When circumscribed brain regions are damaged in humans, highly specific iimpairments in language, memory, problem solving, and cognition are observed. Neurosurgery such as "split brain " or hemispherectomy, for example has shown that encompassing regions, the left and right cerebral hemispheres each control human behavior in unique ways. Observations stretching over 100 years of patients with unilateral focal brain damage have revealed, withouth the theoretical benefits of "cognitive neuroscience" or "cognitive psychology," that human behavior is indeed controlled by the brain (...) and its neurons. (shrink)

Art is a human communicative system that relies on referential cognition of thoughts, emotions, and experiences through symbolic meanings, which explains why only humans have art and why it is ubiquitously present throughout human societies. Archaeological evidence for early material art signals presence of symbolic and abstract cognition. In early human life in Africa the symbolism afforded by group dance formation would have been more advantageous for survival than individual artistic expression, but it would not leave archaeological physical traces. Slipping (...) into synchronized movements is a natural form of expressing interpersonal unity and symbolically signaling the members' affiliation to the group. In sharp contrast, production of material art encourages individual virtuosity in talent, something only a select few would possess, and in this regard it is not as inclusive as group dance. It is proposed here that the early Homo sapiens relied on symbolic expressions of intermember unity through group dance. (shrink)

The issue of hemispheric processing of art works, either alone or in relation to a certain aspect of language, was investigated in normal subjects. Three experiments were performed. In the first, memory for surrealistic versus realistic pictures was investigated. In the second, memory for metaphoric versus literal titles of these pictures was measured. In the third, memory for the paintings was determined as a function of the same titles. The results of the first experiment showed a right visual field (RVF) (...) advantage for the surrealistic pictures. No field difference emerged for the realistic pictures. The results of the second experiment indicated a RVF advantage in memory for metaphoric titles. Moreover, in the RVF, there was an advantage for titles from surrealistic-metaphoric pairs over all other pairings. Results of experiment three showed a RVF advantage in remembering pictures from surrealistic-metaphoric pairs and in the left visual field (LVF) there was advantage for pictures with literal titles. Taken together, the results suggest left hemisphere advantage in processing meaningful, yet incongruous arrays, both pictorial and linguistic. The results are discussed in terms of hemispheric memory for art works, metaphors, and the relationship between the two in the brain. (shrink)

Overall mean performance on intelligence tests by brain-damaged patients with focal lesions can be misleading in regard to localization of intelligence. The widely used WAIS has many subtests that together recruit spatially distant neural but individually the subtests reveal localized functions. Moreover, there are kinds of intelligence that defy the localizationist approach inferred from brain damage.

Human aesthetic experiences are pervasive; they are triggered by faces, art, natural scenery, foods, ideas, theories, and decision-making situations, among many sources, and seem to be a distinctive trait of our species. Our moral sense, understood as our capacity to judge events, actions, or people as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, also seems to be an exclusively human endowment (Ayala 2010). As part of the scientific efforts to characterize the biological foundations of our human uniqueness, recently there has been (...) interest in the brain’s underpinnings of aesthetic reactions to art on the one hand, and in the neural correlates of moral judgment and decision-making on the other (Greene and Paxton .. (shrink)

One of the twentieth century's most significant artists, Cindy Sherman has quietly uprooted conventional understandings of portraiture and art, questioning everything from identity to feminism. Critics around the world have taken Sherman's photographs and extensively examined what lies underneath. However, little critical ink has been spilled on Sherman's only film, Office Killer, a piece that plays a significant role both in Sherman's body of work and in American art in the late twentieth century. Dahlia Schweitzer breaks the silence with (...) her trenchant analysis of Office Killer and explores the film on a variety of levels, combating head-on the art world's reluctance to discuss the movie and arguing instead that it is only through a close reading of the film that we can begin to appreciate the messages underlying all of Sherman's work. The first book on this neglected piece of an esteemed artist's oeuvre, Cindy Sherman's?Office Killer” rescues the film from critical oblivion and situates it next to the artist's other iconic works. (shrink)

Why did Israeli women not fight for social equality until the late 1980s? And what changed their individual and collective willingness to act? The paper maintains that social action to improve women’s positions in society didexist before the late 1980s but it was mostly not rebellious in the sense that it was not directed against men or the existing social order. The main factor behind the in[action is the lack of feminist ideologies that affect and support gender identities. This kind (...) of feminist gender identity was inhibited in Israel by the inter-relations among three factors: the lack of ideological pluralism, the influence of traditional and religious beliefs, and the effect of national, total, and masculine institutions . The same factors—or some combinations of these factors—may inhibit women’s activism in other societies as well. (shrink)

Things and Their Place in Theories Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and ...

A complete translation of Aristotle's classic that is both faithful and readable, along with an introduction that provides the modern reader with a means of understanding this seminal work and its impact on our culture. In this volume, Joe Sachs (translator of Aristotle's _Physics, Metaphysics,_ and the _Nicomachean Ethics _)also supplements his excellent translation with well-chosen notes and glossary of important terms. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a (...) glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle’s immediate audience. (shrink)

Explores the nature and types of mystical experience and discusses the value of mysticism for humanity.

W. V. Quine is one of the most eminent philosophers alive today. Now in his mid-eighties he has produced a sharp, sprightly book that encapsulates the whole of his philosophical enterprise, including his thinking on all the key components of his epistemological stance--especially the value of logic and mathematics. New readers of Quine may have to go slowly, fathoming for themselves the richness that past readers already know lies between these elegant lines. For the faithful there is much to ponder. (...) In this short book, based on lectures delivered in Spain in 1990, Quine begins by locating his work historically. He provides a lightning tour of the history of philosophy (particularly the history of epistemology), beginning with Plato and culminating in an appreciative sketch of Carnap's philosophical ambitions and achievements. This leads, in the second chapter, to an introduction to Quine's attempt to naturalize epistemology, which emphasizes his continuities with Carnap rather than the differences between them. The next chapters develop the naturalistic story of the development of science to take account of how our conceptual apparatus is enhanced so that we can view the world as containing re-identifiable objects. Having explained the role of observation sentences in providing a checkpoint for assessing scientific theories, and having despaired of constructing an empirical criterion to determine which sentences are meaningful, Quine in the remaining chapters takes up a variety of important issues about knowledge. He concludes with an extended treatment of his views about reference and meaning and his attitudes toward psychological and modal notions. The presentation is distinctive, and the many small refinements of detail and formulation will fascinate all who know Quine's philosophy. (shrink)

"More than any thing else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being," says W. Brian Arthur. Yet, until now the major questions of technology have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from -- how exactly does invention work? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Why are certain regions -- Cambridge, England, in the 1920s and Silicon Valley today -- hotbeds of innovation, while others languish? Does technology, like biological life, (...) evolve? How do new industries, and the economy itself, emerge from technologies? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur sets forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology that gives answers to these questions. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution. It achieves for the progress of technology what Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress. Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Conventional thinking ascribes the invention of technologies to "thinking outside the box," or vaguely to genius or creativity, but Arthur shows that such explanations are inadequate. Rather, technologies are put together from pieces -- themselves technologies -- that already exist. Technologies therefore share common ancestries and combine, morph, and combine again to create further technologies. Technology evolves much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms -- it creates itself from itself; all technologies are descended from earlier technologies. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, and writing in wonder fully engaging and clear prose, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives. (shrink)

Through clear explanation of its characteristic concepts and doctrines, and paying close attention to the published works of its philosophers, the volume ...

Can a corporation have a conscience? What is wrong with reverse discrimination? Can ethical management and managed care coexist? Hoffman, Frederick, and Schwartz address these and many other current, intriguing, often complex issues in corporate morality. This introductory business ethics text contains a thorough general introduction on ethical theory, 54 readings, and 25 cases. Divided into five parts, each with an introduction that presents the major themes of its articles and cases, the text contains an impartial, point-counterpoint presentation of different (...) perspectives on the most important issues being debated in business ethics. Each chapter ends with questions that can be used for student discussion, review, tests/quizzes, or for student assignments. The fourth edition has 27 new readings, 15 new cases, and 10 new mini-cases. (shrink)

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a popular-science book on cosmology (the study of the origin and evolution of the universe) by British physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who have no prior knowledge of the universe and people who are interested in learning.

While the idea of philosophy as conceptual analysis has attracted many adherents and undergone a number of variations, in general it suffers from an authority problem with two dimensions. First, it is unclear why the analysis of a concept should have objective authority: why explicating what we mean should express how things are. Second, conceptual analysis seems to lack intersubjective authority: why philosophical analysis should apply to more than a parochial group of individuals. I argue that Hegel’s conception of social (...) ontology, focused on his concept of “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit), helps to explain how concepts (and their explication) have both objective and intersubjective authority in the social domain. Hegel claims that modern institutions are the product of self-conscious purposes, so that they are conceptually constituted. Concepts do not just represent these objects and so depend on a contingent relation to them. As many contemporary social ontologists agree, this means that our concepts of these institutions are uniquely epistemically “transparent.” They have objective authority. Concepts have intersubjective authority in the modern world as well, according to Hegel. However, I show that this feature of Hegel’s account does not rely on the solution to a philosophical problem. Rather, since the concepts of modern ethical life are “essentially contested,” their content depends on the practical and political agreement of modern subjects. This means that concepts can only have objective authority if some prior intersubjective agreement has been reached. The role of philosophy as conceptual analysis is thus importantly dependent on political developments. (shrink)

William Abraham studied Philosophy at the University of Ghana, and even more Philosophy at Oxford University. Thereafter, he gained permission to take part in the competitive examination and interview for a fellowship at All Souls' College. The examination was once described, with some exaggeration, as 'the hardest exam in the world!' It included a three-hour essay. Following his success in becoming the first African fellow of All Souls, his interest in African politics quickly developed into a Pan-African perspective. The Mind (...) of Africa, written while he was still at All Souls, was a fruit of that enlarged perspective. After several years as a Fellow, he had occasion to visit Ghana in 1962. There Kwame Nkrumah, then President of Ghana, successfully persuaded him to return to Ghana to teach at the University of Ghana, Legon and he subsequently resigned from All Souls. In 1968, he went to the United States as a visiting professor. This was followed by invitations to teach at various academic institutions there, including Berkeley and Stanford. He subsequently settled in California, where he continued to teach and research philosophy in the University of California at Santa Cruz until his retirement. The Mind of Africa appeared at a time when a number of African countries were obtaining, or fighting for, their political freedom from their colonial rulers and becoming independent nations and expecting to build new societies in accordance with their own visions and conceptions, though not necessarily jettisoning all the features of their colonial heritage. Building new societies requires appropriate ideologies and philosophies fashioned within the crucible of their cultural and historical experiences. Thus, the relation between ideology and society is taken up at the very outset of the book... The Mind of Africa is important for Africa's future and identity. (shrink)

_Selections_ seeks to provide an accurate and readable translation that will allow the reader to follow Aristotle's use of crucial technical terms and to grasp the details of his argument. Unlike anthologies that combine translations by many hands, this volume includes a fully integrated set of translations by a two-person team. The glossary--the most detailed in any edition--explains Aristotle's vocabulary and indicates the correspondences between Greek and English words. Brief notes supply alternative translations and elucidate difficult passages.

P. KOnig: Einleitung - P. ZIche: Idiographik und allgemeine Wissenschaftlichkeit - Windelband und die Wissenschaftsreflexion um 1900 - G. HArtung: Ein Philosoph korrigiert sich selbst - Wilhelm Windelbands Abkehr vom Relativismus - O. SChlaudt: Philosophie am Leitfaden der Empirie. WIndelbands relativistisches Programm - S. KUft: Windelbands Konzeption von Transzendentalphilosophie und ihr Bezug zur Kulturphilosophie - R. BOnito Oliva: Windelband. KUlturphilosophie und Kulturkrise - P. KOnig: Teleologie und Geschichte bei Wilhelm Windelband - J. BOhr: Im Fortschreiben der Probleme: Windelbands 19. JAhrhundert (...) - T.-H. CHang: Der Wertbegriff beiWilhelm Windelband und sein Konzept der Problemgeschichte - T. KUbalica: Die Geschichte der Philosophie als Problemgeschichte - J. MEhlich: Windelbands Praludien und das Silberne Zeitalter in Russland - G. SChluter: Windelbands italienische Kontakte und Bezugnahmen - D. STefanelli: Notizen uber Karl Vossler und die "Sudwestdeutsche Schule" - C. ZAnfi: Geschichte, Natur und Leben: Windelband und Bergson in der Historismus-Debatte - J.-I. LIndén: Der beseelte Geist: Dilthey als Kritiker der badischen Schule - H. GUndlach: Windelbands Ringen mit der Psychologie - Anhang: Wilhelm Windelband: Blaue Hefte zur Psychologie. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

To assess the ability of the disconnected cerebral hemispheres to recognize images of the self, a split-brain patient was tested using morphed self-face images presented to one visual hemifield at a time while making “self/other” judgments. The performance of the right and left hemispheres of this patient as assessed by a signal detection method was not significantly different, though a measure of bias did reveal hemispheric differences. The right and left hemispheres of this patient independently and equally possessed the ability (...) to self-recognize, but only the right hemisphere could successfully recognize familiar others. This supports a modular concept of self-recognition and other-recognition, separately present in each cerebral hemisphere. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

If within the borders of human life the truth is, as Vico has said, what is made, then the task of a student of human life can be and should be to find out from what human beings have made what manner of makers they are and what sorts of production their circumstance allows.