Search

This paper is concerned with the question of whether mature human experience is thoroughly conceptual, or whether it involves non-conceptual elements or layers. It has two central goals. The first goal is methodological. It aims to establish that that question is, to a large extent, an empirical question. The question cannot be answered by appealing to purelya prioriand transcendental considerations. The second goal is to argue, inter alia by relying on empirical findings, that the view known as ‘state-conceptualism’ is false. We will argue that our experiences do involve non-conceptual elements. That is, a subject may enjoy an experience with a particular phenomenal aspect, withoutpossessingthe concept needed for the specification of the content of that aspect, and moreover, without being able toacquirethat concept upon having that experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I elaborate on Pylyshyn's definition of the cognitive impenetrability (CI) of early vision, and draw on the role of concepts in perceptual processing, which links the problem of the CI or cognitive penetrability (CP) of early vision with the problem of the nonconceptual content (NCC) of perception. I explain, first, the sense in which the content of early vision is CI and I argue that if some content is CI, it is conceptually encapsulated, that is, it is NCC. Then, I examine the definitions of NCC and argue that they lead to the view that the NCC of perception is retrieved in a stage of visual processing that is CI. Thus, the CI of a state and content is a sufficient and necessary condition for the state and its content to be purely NCC, the CI ≡ NCC thesis. Since early vision is CI, the purely NCC of perception is formed in early vision. I defend the CI ≡ NCC thesis by arguing against objections raised against both the sufficient and the necessary part of the thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For any given animal, the sources of mechanical disturbances inducing tissue deformation define environment from the perspective of the animal's haptic perceptual system. The system's achievements include perceiving the body, attachments to the body, and the surfaces and substances adjacent to the body. Among the perceptual systems, it stands alone in having no defined medium. There is no articulated functional equivalent to air and water, the media that make possible the energy transmissions and diffusions underpinning the other perceptual systems. To identify the haptic system's medium the authors focus on connective tissue and the conjunction of muscular, connective tissue net, and skeletal (MCS) as the body's proper characterization. The challenge is a biophysical formulation of MCS as a continuum that, similar to air and water, is homogeneous and isotropic. The authors hypothesized a multifractal tensegrity (MFT) with the shape and stability of the constituents of each scale, from individual cell to whole body, derivative of continuous tension and discontinuous compression. Each component tensegrity of MFT is an adjustive-receptive unit, and the array of tensions in MFT is information about MCS. The authors extend the MFT hypothesis to body-brain linkages, and to limb perception phenomena attendant to amputation, vibration, anesthesia, neuropathy, and microgravity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper first addresses the place of psychoanalysis in relation to certain other key bodies of knowledge: the thesis is that psychoanalysis is best understood as a highly specialized branch of human biology. Within this framework the main psychoanalytic ideas about depression in adults are described, giving particular attention to depression when it becomes a chronic, treatment-resistant state. Goldberg shows (pages 236-247 this issue) that the advances in genetics and neurobiology can be connected with those in developmental research (Murray & Hill, pages 185-199 & 200-212 this issue). This enables new light to be thrown upon the psychobiological diathesis which seems to underlie depression. This paper argues that an investigation of subjectivity and meaning is also necessary if our account of depression is to be complete. Without an understanding of meaningfulness, the function of the brain cannot be fully known. Finally, some clinical material shows why psychic reality has to be approached in its own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power PC theory postulates a normative procedure for making causal inferences from contingency information, and offers this as a descriptive model of human causal judgement. The inferential procedure requires a set of assumptions, which includes the assumption that the cause being judged is distributed independently of the set of other possible causes of the same outcome. It is argued that this assumption either never holds or can never be known to hold. It is also argued that conformity of judgements to the prescriptions of the model requires a sophisticated appreciation of methodological factors and acquired domain-specific knowledge of causes, and that the theory is disconfirmed by a finding that an objective contingency that equally supports two causal inferences results in only one of them actually being made. An alternative proposal based on the hypothesis that causal understanding originates with experiences of forces exerted while acting on objects is briefly sketched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two critical thinking skills - the tendency to avoid myside bias and to avoid one-sided thinking - were examined in three different experiments involving over 1200 participants and across two different paradigms. Robust indications of myside bias were observed in all three experiments. Participants gave higher evaluations to arguments that supported their opinions than those that refuted their prior positions. Likewise, substantial one-side bias was observed - participants were more likely to prefer a one-sided to a balanced argument. There was substantial variation in both types of bias, but we failed to find that participants of higher cognitive ability displayed less myside bias or less one-side bias. Although cognitive ability failed to associate with the magnitude of the myside bias, the strength and content of the prior opinion did predict the degree of myside bias shown. Our results indicate that cognitive ability - as defined by traditional psychometric indicators - turns out to be surprisingly independent of two of the most important critical thinking tendencies discussed in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention is arguably the brain's highest control system, functioning as a filter on lower-level activations (those up to semantic level). It allows passage through its filter of activations for those stimuli or for motor responses of importance in solving tasks; at the same time attention represses distracters. The details of the control system involved, including an inverse model controller for the signal to move the focus of attention to a particular goal and a forward model to predict the attended state of the world, are discussed in the paper and their firm support from experimental data is described. The results of various simulations are then considered. Executive powers are shown to be able to be developed on the basis of such attention control. Finally an efference copy of the attention movement control signal is suggested as the control basis of consciousness, thereby giving consciousness an important function in the brain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is it that we commonly experience such difficulty in accepting the death of someone close to us? It is the contention of this paper that one of the conglomeration of issues raised by the death of another person concerns the challenge of assimilating the transition from existence to non-existence. This is an ontological dilemma, mediated by both cognitive and linguistic structures. Cognitive factors operate to the extent that we attempt to apply an implicit principle of continuity to both concrete and abstract concepts, and defend this principle from disconfirmation by resort to magical thinking. Linguistic factors may influence reactions to bereavement to the extent that we commonly use such concepts as “identity” and “person” so as to engender an expectancy of persistence beyond death and that our defence of this expectation is again reflected in magical thinking. From this particular perspective then, the denial associated with bereavement is both cognitively and linguistically mediated. It is as such a structural phenomenon, the cognitive aspect of which may be rooted in a fundamental way of thinking about the world while the linguistic aspect would be more culturally relative. The societal response to magical thinking may be even more culturally bound, such mysticism typically being viewed as a type of medical deviance, to be “cured,” thereby effectively denying continuity. Possibly then, the relative merits of disengagement versus continued connection with the deceased become just a matter of perspective. The issue is a broad and speculative one touching on just a single aspect of bereavement, the theoretical position being that by unpacking each of the various issues raised by death and loss, some further understanding may emerge of the cumulative human reaction of grieving. An associated rating scale is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several epoxides are efficiently converted to the corresponding β-chlorohydrins in impressive yields with thionyl chloride in the presence of β-cyclodextrin using water as solvent at room temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I aim to present an explanation of object permanence that is derived from an ecological account of perceptually based action. In understanding why children below a certain age do not search for occluded objects, one must first understand the process by which these children perform certain intentional actions on non-occluded items; and to do this one must understand the role affordances play in eliciting retrieval behaviour. My affordance-based explanation is contrasted with Shinskey and Munakata's graded representation account; and although I do not reject totally the role representations play in initiating intentional action I nevertheless maintain that only by incorporating direct perception into an account of object permanence can a fuller understanding of this phenomenon be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examination of recent debates about belief shows the need to distinguish: (a) non–linguistic informational states in animal perception; (b) the uncritical use of language, e.g. by children; (c) adult humans' reasoned judgments. If we also distinguish between mind-directed and object–directed mental states, we have: 1. Perceptual ‘beliefs’ of animals and infants about their material environment. 2. ‘Beliefs’ of animals and infants about the mental states of others. 3. Linguistically-expressible beliefs about the world, resulting from e.g. the uncritical tendency to believe what we are told. 4. Uncritically-formed beliefs about the mental states. 5. Beliefs about the material world arrived at by the weighing of evidence. 6. Beliefs about mental states formed by critical assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]