The human masticatory system is a complex functional unit characterized by a multitude of skeletal components, muscles, soft tissues, and teeth. Muscle activation dynamics cannot be directly measured on live human subjects due to ethical, safety, and accessibility limitations. Therefore, estimation of muscle activations and their resultant forces is a longstanding and active area of research. Reinforcement learning (RL) is an adaptive learning strategy which is inspired by the behavioral psychology and enables an agent to learn the dynamics of an (...) unknown system via policy-driven explorations. The RL framework is a well-formulated closed-loop system where high capacity neural networks are trained with the feedback mechanism of rewards to learn relatively complex actuation patterns. In this work, we are building on a deep RL algorithm, known as the Soft Actor-Critic, to learn the inverse dynamics of a simulated masticatory system, i.e., learn the activation patterns that drive the jaw to its desired location. The outcome of the proposed training procedure is a parametric neural model which acts as the brain of the biomechanical system. We demonstrate the model’s ability to navigate the feasible three-dimensional (3D) envelope of motion with sub-millimeter accuracies. We also introduce a performance analysis platform consisting of a set of quantitative metrics to assess the functionalities of a given simulated masticatory system. This platform assesses the range of motion, metabolic efficiency, the agility of motion, the symmetry of activations, and the accuracy of reaching the desired target positions. We demonstrate how the model learns more metabolically efficient policies by integrating a force regularization term in the RL reward. We also demonstrate the inverse correlation between the metabolic efficiency of the models and their agility and range of motion. The presented masticatory model and the proposed RL training mechanism are valuable tools for the analysis of mastication and other biomechanical systems. We see this framework’s potential in facilitating the functional analyses aspects of surgical treatment planning and predicting the rehabilitation performance in post-operative subjects. (shrink)

Ideomotor actions are behaviours that are unconsciously initiated and express a thought rather than a response to a sensory stimulus. The question examined here is whether ideomotor actions can also express nonconscious knowledge. We investigated this via the use of implicit long-term semantic memory, which is not available to conscious recall. We compared accuracy of answers to yes/no questions using both volitional report and ideomotor response . Results show that when participants believed they knew the answer, responses in the two (...) modalities were similar. But when they believed they were guessing, accuracy was at chance for volitional report , but significantly higher for Ouija response . These results indicate that implicit semantic memory can be expressed through ideomotor actions. They also suggest that this approach can provide an interesting new methodology for studying implicit processes in cognition. (shrink)

Sidney Hook on Pragmatism, Democracy, and Freedom collects twenty-five of Hook's most incisive essays in political philosophy, written throughout his lengthy career. Clustered into five main sections, the essays discuss pragmatism and naturalism, Marx and Marxism, democratic theory, democratic practice, and the defense of a free society.

What is the right thing to do? -- "You have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong" -- Between culpable and blameless -- Are all mistakes equal? -- Report, disclose, protect, learn -- A just culture in your organization -- The criminalization of human error -- Is criminalization bad for safety? -- Without prosecutors, there would be no crime -- Three questions for your just culture -- Why do we blame?

A just culture is a culture of trust, learning and accountability. It is particularly important when an incident has occurred; when something has gone wrong. How do you respond to the people involved? What do you do to minimize the negative impact, and maximize learning? This third edition of Sidney Dekker's extremely successful Just Culture offers new material on restorative justice and ideas about why your people may be breaking rules. Supported by extensive case material, you will learn about (...) safety reporting and honest disclosure, about retributive just culture and about the criminalization of human error. Some suspect a just culture means letting people off the hook. Yet they believe they need to remain able to hold people accountable for undesirable performance. In this new edition, Dekker asks you to look at 'accountability' in different ways. One is by asking which rule was broken, who did it, whether that behavior crossed some line, and what the appropriate consequences should be. In this retributive sense, an 'account' is something you get people to pay, or settle. But who will draw that line? And is the process fair? Another way to approach accountability after an incident is to ask who was hurt. To ask what their needs are. And to explore whose obligation it is to meet those needs. People involved in causing the incident may well want to participate in meeting those needs. In this restorative sense, an 'account' is something you get people to tell, and others to listen to. Learn to look at accountability in different ways and your impact on restoring trust, learning and a sense of humanity in your organization could be enormous. (shrink)

_What is This Thing Called Love?_ provides a clear how-to guide for carrying out psychotherapy with couples from a psychoanalytic perspective. The book draws on both early and contemporary psychoanalytic knowledge, explaining how each theory described is useful in formulating couple dynamics and in working with them. The result is an extremely practical approach, with detailed step-by-step instructions on technique, illuminated throughout by vivid case studies. The book focuses on several key areas including: An initial discussion about theories of love. (...) Progression of therapy from beginning to termination. Transference and countertransference and their unique manifestations in couples therapy. Comparisons between couples therapy and individual therapy. Step-by-step instruction on technique. _What is This Thing Called Love?_ is enlivened with humour and humanness. It is crucial reading for psychoanalytic therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, couples therapists and students who want to learn about--or augment their skills in--this challenging modality. (shrink)

English summary: Questions of orientation in a globalized world social ethics answered with a Theology of Real. German text. German description: Theologie als Selbstreflexion der Kirche bestimmt deren Identitat dogmatisch. Wenn die Kirche jedoch gefragt ist und Gestalt annimmt, indem sie zum Orientierungswissen der Gesellschaft beitragt, dann antwortet die christliche Traditionsgemeinschaft sozialethisch. Beides wird zusammengehalten durch eine Theologie des Wirklichen. Sie verhindert, dass Verantwortungsethik ins Leere lauft. Dies dokumentieren die Beitrage des vorliegenden Bandes. Die Autoren stehen dabei in der Traditionslinie (...) einer Theologie des Wirklichen, mit der Georg Wunsch vor 80 Jahren in Marburg die deutsche Tradition des Fachgebietes begrundete. Wolfgang Huber, Peter Dabrock und Wolfgang Nethofel zeigen, wie diese Sozialethik sich der Zukunft stellt. Die protestantische Kombination von Freiheit und sozialer Verantwortung fuhrt heute auch die Kirche vor Ort hinein in prinzipiell transdisziplinare und globalisierte Fragestellungen. Sozialethik bewahrt sich dabei im Dialog zwischen verschiedenen Kulturen und Fachdisziplinen. Oekologisch-okonomische Zusammenhange, Bio- und Nanotechnologie eroffnen neue Fragehorizonte und ermoglichen paradigmatische Erfahrungen, die bereits heute in ungewohnten, aber fur die ubrigen theologischen Disziplinen wegweisenden Organisationsformen abgearbeitet werden. Die Gegenwartsdimensionen einer zeitgenossischen Verantwortungsethik eroffnen die Autoren, indem sie fundamental- und materialethische Fragestellungen auch im Kontext der neueren Theologiegeschichte erortern. Und schliesslich zeigen die Beitrage, dass neben der Fach- und Sachkritik auch die geschichtsbewusste Selbstkritik der Sozialethik notwendige Dimensionen einer Verantwortungsethik in protestantischer Tradition sind. (shrink)

Development projects in Sub-Saharan Africa propose to alleviate hunger in rural areas by introducing new agricultural practices and technologies, yet there is limited empirical evidence of how an agricultural intervention can lead farming households to transition to food security. Research on food security pathways considers agricultural interventions that increase farmers’ income to be particularly effective for reducing food insecurity. Consistent with this stance, Malawian agricultural policy aims to address hunger by encouraging smallholder farmers to intensify and commercialize maize production. This (...) paper explores if smallholders’ market and livelihood orientations do indeed lead them to favor an income pathway to food security. Qualitative analysis of 60 smallholder farmer interviews in Malawi found that, upon achieving improvements in production yields and diversity, rather than commercialize, many farmers re-organized their production and consumption to reduce market dependency. Farmers deployed this strategy to increase their food security, explaining that the choice to self-provision food and farming inputs was both an expression of farming identity and a lived understanding of their marginal position in commodity markets. The author finds that, in failing to consider how production relations affect food access, scholarship inadequately theorizes farm-level food security transitions and reproduces discursive framings of hunger. Food sovereignty narratives more accurately captured what mattered for Malawian smallholders’ food security, suggesting that engagement with this concept could improve scientific understandings of food security transitions. (shrink)

The theme of this paper is that people in Northeast Brazil refuse to let a good person who helped them during his (or her) lifetime die. They do this through several of the religious traditions practiced in the region. Beings, human and other, now in another plane of reality established in modern thinking, cross the conceptual divide and return through mediums or other intermediaries to heal the living. We examine two religious traditions, “folk” or “popular” Catholicism and Kardecist‐Spiritism, focusing on (...) the spirit of Argeu Hebster, a medical doctor who lived in the municipality of Marangaupe in the state of Ceará until his death in 1977. The return of the doctor is told in stories told to the authors while doing ethnography that provide the data used in analyzing the enchanted worlds of the two religions. (shrink)

In the rationalist tradition in ethics, the emotions are morally suspect. In a corrective swing of the pendulum, burgeoning philosophical interest is “rehabilitating” the emotions in ethical decisionmaking. The emotions and reason should be mutually correcting resources in moral reflection.

The sub-title of this essay might very well be: “A Study in the Biology and Mechanics of Historical Research and Interpretation”. A study in biology because historians can be divided into two classes: invertebrates and vertebrates. The invertebrate historians are those who have inarticulate major premises; the vertebrate historians are those having articulate major premises. A study in mechanics because analysis of historical thought reveals that the principle of least action holds literal sway so far as many historians' critical awareness (...) of their assumptions is concerned. (shrink)

Academic freedom re-visited, by T. V. Smith.--Human rights under the United Nations Charter, by B. V. Cohen.--The absolute, the experimental method, and Horace Kallen, by P. H. Douglas.--Some tame reflections on some wild facts, by J. Frank.--Some central themes in Horace Kallen's philosophy, by S. Ratner.--Cultural relativism and standards, by G. Boas.--The philosophy of democracy as a philosophy of history, by S. Hook.--The rational imperatives, by C. I. Lewis.--From Poe to Valéry, by T. S. Eliot.--Events and the future, by J. (...) Dewey.--Teleological explanation and teleological systems, by E. Nagel.--Chʻan (Zen) Buddhism in China: its history and method, by H. Shih.--Reconsideration of the origin and nature of perception, by A. Ames.--Horace M. Kallen: A bibliography (p. 275-277). (shrink)

By examining single-word reading times (in full sentences read for meaning), we show that (1) function words are accessed faster than content words, independent of perceptual characteristics; (2) previous failures to show this involved problems of frequency range and task used; and (3) these differences in lexical access are related to perceptual fluency. We relate these findings to issues in the literature on event-related potentials (ERPs) and neurolinguistics.

The nature and aim of science, by E. Nagel.--Truth and provability, by L. Henkin.--Completeness, by L. Henkin.--Computability, by S. C. Kleene.--Necessary truth, by W. V. Quine.--What is a scientific theory? By P. Suppes.--Science and simplicity, by N. Goodman.--Scientific explanation, by C. G. Hempel.--Observation and interpretation, by N. R. Hanson.--Probability and confirmation, by H. Putnam.--Utility and acceptance of hypotheses, by I. Levi.--Space and time, by A. Grünbaum.--Problems of microphysics, by P. Feyerabend.--Aspects of explanation in biological theory, by M. Beckner.--Psychologism and methodological (...) individualism, by S. Morgenbesser.--Science, fact, and value, by M. Scriven.--The justification of induction, by M. Black. (shrink)

The New Transnational Activism shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, and the (...) opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links. But we can no more sharply draw a line between domestic and international politics in studying transnational activism than we could ignore local politics in studying its national equivalent. Understanding the processes that link the local, the national and the international is the major undertaking of the book. (shrink)

In this new edition of the classic book on the moral conduct of war, Sidney Axinn provides a full-length treatment of the military conventions from a philosophical point of view. Axinn considers these basic ethical questions within the context of the laws of warfare: Should a good soldier ever disobey a direct military order? Are there restrictions on how we fight a war? What is meant by “military honor,” and does it really affect the contemporary soldier? Is human dignity (...) possible under battlefield conditions? Axinn answers “yes” to these questions. His objective in A Moral Military is to establish a basic framework for moral military action and to assist in analyzing military professional ethics. He argues for the seriousness of the concept of military honor but limits honorable military activity by a strict interpretation of the notion of war crime. With revisions and expansions throughout, including a new chapter on torture, A Moral Military is an essential guide on the nature of war during a time when the limits of acceptable behavior are being stretched in new directions. (shrink)

This column describes the history, mission, and work of Saint Louis University School of Law’s service-learning course Health Law, Policy and Advocacy: Grassroots Advocacy. Grassroots Advocacy allows law students to work with advocacy organizations on state and federal health policy initiatives, engaging in legislative and administrative advocacy and public education. The course uses community collaboration, community-led advocacy, and collaborative learning to train the next generation of health policy advocates for Missouri and the nation.

Like_ _John Dewey, his mentor and friend, Sidney Hook shares the classic concep­tion of philosophy as the pursuit of wis­dom. A philosopher is concerned ulti­mately with the conception of the good life in a good society. In these essays extending over many years, Hook illustrates the activity of the philosopher in the cave of social life. He brings to bear the tools of reflective analysis on dominant social and political issues: human rights; the role of personality and leadership in (...) history; the attempt to defend freedom as we seek to preserve and extend the welfare state; and a criticism of the common premise of historical materialism shared by both Marxists and their opponents. Most significantly, Hook addresses the relation between morality and reli­gion and the place of religion in demo­cratic society. A secular and naturalistic humanism, he contends, generates an authentic, reliable commitment to the_ _democratic faith. (shrink)

One of America's best known social and political philosophers, Sidney Hook, compiled this fascinating combination of essays popular and technical addressing questions by professionals and lay readers alike. -/- Written between 1934 and 1960, these controversial essays generated heated discussion and polemic, the echoes of which are still being heard. Championing secularism, humanism, and naturalism, Hook eloquently argues against the claim that religious experience and metaphysical insight alone can discover truths about existence and reality that rest outside the domain (...) of scientific method or inquiry. -/- Crucial philosophical questions are discussed: What is the role of philosophy in life? Is "philosophical knowledge" possible, as distinct from scientific and commonsense knowledge? Does determinism vacate moral responsibility? Do religious and metaphysical beliefs possess cognitive meaning? What is the core dispute between materialism and idealism? -/- Hook's provocative analyses will not only clarify these questions but stimulate readers to reassess their own views. (shrink)

We create value for ourselves by making sacrifices. In Sacrifice and Value, Sidney Axinn presents the role of sacrifice in the work of many figures in the history of Philosophy. A novel feature is the attention given to Kant's use of sacrifice, and the way this changes the usual view of the Categorical Imperative, and Kant's concept of value.

Ethical issues are pivotal to the practice of psychiatry. Anyone involved in psychiatric practice and mental healthcare has to be aware of the range of ethical issues relevant to their profession. An increased professional commitment to accountability, in parallel with a growing "consumer" movement has paved the way for a creative engagement with the ethical movement. The bestselling 'Psychiatric Ethics' has carved out a niche for itself as the major comprehensive text and core reference in the field, covering a range (...) of complex ethical dilemmas which face clinicians and researchers in their everyday practice. This new edition takes a fresh look at recent trends and developments at the interface between ethics and psychiatric practice. Coming ten years after the third edition, the editors have observed several emerging aspects of psychiatric practice requiring coverage, as a result, 5 new chapters have been added, including cutting edge topics - such as neuroethics. All other chapters have been fully revised and updated. The book will continue to be essential reading for psychiatrists, psychologists, other mental health professionals, and bioethicists, as well as of interest to policy makers, managers and lawyers. (shrink)