ABSTRACTMany of our emotions arise in social contexts, as we interact with and learn about others. What is not yet clear, however, is how such emotions unfold when we either react to others or attempt to regulate our emotions. To address this issue, 30 healthy volunteers reacted to or reappraised positive or negative information that was paired with neutral faces. While they were doing this task, we assessed pupillary responses. We also asked participants to provide ratings of accountability and experienced (...) emotion. Findings indicated that appraised accountability increased in response to emotional information, and changes in accountability were associated with commensurate changes in valence reports and increased pupil diameter. During reappraisal, accountability and emotion decreased, but pupil diameter increased. The findings highlight the importance of accountability appraisals during the generation and regulation of emotional reactions to others, while also documenting pupillary increases during emot... (shrink)

Given the recent interest in the subjective or phenomenal dimension of consciousness it is no wonder that many authors have once more started to speak of the need for pheno- menological considerations. Often however the term ‘phenomenology’ is being used simply as a synonym for ‘folk psychology', and in our article we argue that it would be far more fruitful to turn to the argumentation to be found within the continental tradition inaugurated by Husserl. In order to exemplify this claim, (...) we criticize Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory as well as Strawson's recent contribution in this journal, and argue that a phenomenological analysis of the nature of self-awareness can provide us with a more sophisticated and accurate model for understanding both phenomenal consciousness and the notion of self. (shrink)

We propose that typical schizophrenic delusions develop on the background of preexisting anomalies of self-experience. We argue that disorders of the Self represent the experiential core clinical phenomena of schizophrenia, as was already suggested by the founders of the concept of schizophrenia and elaborated in the phenomenological psychiatric tradition. The article provides detailed descriptions of the pre-psychotic or schizotypal anomalies of self-experience, often illustrated through clinical vignettes. We argue that delusional transformation in the evolution of schizophrenic psychosis reflects a global (...) reorganization of consciousness and existential reorientation, both of which radiate from a fundamental alteration of the Self. We critically address the contemporary cognitive approaches to delusion formation, often finding them inconsistent with the clinical features of schizophrenia or implausible from a phenomenological point of view. (shrink)

Nach Kant bleibt alles Denken auf das einzelne Subjekt des Denkens und seine Möglichkeiten zurückbezogen. Simon beschreibt Kants Werk als ein System, das den eigenen Denkansatz als einen Besonderen neben anderen begreift. Auch wenn das Subjekt anderes Denken nicht immer von sich aus versteht, bezieht es jenes als "fremde Vernunft" in seine Weltorientierung ein und erkennt es an. Damit ergibt sich die Notwendigkeit des Findens einer Sprache, in der im Ausgang vom eigenen Vorverständnis anderen etwas so gesagt werden kann, dass (...) es auch ihnen "etwas" bedeutet und in diesem Sinne als wahr erscheint. Von hier aus verändert sich dann der Begriff der Bedeutung und die Sprache der Philosophie. (shrink)

The pedagogy and heuristics of Professor Dagfinn Føllesdal.

Since its development about 15 years ago, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become the leading research tool for mapping brain activity. The technique works by detecting the levels of oxygen in the blood, point by point, throughout the brain. In other words, it relies on a surrogate signal, resulting from changes in oxygenation, blood volume and flow, and does not directly measure neural activity. Although a relationship between changes in brain activity and blood flow has long been speculated, indirectly (...) examined and suggested and surely anticipated and expected, the neural basis of the fMRI signal was only recently demonstrated directly in experiments using combined imaging and intracortical recordings. In the present paper, we discuss the results obtained from such combined experiments. We also discuss our current knowledge of the extracellularly measured signals of the neural processes that they represent and of the structural and functional neurovascular coupling, which links such processes with the hemodynamic changes that offer the surrogate signal that we use to map brain activity. We conclude by considering applications of invasive MRI, including injections of paramagnetic tracers for the study of connectivity in the living animal and simultaneous imaging and electrical microstimulation. D 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Biochar is a soil—improving substrate made from phytomass pyrolysis. In Southeast Asia, its application decreases due to the long-term growth of biochar cost and thus caused further prolongation of the payback period. In the Euro-American civilization the biochar application is already almost forgotten once it has been much earlier recognized that the crop yields can be increased much faster with higher doses of nutrients and other agrochemicals. The payback period can be expected in decades. Such a long-time investment into soil (...) fertility raises also many ethical questions. The final decision combines issues of social responsibility, risk and other financial indicators as well as personal preferences and more. The attitudes of Western and Central European decision makers in the agriculture business segment were analyzed on the basis of electronic questionnaire survey and a subsequent interview through their local unions. According to the data, most of them did not know about the possibilities of a more environmentally friendly approach to soil enhancement based on the addition of a fertilizer in the form of biochar. Among others, the collected data also shows that the decision makers from Western Europe have a much different ethical approach to the land and financial indicators than the Central Europeans. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of a convex tree. We show that the binary expansion for real numbers in the unit interval ) is equivalent to weak König lemma ) for trees having at most two nodes at each level, and we prove that the intermediate value theorem is equivalent to \ for convex trees, in the framework of constructive reverse mathematics.

In this response to Wiggins and Schwartz, Ratcliffe, and Stanghellini, we first wish to express our gratitude to Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology for providing us the space to clarify our views and to overcome certain misunderstandings. Ratcliffe notes that our critique is "harsh," whereas Wiggins and Schwartz lament the fact that the debate "has taken the form of sometimes acid formulations and rejoinders . . . that lack the tone of mutual appreciation" (2011, 31). We deplore the fact that this (...) exchange was at all necessary, and we share Wiggins and Schwartz's concerns. However, we need to recall here and emphasize that our article originated as a response. It originated as a response to an article that was .. (shrink)

It is easy to think of attention as a purely sensorimotor, exogenous mechanism divorced from the influence of an agent’s preferences and needs. However, according to the active inference framework, such a strict reduction cannot be straightforwardly invoked, since _all_ cognitive and behavioural processes can at least be described as maximising the evidence for a generative model entailed by the ongoing existence of that agent; that is, the minimisation of variational free energy. As such, active inference models could cast an (...) (embodied) cognitive mechanism like attention, described in this paper as a relevance filter, as constrained (or enslaved) by these prior preferences for which an agent must seek evidence, whether or not such priors are having direct, real-time neurocognitive effects on the sensorimotor loops that couple the attending agent and her surrounding environment. This duality with respect to the role of priors corresponds to a wider, ongoing debate in the active inference community regarding the framework’s explanatory power. More specifically, the debate centres on whether the notion of a generative model and the priors embedded ubiqitously therein act as a purely useful instrumental tool for scientists aiming to model the behaviours of self-organising entities, or, rather, the brain (and body) is genuinely constituted by a predictive hierarchy within which higher-order dynamics constrain and contextualise activity unfolding at lower levels. With a focus on the second (ontologically realist) construal of active inference presented here, this paper argues that in cognitive systems endowed with attentional schema, higher-order preferences do, indeed, impose a demonstrable and powerful modulating effect on the way attention unfolds. Furthermore, these preferences in question transcend the contingent, task-relevant goals that have already been shown to bias attention. Rather, attention is powerfully tuned by the most-deep rooted priors the agent possesses, such that, when sensory evidence against these priors is observed and free energy spikes, the agent attentionally prioritises the homeostatic restoration of these preferred states over their shorter-term desires. This suggests that, at its core, attention is a goal-driven process, which calls into question the putative dichotomy that exists between endogenous (goal-directed) attention and exogenous (stimulus-driven) attention. What emerges in its place is a symbiotic relationship between attention and preferences, whereby the fulfilment of the latter rests on successful application of the former, and the former derives its function from the organismic need to find evidence for the latter. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJan Patočka is known as a philosophical analyst of the phenomenological concept of the live-word, which contradicts the preoccupations expressed in Sir Herbert Read’s Art of Sc...

Libet considers “positive free voluntary acts” as mere illusions, admitting free will only as Veto. This essay shows seven ways by which we can gain evident knowledge about positive and negative free will, through: (1) the immediate evidence of free will in the cogito, (2) the light of the necessary essence of free will, (3) the experience of moral “oughts” in whose experience freedom is co-given, (4) any denial of human free will entails its assertion or recognition, (5) the objects (...) and subjects of certain acts disclose free will, (6) in a world without free agents there would be no explanation of the beginning of efficient causality, and (7) Veto-power of the will logically presupposes positive free will. Libet’s experiments confirm that the free decision to act at a certain time and the preceding and accompanying free acts make new energy to burst forth in the brain. (shrink)

The modern (Russellian) theory of definition conceives definitions as abbreviations, so that the question of adequateness (let alone of truth-value) of definitions becomes meaningless. In this paper we show that beside Russellian conception of definitions understood as abbreviations, there is an Aristotelian conception, which exploits the notion of essence and that this conception can be rehabilitated from the standpoint of the modern logic (in particular by means of Pavel Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic). Also Carnap’s ‘explication’ indicates that what we feel (...) to be a definition is frequently distinct from a Russellian definition. (shrink)

Plato's famous dialogue, the Phaedrus, was variously subtitled in antiquity: "On Beauty", "On Love", "On the Psyche". It is also concerned with the art of rhetoric, of thought and communication. Pieper, noted for the grace and clarity of his style, gives an illuminating and stimulating interpretation of the dialogue. Leaving the more recondite scholarly preoccupations aside, he concentrates on the content, bringing the actual situation in the dialogue -- Athens and its intellectuals engaged in spirited debate -- alive. Equally alive (...) is the discussion of ideas, which are brought to bear on contemporary experience and made to prove the perennial validity of Socratic wisdom, and its power to excite the mind. The main thesis -- that in poetry and in love man is "beside himself", that is, divinely inspired -- is discussed with reference to modern poets, novelists, and modern psychology. (shrink)

A rigorous analysis of Maimonides' and Nahmanides' explanations of the Mosaic commandments that challenges received notions of the relation between these two seminal thinkers.

It is shown that, relative to Bishop-style constructive mathematics, the boundedness principle BD-N is equivalent both to a general result about the convergence of double sequences and to a particular one about Cauchyness in a semi-metric space.

Flow has been described as a state of optimal performance, experienced universally across a broad range of domains: from art to athletics, gaming to writing. However, its phenomenal characteristics can, at first glance, be puzzling. Firstly, individuals in flow supposedly report a loss of self-awareness, even though they perform in a manner which seems to evince their agency and skill. Secondly, flow states are felt to be effortless, despite the prerequisite complexity of the tasks that engender them. In this paper, (...) we unpick these features of flow, as well as others, through the active inference framework, which posits that action and perception are forms of active Bayesian inference directed at sustained self-organisation; i.e., the minimisation of variational free energy. We propose that the phenomenology of flow is rooted in the deployment of high precision weight over (i) the expected sensory consequences of action and (ii) beliefs about how action will sequentially unfold. This computational mechanism thus draws the embodied cognitive system to minimise the ensuing (i.e., expected) free energy through the exploitation of the pragmatic affordances at hand. Furthermore, given the challenging dynamics the flow-inducing situation presents, attention must be wholly focussed on the unfolding task whilst counterfactual planning is restricted, leading to the attested loss of the sense of self-as-object. This involves the inhibition of both the sense of self as a temporally extended object and higher–order, meta-cognitive forms of self-conceptualisation. Nevertheless, we stress that self-awareness is not entirely lost in flow. Rather, it is pre-reflective and bodily. Our approach to bodily-action-centred phenomenology can be applied to similar facets of seemingly agentive experience beyond canonical flow states, providing insights into the mechanisms of so-called selfless experiences, embodied expertise and wellbeing. (shrink)

In this project, a spiral fast imaging sequence was implemented on a Bruker Avance MR system. Acquisition and processing schemes were developed to measure the experimental k-space trajectories. Since errors in k-space are reflected as errors in the corresponding image, we used different strategies to measure and calculate corrections for deviation of the experimental k-space trajectory from the theoretical one. Even if the k-space trajectories deviate from the theoretical ones, an experimentally measured trajectory can be incorporated in the spiral reconstruction (...) and a reduction of image artifacts can be obtained. (shrink)

La controverse et le débat sur la phénoménologie transcendantale de Husserl et l’ontologie fondamentale de Heidegger sont devenus un thème central des révisions philosophiques, en grande partie et d’abord grâce aux efforts de philosophes tels que Ludwig Landgrebe, Eugen Fink et Roman Ingarden. Jan Patočka, lui aussi, a apporté une contribution importante au débat, qui n’est malheureusement pas toujours reconnue. Il présente une analyse fondamentale de la phénoménologie asubjective selon laquelle les philosophies de Husserl et de Heidegger n’ont pas entièrement (...) réussi à surmonter le cartésianisme et selon laquelle ces dernières n’ont pas donné les mêmes réponses à la question du fondement dernier de l’apparition de l’apparaissant. L’auteur de cet essai examine leurs contradictions de manière assez détaillée. Plus précisément, il vise à démontrer l’importance des critiques de Patočka pour comprendre sa doctrine non cartésienne de la phénoménologie asubjective, qui s’est en fait formée en opposition aux apparentes insuffisances tant de Husserl que de Heidegger. Le lecteur peut maintenant voir en détail comment Patočka lui-même cherche à y remédier dans sa pensée ultérieure et comment on peut échapper au péril du subjectivisme. Avec ces considérations en arrière-plan, cet exposé présente la phénoménologie asubjective comme une méthodologie philosophique viable et pertinente. (shrink)

A single theme runs through the three essays on St. Thomas gather in this book. It is the theme of mystery or, more exactly, the response of the searching human intellect to the fact of mystery. Both the fact and the response are suggested in a short biography of St. Thomas that forms the first essay and are then sketched out in detail by a presentation of the "negative element" in his philosophy. The third essay shows that contemporary Existentialism is (...) in basic agreement with the philosophia perennis on this fundamental element of philosophical thinking. (shrink)

This book is the first English version of Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Grammatik, published by Julius Springer, Vienna, 1935, as Volume 10 of the Vienna Circle's series Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung. The prefatory remarks of both editor and author acknowledge the influence ofWittgenstein in a general way. However, in aim and approach, the work differs from Wittgenstein's Philosophische Grammatik. This is indeed based on material going back to 1932, some of which Schachter must have known. On the other hand, the (...) present Prolegomena not only explains the general, philosophical principles to be followed, but in the light of these proceeds to cover the entire range of conventional grammar, showing where that is uncritical. Whether Wittgenstein in his turn knew of Schachter's work has never been explored. Schachter's object is universal grammar. As is natural, the examples in the original are largely drawn from German grammar, with occasional minor excursions into other languages. For English readers, what matters are the general problems of grammar: there is no point in tying these to the linguistic peculiarities of German, let alone a local variety of it. One who can grasp German at that level might as well read the original. The translation is therefore twofold: the text as a whole has been rendered into English, and the entire apparatus of examples has been replaced, as far as this can be done, by illustrations from English grammar, chosen so as to bring out the same kinds of problem as in the original. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse in the framework of constructive mathematics (BISH) the validity of Farkas' lemma and related propositions, namely the Fredholm alternative for solvability of systems of linear equations, optimality criteria in linear programming, Stiemke's lemma and the Superhedging Duality from mathematical finance, and von Neumann's minimax theorem with application to constructive game theory.

From the perspective of Catholic moral theology, one of the most important topics in view of the tense relationship between law, ethics and religion is natural law. The first part of the present text tries to defend this type of theory, which goes back to antiquity, against the most important objections and to determine the contours of a contemporary form of natural law thinking. In the second part of the text, their practical importance is indicated using the example of the (...) current debate about the moral evaluation of suicide and suicide assistance as well as dealing with the phenomenon of so-called transgenderness. (shrink)

Although California is often regarded as a regional civilization within the United States of America, this article argues that California justifies being considered a major civilization in itself, indeed the only genuinely 21stcentury civilization, if only because of its top ranking among world economies. The article traces the varied facets of California natural and social history to show the overriding importance of biodiversity as a perennially unifying theme for an understanding of that civilization, and it confronts the varied challenges to (...) this biodiversity that constitute more recent California history and politics. (shrink)