Can dreams reveal insight into our cognitive abilities and aptitudes (i.e., “human intelligence”)? The relationship between dream production and trait-like cognitive abilities is the foundation of several long-standing theories on the neurocognitive and cognitive-psychological basis of dreaming. However, direct experimental evidence is sparse and remains contentious. On the other hand, recent research has provided compelling evidence demonstrating a link between dream content and new learning, suggesting that dreams reflect memory processing during sleep. It remains to be investigated whether the extent (...) of learning-related dream incorporation (i.e., the semantic similarity between waking experiences and dream content) is related to inter-individual differences in cognitive abilities. The relationship between pre–post sleep memory performance improvements and learning-related dream incorporation was investigated ( N = 24) to determine if this relationship could be explained by inter-individual differences in intellectual abilities (e.g., reasoning, short term memory (STM), and verbal abilities). The extent of dream incorporation using a novel and objective method of dream content analysis, employed a computational linguistic approach to measure the semantic relatedness between verbal reports describing the experience on a spatial (e.g., maze navigation) or a motor memory task (e.g., tennis simulator) with subsequent hypnagogic reverie dream reports and waking “daydream” reports, obtained during a daytime nap opportunity. Consistent with previous studies, the extent to which something new was learned was related ( r = 0.47) to how richly these novel experiences were incorporated into the content of dreams. This was significant for early (the first 4 dream reports) but not late dreams (the last 4 dream reports). Notably, here, we show for the first time that the extent of this incorporation for early dreams was related ( r = 0.41) to inter-individual differences in reasoning abilities. On the other hand, late dream incorporation was related ( r = 0.46) to inter-individual differences in verbal abilities. There was no relationship between performance improvements and intellectual abilities, and thus, inter-individual differences in cognitive abilities did not mediate the relationship between performance improvements and dream incorporation; suggesting a direct relationship between reasoning abilities and dream incorporation. This study provides the first evidence that learning-related dream production is related to inter-individual differences in cognitive abilities. (shrink)

Some theorists, worried about liberalism’s potential as a foundation for public health ethics, suggest that republicanism provides a better background of justification for public health policies, interventions, etc. In this article, this suggestion is put to the test, and it is argued that (i) contemporary (civic) republicanism and liberalism are not nearly as opposed as it is sometimes suggested, and that (ii) the kind of republicanism which one leading scholar in the field, Bruce Jennings, as an alternative to liberalism, does (...) not reflect the contemporary understanding of republicanism as held by, e.g. Phillip Pettit et al. (shrink)

MORALITY is an area of culture that is highly susceptible to philosophical skepticism. This has been so at least since the time of the Greek Sophists. But modern Western civilization seems to be especially prone to philosophical doubts about the moral enterprise because of widely shared assumptions and views in the modern age about the knowledge-yielding powers of the human mind. This particular trouble spot in the culture has received extensive philosophical attention ever since the seventeenth century, but activity in (...) moral philosophy has never been greater than in our own time. (shrink)

We prove several trichotomy results for ideals of compact sets. Typically, we show that a "sufficiently rich" universally Baire ideal is either $\Pi _{3}^{0}$-hard, or $\Sigma _{3}^{0}$-hard, or else a σ-ideal.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois. This paper describes a proposed mobile platform, Transafe, that captures and analyses public perceptions of safety to deliver 'crowdsourced' collective intelligence about places in the City of Melbourne, Australia, and their affective states at various times of the day. Public perceptions of crime on public transport in Melbourne are often mismatched with actual crime statistics and (...) such perceptions thus can act as social barriers to visitors and locals traversing within and through the city. Using interactive mobile applications and social media, the visualization of this crowdsourced safety perception information will increase the commuter's awareness of various situations in the City of Melbourne. In addition, through social behavioral analysis and ethnographic research, the collective public intelligence will also help inform the stakeholders of the city for future policy-making and policing strategies for safety perception management. At the centre of the proposed platform is the design and development of a mobile phone application that can contribute to people feeling safer by supporting users to report crimes and misdemeanors that they witness, and provide information about transportation and emergency services around where the users are located. The proposed application can also act as a crime deterrent with one feature that enables user tracking by up to three nominated friends if the user opts to activate tracking when feeling unsafe while roaming the city. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Physicians are exposed to matters of existential character at work, but little is known about the personal impact of such issues. Methods: To explore how physicians experience and cope with existential aspects of their clinical work and how such experiences affect their professional identities, a qualitative study using individual semistructured interviews has analysed accounts of their experiences related to coping with such challenges. Analysis was by systematic text condensation. The purposeful sample comprised 10 physicians (including three women), (...) aged 33–66 years, residents or specialists in cardiology or cardiothoracic surgery, working in a university hospital with 24-hour emergency service and one general practitioner. Results: Participants described a process by which they were able to develop a capacity for coping with the existential challenges at work. After episodes perceived as shocking or horrible earlier in their career, they at present said that they could deal with death and mostly keep it at a distance. Vulnerability was closely linked to professional responsibility and identity, perceived as a burden to be handled. These demands were balanced by an experience of meaning related to their job, connected to making a difference in their patients’ lives. Belonging to a community of their fellows was a presupposition for coping with the loneliness and powerlessness related to their vulnerable professional position. Conclusions: Physicians’ vulnerability facing life and death has been underestimated. Belonging to caring communities may assist growth and coping on exposure to existential aspects of clinical work and developing a professional identity. (shrink)

BY OVEREMPHASIZING MATERIALISTIC VALUES, we have perverted the culture and set modern Western civilization on a self-destructive course. Some critics have said that the economy, science, and technology are the only healthy aspects of our society. We have what I have called a saber-toothed tiger civilization. In the evolutionary process, the saber-toothed tiger developed great tusks as effective weapons in combat, but perished because they obstructed its eating. We have developed a culture that is highly successful in advancing science and (...) technology and producing wealth and power, but in doing so we have undermined and subjectivized the sectors of the culture that underwrite our identity, the meaning of our existence, and the norms and values by which we live our lives, organize our society, and run our institutions, including even science and the economy. But unlike the saber-toothed tiger, we can discover our error and correct our course. (shrink)

ARE HUMAN beings material substances? If not, are they made of material stuff? And is the world otherwise materialistic? These are ancient questions for which the dominant intellectual framework of our age compels us toward affirmative answers. In this paper, I want to reinterpret the questions, critically examine the currently most popular way of making the case for the affirmative answers, and argue for a somewhat novel way of casting negative answers in search of a more adequate philosophical understanding of (...) human beings, minds, and persons. (shrink)

We show that the analysis of Keisler’s order can be localized to the study of φ-types. Specifically, if is a regular ultrafilter on λ such that and M is a model whose theory is countable, then is λ+-saturated iff it realizes all φ-types of size λ.