GY, an extensively studied human hemianope, is aware of salient visual events in his cortically blind field but does not call this ''vision.'' To learn whether he has low-level conscious visual sensations or whether instead he has gained conscious knowledge about, or access to, visual information that does not produce a conscious phenomenal sensation, we attempted to image process a stimulus s presented to the impaired field so that when the transformed stimulus T(s) was presented to the normal hemifield it (...) would cause a sensation similar to that caused by s in the impaired field. While degradation of contrast, spatio-temporal filtering, contrast reversal, and addition of smear and random blobs all failed to match the response to a flashed bar sf, moving textures of low contrast were accepted to match the response to a moving contrast-defined bar, sm. Orientation and motion direction discrimination of the perceptually matched stimuli [sm and T(sm)] was closely similar. We suggest that the existence of a satisfactory match indicates that GY has phenomenal vision. (shrink)

In this paper we wish to bring together two seemingly independent areas of research: synaesthesia and sensory substitution. Synaesthesia refers to a rare condition where a sensory stimulus elicits not only the sensation that stimulus evokes in its own modality, but an additional one; a synaesthete may thus hear the word “Monday”, and, in addition to hearing it, have a concurrent visual experience of a red color. Sensory substitution, in contrast, attempts to substitute a sensory modality that a person has (...) lost by transforming the information it provided so that it can be accessed through another, intact sensory modality. To make visual information accessible to a blind person, for example, data taken by a camera would be transformed into tactile or auditory information. What do synaesthesia and sensory substitution have in common? Research in both of these areas contributes to our understanding both of cross-modal cooperation and of sensory sensations or qualia, asking under what circumstances these can arise in a modality that is not stimulated. Synaesthesia reveals that this “sensory cross-activation” is possible, and sensory substitution research hopes to induce it. In this article, we will review briefly the literature on synaesthesia, and discuss the issue of qualia for this domain of research. We will then address the evidence for synaesthesia and visual qualia in the blind, and the research on sensory substitution, to finally ask whether sensory substitution may induce a ‘synthetic’ form of synaesthesia by taking advantage of the nervous system’s capacity for generating visual images in the absence of retinal input. (shrink)

To see whether the mental and the neural have common attributes that could resolve some of the traditional dichotomies, we review neuroscientific data on the visual system. The results show that neuronal and perceptual function share a parallel and hierarchical architecture which is manifest not only in the anatomy and physiology of the visual system, but also in normal perception and in the deficits caused by lesions in different parts of the system. Based on the description of parallel hierarchical levels (...) of active information processing in the visual brain, we suggest a concept of dissociable levels of perception, advocating that the phenomenal perception and recognition is realized in the functional integrity of a network of reciprocal cortico-cortical connections. The properties shared by neuronal and perceptional functions provide a basis for a neuromental monism in which both functions are attributed a causal role. (shrink)

In three macaque monkeys with unilateral removal of primary visual cortex and in one unoperated monkey, we measured reaction times to a visual target that was presented at a lateral eccentricity of 20o in the normal, left, visual hemifield. When an additional stimulus was presented at the corresponding position in the right hemifield (hemianopic in three of the monkeys), it significantly slowed the reaction time to the left target if it preceded it by delays from 100-500 msec. The most effective (...) delay depended on the particular experimental paradigm and perhaps on the experience of the monkey with the task. The results show that reaction times to seen targets in the normal hemifield of monkeys are influenced by the presentation of ''unseen'' targets in the anopic hemifield, as in some patients with cortically blind visual field defects. (shrink)

In spatial sequence synaesthesia ordinal stimuli are perceived as arranged in peripersonal space. Using fMRI, we examined the neural bases of SSS and colour synaesthesia for spoken words in a late-blind synaesthete, JF. He reported days of the week and months of the year as both coloured and spatially ordered in peripersonal space; parts of the days and festivities of the year were spatially ordered but uncoloured. Words that denote time-units and triggered no concurrents were used in a control condition. (...) Both conditions inducing SSS activated the occipito-parietal, infero-frontal and insular cortex. The colour area hOC4v was engaged when the synaesthetic experience included colour. These results confirm the continued recruitment of visual colour cortex in this late-blind synaesthetes. Synaesthesia also involved activation in inferior frontal cortex, which may be related to spatial memory and detection, and in the insula, which might contribute to audiovisual integration related to the processing of inducers and concurrents. (shrink)

Conflicts in Interpretation applies novel methods of constraint interaction, derived from connectionist theories and implemented in linguistics within the framework of Optimality Theory, to core semantic and pragmatic issues such as polysemy, negation, (in) definiteness, focus, anaphora, and rhetorical structure. It explores the hypothesis that a natural language grammar is a set of potentially conflicting constraints on forms and meanings. Moreover, it hypothesizes that competent language users not only optimize from an input form to the optimal output meaning for this (...) form, or vice versa, but also consider the opposite direction of optimization, thus taking into account the speaker as a hearer and taking into account the hearer as a speaker. The book aims to show that such a bidirectional constraint-based grammar sheds new light on the relation between form and meaning, within a sentence as well as across sentence boundaries, within a single language as well as across languages, and within competent adult language users as well as during language development. An important dimension of the book is the structured investigation of issues at the interface of semantics with syntax and pragmatics, such as the effects of distinguishing between speaker's perspective and hearer's perspective in comprehension and production, stable and instable patterns of form and meaning across languages, and the development of a coherent pattern of form and meaning in children. Conflicts in Interpretation will be of interest to any researcher or advanced student in linguistics, cognitive science, language typology, or psycholinguistics who is interested in the capacity of our human mind to map meaning onto form, and form onto meaning. (shrink)

There is substantial support for the general idea that a formalization of comprehenders' expectations about the likely next word in a sentence helps explaining data related to online sentence processing. While much research has focused on syntactic, semantic, and discourse expectations, the present event‐related potentials (ERPs) study investigates neurolinguistic correlates of pragmatic expectations, which arise when comprehenders expect a sentence to conform to Gricean Maxims of Conversation. For predicting brain responses associated with pragmatic processing, we introduce a formal model of (...) such Gricean pragmatic expectations, using an idealized incremental interpreter. We examine whether pragmatic expectancies derived from this model modulate the amplitude of the N400, a component that has been associated with predictive processing. As part of its parameterization, the model distinguishes genuine pragmatic interpreters, who expect maximally informative true utterances, from literal interpreters, who only expect truthfulness. We explore the model's non‐trivial predictions for an experimental setup which uses picture‐sentence verification with ERPs recorded at several critical positions in sentences containing the scalar implicature trigger some. We find that Gricean expectations indeed affect the N400, largely in line with the predictions of our model, but also discuss discrepancies between model predictions and observations critically. (shrink)

Our article explores the repair practices pilots use to correct various troubles during flights. The intersubjective understanding of action is a salient part of the time-critical activities of aviation. Repairs solve troubles before any accident risk emerges, thus contributing to flight safety. In repair practices, the social and technical environment is interwoven. If remedies concern faulty lines of action, they target the techno-material condition of the aircraft. Such repair practices are not repairs of talk, but remedies of action in a (...) socio-material interaction. We discuss remedies of action as a particular type of repair practice, and outline their role in socio-material interactions. The aim is to continue building a holistic analysis of social action, not just to add a multimodal layer over an analysis of talk. The rethinking of social action contributes to the exploration of social actions anchored to their socio-material environment. (shrink)

The article briefly introduces an academic debate between two different responses to the predicament of the human in the ecological crisis, namely the object-oriented ontology and the vitalist response to that approach. Based on that introduction, it argues for the need of a complementing analytical tool and sketches the contours of such a tool by suggesting an epistemological tactic for a decolonizing human distinctiveness. The article suggests an analytical maneuver to be used by scholars who aim at decolonizing nature from (...) human oppression, a tool that enables illumination and critical scrutiny of the epistemological role of the human as one stage toward destabilizing the notion of human distinctiveness. The article, thus, introduces an approach where human distinctiveness is not understood as a factual distinctiveness—not an essential difference between the human and the nonhuman world—but where human distinctiveness is critically viewed as a discursive role in theoretical work, a role that can be temporarily put to use by the scholar as a decolonizing epistemological tactic. In other words, human distinctiveness is here tactically used as a tool to critically scrutinize the idea of human distinctiveness rather than to safeguard it. (shrink)

The present event‐related potential (ERP) study used picture–sentence verification to investigate the neurolinguistic correlates of the online processing of compositional‐semantic information. To this end, we examined context effects on sentences involving temporal adverbial quantification likeJana war jeden Morgen schwimmen an den Arbeitstagen (“Jana went for a swim every morning during the working week”). We tested whether the conceptual complexity associated with quantifying over time intervals leads to delayed predictions regarding the upcoming words in a sentence. The present study replicated previous (...) results relating to quantification over individuals, which are conceptually less complex than time intervals. Analogous to previous studies, false vs. true sentences elicited an N400 whenever contextual cues did not permit a potential revision of a locally assigned truth value. The present results are compatible with an approach under which contextual cues are immediately considered for predicting how a sentence continues. The fact that the contextual complexity did not lead to processing delays indicates that the processing system quickly abstracts away from the conceptual complexity associated with the linguistic input if such an abstraction is possible. (shrink)

An argument evaluation inventory distinguishing between different levels of theory-evidence differentiation was designed corresponding to the levels of argument observed in argument generation tasks. Five scenarios containing everyday theories about a social problem, and arguments to support those theories were presented to 170 participants from two age groups (15 and 22 years) and different educational tracks. Participants had to rate the validity of arguments proposed by a story figure, to support the theory, to choose the best argument, and to justify (...) their choice. The rating task proved to be very difficult for all age groups, with only 49% of the university students consistently rating valid evidence-based arguments higher than flawed arguments. Competence improved with age and educational level. In the choice task more than 80% of the adults preferred an argument that reflected theory-evidence differentiation over mere theory elaboration or flawed reasoning. However, only adults with a university education were able to also explicitly justify their choice. Overall, these findings imply that laypersons have similar conceptual problems in differentiating theory from evidence as it has been reported for evidence generation tasks (Kuhn, 1991). Performance on the choice task suggests that some implicit awareness of differences between theory and evidence may precede a full, explicit understanding. Implications for education are discussed. (shrink)

Substance-abusing women are vulnerable to specific kinds of epistemic injustice, including stigmatization and discrimination. This article examines the development of the epistemic agency of female substance abusers by asking: How does the use of a formal discussion protocol in community rehabilitation interaction alleviate epistemic injustice and strengthen the epistemic agency of substance abusers? The data were collected in a Finnish rehabilitation center by videotaping six group discussions between social workers, peer support workers, and rehabilitation clients with substance abuse problems. Of (...) these data, one recorded group discussion between four female participants—two rehabilitation clients, a peer support worker, and a social adviser—was used in this paper. Using conversational analysis, the findings indicate that, through the collaborative activities of sharing experiential knowledge about substance abuse and discussing the experiences of abuse in the rehabilitation interaction, substance abusers can develop novel ways to strengthen their epistemic agency by enhanced self-awareness. The discussion protocol is an epistemic tool that professionals and clients can learn to use in ethically and epistemologically successful ways in interaction. The use of a discussion protocol is an example of social professionals’ clinical knowledge of intensifying collaboration and sharing experiential knowledge in community rehabilitation and other substance abuse services. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis, Heidelberg, 1977.

Die interdisziplinäre Forschungsgruppe "Poetik und Hermeneutik" und ihre Mitglieder haben die geistes- und kulturwissenschaftliche Landschaft der alten Bundesrepublik geprägt wie vielleicht sonst nur noch die Kritische Theorie. Zahlreiche Interviews mit den wichtigsten noch lebenden Akteuren erlauben einen ebenso erkenntnisreichen wie unterhaltsamen Blick hinter die Kulissen von Poetik & Hermeneutik. Unter welchen Bedingungen und mit welchen Absichten wurde die Gruppe von Hans Blumenberg, Clemens Heselhaus, Wolfgang Iser und Hans Robert Jauß ursprünglich gegründet? Wie entfalteten sich Diskussionen und Kontroversen? Wie kam P&H (...) zur Blüte und warum scheiterte ein möglicher Generationenwechsel? Als Zeitzeugen gehört werden unter anderen Aleida und Jan Assmann, Ferdinand Fellmann, Manfred Frank, Gerhart von Graevenitz, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Anselm Haverkamp, Dieter Henrich, Helga Jauss-Meyer, Renate Lachmann, Thomas Luckmann, Hermann Lübbe, Christian Meier, Jürgen Schlaeger, Gabriele Schwab, Wolf-Dieter Stempel, Karlheinz Stierle, Rainer Warning und Harald Weinrich. (shrink)

Can gender equality quality criteria developed for assessing EU internal policies be used unequivocally for evaluating EU external policies? Or might a methodological adaptation be necesary? To engage with this dilemma, the author evaluates the two-dimensional quality model of Krizsan and Lombardo and examines what a reorientation of the model would entail to better allow for the analysis of gender policy implemented outside of Europe. The author argues that to allow for an in-depth analysis of EU gender policy abroad, the (...) model’s procedural criteria ‘empowerment of women’s rights advocates’ and ‘transformation with reference to the prevailing context’ need to be brought centre stage and mainstreamed throughout the research design. The author suggests doing this by explicitly involving the views of gender activists from the national context in the analysis and using their perspectives as a touchstone for the evaluation of quality. To examine the proposed methodological model’s suitability for analysing the quality of gender policies in EU external relations, this operationalization is applied to the case of EU–South African development cooperation. The article concludes that the inclusion of gender advocates’ perspectives is necessary to avoid stereotypical, paternalist and Eurocentric ideas about the meaning of gender equality abroad and allow for a contextually grounded reflexivity on the quality of gender policy. Finally, it is argued that it is the role of feminist research to enhance women’s capacity for self-determination methodologically and to hear the voices of national actors that might otherwise not be heard in EU external relations. (shrink)

While action selection strategies in well‐defined domains have received considerable attention, little is yet known about how people choose what to do next in ill‐defined tasks. In this contribution, we shed light on this issue by considering everyday tasks, which in many cases have a multitude of possible solutions (e.g., it does not matter in which order the items are brought to the table when setting a table) and are thus categorized as ill‐defined problems. Even if there are no hard (...) constraints on the ordering of subtasks in everyday activities, our research shows that people exhibit specific preferences. We propose that these preferences arise from bounded rationality, that is, people only have limited knowledge and processing power available, which results in a preference to minimize the overall physical and cognitive effort. In the context of everyday activities, this can be achieved by (a) taking properties of the spatial environment into account to use them to one's advantage, and (b) employing a stepwise‐optimal action selection strategy. We present the Opportunistic Planning Model as an explanatory cognitive model, which instantiates these assumptions, and show that the model is able to generalize to new everyday tasks, outperforming machine learning models such as neural networks during generalization. (shrink)

In the last twenty years, there has been an enormous growth of scientific research concerning the process of human moral reasoning and moral intuitions. In contemporary descriptive ethics, three dominant approaches can be found – heuristic approach, dual-process theory, and universal moral grammar. Each of these accounts is based on similar empirical evidence combining findings from evolutionary biology, moral psychology, and neuroethics. Nevertheless, they come to different conclusions about the reliability of moral intuitions. The aim of this paper is to (...) critically investigate each of these approaches and compare them with recent scientific findings. Last chapter addresses implications of these findings for moral epistemology and normative ethics. The aim is to show that despite different interpretations of available data, we can reach a satisfying pragmatical conclusion which would be in compliance with the empirical evidence, yet it would not necessarily depend on it. (shrink)

The Special Issue is started with the observation that the tension of mind and society, i.e. cognitive and sociological/cultural dimensions in knowledge production and innovation, is a well-known topic of academic discourse in Science and Technology Studies. The introduction mentions some historical hallmarks of the involved perspectives and discussions to outline the background of the Special Issue. The purpose of its contributions, which are briefly presented at the end of the introduction, is to review this long-existing tension of cognitive and (...) cultural dimensions in knowledge production and innovation in the light of the cognitive and societal changes that have just begun and will have a huge impact in the future. (shrink)

Der erste der auf vier Bände angelegten Sichtungen der Bestimmung,Leben' stellt in chronologischer Folge wichtige Grundkonstellationen des Begriffsfeldes Leben von Aristoteles bis Schelling vor. Exemplarisch wird herausgearbeitet, wie in der europäischen Kulturgeschichte vom Leben geredet wurde, wann und weshalb der Lebensbegriff an Bedeutung gewann und warum die Rede vom Leben mit einer eigenen Konfliktgeschichte verbunden ist. Von besonderem Interesse sind dabei jene Diskussionen, die für christliche Traditionen direkt oder latent relevant wurden. Damit soll den Lebensdiskursen innerhalb der bioethischen Debatten ein (...) diese anregendes Gegengewicht gegeben werden. Denn um entscheiden zu können, was zum Wohl von Lebewesen mit Lebendem getan und gelassen werden sollte, dürfte hilfreich sein, zu klären, was genau gesteigert, geschützt, renaturalisiert, kultiviert oder in Frieden gelassen werden soll. Mit Beiträgen von:Petra Bahr, Christoph Ellsiepen, Matthias Freudenberg, Gerald Hartung, Christina Hoegen-Rohls, Tom Kleffmann, Dietrich Korsch, Christof Landmesser, Christoph Markschies, Peter McLaughlin, Jörn Müller, Hanns Nissing, Enno Rudolph, Stephan Schaede, Konrad Schmid, Christian Senkel, Joachim von Soosten, Philipp Stoellger. (shrink)

"Change is not merely necessary to life--it is life." That's Alvin Toffler, characteristically stating the profound in a profoundly direct way. And yes, even when we see change coming--as we're about to graduate from school, take a new job, get married--it's still not so easy to accept. And when we don't see it coming--oof, we have an even harder time. Here to help us embrace change and defuse its unsettling power is Change Happens, a full-color illustrated gift book to consult, (...) to share, to give, and to keep on a night table. Curated by Kathryn and Ross Petras, the ultimate connoisseurs of quotes whose books and calendars have over 4.5 million copies in print, these words of wisdom inspire us to be open to change and remind us that nothing positive in life ever happens without it. Arranged alphabetically by subject--including Adapting, Curveballs, Faith, Letting Go, Regrets, Second Chances, Vulnerability--it's a book to turn to in moments of need, when offering advice to a friend or loved one, when urging a child to find the courage to take a step, when marking an important occasion. (shrink)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Knud Ejler Løgstrup were WWII contemporaries: Lutheran theologians and religious figures in their respective German and Danish communities; both active in the anti-Nazi resistance. Being involved in the resistance, Bonhoeffer and Løgstrup were required to rethink what it meant to be ethical, in particular in relation to disclosure and the telling of truth, in a situation of war. In this paper, we consider the grounds on which both Løgstrup and Bonhoeffer acted, their belief in a duty or (...) requirement to resist, in light of the more general problem presented by resistance as action undertaken in a state of exception. We investigate the distinction between the normativity of ordinary or stable time, and action required in a state of exception, using the specific example of truth-telling as a normative demand and its conflict with the exceptional imperative to lie. The example of truth-telling raises important questions about the role of agency and phronetic judgment in a state of exception. In order to determine a foundation for such judgment, we turn to the framework adapted by both Bonhoeffer and Løgstrup to ground their requirement to lie: Luther’s concept of three estates. We consider how their respective concepts of mandates and laws of life/sovereign expressions of life both illuminate and highlight the more general problem of the relation between norm and exceptional action. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide an overview of some of the results obtained in the mathematical theory of intermediate quantifiers that is part of fuzzy natural logic. We briefly introduce the mathematical formal system used, the general definition of intermediate quantifiers and define three specific ones, namely, “Almost all”, “Most” and “Many”. Using tools developed in FNL, we present a list of valid intermediate syllogisms and analyze a generalized 5-square of opposition.