Heart rate variability (HRV), the change in the time intervals between adjacent heartbeats, is an emergent property of interdependent regulatory systems that operate on different time scales to adapt to challenges and achieve optimal performance. This article briefly reviews neural regulation of the heart, and its basic anatomy, the cardiac cycle, and the sinoatrial and atrioventricular pacemakers. The cardiovascular regulation center in the medulla integrates sensory information and input from higher brain centers, and afferent cardiovascular system inputs to adjust heart (...) rate and blood pressure via sympathetic and parasympathetic efferent pathways. This article reviews sympathetic and parasympathetic influences on the heart, and examines the interpretation of HRV and the association between reduced HRV, risk of disease and mortality, and the loss of regulatory capacity. This article also discusses the intrinsic cardiac nervous system and the heart-brain connection, through which afferent information can influence activity in the subcortical and frontocortical areas, and motor cortex. It also considers new perspectives on the putative underlying physiological mechanisms and properties of the ultra-low-frequency (ULF), very-low-frequency (VLF), low-frequency (LF), and high-frequency (HF) bands. Additionally, it reviews the most common time and frequency domain measurements as well as standardized data collection protocols. In its final section, this article integrates Porges' polyvagal theory, Thayer and colleagues' neurovisceral integration model, Lehrer et al.'s resonance frequency model, and the Institute of HeartMath's coherence model. The authors conclude that a coherent heart is not a metronome because its rhythms are characterized by both complexity and stability over longer time scales. Future research should expand understanding of how the heart and its intrinsic nervous system influence the brain. (shrink)

Fred Feldman is an important philosopher, who has made a substantial contribution to utilitarian moral philosophy. This collection of ten previously published essays plus a new introductory essay reveal the striking originality and unity of his views. Feldman's version of utilitarianism differs from traditional forms in that it evaluates behaviour by appeal to the values of accessible worlds. These worlds are in turn evaluated in terms of the amounts of pleasure they contain, but the conception of pleasure involved is (...) a novel one and the formulation of hedonism improved. In Feldman's view pleasure is not a feeling but a propositional attitude. He also deals with problems of justice that affect standard forms of utilitarianism. The collection is ideally suited for courses on contemporary utilitarian theory. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the role of intuition-based ascriptions of cognition that are closely related to the ascription of mind. This practice hinders the explication of a clear and stable target domain for the cognitive sciences. To move forward, the proposal is to cut the notion of cognition free from such ascriptions and the intuition-based judgments that drive them. Instead, cognition is reinterpreted and developed as a scientific concept that is tied to a material domain of research. In this reading, cognition (...) becomes a changeable theoretical concept that can and must be adapted to the findings within this target domain. Taking humans as the best-established existing example of the relevant material target domain, this central case is extended to include all living systems. To clarify what it is about living systems that warrants their role as cognitive target domain, the new concept of cobolism is introduced as a complement to metabolism. Cobolism refers to the systematic ways in which each living system encompasses structures, processes and external events that maintain the fundamental metabolic processes that constitute the core of each living system. Cobolism is perfectly general, applies to bacterial and human cases alike, and provides a general format to describe wildly different cognitive organizations. It provides a clear target for the cognitive sciences to work on, turning them into what we can call the cognitive life sciences. (shrink)

Historically, there has been little agreement between advocates of radical financial reform and socialist theoreticians. However, in the new circumstances of the twenty-first century, a productive synthesis of these two traditions might be possible. Drawing on the franchise model of credit creation elaborated by Robert C. Hockett and the dysfunctions created by the extreme concentration of private financial institutions, this article outlines a reform agenda that would both democratize finance and facilitate the flow of funds into valuable forms of investment (...) that are currently starved for resources. If the new institutions envisioned in this proposal were able to take root and expand, they could ultimately facilitate a transition to socialism, defined as the subordination of the market to democratic politics. (shrink)

Despite the dominant role of market fundamentalist ideas in U.S. politics over the last thirty years, the Federal government has dramatically expanded its capacity to finance and support efforts of the private sector to commercialize new technologies. But the partisan logic of U.S. politics has worked to make these efforts invisible to mainstream public debate. The consequence is that while this “hidden developmental state” has had a major impact on the structure of the U.S. national innovation system, its ability to (...) be effective in the future is very much in doubt. The article ends by arguing that the importance of these developmental initiatives to the U.S. economy could present a significant opening for new progressive initiatives. (shrink)

The modern theory of computability is based on the works of Church, Markov and Turing who, starting from quite different models of computation, arrived at the same class of computable functions. The purpose of this paper is the show how the main results of the Church-Markov-Turing theory of computable functions may quickly be derived and understood without recourse to the largely irrelevant theories of recursive functions, Markov algorithms, or Turing machines. We do this by ignoring the problem of what constitutes (...) a computable function and concentrating on the central feature of the Church-Markov-Turing theory: that the set of computable partial functions can be effectively enumerated. In this manner we are led directly to the heart of the theory of computability without having to fuss about what a computable function is.The spirit of this approach is similar to that of [RGRS]. A major difference is that we operate in the context of constructive mathematics in the sense of Bishop [BSH1], so all functions are computable by definition, and the phrase “you can find” implies “by a finite calculation.” In particular ifPis some property, then the statement “for eachmthere isnsuch thatP” means that we can construct a functionθsuch thatP)for allm. Church's thesis has a different flavor in an environment like this where the notion of a computable function is primitive.One point of such a treatment of Church's thesis is to make available to Bishopstyle constructivists the Markovian counterexamples of Russian constructivism and recursive function theory. The lack of serious candidates for computable functions other than recursive functions makes it quite implausible that a Bishopstyle constructivist could refute Church's thesis, or any consequence of Church's thesis. Hence counterexamples such as Specker's bounded increasing sequence of rational numbers that is eventually bounded away from any given real number [SPEC] may be used, as Brouwerian counterexamples are, as evidence of the unprovability of certain assertions. (shrink)

We consider notions of boundedness of subsets of the natural numbers ℕ that occur when doing mathematics in the context of intuitionistic logic. We obtain a new characterization of the notion of a pseudobounded subset and we formulate the closely related notion of a detachably finite subset. We establish metric equivalents for a subset of ℕ to be detachably finite and to satisfy the ascending chain condition. Following Ishihara, we spell out the relationship between detachable finiteness and sequential continuity. Most (...) of the results do not require countable choice. (shrink)

Third-party punishment (TPP) occurs when the perpetrator of a transgression is punished by an individual who is not the victim of the transgression and, therefore, not directly affected by it. As F...

A very weak omniscience principle is formulated, related omniscience principlesare considered, and the theorem that a function of bounded variation is the difference of two increasing functions is shown to be equivalent to the omniscience principle WLPO. It is a so shown that an arbitrary function with located variation on an interval is the difference of two increasing functions.

This is an introduction to an English translation of a 25-page excerpt from Marx’s Manuscript of 1867–68, which was published for the first time in German in 2012 in the MEGA, Volume II/4.3. This excerpt is Marx’s first and only attempt to incorporate unequal turnover times across industries into his theory of the equalisation of the profit rate and prices of production. The introduction attempts to clarify the overall logic of this excerpt as well as to point out Marx’s many (...) small errors in this messy first draft. The introduction concludes with the implications of this excerpt for the general interpretation of Marx’s theory of prices of production. (shrink)

This paper attempts to answer Joseph B. McAllister’s critique o f the epistemology of F. S. C. Northrop. Toward this end an exposition of the essence of Northrop’s theory of knowledge is presented and a simple comparison with McAllister’s similar effort reveals the latter’s deficiencies. I also reveal how McAllister’s criticism of Northrop’s “supposed” realism depends on equating realism in general with one kind, direct realism. If this is so, then Northrop is neither a skeptic nor a moral or legal (...) relativist. (shrink)

This essay argues that Rand's conception of truth marshals all the strengths of the four theories of truth detailed by philosopher Nicholas Rescher: correspondence, coherence, intuitionistic, and pragmatic.

Seddon echoes comments he made in his original Spring 2003 Journal of Ayn Rand Studiesreview of GregNyquist's book, Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature. He argues that Nyquist's reply still does not grasp fully the Objectivist view of logic and the role of induction.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Western modernity is frequently praised as a process of emancipation liberating individuals from external tutelage. While in the early phases of modernity, individual autonomy was still socially nurtured and embedded, subsequent developments put the premium steadily on negative liberty, thus pushing individuals into private self-enclosure. Autonomy thus became divorced from social and political agency. In psychoanalysis such divorce is called autism or narcissism. The article first examines Zygmunt Bauman’s discussion of the pathology in his The Individualized Society. Next to show (...) the progressive globalization of the malaise, the article turns to an analysis of contemporary Indian society by Ashis Nandy. Finally, the article considers a possible remedy for the pathology: the restoration of a ‘public realm’ as recommended by Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

This introduction explains the logic of bringing together the perspectives of Hyman Minsky and Karl Polanyi to analyze processes of financialization. Although Minsky and Polanyi have very different intellectual trajectories, there are important complementarities in their approaches. The introduction also explains the focus of the three papers in this special section written by Kurtuluş Gemici, Lucas Kirkpatrick, and David Woodruff.

When occasion, text, and sermon are merged, then the text interprets the listeners and the listeners interpret the text.

The imagination opens onto a reconciliation of the past with the future, especially when it is activated as a retrieval of the memories of collective suffering. This is especially the case with the Latin American experience, with its history of military governments and their 'dirty wars' against their civilians. Using Ricoeur's notion of the metaphorical imagination, and drawing on Dussel's work on ethical hermeneutics, this paper argues that, in the act of remembering, other social imaginaries can be created as possibilities (...) that go beyond the concrete present, and which occur from the vantage points of oppressed others. (shrink)

Table of Contents 1 Policy-making, prediction and the theory of international behaviour 5 2 Social science, naturalism and scientific realism 33 3 Theory, observation and law 63 4 Natural causation, social action and international politics 87 5 Prediction, theory and policy-making 126 6 Explaining agreement and disagreement in the natural sciences and social sciences 172 7 Conclusions 207.

This book consists of an edited collection of original essays of the highest academic quality by seasoned experts in their fields of cognitive science. The essays are interdisciplinary, drawing from many of the fields known collectively as “the cognitive sciences.” Topics discussed represent a significant cross-section of the most current and interesting issues in cognitive science. Specific topics include matters regarding machine learning and cognitive architecture, the nature of cognitive content, the relationship of information to cognition, the role of language (...) and communication in cognition, the nature of embodied cognition, selective topics in visual cognition, brain connectivity, computation and simulation, social and technological issues within the cognitive sciences, and significant issues in the history of neuroscience. This book will be of interest to both professional researchers and newer students and graduate students in the fields of cognitive science—including computer science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. The essays are in English and are designed to be as free as possible of technical jargon and therefore accessible to young scholars and to scholars who are new to the cognitive neurosciences. In addition to several entries by single authors, the book contains several interesting roundtables where researchers contribute answers to a central question presented to those in the focus group on one of the core areas listed above. This exciting approach provides a variety of perspectives from across disciplines on topics of current concern in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The crisis of pandemics such as Covid-19 reveals the reality of a crisis-ridden world fraught by devastation of nature and distortion of human life simultaneously. This article tries to bring to light that pandemics actually move from one ‘region’ of human Lifeworld to another. The phenomenological notion of ‘Lifeworld’ can enable one to see ‘natural life’ and ‘civil life’ as two different but related ‘regions of life’ related to each other in the context of an ontological unity. As such, the (...) ‘coming’ of pandemic viruses into human life-sphere is seen as one step in a process which had already begun with the disruptive human interference in the natural environment. These are in fact practical implications of the mastery of the modern ‘ego cogito’ and its use of technological warfare. (shrink)