ABSTRACT According to the ‘Principle of Alternative Possibilities’, an agent is morally responsible for performing some action only if she could have done otherwise. Beginning with Harry Frankfurt nearly fifty years ago, a number of putative counterexamples have been offered. In this essay, I consider a type of counterexample developed by David Hunt: so-called ‘complete blockage’ Frankfurt examples. The chief objection to these cases is that they presuppose causal determinism, thereby begging the question against incompatibilists. I argue, however, that even (...) if we grant that complete blockage Frankfurt examples assume causal determinism, they can still be successfully deployed as counterexamples to PAP without begging the question. (shrink)

Learn the tips and tricks used by a top photographer in the digital photography industry in Rick Sammon's Top Digital Photography Secrets. Filled with beautiful photographs and the techniques Rick Sammon used to capture them, this book offers you motivation to capture stunning photographs and the tools and tricks you need to capture them. With more than 100 techniques for use behind the camera, this book will improve the camera skills of both amateur and experienced photographers. Additionally, this (...) book includes a chapter on post-production secrets, and a Rick Sammon DVD Guide lighting, camera, and digital photography basics. In this 1-hour DVD, Rick shows you how to get great photos using a variety of lighting sources, camera-specific techniques, and basic rules of photography. (shrink)

The emulation theory of representation is developed and explored as a framework that can revealingly synthesize a wide variety of representational functions of the brain. The framework is based on constructs from control theory (forward models) and signal processing (Kalman filters). The idea is that in addition to simply engaging with the body and environment, the brain constructs neural circuits that act as models of the body and environment. During overt sensorimotor engagement, these models are driven by efference copies in (...) parallel with the body and environment, in order to provide expectations of the sensory feedback, and to enhance and process sensory information. These models can also be run off-line in order to produce imagery, estimate outcomes of different actions, and evaluate and develop motor plans. The framework is initially developed within the context of motor control, where it has been shown that inner models running in parallel with the body can reduce the effects of feedback delay problems. The same mechanisms can account for motor imagery as the off-line driving of the emulator via efference copies. The framework is extended to account for visual imagery as the off-line driving of an emulator of the motor-visual loop. I also show how such systems can provide for amodal spatial imagery. Perception, including visual perception, results from such models being used to form expectations of, and to interpret, sensory input. I close by briefly outlining other cognitive functions that might also be synthesized within this framework, including reasoning, theory of mind phenomena, and language. Key Words: efference copies; emulation theory of representation; forward models; Kalman filters; motor control; motor imagery; perception; visual imagery. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 4, Page 261-264, October 2022. According to Jean Moritz Müller's The world-directedness of emotional feeling, the reason why emotions do not apprehend or disclose value is that one cannot apprehend what one has already apprehended: the value in question, he claims, is apprehended prior to the emotional feeling. Emotions, then, should not be conceived as apprehending value since they already presuppose awareness of it. I can be acquainted with a fact without feeling aware of the (...) meaning it holds. Yet I argue that only an emotional reaction actually registers value or disvalue. My value-responsive concept of emotion is one that Müller rejects. Yet I contend that to recognize the loss of a beloved person, for instance, just is to feel the emotion of grief. (shrink)

It is the aim of work in theoretical cognitive science to produce good theories of what exactly cognition amounts to, preferably theories which not only provide a framework for fruitful empirical investigation, but which also shed light on cognitive activity itself, which help us to understand our place, as cognitive agents, in a complex causally determined physical universe. The most recent such framework to gain significant fame is the so-called dynamical approach to cognition. Explaining and exploring DST is the purpose (...) of the collection Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition, edited by Robert Port and Timothy van Gelder. (shrink)

[1] It is well-known that Evans laid the groundwork for a truly radical and fruitful theory of _content_ -- a theory according to which content is a genus with at least conceptual and nonconceptual varieties as species, and in which nonconceptual content plays a very significant role. It is less well-recognized that Evans was also in the process of working out the details of a truly radical and groundbreaking theory of _representation_, a task he was unfortunately unable to bring to (...) any satisfactory stage of fruition. I am here drawing the distinction between a theory of. (shrink)

I explain a strategy, called model-based control, which has proven useful in control theory, and argue that many aspects of brain function can be understood as applications of this strategy. I first demonstrate that in the domain of motor control, there is good evidence that the brain constructs models, or emulators, of musculoskeletal dynamics. I then argue that imagery, motor, visual and otherwise, can be supported by these emulatory mechanisms. I argue that the same apparatus to understanding aspects of psychological (...) development, including the development of theory of mind. I then show how features of linguistic competence can be addressed with the same mechanisms. Finally, I develop a semantic theory applicable to these emulators. (shrink)

Profinite groups are Galois groups. The effective study of infinite Galois groups was initiated by Metakides and Nerode [8] and further developed by LaRoche [5]. In this paper we study profinite groups without considering Galois extensions of fields. The Artin method of representing a finite group as a Galois group has been generalized by Waterhouse [14] to profinite groups. Thus, there is no loss of relevance in our approach.The fundamental notions of a co-r.e. profinite group, recursively profinite group, and the (...) degree of a co-r.e. profinite group are defined in §1. In this section we prove that every co-r.e. profinite group can be effectively represented as an inverse limit of finite groups. The degree invariant is shown to behave very well with respect to open subgroups and quotients. The work done in this section is basic to the rest of the paper.The commutator subgroup, the Frattini subgroup, thep-Sylow subgroups, and the center of a profinite group are essential in the study of profinite groups. It is only natural to ask if these subgroups are effective. The following question exemplifies our approach to this problem: Is the center a co-r.e. profinite group? Theorem 2 provides a general method for answering this type of question negatively. Examples 3,4 and 5 are all applications of this theorem. (shrink)

Socrates is a man of faith whose love and pursuit of the truth is grounded in religious conviction. Faith, whatever else it may be, involves guiding one's life in terms of a transcendent dimension, recognizing a reality lying behind any particular experience. In Plato's Phaedo, a literary and philosophical masterpiece, we enter the narrative of Socrates' trial and execution on the day of his death, examining arguments for the immortality of the psyche. The dialogue combines logical argument and mythological speculation, (...) and presents Socrates simultaneously as an abstract theorist and an unforgettably singular person. Distinct persons, such as Socrates, have an interest in continuing to exist as the individuals that they are. When we cease to exist, we lose the opportunity to engage in any activity that is worth doing, such as—emphatically, for some of us—doing philosophy. What Socrates is presented as having discovered in the Phaedo—with the ostensibly absent Plato lurking behind every line in this literary gem of a text—is a way of transforming oneself with an eye on immortality. That Socrates dies utterly without fear is the supreme vindication of the philosophical life. (shrink)

The emulation theory of representation articulated in the target article is further explained and explored in this response to commentaries. Major topics include: the irrelevance of equilibrium-point and related models of motor control to the theory; clarification of the particular sense of “representation” which the emulation theory of representation is an account of; the relation between the emulation framework and Kalman filtering; and addressing the empirical data considered to be in conflict with the emulation theory. In addition, I discuss the (...) further empirical support for the emulation theory provided by some commentators, as well as a number of suggested theoretical applications. (shrink)

b>: In this article I outline, apply, and defend a theory of natural representation. The main consequences of this theory are: i) representational status is a matter of how physical entities are used, and specifically is not a matter of causation, nomic relations with the intentional object, or information; ii) there are genuine (brain-)internal representations; iii) such representations are really representations, and not just farcical pseudo-representations, such as attractors, principal components, state-space partitions, or what-have-you;and iv) the theory allows us to (...) sharply distinguish those complex behaviors which are genuinely cognitive from those which are merely complex and adaptive. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to do a “diffractive reading” of texts by Karl Marx and Michel Serres. A diffractive reading, as this term is used by thinkers like Karen Barad, aims at the appearance of something new from the confrontation of two texts that at first sight seem to have very little to do with each other. I do a close reading of the start of “The Chapter on Capital (Continuation)” (from Notebook 5 in the Grundrisse), where Marx (...) speaks about nature, the land, and about how the common was lived by German tribes (he rejects the way the Romans speak of the Ager Publicus because of its already existing link to property). The German tribes on the contrary practice their community through a Vereinigung and not through a Verein which means that what binds them is temporary, caused by a need, and not institutionalized indefinitely. More important even, he speaks of the land as part of the commune, as part of us temporarily, and caused by a need. This “inorganic self,” which is how he defines the land that feeds us, and thus belongs to us, is what gives rise to our being and is thus an inextricable part of who we are. Then, I turn to Serres, who, in his book The Five Senses also analyzes what gives form to us. Starting from the etymological analysis of the Homo sapiens, in which Homo refers to humus, the rich topsoil of the earth and sapiens to sapient, to “having a taste for something,” Serres too speaks of the earth that feeds us. Their earthly analysis of what forces us to think then brings me to take another look at how we think about intelligence today, and how the alienation that both Marx and Serres are speaking of, seems to have installed itself in how we are imagining technology and food. I talk of how the American military designs meals for the American soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, knowing that “the sense of home” should be included in their ready-to-eat meals. I talk of the Museum for Forgotten Skills, an art project set up by Casco Art Institute, in Utrecht (the Netherlands), in which a new population was introduced to their land, to the idea of becoming part of the community again, taking part in its rituals, in understanding the land, the language and the history accompanying it. My conclusion, in line with Serres (and Marx) is not very uplifting though. Alienation, which in the end is all about how we have alienated ourselves from the land, from the earth, prevents us from living together, from becoming a community, and in the end, from living a life. (shrink)

The classical tradition of testimony in topics -- Three medieval traditions : Augustine, Boethius, and Cassiodoras -- Two renaissance traditions : Ciceronian and Augustinian -- The long influence of the port-royal logic -- Appreciating Aristotle : Thomists, Scots, and Oxford noetics -- Testimony becomes experience : the rise of critical thinking.

Globally, chronic disease and conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression and cancer are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. Why, then, are public health efforts and programs aimed at preventing chronic disease so difficult to implement and maintain? Also, why is primary care—the key medical specialty for helping persons with chronic disease manage their illnesses—in decline? Public health suffers from its often being socially controversial, personally intrusive, irritating to many powerful corporate interests, and structurally designed to be largely (...) invisible and, as a result, taken for granted. Primary care struggles from low reimbursements, relative to specialists, excessive paperwork and time demands that are unattractive to medical students. Our paper concludes with a discussion of why the need for more aggressive public health and redesigned primary care is great, will grow substantially in the near future, and yet will continue to struggle with funding and public popularity. (shrink)

Each of us distinguishes between himself and states of himself on the one hand, and what is not himself or a state of himself on the other. What are the conditions of our making this distinction, and how are they fulfilled? In what way do we make it, and why do we make it in the way we do?

Reforms associated with New Public Management have led to changes in the management of work and organization that challenge the stability, durability and linearity of the managerial hierarchy in contemporary public sector workplaces. Against this background, this article considers the ways in which two clinician-managers who work in a large metropolitan teaching hospital speak about their organizational roles. Reflecting the complexity of their part of the organization, the emergency department, the interviewees position themselves as operating at the interstice between the (...) competing and contradictory spatial logics of locality and mobility. With their identities strongly anchored in emergency as locality, the clinician-managers intervene in the flows of meanings and resources that affect its processes in ways that require intra- and inter-organizational mobility and which are incommensurate with traditional perceptions of middle managers. In regarding the interviews as `practical authoring', we note our own spatial ambiguity as academic researchers interested in organizations other than our own and suggest that our insider-outsider positionings are reflected in the interviews' complex spatialities. We conclude that the interviewees' boundary-spanning and cross-spatial self-positionings are indicative of the hybrid roles that workers under NPM increasingly embody and are in contrast to traditional perceptions of how the provision and management of public service work is carried out. (shrink)

The problem with “Europeans want Peace” is that they do not oppose genocidal war. They have not learned the lesson of the 1930s (that timely intervention—with American support that was sadly lacking but would end up coming anyway—could have stopped Hitler and saved millions of lives in Europe), or the lesson of Auschwitz (that genocidal crimes may warrant such intervention). Nor do they see that the“European sovereign state” they refer to, i.e., Yugoslavia, was actually a disintegrating communist federation, whose constituent (...) units have the right to choose whether to re-federate or go off on their own (like Slovenia), or that…. (shrink)

Whereas most previous and later discussions of Marx’s transformation of values into prices of production have focused on his mathematical procedure, Henryk Grossman addressed the logic of its place in the structure ofCapital. On this basis he criticised underconsumptionist and disproportionality theorists of economic crises for inappropriately basing their accounts on the level of analysis of the value schemas in the second volume ofCapital. Such a criticism cannot be made of Grossman’s and Marx’s explanation of systemic crises in terms of (...) the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Grossman’s article still provides insights into Marx’s analysis of capitalism and his theory of economic crises, unsurpassed in the subsequent literature. (shrink)

In evolutionary medicine, researchers characterize some outcomes as evolutionary mismatch. Mismatch problems arise as the result of organisms living in environments to which they are poorly adapted, typically as the result of some rapid environmental change. Depression, anxiety, obesity, myopia, insomnia, breast cancer, dental problems, and numerous other negative health outcomes have all been characterized as mismatch problems. The exact nature of evolutionary mismatch itself is unclear, however. This leads to a lack of clarity about the sorts of problems that (...) evolutionary mismatch can actually explain. Resolving this challenge is important not only for the evolutionary health literature, but also because the notion of evolutionary mismatch involves central concepts in evolutionary biology: fitness, evolution in changing environments, and so forth. In this paper, I examine two characterizations of mismatch currently in the literature. I propose that we conceptualize mismatch as a relation between an optimal environment and an actual environment. Given an organism and its particular physiology, the optimal environment is the environment in which the organism’s fitness is maximized: in other words, the optimal environment is that in which the organism’s fitness is as high as it can possibly be. The actual environment is the environment in which the organism actually finds itself. To the extent that there is a discordance between the organism’s actual and optimal environments, there is an evolutionary mismatch. In the paper, I show that this account of mismatch gives us the right result when other accounts fail, and provides useful targets for investigation. (shrink)

A community's abilities to promote health and maximize its response to public health threats require fulfillment of one of the four elements of public health legal preparedness, the capacity to effectively coordinate law-based efforts across different governmental jurisdictions, as well as across multiple sectors and disciplines. Government jurisdictions can be viewed “vertically” in that response efforts may entail coordination in the application of laws across multiple levels, including local, state, tribal, and federal governments, and even with international organizations. Coordination of (...) legal responses to public health emergencies also may involve a horizontal dimension comprising numerous and diverse sectors, such as public health, public and private health care, emergency management, education, law enforcement, the judiciary, and the military.Although responses to many acute health threats can implicate multiple jurisdictions and sectors, the jurisdictional and sectoral dimensions of legal preparedness are complex and may vary substantially by the nature of a threat, its geographic and geopolitical extent, and the operational response demanded. (shrink)

Michel Serres captures the urgencies of our time; from the digital revolution to the ecological crisis to the future of the university, the crises that code the world today are addressed in an accessible, affirmative and remarkably original analysis in his thought. This volume is the first to engage with the philosophy of Michel Serres, not by writing 'about' it, but by writing 'with' it. This is done by expanding upon the urgent themes that Serres works on; by furthering his (...) materialism, his emphasis on communication and information, his focus on the senses, and the role of mathematics in thought. His famous concepts, such as the parasite, 'amis de viellesse', and the algorithm are applied in 21st century situations. With contributions from an international and interdisciplinary team of authors, these writings tackle the crises of today and affirm the contemporary relevance of Serres' philosophy. (shrink)

The concept of the postsecular is a challenge to systematic theological thought, as it points to some context where the opposition between the religious and the secular, or between theism and atheism, is weakened or even surpassed. In this perspective, the postsecular is not about the visibility of religion in the public sphere, but about the way in which we interpret ourselves in the world in order to find orientation and fulfillment. In a postsecular context, religious perspectives and secularist outlooks (...) are no longer opposed of necessity, but draw on a common religious and secular heritage. In this article, Richard Kearney’s Anatheism and Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Deconstruction of Christianity are presented as exemplifications of postsecular thought that may open up new perspectives to systematic theology. In different ways, Kearney and Nancy reflect on a transcendent dimension in our experience or in the world, which is beyond the secular. Yet they distinguish themselves due to a religious transcendence-oriented approach and a secularist world-oriented approach, which shows that the opposition between the religious and the secular may be weakened, but the demarcations between the two still have their impact. (shrink)

In this reply we claim that, contra Dreyfus, the kinds of skillful performances Dreyfus discusses _are_ representational. We explain this proposal, and then defend it against an objection to the effect that the representational notion we invoke is a weak one countenancing only some global state of an organism as a representation. According to this objection, such a representation is not a robust, projectible property of an organism, and hence will gain no explana- tory leverage in cognitive scientific explanations. We (...) argue on conceptual and empirical grounds that the representations we have identified are not weak unprojectible global states of organisms, but instead genuinely explanatory representational parts of persons. (shrink)

The Early Dialectics Within Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology Rick Sprague. with me the very categories of thought I wish to understand critically. Thus coming to awareness must be coming to know the knowing with which I began.

b>: The problem of how physical systems, such as brains, come to represent themselves as subjects in an objective world is addressed. I develop an account of the requirements for this ability that draws on and refines work in a philosophical tradition that runs from Kant through Peter Strawson to Gareth Evans. The basic idea is that the ability to represent oneself as a subject in a world whose existence is independent of oneself involves the ability to represent space, and (...) in particular, to represent oneself as one object among others in an objective spatial realm. In parallel, I provide an account of how this ability, and the mechanisms that support it, are realized neurobiologically. This aspect of the article draws on, and refines, work done in the neurobiology and psychology of egocentric and allocentric spatial representation. (shrink)

In Knowing Emotions, Furtak argues that it is only through the emotions that we can perceive meaning in life, and only by feeling emotions that we are able to recognize the value or significance of anything whatsoever. Our affective responses and dispositions therefore play a critical role in human existence, and their felt quality is intimately related to the awareness they provide.

I argue against a growing radical trend in current theoretical cognitive science that moves from the premises of embedded cognition, embodied cognition, dynamical systems theory and/or situated robotics to conclusions either to the effect that the mind is not in the brain or that cognition does not require representation, or both. I unearth the considerations at the foundation of this view: Haugeland's bandwidth-component argument to the effect that the brain is not a component in cognitive activity, and arguments inspired by (...) dynamical systems theory and situated robotics to the effect that cognitive activity does not involve representations. Both of these strands depend not only on a shift of emphasis from higher cognitive functions to things like sensorimotor processes, but also depend on a certain understanding of how sensorimotor processes are implemented - as closed-loop control systems. I describe a much more sophisticated model of sensorimotor processing that is not only more powerful and robust than simple closed-loop control, but for which there is great evidence that it is implemented in the nervous system. The is the emulation theory of representation, according to which the brain constructs inner dynamical models, or emulators, of the body and environment which are used in parallel with the body and environment to enhance motor control and perception and to provide faster feedback during motor processes, and can be run off-line to produce imagery and evaluate sensorimotor counterfactuals. I then show that the emulation framework is immune to the radical arguments, and makes apparent why the brain is a component in the cognitive activity, and exactly what the representations are in sensorimotor control. (shrink)

A number of recent attempts to bridge Husserlian phenomenology of time consciousness and contemporary tools and results from cognitive science or computational neuroscience are described and critiqued. An alternate proposal is outlined that lacks the weaknesses of existing accounts.

Steven Cahn posed a puzzle in this issue of the APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy, asking whether philosophy professors are morally obliged to reason students out of presumably irrational religious beliefs, by analogy with a hypothetical case in which a young person has been led to believe she has a magnanimous uncle who she never met but who has the wherewithal to watch over her life from afar and protect her. I responded in a nuanced manner, but basically emphasizing that (...) we have an obligation to teach students to reason, not what particular premises or conclusions to accept. (shrink)

Peter Strawson (1962) argued that the truth of determinism would not threaten our reactive attitudes, e.g., resentment, or our normative practices, e.g., punishment, though these presuppose (indeterministic) free will, because they are too entrenched. If autonomous agency presupposes an agent-self, however, the same concern faces the issue of the resilience of belief in an agent-self. If belief in agency would persist in the face of determinism, would belief in the agent-self? If not, what are the likely consequences? Buddhist practice is (...) depicted as the path from allegedly erroneous belief in the conventional agent-self to the ultimately enlightening realization of no-self, with meditation as the primary means for directly experiencing that ultimate reality. One largely unnoticed problem with this view is that analysis of Buddhist claims suggests the opposite: that ordinary people do not have an agent-self nor agency, but that the Buddha had an agent-self and agency, and that Buddhist practice increases agency, thus selfhood. Another problem is that Buddhist practice might not uncover the unreality of self, but disassemble a pre-existing self. And, among other problems, it is possible that the no-self doctrine would disempower individuals, threaten individual wellbeing, and lead to antisocial behavior. Such problems are examined here. (shrink)

The selectionist account of behavior is actually a focused discussion of operant selection. To this end, the authors essentially exclude stimuli from their analysis. This exclusion is inconsistent with the importance placed on environmental interaction in their general account. Further, this exclusion limits the generality of their account by missing important sources of stimulus-elicited behavior (e.g., classical conditioning).

This article aims to effectuate a paradigm shift in the way we view cases involving pure advantage-taking in contract formation. By ‘pure advantage-taking’ it is meant that D in some sense took ‘unfair advantage of’ a special bargaining weakness or vulnerability that D found ‘ready-made’ in P: D neither caused P’s relevant weakness or vulnerability nor otherwise was legally responsible for relieving it.Certain undue influence and unconscionable dealing cases (for example) fit this scenario perfectly, yet senior Commonwealth courts consistently assert (...) (or imply) that the doctrines of undue influence and unconscionable dealing are ordered, ostensibly exclusively, by a common law precept against interpersonal exploitation, and that judges are, when they invoke those doctrines, responding precisely to that particular concern. It is argued here, however, that the exploitation concept serves, or ought to be seen as serving, no necessary justificatory function in relation to state-assisted rescission or suppression of contracts objectively formed at common law. Instead, a principle of (what I shall call) ‘transactional neglect’ should be seen to eclipse and subsume the exploitation concept as the prevailing justification for interference with apparent contracts in pure ‘unfair advantage’ situations. The advocated shift is thus away from ‘exploitation’ towards ‘transactional neglect’—D’s corrective liability for failure to take reasonable precautions against the risk of foreseeable transactional harm to P, when P and D were, knowingly to D at the time, bargaining under conditions that make ‘exploitation’ possible. (shrink)

It is an under-appreciated fact that we have no significant understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms supporting any aspect of cognition, broadly construed. The limited understanding we do have is a combination of a multitude of enticing empirical fragments, scattered sparsely on a background of noise, and a number of vastly underdetermined theoretical frameworks. But however incomplete the answers, the questions posed by cognitive neuroscience are compelling. Indeed, it is nothing less than ourselves -- our decision making abilities, our command of (...) language, our own consciousness -- that we are seeking to understand. (shrink)