While some are currently debating whether time may or may not be an illusion, others keep devoting their time to the science of consciousness. Time as such may be seen as a physical or a subjective variable, and the limitations in our capacity of perceiving and analyzing temporal order and change in physical events definitely constrain our understanding of consciousness which, in return, constrains our conceptual under-standing of time. Temporal codes generated in the brain have been considered as the key (...) to insight into neural function and, ultimately, as potential neural substrates of consciousness itself. On the basis of cur-rent evidence and opinion from neuroscience and philosophy, we consider the interrelation between con-sciousness and time in the light of Hegel and Heidegger’s concepts of Sein (Being) and Zeit (Time). We suggest that consciousness can be defined in terms of a succession of psychological moments where we realize that we exist in, and are part of, a present moment in time. This definition places all other percep-tual or sensorial processes which may characterize phenomenal experience at a different level of analysis and centers the debate around consciousness on the fundamental identity link between awareness of the Ich (I) and awareness of what Heidegger termed Ursprüngliche Zeit (original time). We argue that human consciousness has evolved from the ability to be aware of, to remember, and to predict temporal order and change in nature, and that the limits of this capacity are determined by limits in the functional plasticity of resonant brain mechanisms. Although the conscious state of the Self is the ultimate expression of this evolution, it is devoid of any adaptive function as such. (shrink)

In a challenge trial, research subjects are purposefully exposed to some pathogen in a controlled setting, in order to test the efficacy of a vaccine or other experimental treatment. This is an example of medical effective altruism (MEA), where individuals volunteer to risk harms for the public good. Many bioethicists rejected challenge trials in the context of Covid‐19 vaccine research on ethical grounds. After considering various grounds of this objection, I conclude that the crucial question is how much harm research (...) subjects can permissibly risk. But we lack a satisfying way of making this judgment that does not appeal simply to the intuitions of doctors or bioethicists. I consider one recent and structurally plausible approach to critically evaluating the harm question. Alex London defends a social consistency test for research risks: we should compare the risks undertaken by research subjects to relevantly similar risks which are accepted in other spheres of society. I argue there is no good reason not to consider volunteer military service as a relevant social comparison. This implies there is essentially no cap on acceptable risks on the social consistency rationale. In short, if soldiers can be heroes, why can't research volunteers? (shrink)

We show that true colors as defined by Chevreul (1839) produce unsuspected simultaneous brightness induction effects on their immediate grey backgrounds when these are placed on a darker (black) general background surrounding two spatially separated configurations. Assimilation and apparent contrast may occur in one and the same stimulus display. We examined the possible link between these effects and the perceived depth of the color patterns which induce them as a function of their luminance contrast. Patterns of square-shaped inducers of a (...) single color (red, green, blue, yellow, or grey) were placed on background fields of a lighter and a darker grey, presented on a darker screen. Inducers were always darker on one side of the display and brighter on the other in a given trial. The intensity of the grey backgrounds varied between trials only. This permitted generating four inducer luminance contrasts, presented in random order, for each color. Background fields were either spatially separated or consisted of a single grey field on the black screen. Experiments were run under three environmental conditions: dark-adaptation, daylight, and rod-saturation after exposure to bright light. In a first task, we measured probabilities of contrast, assimilation, and no effect in a three-alternative forced-choice procedure (background appears brighter on the ‘left’, on the ‘right’ or the ‘same’). Visual adaptation and inducer contrast had no significant influence on the induction effects produced by colored inducers. Achromatic inducers produced significantly stronger contrast effects after dark-adaptation, and significantly stronger assimilation in daylight conditions. Grouping two backgrounds into a single one was found to significantly decrease probabilities of apparent contrast. Under the same conditions, we measured probabilities of the inducers to be perceived as nearer to the observer inducers. These, as predicted by Chevreul’s law of contrast, were determined by the luminance contrast of the inducers only, with significantly higher probabilities of brighter inducers to be seen as nearer, and a marked asymmetry between effects produced by inducers of opposite sign. Implications of these findings for theories which attempt to link simultaneous induction effects to the relative depth of object surfaces in the visual field are discussed. (shrink)

Poorly saturated colors are closer to a pure grey than strongly saturated ones and, therefore, appear less “colorful”. Color saturation is effectively manipulated in the visual arts for balancing conflicting sensations and moods and for inducing the perception of relative distance in the pictorial plane. While perceptual science has proven quite clearly that the luminance contrast of any hue acts as a self-sufficient cue to relative depth in visual images, the role of color saturation in such figure-ground organization has remained (...) unclear. We presented configurations of colored inducers on grey ‘test’ backgrounds to human observers. Luminance and saturation of the inducers was uniform on each trial, but varied across trials. We ran two separate experimental tasks. In the relative background brightness task, perceptual judgments indicated whether the apparent brightness of the grey test background contrasted with, assimilated to, or appeared equal (no effect) to that of a comparison background with the same luminance contrast. Contrast polarity and its interaction with color saturation affected response proportions for contrast, assimilation and no effect. In the figure-ground task, perceptual judgments indicated whether the inducers appeared to lie in front of, behind, or in the same depth with the background. Strongly saturated inducers produced significantly larger proportions of foreground effects indicating that these inducers stand out as figure against the background. Weakly saturated inducers produced significantly larger proportions of background effects, indicating that these inducers are perceived as lying behind the backgrounds. We infer that color saturation modulates figure-ground organization, both directly by determining relative inducer depth, and indirectly, and in interaction with contrast polarity, by affecting apparent background brightness. The results point towards a hitherto undocumented functional role of color saturation in the genesis of form, and in particular figure-ground percepts in the absence of chromatostereopsis. (shrink)

Colour information not only helps sustain the survival of animal species by guiding sexual selection and foraging behaviour but also is an important factor in the cultural and technological development of our own species. This is illustrated by examples from the visual arts and from state-of-the-art imaging technology, where the strategic use of colour has become a powerful tool for guiding the planning and execution of interventional procedures. The functional role of colour information in terms of its potential benefits to (...) behavioural success across the species is addressed in the introduction here to clarify why colour perception may have evolved to generate behavioural success. It is argued that evolutionary and environmental pressures influence not only colour trait production in the different species but also their ability to process and exploit colour information for goal-specific purposes. We then leap straight to the human primate with insight from current research on the facilitating role of colour cues on performance training with precision technology for image-guided surgical planning and intervention. It is shown that local colour cues in two-dimensional images generated by a surgical fisheye camera help individuals become more precise rapidly across a limited number of trial sets in simulator training for specific manual gestures with a tool. This facilitating effect of a local colour cue on performance evolution in a video-controlled simulator (pick-and-place) task can be explained in terms of colour-based figure-ground segregation facilitating attention to local image parts when more than two layers of subjective surface depth are present, as in all natural and surgical images. (shrink)

The laws and principles which predict how perceptual qualities can be extracted from the most elementary visual signals were discovered by the Gestalt psychologists(e.g., Wertheimer,1923; Metzger,1930, translated and re-editedbySpillmann in 2009 and2012, respectively). Their seminal work has inspired visual science ever since, andhas led to exciting discoveries which have confirmed the Gestalt idea that the human brain would have an astonishing capacity for selecting and combining critical visual signals to generate output representations for decision making and action. This capacity of (...) selection and integration enables the perception of form and space, and the correct estimation of relative positions, trajectories, and distances of objects represented in planar images. This paper addresses problems of perceptual organization with critical implications for visual interfaces, and the design of surgical simulator platforms in particular. (shrink)

Agnieszka Jaworska and Julie Tannenbaum recently developed the ingenious and novel person‐rearing account of moral status, which preserves the commonsense judgment that humans have a higher moral status than nonhuman animals. It aims to vindicate speciesist judgments while avoiding the problems typically associated with speciesist views. We argue, however, that there is good reason to reject person‐rearing views. Person‐rearing views have to be coupled with an account of flourishing, which will (according to Jaworska and Tannenbaum) be either a species norm (...) or an intrinsic potential account of flourishing. As we show, however, person‐rearing accounts generate extremely implausible consequences when combined with the accounts of flourishing Jaworska and Tannenbaum need for the purposes of their view. (shrink)

Results from three experiments using spatial forced-choice techniques show that an illusory contour improves the detectability of a spatially superimposed, 1pixel-thin subthreshold line of either contrast polarity. Furthermore, the subthreshold line is found to enhance the visibility of an illusory contour bridging the gap between the two colinear edges of physically defined boundaries. Stimuli which do not induce illusory contours, but reduce uncertainty about the spatial position of the line, give rise to a slight detection facilitation, but the threshold of (...) 75% correct responses is not attained. The data indicate that superimposing illusory contours and 1pixel thin subthreshold lines produces interactions which are similar to classic subthreshold summation. This provides psychophysical evidence for the functional equivalence of illusory and real lines, as suggested by neurophysiological data from single-cell recordings in V1 and V2 of cats and primates. (shrink)

Peter Singer argues that we’re obligated to donate our entire expendable income to aid organizations. One premiss of his argument is "If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so." Singer defends this by noting that commonsense morality requires us to save a child we find drowning in a shallow pond. I argue that Singer’s Drowning Child thought experiment doesn’t justify this premiss. I offer (...) my own Drowning Children thought experiment, which should reveal that commonsense morality entails that premiss two is actually false. (shrink)

The laws which predict how the perceptual quality of figure-ground can be extracted from the most elementary visual signals were discovered by the Gestaltists, and form an essential part of their movement (see especially Metzger, 1930, and Wertheimer, 1923 translated and re-edited by Lothar Spillmann, 2009 and 2012, respectively). Distinguishing figure from ground is a prerequisite for perception of both form and space (the relative positions, trajectories, and distances of objects in the visual field. The human brain has an astonishing (...) capacity for selecting and combining a few critical visual signals to accurately represent both form and space. (shrink)

Two universal functional principles of Grossberg’s Adaptive Resonance Theory [19] decipher the brain code of all biological learning and adaptive intelligence. Low-level representations of multisensory stimuli in their immediate environmental context are formed on the basis of bottom-up activation and under the control of top-down matching rules that integrate high-level long-term traces of contextual configuration. These universal coding principles lead to the establishment of lasting brain signatures of perceptual experience in all living species, from aplysiae to primates. They are re-visited (...) in this concept paper here on the basis of examples drawn from the original code and from some of the most recent related empirical findings on contextual modulation in the brain, highlighting the potential of Grossberg’s pioneering insights and groundbreaking theoretical work for intelligent solutions in the domain of developmental and cognitive robotics. (shrink)

A particularly important, pressing, philosophical question concerns whether Confederate monuments ought to be removed. More precisely, one may wonder whether a certain group, viz. the relevant government officials and members of the public who together can remove the Confederate monuments, are morally obligated to (of their own volition) remove them. Unfortunately, academic philosophers have largely ignored this question. This paper aims to help rectify this oversight by moral philosophers. In it, I argue that people have a moral obligation to remove (...) most, if not all, public Confederate monuments because of the unavoidable harm they inflict on undeserving persons. In the first section, I provide some relevant historical context. In the second section, I make my unique harm-based argument for the removal of Confederate monuments. In the third section, I consider and rebut five objections. (shrink)

Analysis of grip force signals tailored to hand and finger movement evolution and changes in grip force control during task execution provide unprecedented functional insight into somatosensory cognition. Somatosensory cognition is a basis of our ability to manipulate, move, and transform objects of the physical world around us, to recognize them on the basis of touch alone, and to grasp them with the right amount of force for lifting and manipulating them. Recent technology has permitted the wireless monitoring of grip (...) force signals recorded from biosensors in the palm of the human hand to track and trace human grip forces deployed in cognitive tasks executed under conditions of variable sensory (visual, auditory) input. Non-invasive multi-finger grip force sensor technology can be exploited to explore functional interactions between somatosensory brain mechanisms and motor control, in particular during learning a cognitive task where the planning and strategic execution of hand movements is essential. Sensorial and cognitive processes underlying manual skills and/or hand-specific (dominant versus non-dominant hand) behaviors can be studied in a variety of contexts by probing selected measurement loci in the fingers and palm of the human hand. Thousands of sensor data recorded from multiple spatial locations can be approached statistically to breathe functional sense into the forces measured under specific task constraints. Grip force patterns in individual performance profiling may reveal the evolution of grip force control as a direct result of cognitive changes during task learning. Grip forces can be functionally mapped to from-global-to-local coding principles in brain networks governing somatosensory processes for motor control in cognitive tasks leading to a specific task expertise or skill. Under the light of a comprehensive overview of recent discoveries into the functional significance of human grip force variations, perspectives for future studies in cognition, in particular the cognitive control of strategic and task relevant hand movements in complex real-world precision task, are pointed out. (shrink)

The perception of brightness differences in Ehrenstein figures and of illusory contours in phase-shifted line gratings was investigated as a function of the contrast polarity of the inducing elements. We presented either continuous lines or line-like arrangements composed of aligned dashes or dots whose spacing was varied. A yes/no procedure was used in which naive observers had to decide whether or not they perceived a brightness difference in a given Ehrenstein figure or an illusory contour in a phase-shifted line grating. (...) The results show that brightness differences are perceived to some extent in Ehrenstein figures with inducers of opposite polarity of contrast; however, the percentage of yes response was systematically lower and response times were longer than for figures with inducers of the same polarity. Phase-shifted line gratings with lines of opposite polarity of contrast yielded stronger illusory contours and shorter response times than those with lines of the same polarity. When the sign of contrast was not the same within a given line of induction, neither differences in brightness nor illusory contours were perceived. The results suggest that the mechanisms that lead to apparent differences in brightness are more sensitive to input of the same contrast polarity, the mechanisms generating illusory contours more sensitive to input of opposite polarity. The data are discussed in the light of a multistage approach to illusory form perception and some implications for cortical models of illusory contour integration are discussed. (shrink)

Evolution and geometry generate complexity in similar ways. Evolution drives natural selection while geometry may capture the logic of this selection and express it visually, in terms of specific generic properties representing some kind of advantage. Geometry is ideally suited for expressing the logic of evolutionary selection for symmetry, which is found in the shape curves of vein systems and other natural objects such as leaves, cell membranes, or tunnel systems built by ants. The topology and geometry of symmetry is (...) controlled by numerical parameters, which act in analogy with a biological organism’s DNA. The introductory part of this paper reviews findings from experiments illustrating the critical role of two-dimensional (2D) design parameters, affine geometry and shape symmetry for visual or tactile shape sensation and perception-based decision making in populations of experts and non-experts. It will be shown that 2D fractal symmetry, referred to herein as the “symmetry of things in a thing”, results from principles very similar to those of affine projection. Results from experiments on aesthetic and visual preference judgments in response to 2D fractal trees with varying degrees of asymmetry are presented. In a first experiment (psychophysical scaling procedure), non-expert observers had to rate (on a scale from 0 to 10) the perceived beauty of a random series of 2D fractal trees with varying degrees of fractal symmetry. In a second experiment (two-alternative forced choice procedure), they had to express their preference for one of two shapes from the series. The shape pairs were presented successively in random order. Results show that the smallest possible fractal deviation from “symmetry of things in a thing” significantly reduces the perceived attractiveness of such shapes. The potential of future studies where different levels of complexity of fractal patterns are weighed against different degrees of symmetry is pointed out in the conclusion. (shrink)

Scientific studies have shown that non-conscious stimuli and représentations influence information processing during conscious experience. In the light of such evidence, questions about potential functional links between non-conscious brain representations and conscious experience arise. This article discusses models capable of explaining how statistical learning mechanisms in dedicated resonant circuits could generate specific temporal activity traces of non-conscious representations in the brain. How reentrant signaling, top-down matching, and statistical coincidence of such activity traces may lead to the progressive consolidation of neural (...) signatures of conscious experience in networks extending across large distances beyond functionally specialized brain regions is then explained. (shrink)

Perhaps death’s badness is an illusion. Epicureans think so and argue that agents cannot be harmed by death when they’re alive nor when they’re dead. I argue that each version of Epicureanism faces a fatal dilemma: it is either committed to a demonstrably false view about the relationship between self-regarding reasons and well-being or it is involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism. I first provide principled reason to think that any viable view about the badness of death must (...) allow that agents have self-regarding reason to avoid death if doing so would increase their total well-being. I then show that Epicurean views which do not preserve this link are subject to reductio arguments and so should be rejected. After that, I show that the Epicurean views which accommodate this desideratum are involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism. (shrink)

Marc Lange has recently raised three objections to the account of minimal model explanations offered by Robert Batterman and Collin Rice. In this article, I suggest that these objections are misguided. I suggest that the objections raised by Lange stem from a misunderstanding of the what it is that minimal model explanations seek to explain. This misunderstanding, I argue, consists in Lange’s seeing minimal model explanations as relating special types of models to particular target systems rather than seeing minimal model (...) explanations as looking to explain robust patterns of behavior that are exhibited by a variety of physically diverse systems. (shrink)

The principle of self-organization has acquired a fundamental significance in the newly emerging field of computational philosophy. Self-organizing systems have been described in various domains in science and philosophy including physics, neuroscience, biology and medicine, ecology, and sociology. While system architecture and their general purpose may depend on domain-specific concepts and definitions, there are (at least) seven key properties of self-organization clearly identified in brain systems: 1) modular connectivity, 2) unsupervised learning, 3) adaptive ability, 4) functional resiliency, 5) functional plasticity, (...) 6) from-local-to-global functional organization, and 7) dynamic system growth. These are defined here in the light of insight from neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience and Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART), and physics to show that self-organization achieves stability and functional plasticity while minimizing structural system complexity. A specific example informed by empirical research is discussed to illustrate how modularity, adaptive learning, and dynamic network growth enable stable yet plastic somatosensory representation for human grip force control. Implications for the design of “strong” artificial intelligence in robotics are brought forward. (shrink)

In his landmark article for this journal, Francis Mechner (2018) presents a novel analysis of the confluence of unique combinations of variables accounting for aesthetic experiences, a phenomenon he calls synergetics. He proposes that artists, musicians, and writers use novel devices to capitalize on those effects. In my response to Mechner's fascinating article, I question the generality of such synergetic experiences to a wide array of audience members. I also question whether the evolutionary basis for aesthetic creativity accounts for the (...) ubiquity of aesthetic activity, as Mechner suggests. I do share Mechner’s emphasis on the importance of culturally nesting aesthetic contributions. But I suggest understanding aesthetic activities across cultures and subcultures requires additional mechanisms serving important bridging functions. I explore dispositional analysis, drawing on both Wittgenstein’s aesthetic language games and derived stimulus relationships. The behavioral functions of aesthetic experiences are those playing roles in cultural contingencies: motivational events, antecedent stimulus events, and consequences of aesthetic activities. Two kinds of aesthetic responses are discussed: 1) aesthetic creative responses by artists, writers or musicians, and 2) responses of audience members to those creations. These resulting aesthetic stimuli may play critical roles in cultural metacontingencies. (shrink)

In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply to any of thefield theories, or any other neural theory, of consciousness, their explanatory power is limited. As discussed in detail herein, the matter is complicated further by the facts than any scientifically operational definition of consciousness is inevitably partial, and that the phenomenon has no spatial (...) dimensionality. Under the light of insights from research on meditation and expanded consciousness, chronic pain syndrome, healthy aging, and eudaimonic well being, we may conceive consciousness as a source of potential energy that has no clearly defined spatial dimensionality, but can produce significant changes in others and in the world, observable in terms of changes in time. It is argued that consciousness may have evolved to enable the human species to generate such changes in order to cope with unprecedented and/or unpredictable adversity. Such coping could, ultimately, include the conscious planning of our own extinction when survival on the planet is no longer an acceptable option. (shrink)

The value alignment problem for artificial intelligence (AI) asks how we can ensure that the “values”—i.e., objective functions—of artificial systems are aligned with the values of humanity. In this paper, I argue that linguistic communication is a necessary condition for robust value alignment. I discuss the consequences that the truth of this claim would have for research programmes that attempt to ensure value alignment for AI systems—or, more loftily, those programmes that seek to design robustly beneficial or ethical artificial agents.

This bookreview discusses Piccolino and Wades' book on Galileo's impact on contemporary perception science.

Global society issues are putting increasing pressure on both small and large organizations to communicate ethically at all levels. Achieving this requires social skills beyond the choice of language or vocabulary and relies above all on individual social responsibility. Arguments from social contract philosophy and speech act theory lead to consider a communication contract that identifies the necessary individual skills for ethical communication on the basis of a limited number of explicit clauses. These latter are pragmatically binding for all partners (...) involved and help to ensure that the ground rules of cooperative communication are observed within a group or an organization. Beyond promoting ethical communication, the communication contract clarifies how individual discursive behaviour can be constructively and ethically monitored by group leaders in business meetings. A case study which shows what may happen when ground clauses of ethical communication are violated is presented. The conclusions of the study highlights why attempting to respect the communication contract is in the best interest of all partners at all levels within any group or organization. (shrink)

This selective review explores biologically inspired learning as a model for intelligent robot control and sensing technology on the basis of specific examples. Hebbian synaptic learning is discussed as a functionally relevant model for machine learning and intelligence, as explained on the basis of examples from the highly plastic biological neural networks of invertebrates and vertebrates. Its potential for adaptive learning and control without supervision, the generation of functional complexity, and control architectures based on self-organization is brought forward. Learning without (...) prior knowledge based on excitatory and inhibitory neural mechanisms accounts for the process through which survival-relevant or task-relevant representations are either reinforced or suppressed. The basic mechanisms of unsupervised biological learning drive synaptic plasticity and adaptation for behavioral success in living brains with different levels of complexity. The insights collected here point toward the Hebbian model as a choice solution for “intelligent” robotics and sensor systems. Keywords: Hebbian learning; synaptic plasticity; neural networks; self-organization; brain; reinforcement; sensory processing; robot control . (shrink)

Although symmetry has been discussed in terms of a major law of perceptual organization since the early conceptual efforts of the Gestalt school (Wertheimer, Metzger, Koffka and others), the first quantitative measurements testing for effects of symmetry on processes of Gestalt formation have seen the day only recently. In this study, a psychophysical rating study and a “foreground”-“background” choice response time experiment were run with human observers to test for effects of bilateral symmetry on the perceived strength of figure-ground in (...) triangular Kanizsa configurations. Displays with and without bilateral symmetry, identical physically-specified-to-total contour ratio, and constant local contrast intensity within and across conditions, but variable local contrast polarity and variable orientation in the plane, were presented in a random order to human observers. Configurations with bilateral symmetry produced significantly stronger figure-ground percepts reflected by greater subjective magnitudes and consistently higher percentages of “foreground” judgments accompanied by significantly shorter response times. These effects of symmetry depend neither on the orientation of the axis of symmetry, nor on the contrast polarity of the physical inducers. It is concluded that bilateral symmetry, irrespective of orientation, significantly contributes to the, largely sign-invariant, visual mechanisms of figure-ground segregation that determine the salience of figure-ground in perceptually ambiguous configurations. (shrink)

Do facts about what an agent would freely do in certain circumstances at least partly determine any of her moral obligations? Actualists answer ‘yes’, while possibilists answer ‘no’. We defend two novel hybrid accounts that are alternatives to actualism and possibilism: Dual Obligations Hybridism and Single Obligation Hybridism. By positing two moral ‘oughts’, each account retains the benefits of actualism and possibilism, yet is immune from the prima facie problems that face actualism and possibilism. We conclude by highlighting one substantive (...) difference between our two hybrid accounts. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s service conception of law remains one of the best known theories of political authority. Setting aside ongoing debates about the nature of authority, I locate a problem in the basic justificatory structure of the service conception. I show that the service justification of the state does not yield the conclusion that the law generates exclusionary reasons, which are meant to be the key hallmark of authority. An automatic but defeasible _habit _of obeying the state is likely to lead (...) to better outcomes than exclusionary deference to the state. Given the instrumental justification of the service conception, this means that exclusionary reasons to defer do not obtain. Habituation and automaticity have been developed in other contexts and are here extended to the context of political authority. The possibility of habitual obedience undercuts Raz's theory while suggesting a new approach to the question of political authority. (shrink)

In psychophysical experiments, the use of a psychophysical procedure of brightness/darkness cancellation shed light on interactions between spatial arrangement and figure–ground contrast in the perceptual filling in of achromatic and colored surfaces.Achromatic and chromatic Kanizsa squares with varying contrast, contrast polarity, and inducer spacingwere used to test how these factors interact in the perceptual filling in of surface brightness or darkness. The results suggest that the neuronal processing of surfaces with apparent contrast, leading to figure–ground segregation (i.e., perceptual organization), is (...) governed by mechanisms that integrate both luminance contrast and spatial information carried by the inducing stimuli, while discarding information on contrast polarity or color. The findings are discussed in relation to earlier observations on brightness assimilation and contrast. They support theories of nonantagonistic neural mechanisms suppressing local contrast or color signs in brightnessbased figure–ground percepts. Such mechanismsmight be necessary to cancel potentially conflicting polarities in geometricallycomplex visual stimuli so that perceptual filling in resulting in the most plausible representation of figure and ground can be achieved. (shrink)

An increasing portion of contemporary politics revolves around a set of claims made by those (typically derisively) referred to as NIMBYs. Despite its practical significance, NIMBYism has not received significant attention in academic philosophy. I attempt a charitable but limited reconstruction of NIMBYism in terms of legitimate expectations. I argue that, despite NIMBY expectations being somewhat vague and at least moderately unjust, they may be legitimate. This does not imply that they are decisive, or entail a conclusion about their overall (...) normative force. I close by developing some tentative details in institutional design, focusing on the possibility of monetary compensation as a way of recognizing, but limiting the force of, NIMBY expectations. (shrink)

Can we identify potential long-term consequences of digitalisation on public health? Environmental studies, metabolic research, and state of the art research in neurobiology point towards the reduced amount of natural day and sunlight exposure of the developing child, as a consequence of increasingly long hours spent indoors online, as the single unifying source of a whole set of health risks identified worldwide, as is made clear in this review of currently available literature. Over exposure to digital environments, from abuse to (...) addiction, now concerns even the youngest (ages 0 to 2) and triggers, as argued on the basis of clear examples herein, a chain of interdependent negative and potentially long-term metabolic changes. This leads to a deregulation of the serotonin and dopamine neurotransmitter pathways in the developing brain, currently associated with online activity abuse and/or internet addiction, and akin to that found in severe substance abuse syndromes. A general functional working model is proposed under the light of evidence brought to the forefront in this review. (shrink)

I formulate a compatibilism that is distinctively responsive to skeptical worries about the justification of punishment and other moral responsibility practices. I begin with an evolutionary story explaining why backward-looking reactive attitudes are “given” in human society. Cooperative society plausibly could not be sustained without such practices. The necessary accountability practices have complex internal standards. These internal standards may fully ground the appropriateness of reactive attitudes. Following a recent analogy, we can similarly hold that there are no external standards for (...) what is funny; the norms of comedy are complex, but funny is funny. However, this is compatible with moral reasons to change the practices themselves, and therefore change what is fitting within them: in the first instance, a moralistic “that's not funny” is ill-fitting, but “that shouldn't be funny” can be apt. The analogous reformist position prescribes practices constituting the minimal responsibility norms necessary for cooperative society. (shrink)

The segregation of image parts into foreground and background is an important aspect of the neural computation of 3D scene perception. To achieve such segregation, the brain needs information about border ownership; that is, the belongingness of a contour to a specific surface represented in the image. This article presents psychophysical data derived from 3D percepts of figure and ground that were generated by presenting 2D images composed of spatially disjoint shapes that pointed inward or outward relative to the continuous (...) boundaries that they induced along their collinear edges. The shapes in some images had the same contrast (black or white) with respect to the background gray. Other images included opposite contrasts along each induced continuous boundary. Psychophysical results demonstrate conditions under which figure-ground judgment probabilities in response to these ambiguous displays are determined by the orientation of contrasts only, not by their relative contrasts, despite the fact that many border ownership cells in cortical area V2 respond to a preferred relative contrast. Studies are also reviewed in which both polarity-specific and polarity-invariant properties obtain perceptual figure-ground grouping results. The FACADE and 3D LAMINART models are used to explain these data. Keywords: figure-ground separation, border ownership, perceptual grouping, surface filling-in, V2, V4, FACADE Theory. (shrink)

This is a short reply to Dan Demetriou's "Ashes of Our Fathers: Racist Monuments and the Tribal Right." Both are included in Oxford University Press's Ethics, Left and Right: The Moral Issues That Divide Us.

The quantization error in a fixed-size Self-Organizing Map (SOM) with unsupervised winner-take-all learning has previously been used successfully to detect, in minimal computation time, highly meaningful changes across images in medical time series and in time series of satellite images. Here, the functional properties of the quantization error in SOM are explored further to show that the metric is capable of reliably discriminating between the finest differences in local contrast intensities and contrast signs. While this capability of the QE is (...) akin to functional characteristics of a specific class of retinal ganglion cells (the so-called Y-cells) in the visual systems of the primate and the cat, the sensitivity of the QE surpasses the capacity limits of human visual detection. Here, the quantization error in the SOM is found to reliably signal changes in contrast or colour when contrast information is removed from or added to the image, but not when the amount and relative weight of contrast information is constant and only the local spatial position of contrast elements in the pattern changes. While the RGB Mean reflects coarser changes in colour or contrast well enough, the SOM-QE is shown to outperform the RGB Mean in the detection of single-pixel changes in images with up to five million pixels. This could have important implications in the context of unsupervised image learning and computational building block approaches to large sets of image data (big data). (shrink)

Value conservatism is the thesis that there is a distinctive reason to preserve valuable things even when a (somewhat) more valuable thing might be created by their destruction. I offer an account that improves on the current literature in response to Cohen's “Rescuing Conservatism.” In short, we become psychologically attached to valuable things that make up part of our lives; the same holds true, interestingly, with things of relatively neutral value. Severing attachments is painful. This yields a reason to favor (...) an object that someone is attached to over an object that no one is attached to. But an analysis is only part of a theory of conservatism: we also need to know whether such conservatism is justified. I argue that Cohen's idea of “accepting the given” can be read to yield such a justification: it is valuable to maintain some moderate disposition to accept what one already has. This attachment‐based account of conservatism displays a number of attractive theoretical features, including accounting for the impulse to restore past valuables and providing a framework for judging conservatism excessive. (shrink)

Perceptual neuroscience has identified mechanisms of perceptual grouping which account for the ways in which visual sensitivity to ordered structure and regularities expresses itself, in behavior and in the brain. The need to actively construct order, notably representations of objects in depth, is mandated as soon as visual signals reach the retina, given the occlusion of retinal signals by retinal veins and other retinal elements or blur. Multiple stages of neural processing transform fragmented signals into visual key representations of 3D (...) scenes that can be used to control effective behaviors. Since our survival depends on our ability to pick up order in the physical world, and since we conceive the physical world as an ordered one, our perception must somehow be sensitive to order. The articles from this collection illustrate how texture dissimilarity, boundary completion, surface filling-in, and figure-ground segregation generate perceptual order. (shrink)

Consciousness is known to be limited in processing capacity and often described in terms of a unique processing stream across a single dimension: time. In this paper, we discuss a purely temporal pattern code, functionally decoupled from spatial signals, for conscious state generation in the brain. Arguments in favour of such a code include Dehaene et al.'s long-distance reverberation postulate, Ramachandran's remapping hypothesis, evidence for a temporal coherence index and coincidence detectors, and Grossberg's Adaptive Resonance Theory. A time-bin resonance model (...) is developed, where temporal signatures of conscious states are generated on the basis of signal reverberation across large distances in highly plastic neural circuits. The temporal signatures are delivered by neural activity patterns which, beyond a certain statistical threshold, activate, maintain, and terminate a conscious brain state like a bar code would activate, maintain, or inactivate the electronic locks of a safe. Such temporal resonance would reflect a higher level of neural processing, independent from sensorial or perceptual brain mechanisms. (shrink)

Deprivation views of the badness of death are almost universally accepted among those who hold that death can be bad for the person who dies. In their most common form, deprivation views hold that death is bad because (and to the extent that) it deprives people of goods they would have gained had they not died at the time they did. Contrast this with categorical desire views, which hold that death is bad because (and to the extent that) it thwarts (...) people’s categorical desires. Categorical desires are desires that are not conditional upon one being alive; yet provide reason for the agent to continue living to ensure that those very desires are satisfied. I argue that categorical desire views are subject to two serious problems that deprivation views are not. First, categorical desire views entail that it is not bad for someone to not be resuscitated after dying a bad death. Second, categorical desire views cannot account for cases in which it is good to prevent people from coming into existence or cases in which it is good to prevent them from continuing to exist. After considering, and rejecting, various replies on behalf of categorical desire proponents, I conclude that we have good reason to reject categorical desire views in favor of deprivation views. (shrink)

Technological progress has brought about the emergence of machines that have the capacity to take human lives without human control. These represent an unprecedented threat to humankind. This paper starts from the example of chemical weapons, now banned worldwide by the Geneva protocol, to illustrate how technological development initially aimed at the benefit of humankind has, ultimately, produced what is now called the “Weaponization of Artificial Intelligence (AI)”. Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) fail the so-called discrimination principle, yet, the wider public (...) is largely unaware of this problem. Given that ongoing scientific research on AWS, performed in the military sector, is generally not made available to the public domain, many of the viewpoints on this subject, expressed across different media, invoke common sense rather than scientific evidence. Yet, the implications of a potential weaponization of our work as scientists, especially in the field of AI, are reaching further than some may think. The potential consequences of a deployment of AWS for citizen stakeholders are incommensurable, and it is time to raise awareness in the public domain of the kind of potential threats identified, and to encourage legal policies ensuring that these threats will not materialize. (shrink)

‘Mapping accounts’ of applied mathematics hold that the application of mathematics in physical science is best understood in terms of ‘mappings’ between mathematical structures and physical structures. In this paper, I suggest that mapping accounts rely on the assumption that the mathematics relevant to any application of mathematics in empirical science can be captured in an appropriate mathematical structure. If we are interested in assessing the plausibility of mapping accounts, we must ask ourselves: how plausible is this assumption as a (...) working hypothesis about applied mathematics? In order to do so, we examine the role played by mathematics in the multiscalar modelling of sea ice melting behaviour and examine whether we can indeed capture the mathematics involved in the kind of mathematical structure employed by the mapping account. Along the way, we note that the cases of applied mathematics that appear in discussions of mapping accounts almost exclusively involve the employment of a single clearly circumscribed mathematical field or domain. While the core assumption of mapping accounts may appear plausible in such situations, we ultimately suggest that the mapping account is not able to handle the important added complexities involved in our sea ice case study. In particular, the notion of mathematical structure around which such accounts are framed does not seem to be able to capture the way in which some applications of mathematics require that very different pieces of mathematics be related to one another on the basis of both mathematical and empirical information. (shrink)

Symmetry in biological and physical systems is a product of self-organization driven by evolutionary processes, or mechanical systems under constraints. Symmetry-based feature extraction or representation by neural networks may unravel the most informative contents in large image databases. Despite significant achievements of artificial intelligence in recognition and classification of regular patterns, the problem of uncertainty remains a major challenge in ambiguous data. In this study, we present an artificial neural network that detects symmetry uncertainty states in human observers. To this (...) end, we exploit a neural network metric in the output of a biologically inspired Self- Organizing Map Quantization Error (SOM-QE). Shape pairs with perfect geometry mirror symmetry but a non-homogenous appearance, caused by local variations in hue, saturation, or lightness within and/or across the shapes in a given pair produce, as shown here, a longer choice response time (RT) for “yes” responses relative to symmetry. These data are consistently mirrored by the variations in the SOM-QE from unsupervised neural network analysis of the same stimulus images. The neural network metric is thus capable of detecting and scaling human symmetry uncertainty in response to patterns. Such capacity is tightly linked to the metric’s proven selectivity to local contrast and color variations in large and highly complex image data. (shrink)

This is a response to Marie McGinn, who, roughly, lined me up with J. L. Austin over against GEM Anscombe and Wittgenstein on the issue whether perception is (or can be) intentional. I do not mind being aligned with Austin, but argue that this is the wrong way to line things up. I stand equally with Wittgenstein. Anscombe turns out to be odd man out on this one.

Detecting quality in large unstructured datasets requires capacities far beyond the limits of human perception and communicability and, as a result, there is an emerging trend towards increasingly complex analytic solutions in data science to cope with this problem. This new trend towards analytic complexity represents a severe challenge for the principle of parsimony (Occam’s razor) in science. This review article combines insight from various domains such as physics, computational science, data engineering, and cognitive science to review the specific properties (...) of big data. Problems for detecting data quality without losing the principle of parsimony are then highlighted on the basis of specific examples. Computational building block approaches for data clustering can help to deal with large unstructured datasets in minimized computation time, and meaning can be extracted rapidly from large sets of unstructured image or video data parsimoniously through relatively simple unsupervised machine learning algorithms. Why we still massively lack in expertise for exploiting big data wisely to extract relevant information for specific tasks, recognize patterns and generate new information, or simply store and further process large amounts of sensor data is then reviewed, and examples illustrating why we need subjective views and pragmatic methods to analyze big data contents are brought forward. The review concludes on how cultural differences between East and West are likely to affect the course of big data analytics, and the development of increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) aimed at coping with the big data deluge in the near future. Keywords: big data; non-dimensionality; applied data science; paradigm shift; artificial intelligence; principle of parsimony (Occam’s razor) . (shrink)

Victor Vasarely's (1906–1997) important legacy to the study of human perception is brought to the forefront and discussed. A large part of his impressive work conveys the appearance of striking three-dimensional shapes and structures in a large-scale pictorial plane. Current perception science explains such effects by invoking brain mechanisms for the processing of monocular (2D) depth cues. Here in this study, we illustrate and explain local effects of 2D color and contrast cues on the perceptual organization in terms of figure-ground (...) assignments, i.e. which local surfaces are likely to be seen as “nearer” or “bigger” in the image plane. Paired configurations are embedded in a larger, structurally ambivalent pictorial context inspired by some of Vasarely's creations. The figure-ground effects these configurations produce reveal a significant correlation between perceptual solutions for “nearer” and “bigger” when other geometric depth cues are missing. In consistency with previous findings on similar, albeit simpler visual displays, a specific color may compete with luminance contrast to resolve the planar ambiguity of a complex pattern context at a critical point in the hierarchical resolution of figure-ground uncertainty. The potential role of color temperature in this process is brought forward here. Vasarely intuitively understood and successfully exploited the subtle context effects accounted for in this paper, well before empirical investigation had set out to study and explain them in terms of information processing by the visual brain. (shrink)

Brincat and Westheimer [Journal of Neurophysiology 83 (2000) 1900] have reported facilitating interactions in the discrimination of spatially separated target orientations and co-linear inducing orientations by human observers. With smaller gaps between stimuli (short-range effects), facilitating interactions were found to depend on the contrast polarity of the stimuli. With larger gaps (longrange effects), only co-linearity of the stimuli seemed necessary to produce facilitation. In our study, the dependency of facilitating interactions on the intensity (luminance) of line stimuli is investigated by (...) measuring detection thresholds for a target line separated from the end of an inducing line by co-axial gaps ranging from 5 to 200 min of visual arc. We find facilitating interactions between target and inducing orientations, producing short-range and long-range effects similar to those reported by Brincat and Westheimer. In addition, detection thresholds as a function of the co-axial separation between target and inducing line reveal an interaction between the spatial regime of facilitating effects and the luminance of the stimuli. Short-range effects are found to be sensitive to changes in local intensity while long-range effects remain unaffected. (shrink)

In his Death and the Afterlife, Samuel Scheffler provides a compelling argument that people would see less reason and be significantly less motivated to pursue most of their life's projects if they were to discover that there is no collective afterlife (i.e. future generations of humans continuing to exist after they die). Scheffler focuses on how people would react to learning there is no collective afterlife. In this paper, I focus on issues concerning how people ought to react to learning (...) there is no collective afterlife. Answers to this question lead to surprising conclusions that challenge some of the normative claims Scheffler seems disposed to endorse. This paper has two central aims. First, I attempt to show that negative attitudes toward the lack of a collective afterlife are warranted for two reasons that have been heretofore overlooked. Interestingly, such reasons leave open the possibility that it can be appropriate to lament the lack of a collective afterlife even if it is not bad, all things considered, for anyone. Second, I argue that the lack of a collective afterlife need not be bad, all things considered, for most people. This is because there could be a sufficient number of meaningful projects available to people that would compensate for the loss of pro tanto value caused by the lack of a collective afterlife. These considerations lead to the somewhat paradoxical conclusion that the lack of a collective afterlife need not negatively affect the total value of anyone's life, yet it may still be appropriate to lament the fact that there is no collective afterlife. (shrink)