Some contemporary theorists such as Mazzocchi, Theise and Kafatos are convinced that the reformed complementarity may redefine how we might exploit the complexity theory in 21st-century life sciences research. However, the motives behind the profound re-invention of “biological complementarity” need to be substantiated with concrete shreds of evidence about this principle’s applicability in real-life science experimentation, which we found missing in the literature. This paper discusses such pieces of evidence by confronting Bohr’s complementarity and ion channel modeling practice. (...) We examine whether and to what extent this principle might assist in developing ion channel models incorporating both deterministic and stochastic solutions. According to the “mutual exclusiveness of experimental setups” version of Bohr’s complementarity, this principle is needed when two mutually exclusive perspectives or approaches are right, necessary in a particular context, and are not contradictory as they arise in mutually exclusive conditions (mutually exclusive experimental or modeling setups). A detailed examination of the modeling practice reveals that both solutions are often used simultaneously in a single ion channel model, suggesting that the opposite conceptual frameworks can coexist in the same modeling setup. We concluded that Bohr’s complementarity might find applications in these complex modeling setups but only through its realistic phenomenological interpretation that allows applying different modes of description regardless of the nature of the underlying ion channel opening process. Also, we propose the combined use of complementarity and Complex thinking in building the multifaceted ion channel models. Overall, this paper’s results support the efforts to establish a more general form of complementarity to meet today’s complexity theory-inspired life sciences modeling demands. (shrink)

When laws or legal principles mention mental states such as intentions to form a contract, knowledge of risk, or purposely causing a death, what parts of the brain are they speaking about? We argue here that these principles are tacitly directed at our prefrontal executive processes. Our current best theories of consciousness portray it as a workspace in which executive processes operate, but what is important to the law is what is done with the workspace content rather than the content (...) itself. This makes executive processes more important to the law than consciousness, since they are responsible for channeling conscious decision-making into intentions and actions, or inhibiting action.We provide a summary of the current state of our knowledge about executive processes, which consists primarily of information about which portions of the prefrontal lobes perform which executive processes. Then we describe several examples in which legal principles can be understood as tacitly singling out executive processes, including principles regarding defendants’ intentions or plans to commit crimes and their awareness that certain facts are the case, as well as excusatory principles which result in lesser responsibility for those who are juveniles, mentally ill, sleepwalking, hypnotized, or who suffer from psychopathy. (shrink)

This article presents an overview of the single-channel dereverberation methods suitable for distant speech recognition application. The dereverberation methods are mainly classified based on the domain of enhancement of speech signal captured by a distant microphone. Many single-channel speech enhancement methods focus on either denoising or dereverberating the distorted speech signal. There are very few methods that consider both noise and reverberation effects. Such methods are discussed under a multistage approach in this article. The article concludes (...) with a hypothesis that the methods that do not require an a priori reverberation impulse response is desirable in varying the environmental conditions for DSR applications such as intelligent home and office environments, humanoid robots, and automobiles rather than the methods that require an a priori reverberation impulse response. (shrink)

Pharmaceutical supply chains are often highly complex with conflicting objectives of social welfare and profit maximization. Furthermore, there are various stakeholders including pharmaceutical manufacturer, distributors, retailers, patients, and the government. In this paper, we consider a two-stage supply chain consisting of one pharmaceutical manufacturer and a pharmacy with online and offline channels. We focus on four price cap models: no price cap regulation, pharmaceutical manufacturer’s price cap regulation, pharmacy price cap regulation, and linkage price cap regulation. We apply game (...) class='Hi'>theory, investigate how the price cap regulations affect the firms’ pricing, and evaluate the economic performance and social welfare of the dual-channel pharmaceutical supply chain. Our findings show that first, like the single-channel pharmaceutical supply chain, the profit of the regulated firm always decreases and the profit of the unregulated firm always increases when they are under one-sided price cap regulations. Second, the impacts of the linkage price cap regulation on the supply chain are more complicated depending on the linkage coefficient and market share. Overall, our findings can provide theoretical and practical insights to help the government devise price cap regulations for complex modern pharmaceutical supply chains. (shrink)

In special application scenarios, such as portable anesthesia depth monitoring, portable emotional state recognition and portable sleep monitoring, electroencephalogram (EEG) signal acquisition equipment is required to be convenient and easy to use. It is difficult to remove electrooculogram (EOG) artifacts when the number of EEG acquisition channels is small, especially when the number of observed signals is less than that of the source signals, and the overcomplete problem will arise. The independent component analysis (ICA) algorithm commonly used for artifact removal (...) requires the number of basis vectors to be smaller than the dimension of the input data due to a set of standard orthonormal bases learned during the convergence process, so it cannot be used to solve the overcomplete problem. The empirical mode decomposition method decomposes the signal into several independent intrinsic mode functions so that the number of observed signals is more than that of the source signals, solving the overcomplete problem. However, when using this method to solve overcompleteness, the modal aliasing problem will arise, which is caused by abnormal events such as sharp signals, impulse interference, and noise. Aiming at the above problems, we propose a novel EEG artifact removal method based on discrete wavelet transform, complete empirical mode decomposition for adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) and ICA in this paper. First, the input signals are transformed by discrete wavelet (DWT), and then CEEMDAN is used to solve the overcomplete and mode aliasing problems, meeting the a priori conditions of the ICA algorithm. Finally, the components belonging to EOG artifacts are removed according to the sample entropy value of each independent component. Experiments show that this method can effectively remove EOG artifacts while solving the overcomplete and modal aliasing problems. (shrink)

The separable hidden variables theory (Bhave [1986]) of Aspect's [1982] four single channel polarizers is developed further to consider possible modified Aspect's experiment with four double channel polarizers. It is shown that Aspect's commutator is not a truly stochastic commutator, and that until such a truly stochastic commutator is devised, experiments based on Bell's inequalities (like those of Aspect's) cannot be adequate experimental tests of quantum nonseparability.

Frauchiger and Renner have recently claimed to prove that “Single-world interpretations of quantum theory cannot be self-consistent”. This is contradicted by a construction due to Bell, inspired by Bohmian mechanics, which shows that any quantum system can be modelled in such a way that there is only one “world” at any time, but the predictions of quantum theory are reproduced. This Bell–Bohmian theory is applied to the experiment proposed by Frauchiger and Renner, and their argument is (...) critically examined. It is concluded that it is their version of “standard quantum theory”, incorporating state vector collapse upon measurement, that is not self-consistent. (shrink)

We recast parts of decision theory in terms of channel theory concentrating on qualitative issues. Channel theory allows one to move between model theoretic and language theoretic notions as is necessary for an adequate covering. Doing so clarifies decision theory and presents the opportunity to investigate alternative formulations. As an example, we take some of Savage’s notions of decision theory and recast them within channel theory. In place of probabilities, we use (...) a particular logic of preference. We introduce a logic for describing actions separate from the logic of preference over actions. The structures introduced by channel theory that represent the decision problems can be seen to be an abstract framework. This frame-work is very accommodating to changing the nature of the decision problems to handle different aspects or theories about decision making. (shrink)

Depression is a common mental health illness worldwide that affects our quality of life and ability to work. Although prior research has used EEG signals to increase the accuracy to identify depression, the rates of underdiagnosis remain high, and novel methods are required to identify depression. In this study, we built a model based on single-channel, dry-electrode EEG sensor technology to detect state depression, which measures the intensity of depressive feelings and cognitions at a particular time. To test (...) the accuracy of our model, we compared the results of our model with other commonly used methods for depression diagnosis, including the PHQ-9, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, and House-Tree-Person drawing test, in three different studies. In study 1, we compared the results of our model with PHQ-9 in a sample of 158 senior high students. The results showed that the consistency rate of the two methods was 61.4%. In study 2, the results of our model were compared with HAM-D among 71 adults. We found that the consistency rate of state-depression identification by the two methods was 63.38% when a HAM-D score above 7 was considered depression, while the consistency rate increased to 83.10% when subjects showed at least one depressive symptom. In study 3, 68 adults participated in the study, and the results revealed that the consistency rate of our model and HTP drawing test was 91.2%. The results showed that our model is an effective means to identify state depression. Our study demonstrates that using our model, people with state depression could be identified in a timely manner and receive interventions or treatments, which may be helpful for the early detection of depression. (shrink)

I examine different arguments that could be used to establish indeterminism of neurological processes. Even though scenarios where single events at the molecular level make the difference in the outcome of such processes are realistic, this falls short of establishing indeterminism, because it is not clear that these molecular events are subject to quantum mechanical uncertainty. Furthermore, attempts to argue for indeterminism autonomously (i.e., independently of quantum mechanics) fail, because both deterministic and indeterministic models can account for the empirically (...) observed behavior of ion channels. (shrink)

Social contract theory imagines political societies as resting on a fundamental agreement, adopted at a discrete moment in hypothetical time, that both bound individual persons together into a single polity and set fundamental rules regarding that polity's structure and powers. Written constitutions, adopted at real moments in historical time, dictating governmental structures, bounding governmental powers, and entrenching individual rights, look temptingly like social contracts reified. I argue in this article, however, that something essential is lost in the casual (...) slippage between social contract theory and the practice of constitutionalism. Enacted constitutions do not come into being against the background of a state of nature of isolated individuals; and by this I do not mean to invoke the too-familiar critique of the supposedly decontextualized liberal person, but rather to critique the aspiration to decontextualize the legal and political order. Constitutions are enacted in ongoing societies (whether newly politically sovereign or otherwise) with pre-existing laws and legal systems, political organizations, cultural and linguistic and religious divisions, and norms and mores. Moreover, the practice of constitutionalism is usually, at least in part, a practice of reconciling those legacies to a new political order, of making use of those legacies to build loyalties to or counterbalances against the state (or both). Most constitutions cannot be well-understood by retrospectively characterizing them as the kind of complete and radical break with the past envisioned by social contract theory. Contractarian blinders lead us to look for greater individualism, greater social unity, and greater coherence of principles than can actually be expected of constitutions or constitutionalism. Real constitutional orders appropriate, incorporate, and channel the histories and divisions of the societies they govern. Treating them as if they are social contracts will flatten and distort them, making those engagements with the past or with social plurality appear anomalous and encouraging their minimization. I aim to redirect some of our attention to non-contractarian constitutionalism, or non-contractarian strands within constitutionalism, both as intellectual inheritance and as lived practice. Non-contractarian elements persisted in constitutional theory across the apparent break of the late 1700s, even though these have to some degree been lost sight of more recently; and they have persisted and should persist in constitutional practice. (shrink)

An axiomatic account of multiset theory is given, where multiplicities are of the same sort as sets. Various theories are proposed covering different existing multiset systems, as well as a stronger theory which is equiconsistent with Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory and with antifoundation. The inclusion relation receives a recursive definition in terms of membership and is shown to be not always antisymmetric.

This is the first biography of the last and greatest British idealist philosopher, R. G. Collingwood, a man who both thought and lived at full pitch. Best known today for his philosophies of history and art, Collingwood was also a historian, archaeologist, sailor, artist, and musician. A figure of enormous energy and ambition, he took as his subject nothing less than the whole of human endeavor, and he lived in the same way, seeking to experience the complete range of human (...) passion. In this vivid and swiftly paced narrative, Fred Inglis tells the dramatic story of a remarkable life, from Collingwood's happy Lakeland childhood to his successes at Oxford, his archaeological digs as a renowned authority on Roman Britain, his solo sailing adventures in the English Channel, his long struggle with illness, and his sometimes turbulent romantic life. In a manner unheard of today, Collingwood attempted to gather all aspects of human thought into a single theory of practical experience, and he wrote sweeping accounts of history, art, science, politics, metaphysics, and archaeology, as well as a highly regarded autobiography. Above all, he dedicated his life to arguing that history--not science--is the only source of moral and political wisdom and self-knowledge. Linking the intellectual and personal sides of Collingwood's life, and providing a rich history of his milieu, History Man also assesses Collingwood's influence on generations of scholars after his death and the renewed recognition of his importance and interest today. (shrink)

As the main sales force of life insurance companies, salespeople have accounted for more than 50% of life insurance sales channels over the years, playing a pivotal role in the development of the industry. Since the adoption of the model of employment at an agency, the commission income of life insurance salespeople has largely relied on their sales volume, which requires employee proactivity under a great number of stressors. However, because previous studies have analyzed stressors in a single dimension, (...) our understanding of the relationship between work stressors and proactive behaviors remains limited. Applying self-determination theory, we investigated differential relationships between challenge/hindrance stressors and proactive behaviors, which were expected to be mediated by passion and moderated by servant leadership. In the sample of 332 insurance salespeople, there was a positive relationship between challenge stressors and proactive behaviors. In addition, passion mediated the relationship between stressors and proactive behaviors, and servant leadership moderated the relationship between stressors and passion. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

To improve the spatial resolution of imaging and get more effective brain function information, a multi-distance probe configuration with three distances and 52 channels is designed. At the same time, a data conversion method of modified Beer–Lambert law with partial pathlength is proposed. In the experiment, three kinds of tasks, grip of left hand, grip of right hand, and rest, are performed with eight healthy subjects. First, with a typical single-distance probe configuration, the feasibility of the proposed MBLL with (...) PPL is preliminarily validated. Further, the characteristic of the proposed method is evaluated with the multi-distance probe configuration. Compared with MBLL with differential pathlength factor, the proposed MBLL with PPL is able to acquire more obvious concentration change and can achieve higher classification accuracy of the three tasks. Then, with the proposed method, the performance of the multi-distance probe configuration is discussed. Results show that, compared with a single distance, the combination of the three distances has better spatial resolution and could explore more accurate brain activation information. Besides, the classification accuracy of the three tasks obtained with the combination of three distances is higher than that of any combination of two distances. Also, with the combination of the three distances, the two-class classification between different tasks is carried out. Both theory and experimental results demonstrate that, using multi-distance probe configuration and the MBLL with PPL method, the performance of brain function detected by NIRS can be improved. (shrink)

The volume starts with the paper of Lynn Maurice Ferguson Arnold, former Premier of South Australia and former Minister of Education of Australia, concerning the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life) that was held from 25 May to 25 November 1937 in Paris, France. The organization of the world exhibition had placed the Nazi German and the Soviet pavilions directly across from each other. Many papers are devoted (...) to the interpretation of this opposition. Arnold’s paper considers the differences in the two totalitarian states’ architectural and design discourse styles. Although each of them communicated a totalitarian language of purposes, permissions, and boundaries, they essentially differed in the styles of discourse represented by the architecture and design of their respective pavilions. They were opposites of each other and the liberal ideals they contested. The internationalist viewpoint reflecting the multi-ethnic mix of the USSR is contrasted to the ein Volk homogeneity represented in the German pavilion. The Soviet pavilion opted for a utopian future to be arrived at by “benign” leadership, whereas the German pavilion anchored itself in the myth of Teutonic history with the nostalgic pride protected by the swastika-bearing eagle. Jean-Yves Béziau is best known as a logician and founder of Universal Logic. However, in this paper, he poses a new philosophical question: why philosophical discourse does not use images? The paper begins with a general analysis of different types of philosophical discourses. Then, he focuses on why images have been and are still rejected in philosophical discourse. He explains various ways to use images in a fruitful way to develop philosophical thinking and discourse and illustrates his view by providing several examples. He concludes with a promising programmatic declaration about founding a new journal entitled World Journal of Pictorial Philosophy to stimulate the usage of images for developing philosophical thinking. Although complaints about the obscurity of many philosophers’ discourse are widespread, Tatiana Denisova, ex-professor of the Surgut University and a research associate of the University of the Aegean undertakes a positive attitude to this problem. She explains that the reasons for the obscurity of philosophical texts, the subsequent complexity in communicating philosophers’ meanings and their eventual incomplete understanding is not a sign of their inferiority. On the contrary, it is a sign of the fruitfulness of philosophical discourse, which can generate new meanings. Thus, the darkness of philosophical discourse is like the life-giving chaos, and the obscurity that it inevitably contains can be the keeper of implicit meanings and even their generator. Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszyńska and Piotr Leśniewski, authors of a monograph on Polish philosopher Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890 – 1963), make a comparative analysis of his educational style with that of Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (1921 – 1997). The authors highlight that these scholars have distinctly different backgrounds. The former was an educator, philosopher and a leading advocate of critical pedagogy connected with the dialogical Latin-American tradition. The latter was a philosopher and logician, a notable representative of the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic with significant contributions to semantics, model theory and the philosophy of science. Despite their apparent difference, the authors identify some striking similarities regarding their attitudes towards education; notably, their approaches are essentially dialogical. Gilah Yelin Hirsch is a multidisciplinary artist who works as a painter, writer, curator, educator, and filmmaker. In her experiential paper, he explains how and why she uses four channels of communication in her creative expression: writing, painting, filmmaking, and teaching, as dialogic inquiry. She considers that these channels compose a continuum of discourse styles, each reaching a different facet of kaleidoscopic consciousness. She claims that her choice of medium is prompted by a need to communicate her insights profoundly. Thus, for instance, she created painted allegories to express narratives based on dreams and visions emerging from her subconscious. Art and healing is another Tibetan-rooted type of discourse practised by the author. Creating and observing a healing image produces a positive psychophysiological change in both the artist and the viewer. The discourse here is tripartite between creator, image, and viewer. Filmmaking is another type of discourse she practices between the filmmaker/artist as shaman or healer and the viewer as respondent or participant. These films are meant to be experienced frame by frame, physically and emotionally in both the body and mind. Jocelyn Ireson-Paine is a cartoonist and programmer. His paper offers an original attempt to use category theory in cartooning. Category theory is a branch of mathematics that provides concepts and methods to describe general abstract structures in terms of a labelled directed graph called category, whose nodes are called objects, and whose labelled directed edges are called arrows (or morphisms or transformations or mappings). The author explores different ways to define “style” in art using category theory and a relational view of art. Moreover, he examines how “translation” (transformation) between styles could be defined and reveals the difficulties of how it could be implemented in a computer using special software. Jens Lemanski is a philosopher who has revived research in Arthur Schopenhauer’s legacy by exploring his work on mathematical evidence, logic diagrams, and problems of semantics. In this paper, he advances a new approach to eristic as an art of protecting oneself from the one who deliberately violates norms of discourse ethics to win an argument. The author attributes the origins of this view to Schopenhauer, suggesting a new reading of his work. According to the author, eristic is a prohibitive technique that takes effect when the norms of discourse ethics are transgressed and violated. Thus, eristic is viewed as a discipline of Enlightenment philosophy and a correlate of discourse ethics. Roshdi Rashed is an authority on the history of Arabic mathematical sciences. Proceeding from Gilles-Gaston Granger’s definition of mathematical style, he studies the question of whether a mathematical work can be characterized by a single style or by a multitude of styles. This question is explored within the style of a single work, namely Menelaus’s Sphaerica, and through the study of the development of a single problem over time, namely the isoperimetric problem. He indicates Menelaus’s divergence from the Euclidean style of (plane and stereometric) geometry caused by the drop of the Parallel Postulate, which associated it with hyperbolic geometry. Hence, the author concludes that Menelaus’s Sphaerica incorporates the well-known Euclidean style with a variation of the non-Euclidean one. On the other hand, examining the isoperimetric problem reveals another interesting historical picture. A succession of different styles (cosmological, geometric, infinitesimalistic, style of the calculus of variations, of synthetic geometry) can be observed due to the transformation of the research object over time. Boris Shalyutin, a Russian social philosopher, and Ombudsman for Human Rights in the Kurgan Region, explores the origins of discourse in combination with the birth of society and law. He claims that legal discourse marks the historical emergence of discourse in general. Homo Juridicus generated Homo Sapiens, which have created new spheres of discourse, notably moral discourse and further philosophical, political, and scientific discourse. Petros Stefaneas, a logician, computer scientist and novelist, suggests an alternative to the traditional narratology approach for studying (interactive) social media discourse. He claims that style describes how the parts of a narrative are blended into a whole. The author relies upon Goguen’s and Harrel’s concept of style as a choice of blending principles and transfers to the study of the social media narratives elements from the methodology of studying Web-based collaborative search for mathematical proofs like those implemented within the Polymath project. The last paper belongs to Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, a linguist, language revivalist, and proponent of a model of the emergence of Israeli Hebrew, according to which Hebrew and Yiddish were the primary sources of Modern Hebrew. This paper explores the fascinating and multifaceted Yiddish language and its survival in Israeli. Yiddish is characterized by a unique style that embeds psycho-ostensive expressions throughout its discourse. The author highlights the cross-fertilization between Hebrew and Yiddish as it manifests itself in any aspect of the Israeli language. He claims that Yiddish survives beneath Israeli phonetics, phonology, discourse, syntax, semantics, lexis, and even morphology, although traditional and institutional linguists have been most reluctant to admit it. (shrink)

The organizational history of American government during the past 100 years has been written principally in terms of the creation of larger and larger public organizations. Beginning with the Progressive movement, no matter the goal, the reflexive response has been to consolidate and centralize into formal hierarchies. That efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, and the coordination necessary to achieve them, are promoted by such reorganizations has become widely accepted. Borrowing from social psychology, sociology, political science, and public administration, and using the (...) public transit system of the San Francisco Bay area for illustrative purposes, Donald Chisholm directly challenges this received wisdom. He argues that, contrary to contemporary canons of public administration, we should actively resist the temptation to consolidate and centralize our public organizations. Rather, we should carefully match organizational design with observed types and levels of interdependence, since organizational systems that on the surface appear to be tightly linked webs of interdependence on closer examination often prove decomposable into relatively simpler subsystems that may be coordinated through decentralized, informal organizational arrangements. Chisholm finds that informal channels between actors at different organizations prove remarkably effective and durable as instruments of coordination. Developed and maintained as needed rather than according to a single preconceived design, informal channels, along with informal conventions and contracts, tend to match interorganization interdependence closely and to facilitate coordination. Relying on such measures reduces the cognitive demands and obviates the necessity for broadscale political agreement typical of coordination by centralized, formal organizations. They also advance other important values that are frequently absent in formally consolidated organizations, such as reliability, flexibility, and the representation of varied interests. _Coordination Without Hierarchy_ is an incisive, penetrating work whose conclusions apply to a wide range of public organizations at all levels of government. It will be of interest to a broad array of social scientists and policymakers. In an earlier version, _Coordination Without Hierarchy_ received the American Political Science Association 1985 Leonard D. White Award for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of public administration, including broadly related problems of policy formation and administrative theory. (shrink)

A popular view has it that the mental representations underlying human pretense are not beliefs, but are “belief-like” in important ways. This view typically posits a distinctive cognitive attitude (a “DCA”) called “imagination” that is taken toward the propositions entertained during pretense, along with correspondingly distinct elements of cognitive architecture. This paper argues that the characteristics of pretense motivating such views of imagination can be explained without positing a DCA, or other cognitive architectural features beyond those regulating normal belief and (...) desire. On the present “Single Attitude” account of imagination, propositional imagining just is a form of believing. The Single Attitude account is also distinguished from “metarepresentational” accounts of pretense, which hold that both pretending and recognizing pretense in others require one to have concepts of mental states. It is argued, to the contrary, that pretending and recognizing pretense require neither a DCA nor possession of mental state concepts. (shrink)

This thesis studies collider phenomenology of physics beyond the Standard Model at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It also explores in detail advanced topics related to Higgs boson and supersymmetry - one of the most exciting and well-motivated streams in particle physics. In particular, it finds a very large enhancement of multiple Higgs boson production in vector-boson scattering when Higgs couplings to gauge bosons differ from those predicted by the Standard Model. The thesis demonstrates that due to the loss of (...) unitarity, the very large enhancement for triple Higgs boson production takes place. This is a truly novel finding. The thesis also studies the effects of supersymmetric partners of top and bottom quarks on the Higgs production and decay at the LHC, pointing for the first time to non-universal alterations for two main production processes of the Higgs boson at the LHC-vector boson fusion and gluon-gluon fusion. Continuing the exploration of Higgs boson and supersymmetry at the LHC, the thesis extends existing experimental analysis and shows that for a single decay channel the mass of the top quark superpartner below 175 GeV can be completely excluded, which in turn excludes electroweak baryogenesis in the Minimal Supersymmetric Model. This is a major new finding for the HEP community. This thesis is very clearly written and the introduction and conclusions are accessible to a wide spectrum of readers. (shrink)

Commonsense psychology and cognitive science both regularly assume the existence of representational states. I propose a naturalistic theory of representation sufficient to meet the pretheoretical constraints of a "folk theory of representation", constraints including the capacities for accuracy and inaccuracy, selectivity of proper objects of representation, perspective, articulation, and "efficacy" or content-determined functionality. The proposed model states that a representing device is a device which changes state when information is received over multiple information channels originating at a (...) class='Hi'>single source. The changed state of a representing device is a representation. The unitary information source which would give rise to the information impinging on the representing device, and hence, give rise to the representation, is the content of the representation. The model meets the pretheoretic constraints, and also conforms to available neurobiological data for two invertebrate species. (shrink)

Miroir, miroir de mes désirsAu seuil de la réversibilité, la libido ardente des imagesEn parcourant les perspectives de Lacan, Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze, je me propose de montrer comment l’image – une image dont le rôle, depuis Platon, a été réduit par la métaphysique occidentale à celui de simple copie – rend possible une pensée nouvelle non dualiste, une pensée ouverte par le désir, c’est-à-dire par ce qui dépasse tout dualisme simpliste et qui trouve dans l’image sa voie privilégiée.L’image du miroir (...) – considérée par le platonisme comme le simulacre par excellence, comme l’emblème de la copie déformante et trompeuse d’un modèle originaire harmonieux – donne à voir bien plus qu’elle ne nous montre : comme Lacan le remarquait dans son célèbre essai de 1949, devant le miroir, nous nous découvrons, comme les enfants, sujets du monde, mais aussi, inévitablement, sujets au monde. Le «je» – dont nous sommes in-formés par l’image du miroir – s’abîme, par cette même image, dans les l’inquiétante étrangété de l’autre, et par suite dans les gorges insondables de son désir. Si l’image du miroir nous permet d’embrasser la totalité de notre corps et d’apprécier en un regard notre statut de sujet, ce regard nous est toutefois restitué – aveugle et insistant – sous la forme d’un objet partiel qui nous interpelle comme sujets désubjectivés, comme sujets castrés, ou encore comme simples « taches » dans lapeinture du monde. L’image fixée par l’enfant dans le miroir fonde, paradoxalement, l’idée traditionnelle du sujet comme pôle dynamique de la relation je-monde. Comme le remarque Slavoj Žižek, en commentant Lacan, la capacité dynamique du sujet se fonde en somme sur une fixation excessive de l’image du sujet lui-même, fixation qui trouve son origine absente dans le regard entendu comme objet a, c’est-à-dire comme point aveugle de la conscience, lieu d’acquisition et de perte qui, par la castration du sujet, ouvre la plaie libidineuse et pulsionnelle de l’inconscient et renverse par là le désir de l’homme en désir de l’autre, comme le rappelle une célèbre formule de Lacan.Longtemps considérées comme porteuses d’illusions, comme l’illusion en tant que telle, les images nous montrent en fait la vérité de cette illusion : le monde est déformation et réversibilité, et nous-mêmes, prétendus sujets faisant face à son tableau inerte, n’en sommes que des taches. Au cours des mêmes années durant lesquelles Lacan élabore une théorie du regard, Merleau-Ponty, son interlocuteur direct – qui se réfère lui aussi au comportement de l’enfant devant le miroir – réfléchit sur la question du « en-être », c’est-à-dire de la réversibilité de la chair, ce tissu de différences qui nous constitue – les animaux et les choses – comme autant de plis d’un horizon commun. Pour Merleau-Ponty comme pour Lacan, dans une telle perspective, le sujet ne se défi nit pas positivement, mais comme écart par rapport à lui-même, comme coupure dans la peau de la conscience, comme plaie ouverte sur l’inconscient et sur le désir qui en jaillit abondamment. Ainsi, voir dans le miroir que, comme disait le poète, « je est un autre », implique que l’image soit libérée de son statut dévalorisant de « seconde chose » hérité du platonisme. Cela inaugure, en fait, une pensée sans dualisme. Gilles Deleuze travaillera lui aussi dans ce sens, lorsqu’il théorisera un renversement du platonisme à partir des images, dans son essai de 1966 Renverser le platonisme.Historiquement, le commencement de la philosophie a coïncidé avec la recherche d’une origine, d’une archè. Mais un monde où les relations nées du désir tracent des itinéraires imprévisibles, où le je et l’autre ne se distinguent plus, où sujet et objet ne connaissent plus de frontière, où la copie cesse de présupposer le modèle, un monde ainsi fait, a-t-il encore une origine accessible? Confronté à cette question essentielle, Merleau-Ponty théorisera – une fois encore à partir de la vision –, au lieu d’une origine en soi préétablie, un originaire en perpétuelle explosion. De son côté, Deleuze élaborera quelque chose d’analogue, à partir de la réflexion sur le cinéma qui l’occupera dans les années 1980 : il « encapsulera » les extases temporelles dans une image-miroir, une concrétion cristalline à plusieurs facettes où le monde se différencie sans cesse, dans un éternel retour.Mirror, Mirror of my DesiresOn the Threshold of Reversibility, the libidic Passion of ImagesIn a journey through the perspectives of Lacan, Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, I shall show how images – the images that from Plato on have been relegated by Western metaphysics to the role of mere copies – allow us to trace the direction of a new and non-dualistic thought, a direction opened up by desire, that is to say, by something exceeding any simplistic dualism and fi nding precisely in images its privileged channel.The specular image – conceived by Platonism as the simulacrum par excellence, as the emblem of the deforming, deceiving copy of a harmonious preliminarymodel – makes us see more than it actually shows: as Lacan remarked in a renowned essay published in 1949, since childhood, in front of the mirror, we discover ourselves as subjects of the world, but also – and inevitably – as subjected to the world. The ego – of which we are in-formed by the specular image – is turned, through that very image, into the obscure, uncanny chasm of the other, and, consequently, in the unfathomable vortex of the other’s desire. Indeed, if in the mirror we can embrace the whole of our body and catch with a single gaze its status of subject, by the mirror that very gaze is however returned – blind and insistent – as a partial object summoning us as desubjectivized subjects, as castrated subjects, namely, as mere “stains” in the picture of the world. Quite paradoxically, the image fixed by the child in the mirror founds the traditional idea of the subject conceived as the dinamic pole of the relation between the ego and the world. In short, as Slavoj Žižek remarks commenting on Lacan, the dinamic capability of the subject is grounded on an excessive fixation of the image of the subject itself, fixation which finds its absent origin in the gaze meant as object a, namely, meant as that blind point of consciousness, that point of acquisition and loss which, by castrating the subject, opens the acies of the libidically throbbing wound of the unconscious and turns, to borrow a renowed Lacanian expression, man’s desire into the other’s desire.For long considered to herald illusions, images show us the truth of illusion itself: the world is deformation and reversibility and we – presumed subjects in front of its inert picture – are, on the contrary, its “stains.” In the same years in which Lacan was elaborating a theory of gaze, Merleau-Ponty, who was then a direct interlocutor of his, was articulating – by referring, as Lacan did, to the child’s behaviour in front of the mirror – a series of important reflections over the problem of the en-être, that is to say, over the problem of the reversibility of flesh, i. e., that differential fabric constituting us – animals and things – as variegated gatherings of a common horizon. For Merleau-Ponty, as well as for Lacan, according to such a perspective, the subject, far from being defined in a positive way, is defined by a gap in relation with its own self, that is to say, by a cut in the skin of consciousness, by a wound opening to the unconscious and to the desire spurting abundantly from the subconscious.To see in the mirror that, as the poet said, “I am an Other,” is to free images from the status of “second things” with which Platonism had dismissed them; it is, in other words, to inaugurate a non-dualistic thought. For his part, Deleuze will also engage in the same direction by theorizing a reversing of Platonism from the very standpoint of images in his 1966 essay Renverser le platonisme.The beginning of philosophy has historically matched with the search for an origin, namely, an arké. But in a world in which the relations inaugurated by desire trace unpredictable itineraries, in a world in which the ego and the other can no longer be distinguished, in a world in which the subject and the object know no more boundary lines, in a world in which model and copy cease to exist as the presupposition of one another, in such a world, I said, is it still possible to find an origin? By measuring himself with such a crucial question, Merleau-Ponty will theorize – once again from the standpoint of vision – an “originating in perennial explosion” instead of a narrow, pregiven origin. For his part, Deleuze will elaborate something similar in his reflection on cinema, which will keep him busy in the first half of the eighties, by capsulating the temporal dimensions in a mirror-image, i. e., a crystalline concretion in whose facets the world perennially becomes in an eternal differential return. (shrink)

One of Prof. Walzer's most fascinating contributions to the field of political theory is his introduction of the concept of `complex equality'.In Spheres of Justice, he defines this concept as follows: “In formal terms, complex equality means that no citizen's standing in one sphere or with regard to one social good can be undercut by his standing in some other sphere, with regard to some other good. Thus, citizen X may be chosen over citizen Y for political office, and (...) then the two of them will be unequal in the sphere of politics. But they will not be unequal generally so long as X's office gives him no advantage over Y in any other sphere – superior medical care, access to better schools for his children, entrepreneurial opportunities, and so on” .To achieve a situation of complex equality, Prof. Walzer proposes a system of blocked exchanges: it should be avoided that goods obtained in one sphere are exchanged to obtain goods in another sphere. For instance, the money person X has acquired in the economic sphere should not be used to `buy' power and influence in the political sphere.Prof. Walzer states that this system of complex equality will lead to a more egalitarian distribution of social goods. Maybe in each sphere distinct inequalities will persist, but given the plurality of spheres, eventually every person will acquire goods in one sphere or another. This line of reasoning reminds us to some extent of the traditional pluralist argument as it was formulated by Robert Dahl .Dahl asserts that in contemporary American society, no single group actually dominates political decision-making, since the power of even very influential groups is limited to a few policy arenas. Even underprivileged groups have enough access to proper channels to let their voice get heard in political decision-making. (shrink)

Axioms in set theory typically have the form , where is a relation which links with in some way. In this paper we introduce a particular linkage relation and a single axiom based on from which all the axioms of (Zermelo set theory) can be derived as theorems. The single axiom is presented both in informal and formal versions. This calls for some discussion of pertinent features of formal and informal axiomatic method and some discussion of (...) pertinent features of the system of set theory to be erected on the single axiom. is shown to be somewhat stronger than , but much weaker than (Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory). (shrink)

The complexity and heterogeneity of causes influencing ecology’s domain challenge its capacity to generate a general theory without exceptions, raising the question of whether ecology is capable, even in principle, of achieving the sort of theoretical success enjoyed by physics. Weber has argued that competition theory built around the Competitive Exclusion Principle (especially Tilman’s resource-competition model) offers an example of ecology identifying a law-like causal regularity. However, I suggest that as Weber presents it, the CEP is not yet (...) a causal regularity. Instead, I argue that the scientific understanding in Tilman’s theory takes a different form. The theory explains through a structure I call “channeling explanation” which does not depend on deduction from general laws, but rather builds on constraints and trade-offs represented in state-space. Recognizing this structure supports the more general point that ecology and other so-called special sciences can reveal novel theoretical approaches to philosophy of science when approached with openness to their uniqueness. (shrink)

Many analogies exist between the process of evolution by natural selection and of learning by reinforcement and punishment. A full extension of the evolutionary analogy to learning to include analogues of the fitness, genotype, development, environmental influences, and phenotype concepts makes possible a single theory of the learning process able to encompass all of the elementary procedures known to yield learning.

Recent work in cognitive modelling has found that most of the data that has been cited as evidence for the dual-process theory (DPT) of reasoning is best explained by non-linear, “monotonic” one-process models (Stephens et al., 2018, 2019). In this paper, I consider an important caveat of this research: it uses models that are committed to unrealistic assumptions about how effectively task conditions can isolate Type-1 and Type-2 reasoning. To avoid this caveat, I develop a coordinated theoretical, experimental, and (...) modelling strategy to better test DPT. First, I propose that Type-1 and Type-2 reasoning are defined as reasoning that precedes and follows metacognitive control, respectively. Second, I argue that reasoning that precedes and follows metacognitive control can be effectively isolated using debiasing paradigms that manipulate metacognitive heuristics (e.g., processing fluency) to prevent or trigger metacognitive control, respectively. Third, I argue that monotonic modelling can allow us to decisively test DPT only when we use them to analyse data from this particular kind of debiasing paradigm. (shrink)

The representation of a quantum system as the spatial configuration of its constituents evolving in time as a trajectory under the action of the wave-function, is the main objective of the de Broglie–Bohm theory. However, its standard formulation is referred to the statistical ensemble of its possible trajectories. The statistical ensemble is introduced in order to establish the exact correspondence between the probability density on the spatial configurations and the quantum distribution, that is the squared modulus of the wave-function. (...) In this work we explore the possibility of using the pilot wave theory at the level of a single Bohm’s trajectory, that is a single realization of the time dependent configuration which should be representative of a single realization of the quantum system. The pilot wave theory allows a formally self-consistent representation of quantum systems as a single Bohm’s trajectory, but in this case there is no room for the Born’s rule at least in its standard form. We will show that a correspondence exists between the statistical distribution of configurations along the single Bohm’s trajectory and the quantum distribution for a subsystem interacting with the environment in a multicomponent system. To this aim, we present the numerical results of the single Bohm’s trajectory description of the model system of six confined planar rotors with random interactions. We find a rather close correspondence between the coordinate distribution of one rotor, the others representing the environment, along its trajectory and the time averaged marginal quantum distribution for the same rotor. This might be considered as the counterpart of the standard Born’s rule when the pilot wave theory is applied at the level of single Bohm’s trajectory. Furthermore a strongly fluctuating behavior with a fast loss of correlation is found for the evolution of each rotor coordinate. This suggests that a Markov process might well approximate the evolution of the Bohm’s coordinate of a single rotor and, under this condition, it is shown that the correspondence between coordinate distribution and quantum distribution of the rotor is exactly verified. (shrink)

ExcerptAdorno's afterlife has been a curious one. His ghost glides through some of the most evocative work across disparate critical theoretical traditions, but often without clear course. It seems not unreasonable to speculate that these uncertain inheritances flow from the general opacity of his works, not least of them Negative Dialectics.1 It is in this late, and arguably his most abstruse, work that he sets out to channel and refigure Hegel—abstruse in his own right, no doubt—as the single (...) most important object of his theoretical adoration and rebellion. It is not correct to say, as many of his latter-day interpreters…. (shrink)

De Neys (2021) argues that the debate between single- and dual-process theorists of thought has become both empirically intractable and scientifically inconsequential. I argue that this is true only under the traditional framing of the debate—when single- and dual-process theories are understood as claims about whether thought processes share the same defining properties (e.g., making mathematical judgments) or have two different defining properties (e.g., making mathematical judgments autonomously versus via access to a central working memory capacity), respectively. But (...) if single- and dual-process theories are understood in cognitive modeling terms as claims about whether thought processes function to implement one or two broad types of algorithms, respectively, then the debate becomes scientifically consequential and, presumably, empirically tractable. So, I argue, the correct response to the current state of the debate is not to abandon it, as De Neys suggests, but to reframe it as a debate about cognitive models. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to prove the decidability ofstit theory (a logic of seeing to it that) with a single agent andRefref Equivalence. This result is obtained through an axiomatization of the theory and a proof that it has thefinite model property. A notion ofcompanions to stit formulas is introduced and extensively used in the proof.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative EssaysBruce HeidenAndrew Faulkner, ed. The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. xv + 400 pp. 2 black-and-white figs. Cloth, $160.This volume, according to its editor, is intended to fill the need for a companion to the Homeric Hymns, but “[it] is more than just a companion. It aims not only to evaluate the state of scholarship on the Hymns but also (...) to advance it” (23). Actually, the collection falls far short of a satisfactory companion, and its influence could set back scholarship on the Hymns to before Clay’s pioneering ensemble reading of the major Hymns in The Politics of Olympus (Princeton, 1989). Since the volume’s title promises “interpretative essays,” it might be ungenerous to dwell upon its shortcomings as a companion. But only a few of its fourteen contributions could even be described as “interpretative,” except loosely. Almost all focus upon putative facts, some of them imaginary.The editor’s introduction is symptomatic of problems that beset the entire collection. A survey of recent scholarship on the Hymns sketches representative positions of what is styled a “debate,” which to Faulkner apparently means that all views worth mentioning get equal time, none are ever legitimately invalidated, and consensus forms around a hypothetical middle ground. Faulkner divides the field into four categories, “Oral Poetics,” “Dating and Language,” “Performance and Function,” and “Genre, Panhellenism, and Local Connections,” a misleading division since a single research paradigm, traditional oral poetics, defines most of the issues here distributed among three of the categories (the first, third, and fourth). Faulkner’s historical sketch of oral poetics conventionally accords seminal status to Parry and Lord, but it takes no notice of Nagy, and an inexperienced reader would never suspect how much current work on archaic Greek poetry, including much in the present volume, emanates from this one scholar’s program. As for intellectual influences originating outside philology, Faulkner recognizes none at all; his survey makes no mention of structuralism, and more importantly, no mention of the functionalist sociolinguistics channeled into classical Greek scholarship by Gregory Nagy and (somewhat differently) by Claude Calame, both contributors to this very volume. On the other hand, Faulkner acknowledges the importance of Clay’s Politics quite explicitly, but still misleadingly, for he summarizes the book’s thesis but passes over the analytic framework on which (in principle) it rests. He then proceeds to tabulate a few dissenting positions, again without analyzing their premises or merits. All this conveys an impression that academic research on the Hymns has no programs, methods, or standards, that the [End Page 521] field consists of numerous independent researchers who spontaneously converge around a limited repertoire of questions, and that disciplinary authority belongs to a consensus of prudent experts rather than investigative rigor or hegemonic theory. From an editor who sees the academic landscape in this way, we get a collection of articles whose main purpose appears to be that of assembling and projecting consensus. Readers will learn what a certain disciplinary network thinks to be in vogue at the present time (itself), but not much about the Homeric Hymns, and certainly not much about the four major hymns that have prompted the most study and contemplation.Besides the editor’s introduction, the volume features contributions by Martin West (speculative reconstruction of the fragmentary first Hymn to Dionysus), Nicholas Richardson (survey of issues in recent work on the Hymn to Demeter), Mike Chappell (survey of arguments for and against the Hymn to Apollo being a composite), Athanassios Vergados (argument that the Hymn to Hermes effects the god’s epiphany obliquely), Pascale Brillet-Dubois (the Hymn to Aphrodite as an intertextual dialogue between “Aphroditean” and “Iliadic” poetics), Dominique Jaillard (the epiphanic framework of Hymn 7 to Dionysus), Oliver Thomas (thorough reading of the Hymn to Pan), Andrew Faulkner (allusions to the hymns as evidence of the collection’s contents and circulation in certain periods), William D. Furley (the Homeric Hymns as a departure from authentic religious hymns), Jenny Clay (the existence of a genre of Olympian narrative), Nancy Felson (confrontations between Zeus and his children in Hesiod’s Theogony, the Hymn to Apollo, and Hymn... (shrink)

Exact wavelet solutions of the wave equation for accelerating potentials are found and applied to single individual events in Stern-Gerlach experiment.

With the aim of giving a naturalistic foundation to the notion of mental representation, Fred Dretske (1981;1988) has put forward and developed the idea that the relation between a representation and its intentional content is grounded on an informational relation. In this explanatory model, mental representations are conceived of as states of organisms which a learning process has selected to play a functional role: a necessary condition for fulfilling this role is that the organism or some proper part of it (...) (presumably situated in the brain) is a natural indicator of the occurrence of a determinate type of event in the environment of the organism (or in the organism but outside of the proper part serving as the indicator). A state of the organism is a natural indicator of a type of event if and only if it carries information about the occurrence of that type of event. Jerry Fodor (1987) has devised and followed another strategy which consists in considering the relation between a mental representation and its intentional object as a relation of lawful, or nomic, dependence. A representational state of an organism has an objective content in virtue of the existence of a relation of nomic dependence between this state - presumably a property of the brain of the organism - and some objective property in the world. This dependence also creates a regular correlation between the occurrences of representational states of a certain type and the states of affairs whose type is their representational content. Both approaches encounter indeterminacy problems: for each, there exist situations in which the explanatory model chosen - information flow or nomic dependence - does not succeed in selecting, purely on the basis of the constraints characteristic of that model, one out of several potential contents for a given representational state. In such cases, that state is related to more than one type of events in accordance with the informational or nomic constraints imposed by those theories. In what follows, I examine an attempt by Pierre Jacob (1997) to solve two problems of indeterminacy threatening the informational theory of mental representation. According to Jacob, one of these problems can be solved with the help of the distinction between the source which is the target of the information and the channel over which the information is transmitted, whereas the solution to the other problem requires the introduction of the concept of function. I shall begin with a consideration of the distinction, with respect to a situation of information transmission, between the source and the channel. I argue that both the source and the channel, and thus the information transmitted, depend not only on the external situation which characterises the source, the channel and the receiving organism, but also on the previous knowledge and the informational needs of the receiver. I then try to show that this relativity of information undermines the solution Jacob proposes to one of the problems of indeterminacy of representational content. Finally, I examine the possibility considered by Dretske and Jacob to solve this 'problem of the reference class' due to the mentioned relativity of information, by grounding the flow of information on lawful dependence instead of statistical dependence. I shall propose two arguments showing first that these two groundings are not equivalent and second that nomic dependence is inappropriate as a grounding for information flow. I conclude by suggesting that the problem of the reference class can be solved within the framework of the informational approach, on the condition of enriching it with functional considerations. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's theory of justice has received less critical attention than many other features of his work, and yet it constitutes a crucial part of his project to rebut Kant's and other Continental thinkers' charge that British empiricism is incapable of cultivating a genuine morality. Here I explain that the problem of justice preoccupied Mill throughout his lifetime, and that wrestling with this question directly contributes to Mill building bridges between British empiricism's and Kant's conception of the moral (...) conscience, empiricism and romanticism's moral psychology, and empiricism's naturalized morality and Rousseau and Kant's separation of morality and nature. Mill's reflections on the character of justice also lead him to an ever more fundamental examination on the nature of liberty. (shrink)

For an arbitrary potential V with classical trajectoriesx=g(t), we construct localized oscillating three-dimensional wave lumps ψ(x, t,g) representing a single quantum particle. The crest of the envelope of the ripple follows the classical orbitg(t), slightly modified due to the potential V, and ψ(x, t,g) satisfies the Schrödinger equation. The field energy, momentum, and angular momentum calculated as integrals over all space are equal to the particle energy, momentum, and angular momentum. The relation to coherent states and to Schrödinger waves (...) is also discussed. (shrink)

Questions of what a self-driving car ought to do if it encounters a situation analogous to the ‘trolley problem’ have dominated recent discussion of the ethics of self-driving cars. This paper argues that this interest is misplaced. If a trolley-style dilemma situation actually occurs, given the limits on what information will be available to the car, the dynamics of braking and tyre traction determine that, irrespective of outcome, it is always least risky for the car to brake in a straight (...) line rather than swerve. (shrink)