Perhaps the central focus of American bioethics has been to push against medical paternalism on the grounds that it impedes the autonomy of patients—that is, their ability to make choices of their...

What role does experience play in the development of face recognition? A growing body of evidence indicates that newborn brains need slowly changing visual experiences to develop accurate visual recognition abilities. All of the work supporting this “slowness constraint” on visual development comes from studies testing basic‐level object recognition. Here, we present the results of controlled‐rearing experiments that provide evidence for a slowness constraint on the development of face recognition, a prototypical subordinate‐level object recognition task. We found that (1) newborn (...) chicks can rapidly develop view‐invariant face recognition and (2) the development of this ability relies on experience with slowly moving faces. When chicks were reared with quickly moving faces, they built distorted face representations that largely lacked invariance to viewpoint changes, effectively “breaking” their face recognition abilities. These results provide causal evidence that slowly changing visual experiences play a critical role in the development of face recognition, akin to basic‐level object recognition. Thus, face recognition is not a hardwired property of vision but is learned rapidly as the visual system adapts to the temporal structure of the animal's visual environment. (shrink)

How do newborns learn to recognize objects? According to temporal learning models in computational neuroscience, the brain constructs object representations by extracting smoothly changing features from the environment. To date, however, it is unknown whether newborns depend on smoothly changing features to build invariant object representations. Here, we used an automated controlled-rearing method to examine whether visual experience with smoothly changing features facilitates the development of view-invariant object recognition in a newborn animal model—the domestic chick. When newborn chicks were reared (...) with a virtual object that moved smoothly over time, the chicks created view-invariant representations that were selective for object identity and tolerant to viewpoint changes. Conversely, when newborn chicks were reared with a temporally non-smooth object, the chicks developed less selectivity for identity features and less tolerance to viewpoint changes. These results provide evidence for a “smoothness constraint” on the development of invariant object recognition and indicate that newborns leverage the temporal smoothness of natural visual environments to build abstract mental models of objects. (shrink)

Samantha Vice’s essay, ‘How Do I Live in This Strange Place?’, is a sensitive and subtle exploration of the difficult moral terrain of the issues of white responsibility and white moral self-reform in a South Africa that is formally post-apartheid, but still profoundly shaped by the legacy of white domination, both in its enduring socio-economic structures and in its citizens’ typical moral psychologies. Vice’s conclusion is that shame is the moral emotion most appropriate for whites unable to free themselves (...) from white privilege and live up to what she sees as the required standards of moral excellence. In response, I argue that she is in effect making the supererogatory obligatory, and constructing an unrealistic schedule of virtues. Drawing on various recent writings on non-ideal theory, I suggest that standard moral distinctions need to be relocated to take systemic social oppression into account, thereby yielding a more forgiving moral taxonomy than Vice’s own over-demanding mapping. (shrink)

Introduction, W G Runciman Social Evolution in Primates: The Role of Ecological Factors and Male Behaviour, Carel P van Schaik Determinants of Group Size in Primates: A General Model, R I M Dunbar Function and Intention in the Calls of Non-Human Primates, Dorothy L Cheney & Robert M Seyfarth Why Culture is Common, but Cultural Evolution is Rare, Robert Boyd & Peter J Richerson An Evolutionary and Chronological Framework for Human Social Behaviour, Robert A Foley Friendship and the Banker?s Paradox: (...) Other Pathways to the Evolution of Adaptations for Altruism, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides The Early Prehistory of Human Social Behaviour: Issues of Archaeological Inference and Cognitive Evolution, Steven Mithen The Emergence of Biologically Modern Populations in Europe: A Social and Cognitive ?Revolution??, Paul Mellars Responses to Environmental Novelty: Changes in Men?s Marriage Strategies in a Rural Kenyan Community, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder Genetic Language Impairment: Unruly Grammars, M Gopnik, J Dalalakis, S E Fukuda, S Fukuda & E Kehayia The Emergence of Cultures among Wild Chimpanzees, Christophe Boesch Terrestriality, Bipedalism and the Origin of Language, Leslie C Aiello Conclusions, John Maynard Smith. (shrink)

The correspondence between the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno and his politically active graduate student Elisabeth Lenk offers fresh insights into both Adorno's view of surrealism and its relation to the student uprisings of 1960s France and Germany. Written between 1962, when Lenk moved to Paris and persuaded an initially reluctant Adorno to supervise her sociology dissertation on the surrealists, and Adorno's death in 1969, these letters reveal a surprisingly tender side of the distinguished professor. The correspondence is accompanied by a (...) selection of documents that bring additional depth and context to the letters and their engagement with the art and politics of the period. Filling in the background of Adorno and Lenk's lively exchange, the volume includes new translations of classic essays by Walter Benjamin ("Surrealism: Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia") and Adorno ("Surrealism Reconsidered"), along with a collection of short prose readings by Adorno and the writer-scholar Carl Dreyfus and three original essays by Lenk: her afterword to Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon, her Introduction to the German edition of Charles Fourier's The Theory of the Four Movements and the General Destinies, and her incisive essay "Critical Theory and Surreal Practice." An Introduction by Lenk's student, the contemporary writer and critic Rita Bischof, points to the continuing challenge of surrealist politics. This remarkable body of correspondence appears here in English for the first time, as do Adorno and Dreyfus's surrealist readings and the essays by Lenk. Together, they provide a rich mine of critical material for reassessing the significance of the surrealist movement and its successors. (shrink)

When Moschion orders Daos up to him for punishment, Daos points to the spot by Moschion's had indicated , but then darts fearfully away. I wish I could name the originator of this attractive part-division, which makes the use of more precise; but in seminars the correct assignment of ideas is often very difficult.

Everyone, according to W.A. Mathieu, is musical by nature--it goes right along with being human. And if you don't believe it, this book will convince you. In a series of interrelated short essays, Mathieu takes the reader on a journey through ordinary experiences to open our ears to the rich variety of music that surrounds us but that we are trained to ignore; such as the variety of pitches produced by different objects, like glassware, furniture, drums--anything you can tap; or (...) sounds that hover on the border of music, like laughter, the clinking of glasses in a toast, or the unintentional falsetto produced by yawning. Along the way the author teaches aspects of music theory that nonmusicians might ordinarily shy away from. He reveals the way of music to be a profoundly spiritual path--one that is everyone's birthright. (shrink)

In a note on Aesch. Ag. 1243 f. in C.R. lxxv 187-8, I had occasion to cite a number of examples of adverbial transference. Whether they were or were not adequate to establish the point I was seeking to make I leave to the judgement of others, but the idiom possesses interest of its own, and it seems worth while to quote some further instances of it that I have noted since my article appeared. I will divide them according as (...) they occur with verbs of hearing or with other verbs. (shrink)

L'A. soutient, contre Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis et William May, que le contrôle naturel des naissances pratiqué avec une intention mauvaise n'est pas contraception. Il montre que les auteurs identifient de façon incorrecte la fin prochaine de la contraception comme choix qu'il n'y ait pas d'enfant, alors que la fin prochaine véritable est d'empêcher un enfant de venir au monde . Ainsi donc, puisque en NFP un couple ne cherche pas à empêcher la venue au monde d'un enfant, (...) NFP n'implique pas d'action contraceptive. L'A. soutient aussi qu'identifier la fin prochaine comme choix qu'il n'y ait pas d'enfant ne spécifie pas de façon adéquate une classe homogène d'actes objectifs, bien que cela spécifie une classe homogène d'actes moraux. (shrink)

Modern knowledge of servo systems and computing machines makes it possible to specify a circuit that can and will induce the rules and winning moves in a game like chess when they are given only ostensibly, that is, by playing against opponents who quit when illegal or losing moves are made. Such circuits enjoy a value social in the sense that it is shared by the players.La connaissance moderne des servomécanismes et des machines à calculer permet de concevoir un circuit (...) qui pourra suivre des règles et décider les coups décisifs dans un jeu comme le jeu d'échecs tout au moins quand les coups sont joués de faÇon apparente, c'est-à-dire contre des adversaires qui abandonneront dans le cas de coups irréguliers ou de coups absurdes.De tels circuits possèdent une „valeur” sociale dans la mesure où elle est partagée par les autres joueurs.Moderne Kenntnissen im Gebiete von Folgegeraeten und Rechenmaschinen ermoeglichen es einen elektrischen Kreis aufzuwerfen, der die Regeln und gewinnbringende Zuege eines Spieles wie Schach induktiv erfassen kann und wird, wenn diese Regeln und Zuege nur ostensiv gegeben sind; d.h. indem mit Gegnern gespielt wird, die das Spiel einstellen sobald regelwidrige oder verlustbringende Zuege gemacht werden. Solche Kreise schaffen demnach einen Wert, der gesellschaftlich in dem Sinn ist, dass er auch von den Mitspielern geteilt wird. (shrink)

The generation of asymmetric cell shapes is a recurring theme in biology. In budding yeast, one form of cell asymmetry occurs for division and is generated by anisotropic growth of the mother cell to form a daughter cell bud. Previous genetic studies uncovered key roles for the small GTPase Cdc42 in organizing the actin cytoskeleton and vesicle delivery to the site of bud growth,1,2 but a recent paper has also raised questions about how control of Cdc42 activity is integrated into (...) a proposed hierarchical regulatory pathway that specifies a unique site of bud formation.3 BioEssays 25:833–836, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)