A critical discussion is provided of three central assumptions underlying Nunez's approach to modeling cortical activity. A plea is made for neurophysiologically realistic models involving nonlinearities, multiple time scales, and stochasticity.

Based on concepts of self-organization, we interpret apparent motion as the result of a so-called non-equilibrium phase transition of the perceptual system with the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) acting as a control parameter. Accordingly, we predict a significantly increasing variance of the quality index of apparent motion close to critical SOAs. [Shepard].

Muscle synergies reflect the presence of a common neural input to multiple muscles. Steering small sets of synergies is commonly believed to simplify the control of complex motor tasks like walking and running. When these locomotor patterns emerge, it is likely that synergies emerge as well. We hence hypothesized that in children learning to run the number of accompanying synergies increases and that some of the synergies’ activities display a temporal shift related to a reduced stance phase as observed in (...) adults. We investigated the development of locomotion in 23 children aged 2–9 years of age and compared them with seven young adults. Muscle activity of 15 bilateral leg, trunk, and arm muscles, ground reaction forces, and kinematics were recorded during comfortable treadmill walking and running, followed by a muscle synergy analysis. We found that toddlers and preschoolers utilize a “walk-run strategy” when learning to run: they managed the fastest speeds on the treadmill by combining double support and flight phases. In particular the activity duration of the medial gastrocnemius muscle was weakly correlated with age. The number of synergies across groups and conditions needed to cover sufficient data variation ranged between four and eight. The number of synergies tended to be smaller in toddlers than it did in preschoolers and school-age children but the adults had the lowest number for both conditions. Against our expectations, the age groups did not differ significantly in the timing or duration of synergies. We believe that the increase in the number of muscle synergies in older children relates to motor learning and exploration. The ability to run with a FP is clearly associated with an increase in the number of muscle synergies. (shrink)

A proof of ‘correctness’ for a mathematical algorithm cannot be relevant to executions of a program based on that algorithm because both the algorithm and the proof are based on assumptions that do not hold for computations carried out by real-world computers. Thus, proving the ‘correctness’ of an algorithm cannot establish the trustworthiness of programs based on that algorithm. Despite the (deceptive) sameness of the notations used to represent them, the transformation of an algorithm into an executable program is a (...) wrenching metamorphosis that changes a mathematical abstraction into a prescription for concrete actions to be taken by real computers. Therefore, it is verification of program executions (processes) that is needed, not of program texts that are merely the scripts for those processes. In this view, verification is the empirical investigation of: (a) the behavior that programs invoke in a computer system and (b) the larger context in which that behavior occurs. Here, deduction can play no more, and no less, a role than it does in the empirical sciences. (shrink)

This article contributes to Construction Grammar, historical linguistics, and Russian linguistics through an in-depth corpus study of predicate agreement in constructions with quantified subjects. Statistical analysis of approximately 39,000 corpus examples indicates that these constructions constitute a network of constructions (“allostructions”) with various preferences for singular or plural agreement. Factors pull in different directions, and we observe a relatively stable situation in the face of variation. We present an analysis of a multidimensional network of allostructions in Russian, thus contributing to (...) our understanding of allostructional relationships in Construction Grammar. With regard to historical linguistics, language stability is an understudied field. We illustrate an interplay of divergent factors that apparently resists language change. The syntax of numerals and other quantifiers represents a notoriously complex phenomenon of the Russian language. Our study sheds new light on the contributions of factors that favor singular or plural agreement in sentences with quantified subjects. (shrink)

This work offers a new theory of what it means to be a legal person and suggests that it is best understood as a cluster property. The book explores the origins of legal personhood, the issues afflicting a traditional understanding of the concept, and the numerous debates surrounding the topic.

The findings of the Archbishop's Council in their 2004 report, to the effect that traditional forms of church in Britain are under threat because of changing cultural patterns, emphasise the need to re-think church for our contemporary contexts. The 'Fresh Expressions of church' movement is one such initiative identified and approved of by the Archbishop's Council. This article reports on research undertaken in a practical theological interpretation of The Filling Station, a Christian ministry that has grown significantly in its 10-year (...) history and was formed as a missional endeavour in recognition of declining church attendance in traditional churches in Britain. This work explores whether The Filling Station is a Fresh Expression of church and whether it meets the values of authentic missional churches. In examining whether The Filling Station ought to be considered for import into appropriate local congregational contexts, it enquires whether it satisfactorily addresses prevailing social trends affecting churches, including consumerism and the need for identity. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of (...) the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

In this short paper I propose that the sensorimotor approach to perception is a tree yielding two distinct theoretical fruits. One fruit is sensorimotor reductionism. The other is sensorimotor integrationism. In this paper I try to explain what makes these fruits different.

Open Compositionality: Towards a Methodology of Language offers a fresh view into human languages as supermodular, highly interactive cognitive capacities allowing for human unique thought and communication. It is a novel account of semantics as decision-making in tandem with the cognition first methodology.

An entertaining history of the idea of nothing - including absences, omissions, and shadows - from the Ancient Greeks through the 20th century How can nothing cause something? The absence of something might seem to indicate a null or a void, an emptiness as ineffectual as a shadow. In fact, 'nothing' is one of the most powerful ideas the human mind has ever conceived. This short and entertaining book by Roy Sorensen is a lively tour of the history and philosophy (...) of nothing, explaining how various thinkers throughout history have conceived and grappled with the mysterious power of absence -- and how these ideas about shadows, gaps, and holes have in turned played a very positive role in the development of some of humankind's most important ideas. Filled with Sorensen's characteristically entertaining mix of anecdotes, puzzles, curiosities, and philosophical speculation, the book is ordered chronologically, starting with the Taoists, the Buddhists, and the ancient Greeks, moving forward to the middle ages and the early modern period, then up to the existentialists and present day philosophy. The result is a diverting tour through the history of human thought as seen from a novel and unusual perspective. (shrink)

Howard Van Till has long been a critic of interventionist conceptions of God's creative activity, and he places the “intelligent design” position in that category. Yet certain lines of reasoning in Van Till's own work can best be understood as arguing for design. It is likely that this reasoning will eventually bring Van Till into conflict with an increasingly naturalistic scientific community.

Let G be a group definable in an o-minimal structure M. In this paper we show: Theorem. If G is a two-dimensional definably connected nonabelian group, then G is centerless and G is isomorphic to R+R*>0, for some real closed field R. Theorem. If G is a three-dimensional nonsolvable, centerless, definably connected group, then either G SO3 or G PSL2, for some real closed field R.

De Sousa's comprehensive two-part review of a diversity of contemporary approaches to the study of consciousness is highly welcome. He makes us aware of a proliferation of theoretical and empirical approaches targeting a common theme, but diverging in many ways. He skilfully accomplishes a classification of kinds of approach, identification of the main representatives, their contributions, and respective limitations. However, he does not show how the desired integration could be accomplished. Besides summarising De Sousa's efficient analytical work, I make critical (...) comments and briefly report my contribution for the integration project. (shrink)

The large number of xenophobic attacks that broke out in different places in South Africa during 2008 was still continuing unabated 10 years later. We were stressed to come to terms with the reality that this occurred in a country that is globally considered to be an example of reconciliation. It is clear that we were confronted by the politics of fear, which were manifested in xenophobia and all the other -isms. In this article, the primary causes of these xenophobic (...) outbreaks were scrutinised and placed within the wider framework of a culture of fear. The central research question is: Why are we still struggling with this phenomenon more than a decade after it first appeared on South African soil? In-depth analysis will be performed on what is lying behind the culture of fear underlying these acts of violence. After exploring some of the factors related to a culture of fear by making use of a sociological frame, the author moved on to answer a second question: How do we, as preachers, researchers and practical theologians, respond in a theological way to the challenges posed by a xenophobic culture in our preaching activities? Finally, the impact of violence and fear on the practice of preaching within a Christian context was discussed. (shrink)

Since the end of apartheid and the advent of democratic elections, South Africa has made great strides, but we still continue, at times, to be unable to practise sawubona. On one level, this is not surprising given our history of separateness. The article asks whether fresh expressions of church, such as the community supper at St Peters in Mowbray, Cape Town, indeed create a space for genuinely ‘seeing’ each other and practicing being human together. The article also explores some of (...) the problems inherent in ethnographic work amongst the poor and the vulnerable by asking whether some types of ethnographic work actually practice a form of epistemic violence and muses upon the idea of the postcolonial gaze and ‘othering’ in ethnography in contexts of poverty in the global South. Can ethnography, in some cases, be a form of academic pornography? (shrink)

Exploring history pertinent to evolutionary developmental biology (hereafter, Evo-devo) is an exciting prospect given its current status as a cutting-edge field of research. The first and obvious question concerns where to begin searching for materials and sources. Since this new discipline adopts a moniker that intentionally juxtaposes ‘evolution’ and development’, individuals, disciplines, and institutional contexts relevant to the history of evolutionary studies and investigations of ontogeny prompt themselves. Each of these topics has received attention from historians and thus there is (...) both primary and secondary material from which to draw. For example, many historians have documented the historical trajectories of genetics and embryology, their split, and various relations (or lack thereof), especially in the first three decades of the 20th century. (shrink)

Argues against several influential a priori arguments for individualism in the philosophy of mind that were influential in the 1980s.

Book Information A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition. By John Rawls. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 1999. Pp. xxii + 538. Hardback, £25.00. Paperback, £12.99.