Much of our understanding of human thinking is based on probabilistic models. This innovative book by Jerome R. Busemeyer and Peter D. Bruza argues that, actually, the underlying mathematical structures from quantum theory provide a much better account of human thinking than traditional models. They introduce the foundations for modelling probabilistic-dynamic systems using two aspects of quantum theory. The first, 'contextuality', is a way to understand interference effects found with inferences and decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The second, 'quantum entanglement', (...) allows cognitive phenomena to be modeled in non-reductionist ways. Employing these principles drawn from quantum theory allows us to view human cognition and decision in a totally new light. Introducing the basic principles in an easy-to-follow way, this book does not assume a physics background or a quantum brain and comes complete with a tutorial and fully worked-out applications in important areas of cognition and decision. (shrink)

First published in 1977, Emotion, Thought and Therapy is a study of Hume and Spinoza and the relationship of philosophical theories of the emotions to psychological theories of therapy. Jerome Neu argues that the Spinozists are closer to the truth; that is, that thoughts are of greater importance than feelings in the classification and discrimination of emotional states. He then contends that if the Spinozists are closer to the truth, we have the beginning of an argument to show that Freudian (...) or analytic therapies make philosophic sense. Throughout the book, careful attention is paid to modern discussions in philosophy of mind and psychology, and materials from anthropology and other relevant disciplines are considered. At the centre of the discussion is the notion of ‘thought-dependence’. Therapies for psychological disorders are placed along a spectrum in accordance with the role they assign to thoughts. The Spinozist view of the emotions can be seen as at the extreme thought end of a corresponding spectrum of theories of the emotions. The book suggests that this stream may help explain the spectrum of therapeutic theories and the possibilities that exist for psychological development and change. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy, psychology and counselling. (shrink)

This remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its aim is to set Kant's still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him and how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. The book is organised into four main sections, each exploring moral philosophy by discussing the work of many influential philosophers of the (...) seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In an epilogue the author discusses Kant's view of his own historicity, and of the aims of moral philosophy. In its range, in its analyses of many philosophers not discussed elsewhere, and in revealing the subtle interweaving of religious and political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant's ethics. (shrink)

In this book, Jerome Kagan takes a provocative look at the mental developments underlying the startling transitions in the child's second year.It is Kagan&...

In this paper we continue our study, begun in [5], of the connection between ultraproducts and saturated structures. IfDis an ultrafilter over a setI, andis a structure, the ultrapower ofmoduloDis denoted byD-prod. The ultrapower is important because it is a method of constructing structures which are elementarily equivalent to a given structure. Our ultimate aim is to find out what kinds of structure are ultrapowers of. We made a beginning in [5] by proving that, assuming the generalized continuum hypothesis, for (...) each cardinalαthere is an ultrafilterDover a set of powerαsuch that for all structures,D-prodisα+-saturated. (shrink)

Is jealousy eliminable? If so, at what cost? What are the connections between pride the sin and the pride insisted on by identity politics? How can one question an individual's understanding of their own happiness or override a society's account of its own rituals? What makes a sexual desire "perverse," or particular sexual relations undesirable or even unthinkable? These and other questions about what sustains and threatens our identity are pursued using the resources of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and other disciplines. The (...) discussion throughout is informed and motivated by the Spinozist hope that understanding our lives can help change them, can help make us more free. (shrink)

We investigate the nature of the sense of presence that usually accompanies perceptual experience. We show that the notion of a sense of presence can be interpreted in two ways, corresponding to the sense that we are acquainted with an object, and the sense that the object is real. In this essay, we focus on the sense of reality. Drawing on several case studies such as derealization disorder, Parkinson’s disease and virtual reality, we argue that the sense of reality is (...) two-way independent from the spatial and sensory contents of experience. We suggest that the sense of reality is an affective experience akin to a metacognitive feeling. Finally, we present a potentially important implication of our account for the current debate between Intentionalism and Naïve Realism. Since perception is “opaque” with respect to the reality of what is perceived, Intentionalism cannot refer to the sense of reality as what differentiates perception from sensory-like experiences such as imaginings. In contrast, Naïve Realism has an independent explanation of the specificity of perception. (shrink)

In chapter 5 of Knowledge and its Limits, T. Williamson formulates an argument against the principle (KK) of epistemic transparency, or luminosity of knowledge, namely “that if one knows something, then one knows that one knows it”. Williamson’s argument proceeds by reductio: from the description of a situation of approximate knowledge, he shows that a contradiction can be derived on the basis of principle (KK) and additional epistemic principles that he claims are better grounded. One of them is a reflective (...) form of the margin for error principle defended by Williamson in his account of knowledge. We argue that Williamson’s reductio rests on the inappropriate identification of distinct forms of knowledge. More specifically, an important distinction between perceptual knowledge and non-perceptual knowledge is wanting in his statement and analysis of the puzzle. We present an alternative account of this puzzle, based on a modular conception of knowledge: the (KK) principle and the margin for error principle can coexist, provided their domain of application is referred to the right sort of knowledge. (shrink)

Aristotle taught logic to Alexander the Great and, through his enduring philosophical works, to Mortimer Adler as well. The one went on to conquer the world; the other to dominate the field of adult education in the United States. Now Adler instructs the world in the "uncommon common sense" of Aristotelian logic.

The discovery of mirror neurons has given rise to a number of interpretations of their functions together with speculations on their potential role in the evolution of specifically human capacities. Thus, mirror neurons have been thought to ground many aspects of human social cognition, including the capacity to engage in cooperative collective actions and to understand them. We propose an evaluation of this latter claim. On the one hand, we will argue that mirror neurons do not by themselves provide a (...) sufficient basis for the forms of agentive understanding and shared intentionality involved in cooperative collective actions. On the other hand, we will also argue that mirror neurons can nevertheless play an important role in an account of the production and understanding of joint action, insofar as they provide the basic constituents of implicit agent-neutral representations and are useful elements in a process of online mutual adjustment of participants' actions. (shrink)

Almost a philosopher -- First embrace of science -- Between scientific and sectarian medicine -- The ancient art of natural grace -- Crises and construction -- An earnestly inquiring state.

Reviews the book 'William James and the Metaphysics of Experience,' by David C. Lamberth.

The sounds produced by animals have been a topic of research into animal behaviour for a very long time. If acoustic signals are undoubtedly a vehicle for exchanging information between individuals, environmental sounds embed as well a significant level of data related to the ecology of populations, communities and landscapes. The consideration of environmental sounds for ecological investigations opens up a field of research that we define with the term ecoacoustics. In this paper, we draw the contours of ecoacoustics by (...) detailing: the main theories, concepts and methods used in ecoacoustic research, and the numerous outcomes that can be expected from the ecological approach to sound. Ecoacoustics has several theoretical and practical challenges, but we firmly believe that this new approach to investigating ecological processes will generate abundant and exciting research programs. (shrink)

Living in the Borderland addresses the evolution of Western consciousness and describes the emergence of the "Borderland," a spectrum of reality that is beyond the rational yet is palpable to an increasing number of individuals. Building on Jungian theory, Jerome Bernstein argues that a greater openness to transrational reality experienced by Borderland personalities allows new possibilities for understanding and healing confounding clinical and developmental enigmas." "Living in the Borderland challenges the standard clinical model, which views normality as an absence of (...) pathology and which equates normality with the rational. Jerome S. Bernstein describes how psychotherapy itself often contributes to the alienation of Borderland personalities by misperceiving the difference between the pathological and the sacred. The case studies included illustrate the potential this has for causing serious psychic and emotional damage to the patient." "This challenge to the orthodoxies and complacencies of western medicine's concept of pathology will interest Jungian Analysts, Psychotherapists, Psychiatrists and other physicians, as well as educators of children. (shrink)

Chris Tweedt has offered a solution to the “common sense problem of evil,” on which that there is gratuitous evil is justified non-inferentially as a trivial inference from non-inferentially justified premises by invoking versions of CORNEA. Tweedt claims his solution applies not only to the versions of the common sense problem of evil offered by Paul Draper and Trent Dougherty, but also to that offered by me in this journal in 1992. Here I argue that Tweedt fails to defeat this (...) version of the problem. So even if Tweedt’s response to Draper and Dougherty is successful, a version of the common sense problem of evil survives. (shrink)

Pierre-Henri Castel provides a short but richly argued precis of his recently published two-volume 1,000-page masterwork on the history of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Having not read the as-yet-untranslated books, I write this commentary from Plato’s cave, trying to infer the reality of Castel’s analysis from expository shadows. I am unlikely to be more successful than Plato’s poor troglodytes, so I apologize ahead of time for any misunderstandings. Moreover, I cannot assess Castel’s detailed evidential case for his substantive theses.1 I thus focus (...) on some key philosophical issues that impinge on an area of my concern, the concept of mental disorder. Castel is a rare breed of French.. (shrink)

Shows the inseparability of textuality, materiality, and history in discussions of the body.

Based on readings of the Syrian revolution which undermines as a simple riot or viewed it through the religious prism, this work shows how the 2011 events in the different territories of this country have aimed the individual and collective emancipation, and that such an impulse towards freedom and dignity can be objectively described as through the category of “revolution”. The article focuses on the vision of politics in the Arab world as reflected in some work of historians, sociologists or (...) political scientists, but focuses on the approach of Michel Seurat (specially his book, L’État de barbarie) mobilizing paradigms such as tribalism and sectarianism to approach the Syrian society. This point of view is still at work in the analysis of the historical phase that this country is going through. (shrink)

Gaifman's normal form theorem showed that every first-order sentence of quantifier rank n is equivalent to a Boolean combination of “scattered local sentences”, where the local neighborhoods have radius at most 7n−1. This bound was improved by Lifsches and Shelah to 3×4n−1. We use Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé type games with a “shrinking horizon” to get a spectrum of normal form theorems of the Gaifman type, depending on the rate of shrinking. This spectrum includes the result of Lifsches and Shelah, with a more (...) easily understood proof and with the bound on the radius improved to 4n−1. We also obtain bounds for a normal form theorem of Schwentick and Barthelmann. (shrink)

Often advocates for persons with disabilities are resistant to what might appear to be the banal truism that, at bottom, disability is a decrement in health. Disability advocates have long objected to the “medicalization” of disability, when that means focusing entirely on a person’s underlying impairments and ignoring all of the manifold obstacles in his or her environment — e.g., physical, human-built, attitudinal, social, political, and cultural — that makes living with those impairments at least disadvantageous and socially devalued. Over-medicalization (...) is another and well understood problem that people with disabilities are justifiably concerned about. Yet it is somewhat of a mystery why anyone with an impairment would ever deny, or feel uncomfortable being told, that their impairment is a health problem. Surely, people with disabilities are unhealthy, by virtue of their impairments and to the degree according to the severity of those impairments. How could it be otherwise? (shrink)

Because most chemical reactions, by definition, cannot avoid breaking of bonds, weakly bonded species exist fleetingly in almost every chemical change. Historically, chemical quantum mechanics was aimed at explaining the nature of strong bonds. The theory involved a number of approximations to the full solution of the Schrödinger equation. The study of non‐Kekulé molecules provides an opportunity to test whether modern quantum chemical computations are competent to deal with the nature of molecules with very weak bonds. †To contact the author, (...) please write to: Department of Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT: 06520‐8107; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Advances in behavioral and brain sciences have engendered wide ranging efforts to help understand consciousness. The target article suggests that abstract computational models are ill-advised. This commentary broadens the discussion to include mysteries of subjective experience that are inconsistent with current neuroscience. It also discusses progress being made through demystifying specific cases and pursuing evolutionary considerations.

In what follows I offer an explanation for the evils in our world that should be a live option for theists who accept middle knowledge. My explanation depends on the possibility of a multiverse of radically different kinds of universes. Persons must pass through various universes, the sequence being chosen by God on an individual basis, until reaching God’s goal for them. Our universe is depicted as governed much by chance, and I give a justification, in light of my thesis, (...) for why God would have people pass through a universe of just such a sort. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to demonstrate that American Indians have a world-view that is consistent, intelligible, and legitimate. It is a deft and self-aware exemplification of the task of cross-cultural comparison. The overall strategy in the argument is to employ a modified version of Nelson Goodman’s notion of world-making and then construct a simplified model of the American Indian worldview. Norton-Smith accomplishes this difficult task and in the process modifies Goodman in a realist direction, making a strong case (...) that the Native view deserves intellectual respect. The writing is accessible and shows a deft and helpful interplay between abstract language and concrete illustrative .. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.