A record of the words and teachings of Confucius, _The Analects_ is considered the most reliable expression of Confucian thought. However, the original meaning of Confucius's teachings have been filtered and interpreted by the commentaries of Confucianists of later ages, particularly the Neo-Confucianists of the Song dynasty, not altogether without distortion.In this monumental translation by Professor D. C. Lau, an attempt has been made to interpret the sayings as they stand. The corpus of the sayings is taken as an organic (...) whole and the final test of the interpretation rests on the internal consistency it exhibits. In other words, _The Analects_ is read in the light of _The Analects._This results in a truer understanding of Confucius' thought than the traditional interpretation and paves the way for a re-assessment of its importance in the history of Chinese thought and its relevance to the present day world.This volume also contains an introduction to the life and teachings of Confucius, and three appendices on the events in the life of Confucius, on his disciples, and on the composition of _The Analects._. (shrink)

It is usually taken as given that consciousness involves superior or more elaborate forms of information processing. Contemporary models equate consciousness with global processing, system complexity, or depth or stability of computation. This is in stark contrast with the powerful philosophical intuition that being conscious is more than just having the ability to compute. I argue that it is also incompatible with current empirical findings. I present a model that is free from the strong assumption that consciousness predicts superior performance. (...) The model is based on Bayesian decision theory, of which signal detection theory is a special case. It reflects the fact that the capacity for perceptual decisions is fundamentally limited by the presence and amount of noise in the system. To optimize performance, one therefore needs to set decision criteria that are based on the behaviour, i.e. the probability distributions, of the internal signals. One important realization is that the knowledge of how our internal signals behave statistically has to be learned over time. Essentially, we are doing statistics on our own brain. This ‘higherorder’ learning, however, may err, and this impairs our ability to set and maintain optimal criteria for perceptual decisions, which I argue is central to perception consciousness. I outline three possibilities of how conscious perception might be affected by failures of ‘higher-order’ representation. These all imply that one can have a dissociation between consciousness and performance. This model readily explains blindsight and hallucinations in formal terms, and is beginning to receive direct empirical support. I end by discussing some philosophical implications of the model. (shrink)

The Boltzmann and Gibbs approaches to statistical mechanics have very different definitions of equilibrium and entropy. The problems associated with this are discussed and it is suggested that they can be resolved, to produce a version of statistical mechanics incorporating both approaches, by redefining equilibrium not as a binary property but as a continuous property measured by the Boltzmann entropy and by introducing the idea of thermodynamic-like behaviour for the Boltzmann entropy. The Kac ring model is used as an example (...) to test the proposals. (shrink)

We discuss cases where subjects seem to enjoy conscious experience when the relevant first-order perceptual representations are either missing or too weak to account for the experience. Though these cases are originally considered to be theoretical possibilities that may be problematical for the higher-order view of consciousness, careful considerations of actual empirical examples suggest that this strategy may backfire; these cases may cause more trouble for first-order theories instead. Specifically, these cases suggest that (I) recurrent feedback loops to V1 are (...) most likely not the neural correlate of first-order representations for conscious experience, (II) first-order views seem to have a problem accounting for the phenomenology in these cases, and either (III) a version of the ambitious higher-order approach is superior in that it is the simplest theory that can account for all results at face value, or (IV) a view where phenomenology is jointly determined by both first-order and higher-order states. In our view (III) and (IV) are both live options and the decision between them may ultimately be an empirical question that cannot yet be decided. (shrink)

During the course of the nineteenth century, a dramatic change took place in the way Americans die. The deathbed, formerly governed predominantly by religious tradition, gradually was being shaped by medical ethics and state law. By the end of the nineteenth century, not only had the physician replaced the priest as master of ceremonies at the deathbed, but the state, in the form of positive law, had begun to express an interest in regulating the treatment of the dying patient. This (...) interest first emerged in the context of the late nineteenth-century public debate over the legitimacy of medical euthanasia, an issue passionately disputed to this day in America and other Western societies. The history of the deathbed in nineteenth-century America suggests that the intervention of the state in the regulation of dying is a relatively new phenomenon. This paper examines this history, thereby enabling us to explore a world in which the legal regulation of dying was still unthinkable and inviting us to contemplate the historical significance of this development. The paper traces the changes that occurred during the nineteenth century in deathbed ethics, concluding with proposals for regulating dying legally through euthanasia. It focuses on the most significant moments in the history of the nineteenth-century deathbed, outlining a three-stage transformation in deathbed ethics--from the realm of religion, to the jurisdiction of medical ethics, to positive law regulation--a movement that reflects a change not only in specific rules of deathbed conduct, but also a more decisive alteration of the entire normative system governing the deathbed and the entire experience of dying. The insight to the modus operandi of regulatory law that emerges in the paper can lead to a deeper understanding of the conditions of its possibility. Regulation is only possible if the phenomenon to be regulated undergoes a transformation through which it severs its connections with anything that cannot be regulated. Thus, the paper shows how a radical transformation in the way people die was necessary for regulation by state law to emerge. (shrink)

The intuition that consciousness is hard to explain may fade away as empirically adequate theories of consciousness develop. We review socio-historical factors that account for why, as a field, the neuroscience of consciousness has not been particularly successful at developing empirically adequate theories. Based on this we argue that the meta-problem may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, created in part because we inadvertently focused too much on the so-called 'hard problem', limiting scientific progress.

Measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) has been fundamental to our understanding of how language is encoded in the brain. One particular ERP response, the N400 response, has been especially influential as an index of lexical and semantic processing. However, there remains a lack of consensus on the interpretation of this component. Resolving this issue has important consequences for neural models of language comprehension. Here we show that evidence bearing on where the N400 response is generated provides key insights into what it (...) reflects. A neuroanatomical model of semantic processing is used as a guide to interpret the pattern of activated regions in functional MRI, magnetoencephalography and intracranial recordings that are associated with contextual semantic manipulations that lead to N400 effects. (shrink)

Externalism with regard to mental content says that in order to have certain types of intentional mental states (e.g. beliefs), it is necessary to be related to the environment in the right way.

Face recognition is a computationally challenging classification task. Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) are brain‐inspired algorithms that have recently reached human‐level performance in face and object recognition. However, it is not clear to what extent DCNNs generate a human‐like representation of face identity. We have recently revealed a subset of facial features that are used by humans for face recognition. This enables us now to ask whether DCNNs rely on the same facial information and whether this human‐like representation depends on (...) a system that is optimized for face identification. In the current study, we examined the representation of DCNNs of faces that differ in features that are critical or non‐critical for human face recognition. Our findings show that DCNNs optimized for face identification are tuned to the same facial features used by humans for face recognition. Sensitivity to these features was highly correlated with performance of the DCNN on a benchmark face recognition task. Moreover, sensitivity to these features and a view‐invariant face representation emerged at higher layers of a DCNN optimized for face recognition but not for object recognition. This finding parallels the division to a face and an object system in high‐level visual cortex. Taken together, these findings validate human perceptual models of face recognition, enable us to use DCNNs to test predictions about human face and object recognition as well as contribute to the interpretability of DCNNs. (shrink)

It has been over a decade and half since Christof Koch and the late Francis Crick first advocated the now popular NCC project (Crick and Koch, 1990), in which one tries to find the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) for perceptual processes. In his chapter in this book Chris Frith provides a splendid review of how neuroimaging has contributed greatly to this project. For the sake of contrast, this chapter takes a more critical stance on what we have actually learned. (...) Many authors have written on whether looking for the neural correlates would eventually lead to an explanatory theory of consciousness, while the proponents defend that focusing on correlates is a strategically sensible first step, given the complexity of the problem (Crick and Koch, 1998;Crick and Koch, 2003). My point here is not to argue whether studying the NCC is useful, but rather, to question whether we are really studying the NCC at all. I argue that in hoping to sidestep the difficult conceptual issues, we have sometimes also missed the phenomenon of perceptual consciousness itself. (shrink)

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Future automated vehicles of different sizes will share the same space with other road users, e. g., pedestrians. For a safe interaction, successful communication needs to be ensured, in particular, with vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians. Two possible communication means exist for AVs: vehicle kinematics for implicit communication and external human-machine interfaces for explicit communication. However, the exact interplay is not sufficiently studied yet for pedestrians' interactions with AVs. Additionally, very few other studies focused on the interplay of vehicle (...) kinematics and eHMI for pedestrians' interaction with differently sized AVs, although the precise coordination is decisive to support the communication with pedestrians. Therefore, this study focused on how the interplay of vehicle kinematics and eHMI affects pedestrians' willingness to cross, trust and perceived safety for the interaction with two differently sized AVs. In this experimental online study, the participants interacted with the AVs in a shared space. Both AVs were equipped with a 360° LED light-band eHMI attached to the outer vehicle body. Three eHMI statuses were displayed. The vehicle kinematics were varied at two levels. Moreover, “non-matching” conditions were included for both AVs in which the dynamic eHMI falsely communicated a yielding intent although the vehicle did not yield. Overall, results showed that pedestrians' willingness to cross was significantly higher for the smaller AV compared to the larger AV. Regarding the interplay of vehicle kinematics and eHMI, results indicated that a dynamic eHMI increased pedestrians' perceived safety when the vehicle yielded. When the vehicle did not yield, pedestrians' perceived safety still increased for the dynamic eHMI compared to the static eHMI and no eHMI. The findings of this study demonstrated possible negative effects of eHMIs when they did not match the vehicle kinematics. Further implications for a holistic communication strategy for differently sized AVs will be discussed. (shrink)

In the United States, disease screening is offered to the public as a consumer service. It has been proposed that the act of “consumption” is a manifestation of agency and that the decision to consume is an exercise of autonomy. The enthusiasm of the American public for disease screening and the expansion in the demand for all sorts of disease screening in recent years can be viewed as an expression of such autonomy. Here, we argue that the enthusiasm for disease (...) screening witnessed in the American public today may be more a reflection of the constraint on autonomy than its facilitation. It is our opinion that the articulation of socio-historical processes has contributed to a moral imperative which is reflected in the decision making of individuals around disease screening. We suggest medical and health professionals have a responsibility to facilitate the exercise of individual autonomy in health care decision making as an integral component of professional obligation. These professionals need to problematise healthcare activities that constrain individual autonomy. (shrink)

Turn taking is observed in many field and laboratory settings captured by various widely studied 2 × 2 games. This article develops a repeated game model that allows us to systematically investigate turn-taking behavior in many 2 × 2 games, including the battle of the sexes, the game of chicken, the game of common-pool-resources assignment, and a particular version of the prisoners’ dilemma. We consider the “turn taking with independent randomizations” (TTIR) strategy that achieves three objectives: (a) helping the players (...) reach the turn-taking path, (b) resolving the question of who takes the good turn first, and (c) deterring defection. We determine conditions under which there exists a unique TTIR strategy profile that can be supported as a subgame-perfect equilibrium. We also show that there exist conditions under which an increase in the “degree of conflict” of the stage game leads to a decrease in the expected number of periods in reaching the turn-taking path. (shrink)

It has been over a decade and half since Christof Koch and the late Francis Crick first advocated the now popular NCC project (Crick and Koch, 1990), in which one tries to find the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) for perceptual processes. In his chapter in this book Chris Frith provides a splendid review of how neuroimaging has contributed greatly to this project. For the sake of contrast, this chapter takes a more critical stance on what we have actually learned. (...) Many authors have written on whether looking for the neural correlates would eventually lead to an explanatory theory of consciousness, while the proponents defend that focusing on correlates is a strategically sensible first step, given the complexity of the problem (Crick and Koch, 1998;Crick and Koch, 2003). My point here is not to argue whether studying the NCC is useful, but rather, to question whether we are really studying the NCC at all. I argue that in hoping to sidestep the difficult conceptual issues, we have sometimes also missed the phenomenon of perceptual consciousness itself. (shrink)

Conscious experiences involve subjective qualities, such as colours, sounds, smells and emotions. In this Perspective, we argue that these subjective qualities can be understood in terms of their similarity to other experiences. This account highlights the role of memory in conscious experience, even for simple percepts. How an experience feels depends on implicit memory of the relationships between different perceptual representations within the brain. With more complex experiences such as emotions, explicit memories are also recruited. We draw inspiration from work (...) in machine learning as well as the cognitive neuroscience of learning and decision making to make our case and discuss how the account could be tested in future experiments. The resulting findings might help to reveal the functions of subjective experience and inform current theoretical debates on consciousness. (shrink)

Recent studies revealed how the reference to Zhuangzi played a determining role in the evolution of Heidegger’s thinking. Among the sources is a work written in 1945 under the title _Country Path Conversations_. The last of these conversations presents strong similarities with another between Confucius and Yan Hui, imagined by Zhuangzi at the beginning of the fourth chapter. Analogies between these two conversations are so numerous that it is surprising that it has not been noticed until now. However, the establishment (...) of this rapprochement is crucial. It might show how deep is the echo that Heidegger acknowledged between his work and the Lao-Zhuang perspective. Moreover, it reveals that this resonance is not limited to the themes of the “path” and the “letting be,” but also concerns the essential problem of evil and the way to face it. (shrink)

The paper outlines a deflationary interpretation of Hegel’s metaphysics, as presented in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. It focuses mainly on the Science of Logic as a theory of categories, which explores the movement of the Concept. The major idea is to read Hegel’s identification of logic and metaphysics as a thesis on deflating metaphysics into logic and semantics. Hegel’s metaphysics, which may better be called logico-metaphysics, does not describe the objective world directly. Rather, as a second-order theory, it (...) unfolds and makes transparent the fundamental concepts that are necessary for our understanding of the world and our orientation in it. -/- The paper begins with a brief discussion of Hegel’s idea of philosophy as system. The argument is made that Hegel should be interpreted holistically, in contrast to the popular approach of distinguishing between what is living and what is dead in his philosophy. In the second and third parts of the paper, an analysis is given of Hegel’s criticism of Kant, with an explanation of how Hegel’s Logic further develops Kant’s project of transforming traditional metaphysics. Here, the interesting fact that Hegel’s logical categories are not derived from an absolute first principle is pointed out. Instead, the task of Hegel’s Logic is to comprehend and systematize the concepts that have already been evolved in the history of philosophy. In the last part of the paper, the deflationary approach is extended to Hegel’s Realphilosophie. While Hegel’s Logic takes the place of ontology, his Philosophy of Nature and Spirit offers a comprehensive metaphysica specialis, laying conceptual foundations for understanding various dimensions of reality, from nature through the ethical-political world to different cultural domains. The paper takes Hegel’s Philosophy of Objective Spirit as an example to illustrate how the deflationary interpretation sheds light on Hegel’s “practical” philosophy as a second-order theory that does not aim to uncover first-order normative principles for guiding actions, but rather to develop the concepts necessary for normative judgments. (shrink)

The question of whether grammaticality is a binary categorical or a gradient property has been the subject of ongoing debate in linguistics and psychology for many years. Linguists have tended to use constructed examples to test speakers’ judgements on specific sorts of constraint violation. We applied machine translation to randomly selected subsets of the British National Corpus (BNC) to generate a large test set which contains well-formed English source sentences, and sentences that exhibit a wide variety of grammatical infelicities. We (...) tested a large number of speakers through (filtered) crowd sourcing, with three distinct modes of classification, one binary and two ordered scales. We found a high degree of correlation in mean judgements for sentences across the three classification tasks. We also did two visual image classification tasks to obtain benchmarks for binary and gradient judgement patterns, respectively. Finally, we did a second crowd source experiment on 100 randomly selected linguistic textbook example sentences. The sentence judgement distributions for individual speakers strongly resemble the gradience benchmark pattern. This evidence suggests that speakers represent grammatical well-formedness as a gradient property. (shrink)

This book is about the basic principles that underlie critical thinking and creativity. The majority of the content is on critical thinking since more topics are naturally involved and since they can be discussed readily and systematically. The last few chapters are devoted to creativity and research methodology, not typical the book's plethora of competition. Each chapter introduces a specific topic, usually by introducing the relevant theories in conjunction with realistic examples that show how the theories can be applied. Each (...) chapter concludes with a set of exercises whose solutions are detailed at the rear of the book. While the writing style is purposefully informal, the presentation is complete, at least with respect to the intended introductory level. (shrink)

A key question in understanding visual awareness is whether any single cortical area is indispensable. In a transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment, we show that observers' awareness of activity in extrastriate area VS depends on the amount of activity in striate cortex (Vl). From the timing and pattern of effects, we infer that back-projections from extrastriate cortex influence information content in Vl, but it is Vl that determines whether that information reaches awareness.

Psychoanalysis and Christianity hold forth the promise of genuinely radical change, transforming a person so substantially such that ‘nothing remains the same’; even if the objective conditions of one’s existence stay fixed, the very lens with which the ‘born again’ subject views the world would have undergone so traumatic an upheaval that values, priorities and everything previously deemed essential would have been reimagined. It is, quite truly, a new beginning. This paper aims to insinuate a close proximity between Žižekian concepts (...) of the traumatically emergent and new vis-à-vis Biblical ideas of salvation, vocation and agape love. I also wish to demonstrate how even the Christian sacraments of baptism and the eucharist point to death and dying as their constitutive elements, with the result that sacrifice for the world becomes the main political role the Church must play. (shrink)

This study demonstrates the importance of including narrative ethics in a construction of Old Testament ethics. The social identity approach is used as a lens through which to understand and derive ethics. This approach highlights the social emphases of a biblical text, and consequently assists in understanding a text s original ethical message. The book of Ruth is used as a test case, employing a social identity approach for understanding the narrative, but also to model the approach so that it (...) can be implemented more widely in study of the Old Testament and narrative ethics. Each of the protagonists in the book of Ruth is examined in regards to their personal and social self-components. This study reveals that the narrative functions to shape or reinforce the identity of an ancient Israelite implied reader. A social identity approach can also highlight the social processes within a society. The social processes taking place in the Monarchic and Persian Periods are discussed, and it is found that the social emphases of the book of Ruth most closely correspond to the social undercurrents of the Persian Period.". (shrink)