The distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness is a subject of intensive debate. According to one view, visual experience overflows the capacity of the attentional and working memory system: We see more than we can report. According to the opposed view, this perceived richness is an illusion—we are aware only of information that we can subsequently report. This debate remains unresolved because of the inevitable reliance on report, which is limited in capacity. To bypass this limitation, this study utilized (...) color diversity—a unique summary statistic—which is sensitive to detailed visual information. Participants were shown a Sperling-like array of colored letters, one row of which was precued. After reporting a letter from the cued row, participants estimated the color diversity of the noncued rows. Results showed that people could estimate the color diversity of the noncued array without a cost to letter report, which suggests that color diversity is registered automatically, outside focal attention, and without consuming additional working memory resources. (shrink)

When attempting to generalize recursion theory to admissible ordinals, it may seem as if all classical priority constructions can be lifted to any admissible ordinal satisfying a sufficiently strong fragment of the replacement scheme. We show, however, that this is not always the case. In fact, there are some constructions which make an essential use of the notion of finiteness which cannot be replaced by the generalized notion of $\alpha$-finiteness. As examples we discuss bothcodings of models of arithmetic into the (...) recursively enumerable degrees, and non-distributive lattice embeddings into these degrees. We show that if an admissible ordinal $\alpha$ is effectively close to $\omega$ (where this closeness can be measured by size or by cofinality) then such constructions maybe performed in the $\alpha$-r.e. degrees, but otherwise they fail. The results of these constructions can be expressed in the first-order language of partially ordered sets, and so these results also show that there are natu. (shrink)

Chomsky proposes a reformulation of the theory of transformational generative grammar that takes recent developments in the descriptive analysis of particular ...

Noam Chomsky's book on syntactic structures is a serious attempts on the part of a linguist to construct within the tradition of scientific theory-construction ...

In Rules and Representations, first published in 1980, Noam Chomsky lays out many of the concepts that have made his approach to linguistics and human cognition so instrumental to our understanding of language.Chomsky arrives at his well-known position that there is a universal grammar, structured in the human mind and common to all human languages. Based on Chomsky's 1978 Woodbridge Lectures, this edition contains revised versions of the lectures and two new essays.

From a theoretical perspective, most discussions of statistical learning have focused on the possible “statistical” properties that are the object of learning. Much less attention has been given to defining what “learning” is in the context of “statistical learning.” One major difficulty is that SL research has been monitoring participants’ performance in laboratory settings with a strikingly narrow set of tasks, where learning is typically assessed offline, through a set of two-alternative-forced-choice questions, which follow a brief visual or auditory familiarization (...) stream. Is that all there is to characterizing SL abilities? Here we adopt a novel perspective for investigating the processing of regularities in the visual modality. By tracking online performance in a self-paced SL paradigm, we focus on the trajectory of learning. In a set of three experiments we show that this paradigm provides a reliable and valid signature of SL performance, and it offers important insights for understanding how statistical regularities are perceived and assimilated in the visual modality. This demonstrates the promise of integrating different operational measures to our theory of SL. (shrink)

The book from which these sections are excerpted is concerned with the prospects for assimilating the study of human intelligence and its products to the natural sciences through the investigation of cognitive structures, understood as systems of rules and representations that can be regarded as These mental structui′es serve as the vehicles for the exercise of various capacities. They develop in the mind on the basis of an innate endowment that permits the growth of rich and highly articulated structures along (...) an intrinsically determined course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of experience, which fixes parameters in an intricate system of predetermined form. It is argued that the mind is modular in character, with a diversity of cognitive structures, each with its specific properties arid principles. Knowledge of language, of the behavior of objects, and much else crucially involves these mental structures, and is thus not characterizable in terms of capacities, dispositions, or practical abilities, nor is it necessarily grounded in experience in the standard sense of this term. (shrink)

The book from which these sections are excerpted is concerned with the prospects for assimilating the study of human intelligence and its products to the natural sciences through the investigation of cognitive structures, understood as systems of rules and representations that can be regarded as “mental organs.” These mental structui′es serve as the vehicles for the exercise of various capacities. They develop in the mind on the basis of an innate endowment that permits the growth of rich and highly articulated (...) structures along an intrinsically determined course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of experience, which fixes parameters in an intricate system of predetermined form. It is argued that the mind is modular in character, with a diversity of cognitive structures, each with its specific properties arid principles. Knowledge of language, of the behavior of objects, and much else crucially involves these mental structures, and is thus not characterizable in terms of capacities, dispositions, or practical abilities, nor is it necessarily grounded in experience in the standard sense of this term.Various types of knowledge and modes of knowledge acquisition are discussed in these terms. Some of the properties of the language faculty are investigated. The basic cognitive relation is “knowing a grammar”; knowledge of language is derivative and, correspondingly, raises further problems. Language as commonly understood is not a unitary phenomenon but involves a number of interacting systems: the “computational” system of grammar, which provides the representations of sound and meaning that permit a rich range of expressive potential, is distinct from a conceptual system with its own properties; knowledge of language must be distinguished from knowledge of how to use a language; and the various systems that enter into the knowledge and use of language must be further analyzed into their specific subcomponents. (shrink)

IntroductionAs part of a unifying theory of autism, Ben Shalom (2009) proposed that while procedural, perceptual and semantic memory functions are intact in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the more integrative level of episodic memory is impaired. According to Ben Shalom, this reduced integration may be due to the reduced function of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which may also explain the reduced integration found in motor, sensory-perceptual and emotional processes in ASD. The present review examines this hypothesis, by focusing on (...) evidence regarding autobiographical memory (AM) episodes in ASD – arguably the highest form of memory integration processes. Most research on memory in ASD thus far has focused on memory for experimentally-presented stimuli (Lind, 2010;Boucher et al., 2012). The present paper builds on this literature to examine the rich evidence that has recently accumulated from in-depth, systematic studies of autobiographical memory in ASD – memories of personally-related events that are naturalistically accumulated over a person’s lifetime. Of note, research on AM is limited in its focus on memories that cannot be as readily verified (but see Bruck et al., 2007), and in its reliance on high-functioning verbal individuals. Nonetheless, studies of AM provide us with an unparalleled perspective on the naturalistic process of memory integration in ASD. Specifically, this review aims to determine how well memory episodes are integrated in ASD; which elem... (shrink)

Andrew Chignell and Omri Boehm have recently argued that Kant’s pre-Critical proof for the existence of God entails a Spinozistic conception of God and hence substance monism. The basis for this reading is the assumption common in the literature that God grounds possibilities by exemplifying them. In this article I take issue with this assumption and argue for an alternative Leibnizian reading, according to which possibilities are grounded in essences united in God’s mind (later also described as Platonic ideas intuited (...) by God). I show that this view about the distinction between God’s cognition of essences as the ground of possibility and the actual world is not only explicitly stated by Kant, but is also consistent with his metaphysical picture of teleology in nature and causality during the pre-Critical period. Finally, I suggest that the distinction between the conceptual order of essences embodied in the idea of God and the order of the objects of experience plays a role in the transition into the Critical system, where it is transformed into the distinction between the intelligible and the sensible worlds. (shrink)

In the ‘Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic’ of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant contends that the idea of God has a positive regulative role in the systematization of empirical knowledge. But why is this regulative role assigned to this specific idea? Kant’s account is rather opaque and this question has also not received much attention in the literature. In this paper I argue that an adequate understanding of the regulative role of the idea of God depends on the specific (...) metaphysical content Kant attributes to it in the Critique and other writings. I show that neither a heuristic principle of conceptual systematicity, nor conceiving God as a hypothesis of an intelligent designer, can satisfy the demands of reason to make the unity and necessity of the laws of nature intelligible. Regarding the positive account about the metaphysical content of the idea of God, I support my argument by referring to Kant’s pre-critical discussion of the usefulness of the conception of God for the project of science, and by expounding Kant’s critical account of the necessity of the laws of nature. Thus my account sheds light on the continuity of Kant’s conception of God and his appropriation of his own rationalistic metaphysics. (shrink)

All new, unpublished interviews with world-renowned dissident Noam Chomsky.

In his lectures on Logic and Metaphysics, Kant distinguishes between logical and real essences. While the former is related to concepts and is knowable, the latter is related to things and is unknowable. In this paper, I argue that the unknowability is explained by the modal characteristic of real essences as a necessitating ground on which a priori knowledge is impossible. I also show how this claim is related to the unknowable necessity of particular laws of nature. Since laws of (...) nature are conceived as grounded in real essences, the unknowability of the latter is equivalent to Kant's other claim that there can be no knowledge of the necessity of particular laws of nature. Necessity can only be known a priori, and therefore, the necessity of particular laws is only assumed and conceived as grounded in something unknowable, a real essence. This conclusion will allow me to attribute to Kant a position I label as “regulative essentialism”, meaning that real essences have an indispensable role in accordance with the rational interest to explain nature as a system of laws and natural kinds, combined with an epistemic humility about the correspondence of our empirical concepts to real essences. (shrink)

This report examines the issue of restraining prisoners undergoing medical treatment from several angles: Cases illustrating the situation regarding shackling since Physicians for Human Rights-Israel's establishment; the issues and ramification raised by this phenomenon, both in terms of human rights and medical ethics, as well as from the governmental point of view, and the PHR-Israel point of view.

We show that the class of strongly jump-traceable c.e. sets can be characterised as those which have sufficiently slow enumerations so they obey a class of well-behaved cost functions, called benign. This characterisation implies the containment of the class of strongly jump-traceable c.e. Turing degrees in a number of lowness classes, in particular the classes of the degrees which lie below incomplete random degrees, indeed all LR-hard random degrees, and all ω-c.e. random degrees. The last result implies recent results of (...) Diamondstone's and Ng's regarding cupping with superlow c.e. degrees and thus gives a use of algorithmic randomness in the study of the c.e. Turing degrees. (shrink)

We prove that degrees that are low for Kurtz randomness cannot be diagonally non-recursive. Together with the work of Stephan and Yu [16], this proves that they coincide with the hyperimmune-free non-DNR degrees, which are also exactly the degrees that are low for weak 1-genericity. We also consider Low(M, Kurtz), the class of degrees a such that every element of M is a-Kurtz random. These are characterised when M is the class of Martin-Löf random, computably random, or Schnorr random reals. (...) We show that Low(ML, Kurtz) coincides with the non-DNR degrees, while both Low(CR, Kurtz) and Low(Schnorr, Kurtz) are exactly the non-high, non-DNR degrees. (shrink)

This book investigates law's interaction with practical reasons. What difference can legal requirements—e.g. traffic rules, tax laws, or work safety regulations—make to normative reasons relevant to our action? Do they give reasons for action that should be weighed among all other reasons? Or can they, instead, exclude and take the place of some other reasons? The book critically examines some of the existing answers and puts forward an alternative understanding of law's interaction with practical reasons. -/- At the outset, two (...) competing positions are pitted against each other: Joseph Raz's view that (legitimate) legal authorities have pre-emptive force, namely that they give reasons for action that exclude some other reasons; and an antithesis, according to which law-making institutions (even those that meet prerequisites of legitimacy) can at most provide us with reasons that compete in weight with opposing reasons for action. These two positions are examined from several perspectives, such as justified disobedience cases, law's conduct-guiding function in contexts of bounded rationality, and the phenomenology associated with authority. -/- It is found that, although each of the above positions offers insight into the conundrum at hand, both suffer from significant flaws. These observations form the basis on which an alternative position is put forward and defended. According to this position, the existence of a reasonably just and well-functioning legal system constitutes a reason that fits neither into a model of ordinary reasons for action nor into a pre-emptive paradigm—it constitutes a reason to adopt an (overridable) disposition that inclines its possessor towards compliance with the system's requirements. (shrink)

Après l'exploration des figures kierkegaardiennes de la paternité (dans un précédent ouvrage publié aux Editions du Cerf en 1999), se poursuit ici notre enquête sur le vaste réseau de correspondances qui relient, chez le penseur de l'existence, la doctrine et la vie. Face à l'écrasante présence paternelle, un énigmatique silence entoure, dans tous ses écrits, la figure de la mère. L'énigme est d'autant plus troublante qu'il dépeint d'ordinaire le christianisme comme une religion exclusive du Père, dont se trouve rejetée toute (...) symbolique féminine. Bannie du religieux, la femme est cependant loin d'être absente du texte de Kierkegaard. Tout se passe au contraire comme si elle y tenait, à travers le drame de la rupture des fiançailles, un rôle primordial, comme si, entièrement issue de ce drame, l'œuvre s'édifiait à la fois depuis un certain rapport au féminin (production esthétique) et contre lui (production religieuse). Ainsi se dessinent deux séries de scènes qui s'opposent comme l'esthétique et le religieux : d'un côté, scènes du désir, où le héros espère être admis dans l'intimité du féminin, une fois écarté le rival paternel ; de l'autre, scènes du renoncement, où il consent au contraire à s'effacer devant ce rival. Par là s'éclairent plusieurs des concepts clés de la pensée du Danois - la répétition, la rupture avec l'immanence, le message indirect, la pseudonymie... -, mais aussi le sens profond de sa polémique ultime avec l'Eglise : son refus de plus en plus marqué de l'adoucissement que le féminin peut apporter à la rigueur de l'idéal, sa dénonciation d'un christianisme qui, oublieux de sa vérité ou virilité initiale, apparaît de plus en plus efféminé, de plus en plus trahi par la scandaleuse connivence du prêtre et de la (sage) femme. Par là se laissent également mieux reconnaître les obscurs enjeux du Tremblement de terre, le fameux drame du père qui, aperçu dans sa secrète déchéance, se révèle à son tour hanté par l'obsédante figure du féminin. (shrink)

This chapter charts a metamorphosis in Djarin's ethical decision‐making across the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. Philosophy and psychology have centered on moral reasoning and developmental processes based on logic, reasoning, and a primary concern with oneself, sometimes tempered by respect for others. Female development typically orients women toward an “ethics of care”: People have responsibilities toward others as well as themselves. The Mandalorian is the story of one man's moral overhaul toward care. Early Mando's moral decisions are based (...) on hierarchy, status, rules, fairness, maximizing benefit, and values. The shift in Mando's decision‐making approach occurred gradually, beginning with the impact of a rampaging blurrg. The hypothetical scenario about the pharmacy illuminates something crucial for understanding Djarin's gradual adoption of ethics of care: often, our choice to frame an ethical dilemma through one perspective or another winds up determining our moral decision. (shrink)

A unique solution is proposed to the problem of how thermodynamic processes between thermodynamic systems at relative rest “appear” to a moving observer. Assuming only transformations for entropy, pressure, and volume and the invariance of the “fundamental thermodynamic equation,” one can derive transformations for (thermodynamic) energy and temperature. The invariance of the first and second laws entails transformations for work and heat. All thermodynamic relations become Lorentz-invariant. The transformations thus derived are in principle equivalent to those of Einstein and Planck, (...) except that our expressions for energy and work do not include the mass motion energy. This results in a simpler formulation and endows our transformations (especially that of temperature) with a straightforward physical interpretation. (shrink)