that meaning is “use”; Wittgenstein, Dummett holds, draws the “metaphysical consequences” of this by subscribing to a form of non-realism. In this paper I defend a version of Dummett’s point that the Tractarian semantics is replaced in the Investigations by the notion that meaning is use, but I criticize his contention that Wittgenstein, as a consequence, subscribes (...) to some variety of metaphysical non-realism. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of Georg Simmel’s philosophy of culture as a theory that can be applied to a critical view of the cultural and political economy situation of our time. This interpretation allows us to somewhat re-actualize the legacy of the German philosopher in the context of contemporary critical thought. The interpretation was created on the basis of the analysis of two Simmel’s key concepts, namely: “tragedy of culture” and “conflict of culture”, as well as their relationship. In (...) addition, the basis for such reading was Simmel’s understanding of the subject, which denies the absolute sovereignty and asserts his appearance only under the influence of cultural objects. This is complemented by the interpretation of the “tragedy of culture” as a theory that debunks the “sovereign subject” as discussed by Dina and Michael Weinstein in Postmodern Simmel. Interpretation of Simmel’s theory of culture as critical towards its object includes an analysis of various phenomena inherent in modern culture from the standpoint of this theory. First, such a phenomenon is the capitalist system, which, due to its self-regulation, is an absolutely alienated object and a stimulator of the quantitative distribution of cultural objects. Secondly, the imperious relationship of cultural objects and the level of influence of some objects on the development and distribution of others allows us to look at how certain cultural phenomena transform culture as a whole. The third point is the relativization of reality and values and the role of the phenomenon of money in this process. Finally, it is the transformation of the role of subjects in the process of creating cultural objects. This transformation arises as the effect of placing the “tragedy” and “conflict” of culture in the same plane of contemporaneity, as a result of which the impulse to reproduce an objective culture can no longer be provided by a subjective impulse; but there is no decline in the rate of growth of an objective culture, and therefore, the key objects of culture are taken the function of this impulse.Manuscript received 10.08.2020. (shrink)

The literature on Kierkegaard is often content to paraphrase. By contrast, Michael Theunissen articulates one of Kierkegaard's central ideas, his theory of despair, in a detailed and comprehensible manner and confronts it with alternatives. Understanding what Kierkegaard wrote on despair is vital not only because it illuminates his thought as a whole, but because his account of despair in The Sickness unto Death is the cornerstone of existentialism. Theunissen's book, published in German in 1993, is widely regarded as the (...) best treatment of the subject in any language. Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair is also one of the few works on Kierkegaard that bridge the gap between the Continental and analytic traditions in philosophy. Theunissen argues that for Kierkegaard, the fundamental characteristic of despair is the desire of the self "not to be what it is." He sorts through the apparently chaotic text of The Sickness unto Death to explain what Kierkegaard meant by the "self," how and why individuals want to flee their selves, and how he believed they could reconnect with their selves. According to Theunissen, Kierkegaard thought that individuals in despair seek to deny their authentic selves to flee particular aspects of their character, their past, or the world, or in order to deny their "mission." In addition to articulating and evaluating Kierkegaard's concept of despair, Theunissen relates Kierkegaard's ideas to those of Heidegger, Sartre, and other twentieth-century philosophers. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Baumann's comments on "Can Knowledge Really be Non-fative?" In this paper Baumann's suggestions for how those who deny the factivty of knowledge might deal with the argument from inconsistency and explosion are addressed.

It has become very popular among philosophers to attempt to discredit, or at least set severe limits to, the thesis that there exist conceptual schemes radically different from ours. This fashion is misconceived. Philosophers have attempted to justify it in two main ways: by means of arguments which are a priorist relative to the relevant linguistic and textual evidence (and either independent of or based upon positive theories of meaning, understanding, and interpretation); and by means of arguments which are a (...) posteriorist relative to that evidence. The former approach is misconceived, not only in that its particular arguments fail, but also in principle. The latter approach, while in general the right sort of approach to adopt to the question, arrives at its conclusion only through faulty execution, through misinterpretation of the evidence. Though quite unjustified, philosophers' hostility to the thesis of radically different conceptual schemes is easily explained, namely, in terms of a number of psychologically powerful motives which it subserves. These motives cannot step in to provide the missing justification, however. Instead, they reveal such hostility in an even shadier light. (shrink)

This essay argues that Kant’s conception of regulative ideas of practical reason introduced in the Critique of Pure Reason serves an important twofold function in his political philosophy. First, Kant’s version of the ideal, Platonic republic acts as the a priori paradigm of a rightful state to which existing regimes can and should conform. Second, Kant frames the regulative status of such practical ideas as a resolution of the conflict between the extremes of dogmatism and skepticism. In his principal political (...) writings from the 1790s—i. e., “Theory and Practice,” “Perpetual Peace,” and the Doctrine of Right—Kant draws on his account of practical ideas in the Critique to articulate a counterfactual norm of popular sovereignty that distinguishes his political standpoint from opponents on the left and the right. Radicals repeat the error of the dogmatists by affirming that the norm of collective self-legislation is completely attainable in experience. By contrast, conservatives make the mistake of the skeptics by denying that rational political standards can be applied to reality at all. I show that Kant reconciles these extremes through his model of gradual, non-violent political reform guided by the regulative ideal of a perfectly self-legislating state. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ghazali and Demonstrative Science MICHAEL E. MARMURA I MEDIEVALISLA_MICtheologians subjected Aristotle's theory of the essential efficient cause to severe criticism and rejected it. This criticism and rejection finds its most forceful expression in the writings of Ghazali (al-Ghaz~li) (d. 1111).1 In his Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), he argues on logical and empirical grounds that the alleged necessary connection between what is habitually regarded as the (...) natural efficient cause and its effect cannot be proven. He does not, however, take an agnostic stand on this question but proceeds to affirm two points: (1) that there is no causal agency in natural things; (2) that all natural events are the direct creation of God. Ghazali, moreover, does not confine such divine action to the realm of the inanimate and the irrational, in his al-Iqtis.~d fi-l-Ftiqad (The Golden Mean of Belief), he affirms the doctrine that the individual human act, like any other occurrence in the world, is also the direct creation of God. Causal efficacy resides in God alone. But the divine act, for Ghazali, is not an essential act. It does not proceed as the necessary consequence of divine essence. It is the arbitrary decree of the divine will, an attribute coeternal, but not identical with divine essence. Ghazali thus denies essential action altogether. In all this, he gives expression to the occasionalism of the Islamic school of dogmatic theology (kal~m) to which he belonged, the Ashcarite school. Ghazali had also a keen interest in logic. He wrote logical treatises for his fellow theologians, encouraging them to master this art as a tool to rebutt their doctrinal opponents. The~ treatises, in the main, sum up and explain the logic used by the Islamic philosophers--a logic that reflects the Stoic and Aristotelian traditions. Ghazali recognizes formal logic to be philosophically neutral, and hence in no way conflicting with his theology." He does not confine himself to formal logic in these expositions, however, but discusses Aristotelian demonstration. And it is in his statements on demonstration that we seem to be confronted with paradox. Demonstrative science, as understood by the Islamic philosophers, rests on the theory of essential causes and functions in terms of it. Indeed, in his reply to Ghazali's rejection of essential efficient causes in nature, Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (d. 1198) argues Texts frequently referred to in the notes will be abbreviated as follows: Demonstration: Ibn Sin~, Al-Shifa~; Logic V.; Demonstration, ed. A. E. Affifi,revised by I. Madkur (Cairo, 1956). Iqti~dd: A1-Ghaz~li, Al-Iqtisad Fi-l-ICtiqad(Cairo: no date). Metaphysics: Ibn Sin~, A1-Shif~: al-Ilah~yat (Metaphysics), ed. C. C. Anawati, S. Dunya, and S. Zayd, revised by I. Madkur (2 vols.; Cairo, 1960). MI: AI-Ghaz~lI,MiCyaral-CIlm,ed. S. Dunya (Cairo, 1961). TF: A1-Ghaz~ll, Tahafut al-Falasifa, ed. M. Bouyges (Beirut, 1927). TT: Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Tahafut al-Tahafut, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut, 1930). 2 TF., pp. 15-17. [1831 184 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that such a rejection would render demonstrative science impossible. We would have no true knowledge; at best, only opinion. 3For this staunch defender of Aristotle, the theory of natural efficient causality constitutes a necessary condition for demonstrative science. Yet Ghazali in his writings does not deny the claim that demonstration gives us certain knowledge about the natural order. On the contrary, he seems to be affirming this in both his Tahdfutand the logical treatise he appended to this work, Mi~jdral-CIlm(The Standardfor Knowledge).If Ghazali does in fact uphold this claim for demonstration, then he must either deny that the theory of essential efficient causality is a necessary condition for demonstrative science, or fall into contradiction. At first glance, Ghazali's position in the Micy~r,where he gives his most comprehensive treatment of demonstration, is highly ambiguous and suggests contradiction. He seems for the most part to be reproducing the essentials of the Aristotelian demonstrative theory. Although in one section he reaffirms his rejection of necessary causal connection in nature, he nonetheless continues to use such terms as "cause," "effect," "necessity" and "certainty" in what appear to be... (shrink)

“The physics of representation” aims to define the word “representation” as used in the neurosciences, argue that such representations as described in neuroscience are related to and usefully illuminated by the representations generated by modern neural networks, and establish that these entities are “representations in good standing”. We suggest that Poldrack succeeds in, exposes some tensions between the broad use of the term in neuroscience and the narrower class of entities that he identifies in the end, and between the meaning (...) of “representation” in neuroscience and in psychology in, and fails in. This results in some hard choices: give up on the broad scope of the term in neuroscience or continue to embrace the broad, psychologically inflected sense of the term, and deny the entities generated by neural nets are representations in the relevant sense. (shrink)

The rapid development in healthcare technologies in recent years has resulted in the need for health services, whether publicly funded or insurance based, to identify means to maximise the benefits and provide equitable distribution of limited resources. This has resulted in the need for rationing decisions, and there has been considerable debate regarding the substantive and procedural ethical principles that promote distributive justice when making such decisions. In this paper, I argue that while the scientifically rigorous approaches of evidence-based healthcare (...) are claimed as aspects of procedural justice that legitimise such guidance, there are biases and distortions in all aspects of the process that may lead to epistemic injustices. Regardless of adherence to principles of distributive justice in the decision-making process, evidential failings may undermine the fairness and legitimacy of such decisions. In particular, I identify epistemic exclusion that denies certain patient and professional groups the opportunity to contribute to the epistemic endeavour. This occurs at all stages of the process, from the generation, analysis and reporting of the underlying evidence, through the interpretation of such evidence, to the decision-making that determines access to healthcare resources. I further argue that this is compounded by processes which confer unwarranted epistemic privilege on experts in relation to explicit or implicit value judgements, which are not within their remit. I suggest a number of areas in which changes to the processes for developing, regulating, reporting and evaluating evidence may improve the legitimacy of such processes. (shrink)

Hammersley asserts that “radical” strands of ethnomethodology and constructionism in science and technology studies (STS) take an anti-representationalist approach which denies that “science produces representations referring to objects or processes that exist independently of it.” In this ‘Comment,’ I argue that ethnomethodology is distinct from both constructionist and post-constructionist research programs in STS, and that Hammersley presents a binary choice between being for or against the general proposition that scientific representations correspond to independent realities. He suggests that STS studies should (...) “suspend” the philosophical question of whether scientific representations correspond to their worldly referents. Perhaps this is good advice for proponents of STS who promote a “turn to ontology” or propose to do “empirical philosophy,” but ethnomethodologists take a deflationary approach to the topics of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Reliabilism holds that knowledge is true belief reliably caused. Reliabilists should say something about individuating processes; critics deny that the right degree of generality can be specified without arbitrariness. It is argued that this criticism applies as well to processes mentioned in scientific explanations. The gratuitous puzzles created thereby show that the “generality problem” is illusory.