Fred S. Berlin, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine --Book Jacket.

Air temperature prediction can play a significant role in studies related to climate change, radiation and heat flux estimation, and weather forecasting. This study applied and compared the outcomes of three advanced fuzzy inference models, i.e., dynamic evolving neural-fuzzy inference system, hybrid neural-fuzzy inference system, and adaptive neurofuzzy inference system for AT prediction. Modelling was done for three stations in North Dakota, USA, i.e., Robinson, Ada, and Hillsboro. The results reveal that FIS type models are well suited when handling highly (...) variable data, such as AT, which shows a high positive correlation with average daily dew point, total solar radiation, and negative correlation with average wind speed. At the Robinson station, DENFIS performed the best with a coefficient of determination of 0.96 and a modified index of agreement of 0.92, followed by ANFIS with R2 of 0.94 and md of 0.89, and HyFIS with R2 of 0.90 and md of 0.84. A similar result was observed for the other two stations, i.e., Ada and Hillsboro stations where DENFIS performed the best with R2: 0.953/0.960, md: 0.903/0.912, then ANFIS with R2: 0.943/0.942, md: 0.888/0.890, and HyFIS with R2: 0.908/0.905, md: 0.845/0.821, respectively. It can be concluded that all three models are capable of predicting AT with high efficiency by only using DP, TSR, and WS as input variables. This makes the application of these models more reliable for a meteorological variable with the need for the least number of input variables. The study can be valuable for the areas where the climatological and seasonal variations are studied and will allow providing excellent prediction results with the least error margin and without a huge expenditure. (shrink)

Previous studies of initiatives in Writing to Learn and Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines, while showing gains in knowledge retention and improvement in general writing skills, have not yet investigated the more fundamental issue of how writing supports development of domain-specific forms of thinking. Written samples were gathered from prospective teachers engaged in a year-long program of classroom observation and participation designed to advance their understanding of student success and failure. Ethnographic and quantitative methods provided evidence that their (...) written accounts indicated an increased understanding that was aligned with the goals of the program. (shrink)

All worldviews have some sort of moral vision for why and how they pursue their goals, though these moral visions may be more or less explicitly stated. Transhumanism is no different, though sometimes people forget that transhumanism is not the alien dream of a posthuman mind but is instead a very human ideology driven by very human interests and moral ideals. In this paper, I lay out some of those ideals in very general terms, advocating a high-minded moral vision for (...) transhumanism that is born of and extends the desire for human flourishing. Though taken to new heights, transhumanism coheres with age-old views of ourselves as our own projects. What the end and direction and scope of those projects can be, however, is generated by, but not limited to, human nature. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is a version of intra-theoretical pluralism that was recently proposed by Hjortland [2013]. In a first move, I use synonymy-relations to formulate an intuitively compelling objection against Hjortland's claim that, if one uses a single calculus to characterise the consequence relations of the paraconsistent logic LP and the paracomplete logic K3, one immediately obtains multiple consequence relations for a single language and hence a reply to the Quinean charge of meaning variance. In a second (...) move, I explain how a natural generalisation of the notion of synonymy can be used to counter this objection, but I also show how the solution can be turned into an equally devastating ‘one logic after all’ type of objection. Finally, I propose the general diagnosis that these problems could only arise in the presence of conceptual distinctions that are too coarse to accommodate coherent pluralist theses. T.. (shrink)

Professor Max Charlesworth and I worked, at Deakin University, on a course, 'Understanding Art'. Max was interested in the Social History of Art and in art as: 'giving form to mere matter'. Here 'form' might be read as 'lucid', 'exemplary', 'beautiful' etcetera. I am an Aristotle Poetics 4 man '… imitating something with the utmost veracity in a picture', and an Aristotle and John Cage man: 'Art is the imitation of nature in the manner of operation. Or a net'. (Cage) (...) (See Aristotle Meteorologica, 381b Book iv.) I was invited by the University of Melbourne to lecture on The Philosophy of Art, which I did for five delightful years. There I included the Heidegger essay, giving it as favourable a reading as I could. Unfortunately I have mislaid my marked-up copy and was forced to re-visit the essay, cold. My new reading lacks - in most respects - my former geniality. Kant's Aesthetic Ideas give us more than Heidegger does. So: I stuck with Aristotle, Cage and Kant. (shrink)

Most philosophers who have expressed a view about whether forgiveness is compatible with forgivers’ continuing to punish, or support the punishment of, people who have wronged them hold that forgiveness is compatible with punishing or favouring punishment of wrongdoers. I argue that whether forgiveness entails forbearing punishment depends on which of two senses of forgiveness is operative. On the first, sentiment-based sense of forgiveness as consisting essentially in a change of heart on the part of a victim, a victim can, (...) I submit, forgive while continuing to punish or to support the punishment of a person who has wronged her. On the second sense of forgiveness as consisting in debt remission whether or not accompanied by a change of heart, the state’s remission of the entirety of criminal offenders’ punishment qualifies as forgiveness and, moreover, the state could not forgive offenders in this sense while continuing to punish them. (shrink)

This syllabus was submitted to the Rhodes College Office of Academic Affairs by the course instructor.

The abortion controversy as a cultural phenomenon is itself socially troublesome. However, current biotechnology research programs point to a possible technological fix. If we could harmlessly remove fetuses from women’s bodies and transfer them to other women, cryonic suspension, or ectogenetic devices, this might mitigate the controversy. Pro-lifers’ apparent minimal requirement would be met—fetuses would not be killed. Pro-choicers’ apparent minimal requirement would be met—women could end pregnancies and control their bodies. This option has been optimistically anticipated by some ethicists, (...) but some people reject this fix because they are averse to being genetically related to a child they are not raising, insisting on the right to destroy the fetus as well as have it removed. Inthis paper I examine these issues, asking what the real issues in abortion rights are, whether technology can help, what the scope of reproductive autonomy is, and how technology will change the abortion debate. (shrink)

This paper explores the extreme but well-argued-for thesis that the indirect object of an aesthetic experience of serious art is the human soul of the person having the experience. The author of the thesis was Fr. Arthur Little S.J. a mid twentieth-century Irishman, professional philosopher and philosophical popularizer. The paper treats Little’s thesis seriously: comparisons are drawn with Kant, which may be of interest even to those hostile to Little’s central assertion. Little makes a brilliant analysis of a ‘free-beauty’, making (...) the sharpest contrast between this and the most serious art, tragedy. Tragedy, Little holds Kant not able to cope with. One agrees. (shrink)

The hypotheses in both target articles rely implicitly on much the same logic. For a “social-bonding” device to make sense, there must be an underlying reason why an otherwise-arbitrary behaviour sustains alliances – namely, credible signals of one's value to partners. To illustrate our points, we draw on the parallels with supposed bonding behaviours in nonhuman animals.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Proceedings of the ALSC (1995 Convention)Patrick HenryGiven the oppressively politicized character of academic literary studies today, it took courage and conviction to found a new literary society in 1994. The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics is dedicated to the study of literature as a source of pleasure and insight. This would be banal were it not for the way in which culture wars, identity politics, and race (...) and gender issues have come to dominate university literature departments. More than merely a handful of scholars wish to reverse this trend: in less than two years, the ALSC has grown to 1800 members and its first conference, held in Minneapolis, September 22–24, 1995, was a notable success.Because we favor a true pluralism, and like many others are tired of the predictable posturing that permeates so much literary scholarship today, we invited the ALSC to publish its first conference proceedings in our pages. The meeting offered much variety, with classicists and modernists, poets, fiction writers, and critics trading ideas on literature and aesthetics. Despite worries by its detractors that the ALSC represents reaction or blind traditionalism, there was a refreshing openness to the proceedings, with lucid examples of critical reading and topics from metaphor in Dickens and Auden’s Alcaic stanza in “In memory of Sigmund Freud,” to the Islamic influence on Dante’s Commedia—a connection that belies the charge that the Western canon is inevitably Eurocentric. If the ALSC can revive a sense of wonder before the greatest works of literary art and provide an alternative to the complacency and pretentiousness of contemporary theory, it deserves support from us all.For twenty years it has said on our inside back cover that Philosophy and Literature “owes allegiance to no particular school or style of criticism or philosophy.” Our only loyalty is to literature and philosophy; they constitute our field of interest. It has never been our aim to adopt the correct ideology. We remain skeptical of ideological commitments and will continue to publish exciting jargon-free articles representative of the entire spectrum of approaches to literature and philosophy.Copyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

La notion de chair s’élabore chez Merleau-Ponty, à l’encontre du primat husserlien du toucher, dans l’articulation du toucher et du voir. C’est par cette articulation, ce recouvrement l’un par l’autre des champs sensoriels que Merleau-Ponty peut penser la chair comme chair du monde, élément de l’Être. L’auto-appréhension charnelle doit se comprendre d’abord selon une visibilité errante, dans la transitivité des regards qui se voient et s’échangent le paysage commun de leurs vues. Mais, remontant au cœur même de ce « transitivisme (...) », c’est dans la rencontre des corps, dans leur enlacement, que Le visible et l’invisible décrit au plus près l’opération de cette réversibilité. Naissance du monde dans la figure d’une scène primitive où les corps se donnant l’un à l’autre ouvrent un espacement originaire. Cette réflexivité essentiellement est inaccomplie, les corps ne se touchent que dans l’écart qui les unit. La chair, Merleau-Ponty y insiste, ne se rejoint que dans l’immi­nence d’une auto-affection toujours différée, par là elle est différenciée, polymorphe, et elle demeure ouverte. De cette ouverture de la chair naît l’expression. La voix s’élève dans une autre réflexivité, celle d’un sonore qui s’entend et, plus proprement, celle des voix qui s’écoutent. Incarnation sonore, la voix est la chair vive du sens. Entre la caresse et la voix, c’est à un même mouvement de réflexivité et d’expressivité charnelle que Merleau-Ponty nous fait donc assister, un même élan de la chair qui s’exhausse de son anonymat élémentaire pour naître à soi dans l’expression. (shrink)

The emerging view of early dorso‐ventral patterning of amphibian embryos is that two opposing gradients of dorsalising and ventralising secreted factors are necessary. while several transcription factors acting upstream or downstream of the dorsalising molecules have been identified, until recently little was known about the transcriptional response to ventralising signals. Now two groups describe the identification of related homeodomain proteins, Xvent‐1 and Vox, which are able to convert dorsal cells of Xenopus embryos into more ventral ones(1,2).

No. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 25(1) 2006: 48-61.

Pre-diabetes is a risk factor for the development of diabetes, not a disease in its own right. The prevalence increases with age and reaches nearly 50% of those aged over 75 years in the USA. While lifestyle modification and treatment are likely to benefit those with many years of life ahead of them, they are unlikely to benefit patients with a limited life expectancy. Despite this, some very elderly patients in the UK and elsewhere are being labelled as pre-diabetic. While (...) ideal practice would be to carefully consider the impact of any potentially abnormal blood test before it is taken, this is not always possible in routine practice. In this paper, we discuss a pragmatic, ethical approach for clinicians managing pre-diabetic blood tests in very elderly patients. We argue that a ‘see-saw’ model of paternalism should be used in deciding which patients to inform that they can be labelled as pre-diabetic. Those patients that may benefit from the label should be informed, and those that will not, should not. Where the benefits/drawbacks are unclear, the result and its potential significance should be discussed in depth with the individual patient. We do not advocate withholding information from any patient. Instead we suggest clinicians use individual patient circumstances to contextualise the relevance of pre-diabetes to the patient and consider the benefits and drawbacks before informing them. This approach has the potential to be used for other pre-conditions and risk factors in addition to pre-diabetes. (shrink)

The central topic of current philosophy of religion has been the meaning and the truth of the assertion that God exists. The roots of this preoccupation lie in the natural theology, and the criticism of that theology, of the eighteenth century in the West. The arguments of Hume and Kant are still the basis of contemporary discussion. While this attachment to eighteenth-century concerns may manifest a laudable sense of reverence for our ancestors, it has led the philosophy of religion into (...) lamentable delinquencies and impoverishments. (shrink)

This paper argues that modern society does not meet the problems posed by the experience of disease in a satisfactory way. It attempts to show this by examining the distinction between disease and plague. Disease is formulated as necesssarily involving the self in unforeseeable ways with what is other to itself: the challenge of disease is treated as the challenge of this involvement. On the other hand, plague as an abstract threat is that towards which the collective shows principled indifference. (...) The strength and the limits of this indifference are explored. Subsequent upon this, the paper examines the consequences of the loss of the distinction between disease and plague, particularly with respect to the implications of that loss for the treatment, management, and control of disease in modern society. (shrink)

The moral authority of advance directives as a vehicle of precedent autonomy is highly problematic in cases of severe dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. It is unclear how personal values and interests can be enforced by means of such an advance directive; at the stage of severe dementia the distal binding powers of precedent autonomy have expired; and the moral costs of removing another human being from life are very high. It transpires that in fine drawing up an advance directive (...) in the face of Alzheimer is an inappropriate method of orchestrating one’s future care and death. This leaves persons diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease with two morally preferable alternatives. One is that they accept that, when severe dementia is setting in, autonomy is not an issue; others decide. The second is that they commit pre-emptive suicide after Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed. (shrink)

Random-excitation granule cells are likely to overwhelm spatiotemporal sequences described as in Braitenberg et al.'s target article. A mechanism is proposed involving the Golgi cells to reinforce tidal waves against noise. The recurrent inhibition by the Golgi calls can recruit random excitations of granule cells in phase with sequences of mossy fiber input.

We have a certain fascination with the incredible untapped potential of our minds. Some studies once suggested that we use only 10% of the mind's capacity. Today that estimate has been revised to about 2%-3%. Imagine what more we could do with all of that as yet unrealized potential. What is standing in our way? How do we move into a more full realization of who we are? These are the questions that this book seeks to answer.

Evolutionary ideas and modern biological knowledge have important roles to play in the understanding of human behaviour. Nevertheless, it is deeply misleading to regard humans as robots in the grip of their genes. A well designed brain should respond to the consequences of behaviour; if an understanding of the likely consequences can be achieved without actually performing the act, then a person who knows that they will be rewarded or punished for certain acts is bound to be influenced by that (...) knowledge. A brain designed in that way facilitates the evolution of societies with explicit social approval of certain activities and explicit disapproval of others. The evolutionary approach to psychology does not imply that individuals do not make free choices. Individuals clearly do make a big difference to what happens in their lives through their decisions. They may be surprised by the consequences of their own actions. A well designed brain should be able to anticipate the consequences of various courses of action and choose between them on the basis of their likely costs and benefits. Planning before doing is clearly of great advantage. People do make well considered decisions and they benefit from doing so. (shrink)