The aim of this study was to investigate the predictive relationship of peer group influence, teacher-student interaction and indiscipline to students' dropout tendency in evening continuing education programmes. The context of this study is the southern senatorial district of Cross River State, Nigeria. The study adopted a predictive correlational research design, and the sample comprised 554 students randomly selected from 11 centres in the district. This represents 20% of the total population of students. The instrument used for data collection was (...) a questionnaire titled: "Social Indicators and Dropout Tendency Scale" (SIDTS). The researchers collected the data that were analysed using Pearson product-moment correlation and multiple linear regression analyses at the .05 level of significance. The results revealed that peer group influence, teacher-student interaction and level of indiscipline collectively and individually predicted dropout tendency among students in evening continuing education programmes. It was recommended, among others, that the teachers discover diverse ways of making their teaching process lively by devising ways of engaging the students in the learning process by forming discussion groups that will promote healthy peer groups, which will increase their eagerness to come to school. (shrink)

Abstract: The objective of this study was to examine empirically the determinants of job satisfaction levels among community development officer in Oyo State, Nigeria. Due to this, two research questions were formulated and answered. All community development officers across thirty-three local government areas of Oyo state formed the target population. However, fifteen local governments were chosen for the study from the existing number, also, simple random sampling technique which was stratified in nature and operation was used to select seven-hundred and (...) seventy one (771) respondents which cut across three strata (that is three senatorial districts). Structured questionnaire was used to elicit information from the respondents, while descriptive component of statistics was employed to analyse the data generated from the instrument. The empirical findings from demographic attributes of the respondents revealed that the majority of the community development officers participated in the study were female by gender, first degree or Higher National Diploma by qualifications, spent between 4-6 years in service as community development agent, Christian by religious affiliation, and inspector in terms of cadre. Based on the determinants levels of job satisfaction, it was discovered from majority point of view that the current placement in the job, future prospect of the career, availability and accessibility of on-the-job training, favourable working conditions, regular promotion, routine of the job, level of motivation, monthly remuneration among others were some of the determinants of job satisfaction levels among community development officers. The study recommended constant and regular initiation of programmes like on-the-job training, regular payment of wages and salaries, attractive social welfare packages to mention a few for the community development officers regardless of their gender and religious affiliation. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida’s ‘Faith and Knowledge’ presents an account of the complex relationship between religion and technoscience that disrupts their traditional boundaries by uncovering both an irreducible faith at the heart of science and an irreducible mechanicity at the heart of religion. In this paper, I focus on the latter, arguing that emphases in Derrida’s text on both the ‘sources’ of religion and its interaction with modern technologies underemphasize the ways in which a general ‘mechanicity’ is present throughout religion. There is (...) no faith, I contend, that is not in some way materially constituted according to a mechanicity operative not only at its origin but continuously and in ever-changing forms, and not only in its interactions with other fields and institutions but within its own structure and daily life. By closely examining ‘Faith and Knowledge’—along with examples from his essay ‘A Silkworm of One’s Own’ and Michael Naas’s Miracle and Machine—I argue that more attention should be paid to the mechanisms, both human and non-human, that populate and perform religion in its factical life. Mechanical bodies and practices are enlisted by religious traditions in order that these traditions continue to exist by continually reconstituting themselves in, for example, the repetitive use of religious objects or the vocal recitation of creeds. Such mechanical acts of religion are not ultimately opposed to the faithful experience that is often taken to be the wellspring of religious life; on the contrary, they are the conditions for the possibility of this experience. (shrink)

Only ten years since Derrida’s death, with critical detachment, is it possible to be in touch with him again, to start from the beginning of his philosophizing in company with Plato, and from this vantage point to re-read Dissemination? What really stands between Plato and Derrida? In the first page of Pharmacia Derrida writes: “We will take off here from the Phaedrus ... Only a blind or grossly insensitive reading, could indeed spread the rumour that Plato was simply condemning the (...) writer’s activity”.1 Hence the question: Is the nexus writing/pharmakon profitable for thinking of something ambivalent and irreducible, present and absent, something bearer of indefinitely deferred presence in the play of infinite real or imaginary substitutions? The main enterprise of this essay orbits about the problematic of writing, understood as τέχνη, but also as a key locus of relation Plato/ Derrida. Here technology - and thinking of its function and value- I would like to argue, regards the technical and non-technical, the practical and theoretical, seeing that thinking of their function remains always a “parasitical contamination”, seeing that writing is another speech, and, according this statement, we may regard Plato as he who paves the way for Derrida. In what follows, through textual analysis I will focus on some interesting unrolling, connected and disconnected threads by discussing the readings of different scholars and philosophers such as the disputed classicist E. A. Havelock, the historians of ancient philosophy G. Reale and C. H. Kahn. In particular I will explore, first, the nexus speech/writing, and argue that historically Plato was a bi-medial philosopher and writer, an aspect taken for granted, but not sufficiently attended by scholarship. In the second part of the essay I hold that the Derridean reading of ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ discovers a special deconstruction at work within Plato’s dialogues. In the light of the manifold τέχνη, and of the hybrid Khora, at the end the apparent ambiguity in Plato’s stance and Derrida’s φάρμακον invites us to identify Plato as the Father of deconstruction. (shrink)

The study aims to identify the efficiency of the university education performance from the perspective of postgraduate and undergraduate students in international and Palestinian universities. The analytical descriptive approach was used for this purpose and the questionnaire was used as a main tool for data collection. The study community consists of: post graduate students, (23850) graduate students and (146355) undergraduate students. The sample of the study was 378 graduate students and 383 undergraduate students. The random stratified sample was used. The (...) Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) was also used for data analysis. The study reached a number of results, the most important of which are: The level of efficiency of educational performance in Palestinian and international universities from the point of view of postgraduate and undergraduate students was high. And that there are significant differences between the average views of the sample of the study on the efficiency of educational performance in Palestinian and international universities attributed to the University and to the benefit of international universities. The study concluded many recommendations, the most important of which is the necessity of continuing to develop e-learning strategies that affect the efficiency of educational performance and research commensurate with the university's position in the local and international community, which puts it on the best classification between local and international universities through e-learning. (shrink)

This study presented the policy of functional integration of the product planning team as a strategy for the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Palestine. The study population consists of all the workers in companies operating in the field of medicine in Palestine, which are (5) companies producing in the West Bank only for pharmaceuticals used by these companies, which are (296) employees, and was used a simple random sample to choose the sample and size (87) employees of the study (...) population, and to achieve the objectives of the study (87) questionnaires were distributed. The descriptive analytical method was used, and SPSS was used to answer and discuss the study's questions. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between the effectiveness of the policy of product development and the competitiveness of pharmaceutical companies in Palestine (West Bank), where the policy of product development efficiency accounts for 56.6% of the total change in the competitiveness of companies. The product quality component was most influential at all levels of product development effectiveness policy, followed by product identification, product cost reduction, packaging and product deletion. The weakest areas of strategic direction in pharmaceutical companies in Palestine (West Bank) are 67%. The weakest aspects of job integration are: non-regular meetings of representatives of different positions to participate in any project related to product development, to achieve spatial convergence of members of the product planning policy team in offices, laboratories and workplaces. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines or software that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include, Speech, recognition, Learning, Planning and Problem solving. Deep learning is a collection of algorithms used in machine learning, It is part of a broad family of methods used for machine learning that are based on learning representations of data. Deep learning is a technique used (...) to produce Pneumonia detection and classification models using x-ray imaging for rapid and easy detection and identification of pneumonia. In this thesis, we review ways and mechanisms to use deep learning techniques to produce a model for Pneumonia detection. The goal is find a good and effective way to detect pneumonia based on X-rays to help the chest doctor in decision-making easily and accuracy and speed. The model will be designed and implemented, including both Dataset of image and Pneumonia detection through the use of Deep learning algorithms based on neural networks. The test and evaluation will be applied to a range of chest x-ray images and the results will be presented in detail and discussed. This thesis uses deep learning to detect pneumonia and its classification. (shrink)

We consider how an epistemic network might self-assemble from the ritualization of the individual decisions of simple heterogeneous agents. In such evolved social networks, inquirers may be significantly more successful than they could be investigating nature on their own. The evolved network may also dramatically lower the epistemic risk faced by even the most talented inquirers. We consider networks that self-assemble in the context of both perfect and imperfect communication and compare the behaviour of inquirers in each. This provides a (...) step in bringing together two new and developing research programs, the theory of self-assembling games and the theory of network epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper, we present an intelligent tutoring system developed to help students in learning Computer Theory. The Intelligent tutoring system was built using ITSB authoring tool. The system helps students to learn finite automata, pushdown automata, Turing machines and examines the relationship between these automata and formal languages, deterministic and nondeterministic machines, regular expressions, context free grammars, undecidability, and complexity. During the process the intelligent tutoring system gives assistance and feedback of many types in an intelligent manner according to (...) the behavior of the student. An evaluation of the intelligent tutoring system has revealed reasonably acceptable results in terms of its usability and learning abilities are concerned. (shrink)

Wigner's quantum-mechanical classification of particle-types in terms of irreducible representations of the Poincaré group has a classical analogue, which we extend in this paper. We study the compactness properties of the resulting phase spaces at fixed energy, and show that in order for a classical massless particle to be physically sensible, its phase space must feature a classical-particle counterpart of electromagnetic gauge invariance. By examining the connection between massless and massive particles in the massless limit, we also derive a classical-particle (...) version of the Higgs mechanism. (shrink)

: Lately there is more attention paid to technological development in intelligent tutoring systems. This field is becoming an interesting topic to many researchers. In this paper, we are presenting an intelligent tutoring system for teaching DES Information Security Algorithm called DES-Tutor. The DES-Tutor target the students enrolled in cryptography course in the department Information Technology in Al-Azhar University in Gaza. Through DES-Tutor the student will be able to study course material and try the exercises of each lesson. An evaluation (...) of the DES-Tutor was carried out and the results were promising. (shrink)

We address a long-standing debate over whether classical magnetic forces can do work, ultimately answering the question in the affirmative. In detail, we couple a classical particle with intrinsic spin and elementary dipole moments to the electromagnetic field, derive the appropriate generalization of the Lorentz force law, show that the particle's dipole moments must be collinear with its spin axis, and argue that the magnetic field does mechanical work on the particle's elementary magnetic dipole moment. As consistency checks, we calculate (...) the overall system's energy-momentum and angular momentum, and show that their local conservation equations lead to the same force law and therefore the same conclusions about magnetic forces and work. We also compute the system's Belinfante-Rosenfeld energy-momentum tensor. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to results of protein (...) research. PRO (http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro) is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. (shrink)

Organizations are increasingly finding it challenging to balance economic and environmental performance particularly those that face competitive, regulatory and community pressure. With the increasing pressures for environmental sustainability, this calls for the new formulation of strategies by the manufacturers in order to minimize their products and services negative impact on the environment. Hence, Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) continues to be an important research agenda among the researchers. In Palestine, green issues are new and still developing. Constant study is needed (...) to fully understand and update information regarding this area. Objective: The aim of this paper is to explore the views and level of acceptance of GHRM practices among manufacturing firms in Palestine. Results: Through the use of e-mail survey, 121 responses were obtained to generate the results of the study. The result showed GHRM practices have been practiced to somewhat to a greater extent a firms in Palestine. Findings can be extended to study on the issues in further. Academicians and practitioners can apply this result to their research and business strategies on how to improve sustainable performance and to effectively implement GHRM practices. (shrink)

Neuron diagrams are heavily employed in academic discussions of causation. Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum, however, offer an alternative approach employing vector diagrams, which this paper attempts to develop further. I identify three ways in which dispositionalists have taken the activities of powers to be related: stimulation, mutual manifestation, and contribution combination. While Mumford and Anjum do provide resources for representing contribution combination, which might be sufficient for their particular brand of dispositionalism, I argue that those resources are not (...) flexible enough to further accommodate either stimulation or mutual manifestation. Representational tools are provided to address these limitations, improving the general value of the vector model for dispositionalist approaches to causation. (shrink)

How, if at all, consciousness can be part of the physical universe remains a baffling problem. This article outlines a new, developing philosophical theory of how it could do so, and offers a preliminary mathematical formulation of a physical grounding for key aspects of the theory. Because the philosophical side has radical elements, so does the physical-theory side. The philosophical side is radical, first, in proposing that the productivity or dynamism in the universe that many believe to be responsible for (...) its systematic regularities is actually itself a physical constituent of the universe, along with more familiar entities. Indeed, it proposes that instances of dynamism can themselves take part in physical interactions with other entities, this interaction then being “meta-dynamism” (a type of meta-causation). Secondly, the theory is radical, and unique, in arguing that consciousness is necessarily partly constituted of meta-dynamic auto-sensitivity, in other words it must react via meta-dynamism to its own dynamism, and also in conjecturing that some specific form of this sensitivity is sufficient for and indeed constitutive of consciousness. The article proposes a way for physical laws to be modified to accommodate meta-dynamism, via the radical step of including elements that explicitly refer to dynamism itself. Additionally, laws become, explicitly, temporally non-local in referring directly to quantity values holding at times prior to a given instant of application of the law. The approach therefore implicitly brings in considerations about what information determines states. Because of the temporal non-locality, and also because of the deep connections between dynamism and time-flow, the approach also implicitly connects to the topic of entropy insofar as this is related to time. (shrink)

In Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates argues that ‘the many’ are confused about the experience they describe as ‘being overcome by pleasure’. They think the cause is ‘something other than ignorance’. He argues it follows from what they believe that the cause is ‘ignorance’ and ‘false belief’. I show that his argument depends on a premise he does not introduce but they should deny: that when someone is overcome by pleasure, the desire stems from a belief. To explain why Plato does not (...) make Socrates introduce this premise, the account I construct is speculative. It starts from the assumption that Plato is thinking through an understanding of human beings and what they must do to live good lives that he takes the historical Socrates to set out. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Multiple states are at risk of becoming uninhabitable due to climate change, forcing their populations to flee. While the 1951 Refugee Convention provides the gold standard of international protection, it is only applied to a limited subset of people fleeing their countries, those who suffer persecution, which most people fleeing climate change cannot establish. While many journalists and non-lawyers freely use the term “climate refugees,” governments, and courts, as well as UNHCR and many refugee experts, have excluded most climate refugees (...) from the Convention as a matter of legal interpretation. In our 2015 paper, “Unable to Return in the 1951 Refugee Convention: Stateless Refugees and Climate Change”, we sought to reopen the debate on “climate refugees” by arguing that some climate refugees qualify under the 1951 Convention as it is currently written (even if they are not persecuted): those who are stateless and are unable to return to their country of origin because climate change has rendered it uninhabitable. Our interpretation, however, has been rejected by Goodwin-Gill and McAdam (2021) and by Foster and Lambert (2019), which explicitly responds to our paper. Here, we address and respond to their arguments, and develop a new supplementary one, drawing on the principle of systemic integration, as enshrined in Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. (shrink)

We study the structure of families of theories in the language of arithmetic extended to allow these families to refer to one another and to themselves. If a theory contains schemata expressing its own truth and expressing a specific Turing index for itself, and contains some other mild axioms, then that theory is untrue. We exhibit some families of true self-referential theories that barely avoid this forbidden pattern.

In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates says to Callicles that “your love of the people, existing in your soul, stands against me, but if we closely examine these same matters often and in a better way, you will be persuaded” (513c7–d1). I argue for an interpretation that explains how Socrates understands Callicles’s love of the people to stand against him and why he believes examination often and in a better way will persuade Callicles.

I argue against the Ramsey test connecting indicative conditionals with conditional probability, by means of examples in which conditional probability is high but the conditional is intuitively implausible. At the end of the paper, I connect these issues to patterns of belief revision.

1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.

This is an introductory article on sociobiology, particularly its relationship to eugenics. Sociobiology developed in the 1960s as a field within evolutionary biology to explain human social traits and behaviours. Although sociobiology has few direct connections to eugenics, it shares eugenics’ optimistic enthusiasm for extending biological science into the human domain, often with reckless sensationalism. Sociobiology's critics have argued that sociobiology also propagates a kind of genetic determinism and represents the zealous misapplication of science beyond its proper reach that characterized (...) the eugenics movement. More recently, evolutionary psychology represents a sophistication of sociobiology that attends to the mind as the "missing link" between evolution and behaviour (Cosmides and Tooby 1992, Pinker 1997). (shrink)

I give cases where the contrast between "if Shakespeare had not written Hamlet someone else would have" and "if Shakespeare did not write Hamlet and someone else did"is found in future tense sentences. This is often denied.

Social epistemology is autonomous: When applied to the same evidential situations, the principles of social rationality and the principles of individual rationality sometimes recommend inconsistent beliefs. If we stipulate that reasoning rationally from justified beliefs to a true belief is normally sufficient for knowledge, the autonomy thesis implies that some knowledge is essentially social. When the principles of social and individual rationality are applied to justified evidence and recommend inconsistent beliefs and the belief endorsed by social rationality is true, then (...) that true belief would be an instance of social knowledge but not individual knowledge. (shrink)

The Internet of Things (IoT) wireless LAN in healthcare has moved away from traditional methods that include hospital visits and continuous monitoring. The Internet of Things allows the use of certain means, including the detection, processing and transmission of physical and biomedical parameters. With powerful algorithms and intelligent systems, it will be available to provide unprecedented levels of critical data for real-time life that are collected and analyzed to guide people in research, management and emergency care. This chapter provides a (...) quick overview of IoT features and how they relate to wireless discovery and technology to deploy the medical applications you need. In the world, the revolution in any industry is to connect your products and devices to the Internet and make them independent and remotely connected, so that anyone can use and view them from anywhere and anytime. The Internet of Things provides us with a home automation system that uses smart devices to overcome this obstacle, allowing us to easily manage our appliances. A smart city is a vision to integrate a variety of information and communication solutions for residents with essential services, such as smart parking on all streets. The main motivation for using the Internet for parking objects is simply collecting data to get free parking. The IoT-based RTSSPS architecture is divided into three parts: a WSN-based smart street parking module, an IoT-based smart street parking module, and an IoT-based smart street parking module. IoT-based cloud with street parking algorithm, rating and future directions. (shrink)

Nos proponemos abordar dos aspectos poco estudiados de la contribución de Alfred Ayer a la comprensión de la filosofı́a de Hume: su consideración acerca del carácter inferencial de la percepción y su propuesta de que la experiencia tiene carácter público. En primer lugar, analizaremos cómo se ha entendido la concepción humeana de la experiencia. Sostendremos que la interpretación de Ayer contribuye a modificar la concepción privada y atomista de experiencia que usualmente se le atribuye a Hume, al afirmar que para (...) reconocer un objeto no basta un acto simple de percepción, sino su vinculación con un entramado de percepciones pasadas. En segundo lugar, analizaremos si el carácter mental de las percepciones implica que su acceso se da únicamente mediante la introspección o si el propio Hume contempla la posibilidad de que puedan comunicarse. Ayer propone que es posible atribuirle un carácter público a las percepciones ya que las comprende como una serie de patrones sensoriales que no tienen rasgos de pertenencia personal pero pueden singularizarse a partir de su ocurrencia en un momento y lugar determinados. Esta interpretación da pie a su teorı́a del “mundo del sentido común,” que va más allá de lo que Hume propone pero no resulta contradictoria con los principales postulados de su filosofı́a. (shrink)

We argue that C. Darwin and more recently W. Hennig worked at times under the simplifying assumption of an eternal biosphere. So motivated, we explicitly consider the consequences which follow mathematically from this assumption, and the infinite graphs it leads to. This assumption admits certain clusters of organisms which have some ideal theoretical properties of species, shining some light onto the species problem. We prove a dualization of a law of T.A. Knight and C. Darwin, and sketch a decomposition result (...) involving the internodons of D. Kornet, J. Metz and H. Schellinx. A further goal of this paper is to respond to B. Sturmfels’ question, “Can biology lead to new theorems?”. (shrink)

This article discusses various dangers that accompany the supposedly benign methods in behavioral evoltutionary biology and evolutionary psychology that fall under the framework of "methodological adaptationism." A "Logic of Research Questions" is proposed that aids in clarifying the reasoning problems that arise due to the framework under critique. The live, and widely practiced, " evolutionary factors" framework is offered as the key comparison and alternative. The article goes beyond the traditional critique of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin, to (...) present problems such as the disappearance of evidence, the mishandling of the null hypothesis, and failures in scientific reasoning, exemplified by a case from human behavioral ecology. In conclusion the paper shows that "methodological adaptationism" does not deserve its benign reputation. (shrink)

The problem of evil is the most prominent argument against the existence of God. Skeptical theists contend that it is not a good argument. Their reasons for this contention vary widely, involving such notions as CORNEA, epistemic appearances, 'gratuitous' evils, 'levering' evidence, and the representativeness of goods. We aim to dispel some confusions about these notions, in particular by clarifying their roles within a probabilistic epistemology. In addition, we develop new responses to the problem of evil from both the phenomenal (...) conception of evidence and the knowledge-first view of evidence. (shrink)

Common psychopathy rating instrument sdistinguish between an interpersonal-affective and an antisocial dimension.The suggestion that the interpersonal-affective dimension,often considered to be the core feature of psychopathy,is positively associated with executive functioning is occasionally made in the literature, without reporting objective empirical data. The primary aim of thep resent paper was to search for empirical studies reporting relevant data, focussing on four aspects of 'cold' executive functioning: inhibition, attentional shifting, working memory, and planning. Eleven published articles wereidentified, reporting data of 721 individuals (...) from incarcerated and non-incarcerated,male and female,and adult and non-adult samples. Using a heterogeneous set of tests and dependent measures across studies, the inhibition and attentional shifting components were assessed in eight and five studies, respectively; the working memory and planning components each in two studies. A small majority of the studies found positive associations with the different executive functions, although the associations were mostly non-significant. Given the scarcity of studies and the use of heterogeneous populations,tests and statistical analyses, no robust conclusions can be drawn at this stage. Therefore,caution is needed when claiming a positive association between the interpersonal-affective features of psychopathy and executive functioning. Clearly more research is needed to further validate and specify the suggested association. (shrink)

While memory is conceptualized predominantly as an individual capacity in the cognitive and biological sciences, the social sciences have most commonly construed memory as a collective phenomenon. Collective memory has been put to diverse uses, ranging from accounts of nationalism in history and political science to views of ritualization and commemoration in anthropology and sociology. These appeals to collective memory share the idea that memory ‘‘goes beyond the individual’’ but often run together quite different claims in spelling out that idea. (...) This paper reviews a sampling of recent work on collective memory in the light of emerging externalist views within the cognitive sciences, and through some reflection on broader traditions of thought in the biological and social sciences that have appealed to the idea that groups have minds. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the relationship between these kinds of cognitive metaphors in the social sciences and our notion of agency. (shrink)

Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in (...) public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly— even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed.. (shrink)

This chapter describes the potential far‐reaching consequences of contemplative higher education for the fields of science and medicine.

Three arguments summarize opposition to laws protecting LGBTQ+ persons from discrimination: (1) The pseudo-democratic argument (social change should be free of governmental coercion); (2) The clinical argument (homosexuality is an illness); (3) The choice argument (homosexuality is a choice). My purpose is to show the three are vulnerable to damaging objections. This article reflects conditions as they were in 1987 in the USA. For example, the expression LGBTQ+ had not been coined. My use of "gays and lesbians," then believed to (...) be inclusive, excluded a lot of people. (shrink)

Large changes that occur in clear view of an observer can become difficult to notice if made during an eye movement, blink, or other such disturbance. This change blindness is consistent with the proposal that focused visual attention is necessary to see change, with a change becoming difficult to notice whenever conditions prevent attention from being automatically drawn to it. -/- It is shown here how the phenomenon of change blindness can provide new results on the nature of visual attention, (...) including estimates of its capacity and the extent to which it can bind visual properties into coherent descriptions. It is also shown how the resultant characterization of attention can in turn provide new insights into the role that it plays in the perception of scenes and events. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the primordial role of narratives in human self-creation as essentially cultural beings.

What is the primary function of consciousness in the nervous system? The answer to this question remains enigmatic, not so much because of a lack of relevant data, but because of the lack of a conceptual framework with which to interpret the data. To this end, we have developed Passive Frame Theory, an internally coherent framework that, from an action-based perspective, synthesizes empirically supported hypotheses from diverse fields of investigation. The theory proposes that the primary function of consciousness is well-circumscribed, (...) serving the 'somatic nervous system[. For this system, consciousness serves as a frame that constrains and directs skeletal muscle output, thereby yielding adaptive behavior. The mechanism by which consciousness achieves this is more counterintuitive, passive, and “low level” than the kinds of functions that theorists have previously attributed to consciousness. Passive frame theory begins to illuminate (a) what consciousness contributes to nervous function, (b) how consciousness achieves this function, and (c) the neuroanatomical substrates of conscious processes. Our untraditional, action-based perspective focuses on olfaction instead of on vision and is 'descriptive' (describing the products of nature as they evolved to be) rather than 'normative' (construing processes in terms of how they should function). Passive frame theory begins to isolate the neuroanatomical, cognitive-mechanistic, and representational (e.g., conscious contents) processes associated with consciousness. (shrink)

One of the benefits of hypertext in a connected digital environment is the ability to interlink documents. This was part of the hyper-text focused vision of the internet that Tim Berners-Lee was trying to create in the 1990s when he developed the World Wide Web.

En este artículo argumentamos que la naturaleza pública o privada de la educación tiene una incidencia directa en las instituciones que conforman la realidad social. Para sustentar lo anterior, en primer lugar discutimos cómo, según Searle, habitamos un mundo de instituciones gobernadas por reglas y poderes deónticos, ontológicamente irreductibles. Luego, postulamos que la intencionalidad colectiva requiere de la confianza para mantenerse, y esta aumenta cuando gobiernan reglas y poderes deónticos en circunstancias normales. Finalmente, planteamos que la educación pública es una (...) institución que, a diferencia de la privada, privilegia el espacio de lo común. Sócrates es un ejemplo de esto, al proponer una filosofía que no solo busca la verdad, sino que además privilegia el reconocimiento de la ley por sobre la satisfacción inmediata de deseos e inclinaciones personales. De todo esto se explica el círculo virtuoso: la educación pública, al ser inclusiva y beneficiar a todos, potencia las instituciones sociales que tutelan ese interés y, dentro de ellas, el servicio público. (shrink)