This comprehensive anthology offers influential works of philosophy written in the last 125 years in Northern and Central Europe and in the United States'durable contributions that have shaped the contemporary philosophical landscape in English-speaking countries. Substantial yet readable selections represent leading American pragmatists, the early Cambridge analysts, members of the Vienna Circle, the so-called "ordinary language" philosophers, along with recent analytic and post-analytic philosophers.

The concept of contextual emergence has been introduced as a speci?c kind of emergence in which some, but not all of the conditions for a higher-level phenomenon exist at a lower level. Further conditions exist in contingent contexts that provide stability conditions at the lower level, which in turn accord the emergence of novelty at the higher level. The purpose of the present paper is to propose that consciousness is a contextually emergent property of self-sustaining systems. The core assumption is (...) that living organisms constitute self-sustaining embodiments of the contingent contexts that accord their emergence. We propose that the emergence of such systems constitutes the emergence of content-bearing systems because the lower-level processes of such systems give rise to and sustain the macro-level whole in which they are nested, while the emergent macro-level whole constitutes the context in which the lower- level processes can be for something . Such embodied functionality is necessarily and naturally about the contexts that it has embodied. It is this notion of self- sustaining embodied aboutness that we propose to represent a type of content capable of evolving into consciousness. (shrink)

Borrett, Kelly, and Kwan follow the lead of Merleau-Ponty and develop a theory of neural-network modeling that emerges out of what they find wrong with current approaches to thought and action. Specifically, they take issue with "cognitivism" and its tendency to model cognitive agents as controlling, representational systems. While attempting to make the point that pre-predicative experience/action/place (i.e. grasping) involves neither representation nor control, the authors imply that control-theoretic concepts and representationalism necessarily go hand-in-hand. The purpose of the present paper (...) is to demonstrate that this is not the case. Rather, it will be argued that such necessity is only assumed because the authors attempt to apply the control theory of servo-mechanisms to the behavior of organisms. By adopting this engineering control-theoretic perspective, the authors are led, as are most of the cognitivists with whom they disagree, to overlook critical aspects of how it is that biological systems do what they do. It is the ignoring of these critical aspects of biological control, due to the acceptance of an engineering approach to control, that makes it appear as though control theory and representationalism necessarily go hand-in-hand. (shrink)

This study suggests a new approach to EEG data classification by exploring the idea of using evolutionary computation to both select useful discriminative EEG features and optimise the topology of Artificial Neural Networks. An evolutionary algorithm is applied to select the most informative features from an initial set of 2550 EEG statistical features. Optimisation of a Multilayer Perceptron is performed with an evolutionary approach before classification to estimate the best hyperparameters of the network. Deep learning and tuning with Long Short-Term (...) Memory are also explored, and Adaptive Boosting of the two types of models is tested for each problem. Three experiments are provided for comparison using different classifiers: one for attention state classification, one for emotional sentiment classification, and a third experiment in which the goal is to guess the number a subject is thinking of. The obtained results show that an Adaptive Boosted LSTM can achieve an accuracy of 84.44%, 97.06%, and 9.94% on the attentional, emotional, and number datasets, respectively. An evolutionary-optimised MLP achieves results close to the Adaptive Boosted LSTM for the two first experiments and significantly higher for the number-guessing experiment with an Adaptive Boosted DEvo MLP reaching 31.35%, while being significantly quicker to train and classify. In particular, the accuracy of the nonboosted DEvo MLP was of 79.81%, 96.11%, and 27.07% in the same benchmarks. Two datasets for the experiments were gathered using a Muse EEG headband with four electrodes corresponding to TP9, AF7, AF8, and TP10 locations of the international EEG placement standard. The EEG MindBigData digits dataset was gathered from the TP9, FP1, FP2, and TP10 locations. (shrink)

The purpose of this special issue and the conference that inspired it was to address the issue of conceptual integration in a science of consciousness. We felt this to be important, for while current efforts to scientifically investigate consciousness are taking place in an interdisciplinary context, it often seems as though the very terms being used to sustain a sense of interdisciplinary cooperation are working against it. This is because it is this very array of common concepts that generates a (...) sense of unity among consciousness researchers, despite the fact the concepts mean different things in different disciplines. These Concepts of Consciousness include the following: realism, representation, intentionality, information, control, memory and self. Given this list, we believed we could best approach the issue of potential conceptual integration by addressing each concept from different perspectives and asking the following: how do uses of the concept differ, must these meanings be synthesized in order for there to be a unified science of consciousness, is a unified conceptual scheme necessary to establish an independent science of consciousness, is a unified conceptual scheme possible, if it is not possible, why not, and if it is possible, what might it look like? To this end we invited, for each concept, two scholars who made extensive use of the identified concept in their work. The papers entailed in this special issue constitute the outcome of this effort, and in what follows we offer a brief examination of possible forms of integration the papers seem to collectively suggest. (shrink)

Upholding public trust in clinical research necessitates that human subjects be protected from avoidable harm and that the design, interpretation and reporting of research results be shielded from avoidable bias. On both counts, managing financial conflicts of interest is critically important, especially in the modern era when the opportunities for investigators to benefit personally from the commercialization of their intellectual property are overtly encouraged and rapidly expanding. Efforts are underway in the United States to provide more useful guidance to universities (...) and medical schools for purposes of strengthening the oversight and management of financial conflicts of interest in clinical research. (shrink)

Ballard et al. model eye position as a deictic pointer for spatial perception. Evidence from research on gaze control indicates, however, that shifts in actual eye position are neither necessary nor sufficient to produce shifts in spatial perception. Deictic context is instead provided by the interaction between two deictic pointers; one representing actual eye position, and the other, intended eye position.

For the conference and the special issue of the_ Journal of Consciousness Studies_ that lie behind this book, pairs of researchers were asked to tackle from different standpoints concepts of consciousness such as realism, representation, intentionality, information, control, memory and the self.

The purpose of this special issue and the conference that inspired it was to address the issue of conceptual integration in a science of consciousness. We felt this to be important, for while current efforts to scientifically investigate consciousness are taking place in an interdisciplinary context, it often seems as though the very terms being used to sustain a sense of interdisciplinary cooperation are working against it. This is because it is this very array of common concepts that generates a (...) sense of unity among consciousness researchers, despite the fact the concepts mean different things in different disciplines. These Concepts of Consciousness include the following: realism, representation, intentionality, information, control, memory and self. Given this list, we believed we could best approach the issue of potential conceptual integration by addressing each concept from different perspectives and asking the following: how do uses of the concept differ, must these meanings be synthesized in order for there to be a unified science of consciousness, is a unified conceptual scheme necessary to establish an independent science of consciousness, is a unified conceptual scheme possible, if it is not possible, why not, and if it is possible, what might it look like? To this end we invited, for each concept, two scholars who made extensive use of the identified concept in their work. The papers entailed in this special issue constitute the outcome of this effort, and in what follows we offer a brief examination of possible forms of integration the papers seem to collectively suggest. (shrink)

Critical engagement -- Lutheran World Federation (LWF) -- World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) -- World Council of Churches (WCC) -- Conclusion, avenues for reform.

Cognitive psychologists tend to treat intentionality as a control variable during experiments, yet ignore it when generating mechanistic descriptions of performance. Wynn's work brings this conflict into striking relief and, when considered in relation to recent neurophysiological findings, makes it clear that intentionality can be regarded mechanistically if one defines it as the planning of distal effects.

The present paper describes a joint action paradigm in which individuals or pairs utilized two computer keys to keep a dot stimulus moving inside a larger rectangle. Members of a pair could neither see nor hear each other. This paradigm allowed us to combine the discrete-trial type dependent variables commonly utilized by representational theorists, with the continuous, temporal dependence variables utilized by dynamical theorists. Analysis revealed that individuals kept the dot in the rectangle longer than dyads and did so by (...) moving it back and forth within the rectangle. Dyads, however, pressed their individual buttons as quickly as possible in order to keep the dot near the middle of the rectangle. These findings indicate that joint action constitutes a multi-scale phenomena that is best investigated via multiple, complementary methodologies versus single-measure, competing theories. (shrink)

Attention to economic inequality has increased in the wake of the global financial crisis, and along with this increased attention has come the need for reconsideration of the dynamics of moral reflection on inequality. Inequality is often viewed as a negative in terms of economic and social costs. But there are also moral challenges that arise from inequality. The Christian tradition emphasizes the diversity, and therefore the inequality, of the created order, and as such inequality is not simply a result (...) of sin. After the fall into sin, there are new dynamics which consist of sinful kinds of inequality as well as sinful attitudes towards the gifts and endowments of others. This “grief” at the good of others has been classically understood as the vice of envy. This article argues for the ongoing relevance of envy as a particularly important moral category for evaluation of economic inequality. (shrink)

In cognitive neuroscience and in philosophy of mind, causation is a notion that is immensely important but usually not defined precisely enough to afford careful application. A widespread basic flaw is the confusion of causation with correlation. All empirical knowledge in the sciences is based on observing correlations; assigning causal relations to them or interpreting them causally always requires a theoretical background that is implicitly or (better) explicitly stated. This entails that differing theoretical approaches might lead to different interpretations of (...) correlations. In this special volume we attempt to contribute to an improved understanding of causation, in general, and its relationship to consciousness studies, specifically. (shrink)

In considering the challenges medical educators face in addressing the needs of today's health-care system, it is instructive to review the challenges Abraham Flexner (1910) was called upon to address at the turn of the last century. As Flexner surveyed the state of U.S. medical schools 100 years ago, he found a legacy system of medical education that was failing to prepare 20th-century physicians to meet the evolving needs and expectations of patients. That legacy system was based largely on an (...) outmoded apprenticeship model of education, was failing to incorporate the rapidly developing natural sciences, and to make matters worse, was devoid of external scrutiny and uniform standards by which medical schools .. (shrink)

The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept 'self.' This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach (i.e., the event-control approach) that is (...) based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system (i.e., the distal-event system) that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action (i.e., effector-control systems) in a constraining, as opposed to 'causal' manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept 'self' onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify 'the self' as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order. (shrink)

There is quite a bit of disagreement in cognitive science regarding the role that consciousness and control play in explanations of how people do what they do. The purpose of the present paper is to do the following: (1) examine the theoretical choice points that have lead theorists to conflicting positions, (2) examine the philosophical and empirical problems different theories encounter as they address the issue of conscious agency, and (3) provide an integrative framework (Wild Systems Theory) that addresses these (...) problems and potentially naturalizes conscious agency. It does so by grounding conscious and control in the notion of self-sustaining energy-transformation systems (i.e., living systems), versus computational or self- organizing systems, as is the case in information processing theory and dynamical systems theory, respectively. Given its assertion that content (and consciousness) emerges in self-sustaining systems, Wild Systems Theory may also provide a sound theoretical basis for a science of consciousness in general. (shrink)

Within John Dewey's pragmatic naturalism, consciousness, meaning, and value were conceptualized as ontologically real phenomena. During the century that has passed since Dewey's time, naturalism has come to be dominated by physicalist and realist perspectives within which the reality of consciousness, meaning, and value are problematic. Given this historical tension in naturalism, the present paper does the following: describes why consciousness, causality, and the body were all at home in Dewey's naturalism, and why Dewey's naturalism fell out of favour during (...) the century that followed, describes a sample of unsuccessful twentieth-century attempts to get consciousness back into naturalism, including the contemporary embodiment movement, presents a recently developed holist, post-naturalist philosophy of embodiment that challenges the physicalist and realist assumptions at work in most contemporary forms of naturalism, and presentsWST as an intra-disciplinary framework for scholarship, and as a potential means of addressing the scholarship-culture tensions that have emerged during the zeitgeist of naturalism. (shrink)

Beginning the nineteenth-century and continuing down to the present, many authors writing on the history of geology and paleontology have attributed the theory that fossils were inorganic formations produced within the earth, rather than by the deposition of living organisms, to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Some have even gone so far as to claim this was the consensus view in the classical period up through the Middle Ages. In fact, such a notion was entirely foreign to ancient and medieval (...) thought and only appeared within the manifold of ‘Renaissance episteme,’ the characteristics of which have often been projected backwards by some historians onto earlier periods. This paper endeavors to correct this error, explain the development of the Renaissance view, describe certain ancient precedents thereof, and trace the history of the misinterpretation in the literature. -/- . (shrink)

Gold & Stoljar reveal that adherence to the radical neuron doctrine cannot be maintained via appeals to scientific principles. Using arguments from naturalism and materialism, unification, and exemplars, it is shown that the “mind-is-brain” materialism explicit in the trivial version of the neuron doctrine ultimately suffers the same theoretical fate. Cognitive science, if it is to adopt an ontology at all, would be better served by a metaphysically neutral ontology such as double-aspect theory or neutral monism.

Grush makes extensive use of von Holst and Mittelstaedt's (1950) efference copy hypothesis. Although his embellishment of the model is admirably more sophisticated than that of its progenitors, I argue that it still suffers from the same conceptual limitations as entailed in its original formulation.

Hommel et al. propose that action planning and perception utilize common resources. This implies perception should have intention-relative content. Data supporting this implication are presented. These findings challenge the notion of perception as “seeing.” An alternative is suggested (i.e., perception as distal control) that may provide a means of integrating representational and ecological approaches to the study of organism-environment coordination.

The importance of ethical consumerism to many companies worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years. Ethical consumerism encompasses the importance of non-traditional and social components of a company's products and business process to strategic success - such as environmental protectionism, child labor practices and so on. The present paper utilizes a random utility theoretic experimental design to provide estimates of the relative value selected consumers place on the social features of products.

The array seen when saccading across a point light source blinking in the dark is displaced in the direction of the saccade. This displacement reflects an abrupt shift of spatiotopic coordinates that precedes the actual eye movement. The extraretinal signal mediating this discrete shift appears to be an oculomotor reference signal, specifying intended eye orientation, that changes discretely before saccades.

This study uses best–worst scaling experiments to examine differences across six countries in the attitudes of consumers towards social and ethical issues that included both product related issues (such as recycled packaging) and general social factors (such as human rights). The experiments were conducted using over 600 respondents from Germany, Spain, Turkey, USA, India, and Korea. The results show that there is indeed some variation in the attitudes towards social and ethical issues across these six countries. However, what is more (...) telling are the similarities seen and the extent to which individual variation dominates observable demographics and country-based variables. (shrink)

Despite their status as high-income food producing nations, children and their caregivers, both in the United States (U.S.) and Australia can experience food insecurity. Nutrition researchers formed a joint U.S.-Australia collaboration to help advance food security for households with young children aged 0–5 years. This study investigated food insecurity from the perspective of caregivers, especially their perceptions of the impact of food insecurity on their own childhood, their current life, and for the children in their care. Semi-structured interviews were conducted (...) from July to September 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were recruited in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. (_n_ = 19) and Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (_n_ = 22), during periods of stay-at-home public health orders. These two case study sites enabled an exploration of some universal, and some context-specific, social, economic, and health conditions that buffer, or exacerbate, food insecurity for families in these neo-liberal political settings. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted and established six themes:_growing up poor_, _lessons learned_,_ feeding a family amidst a pandemic_,_ caregiver coping strategies_, _food security in the early years_ and _protecting (young) children_. Perspectives on local anti-hunger strategies were organized to outline participant’s preferred solutions. Household food insecurity is conceptualized in public policy in the U.S. and Australia as a short-term crisis for people, justifying austere, time-limited and patchwork solutions. A narrative of caregivers’ lived experience of food insecurity suggests that it is inter-generational, and exacerbated by a food system shock (i.e., COVID-19). These findings from two varying cities and nations offer a different conceptualization of the timespan and nature of the phenomenon of food insecurity, challenging a dominant policy narrative and highlighting the inadequacy of current so-called solutions. (shrink)

The main question that Firestone & Scholl (F&S) pose is whether “what and how we see is functionally independent from what and how we think, know, desire, act, and so forth” (sect. 2, para. 1). We synthesize a collection of concerns from an interdisciplinary set of coauthors regarding F&S's assumptions and appeals to intuition, resulting in their treatment of visual perception as context-free.

Discrete choice experiments—selecting the best and/or worst from a set of options—are increasingly used to provide more efficient and valid measurement of attitudes or preferences than conventional methods such as Likert scales. Discrete choice data have traditionally been analyzed with random utility models that have good measurement properties but provide limited insight into cognitive processes. We extend a well-established cognitive model, which has successfully explained both choices and response times for simple decision tasks, to complex, multi-attribute discrete choice data. The (...) fits, and parameters, of the extended model for two sets of choice data (involving patient preferences for dermatology appointments, and consumer attitudes toward mobile phones) agree with those of standard choice models. The extended model also accounts for choice and response time data in a perceptual judgment task designed in a manner analogous to best–worst discrete choice experiments. We conclude that several research fields might benefit from discrete choice experiments, and that the particular accumulator-based models of decision making used in response time research can also provide process-level instantiations for random utility models. (shrink)

Life as a complicated process is composed of causal phenomena. But even if we know the reasons of all that happens in a living organism, we do not know what life really is. The problem of intercausal relation, of “causal structure” remains. The reason why a process takes place, must be found by analysis, causal structures are found by synthesis of the results of this analysis. Causal structures are characterized by two kinds of equilibrium: energetic and specific equilibrium. A state (...) of physical equilibrium is characterized by a minimum of free energy; a biological energetic equilibrium is an organized one, where the vital factors activate the production of energy by each other and force each other to limit that production to the necessary measure. A specific equilibrium is characterized by the properties of its factors, properties by which those factors act as a cause after having received a specific stimulation. Every factor possesses two specific properties, in accordance with the properties of two neighbouring factors, as a link between two other links in a chain . Both forms of equilibrium authorise us to speak of living systems as a “whole”. In the second part of this paper we treat the dynamic aspect of the functions of living systems as a “whole”. This dynamic aspect manifests itself in growth and probably in cortical functions. Blastomeres represent, when isolated, the “whole” of growing potentialities of a germe. In normal contact with each other they restrict themselves to produce a part of that “whole”, in harmony with that which other blastomeres produce. This harmonious restriction can be explained by interaction between all the blastomeres by which every blastomere suppresses in other blastomeres all that it will produce itself. Blastomeres must therefore act on other blastomees not according to their isolate “being”, but according to the influences which they undergo by all other blastomeres, that means according to their “rôle”. There must be a causal net of interaction between all the blastomeres and that net “as a whole” determines every step of growth. Such a net of relation determines also human history and sociology. Materialism only took account of isolated causes, vitalism only of the effect of the net of causal relations without understanding that such a net might be analysed. In reality there is neither materialism nor vitalism.La vie est un phénomène complexe, se composant de différents phénomènes causals, qui un jour peut-être seront réduits à la causalité physique et chimique. Cependant connaitre toutes les causes des phénomènes vitaux ne signifie pas connaître la vie. Le problème de la vie ne se borne pas aux rapports causals, mais implique surtout les rapports intercausals, c'est à dire l'harmonie ou l'équilibre de ses parties constituantes. La vie comme phénomène est provoquée par une „structure causale”. Tandis que les causes sont trouvées par l'analyse, les rapports intercausals doivent être recherchés par la synthèse, c'est-à-dire par la réconstruction de la réalité de l'organisme vivant en se servant des données analytiques. Le système vivant est en équilibre énergétique et spécifique. Les facteurs énergétiques sont interlacés de telle façon, qu'ils s'activent entre eux et qu'ils se forcent entre eux à se resteindre au développement de l'énergie nécessaire. Un équilibre physique c'est l'état d'énergie libre minimum, tandis que l'équilibre biologique c'est un état d'énergie organisée. Dans un équilibre spécifique on ne peut se borner aux effects causals se manifestant par un phénomène. Il faut décrire les rapports des propriétés spécifiques de tous les facteurs; ce sont ces propriétés qui leur permettent d'agir comme cause, lorsqu'-ils sont atteint d'une excitation spécifique. Les facteurs possèdent au moins deux propriétés spécifiques, adaptées à deux facteurs voisins, comme chaque anneau d'une chaine s'adaptant à deux anneaux voisins . Le fait que l'on trouve dans chaque individu ces deux formes d'équilibre nous donne le droit de créer le concept du „tout” par rapport auquel on peut constater l'harmonie de tous les tacteurs.C'est là le „tout statique”, reste encore le „tout dynamique” qui se manifeste par la croissance et probablement par les phénomènes se produisant dans l'écorce cérébrale, base des actes psychiques. Les parties représentent beaucoup de possibilités qui ne se réalisent pas; p.e. les blastomères peuvent représenter le „tout” de l'organisme, tandis qu'ils se borneront dans la croissance normale à la production d'une part de l'individu. Il y a une interaction entre tous les blastomères, de façon que, par la suppression ou par l'activation mutuelle, chaque partie réalise ce que lui laissent les autres et ce qui est en harmonie avec ce que produiront les autres. De cette façon il y aura de l'harmonie dans tout ce qui sera produit. Les parties agissent par cette interaction, non selon leur „être”, en tant que cellule isolée, mais selon leur „rôle” dans le „tout” du germe, rôle qui est déterminé par cette interaction mutuelle universelle. C'est cette interaction qui détermine le „patron causal”, responsable de chaque étappe de la coissance. Ainsi ce ne sont pas les facteus isolés, mais le réseau des rapports établis entre tous les facteurs, qui gouvernent les phénomènes de la croissance. Ce réseau, par activation ou par suppression, détermine à chaque instant les propriétés causales des parties, d'entre toutes les multiples possibilités. Les possibilités étant données dans les cellules, c'est le „tout” du réseau des rapports qui détermine la croissance. Le matérialisme n'a vu que les causes isolées, telles qu'ellés se manifestent dans les expériences des physiciens, grâce à la technique; le vitalisme n'a vu que le „tout”, sans tâcher de l'analyser afin de trouver à sa base le système causal compliqué, que nous avons tâché de décrire. Dans la réalité la théorie du causalisme ni celle du vitalisme le tiennent plus de bout. (shrink)

Today, an increased impact of information and communication technologies in the society at large has lead teachers to engage in professional development activities related to the use of ICT. Even though this development has been prominent for more than two decades, its long term effects seem complex to determine. This paper is based on interviews with twelve Swedish teachers who participated in a national program for promoting school development and use of ICT in 2000-2001. The program was aligned with the (...) pedagogical approaches set out in the national Swedish curriculum, such as a shift from teaching to learning and giving pupils more responsibility, introducing interdisciplinary approaches to teaching in teams, and a problem based pupils-oriented pedagogy. The analysis of the interviews show that teachers still feel a high degree of appreciation for the program, and that they share a relative agreement of the importance of the program for their teaching with ICT in the last decade. The general intentions of the program to be more concerned with school development and pedagogy rather than technology and ICT seem also to be present today as a long term effect. (shrink)