It is traditionally believed that cerebral activation (the presence of low voltage fast electrical activity in the neocortex and rhythmical slow activity in the hippocampus) is correlated with arousal, while deactivation (the presence of large amplitude irregular slow waves or spindles in both the neocortex and the hippocampus) is correlated with sleep or coma. However, since there are many exceptions, these generalizations have only limited validity. Activated patterns occur in normal sleep (active or paradoxical sleep) and during states of anesthesia (...) and coma. Deactivated patterns occur, at times, during normal waking, or during behavior in awake animals treated with atropinic drugs. Also, the fact that patterns characteristic of sleep, arousal, and waking behavior continue in decorticate animals indicates that reticulo-cortical mechanisms are not essential for these aspects of behavior. (shrink)

Plato's Psychology originally published in 1970 and reprinted in 1972, is still the definitive modern discussion of the nature and development of Plato's ...

In this paper I want to suggest that, while the argued philosophical distinction between logic, epistemolgoy and ontology is one of the many achievements of Aristotle, his predecessor Parmenides was in fact already operating with a theory of knowledge and an elementary propositional logic that are of abiding philosophical interest. As part of the thesis I shall be obliged to reject a number of interpretations of particular passages in his poem, including one or two currently fashionable ones. Since so much (...) turns on points of translation, I note for purposes of comparison what seem to be significant alternatives to my own in any particular instance. The line numbers are those of the DK text. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have frequently criticized ancient Greek philosophy as anti-environmental for a view of philosophy that is counterproductive to environmental ethics and a view of the world that puts nature at the disposal of people. This provocative collection of original essays reexamines the views of nature and ecology found in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus. Recognizing that these thinkers were not confronted with the environmental degradation that threatens contemporary philosophers, the contributors to this book find that (...) the Greeks nevertheless provide an excellent foundation for a sound theory of environmentalism. (shrink)

If in the context of early and classical Greek thought, the term “theology” is taken to mean “of God/gods/the gods and his/their putative relationship, causal and directive, to the world and its operations, and to ourselves within that world,” or something of that order, the first ascription of such a notion to a Presocratic philosopher is to be found in Aristotle's comment that “Thales thought that all things are full of gods”. The Presocratic period ends with no neat causal sequence. (...) If one train of thinking was moving in the direction of a divinely guided, teleologically explicable universe, another was moving in exactly the opposite direction. For the atomists Democritus and Leucippus, the ever-changing universe is an infinity of space in which, across eternity, chance agglomerations of ever-moving atoms produce and will forever go on producing those contents of the universe that we call realities, from gazelles to galaxies. (shrink)

Two experiments are reported that evaluated survey learning of youth with DS and typically developing children (TD) matched on Mental Age (MA). In Experiment 1, the experimenter navigated participants through a novel virtual environment along a circuitous path, beginning and ending at a target landmark (i.e., a door). Then, the participants were placed at a pre-specified location in the environment and instructed to navigate to the same door using the shortest possible path from their current location. They completed the task (...) three times: once after being shown the environment one time, once after three exposures, and once after five exposures. Results indicated that the participants with DS exhibited significantly less skill at identifying the shortcut than did the TD participants. In Experiment 2, participants learned two overlapping routes through a simple environment. Following acquisition, they were tested on several measures of survey knowledge: finding a shortcut, identifying the direction of landmarks not currently visible from their location in the environment, and recognizing a bird’s-eye representation of the overall environment. The results of Experiment2 indicated that the participants with DS were at least as good as the TD participants on all of our measures of survey learning. Hence, we concluded that people with DS can acquire some survey knowledge when they learn a simple environment. However, the performance of both groups was relatively poor in Experiment 2, indicating a need to consider identifying the mechanisms underlying the poor performance on wayfinding of people with DS. Identifying the underlying mechanisms, is a logical first step in devising methods of enhancing environmental learning of people with DS. (shrink)

In the first part of the article I show how Descartes employs the sceptical theist strategy as part of his response to the problem of evil in Meditation Four. However, Descartes's use of this strategy seems to raise a serious challenge to his whole project: if Descartes is ignorant of God's purposes, then how can he be sure that God doesn't have some morally sufficient reason for creating him with unreliable clear and distinct perceptions? Drawing on related objections from Mersenne (...) and Hobbes, I show in the second half of the article how Descartes can sidestep this objection. (shrink)

The paper has as its goal the investigation of the meaning of logos in DK frs. 1, 2, 31b, 39, 45, 50, 87, 108, and 115, with particular emphasis on frs. 1, 2 and 50. It is argued that the focal meaning of the term is ‘account’ or ‘statement’, and that the statement in question, of particular importance in frs 1, 2 and 50, it the account/statement forever being uttered by ‘that which is wise’,, Heraclitus’ divine principle. Plato picks up (...) the idea, with his notion of a World Soul which is similarly forever in a state of utterance which is a piece of self-description, and it is suggested that a modern version of the notion of the universe being in an everlasting state of such self-description is our ability to learn what it has to say by investigating the ‘language’ of radio waves and the like, which are forever being emitted by all moving systems composing the real, and thereby forever offering us a piece of the real’s self-description of itself. (shrink)

Our understanding of genomic reorganization, the mechanics of genomic transmission to offspring during germ line formation, and how these structural changes contribute to the speciation process, and genetic disease is far from complete. Earlier attempts to understand the mechanism(s) and constraints that govern genome remodeling suffered from being too narrowly focused, and failed to provide a unified and encompassing view of how genomes are organized and regulated inside cells. Here, we propose a new multidisciplinary Integrative Breakage Model for the study (...) of genome evolution. The analysis of the high‐level structural organization of genomes (nucleome), together with the functional constrains that accompany genome reshuffling, provide insights into the origin and plasticity of genome organization that may assist with the detection and isolation of therapeutic targets for the treatment of complex human disorders. (shrink)

Le mode infini immédiat de l’étendue est l’un des éléments les plus mystérieux de l’ontologie de Spinoza. Malgré son importance pour le système métaphysique de Spinoza, ce dernier nous dit très peu à propos de ce mode. Dans un effort pour faire progresser l’étude de cette question, j’examine trois hypothèses bien acceptées qui traitent de l’identité de ce mode : l’interprétation de la force, l’interprétation nomique et l’interprétation cinétique. J’affirme premièrement que l’interprétation de la force et l’interprétation nomique doivent faire (...) face à de sérieuses objections. Deuxièmement, je soutiens que malgré les affirmations contraires des spécialistes, l’interprétation cinétique du MIIE est une option valable. (shrink)

In a recent article I attempted to show in some detail how Parmenides’ poem treats of ascertainment and the Real. I return to the argument here, and attempt to draw out some philosophical implications. Translations are in all cases my own; for a defense of them the reader is referred to my earlier work.

This book consists of a selection of papers which throw new light on old problems in one of Plato s most difficult dialogues. The first set of papers deals with definitions of sophistry from different perspectives. In the central section E. Hulsz, D. O'Brien, B. Bossi, P. Mesquita and N. Cordero consider the problem of being and relative non-being with regard to Heraclitus and the legacy of Parmenides. The final section with papers by F. Fronterotta, J. de Garay, D. Ambuel (...) and L. Palumbo is devoted to ontology, predication and truth.". (shrink)

According to The Debunking Argument, evidence from the cognitive science of religion suggests that it is epistemically inappropriate to persist in believing in the theistic God. In this paper, I focus on a reply to this argument according to which the evidence from cognitive science says nothing about the epistemic propriety of belief in the theistic God, since God may have chosen to create human beliefs in God by means of precisely the systems identified by cognitive scientists. I argue that (...) this reply can be extended to a variety of non-theistic contexts, and consequently that if the reply is sound, then the scope of The Debunking Argument is surprisingly limited. (shrink)

Adequate ideas are the fundamental element of Spinoza’s epistemological program. However, a recurrent worry among scholars is that Spinoza’s account of adequate ideas is inconsistent with any finite being ever having one. As I frame it, the problem is that for Spinoza an idea is adequate in a mind only if all its causal antecedents lie within the mind as well. However, it seems there can be no finite mind for which this is true; finite minds come to be and (...) exist within a deterministic causal nexus, and the causal antecedents of every idea in a mind will ultimately stretch far beyond it. I call this the External Cause Objection. I argue that Spinoza appreciated and explicitly answered this concern. According to this reply, adequate ideas do not have causes external to the mind because they do not fall into the category of what Spinoza calls “singular things.” In addition to showing that this coheres with his more specific claims about adequate ideas and his firm belief that finite minds are parts of nature, I argue that the resolution to this problem sheds light on Spinoza’s understanding of what I call absolute agency. Published on 2022-03-23 11:07:32. (shrink)

For the theist, human knowledge of God’s nature is, at best, partial, and this implies that there are characteristics of God beyond our ken which I call ‘the unknown attributes’. However, this confessed ignorance, I argue, has largely unappreciated skeptical consequences for determining the scope of God’s power. Consider some mundane future state of affairs normally considered to be within the scope of God’s power. If it lies within the scope of God’s power, then it is consistent with God’s nature, (...) and hence the unknown attributes. However, what grounds does the theist have for making this claim? More generally, we can ask: how do we know what God can do, if we don’t know what God is? I call this question The Problem of the Unknown Attributes, and take up and evaluate four plausible answers. I argue that the each of these answers fails, but close the paper by gesturing toward a partial reply. The overall aim of the paper is to draw out some of the skeptical consequences of human ignorance of God’s nature, and to thereby highlight an unrecognized tension in theistic thought. (shrink)

Heyman explains useful ways to bring addictive drug use under environmental control. We doubt that relapse is explained by drug features such as immediate reinforcement, clouding of judgment, and so forth. Relapse may require explanation in terms of enduring sensitization of incentive neural substrates, but even if its causal assumptions are wrong, Heyman's model makes useful predictions for behavioral control.

The paper deals with the "deuteros plous", literally ‘the second voyage’, proverbially ‘the next best way’, discussed in Plato’s "Phaedo", the key passage being Phd. 99e4–100a3. The second voyage refers to what Plato’s Socrates calls his “flight into the logoi”. Elaborating on the subject, the author first (I) provides a non-standard interpretation of the passage in question, and then (II) outlines the philosophical problem that it seems to imply, and, finally, (III) tries to apply this philosophical problem to the "ultimate (...) final proof" of immortality and to draw an analogy with the ontological argument for the existence of God, as proposed by Descartes in his 5th "Meditation". The main points are as follows: (a) the “flight into the logoi” can have two different interpretations, a common one and an astonishing one, and (b) there is a structural analogy between Descartes’s ontological argument for the existence of God in his 5th "Meditation" and the "ultimate final proof" for the immortality of the soul in the "Phaedo". (shrink)

El artículo discute la cuestión de si Platón creía que, en el asunto de la areté, la psyché femenina tenía una inclinación natural a la inmoralidad en un sentido que no tenía la psyché masculina, y que por ende era signiticativamente distinta a la psyché masculina. Se arguye que el Timeo (y en menor grado. las Leyes) sugiere fuertemente que sí lo creyó, aunque afortunadamente las consecuencias políticas que intirió de ello (en las Leyes) resultan positivas en lugar de negativas. (...) Se arguye, por el contrario, que Aristóteles -aun cuando sigue manteniendo la teoría lamentable de la inferioridad de las mujeres-habla de diferentes quanta de (una y la misma) areté en las almas masculinas y femeninas, en lugar deuna diferencia en su misma areté. (shrink)

A succinct overview of the main ideas of Aristotle's philosophy intended for readers without previous training in philosophy. Provides a sympathetic reading of Aristotle including an account of specific concepts and doctrines, clarification of assumptions in the texts, why he held the beliefs he hel.

In proportion to their numbers the Semitic peoples have exercised a greater influence on the course of human history as a whole than any other of the large races of mankind. As far as our records carry us, it appears that the early spirit of exploration and adventure, as distinct from racial migration, had its origin with them. Even in Homeric times, the Phoenician trader or pirate was a familiar feature of the Mediterranean world. Greece, commonly regarded by us as (...) the home of true culture, admitted that she owed to Phoenicia her first introduction to the art of writing. Semitic establishments were spread over the whole of the ancient world, and the only state that ever seriously contested with Rome the sovereignty of the world was Carthage. Though not famed more for military prowess than other races, the Semitic branch of mankind in the seventh century of our era swept over northern Africa and western Asia, overflowing at two points into Europe itself. (shrink)

Explores various aspects of Plato’s cosmological writings.