Current explanatory frameworks for social norms pay little attention to why and how brains might carry out computational functions that generate norm compliance behavior. This paper expands on existing literature by laying out the beginnings of a neurocomputational framework for social norms and social cognition, which can be the basis for advancing our understanding of the nature and mechanisms of social norms. Two neurocomputational building blocks are identified that might constitute the core of the mechanism of norm compliance. They consist (...) of Bayesian and reinforcement learning systems. It is sketched why and how the concerted activity of these systems can generate norm compliance by minimization of three specific kinds of prediction-errors. (shrink)

Focusing on the interactions between people suffering from neuromuscular diseases and their wheelchairs, the author raises the question of action: how is action made possible for people suffering from neuromuscular diseases? Starting with actor-network theory, the author shows that action not only results from distribution and delegation to heterogeneous entities but emerges from hard and lengthy work that makes the relation between them possible and transforms the entities involved. The author describes this work, called the process of adjustment, as work (...) on the links making a person, his or her body, and his or her world. Through this work, new possibilities of action emerge for the person, but also new abilities; the person’s identity is transformed and shaped. This analysis leads to a particular conception of the person as made up through his or her relations to other entities. (shrink)

Dass sich Hegel und Hermann Cohen trotz scheinbarer Gegensatze miteinander versohnen lassen, ist eine Grunduberzeugung des Werkes von Myriam Bienenstock, welches sich stets durch die doppelte Ausrichtung auf Hegel und das judische Denken auszeichnete. Mit diesem Band wird Myriam Bienenstock, seit 1997 Professorin fur Philosophie an der Universitat Francois Rabelais in Tours, anlasslich ihres 70. Geburtstages geehrt. Mit Beitragen von Dominque Bourel, Bernard Bourgeois, Christophe Bouton, Pierfrancesco Fiorato, Jean-Francois Goubet, Dana Hollander, Helmut Holzhey, Gerhard Kurz, Claudia Melica, Wolfdietrich (...) Schmied-Kowarzik, Ludwig Siep, Guy Stroumsa und Norbert Waszek. (shrink)

According to the free energy principle, life is an “inevitable and emergent property of any random dynamical system at non-equilibrium steady state that possesses a Markov blanket” :20130475, 2013). Formulating a principle for the life sciences in terms of concepts from statistical physics, such as random dynamical system, non-equilibrium steady state and ergodicity, places substantial constraints on the theoretical and empirical study of biological systems. Thus far, however, the physics foundations of the free energy principle have received hardly any attention. (...) Here, we start to fill this gap and analyse some of the challenges raised by applications of statistical physics for modelling biological targets. Based on our analysis, we conclude that model-building grounded in the free energy principle exacerbates a trade-off between generality and realism, because of a fundamental mismatch between its physics assumptions and the properties of actual biological targets. (shrink)

The role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in influencing creative thinking has been investigated by many researchers who, while succeeding in proving an effective involvement of PFC, reported suggestive but sometimes conflicting results. In order to better understand the relationships between creative thinking and brain activation in a more specific area of the PFC, we explored the role of dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC). We devised an experimental protocol using transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS). The study was based on a 3 (kind of stimulation: (...) anodal vs. cathodal vs. sham) × 2 (priming: divergent vs. convergent) design. Forty-five healthy adults were randomly assigned to one stimulation condition. Participants’ creativity skills were assessed using the Product Improvement subtest from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). After 20 min of tDCS stimulation, participants were presented with visual images of common objects. Half of the participants were instructed to visualize themselves using the object in an unusual way (divergent priming), whereas the other half were asked to visualize themselves while using the object in a common way (convergent priming). Priming was aimed at inducing participants to adopt different attitudes toward the creative task. Afterwards, participants were asked to describe all of the possible uses of the objects that were presented. Participants’ physiological activation was recorded using a biofeedback equipment. Results showed a significant effect of anodal stimulation that enhanced creative performance, but only after divergent priming. Participants showed lower skin temperature values after cathodal stimulation, a finding which is coherent with studies reporting that, when a task is not creative or creative thinking is not prompted, people show lower levels of arousal. Differences in individual levels of creativity as assessed by the Product Improvement test were not influential. The involvement of DLPFC in creativity has been supported, presumably in association to shift of attention modulated by priming. (shrink)

Can facts about subpersonal states and events be constitutively relevant to personal-level phenomena? And can knowledge of these facts inform explanations of personal-level phenomena? Some philosophers, like Jennifer Hornsby and John McDowell, argue for two negative answers whereby questions about persons and their behavior cannot be answered by using information from subpersonal psychology. Knowledge of subpersonal states and events cannot inform personal-level explanation such that they cast light on what constitutes persons? behaviors. In this paper I argue against this position. (...) After having distinguished between enabling and constitutive relevance, I defend the claim that at least some facts about subpersonal states and events are constitutively relevant to some personal-level phenomenon, and therefore can, and sometimes should, inform personal-level explanations. I draw some of the possible consequences of my claim for our understanding of personal-level behavior by focusing on the phenomenon of addiction. (shrink)

Does language make moral cognition possible? Some authors like Andy Clark have argued for a positive answer whereby language and the ways people use it mark a fundamental divide between humans and all other animals with respect to moral thinking (Clark, Mind and morals: essays on cognitive science and ethics. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996; Moral Epistemol Nat Can J Philos Suppl XXVI, 2000a; Moral Epistemol Nat Can J Philos Suppl XXVI, 2000b; Philosophy of mental representation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, (...) pp 37–43 and discussion, 44–61, 2002). I take issue with Clark’s view and argue that language is probably unnecessary for the emergence of moral cognition. I acknowledge, however, that humans unlike other animals seem to posses what Haugeland in Philosophy of mental representation. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002) terms ‘norm-hungriness’: an idiosyncratic need or desire to create and abide by a multitude of norms. Our peculiar norm-hungriness, I suggest, depends on what can be called florid control rather than on language. (shrink)

How should we understand the claim that people comply with social norms because they possess the right kinds of beliefs and preferences? I answer this question by considering two approaches to what it is to believe (and prefer), namely: representationalism and dispositionalism. I argue for a variety of representationalism, viz. neural representationalism. Neural representationalism is the conjunction of two claims. First, what it is essential to have beliefs and preferences is to have certain neural representations. Second, neural representations are often (...) necessary to adequately explain behaviour. After having canvassed one promising way to understand what neural representations could be, I argue that the appeal to beliefs and preferences in explanations of paradigmatic cases of norm compliance should be understood as an appeal to neural representations. (shrink)

Current approaches to cyber-security are not working. Rather than producing more security, we seem to be facing less and less. The reason for this is a multi-dimensional and multi-faceted security dilemma that extends beyond the state and its interaction with other states. It will be shown how the focus on the state and “its” security crowds out consideration for the security of the individual citizen, with detrimental effects on the security of the whole system. The threat arising from cyberspace to (...) (national) security is presented as possible disruption to a specific way of life, one building on information technologies and critical functions of infrastructures, with relatively little consideration for humans directly. This non-focus on people makes it easier for state actors to militarize cyber-security and (re-)assert their power in cyberspace, thereby overriding the different security needs of human beings in that space. Paradoxically, the use of cyberspace as a tool for national security, both in the dimension of war fighting and the dimension of mass-surveillance, has detrimental effects on the level of cyber-security globally. A solution out of this dilemma is a cyber-security policy that is decidedly anti-vulnerability and at the same time based on strong considerations for privacy and data protection. Such a security would have to be informed by an ethics of the infosphere that is based on the dignity of information related to human beings. (shrink)

Avec sa succession de bouleversements institutionnels, le dix-septième siècle anglais fut un fabuleux terrain d'expérimentation et de réflexion politique d'où surgirent les grandes théories modernes. A cette période, philosophes et acteurs engagés tentèrent de penser, avec une acuité particulière liée aux événements (guerres civiles, régicide, république, dictature), les tensions inhérentes au pouvoir, tout à la fois perçu comme contraignant, tyrannique et libérateur. Quatre d'entre eux ont été retenus : Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), le théoricien de l’absolutisme, James Harrington (1611-1677), le républicain (...) classique, Algernon Sidney (1623-1683), le martyr whig, John Locke (1632-1704), le père du libéralisme. Le propos de l’ouvrage est de montrer que, par-delà leurs différences, ces quatre penseurs partagent une approche qui constitue le socle commun d’une théorie de l’Etat moderne. Leur doctrine s’affranchit de l’exercice utopique comme de la théorie de la raison d’Etat et se conçoit comme une anatomie du corps politique. Par un examen minutieux des textes, l’auteur cherche à s’écarter de l' interprétation trop « idéologique » sans doute accentuée par les combats de l’histoire. Elle met en évidence un objet philosophique commun aux quatre auteurs, que l’on retrouve au cœur de toute conception moderne du pouvoir. (shrink)

Huit mois après le dépôt du rapport de la Commission Charbonneau, nous avons souhaité explorer les défis liés à la mise en place des recommandations. Avec un regard constructif, nous nous questionnons sur le fait de savoir à qui incombe le suivi d’un rapport de cette envergure ainsi que les obligations légales liées à cette question et nous nous permettons d’émettre certaines idées liées à une vision globale en matière de reddition de comptes. Tout en partageant nos réflexions inspirées des (...) bonnes pratiques en matière de gestion du risque de fraude, nous présentons la complexité de la mise en place d’une recommandation tels le soutien et la protection des lanceurs d’alerte. (shrink)

More and more frequently, the organisation of design fits into a project organisation where different designers have to cooperate with flexibility and reactivity. In order to help these cooperative design processes, we have to respond to new types of needs: a relatively unformalised coordination that requires permanent mutual adjustment, the fact that members of the team are geographically distant, the difficulty of building a shared reference via design documents and technical and organisational decisions that structure the project. In order to (...) provide computer support for these needs, asynchronous Group Ware is often recommended. However, the efficiency of these tools depends on the models that structure the work processes and the knowledge exchanged. In this paper, we present ABRICo, a new Design Rationale formalism that permits the recording of cooperative decision-making processes in complex design situations. We describe the formalism and explain how we intend to use it to specify cooperative design tools usable via an Intranet for computing projects. (shrink)

In this volume, a range of high-profile researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, and empirical cognitive science, critically engage with Clark's work across the themes of: Extended, Embodied, Embedded, Enactive, and Affective Minds; Natural Born Cyborgs; and Perception, Action, and Prediction. Daniel Dennett provides a foreword on the significance of Clark's work, and Clark replies to each section of the book, thus advancing current literature with original contributions that will form the basis for new discussions, debates and (...) directions in the discipline. (shrink)

A widely shared view in the cognitive sciences is that discovering and assessing explanations of cognitive phenomena whose production involves uncertainty should be done in a Bayesian framework. One assumption supporting this modelling choice is that Bayes provides the best approach for representing uncertainty. However, it is unclear that Bayes possesses special epistemic virtues over alternative modelling frameworks, since a systematic comparison has yet to be attempted. Currently, it is then premature to assert that cognitive phenomena involving uncertainty are best (...) explained within the Bayesian framework. As a forewarning, progress in cognitive science may be hindered if too many scientists continue to focus their efforts on Bayesian modelling, which risks to monopolize scientific resources that may be better allocated to alternative approaches. (shrink)

Abductive reasoning assigns special status to the explanatory power of a hypothesis. But how do people make explanatory judgments? Our study clarifies this issue by asking: How does the explanatory power of a hypothesis cohere with other cognitive factors? How does probabilistic information affect explanatory judgments? In order to answer these questions, we conducted an experiment with 671 participants. Their task was to make judgments about a potentially explanatory hypothesis and its cognitive virtues. In the responses, we isolated three constructs: (...) Explanatory Value, Rational Acceptability, and Entailment. Explanatory judgments strongly cohered with judgments of causal relevance and with a sense of understanding. Furthermore, we found that Explanatory Value was sensitive to manipulations of statistical relevance relations between hypothesis and evidence, but not to explicit information about the prior probability of the hypothesis. These results indicate that probabilistic information about statistical relevance is a strong determinant of Explanatory Value. More generally, our study suggests that abductive and probabilistic reasoning are two distinct modes of inference. (shrink)

Cognitive science began as a multidisciplinary endeavor to understand how the mind works. Since the beginning, cognitive scientists have been asking questions about the right methodologies and levels of explanation to pursue this goal, and make cognitive science a coherent science of the mind. Key questions include: Is there a privileged level of explanation in cognitive science? How do different levels of explanation fit together, or relate to one another? How should explanations at one level inform or constrain explanations at (...) some other level? Can the different approaches to the mind, brain, and culture be unified? The aim of this issue of topiCS is to provide a platform for discussing different answers to such questions and to facilitate a better understanding between the different strands of thinking about the right levels of explanation in cognitive science. (shrink)

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To examine differences in nursing care received by patients with breast cancer enrolled in clinical trials and those not enrolled in clinical trials. DESIGN: Retrospective review of clinic charts. SETTING: Oncology outpatient department of a tertiary-care hospital. SAMPLE: 90 women with early stage breast cancer. The mean age of the women was 53 years. More than half of the women (51 of 90) were treated in a clinical trial. METHODS: Retrospective chart review of all the nurse-patient clinic encounters for (...) a six-month period from date of cancer diagnosis. The content of each encounter was coded using a modified version of the Nursing Action Classification System. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES: Nursing interventions (i.e., assessment, medical scheduling, psychosocial scheduling, reassurance, and teaching) and phone calls. FINDINGS: Women enrolled in clinical trials had more phone interactions with nursing staff (p = 0.003) and received teaching (p < 0.001) and reassurance (p = 0.005) from nursing staff more often than women not enrolled in clinical trials. Controlling for age and stage of disease, teaching (p < 0.001), and reassurance (p = 0.10) were the primary differences in nursing care between the patients enrolled in clinical trials and those not enrolled. CONCLUSION: Differences in nursing care received exist between patients with breast cancer enrolled in clinical trials and those not enrolled. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE: Both teaching and reassurance are important components of caring for patients with cancer and are associated with treatment compliance. If the results of this study are confirmed, measures must be employed to ensure that all patients receive optimal care. (shrink)

Résumé La littérature hétérolingue serait-elle susceptible de contribuer à une poétique du traduire? Notre investigation, qui nous fera quitter la linguistique pour les théories de l’énonciation puis aborder l’analyse rhétorique en termes d’ ethos, s’achèvera sur l’étude d’une phrase extraite d’ Hijo de hombre, roman guarani-hispanophone du Paraguayen Augusto Roa Bastos (1917-2005). Les trois versions françaises étayeront l’hypothèse selon laquelle chaque traduction est un acte de ré-énonciation où se rejoue le rapport à l’altérité linguistique.

The present work refers to the doctorship research that implemented the Free-Expression Painting Studio technique to assist university students who had suicidal ideations or attempts. This technique was developed in France by the psychologist Michel Ternoy, based on Minkowski’s structural-phenomenon analysis method. A group session will be presented and discussed from Michel Henry’s phenomenology of life. Psychology and phenomenology can create spaces for belonging and support, which allow the transformation of suffering from experiences in the community. The Painting Studio makes (...) it possible to experience the affection of the other as a potential of one’s own possibilities, mobilizing the affective dialectical relationship, through which one can go from unbearable suffering to original fruition. We seek to show that art can be part of the therapeutic process as an alternative to the passage to the act of suicide before it becomes unbearable. (shrink)

O tema dos estágios da existência perpassa toda a produção de Kierkegaard. Ele teve sempre o cuidado de mostrar que estético, ético e religioso não são etapas que acontecem apartadas uma da outra, como num modelo sistemático, mas acontecem ao mesmo tempo, uma vez que se dão na existência e se realizam enquanto existência. Mas, em termos da construção de um pensamento clínico em psicologia, o que seria importante ainda se entender acerca dos estágios? Que relação ainda podemos fazer entre (...) as caracterizações e personificações, às quais Kierkegaard, sob pseudônimo ou não, lança mão para apresentar os estágios? E, finalmente, como essa questão perpassa um pensamento clínico ou um pensamento existencial em psicologia? Nosso objetivo com este texto é responder a estas questões. Começaremos por esclarecer o sentido de comunicação indireta no projeto de Kierkegaard. Em seguida, apresentaremos as caracterizações dos diferentes estágios para, então, esclareceremos o sentido de tarefa por meio da apresentação de algumas personificações dos estágios. Por fim, pensaremos as repercussões para um pensamento clínico em psicologia. Veremos que Kierkegaard recorre aos estágios e suas personificações ambicionando tirar o leitor de seu modo confortável de pensar e agir. (shrink)

Superoscillating functions are band-limited functions that can oscillate faster than their fastest Fourier component. The study of the evolution of superoscillations as initial datum of field equations requires the notion of supershift, which generalizes the concept of superoscillations. The present paper has a dual purpose. The first one is to give an updated and self-contained explanation of the strategy to study the evolution of superoscillations by referring to the quantum-mechanical Schrödinger equation and its variations. The second purpose is to treat (...) the Dirac equation in relativistic quantum theory. The treatment of the evolution of superoscillations for the Dirac equation can be deduced by recent results on the Klein–Gordon equation, but further additional considerations are in order, which are fully described in this paper. (shrink)

L'Inopos, qui constitue le principal cours d'eau de Délos, prend sa source au Sud-Ouest du Cynthe. Il coule d'abord vers le Nord puis il s'oriente vers l'Ouest pour déboucher à l'emplacement de l'Agora des Hermaïstes. Un barrage associé à un vaste bassin de retenue a été construit à l'endroit où il change d'orientation. La paroi d'amont du mur qui barre le vallon est constituée de blocs de poros dont les joints verticaux ont été remplis de plomb et dont les assises (...) successives ont été associées par des barres métalliques se développant sur toute la longueur de l'ouvrage. Des drains ménagés dans l'épaisseur du mur conduisaient vers l'aval les eaux d'infiltration. Cette construction, qui atteste une remarquable connaissance des problèmes de stabilité des barrages, est sans doute une œuvre des Athéniens réalisée vers la fin du Ve ou le début du IVe s. Le barrage et son bassin furent réaménagés au début de l'Indépendance. A l'époque impériale, le barrage fut percé en sous-œuvre et associé à un aqueduc. (shrink)

Ob “nicht etwa eine vernünftigere Anordnung von Kreisen zu finden sei, von welchen alle erscheinende Ungleichmäßigkeit abhinge”, ist die Frage, die Copernicus umtreibt. Eine einheitliche, eine systematische Berechnung aller Planetenbewegungen – auch der der sogenannten irrenden Sterne – sucht Copernicus durch die Einführung einer Hypothese, die über eine bloß mathematische Annahme hinausgeht, zu begründen. Die Erkenntnis der einheitlichen Weltgestalt und des festen Ebenmaßes ihrer Teile hat die Annahme eines die systematische Einheit konstituierenden Prinzips zur Voraussetzung. Als dieses Prinzip versteht Copernicus (...) die Erdbewegung. So schließt Copernicus, daß entweder die Erde nicht ruhe oder eine vernünftige Ordnung der Planeten nicht zu begründen sei. Für Bruno und Schelling ist das Prinzip zur Ordnung des Universums keine mathematische Hypothese, sondern ein naturphilosophisches Prinzip. Schelling schließt sich Bruno in der Behauptung an, daß eine Ordnung nur unter der Voraussetzung möglich sei, daß das Subjekt wie das Objekt der Ordnung sich auf ein Prinzip zurückführen ließen. Damit droht die Kopernikanische Wende auf den Kopf gestellt zu werden. (shrink)