Posterior parietal cortex has traditionally been considered to be a sensory association area in which higher-order processing and intermodal integration of incoming sensory information occurs. In this paper, evidence from clinical reports and from lesion and behavioral-electrophysiological experiments using monkeys is reviewed and discussed in relation to the overall functional organization of posterior parietal association cortex, and particularly with respect to a proposed posterior parietal mechanism concerned with the initiation and control of certain classes of eye and limb movements. Preliminary (...) data from studies of the effects of posterior parietal lesions on oculomotor control in monkeys are reported.The behavioral effects of lesions of posterior parietal cortex in monkeys have been found to be similar to those which follow analogous damage of the minor hemisphere in humans, while behavioral-electrophysiological experiments have disclosed classes of neurons in this area which have functional properties closely related to the behavioral acts that are disrupted by lesions of the area. On the basis of current data from these areas of study, it is proposed that the sensory association model of posterior parietal function is inadequate to account for the complexities of the present evidence. Instead, it now appears that many diverse neural mechanisms are locatedin partin parietal cortex, that some of these mechanisms are involved in sensory processing and perceptual functions, but that others participate in motor control, and that still others are involved in attentional, motivational, or emotional processes. It is further proposed that the elementary units of these various neural mechanisms are distributed within posterior parietal cortex according to the columnar hypothesis of Mountcastle. (shrink)

A timely and accessible synthesis of the strengths, weaknesses and reality of science through the eyes of a practicing scientist.

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) identifies consciousness with having a maximum amount of integrated information. But a thing’s having the maximum amount of anything cannot be intrinsic to it, for that depends on how that thing compares to certain other things. IIT’s consciousness, then, is not intrinsic. A mereological argument elaborates this consequence: IIT implies that one physical system can be conscious while a physical duplicate of it is not conscious. Thus, by a common and reasonable conception of intrinsicality, IIT’s consciousness (...) is not intrinsic. It is then argued that to avoid the implication that consciousness is not intrinsic, IIT must abandon its Exclusion Postulate, which prohibits overlapping conscious systems. Indeed, theories of consciousness that attribute consciousness to physical systems, should embrace the view that some conscious systems overlap. A discussion of the admittedly counterintuitive nature of this solution, along with some medical and neuroscientific realities that would seem to support it, is included. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ and _Philosophical Investigations_ are among the most influential philosophical books of the twentieth century, and also among the most perplexing. Wittgenstein warned again and again that he was not and would not be understood. Moreover, Wittgenstein's work seems to have little relevance to the way philosophy is done today. In _Wittgenstein in Exile_, James Klagge proposes a new way of looking at Wittgenstein -- as an exile -- that helps make sense of this. Wittgenstein's exile (...) was not, despite his wanderings from Vienna to Cambridge to Norway to Ireland, strictly geographical; rather, Klagge argues, Wittgenstein was never at home in the twentieth century. He was in exile from an earlier era -- Oswald Spengler's culture of the early nineteenth century. Klagge draws on the full range of evidence, including Wittgenstein's published work, the complete Nachlaß, correspondence, lectures, and conversations. He places Wittgenstein's work in a broad context, along a trajectory of thought that includes Job, Goethe, and Dostoyevsky. Yet Klagge also writes from an analytic philosophical perspective, discussing such topics as essentialism, private experience, relativism, causation, and eliminativism. Once we see Wittgenstein's exile, Klagge argues, we will gain a better appreciation of the difficulty of understanding Wittgenstein and his work. (shrink)

In this book, he also demonstrates a skill shared by the greatest radical thinkers: to reveal positions we've been taught to think of as extremism to be emanations of simple human decency and common sense.

In the process of challenging epistemological assumptions that preclude relationships between knowers and the objects of knowing, feminist epistemologists Lorraine Code and Donna Haraway also can be interpreted as troubling forms of argumentation predicated on positivist-derived logic. Against the latter, Christopher Tindale promotes a rhetorical model of argument that appears able to better engage epistemologies of situated knowledges. I detail key features of the latter from Code, especially, and compare and contrast them with relevant parts of Tindale’s discussion of context (...) on the rhetorical model, and I suggest ways that his work could be expanded to accommodate rhetorical implications of situated knowledges. (shrink)

What could it mean to be religious in a world where religion no longer retains its former authority? Posing this question for his fellow Western intellectuals who inhabit just such a world, James C. Edwards investigates the loss of religion's traditional power in a culture characterized by what he calls "normal nihilism"—a situation in which one's commitment to a particular set of values is all one really has, and in which traditional religion is only a means of interpretation used (...) to preserve what one most cares about. Recognizing the important historical role of religion in making us the people we are, he seeks to establish a viable understanding of religion without traditional beliefs and within the context of contemporary skepticism. _The Plain Sense of Things_ is a book more interested in the power of religion that in its truth and in what happens to that power when the claims to truth slacken their grip. (shrink)

Victor and Cullen (1988) identified several dimensions of ethical climate that exist in organizations and organizational subunits. We tested the relationship between these dimensions of ethical climate and ethical behavior at different levels of analysis. Using Within and Between Analysis (WABA) (cf. Dansereau, Alutto and Yammarino, 1984), partial support was found for a relationship between dimensions of ethical climate and ethical behavior.

Is “good” a family-resemblance concept? Wittgenstein holds it is, since cases of goodness may not have anything in common, but there may be a continuous transition from some cases to others. Von Wright and Hacker argue it is not. They hold that family-resemblance concepts satisfy two conditions that goodness does not satisfy. I assess their arguments and then present a constitutivist account of goodness that Wittgenstein seems to endorse. The constitutivist account is what one would expect if goodness was a (...) family-resemblance concept. Finally, I note that Wittgenstein's nod towards non-descriptivism in the Investigations is paralleled by Stevenson's ethical emotivism. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to expound and distinguish\nbrentano's concept of "Intentional inexistence" (found in\n'psychologie von einem empirischen standpunkt') and\nhusserl's early concept of intentionality (in 'logische\nuntersuchungen'). The main purpose is to show that\nhusserl's phenomenological views are very different from\nand far more developed than brentano's and that he rejects\nmany of his concepts and doctrines. First, brentano's\ndesignation of eight defining characteristics of mental\nphenomena, the purpose of which is to define psychology, is\noutlined. This is followed by a detailed discussion of\nhusserl's criticisms and revisions, (...) emphasizing what\nhusserl thought was brentano's most important insight,\ni.E., That consciousness is intentional. A discussion of\nthree views of the nature of consciousness is given,\nconcluding with husserl's general criticisms that brentano\nfell victim to dualism and representationalism and that his\nconcept of the intentional nature of mind was distorted by\na commitment to naturalism, the latter being overcome only\nby husserl's own transcendental phenomenology in 'ideen'\nand later works. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the ethical climate dimensions identified by Victor and Cullen (1987, 1988) could be replicated in the subunits of a multi-unit organization and if so, were the dimensions associated with particular types of operating units. We identified three of the dimensions of ethical climate found by Victor and Cullen and also found a new dimension of ethical climate related to service. Partial support was found for Victor and Cullen's hypothesis that certain ethical (...) climate dimensions are associated with particular forms of organizational governance and control. (shrink)