In the past two decades, reinforcement learning has become a popular framework for understanding brain function. A key component of RL models, prediction error, has been associated with neural signals throughout the brain, including subcortical nuclei, primary sensory cortices, and prefrontal cortex. Depending on the location in which activity is observed, the functional interpretation of prediction error may change: Prediction errors may reflect a discrepancy in the anticipated and actual value of reward, a signal indicating the salience or novelty of (...) a stimulus, and many other interpretations. Anterior cingulate cortex has long been recognized as a region involved in processing behavioral error, and recent computational models of the region have expanded this interpretation to include a more general role for the region in predicting likely events, broadly construed, and signaling deviations between expected and observed events. Ongoing modeling work investigating the interaction between ACC and additional regions involved in cognitive control suggests an even broader role for cingulate in computing a hierarchically structured surprise signal critical for learning models of the environment. The result is a predictive coding model of the frontal lobes, suggesting that predictive coding may be a unifying computational principle across the neocortex. (shrink)

Mit diesem klaren und provokativen erkenntnistheoretischen Ansatz im Bereich der Religionsphilosophie argumentiert William P. Alston, dass die Wahrnehmung Gottes eines der wichtigsten Beitrage zu den Grunden des religiosen Glaubens liefert. Dabei spielt sein Begriff des direkten erfahrungsmassigen Bewusstsein eine entscheidende Rolle. Nach einem Uberblick uber verschiedene berichtete direkte Gotteserfahrungen zeigt Alston, dass eine Person auf der Grundlage der mystischen Erfahrung berechtigt ist, an Gott zu glauben. "Dieses grossartige Buch ist die Frucht von Jahrzehnten des Reifens und der durchdringenden Reflexion. (...) Wie zu erwarten war, nimmt es die Diskussion des umgebenden Themas der Gotteserfahrung auf und fuhrt es zu einer neuen Ebene der Einsicht und der Durchdringung." Alvin Plantinga, Universitat von Notre Dame, USA "Die Erkenntnistheorie des religiosen Glaubens war vor einiger Zeit das heisseste Thema der Religionsphilosophie. Alstons Arbeit ist der beste und interessanteste Beitrag zu diesem Gebiet. Alston ist nicht nur mit der Verteidigung des religiosen Glaubens beschaftigt, sondern er eroffnet einen plausiblen Vorschlag zum verbesserten Verstandnisses der Frage nach der Entstehung des religiosen Glaubens. Gott wahrnehmen ist sicher der wichtigste Beitrag zur Religionsphilosophie in diesem Jahr." Robert Merrihew Adams, Universitat von Califonien, Los Angeles". (shrink)

First published in 1977. Ethics is the most practical branch of philosophy: its immediate concern is with people's actions. Yet most philosophers do little to relate ethics intelligibly to the human situation. In this inquiry into the nature of ethics, William Ash draws on the relevant works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin to present the theory and practice of Marxist ethics. He offers an explanation of the moral aspect of Marx's dictum: 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world, (...) in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.' The book includes, perhaps for the first time in so considered a form, an assessment of Mao Tsetung's contribution to Marxist moral philosophy, together with the ethical implications of such developments in social practice as the Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The author deals with the question of value by analysing the concept of 'good'; with the question of claims on people and things by analysing the concept of 'right'; with the question of the limits and scope of freedom of choice and action by analysing the concept of 'ought'.' Clearly written in order to 'de-mystify' the subject, the book challenges readers to test the author's enlightened, Marxist approach in terms of the ethical ordering of their own society. (shrink)

Given that we have democracy of a kind in most of Europe, and that there seems a reasonable prospect of its survival in, and extension to the rest of, the sub-continent, this article asks whether and to what extent we also need European-level democratic politics and how we might hope to achieve this, against the background of the current crisis. This article examines the ‘democratic deficit’ in the EU and the tensions between its formal decision-making structures and the growth of (...) what has been called ‘executive federalism’, and also between collective planning and deregulation. (shrink)

Volume III of a tetralogy devoted to Divine Agency and Divine Action articulates a comprehensive vision of systematic theology focused on divine action from creation to eschatology.

Paralogismen betreffs der Leibnizschen Prädikatlehre werden aufgezeigt und widerlegt. Enthaltensein heißt die Inverse von Ableitung; den zwei Arten von Ableitung, die Leibniz kennt, entsprechen zwei Arten von Enthaltensein. Die beiden Arten von Enthaltensein bieten Leibniz die Möglichkeit zu der logischen und irreduziblen Unterscheidung zwischen notwendigen und bedingten Wahrheiten. Die Unterscheidung zwischen einem Individuum und einer Eigenschaft wird mit mengentheoretischen Methoden und auch mit Hilfe von epistemologischen Begriffen untersucht. Die besondere kategorische Form des Aussagesatzes impliziert, daß es für alle Aussagesätze nur (...) eine einzige Tiefen-Grammatik gibt, welche wesentlich verschiedene Ausdruckweisen von kategorischen Aussagen umfaßt. (shrink)

Consider intense moments when you have been seized by joy or, in different contexts, by anguish for another person, or a cat or dog, or perhaps even for a squirrel or possum struck as it dashed across the road: whether glorious or haunting, these are among the most profound and meaningful moments in our lives. Agape Ethics focuses our attention on such moments with utter seriousness and argues they reveal a spiritual reality, the reality of agape. Powerful streams of modern (...) Western rationality reject the idea of agape. This has created a crisis of foundations in modern ethics and alienated us from love for all creatures. Working wholly within the bounds of reason, Agape Ethics joins an increasingly vibrant struggle to legitimate the spiritual reality of agape, to awaken people to its power, to clarify its ethical implications, and to validate our spiritual communion with all creatures in all creation. The result is a powerful, inclusive, and wholly reasonable defense of moral realism that should speak to all who are passionate about creating a maximally loving and good world. (shrink)

Based on the comments of Giovanni Boccaccio and Giovanni Villani, a theory holds that Dante Alighieri may have studied philosophy and theology at Paris in 1309-1310. That same academic year, the Dominican bachelor of the Sentences at Paris, Giovanni Regina di Napoli, delivered a speech thanking a ‘Benefactor’. This Benefactor, neither a Dominican nor a theologian, gave the sole benefit of honoring Giovanni, the convent of Saint-Jacques, and the Dominican Order with his presence, attending Giovanni’s lectures on theology. This paper (...) explores the likelihood that the Benefactor was Dante. An edition and an English translation of Giovanni’s speech are included in appendices. (shrink)

The warmest, funniest, most erudite and ambitious philosophical dialogue of the twenty-first century? A lonely professor in a bookstore café overhears someone trying to explain Wittgenstein to a good friend--the two of them once having come close to an adulterous affair? The professor surreptitiously records their conversation, and then adds on top of it all his own ideas about Wittgenstein's philosophy, biography and psychology. A post-modern, Platonic exploration of how and why we human beings still try to speak and be (...) heard. All our life in language (our most sophisticated philosophies included) keeps revolving around the fixed point of our real if unmeetable need: to find love and understanding? (shrink)

On October 8th 2000 municipal elections were held in Belgium to renew the local councils which had been elected in 1994. In the Walloon region and in Flanders in addition provincial elections were organised. The aim of the article is to try and measure globally where the political forces stand after these elections and among others to assess whether significant swings have take place since june 13th, 1999, when the latest parliamentary and regional elections took place. On the basis of (...) an estimation of the global results in the municipal elections of the various parties in the Walloon region, in Flanders and in Brussels, backed up by the actual results of the provincial elections, one can say that the liberal group bas strengthened its first position.The Christian democrats, who make up the second most important political group and the Socialists, who rank third, have regained a large part of the losses they incurred onjune 13th, 1999.Although improving their results in comparison with 1994, the Green parties lost again part of their advance they registered in the parliamentary and regional elections and which had probably been boosted by the dioxin crisis.The frenchspeaking far right practically disappears, whereas the Vlaams Blok obtained an average of 15 % of the Flemish electorate in the municipal and provincial elections, a level which it had reached in the 1999 parliamentary elections. (shrink)

What can rhetoric tell us about good arguments? The answer depends on what we mean by “good argument” and on how we conceive rhetoric. In this article I examine and further develop Jürgen Habermas’s argumentation theory as an answer to the question—or as I explain, an expanded version of that question. Habermas places his theory in the family of normative approaches that recognize (at least) three evaluative perspectives on all argument making: logic, dialectic, and rhetoric, which proponents loosely align with (...) the three dimensions of product, procedure, and process, respectively (cf. Wenzel 1990; Tindale 1999). Habermas wants to integrate these perspectives in a conception of cogent argumentation that dispels .. (shrink)

In Salvation in Writing , William Wright derives from Calvin’s theology of justification and sanctification a dialectical logic for writing truth that both rivals and mends those of Hegel and Derrida. The result represents a new program for academic theology.

What does a naturalistic epistemologist do? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9531-7 Authors William F. Harms, Humanities and Social Sciences, Seattle Central Community College, 1701 Broadway, Seattle, WA 98122-9905, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.