This paper responds to the issues raised by D. Chalmers by offering a research direction which is quite radical because of the way in which methodological principles are linked to scientific studies of consciousness. Neuro-phenomenology is the name I use here to designate a quest to marry modern cognitive science and a disciplined approach to human experience, thereby placing myself in the lineage of the continental tradition of Phenomenology. My claim is that the so-called hard problem that animates these Special (...) Issues can only be addressed productively by gathering a research community armed with new pragmatic tools for the development of a science of consciousness. I will claim that no piecemeal empirical correlates, nor purely theoretical principles, will really help us at this stage. We need to turn to a systematic exploration of the only link between mind and consciousness that seems both obvious and natural: the structure of human experience itself. In what follows I motivate my choice by briefly examining the current debate about consciousness at the light of Chalmer’s hard problem. Next, I outline the phenomenological strategy. Finally I conclude by discussing some of the main difficulties and consequences of this strategy. (shrink)

Recent articles in Religious Studies have underscored the questions of whether Buddhism presents any empirical doctrines, and whether, if it does, such doctrines are false or vacuous. In what follows I want to sketch an interpretation of Buddhism according to which it does not offer doctrines which are empirically false, on the one hand, or trivially true on the other. In doing so I take my cue from an earlier, and by now classic, paper by H. H. Price. For the (...) exposition of Buddhism I take the Pali Nikāyas, the single most significant collection of texts in the Buddhist tradition. The particular doctrine which is the focus of discussion here is the kammavāda or ‘karma view’ of early Indian Buddhism, for it is the focus of much of the recent literature cited above and a doctrine which some have thought amenable to statement in empirical terms. (shrink)

Geannoteerde briefwisseling van de twee geleerden over het vraagstuk van de evolutie.

Feature selection is a widely studied technique whose goal is to reduce the dimensionality of the problem by removing irrelevant features. It has multiple benefits, such as improved efficacy, efficiency and interpretability of almost any type of machine learning model. Feature selection techniques may be divided into three main categories, depending on the process used to remove the features known as Filter, Wrapper and Embedded. Embedded methods are usually the preferred feature selection method that efficiently obtains a selection of the (...) most relevant features of the model. However, not all models support an embedded feature selection that forces the use of a different method, reducing the efficiency and reliability of the selection. Neural networks are an example of a model that does not support embedded feature selection. As neural networks have shown to provide remarkable results in multiple scenarios such as classification and regression, sometimes in an ensemble with a model that includes an embedded feature selection, we attempt to embed a feature selection process with a general-purpose methodology. In this work, we propose a novel general-purpose layer for neural networks that removes the influence of irrelevant features. The Feature-Aware Drop Layer is included at the top of the neural network and trained during the backpropagation process without any additional parameters. Our methodology is tested with 17 datasets for classification and regression tasks, including data from different fields such as Health, Economic and Environment, among others. The results show remarkable improvements compared to three different feature selection approaches, with reliable, efficient and effective results. (shrink)

Veterinarians play an essential role in the animal-based food chain. They are professionally responsible for the health of farm animals to secure food safety and public health. In the last decades, food scandals and zoonotic disease outbreaks have shown how much animal and human health are entangled. Therefore, the concept of One Health is broadly promoted within veterinary medicine. The profession embraces this idea that the health of humans, animals and the environment is inextricably linked and supports the related call (...) for transdisciplinary collaboration. Especially in zoonotic disease control, the benefits of the cooperation between veterinarians and human doctors seem evident. However, applying a One Health approach also makes moral problems explicit. For instance, how should veterinarians deal with situations in which measures to protect public health negatively affect animal health? This creates a conflict of professional responsibilities. To deal with such moral problems and to strengthen the veterinarian’s position, the starting point is a holistic perspective on One Health. We will argue for an ‘encapsulated health’ argument: the best way to safeguard human health is to promote the health of animals and the environment. This also holds for the responsibility of the veterinary profession: to serve public health, the central responsibility of veterinarians should be to be experts in animal health and welfare. We elaborate this point by using a case study on the role of the veterinary profession in antimicrobial resistance policies in the Netherlands. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson, in various places, has put forward an argument that is supposed to show that denying bivalence is absurd. This paper is an examination of the logical force of this argument, which is found wanting.

Task unrelated thought (TUT) refers to thought directed away from the current situation, for example a daydream. Three experiments were conducted on healthy participants, with two broad aims. First, to contrast distributed and encapsulated views of cognition by comparing the encoding of categorical and random lists of words (Experiments One and Two). Second, to examine the consequences of experiencing TUT during study on the subsequent retrieval of information (Experiments One, Two, and Three). Experiments One and Two demonstrated lower levels of (...) TUT and higher levels of word-fragment completion whilst encoding categorical relative to random stimuli, supporting the role of a distributed resource in the maintenance of TUT. In addition the results of all three experiments suggested that experiencing TUT during study had a measurable effect on subsequent retrieval. TUT was associated with increased frequency of false alarms at retrieval (Experiment One). In the subsequent experiments TUT was associated with no advantage to retrieval based on recollection, by manipulating instructions at encoding (Experiment Two), and/or at retrieval (Experiment Three). The implications of the results of all three experiments are discussed in terms of recent accounts of memory retrieval and conscious awareness. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

In this paper, we give an example of a complete computable infinitary theory T with countable models ${\mathcal{M}}$ and ${\mathcal{N}}$ , where ${\mathcal{N}}$ is a proper computable infinitary extension of ${\mathcal{M}}$ and T has no uncountable model. In fact, ${\mathcal{M}}$ and ${\mathcal{N}}$ are (up to isomorphism) the only models of T. Moreover, for all computable ordinals α, the computable ${\Sigma_\alpha}$ part of T is hyperarithmetical. It follows from a theorem of Gregory (JSL 38:460–470, 1972; Not Am Math Soc 17:967–968, 1970) (...) that if T is a Π 1 1 set of computable infinitary sentences and T has a pair of models ${\mathcal{M}}$ and ${\mathcal{N}}$ , where ${\mathcal{N}}$ is a proper computable infinitary extension of ${\mathcal{M}}$ , then T would have an uncountable model. (shrink)

Three experiments explore the role of working memory in motor skill acquisition and performance. Traditional theories postulate that skill acquisition proceeds through stages of knowing, which are initially declarative but later procedural. The reported experiments challenge that view and support an independent, parallel processing model, which predicts that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired separately and that the former does not depend on the availability of working memory, whereas, the latter does. The behaviour of these two processes was manipulated (...) by providing or withholding visual (and auditory) appraisal of outcome feedback. Withholding feedback was predicted to inhibit the use of working memory to appraise success and, thus, prevent the formation of declarative knowledge without affecting the accumulation of procedural knowledge. While the first experiment failed to support these predictions, the second and third experiments demonstrated that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired independently. It is suggested that the availability of working memory is crucial to motor performance only when the learner has come to rely on its use. (shrink)

Debates over the causes and consequences of the “Axial Age” – and its relevance for understanding and explaining “modernity” – continue to rage within and across a wide variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, archaeology, history, social theory, and cognitive science. We present a computational model that synthesizes three leading theories about the emergence of axial civilizations. Although these theories are often treated as competitors, our computational model shows how their most important conceptual insights and empirically based causal claims (...) can be integrated within a single computational architecture. The plausibility of the latter is supported by the results of our simulation experiments, which were able to simulate the emergence and growth of an axial civilization. The model shows how the relevant theories can be rendered consistent, while challenging the claims of any one to comprehensiveness. (shrink)

After having defined the KARO logic for specifying intelligent agents in earlier work we now turn to the question how to realise agents specified in the KARO framework. To this end we look at agent programming languages that we have defined, and investigate how programs in these languages can be linked to the KARO logic.