Most phobias are focussed on a small number of fear-inducing stimuli (e.g., snakes, spiders). A review of the evidence supporting biological and cognitive explanations of this uneven distribution of phobias suggests that the readiness with which such stimuli become associated with aversive outcomes arises from biases in the processing of information about threatening stimuli rather than from phylogenetically based associative predispositions or “biological preparedness.” This cognitive bias, consisting of a heightened expectation of aversive outcomes following fear-relevant stimuli, generates and maintains (...) robust learned associations between them. Some of the features of such stimuli which determine this expectancy bias are estimates of how dangerous they are, the semiotic similarity between them and their aversive outcomes, and the degree of prior fear they elicit. Ontogenetic and cultural factors influence these features of fear-relevant stimuli and are hence important in determining expectancy bias. The available evidence does not exclude the possibility that both expectancy biases and specific evolved predispositions coexist, but the former can explain a number of important findings that the latter cannot. (shrink)

This book . . . is an invitation to all Christians to begin constructing a food ethics; to the academic Christian ethicist, it presents an opportunity to join a discussion on a topic relevant in so many ways to the life of every American; to the Christian for whom the spark of the divine is detectable in the everyday life, it is a chance to begin making ethical sense out of something done every day for the entirety of one's natural (...) life-participating in agriculture. -from the Introduction In Sustainable Agriculture, Mark Graham joins the vibrant, substantive discussion about the moral issues in American agriculture by revealing what is going on in current agricultural practices and analyzing them in light of morality and sustainability. Graham's constructive proposal for change is based on a moral vision that identifies a group of core values around which our agricultural system should be developed, including: a) a consistent, safe food supply; b) vital, sustainable communities; and c) personal and environmental health. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

The paper discusses Dr. Floris Tomasini's paper “What Is Bioethics: Notes toward a New Approach?”. Based on Tomasini's account of methodological and ethical pluralism, the paper explores the demarcation problem of bioethics and suggests a full methodological laissez-faire.

We replicated and extended the findings of Yao et al. [(2018). Differential emotional processing in concrete and abstract words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44(7), 1064–1074] regarding the interaction of emotionality, concreteness, and imageability in word processing by measuring eye fixation times on target words during normal reading. A 3 (Emotion: negative, neutral, positive) × 2 (Concreteness: abstract, concrete) design was used with 22 items per condition, with each set of six target words matched across conditions in (...) terms of word length and frequency. Abstract (e.g. shocking, reserved, fabulous) and concrete (e.g. massacre, calendar, treasure) target words appeared (separately) within contextually neutral, plausible sentences. Sixty-three participants each read all 132 experimental sentences while their eye movements were recorded. Analyses using Gamma generalised linear mixed models revealed significant effects of both Emotion and Concreteness on all fixation measures, indicating faster processing for emotional and concrete words. Additionally, there was a significant Emotion × Concreteness interaction which, critically, was modulated by Imageability in early fixation time measures. Emotion effects were significantly larger in higher-imageability abstract words than in lower-imageability ones, but remained unaffected by imageability in concrete words. These findings support the multimodal induction hypothesis and highlight the intricate interplay of these factors in the immediate stages of word processing during fluent reading. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' ObjectsGraham ParkesSpirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' Objects. Edited by Stephen Little. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago in association with University of California Press, 1999. Pp. 112.Let me introduce Spirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection (...) of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' Objects (edited by Stephen Little) with this quotation:The purest essence of the energy of the heaven-earth world coalesces into rock. It emerges, bearing the soil. Its formations are wonderful and fantastic. Some with cavernous cliffs, revealing their interior; some with peaks and summits in sharp-edged layers.... Within the size of a fist can be assembled the beauty of a thousand cliffs. Rocks large enough to be set up in great courtyards, small enough to be set upon a stand. Like gazing upon the peaks of Song Shan, or facing the entire range of the Meng mountains; sitting quietly, your imagination purified.... The Sage [Confucius] once said, "the humane man loves mountains," and the love of stones has the same meaning. Thus, longevity through quietude is achieved through this love.This passage articulates the very different understanding of stone—as "essential energy" rather than mere matter—that underlies the traditional Chinese passion for rock collecting and appreciating, for which even the terms "petromania" and "litholatry" seem too weak. It comes from the preface to the earliest surviving Chinese manual on the topic, Du Wan's Stone Compendium of Cloudy Forest, compiled in the early twelfth century, and is quoted by Stephen Little in his erudite and informative introduction to this magnificent catalog for a unique collection of "spirit" or "strange stones" (guai shi) and other scholars' articles. This essay nicely complements and amplifies ideas set forth some fifteen years ago by John Hay, in his now classic introduction to the catalog Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art (New York: China House Gallery, China Institute in America, 1985).Most cultures appear to begin with a natural reverence for stone in its natural state—one thinks of the Druids, the Indian tradition, the Polynesians, Native Americans, and Australian aboriginal culture—and many seem to retain that reverence as they develop. Indeed, when seen in a global perspective, the general lack of interest in (or respect for) rock in its unhewn state that characterizes the European and Anglo-American traditions seems idiosyncratic. But Chinese culture definitely has the longest and most enthusiastic tradition of collecting stones and arranging rocks in gardens: "strange stones" figure among articles of tribute offered to the mythical emperor Yu (mid-second millennium B.C.E.), and the emperor Wu Di (second century B.C.E.) is recorded as having had rocks arranged in the gardens of his palace. [End Page 306]Stephen Little's essay gives an eloquent account of the development of the practice of stone collecting in China, delineating its relationships with poetry and painting and other arts and practices, and containing numerous translations of passages from primary sources otherwise inaccessible to the non-reader of Chinese. Most of the rocks in the catalog are of the well-known Lingbi (sonorous) and Ying types, but other kinds are represented, too. The editor also supplies a context for appreciating the paintings, scrolls, and other articles from scholars' desks that are in the catalog: brush rests, inkstones, brush holders, and so forth. The sixty-six items from the collection are represented in excellent black-and-white photographs.The book is beautifully designed and produced—and is indeed a work of art in itself with its handsome, dark blue Chinese-style case. All in all, this a stylish and informative contribution to the growing literature on a philosophically fascinating topic. [End Page 307]Graham Parkes University of Hawai'iCopyright © 2001 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "Biomedical Informatics: We Are What We Publish", written by Peter L. Elkin, Steven H. Brown, and Graham Wright. It is introduced by an editorial. This article contains the combined commentaries invited to independently comment on the Elkin et al. paper. In subsequent issues the discussion can continue through letters to the editor.

Part I: The Life of Cognitive Science:. William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen, and George Graham. Part II: Areas of Study in Cognitive Science:. 1. Analogy: Dedre Gentner. 2. Animal Cognition: Herbert L. Roitblat. 3. Attention: A.H.C. Van Der Heijden. 4. Brain Mapping: Jennifer Mundale. 5. Cognitive Anthropology: Charles W. Nuckolls. 6. Cognitive and Linguistic Development: Adele Abrahamsen. 7. Conceptual Change: Nancy J. Nersessian. 8. Conceptual Organization: Douglas Medin and Sandra R. Waxman. 9. Consciousness: Owen Flanagan. 10. Decision Making: J. Frank (...) Yates and Paul A. Estin. 11. Emotions: Paul E. Griffiths. 12. Imagery and Spatial Representation: Rita E. Anderson. 13. Language Evolution and Neuromechanisms: Terrence W. Deacon. 14. Language Processing: Kathryn Bock and Susan M. Garnsey. 15. Linguistics Theory: D. Terence Langendoen. 16. Machine Learning: Paul Thagard. 17. Memory: Henry L. Roediger III and Lyn M. Goff. 18. Perception: Cees Van Leeuwen. 19. Perception: Color: Austen Clark. 20. Problem Solving: Kevin Dunbar. 21. Reasoning: Lance J. Rips. 22. Social Cognition: Alan J. Lambert and Alison L. Chasteen. 23. Unconscious Intelligence: Rhianon Allen and Arthur S. Reber. 24. Understanding Texts: Art Graesser and Pam Tipping. 25. Word Meaning: Barbara C. Malt. Part III: Methodologies of Cognitive Science:. 26. Artificial Intelligence: Ron Sun. 27. Behavioral Experimentation: Alexander Pollatsek and Keith Rayner. 28. Cognitive Ethology: Marc Bekoff. 29. Deficits and Pathologies: Christopher D. Frith. 30. Ethnomethodology: Barry Saferstein. 31. Functional Analysis: Brian Macwhinney. 32. Neuroimaging: Randy L. Buckner and Steven E. Petersen. 33. Protocal Analysis: K. Anders Ericsson. 34. Single Neuron Electrophysiology: B. E. Stein, M.T. Wallace, and T.R. Stanford. 35. Structural Analysis: Robert Frank. Part IV: Stances in Cognitive Science:. 36. Case-based Reasoning: David B. Leake. 37. Cognitive Linguistics: Michael Tomasello. 38. Connectionism, Artificial Life, and Dynamical Systems: Jeffrey L. Elman. 39. Embodied, Situated, and Distributed Cognition: Andy Clark. 40. Mediated Action: James V. Wertsch. 41. Neurobiological Modeling: P. Read Montague and Peter Dayan. 42. Production Systems: Christian D. Schunn and David Klahr. Part V: Controversies in Cognitive Science:. 43. The Binding Problem: Valerie Gray Hardcastle. 44. Heuristics and Satisficing: Robert C. Richardson. 45. Innate Knowledge: Barbara Landau. 46. Innateness and Emergentism: Elizabeth Bates, Jeffrey L. Elman, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett. 47. Intentionality: Gilbert Harman. 48. Levels of Explanation and Cognition Architectures: Robert N. McCauley. 49. Modularity: Irene Appelbaum. 50. Representation and Computation: Robert S. Stufflebeam. 51. Representations: Dorrit Billman. 52. Rules: Terence Horgan and John Tienson. 53. Stage Theories Refuted: Donald G. Mackay. Part VI: Cognitive Science in the Real World:. 54. Education: John T. Bruer. 55. Ethics: Mark L. Johnson. 56. Everyday Life Environments: Alex Kirlik. 57. Institutions and Economics: Douglass C. North. 58. Legal Reasoning: Edwina L. Rissland. 59. Mental Retardation: Norman W. Bray, Kevin D. Reilly, Lisa F. Huffman, Lisa A. Grupe, Mark F. Villa, Kathryn L. Fletcher, and Vivek Anumolu. 60. Science: William F. Brewer and Punyashloke Mishra. Selective Biographies of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science: William Bechtel and Tadeusz Zawidzki. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of an ontological argument defended by E. J. Lowe in the *Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion* (edited by C. Meister and P. Copan, at pp.332-40). The volume to which this paper belongs contains an article by Lowe which defends a different ontological argument from the one that I discuss.

Alain Badiou’s treatment of objects in Logics of Worlds is both rich and highly technical, though its terminological challenges are softened by his use of illuminating examples. This article takes a twofold approach to the topic. In a first sense, the theory of objects developed in Logics of Worlds by way of an imagined protest at the Place de la République in Paris exhibits two questionable aspects: (1) the notion that the object is a bundle of qualities (found proverbially in (...) Hume, but also in Kant’s “transcendental object=X”), and (2) the ultimately idealist assumption of a possible isomorphy between appearance and reality. But in a second sense, Badiou’s transcendental account of worlds leads him to a fascinating theory of exemplary entities, one that is immune to the critiques of onto-theology made by Heidegger and Derrida. This can be found in his account of the “transcendental functor” in Alexander the Great’s decisive victory over Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 B.C.E. (shrink)

In ‘Towards a Solution to the Sorites Paradox’, Graham Priest gives us a new account of the sorites based on fuzzy logic. The novelty lies in the suggestion that truth-value assignments should themselves be treated as fuzzy objects, i.e., objects about which we can make fuzzy identity statements. I argue that Priest’s solution does not have the explanatory force that Priest advocates. That is, it does not explain why we find the existence of a cut-off point counter-intuitive. I also (...) argue that this sort of explanation calls for a general theory that goes beyond the special case of linguistic vagueness, for the phenomenon is at bottom not linguistic. (shrink)

In this paper, the class of Fidel-structures for the paraconsistent logic mbC is studied from the point of view of Model Theory and Category Theory. The basic point is that Fidel-structures for mbC can be seen as first-order structures over the signature of Boolean algebras expanded by two binary predicate symbols N and O satisfying certain Horn sentences. This perspective allows us to consider notions and results from Model Theory in order to analyze the class of mbC-structures. Thus, substructures, union (...) of chains, direct products, direct limits, congruences and quotient structures can be analyzed under this perspective. In particular, a Birkhoff-like representation theorem for mbC-structures as subdirect products in terms of subdirectly irreducible mbC-structures is obtained by adapting a general result for first-order structures due to Caicedo. Moreover, a characterization of all the subdirectly irreducible mbC-structures is also given. An alternative decomposition theorem is obtained by using the notions of weak substructure and weak isomorphism considered by Fidel for \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$C_n$$\end{document}-structures. (shrink)

In the year 1308, Cardinal Giacomo Colonna was a tremendously busy man. He had returned to Rome only a few years earlier in the aftermath of a devastating papal war waged against his family by Boniface VIII. The papal court had been absent from the city for years, leaving an administrative void in Rome as it established itself first in Poitiers, then in Avignon from 1308 under the leadership of the Gascon pope Clement V. In 1306 Giacomo was fully reinstated (...) to the cardinalate, and set about rebuilding his family's fortunes and reputation, as well as a number of the city's churches. He commissioned a new mosaic facade for the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and in 1308 he oversaw repairs... (shrink)

The idea of reconciling Ptolemaic planetary theory with Aristotelian natural philosophy by imagining epicycles and eccentric deferents as three-dimensional orbs or orb-segments within larger spheres is frequently associated with Georg Peurbach and his widely read astronomy textbook, the Theoricae novae planetarum (1454). This article cautions against existing tendencies to overstate the originality or revolutionary force of this work by taking a closer look at the early history of the same Ptolemaic-Aristotelian compromise in a Latin European context. Using previously unpublished or (...) unused source material from the twelfth to early fourteenth centuries, it documents the gradual spread and acceptance of an orbicular interpretation of Ptolemy’s planetary models among astronomers and university teachers. (shrink)

Investigates the resolution of contradictions and ambiguous derogations in a code, by means of the imposition of partial orderings. Although formulated as a study in the logic of norms, it provided the initial ideas for work on the logic of theory (or belief) change, developed by the authors in a series of papers by the authors and Peter Gardenfors beginning in 1985.

The preparation of layers of amorphous Se by plasma-enhanced CVD using the hydride H2Se as precursor gas is described. Information concerning the structure of the films was obtained from Raman spectroscopy. The spectra of amorphous Se indicated that the dominant molecular structure is the eight-membered ring and/or a chain with Se8 molecular fragments. This material exhibited reversible photodarkening when illuminated at 77 K. In order to explain this phenomenon, we propose a mechanism which takes into account the role of the (...) lone-pair electron orbitals of Se in their contribution to structural ordering. Illumination can cause a distortion in the normal bonding direction between nearest-neighbour Se atoms and induce in this way intrinsic defect states located at the band edges. In the photo-darkened state, optical transition will occur between these defect states. (shrink)

An adequate theory of rights ought to forbid the harming of animals to promote trivial interests of humans, as is often done in the animal-user industries. But what should the rights view say about situations in which harming some animals is necessary to prevent intolerable injustices to other animals? I develop an account of respectful treatment on which, under certain conditions, it’s justified to intentionally harm some individuals to prevent serious harm to others. This can be compatible with recognizing the (...) inherent value of the ones who are harmed. My theory has important implications for contemporary moral issues in nonhuman animal ethics, such as the development of cultured meat and animal research. (shrink)

Many of the features that distinguish the vertebrates from other chordates are derived from the neural crest, and it has long been argued that the emergence of this multipotent embryonic population was a key innovation underpinning vertebrate evolution. More recently, however, a number of studies have suggested that the evolution of the neural crest was less sudden than previously believed. This has exposed the fact that neural crest, as evidenced by its repertoire of derivative cell types, has evolved through vertebrate (...) evolution. In this light, attempts to derive a typological definition of neural crest, in terms of molecular signatures or networks, are unfounded. We propose a less restrictive, embryological definition of this cell type that facilitates, rather than precludes, investigating the evolution of neural crest. While the evolutionary origin of neural crest has attracted much attention, its subsequent evolution has received almost no attention and yet it is more readily open to experimental investigation and has greater relevance to understanding vertebrate evolution. Finally, we provide a brief outline of how the evolutionary emergence of neural crest potentiality may have proceeded, and how it may be investigated. BioEssays 30:530–541, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)