The aim of this study was to test red - green dichromats' ability to discriminate between illuminant and surface-reflectance changes in natural scenes. Stimuli were simulations of natural scenes presented on a colour monitor with 10-bit resolution per gun. The natural scenes were obtained with a fast hyperspectral imaging system. Six different scenes (including rocks, foliage, and buildings) were tested. In each trial, two images were presented in sequence, each for 1 s, with no interval. The images differed in the (...) phase of daylight on the scene: first with correlated colour temperature 25 000 K, then 6 700 K. The spectral reflectance of a region in the second image was changed randomly, consistent with a local change in daylight. The observer's task was to decide whether a particular surface in the successive images was the same (pure illuminant change) or different (illuminant change with a surface-reflectance change). The performance of four deuteranopes and five protanopes varied considerably across the scenes tested, with mean colour constancy indices (± 1 SEM) of 0.48 (± 0.13) and 0.19 (± 0.10), respectively (1.0 representing ideal performance). Deuteranopes seemed less disadvantaged than protanopes, performing close to normal with some scenes. (shrink)

Measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) has been fundamental to our understanding of how language is encoded in the brain. One particular ERP response, the N400 response, has been especially influential as an index of lexical and semantic processing. However, there remains a lack of consensus on the interpretation of this component. Resolving this issue has important consequences for neural models of language comprehension. Here we show that evidence bearing on where the N400 response is generated provides key insights into what it (...) reflects. A neuroanatomical model of semantic processing is used as a guide to interpret the pattern of activated regions in functional MRI, magnetoencephalography and intracranial recordings that are associated with contextual semantic manipulations that lead to N400 effects. (shrink)

The author, a professor of psychiatry and religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, is interested in developing a religious consciousness which is in many ways opposed to that of the existentialists, at least the more anguished existentialists. "Many contemporary Christians appear to be taking the advice of the Apostle Paul to 'work out your salvation with fear and trembling' out of context." And again: "Modern man's nibbling on intellectual fodder and breathing of 'existential' complaints has led him far (...) astray from his true destiny and rendered him a caricature of his true nature." Play is neither deadly serious nor mere fun, but these are the only alternatives of which modern man is aware. Modern man has forgotten the unique character of play and since this belongs to the essence of religion and liturgy, he has forgotten the essence of Christianity. True religion is playful. And the age of leisure has the time to cultivate play if it would set about doing so. In the course of his argument the author surveys the views of Freud, Erikson, Brown, Eliade, Otto, Huizinga, and Callois.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Originally published in 1957 under the title Sunrise to Eternity, this Seabury edition performs the welcome service of presenting again the outstanding English exposition of Boehme's mystico-philosophical thought. The book is extremely sober and scholarly, systematically demythologizing the standard account of Boehme's life and work. Many expositions of Boehme are cluttered with unlikely and distracting accounts of his personal sanctity and numerous revelations. Stoudt, however, gives a tightly argued, well-documented account of Boehme's biography, alternating chapters on Boehme's life with chapters (...) on the works of the same period. This is extremely helpful, for it exhibits Boehme's development quite clearly. Stoudt makes it very plain that Boehme's early thought is couched in the language of alchemy but that it outgrows that strange vocabulary to become by the end of his life a mature spirituality, steeped in the earlier German mystical tradition and with a speculative depth which anticipates the main lines of German idealism. Boehme is not, then, as the standard hagiographers would have him, an unlettered shoemaker, sprung untainted from the breast of God and untaught by any mortal predecessor. Stoudt is not always as clear as we would hope, but, considering Boehme's notorious obscurity he is clearer than most. While Stoudt points out Boehme's origin in the German tradition that precedes him, he underplays the dependence of Boehme on Meister Eckhardt, or at least leaves that whole problem insufficiently analyzed. There is a brief preface by Paul Tillich.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Kostos Axelos, Greek-born Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne and author of a trilogy in French, Le Déploiement de l'errance, and of several French translations of Lucás and Heidegger, attempts an important confrontation of the two thinkers whom many regard as the major thinkers in European thought today: Marx and Heidegger. To some this is a confrontation of the left and the right, but Axelos moves in an entirely different range altogether. Heidegger himself remarks that a confrontation with Marx must (...) be made in terms of the problem of history. Both Heidegger and Marx--to some extent as the heirs of Hegel--are philosophers of the future. Axelos' book is written from the Heideggerian standpoint, centering on Heidegger's interpretation of the present age in terms of Technik, which is itself a movement in the mission of Being. The movements of the Geschick, as Heidegger says in Der Satz vom Grund and as Axelos emphasizes, are a world-play. The task of a thinking concerned with the future is to play along with the play. The future in Marxist and Heideggerian terms is a "planetary" age, beyond all nationalism, ruled by a global or planetary technology. Thinking must decide whether and how such technology will be an instrument of liberation or of oppression. Axelos' confrontation raises many central and interesting questions: what is the relationship between Heidegger's Gelassenheit and Marx's praxis? What hope is there for a future governed by a play? etc. The book can be recommended as both original and provocative.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This festschrift dedicated to Wilfrid Sellars is divided into two parts. Part I consists of eleven critical studies written expressly for this volume. They explore various aspects of Sellars’ philosophic thought. Part II, entitled "Sellarsiana," consists of Sellars’ autobiographical reflections, a bibliography of his works and a new series of papers by him on the problem of knowledge.

This book presents a theory about the kind of thing a mind is and, on the basis of this theory, a view about how minds are individuated and when two mental states belong to the same mind.