Matthew Walker's model overcomes the unrefined classical concept of consolidation as a unitary process. Presently still confined in its scope to selective data mainly referring to procedural motor learning, the model nonetheless provides a valuable starting point for further refinements, which would be required for a more comprehensive account of different types and aspects of human memory consolidation.

There are obvious flaws in REM sleep suppression paradigms that do not allow any conclusion to be drawn either pro or contra the REM sleep-memory hypothesis. However, less intrusive investigations of REM sleep suggest that this sleep stage or its adjunct neuroendocrine characteristics exert a facilitating influence on certain aspects of ongoing memory formation during sleep. [Nielsen; Vertes & Eastman].

Sleep strengthens memories by repeatedly reactivating associated neuron ensembles. Our studies show that although long-term memory for a medium number of word-pairs benefits from sleep, a large number does not. This suggests an upper limit to the amount of information that has access to sleep-dependent declarative memory consolidation, which is possibly linked to the availability of reactivation opportunities. Due to competing processes of global forgetting that are active during sleep, we hypothesized that even larger amounts of information would enhance the (...) proportion of information that is actively forgotten during sleep. In the present study, we aimed to induce such forgetting by challenging the sleeping brain with vast amounts of to be remembered information. For this, 78 participants learned a very large number of 640 word-pairs interspersed with periods of quiet awake rest over the course of an entire day and then either slept or stayed awake during the night. Recall was tested after another night of regular sleep. Results revealed comparable retention rates between the sleep and wake groups. Although this null-effect can be reconciled with the concept of limited capacities available for sleep-dependent consolidation, it contradicts our hypothesis that sleep would increase forgetting compared to the wake group. Additional exploratory analyses relying on equivalence testing and Bayesian statistics reveal that there is evidence against sleep having a detrimental effect on the retention of declarative memory at high information loads. We argue that forgetting occurs in both wake and sleep states through different mechanisms, i.e., through increased interference and through global synaptic downscaling, respectively. Both of these processes might scale similarly with information load. (shrink)

I take issue with the view that libertarian theory does not imply any particular stand on abortion. Liberty is the absence of interference with people’s wills—interests, wishes, and desires. Only entities that have such are eligible for the direct rights of libertarian theory. Foetuses do not; and if aborted, there is then no future person whose rights are violated. Hence the “liberal” view of abortion: women (especially) may decide whether to bear the children they have conceived. Birth is a good (...) dividing line between the freedom to abort and the point at which society is permitted to take an interest. Once born, children detach from their mothers; no invasion of their bodies is necessary to separate them. Yet some ways of bringing them up can have a negative impact on society. There is a thus legitimate interest in protecting ourselves from the results of truly bad parenting. (shrink)

Jan Salamucha was born on the 10th of June 1903 in Warsaw and murdered on the 11th of August 1944 in Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising very early on in his scholarly career. He is the most original representative of the branch of the Lvov-Warsaw School known as the Cracow Circle. The Circle was a grouping of scholars who were interested in reconstructing scholasticism and Christian philosophy in general by means of mathematical logic. As Jan Lukasiewicz’s successor in the (...) area of logic and Konstanty Michalski’s student in the area of the history of medieval thought, Salamucha had an excellent preparation for this task. His main achievements include a masterful logical analysis of the proof _ex motu _for the existence of God, a modern interpretation of analogical notions and a comprehensive approach to the problem of essence. He also contributed several historical studies: he examined Aristotle’s theory of deduction, he reconstructed William Ockham’s propositional logic and established the authenticity of his treatise on _insolubilia,_ and he identified the historical sources of the antinomies in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He did not shy away from popularizing philosophy, and in that work he was able to elucidate rather than oversimplify the complexities of philosophy. (shrink)

Hilbert's axiomatization program of physical theories met an interesting challenge when it confronted the rise of quantum mechanics in the mid-twenties. The novelty of the mathematical apparatus of the then newly born theory was to be matched only by its substantial lack of any definite physical interpretation. The early attempts at axiomatization, which are described here, reflect all the difficulty of the task faced by Jordan, Hilbert, von Neumann and others. The role of von Neumann is examined in considerable (...) detail as he can be viewed here as the most outstanding of Hilbert's heirs. Von Neumann, especially in his work devoted to the proof of the impossibility of hidden variables, not only continued Hilbert's program but pushed it to its very limits, blending axiomatic rigor and interpretative commitment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Militant democracy calls for pre-emptive measures against political actors who use democratic institutions to undermine or outright abolish a democratic political system. Born in the context of interwar fascism, militant democracy has recently been revived by political and legal theorists concerned about the rise of authoritarian right-wing populists. A long-standing charge against militant democracy—also articulated with renewed force in our era—is that, as a top-down way to deal with the intolerant, militant democracy is inherently elitist and bears uncomfortable (...) similarities with technocracy. But while it is true that militant democracy relies on state institutions to preserve democracy, it by no means excludes citizen engagement: “courts or the people” is a false choice. On the other hand, citizens engaged in militant democracy must take on the difficult task of distinguishing very clearly between democratic essentials under threat and political questions about which citizens might reasonably disagree. While citizen assemblies are not the answer to all of contemporary democracies’ travails, they might be very helpful in clarifying such distinctions for wide audiences. (shrink)

Gerold Tietz was born in 1941 in Horka (north Bohemia) in a family of Sudeten Germans. Germans lived in this village together with Czechs, Roma people and Jews. The family also involved Czech relatives and many of German relatives spoke good Czech and kept relations with Czech cultural groups. After the war Gerold Tietz and his family were expelled to Swabia. He studied history, French and political science. From 1969 the graduated historian lived in Esslingen where he taught in (...) the grammar school for thirty years. In the autobiographically oriented novels _Böhmische Fuge _(1997), _Böhmisches Richtfest _(2007) and in _Böhmische Grätschen _(2009) Tietz tried to depict official social-political events connected with famous political and cultural figures as well as the stories of ordinary days of “small people” who had to face the consequences of historic changes which influenced their lives. The paper analyses the conditions of Czech and German coexistence and confronts the authentic historic context. Nevertheless, negative features of these ethnic groups are not overlooked and the positive ones are presented as a positive contribution to the current European multiculturalism. (shrink)

Bernard Bolzano was born in Prague in 1781 and died in 1848 in the same city1. His major work Wissenschaftslehre was published in 1837 in Sulzbach, Germany.Since the publication of Jan Berg’s Bolza...

"""This book neither wants to make an accusation, nor impose things that are impossible to carry out. It merely wants to make the Balinese and tourists aware of what is happening in this paradise on earth and about the positive infl uence they can have in preserving the culture of the beautiful island of Bali. Tri Hita Karana, the spirit of Bali originated from the rich Balinese-Hindu philosophy. Tri Hita Karana means three causes of happiness: balanced and harmonious relationships of (...) humans with God; of humans with fellow human beings; and of humans with the surrounding nature. Respect and togetherness are essential values in this philosophy. The Hindu doctrine of tat tvam asi, “I am you and you are me”, teaches us that all things are connected. Humans who do not respect God, fellow humans and nature are not respecting themselves, and this will eventually lead to self-destruction. Respect and togetherness will lead to harmony and happiness. Since the Balinese are already living according to the age-old philosophy of Tri Hita Karana, they can contribute to a sustainable environment for their children. The past and the present cannot be separated from each other; the present is born out of the past. Our actions to create a sustainable environment today matter, or in Gandhi’s words: the future depends on what we do today. The authors, Jan Hendrik Peters, a former professor of service studies and Wisnu Wardana, chief-editor of Bali Travel Newspaper, are deeply concerned about the negative infl uences of mass tourism and want to plead for a sustainable future for Bali, by writing this book. “We really do need this book on Bali to make the Balinese people and the international tourists familiar with the essence of Hinduism. If the Balinese follow the philosophy of Tri Hita Karana as a guide in their personal life and business, it means that Bali will be the Island of the Gods forever.” - Ida Pedanda Subali Tianyar, Hindu high priest, Chairman of the Council of Hindu Priests in Indonesia.""". (shrink)

A review essay: Søren Harnow Klausen’s Reality Lost and Found.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Breakthrough of the Refrigerant System CO2 Makes a Brief Appearance The New Wonder Refrigerants The Area of the HFC Gases A New Technology Is Born – in Norway The SHECCO Transcritical CO2 Circuit The CO2 Paradox.

The nineteenth century is a very important period from our contemporary point of view. It is then that many socio-political ideas were born and have affected our social and individual life until now. It is in the nineteenth century that humankind sought to reflect on freedom, individualism and progress, and often paid dearly for any utopian misinterpretations in this area. Last but not least, in the nineteenth century the modern philosophical perception clashed with Christianity. The paper sought to show (...) this intellectual turmoil by focussing on the main adherents of reconciling new ideas with religion. This reconciliation could be effected with an integral view of the human being in mind. The integral human being, advocated by Newman and Acton, can manage to abide by timehonoured traditions and assimilate whatever there is of positive value in civilization.Le 19ème siècle est une période riche en enseignements pour notre réflexion contemporaine. C'est durant ce siècle que nombre d'idées sociopolitiques ayant influé jusqu'à présent sur notre vie individuelle et sociale sont nées. C'est au 19ème siècle que l'humanité chercha à réfléchir sur la liberté, l'individualisme et le progrès, et elle paya au prix fort les erreurs d'interprétation utopiste commises dans ces domaines. Aussi, et non des moindres, c'est au 19ème siècle que la perception philosophique moderne entra en conflit avec le christianisme. L'article vise à dépeindre cette agitation intellectuelle en mettant l'accent sur les principaux tenants de la réconciliation des nouvelles idées avec la religion. Cette réconciliation peut se faire si on a à l'esprit une vision complète de l'être humain. Cet être humain complet, tel que défendu par Newman et Acton, possède les qualités suffisantes pour respecter les traditions ancestrales et assimiler ce qu'il y a de valeureux dans la civilisation. (shrink)

This paper urges that if we wish to give social intelligence to our agents, it pays to look at how we acquired our social intelligence ourselves. We are born with drives and motives that are innate and deeply social. Next, as children we are socialized to acquire norms and values and to understand rituals large and small. These social elements are the core of our being. We capture them in the acronym GRASP: Groups, Rituals, Affiliation, Status, Power. As a (...) consequence, economic rationality or logical reasoning do not suffice when it comes to social intelligence. Basic features of our social behaviour, of the kind that one sees early in the lives of children, need to be prominent. These include fear, love, and aggression. They extend to the combination of these drives with basic social clues from the environment such as big and small, good and bad, as well as culture-specific specializations of these. This will make agents respond differentially to inferred attributes such as gender, age, group membership. This level of universality in social intelligence should receive our full attention. The general insights gained can then be re-used in myriad implementations to specific modelling issues. (shrink)

The growth and sustainability of the nursing profession depends on the ability to recruit and retain the upcoming generation of professionals. Understanding the career choice experiences and professional expectations of Millennial nurses (born 1980 or after) is a critical component of recruitment and retention strategies. This study utilized Polkinghorne's interpretive, narrative approach to understand how Millennial nurses explain, account for and make sense of their choice of nursing as a career. The positioning of nursing as a virtuous choice was (...) both temporally and contextually influenced. The decision to enter the profession was initially emplotted around a traditional understanding of nursing as a virtuous profession: altruistic, noble, caring and compassionate. The centricity of virtues depicts one‐dimensional understanding of the nursing profession that alone could prove dissatisfying to a generation of professionals who have many career choices available to them. The narratives reveal how participants' perceptions and expectations remain influenced by a stereotypical understanding of nursing, an image that remains prevalent in society and which holds implications for the future recruitment, socialization and retention strategies for upcoming and future generations of nurses. (shrink)

The brain adapts to changes that take place in the body. Deprivation of input results in size reduction of cortical representations, whereas an increase in input results in an increase of representational space. Amputation forms one of the most dramatic disturbances of the integrity of the body. The brain adapts in many ways to this breakdown of the afferent–efferent equilibrium. However, almost all studies focus on the sensorimotor consequences. It is not known whether adaptation takes place also at other “levels” (...) in the system. The present study addresses the question whether amputees dream about their intact body, as before the amputation, or about the body after the amputation and whether the dream content was a function of time since the amputation and type of amputation. The results show that the majority of the dreamers reported dreams about their intact body although the mean time that elapsed since the amputation was twelve years. There is no clear relation with the type of amputation. The results give modest evidence for the existence of a basic neural representation of the body that is, at least, partly genetically determined and by this relatively insensitive for changes in the sensory input. (shrink)

Asking pregnant women to pay for non-invasive prenatal testing out of pocket leads to unequal access across socioeconomic strata. To avoid these social justice issues, first-trimester prenatal screening should be publicly funded in countries such as the Netherlands, with universal coverage healthcare systems that offer all other antenatal care services and screening programmes free of charge. In this reply, we offer three additional reasons for public funding of NIPT. First, NIPT may not primarily have medical utility for women and children, (...) but rather offers relevant information and reproductive options, and thus serves important autonomy interests of women. Second, public funding of NIPT can be justified because it results in a reduction of collectively borne costs associated with care and support for children with chromosomal abnormalities. It is important to note that this is not an argument for individual women to take part in screening or to terminate an affected pregnancy. However, it is a legitimate argument in policy making regarding funding arrangements for screening programmes. Finally, public funding would help to amend current misunderstandings among pregnant women, and thus to support informed consent for first-trimester prenatal screening. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Memoriam: Jan Van Bragt (1928–2007)James W. HeisigEarly on the morning of Easter Thursday, April 12, 2007, Jan Van Bragt passed away quietly at the age of seventy-eight.1 During the previous year his health had begun to deteriorate, until in the final days of 2006 he was obliged to leave Kyoto and take up residence with his religious congregation in Himeji. On February 21, he was hospitalized with lung (...) cancer and was operated on some weeks later. After a brief period in a semi-comatose state, he regained consciousness but was never to speak again.Jan was born in Flemish Belgium and entered the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at age eighteen. Six years later, he was ordained a priest. After receiving his master’s degree in philosophy, he entered the doctoral program and at the same time lectured at the congregation’s seminary. Five years later he received his doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Leuven with a thesis on Hegel and immediately set sail for Japan, landing in December 1961.Jan undertook eighteen months of training in the language and then spent another eighteen months working as an assistant pastor at the Sakai Catholic Church near Osaka. In 1965, he was accepted as a research student at Kyoto University, where he spent the next six years studying with Takeuchi Yoshinori and Nishitani Keiji. In 1971, he was named provincial superior of the congregation in Japan, a post he held for five years until he was unexpectedly requested to serve as the first acting director of the newly established Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.For the next fifteen years Jan brought the fledgling institute to maturity, galvanizing the young and inexperienced staff into a community of scholars devoted to exploring the largely unknown and uncharted waters of interreligious dialogue in Japan. Among his first projects was the intermonastic exchange that brought leading Buddhist monks and nuns from Japan to European monasteries and vice versa. At a concluding symposium in Japan he served as chair, juggling Japanese, Flemish, German, French, and English with the skill and poise for which we all remember him. After a flurry of publications on the project, he left the project to others to carry on—as it has to this day, having reached a second generation, most of whom no longer know the inaugural role that he played.Jan was also a key figure in the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, founded in 1982. In addition to bringing the central office of the society to the [End Page 141] Nanzan Institute, he served as president from 1989 to 1997. During his years at the Nanzan Institute, he was in demand around Japan as a lecturer or partner in dialogue. For many years he traveled around the world in the same capacity and was invited to teach in Canada, Belgium, the United States, and the Philippines. From 1985 to 1990, he served as a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. In his thinking and writing, his study and reading, as well as in his moral concerns, Jan straddled any number of civilizations, histories, literatures, and cultures. In the end, however, it was in Japan that he felt most at home, where he found a loom on which to weave the things of life into a single view of the world.At his funeral, Jan Swyngedouw, a fellow Flemish missionary and longtime colleague at the Nanzan Institute, delivered a thoughtful and touching tribute to a man who had always shied away from honors and recognition, preferring to let others stand on his shoulders and even accept the credit that was rightly his. Swyngedouw told of going through Jan’s library (the philosophical portion of which he graciously donated to the Centro Studi Asiatico in Osaka) and being struck by the number of volumes on mysticism. Like all of us, he knew of Jan’s academic interest in the Christian mystics as a bridge between religions, but as he read through comments in the margins he came to realize what most of us had never noticed: how deeply Jan’s own spirituality was rooted in... (shrink)

This paper addresses theoretical challenges, still relevant today, that arose in the first decades of the twentieth century related to the concept of the organism. During this period, new insights into the plasticity and robustness of organisms as well as their complex interactions fueled calls, especially in the UK and in the German-speaking world, for grounding biological theory on the concept of the organism. This new organism-centered biology understood organisms as the most important explanatory and methodological unit in biological investigations. (...) At least three theoretical strands can be distinguished in this movement: Organicism, dialectical materialism, and holistic biology. This paper shows that a major challenge of OCB was to describe the individual organism as a causally autonomous and discrete unit with consistent boundaries and, at the same time, as inextricably interwoven with its environment. In other words, OCB had to conciliate individualistic with anti-individualistic perspectives. This challenge was addressed by developing a concept of life that included functionalist and metabolic elements, as well as biochemical and physical ones. It allowed for specifying organisms as life forms that actively delimit themselves from the environment. Finally, this paper shows that the recent return to the concept of the organism, especially in the so-called “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” is challenged by similar anti-individualistic tendencies. However, in contrast to its early-twentieth-century forerunner, today’s organism-centered approaches have not yet offered a solution to this problem. (shrink)

In recent years, biologists and philosophers of science have argued that evolutionary theory should incorporate more seriously the idea of ‘reciprocal causation.’ This notion refers to feedback loops whereby organisms change their experiences of the environment or alter the physical properties of their surroundings. In these loops, in particular niche constructing activities are central, since they may alter selection pressures acting on organisms, and thus affect their evolutionary trajectories. This paper discusses long-standing problems that emerge when studying such reciprocal causal (...) processes between organisms and environments. By comparing past approaches to reciprocal causation from the early twentieth century with contemporary ones in niche construction theory, we identify two central reoccurring problems: All of these approaches have not been able to provide a conceptual framework that allows maintaining meaningful boundaries between organisms and environments, instead of merging the two, and integrating experiential and physical kinds of reciprocal causation. By building on case studies of niche construction research, we provide a model that is able to solve these two problems. It allows distinguishing between mutually interacting organisms and environments in complex scenarios, as well as integrating various forms of experiential and physical niche construction. (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 was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. 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. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

International institutions such as UNESCO are deliberating on a new standard setting instrument for neurotechnologies. This will likely lead to the adoption of a soft law document which will be the first global document specifically tailored to neurotechnologies, setting the tone for further international or domestic regulations. While some stakeholders have been consulted, these developments have so far evaded the broader attention of the neuroscience, neurotech, and neuroethics communities. To initiate a broader debate, this target article puts to discussion twenty-five (...) considerations and desiderata for recognition by a future instrument. They are formulated at different levels of abstraction, from the big picture to technical details, seek to widen the perspective of preparatory reports and transcend the narrow debate about “neurorights” which overshadows many richer and more relevant aspects. These desiderata are not an exhaustive enumeration but a starting point for discussions about what deserves and what requires protection by an international instrument. (shrink)

There is concern that the use of neuroenhancements to alter character traits undermines consumer's authenticity. But the meaning, scope and value of authenticity remain vague. However, the majority of contemporary autonomy accounts ground individual autonomy on a notion of authenticity. So if neuroenhancements diminish an agent's authenticity, they may undermine his autonomy. This paper clarifies the relation between autonomy, authenticity and possible threats by neuroenhancements. We present six neuroenhancement scenarios and analyse how autonomy accounts evaluate them. Some cases are considered (...) differently by criminal courts; we demonstrate where academic autonomy theories and legal reasoning diverge and ascertain whether courts should reconsider their concept of autonomy. We argue that authenticity is not an appropriate condition for autonomy and that new enhancement technologies pose no unique threats to personal autonomy. (shrink)

Students of Thomas Aquinas have so far lacked a comprehensive study of his doctrine of the transcendentals. This volume fills this lacuna, showing the fundamental character of the notions of being, one, true and good for his thought. The book inquires into the beginnings of the doctrine in the thirteenth century and explains the relation of the transcendental way of thought to Aquinas's conception of metaphysics. It analyzes 'Being', 'One', 'True', 'Good' and 'Beautiful' individually and discusses their importance for the (...) philosophical knowledge of God. Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas is intended as a contribution to the question 'What is philosophy in the Middle Ages?' It argues that the doctrine of the transcendentals is essential for understanding medieval philosophy. (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory of perceptual consciousness offers a form of enactivism in that it stresses patterns of interaction instead of any alleged internal representations of the environment. But how does it relate to forms of enactivism stressing the continuity between life and mind? We shall distinguish sensorimotor enactivism, which stresses perceptual capacities themselves, from autopoietic enactivism, which claims an essential connection between experience and autopoietic processes or associated background capacities. We show how autopoiesis, autonomous agency, and affective dimensions of experience (...) may fit into sensorimotor enactivism, and we identify differences between this interpretation and autopoietic enactivism. By taking artificial consciousness as a case in point, we further sharpen the distinction between sensorimotor enactivism and autopoietic enactivism. We argue that sensorimotor enactivism forms a strong default position for an enactive account of perceptual consciousness. (shrink)

Durch eine Untersuchung der Stoßvorgänge wird die Auffassung entwickelt, daß die Quantenmechanik in der Schrödingerschen Form nicht nur die stationären Zustände, sondern auch die Quantensprünge zu beschreiben gestattet.

The notion of reality in the physical world has become, during the last century, somewhat problematic. The contrast between the simple and obvious reality of the innumerable instruments, machines, engines, and gadgets produced by our technological industry, which is applied physics, and of the vague and abstract reality of the fundamental concepts of physical science, as forces and fields, particles and quanta, is doubtlessly bewildering. There has already developed a gap between pure and applied science and between the groups of (...) men devoted to the one or the other activity, a separation that may lead to a dangerous estrangement. Physics needs a unifying philosophy, expressible in ordinary language, to bridge this gulf between "reality" as thought of in practice and in theory. I am not a philosopher but a theoretical physicist. I cannot provide a well balanced philosophy of science that would take due account of the ideas developed by differing schools, but I shall endeavor to formulate some ideas which have helped me in my own struggle with these problems. (shrink)

Jan-Olav Henriksen reconstructs and analyzes Christianity as a cluster of practices that manifest a distinct historically and contextually shaped mode of being in the world. Henriksen suggests that these practices imply a complicated relationship between the tradition in which they originate, the community that emerges from and is constituted by that tradition, and the individuals who appropriate the tradition that these communities mediate through their practices. Thus, to think of Christianity simply in terms of belief is misleading and represents an (...) underdetermination of its distinct character. Henriksen further argues this relationship needs to be described primarily as practices aimed at orientation and transformation. His analysis points to Christianity's similarity to other religions in regard to the functional or pragmatic dimensions it displays. Examining facets such as prayer, the use of scripture, preaching and doctrine, Henriksen emphasizes that the element that makes a practice distinctively Christian is how it relates to and is informed by the Jesus story. (shrink)

Epigenetics is currently one of the fastest-growing fields in the sciences. Epigenetic information not only controls DNA expression but links genetic factors with the environmental experiences that influence the traits and characteristics of an individual. What we eat, where we work, and how we live affects not only the activity of our genes but that of our offspring as well. This discovery has imposed a revolutionary theoretical shift on modern biology, especially on evolutionary theory. It has helped to uncover the (...) developmental processes leading to cancer, obesity, schizophrenia, alcoholism, and aging, and to facilitate associated medial applications such as stem cell therapy and cloning. Above the Gene, Beyond Biology explores how biologists in this booming field investigate and explain living systems. Jan Baedke offers the first comprehensive philosophical discussion of epigenetic concepts, explanations, and methodologies so that we can better understand this "epigenetic turn" in the life sciences from a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

This book provides for the first time a complete history of the doctrine of the transcendentals and shows its importance for the understanding of philosophy in the Middle Ages.

Freedom of thought is a fundamental human right, enshrined in many human rights treaties. It might very well be the only human right without any practical application. The paper reconstructs scope and meaning of this forgotten right and proposes four principles for its interpretation. In the age of neuroscientific insights and interventions into mind and brain that afford to alter thoughts, the time for the law to define freedom of thought in a way that lives up to its theoretical significance (...) has come. (shrink)

In recent years, postgenomic research, and the fields of epigenetics and microbiome science in particular, have described novel ways in which social processes of racialization can become embodied and result in physiological and health-related racial difference. This new conception of biosocial race has important implications for philosophical debates on the ontology of race. We argue that postgenomic research on race exhibits two key biases in the way that racial schemas are deployed. Firstly, although the ‘new biosocial race’ has been characterized (...) as social race entering into biological processes, it is only particular aspects of social race that are taken to cross the biosocial boundary, resulting in a distorted view of the social component of biosocial race. Secondly, racial categories are assumed to be stable across time and space. This assumption is epistemically limiting, as well as indicating a reliance on a fixed racial ontology. However, the causal pathways for the embodiment of social race, and the different possible modes of embodiment, that postgenomic science is uncovering themselves present a challenge for fixed or static racial ontologies. Given these tensions, we argue that the emerging picture of a shifting landscape of entanglement between the social and the biological requires us to increase the complexity of our ontologies of race, or even embrace a deflationary metaphysics of race. (shrink)

Scholars from all the continents have written articles to celebrate the seventieth birthday of Jan Srzednicki, a thinker still at the height of his powers. Born in Warsaw on 24 April 1993, Jan Srzednicki divided his energies between his philosophical studies at the University of Warsaw and his service in the underground army. In 1944 he was caught up in the dramatic attempt to liberate Warsaw from the Nazis. Srzednicki's scientific work alternates between problems of Austrian and German philosophy (...) and questions of political philosophy. The papers published in this volume discuss topics of general philosophy, in the clear and deep style both of Srzednicki's own philosophical work and of the Authors investigated in his writings. The topics developed pertain to the fields of epistemology and of logic and philosophy of logic. (shrink)

This excellent, semi-technical account includes a review of classical physics (origin of space and time measurements, Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy, laws of motion, inertia, and more) and coverage of Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity, discussing the concept of simultaneity, kinematics, Einstein’s mechanics and dynamics, and more.

Research on the relation between sound and meaning in language has reported substantial evidence for implicit associations between articulatory–acoustic characteristics of phonemes and emotions. In the present study, we specifically tested the relation between the acoustic properties of a text and its emotional tone as perceived by readers. To this end, we asked participants to assess the emotional tone of single stanzas extracted from a large variety of poems. The selected stanzas had either an extremely high, a neutral, or an (...) extremely low average formant dispersion. To assess the average formant dispersion per stanza, all words were phonetically transcribed and the distance between the first and second formant per vowel was calculated. Building on a long tradition of research on associations between sound frequency on the one hand and non‐acoustic concepts such as size, strength, or happiness on the other hand, we hypothesized that stanzas with an extremely high average formant dispersion would be rated lower on items referring to Potency (dominance) and higher on items referring to Activity (arousal) and Evaluation (emotional valence). The results confirmed our hypotheses for the dimensions of Potency and Evaluation, but not for the dimension of Activity. We conclude that, at least in poetic language, extreme values of acoustic features of vowels are a significant predictor for the emotional tone of a text. (shrink)

In recent years the idea that perceptual content is tensed in the sense that we can perceive objects as present or as past has come under attack. In this paper the notion of tensed content is to the contrary defended. The paper argues that assuming that something like an intentionalistic theory of perception is correct, it is very reasonable to suppose that perceptual content is tensed, and that a denial of this notion requires a denial of some intuitively very plausible (...) principles. The paper discusses some common objections against the notion of tensed content and concludes that none of them succeeds in showing that perceptual content cannot be tensed. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a solution to the problem that the need to accommodate the phenomenon of epistemic defeat poses for reliabilism. Defeaters are supposed to remove justification for previously justified beliefs. According to standard process reliabilism, the justification of a belief depends on the reliability of a process that is already completed when a defeater for that belief is obtained. It is hard to see, then, how a defeater can affect reliabilist justification, if that justification, from the perspective (...) of the defeater, lies wholly in the past. What is more, undercutting defeaters plausibly defeat by generating incompatibilities with higher-order propositions :105–118, 2014; Melis in Philos Stud 170:433–442, 2014). This is hard to integrate with reliabilism which explicitly denies higher-order conditions for justification. I argue that both of these phenomena can be accommodated by it via what I call the “Replacement Principle”: when a defeater is obtained, it generates either a logical incompatibility or a doxastic incompatibility. The resulting tension is registered and initiates a reasoning process that compares the epistemic support for the defeater with that for the defeated belief. This process may replace the original reliable formation process as a doxastic base for the defeated belief. If the defeater is not given its due weight in the reasoning process, that process was unreliable and if the defeated belief is retained as a result, it will be unjustified. This is intuitively the right result. Since reasoning is reliable, only if it is rational, the account manages to capture the intuition that disregarding a defeater would be irrational without having to make rationality a condition for justification. Replacement is not only plausible on causal pictures of doxastic basing, but also required in order to allow for the possibility of belief reevaluation in general and is therefore not an ad hoc addition to reliabilism, but rather part of its inherent explanatory resources. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of an internalist view of the perception of shapes. A basic assumption of the paper is that perceptual experiences have certain parts which account both for the phenomenal character associated with perceiving shapes—phenomenal shapes—and for the intentional content presenting shapes—intentional shapes. Internalism about perceptions of shapes is defined as the claim that phenomenal shapes determine the intentional shapes. Externalism is defined as the claim that perceptual experiences represent whatever shape the phenomenal shape reliably tracks. The (...) argument against externalism proceeds in three steps. First, it is argued that phenomenal shapes are modality specific, such that a phenomenal shape that features in a visual perceptual experience cannot feature in a haptic perceptual experience, and vice versa. Second, it is argued that intentional shapes are amodal. Third, it is argued that externalism is incompatible with the fact that phenomenal shapes are modality specific and intentional shapes amodal. (shrink)