Awareness is a personal experience, which is only accessible to the rest of world through interpretation. We set out to identify a neural correlate of visual awareness, using brief subliminal and supraliminal verbal stimuli while measuring cerebral blood flow distribution with H215O PET. Awareness of visual verbal stimuli differentially activated medial parietal association cortex (precuneus), which is a polymodal sensory cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is thought to be primarily executive. Our results suggest participation of these higher order perceptual (...) and executive cortical structures in visual verbal awareness. (shrink)

I. Questions to the French “Model” in the Postsecular Condition There are a number of compelling reasons why we—in our “ postsecular societies”1—should be paying closer attention to that debate which has been raging in France in recent decades, namely, that concerning the separation of “religion” and “politics.” For one, during the past decade, some Europeans—and especially my Dutch compatriots—have been looking with undisguised jealousy at the strict simplicity and transparency of the French “model” of secular government, the laïcité, one (...) that seems to guarantee a neat and orderly separation of religion and politics. Yet in France…. (shrink)

Emotional facial expressions can inform researchers about an individual's emotional state. Recent technological advances open up new avenues to automatic Facial Expression Recognition (FER). Based on machine learning, such technology can tremendously increase the amount of processed data. FER is now easily accessible and has been validated for the classification of standardized prototypical facial expressions. However, applicability to more naturalistic facial expressions still remains uncertain. Hence, we test and compare performance of three different FER systems (Azure Face API, Microsoft; Face++, (...) Megvii Technology; FaceReader, Noldus Information Technology) with human emotion recognition (A) for standardized posed facial expressions (from prototypical inventories) and (B) for non-standardized acted facial expressions (extracted from emotional movie scenes). For the standardized images, all three systems classify basic emotions accurately (FaceReader is most accurate) and they are mostly on par with human raters. For the non-standardized stimuli, performance drops remarkably for all three systems, but Azure still performs similarly to humans. In addition, all systems and humans alike tend to misclassify some of the non-standardized emotional facial expressions as neutral. In sum, emotion recognition by automated facial expression recognition can be an attractive alternative to human emotion recognition for standardized and non-standardized emotional facial expressions. However, we also found limitations in accuracy for specific facial expressions; clearly there is need for thorough empirical evaluation to guide future developments in computer vision of emotional facial expressions. (shrink)

Much else was done by Rose and Sullivan in their possibly conclusive attempt to restore sense to the rebus passage, but the reading super scorpionem locustam was Gaselee's, as Rose and Sullivan clearly acknowledge. This seems unluckily to have escaped B. Baldwin, otherwise he would have noticed that Gaselee also fancied in his correction an allusion to the poisoner Locusta. For those who may have difficulty in obtaining Gaselee's collotype reproduction, I quote the relevant part: ‘But what have lobsters to (...) do with poisoners? Is it permissible to see a more or less open reference to Locusta, the queen of all poisoners? If so, we have here another little piece of evidence which will help us to date the Satyricon.’. (shrink)

It is argued that the way towards understanding the experiments with visible light which purport to exhibit nonlocality lies in a return to the wave theory of light. A connection is also indicated between the present-day photon description and the pre-wave-theory corpuscular description, and hence we see that, essentially, the problem of nonlocality in physics was solved nearly two centuries ago by Young and Fresnel.

This book comes strongly to the defence of educational theory and shows that it has a structure and integrity of its own. The author argues that the validity of educational theory may best be judged in terms of the various assumptions made in it. His argument is illustrated by a review and critique of some particularly influential theories of education: those of Plato, Rousseau, James Mill and John Dewey. He stresses the need for an on-going, contemporary, general theory of education (...) and examines the ways in which the disciplines of psychology, sociology and philosophy can contribute to a general theory of this kind. (shrink)

Mr. Agar has collected his adversaria on the Odyssey which have been enjoying cold storage these many years in the blue depths of the Journal of Philology, and increased them by about three-quarters. He has produced a very interesting and valuable book, the most important contribution to the linguistic history of the Homeric text that has been made for a long time. Mr. Agar holds that the language of Homer represents the original ‘Achaean’ speech, and that its abnormalities in vocabulary, (...) word-formation and metre are the result of natural unforced processes of transmission. This position, held by so well equipped and so trenchant an investigator as Mr. Agar, is reassuring. It does not involve any of the mythological factors of the Higher or the Lower Criticism still recommended among us by Mr. Leaf, Father Browne and Mr. Verrall–Pisistratus, Onomacritus, the Ionian conquest of Smyrna, the Thessalian Iliad, the original Achilleis,–and disagrees with Professor Murray's sinister diagnosis clear away the Attic surface and there rises beneath another surface with another set of corruptions, where Ionic rhapsodes have introduced just the same elements of confusion into an Aeolic or at least a pre-Ionic language. The confusion of tongues is deep down in the heart of the Homeric, dialect, and no surgery in the world can cut beneath it’ . The last ten years’ work in Comparative Philology has made it clearer and clearer that the rule-of-thumb for distinguishing the historical non-Dorian dialects does not apply to the heroic and post-heroic age, and that the terms ‘Aeolic’ and ‘Ionic’ in their usual sense should disappear from the history of Homer. The Homeric tongue derives directly from the pre-colonial language of Greece wherein two elements are discernible, the original Ionian and the Achaean or North-Greek which overlaid it. (shrink)

The world appears to conscious creatures in terms of experienced sensory qualities, but science doesn't find sensory experience in that world, only physical objects and properties. I argue that the failure to locate consciousness in the world is a function of our necessarily representational relation to reality as knowers: we won't discover the terms in which reality is represented by us in the world as it appears in those terms. Qualia -- arguably a type of representational content -- will therefore (...) not be found in the physical world as characterized in experience or science. Instead, consciousness constitutes a subjective, representational reality for cognitive systems such as ourselves, and the physical world is a represented objective reality. I suggest that naturalistic approaches to explaining consciousness should acknowledge the non-objectivity of experience, and be constrained by evidence that consciousness accompanies certain sorts of behaviour-controlling representational functions carried out by complex, physically instantiated mind-systems. I evaluate a variety of current hypotheses about consciousness, and suggest that a mature science of representation may help explain why, perhaps as matter of representational necessity, experience arises as a natural but not objectively discoverable phenomenon. (shrink)

In Appearance and Reality Bradley has much to say about relations. This is to be found particularly in Chapter 3 and Appendix B, but the whole of the book is on this subject in one way or another. His views aroused immediate opposition and Bertrand Russell, among others, strongly attacked the “doctrine of internal relations,” a phrase which, be it noted, does not occur in Chapter 3 at all and makes its appearance only as part of the controversy. Russell argued (...) that some relations at least are purely external, and that if one does not grant this one is left with no option but to reject pluralism, embrace monism, and regard all truths as analytic. With characteristic honesty Russell admitted that it was aversion to these consequences which stimulated his desire to rebut opinions of the kind that Bradley held. It is the thesis of this essay that while Bradley had something important to say about the “doctrine,” he made a more important point about relations and qualities which has been overlaid by the controversy about “internal relations,” and that this point is an extremely relevant one in the context of much modern philosophizing. I will therefore attempt first of all to draw out Bradley’s most important point about relations and qualities; secondly to consider what connection this has with the “internal relations” controversy; and thirdly to decide whether Russell was right in supposing what he did about pluralism, monism, and analytic truths. (shrink)

A new edition of the Homeric Hymns is in preparation by Mr. W. R. Halliday, Principal of King's College, London, and myself. In the meantime there are some passages in the Hymn to Hermes which call for longer treatment than would be natural in an edition. Some of these notes are suggested by the substantial and valuable edition of Professor L. Radermacher.

For half a century the idea of rational thought has been challenged by discoveries that call into question some of its foundations. How we actually think seems to be at odds with descriptive and prescriptive models that once held sway in the development of modern science and scholarship. One response to these challenges has been a loss of nerve. Another—the one on display in Rationality: Contexts and Constraints—is an active attempt to revise those models, so as to enhance their compatibility (...) with new discoveries, in a maximally coherent and inclusive way. Rationality: Contexts and Constraints is an inter-disciplinary reappraisal of the nature of rationality. In method it is pluralistic, drawing upon the analytic approaches of philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and more. These methods guide exploration of the intersection between hoary scholarship and cutting-edge philosophical or scientific research. In this way, Rationality: Contexts and Constraints contributes to development of a suitably revised, comprehensive understanding of rationality, one that befits the 21st century, one that is adequately informed by recent investigations of science, pathology, non-human thought, emotion, and even enigmatic Chinese texts that might previously have seemed to be expressions of irrationalism. • Addresses recent challenges and Identifies a direction for future research on rationality • Investigates the relationship between rationality and mental disorders such as delusion and depression • Assesses reasoning in artificial intelligence and nonhuman animals • Reflects on ancient Chinese Philosophy and possible cultural differences in human psychology • Employs philosophical reflection along with linguistic, probabilistic, and logical techniques -/- . (shrink)

The Database on Ethics Related Legislation and Guidelines was launched in March 2007 as the fourth database of the UNESCO Global Ethics Observatory system of databases in ethics of science and technology. The database offers a collection of legal instruments searchable by region, country, bioethical themes, legal categories and applicability to specific articles of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and International Declaration on Human Genetic Data. This paper discusses the background and rationale for the database and (...) its role as a consultative and comparative resource hub for the study of ethics related legal instruments across the world, with the purpose of informing and inspiring relevant stakeholders on the implementation of the principles contained within the UNESCO declarations on bioethics. (shrink)

It is commonly held that there is no place for the 'now’ in physics, and also that the passing of time is something subjective, having to do with the way reality is experienced but not with the way reality is. Indeed, the majority of modern theoretical physicists and philosophers of physics contend that the passing of time is incompatible with modern physical theory, and excluded in a fundamental description of physical reality. This book provides a forceful rebuttal of such claims. (...) In successive chapters the author explains the historical precedents of the modern opposition to time flow, giving careful expositions of matters relevant to becoming in classical physics, the special and general theories of relativity, and quantum theory, without presupposing prior expertise in these subjects. Analysing the arguments of thinkers ranging from Aristotle, Russell, and Bergson to the proponents of quantum gravity, he contends that the passage of time, understood as a local becoming of events out of those in their past at varying rates, is not only compatible with the theories of modern physics, but implicit in them. (shrink)

The Homeridae bear the name of Homer, and should point a path by which we may climb to his personality. In antiquity they were known to be a γένος, a constituted family-corporation, though the accounts of the functions they fulfilled are scanty. Modern criticism, with its usual fluctuation, began by taking them at their apparent value; then adopted from a Roman grammarian a rationalistic explanation of them; invented other similar rationalistic explanations; and finally my lamented colleague Mr. Binning Monro robbed (...) them of all significance by treating the word as an adjective, an equivalent of Ὁμηρικοí Men who are called Sons of Homer should not be lightly dismissed, and it may be worth while to go over the familiar evidence once more in the hope that this obvious avenue to Homer may not turn out a blind alley. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to elucidate the senses in which this place-name is used in Homer; to assign meanings to the Homeric terms Achaean, Iason and Pelasgic Arge, to ‘Argive’ as a synonym for Greek, and to establish the nature of the Argos over which Agamemnon ruled. I take the Homeric poems as the unity which they profess to be, and which they must be for historical enquiry. Whatever liberties Homer took with his materials it is plain he was (...) careful to respect events. The effort to distinguish between old and new in the Iliad and Odyssey has caused needless and fruitless encumbrance to the official historians, such as Busolt; the Unitarian position has given us the remarkable results of Professor Myres' . The consistency of Mr. Myres' account, and I venture to hope of mine, allows a fresh inference back to the homogeneity of the poems which are their source. (shrink)