Se ha dicho que tenemos inteligencia y personalidad, pero en realidad son dos dimensiones de una misma unidad que nos hace tender a la plenitud. Esto es la Inteligencia Sensible y su maduración es la misión fundamental de la educación. Con la Inteligencia Sensible gestionamos el amor y el miedo, y cuando un niño tiene una Inteligencia Sensible muy alta es posible que se vea envuelto en una vida de amores y temores muy desordenados. Tener alta Inteligencia Sensible no es (...) un trastorno sino una dotación. El niño presenta una sensibilidad muy alta, vive con mucha intensidad, es intuitivo, sus pensamientos son profundos, tiene mucha empatía, una fuerte emotividad, alta creatividad, bondad, ternura, energía y todo con una apariencia de normalidad que hace pensar: este niño tiene algo especial. (shrink)

What is at stake in this counterintuitive reappraisal of such different authors as Claudel, Valéry and Nietzsche is not a poietics of artistic techniques and processes but their style of sensorial and sensitive subjectivation as such. The aim is not a comparative philosophy of art but a genealogy of aesthetic experience. The three authors here considered differ widely in terms of their worldviews and cultural backgrounds. However, they share a similar radical critical view of the Modern and its idols—the cartesian (...) subject, historical progress, the economy of time and memory, the originality of the artist, artistic exceptionalism, etc—as well as a meticulous philological attention paid to the dynamics of how the subject becomes and says itself through a confrontation with the figures of otherness that precede it and haunt it. (shrink)

Autism spectrum disorder is characterised by differences in unimodal and multimodal sensory and proprioceptive processing, with complex biases towards local over global processing. Many of these elements are implicated in versions of the rubber hand illusion, which were therefore studied in high-functioning individuals with ASD and a typically developing control group. Both groups experienced the illusion. A number of differences were found, related to proprioception and sensorimotor processes. The ASD group showed reduced sensitivity to visuotactile-proprioceptive discrepancy but more (...) accurate proprioception. This group also differed on acceleration in subsequent reach trials. Results are discussed in terms of weak top-down integration and precision-accuracy trade-offs. The RHI appears to be a useful tool for investigating multisensory processing in ASD. (shrink)

Purpose – A key cybernetics concept, information transmitted in a system, was quantified by Shannon. It quickly gained prominence, inspiring a version by Harvard psychologists Garner and Hake for “absolute identification” experiments. There, human subjects “categorize” sensory stimuli, affording “information transmitted” in perception. The Garner-Hake formulation has been in continuous use for 62 years, exerting enormous influence. But some experienced theorists and reviewers have criticized it as uninformative. They could not explain why, and were ignored. Here, the “why” is (...) answered. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A key Shannon data-organizing tool is the confusion matrix. Its columns and rows are, respectively, labeled by “symbol sent” (event) and “symbol received” (outcome), such that matrix entries represent how often outcomes actually corresponded to events. Garner and Hake made their own version of the matrix, which deserves scrutiny, and is minutely examined here. Findings – The Garner-Hake confusion-matrix columns represent “stimulus categories”, ranges of some physical stimulus attribute (usually intensity), and its rows represent “response categories” of the subject’s identification of the attribute. The matrix entries thus show how often an identification empirically corresponds to an intensity, such that “outcomes” and “events” differ in kind (unlike Shannon’s). Obtaining a true “information transmitted” therefore requires stimulus categorizations to be converted to hypothetical evoking stimuli, achievable (in principle) by relating categorization to sensation to intensity. But those relations are actually unknown, perhaps unknowable. Originality/value – The author achieves an important understanding: why “absolute identification” experiments do not illuminate sensory processes. (shrink)

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a psychopathological condition characterized by persistent deficits in social interaction and communication, and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. To build an ecological-enactive account of autism, I propose we should endorse the affordance-based approach of the skilled intentionality framework (SIF). In SIF, embodied cognition is understood as skilled engagement with affordances in the sociomaterial environment of the ecological niche by which an individual tends toward the optimal grip. The human econiche offers a whole landscape (...) of affordances, and situated individuals respond to a field of relevant affordances. An important part of SIF is an ecological-enactive interpretation of the free energy principle and predictive processing. Predictive processing accounts indicate that in ASD too much precision is assigned to prediction errors. Autistic persons depend heavily on current sensory information and less on prior beliefs and cannot attune to stable regularities. To reduce uncertainty, they over-rely on routines, strict habits, and a familiar environment—a predictable ecological niche they construct. I argue that skilled intentionality gives us the framework from which to analyze the autistic field of affordances. Autistic patterns of affordance-related bodily states of action readiness are only sensitive to very specific solicitations in the environment and achieve optimal grip in well-known situations. Autism is to be understood as a disorder of bodily normativity. Taking this approach helps us figure out what neurotypical people can do to attune their environment in order to scaffold the needs of autistic individuals by redesigning the landscape of affordances. (shrink)

We present a theoretical view of the cellular foundations for network-level processes involved in producing our conscious experience. Inputs to apical synapses in layer 1 of a large subset of neocortical cells are summed at an integration zone near the top of their apical trunk. These inputs come from diverse sources and provide a context within which the transmission of information abstracted from sensory input to their basal and perisomatic synapses can be amplified when relevant. We argue that apical (...) amplification enables conscious perceptual experience and makes it more flexible, and thus more adaptive, by being sensitive to context. Apical amplification provides a possible mechanism for recurrent processing theory that avoids strong loops. It makes the broadcasting hypothesized by global neuronal workspace theories feasible while preserving the distinct contributions of the individual cells receiving the broadcast. It also provides mechanisms that contribute to the holistic aspects of integrated information theory. As apical amplification is highly dependent on cholinergic, aminergic, and other neuromodulators, it relates the specific contents of conscious experience to global mental states and to fluctuations in arousal when awake. We conclude that apical dendrites provide a cellular mechanism for the context-sensitive selective amplification that is a cardinal prerequisite of conscious perception. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of cognition in the framework of the biogenetic structuralist neurophenomenology of Charles Laughlin. The aim of the article is to study the possibilities of applying the biogenetic structuralist theory as a theoretical and methodological basis for the study of consciousness in Laughlin’s theory. A feature of biogenetic structuralism is the interdisciplinary fusion of anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. The methodology of biogenetic structuralism allows exploring universal structures of consciousness, which are caused by the genetically predisposed (...) organization of the human nervous system. Universal structures of consciousness include structures that mediate human language, knowledge of time and space. It is shown that the problem of cognition is realized in neurognostic models, which are compared with the operational environment. Neurognostic models include both the real nature of man as an organism and the external environment of the organism. Laughlin introduces the concept of a cognitive environment to designate a set of neurognostic models that can potentially be captured by the area of consciousness. He relies on the idea of a cognitive environment, which is essentially intentional in its organization. The polar interaction between the prefrontal cortex and the sensory cortex of the human brain gives rise to the intentionality of consciousness. Laughlin explains the work of the human cerebral cortex neurognostically as omnipresent for human consciousness, and independent of the cultural background. The cerebral cortex is a field of neural activity that arises and dissolves in temporal sequences and coordinates with cognitive processes that connect meaning and form into a single structure in consciousness. The experience of consciousness suggests a sensitive sphere of the cerebral cortex ascertains the meaningful, phenomenal world. The biogenetic structuralist methodology allows to development of an idea of the intentional structure and uniqueness of consciousness. The biogenetic structuralist approach is heuristic for modern science because, firstly, this approach creates the maximum opportunity to include data obtained from naturalistic, ethnographic, anatomical, clinical, and experimental sources; secondly, biogenetic data have the widest empirical and phenomenological rationale; thirdly, biogenetic concepts are defined in the context of a holistic understanding of the phenomenon through the uniqueness of consciousness. (shrink)

Recent work on skin-brain thesis suggests the possibility of empirical evidence that empiricism is false. It implies that early animals need no traditional sensory receptors to be engaged in cognitive activity. The neural structure required to coordinate extensive sheets of contractile tissue for motility provides the starting point for a new multicellular organized form of sensing. Moving a body by muscle contraction provides the basis for a multicellular organization that is sensitive to external surface structure at the scale of (...) the animal body. In other words, the nervous system first evolved for action, not for receiving sensory input. Thus, sensory input is not required for minimal cognition; only action is. The whole body of an organism, in particular its highly specific animal sensorimotor organization, reflects the bodily and environmental spatiotemporal structure. The skin-brain thesis suggests that, in contrast to empiricist claims that cognition is constituted by sensory systems, cognition may be also constituted by action-oriented feedback mechanisms. Instead of positing the reflex arc as the elementary building block of nervous systems, it proposes that endogenous motor activity is crucial for cognitive processes. In the paper, I discuss the issue whether the skin-brain thesis and its supporting evidence can be really used to overthrow the main tenet of empiricism empirically, by pointing out to cognizing agents that fail to have any sensory apparatus. (shrink)

The processing of time intervals in the sub- to supra-second range by the brain is critical for the interaction of primates with their surroundings in activities, such as foraging and hunting. For an accurate processing of time intervals by the brain, representation of physical time within neuronal circuits is necessary. I propose that time dimension of the physical surrounding is represented in the brain by different types of neuronal oscillators, generating spikes or spike bursts at regular intervals. The proposed oscillators (...) include the pacemaker neurons, tonic inputs, and synchronized excitation and inhibition of inter-connected neurons. Oscillators, which are built inside various circuits of brain, help to form modular clocks, processing time intervals or other temporal characteristics specific to functions of a circuit. Relative or absolute duration is represented within neuronal oscillators by “neural temporal unit,” defined as the interval between regularly occurring spikes or spike bursts. Oscillator output is processed to produce changes in activities of neurons, named frequency modulator neuron, wired within a separate module, represented by the rate of change in frequency, and frequency of activities, proposed to encode time intervals. Inbuilt oscillators are calibrated by (a) feedback processes, (b) input of time intervals resulting from rhythmic external sensory stimulation, and (c) synchronous effects of feedback processes and evoked sensory activity. A single active clock is proposed per circuit, which is calibrated by one or more mechanisms. Multiple calibration mechanisms, inbuilt oscillators, and the presence of modular connections prevent a complete loss of interval timing functions of the brain. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the field of empirically informed metaethics, which combines the rigorous conceptual clarity of traditional metaethics with a careful review of empirical evidence. More specifically, this work stands at the intersection of moral psychology, moral epistemology, and philosophy of action. The study comprises six chapters on three distinct (although related) topics. Each chapter is structured as an independent paper and addresses a specific open question in the literature. The first part concerns the psychological features and (...) cognitive function of moral intuition. Chapter 1 (“Moral intuition, strength, and metacognition”) is focused on the concept of intuitive strength, which is one of the defining features of moral intuition. I provide a metacognitive account of intuitive strength and show why such a view is preferable to emotional or quasi-perceptual accounts. Then, in Chapter 2 (“Dual process reflective equilibrium”), I will discuss the interplay between intuition and reflection in moral reasoning. I will contend that the influential “default-interventionist” model of reasoning, theorized by Greene, is insufficiently supported by the evidence. In light of some recent studies, I outline an account of moral reasoning in which intuition and reflection are not in conflict but cooperate to reach a reflective goal. I call this model dual process reflective equilibrium. The aim of the first part is descriptive, i.e., it argues for an accurate understanding of moral intuition and reasoning in light of the available empirical evidence. In contrast, the second part addresses a normative question: is a subject epistemically justified in forming a belief on the basis of a moral intuition? Skeptics of moral intuition argue that accepting moral intuitions should be the exception rather than the rule to the extent that epistemically defective processes determine the content of moral intuitions. Chapter 3 (“Moral intuitionism and the reliability challenge”) introduces the recent empirical challenges to the reliability of moral intuitions and elaborates a promising strategy for defending intuitionism. In short, I consider whether subjects can track the reliability of their intuitions with their confidence. In Chapter 4 (“The argument from limited cognitive resources”), I evaluate a different strategy to defend moral intuitionism. Specifically, I develop an argument according to which accepting moral intuitions is legitimate because it is the most rational option that a subject has, given her limited resources. The third and final part of the dissertation concerns the role of moral intuitions in action. The influence of automatic processes on moral conduct raises different challenges to moral philosophy. The first challenge is to explain how a subject can be motivated by certain values without the mental effort of deliberation. Chapter 5 (“Caring, moral motivation, and automatic conduct”) tackles this issue. Chapter 6 (“Moral sensitivity as skillful automaticity”) aims to explain how moral agents can be sensitive to good reasons through automatic mental processes. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion about the reality of sensory perceptions has been hijacked by two tendencies. First, talk about perception has been largely centered on vision. Second, the realism question is traditionally approached by attaching objects or material structures to matching contents of sensory perceptions. These tendencies have resulted in an argumentative impasse between realists and anti-realists, discussing the reliability of means by which the supposed causal information transfer from object to perceiver takes place. Concerning the nature of sensory (...) experiences and their capacity to provide access to reality, this article challenges the standard categories through which most arguments in this debate have been framed to date. Drawing on the underexplored case of olfaction, I first show how the details of the perception process determine the modalities of sensory experiences. I specifically examine the role of measurement and analyze its influence on the characterization of perceptions in olfaction. My aim is to argue for an understanding of perception through a process view, rather than one pertaining to objects and properties of objects. (shrink)

Sensory substitution devices make use of one substituting modality to get access to environmental information normally accessed through another modality . Based on behavioural and neuroimaging data, some authors have claimed that using a vision-substituting device results in visual perception. Reviewing these data, we contend that this claim is untenable. We argue that the kind of information processed by a SSD is metamodal, so that it can be accessed through any sensory modality and that the phenomenology associated with (...) the use of a SSD is best described in terms of spatial phenomenology, only. (shrink)

Do sensory measurements deserve the label of “measurement”? We argue that they do. They fit with an epistemological view of measurement held in current philosophy of science, and they face the same kinds of epistemological challenges as physical measurements do: the problem of coordination and the problem of standardization. These problems are addressed through the process of “epistemic iteration,” for all measurements. We also argue for distinguishing the problem of standardization from the problem of coordination. To exemplify our (...) claims, we draw on olfactory performance tests, especially studies linking olfactory decline to neurodegenerative disorders. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn a recent paper, Michael Pardo argues that the epistemic property that is legally relevant is the one called Safety, rather than Sensitivity. In the process, he argues against our Sensitivity-related account of statistical evidence. Here we revisit these issues, partly in order to respond to Pardo, and partly in order to make general claims about legal epistemology. We clarify our account, we show how it adequately deals with counterexamples and other worries, we raise suspicions about Safety's (...) value here, and we revisit our general skepticism about the role that epistemological considerations should play in determining legal policy. (shrink)

When a user integrates a sensory substitution device into her life, the process involves perceptual learning, that is, ‘relatively long-lasting changes to an organism’s perceptual system that improve its ability to respond to its environment’ (Goldstone 1998: 585). In this paper, I explore ways in which the extensive literature on perceptual learning can be applied to help improve sensory substitution devices. I then use these findings to answer a philosophical question. Much of the philosophical debate surrounding (...) class='Hi'>sensory substitution devices concerns what happens after perceptual learning occurs. In particular, should the resultant perceptual experience be classified in the substituted modality (as vision), in the substituting modality (as auditory or tactile), or in a new sense modality? I propose a novel empirical test to help resolve this philosophical debate. (shrink)

Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an established method for integrating values into technical design. It has been applied to different technologies and, more recently, to artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that AI poses a number of challenges specific to VSD that require a somewhat modified VSD approach. Machine learning (ML), in particular, poses two challenges. First, humans may not understand how an AI system learns certain things. This requires paying attention to values such as transparency, explicability, and accountability. Second, ML (...) may lead to AI systems adapting in ways that ‘disembody’ the values embedded in them. To address this, we propose a threefold modified VSD approach: 1) integrating a known set of VSD principles (AI4SG) as design norms from which more specific design requirements can be derived; 2) distinguishing between values that are promoted and respected by the design to ensure outcomes that not only do no harm but also contribute to good; and 3) extending the VSD process to encompass the whole life cycle of an AI technology in order to monitor unintended value consequences and redesign as needed. We illustrate our VSD for AI approach with an example use case of a SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing app. (shrink)

This article seeks the origin, in the theories of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Descartes, and Berkeley, of two-stage theories of spatial perception, which hold that visual perception involves both an immediate representation of the proximal stimulus in a two-dimensional ‘‘sensory core’’ and also a subsequent perception of the three dimensional world. The works of Ibn al-Haytham, Descartes, and Berkeley already frame the major theoretical options that guided visual theory into the twentieth century. The field of visual perception was the first (...) area of what we now call psychology to apply mathematics, through geometrical models as used by Euclid, Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham, and Descartes (among others). The article shows that Kepler’s discovery of the retinal image, which revolutionized visual anatomy and entailed fundamental changes in visual physiology, did not alter the basic structure of theories of spatial vision. These changes in visual physiology are advanced especially in Descartes' Dioptrics and his L'Homme. Berkeley develops a radically empirist theory vision, according to which visual perception of depth is learned through associative processes that rely on the sense of touch. But Descartes and Berkeley share the assertion that there is a two-dimensional sensory core that is in principle available to consciousness. They also share the observation that we don't usually perceived this core, but find depth and distance to be phenomenally immediate, a point they struggle to accommodate theoretically. If our interpretation is correct, it was not a change in the theory of the psychology of vision that engendered the idea of a sensory core, but rather the introduction of the theory into a new metaphysical context. (shrink)

The primary intention of this book is to elucidate the relations between sensory perception and art as a form of knowledge. This enables us to understand how different kinds of art are given their meaning not only from observation, resemblance and reason but also from an artist’s sensitivity to the inner form of sensory experience as it is realized in perception, reflection, memory and imagination. By assuming a number of different points of view, Part 1 shows how (...) the physical object and the act of sensory perception are logically interdependent, and I give my elaboration of this argument two kinds of emphasis. In the first place, it opposes all arguments that support a merging of the mental and physical, as in idealism, materialism, neutral monism and panpsychism. A conceptual distinction is observed because sensory perception gives the physical object its identity. This idea also implies that the physical object is only realized by sentient life - self-aware inner life and a world become possible simultaneously. The second emphasis concerns the mind-body problem, and towards the end of Part 1 I offer an argument which places this problem in a certain light by representing the brain not as a physical counterpart to inner experience but as essentially instrumental to perception and self-awareness, and related experience. The argument in Part 2 is distinguished by a sense of continuity between the nature of sensory perception and the formal resources of artists in both physical and literary media. Hence, in a discussion of Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin, I indicate ways in which the painter conveys the inner experience and character of the figures in the painting by means of compositional design, light and colour, and thereby uses these and other sensuous resources to portray human life and experience. This is followed by a discussion of two sonnets by Shakespeare, in which the same general aim is pursued by using the literary resources of figurative language. Finally, a discussion of Hamlet shows how, in this work, the augmentation of figurative language by dramatic form strengthens the view that art can provide a form of knowledge that is based as completely upon intuition about our sensory experience as it is upon reason and observation. Just as my (true) perception of a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee arises immediately from past experience, so the dramatist can see immediately from his or her past experience how a character might perceive things and behave. -/- . (shrink)

As recently highlighted, despite a burgeoning field of sensory ethnography, the practices, production, and accountability of the senses in specific social interactional contexts remain sociologically under-explored. To contribute original insights to a literature on the sensuous body in physical–cultural contexts, here we adopt an ethnomethodologically sensitive perspective to focus on the accomplishment, social organization, and accountability of sensoriality in interaction. Exploring instances of the senses at work in social interaction, we utilize data from two ethnographic research projects to investigate (...) the production of running-together and swimming-together by skilled, experienced practitioners. We focus on two interlinked sensory modalities: auditory attunement, and vision and intercorporeality, identified as key dimensions of sensory embodiment and “togethering” in these particular domains. (shrink)

Multisensory processing encompasses all of the various ways in which the presence of information in one sensory modality can adaptively influence the processing of information in a different modality. In Part I of this survey article, I begin by presenting a cartography of some of the more extensively investigated forms of multisensory processing, with a special focus on two distinct types of multisensory integration. I briefly discuss the conditions under which these different forms of multisensory processing occur as well (...) as their important perceptual consequences and interrelations. In Part II, I then turn to examining of some of the different possible ways in which the structure of conscious perceptual experience might also be characterized as multisensory. In addition, I discuss the significance of research on multisensory processing and multisensory consciousness for philosophical attempts to individuate the senses. (shrink)

The value sensitive design (VSD) approach to designing transformative technologies for human values is taken as the object of study in this chapter. VSD has traditionally been conceptualized as another type of technology or instrumentally as a tool. The various parts of VSD’s principled approach would then aim to discern the various policy requirements that any given technological artifact under consideration would implicate. Yet, little to no consideration has been given to how laws, regulations, policies and social norms engage within (...) VSD practices. Similarly, how the interactive nature of the VSD approach can, in turn, influence those directives. This is exacerbated when we consider machine ethics policy that have global consequences outside their development spheres. What constructs and models will position AI designers to engage in policy concerns? How can the design of AI policy be integrated with technical design? How might VSD be used to develop AI policy? How might law, regulations, social norms, and other kinds of policy regarding AI systems be engaged within value sensitive design? This chapter takes the VSD as its starting point and aims to determine how laws, regulations and policies come to influence how value trade-offs can be managed within VSD practices. It shows that the iterative and interactional nature of VSD both permits and encourages existing policies to be integrated both early on and throughout the design process. The chapter concludes with some potential future research programs. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that a sensitivity theory of knowledge cannot account for intuitively appealing instances of higher-order knowledge. In this paper, we argue that it can once careful attention is paid to the methods or processes by which we typically form higher-order beliefs. We base our argument on what we take to be a well-motivated and commonsensical view on how higher-order knowledge is typically acquired, and we show how higher-order knowledge is possible in a sensitivity theory (...) once this view is adopted. (shrink)

With emotional motivation the organism prepares the body to obtain a goal. There is an anticipatory sensitization of the sensory systems in the body and the brain. Presynaptic facilitation of the sensory afference in the spinal cord is probably involved. In a second stage the higher centers develop an action image/plan to realize the goal, modifying the initial preparations in the body. The subject experiences the changes in the body as a feeling. Three empirical studies supporting this description (...) are summarized. This description of how feelings develop from emotion circuits is discussed from a phenomenological viewpoint. (shrink)

Introduction & Objectives: Norwich’s Entropy Theory of Perception (1975 [1] -present) stands alone. It explains many firing-rate behaviors and psychophysical laws from bare theory. To do so, it demands a unique sort of interaction between receptor and brain, one that Norwich never substantiated. Can it now be confirmed, given the accumulation of empirical sensory neuroscience? Background: Norwich conjoined sensation and a mathematical model of communication, Shannon’s Information Theory, as follows: “In the entropic view of sensation, magnitude of sensation is (...) regarded as a measure of the entropy or uncertainty of the stimulus signal” [2]. “To be uncertain about the outcome of an event, one must first be aware of a set of alternative outcomes” [3]. “The entropy-establishing process begins with the generation of a [internal] sensory signal by the stimulus generator. This is followed by receipt of the [external] stimulus by the sensory receptor, transmission of action potentials by the sensory neurons, and finally recapture of the [response to the internal] signal by the generator” [4]. The latter “recapture” differentiates external from internal stimuli. The hypothetical “stimulus generators” are internal emitters, that generate photons in vision, audible sounds in audition (to Norwich, the spontaneous otoacoustic emissions [SOAEs]), “temperatures in excess of local skin temperature” in skin temperature sensation [4], etc. Method (1): Several decades of empirical sensory physiology literature was scrutinized for internal “stimulus generators”. Results (1): Spontaneous photopigment isomerization (“dark light”) does not involve visible light. SOAEs are electromechanical basilar-membrane artefacts that rarely produce audible tones. The skin’s temperature sensors do not raise skin temperature, etc. Method (2): The putative action of the brain-and-sensory-receptor loop was carefully reexamined. Results (2): The sensory receptor allegedly “perceives”, experiences “awareness”, possesses “memory”, and has a “mind”. But those traits describe the whole human. The receptor, thus anthropomorphized, must therefore contain its own perceptual loop, containing a receptor, containing a perceptual loop, etc. Summary & Conclusions: The Entropy Theory demands sensory awareness of alternatives, through an imagined brain-and-sensory-receptor loop containing internal “stimulus generators”. But (1) no internal “stimulus generators” seem to exist and (2) the loop would be the outermost of an infinite nesting of identical loops. (shrink)

The main goal of the article is a further development of the usage of income and comparable approaches to company valuation aimed at defining market capitalization sensitivity to value changing in the conditions of dynamization of internal and external business parameters. The relevance of the researched topic is determined by the importance of establishing the factors influencing the change in company market capitalization based on the synthesis of approaches to company valuation. To obtain the results of the study, the (...) following methods were used: structural and logical analysis – to improve the process approach to company valuation in the context of determining the impact of its change on market capitalization; discounted cash flow method (DCF-model) – to determine the value of the enterprise based on the income approach; comparable companies method – to determine the value of the company on the basis of a market approach; factor analysis method – to assess the impact of changes in value on company market capitalization; generalization and logical analysis – in conclusions building. The results of critical analysis of publications of domestic and foreign scientists on the application of company valuation methods identified the need of improvement the process approach to company valuation in the context of determining the impact of its change on the company market capitalization. To adequately assess company value, the use of a synthesis of income and market approaches is proposed. The implementation of the DCF-model and comparable companies valuation method while valuation of Private Joint-Stock Company “SKF Ukraine” allowed to establish that the greatest impact on the target metric (company market capitalization) has an average industry multiplier EV/EBITDA, terminal growth rate and weighted average cost of capital – 5.9 %, 3.2% and 2.7% respectively. The practical value of the results of the study is determined by the importance of forming a full analytical basis for establishing the attractiveness of the performance of joint-stock companies in the market and consolidating management decisionsin order to increase market capitalization. (shrink)

It is typically assumed that while we know other people’s mental states by observing and interpreting their behavior, we know our own mental states by introspection, i.e., without interpreting ourselves. In his latest book, The opacity of mind: An integrative theory of self-knowledge, Peter Carruthers (2011) argues against this assumption. He holds that findings from across the cognitive sciences strongly suggest that self-knowledge of conscious propositional attitudes such as intentions, judgments, and decisions involves a swift and unconscious process of (...) self-interpretation that utilizes the same sensory channels that we employ when working out other people’s mental states. I provide an overview of Carruthers’ book before discussing a pathological case that challenges his account of self-knowledge and mentioning empirical evidence that undermines his use of a particular kind of data in his case against introspection of conscious attitudes. (shrink)

In current philosophy of mind, there is lively debate over whether emotions, moods, and other affects can extend to comprise elements beyond one’s organismic boundaries. At the same time, there has been growing interest in the nature and significance of so-called existential feelings, which, as the term suggests, are feelings of one’s overall being in the world. In this article, I bring these two strands of investigation together to ask: Can the material underpinnings of existential feelings extend beyond one’s skull (...) and skin? To begin, I introduce and adopt a componential-systemic view of extended affectivity. In doing so, I specify the vehicle externalist criteria for extension employed in my analysis. I then define what existential feelings are and pinpoint several key issues in their potential extension. More specifically, I identify sensorimotor ‘know-how’ as a possibly extending component of existential feeling and posit it as the fulcrum of my argument. Finally, I move on to consider the extension of existential feeling via sensory substitution, especially through so-called Tactile Visual Sensory Substitution (TVSS) devices. Informed by both philosophical and empirical studies, I argue that, under certain conditions, (a) the agent’s implicit sensorimotor processing and a TVSS device can become coupled into a new systemic whole, which in turn (b) reconfigures the material underpinnings of the agent’s pre-intentional world-experience. This, I conclude, counts as a cogent case for extended existential feeling. (shrink)

This thesis has two parts. In Part I there is an argument for the conclusion that a linguistic phenomenon known as (radical) context-sensitivity is to be expected given the limitations of those who use language to reason about empirical states of affairs. The phenomenon arises as a consequence of a process that must be performed to use language to reason validly. In Part II it is explained why the phenomenon, understood in light of the discussion of Part I, (...) does not threaten the possibility of communication. Some potential readers might be interested to know that in Part I there's a fair amount of exegesis of arguments for the existence of (radical) context-sensitivity put forward by Charles Travis. Some potential readers might be interested to know that in Part II use is made of work by Erving Goffman and some conversation analysts. (shrink)

Vogel argues that sensitivity accounts of knowledge are implausible because they entail that we cannot have any higher-level knowledge that our beliefs are true, not false. Becker and Salerno object that Vogel is mistaken because he does not formalize higher-level beliefs adequately. They claim that if formalized correctly, higher-level beliefs are sensitive, and can therefore constitute knowledge. However, these accounts do not consider the belief-forming method as sensitivity accounts require. If we take bootstrapping as the belief-forming method, as (...) the discussed cases suggest, then we face a generality problem. Our higher-level beliefs as formalized by Becker and Salerno turn out to be sensitive according to a wide reading of bootstrapping, but insensitive according to a narrow reading. This particular generality problem does not arise for the alternative accounts of process reliabilism and basis-relative safety. Hence, sensitivity accounts not only deliver opposite results given different formalizations of higher-level beliefs, but also for the same formalization, depending on how we interpret bootstrapping. Therefore, sensitivity accounts do not fail because they make higher-level knowledge impossible, as Vogel argues, and they do not succeed in allowing higher-level knowledge, as Becker and Salerno suggest. Rather, their problem is that they deliver far too heterogeneous results. (shrink)

Since the early 1990's the value sensitive design (VSD) approach has been a continually burgeoning design methodology for technological innovation. VSD is commonly described as a "principled approach" to technology design, given that it is explicitly orientated towards designing technologies for human values, rather than sidelining them to ad hoc and/or ex post facto design. However, in much of its near three-decades-long development, the VSD approach has mostly been adopted as a conceptual framework to assess existing technologies and to explore (...) how the consequences of the technology's development could have been influenced positively if VSD was adopted early on and throughout the design process (Friedman et al. 2002). Similarly, VSD has been adopted as a conceptual framework for analysing how future speculative technologies like molecular manufacturing (Umbrello 2019) and advanced artificial intelligence systems can be directed towards positive futures (Umbrello and van de Poel 2021). Yet, despite the benefits of these endeavours and VSD being an approach that can be adapted to any given design domain, it has yet to be widely appropriated in existing design spaces as a primary design approach. In this short paper, we aim to fill this lacuna by framing VSD as a toolkit that can be adopted by existing design teams rather than a wholesale approach. In particular, we describe how VSD maps seamlessly onto agile workflows, an approach to project management that is widely adopted globally. By doing so, we hope that the VSD approach will likewise be more attractive and thus adopted more broadly. As a consequence, a more explicit orientation towards designing technologies for human values will follow. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology provides a principled approach to embedding common values in to AI systems both early and throughout the design process. To do so, it draws on an important case study: the evidence and final report of the UK Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. This empirical investigation shows that the different and often disparate stakeholder groups that are implicated in AI design and use share some common values that can be used (...) to further strengthen design coordination efforts. VSD is shown to be both able to distill these common values as well as provide a framework for stakeholder coordination. (shrink)

One aim of this essay is to contribute to understanding aesthetic communication—the process by which agents aim to convey thoughts and transmit knowledge about aesthetic matters to others. Our focus will be on the use of aesthetic adjectives in aesthetic communication. Although theorists working on the semantics of adjectives have developed sophisticated theories about gradable adjectives, they have tended to avoid studying aesthetic adjectives—the class of adjectives that play a central role in expressing aesthetic evaluations. And despite the wealth (...) of attention paid to aesthetic adjectives by philosophical aestheticians, they have paid little attention to contemporary linguistic theories of adjectives. We take our work to be a first step in remedying these lacunae. In this paper, we present four experiments that examine one aspect of how aesthetic adjectives ordinarily function: the context-sensitivity of their application standards. Our results present a prima facie empirical challenge to a common distinction between relative and absolute gradable adjectives because aesthetic adjectives are found to behave differently from both. Our results thus also constitute a prima facie vindication of some philosophical aestheticians’ contention that aesthetic adjectives constitute a particularly interesting segment of natural language, even if the boundaries of this segment might turn out to be different from what they had in mind. (shrink)

Methods have been a controversial element in theories of knowledge for the last 40 years. Recent developments in theories of justification, concerning the identification and individuation of belief-forming processes, can shed new light on methods, solving some longstanding problems in the theory of knowledge. We needn’t and shouldn’t shy away from methods; rather, methods, construed as psychological processes of belief-formation, need to play a central role in any credible theory of knowledge.

This study explores the relation between pain sensitivity and the cognitive processing of words. 130 participants evaluated the pain-relatedness of a total of 600 two-syllabic nouns, and subsequently reported on their own pain sensitivity. The results demonstrate that pain-sensitive people (based on their self-report) associate words more strongly with pain than less sensitive people. In particular, concrete nouns like syringe, wound, knife, and cactus, are considered to be more pain-related for those who are more pain-sensitive. We discuss our (...) results in the light of three theoretical frameworks – cognitive bias, prototype theory, embodied account. We argue that the latter is best suited to explain the results of this study in the sense in which it implies the principle of body specificity, according to which different bodily characteristics lead to corresponding differences in the way in which people construct concepts and word meanings. (shrink)

There is an increasing agreement in the cognitive sciences community that our sensations are closely related to our actions. Our actions impact our sensations from the environment and the knowledge we have of it. Cognition is grounded in sensori-motor coordination. In the perspective of implementing such a performance in artificial systems, there is a need for a model of sensori-motor coordination. We propose here such a model as based on the generation of meaningful information by a system submitted to a (...) constraint [1]. Systems and agents have constraints to satisfy which are related to their nature (stay alive for an organism, avoid obstacle for a robot, …). We propose here to use an existing meaning generation process where a system submitted to a constraint generates a meaningful information (a meaning) when it receives an information that has a connection with the constraint [2]. The generated meaning is precisely the connection existing between the received information and the constraint of the system. The generated meaning is used to trigger an action that will satisfy the constraint. The generated meaning links the system to its environment. A Meaning Generator System (MGS) has been introduced as a building block for higher level systems (agents). The MGS allows to link sensation and action through the satisfaction of the constraint of the system/agent. We use the MGS in a model which is based on constraint satisfaction for sensori-motor coordination in agents, be they organic or artificial. The meaning is generated by and for the agent that hosts the MGS. Such approach makes possible an addressing of the concept of autonomy through the intrinsic or artificial nature of the constraint to be satisfied (organisms with intrinsic constraints/autonomy, artificial systems with artificial constraints/autonomy). The systemic nature of the MGS also allows to position the groundings of the generated meaning as being in or out of the MGS, and correspondingly identify the constructivist and objectivist components of the generated meaning. The approach presented here makes available a sensori-motor coordination by meaning generation through constraint satisfaction with groundings of the generated meaning. (shrink)

This article is a comparative study between predictive processing (PP, or predictive coding) and cognitive dissonance (CD) theory. The theory of CD, one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology, is shown to be highly compatible with recent developments in PP. This is particularly evident in the notion that both theories deal with strategies to reduce perceived error signals. However, reasons exist to update the theory of CD to one of “predictive dissonance.” First, the hierarchical PP (...) framework can be helpful in understanding varying nested levels of CD. If dissonance arises from a cascade of downstream and lateral predictions and consequent prediction errors, dissonance can exist at a multitude of scales, all the way up from sensory perception to higher order cognitions. This helps understand the previously problematic dichotomy between “dissonant cognitive relations” and “dissonant psychological states,” which are part of the same perception-action process while still hierarchically distinct. Second, since PP is action-oriented, it can be read to support recent action-based models of CD. Third, PP can potentially help us understand the recently speculated evolutionary origins of CD. Here, the argument is that responses to CD can instill meta-learning which serves to prevent the overfitting of generative models to ephemeral local conditions. This can increase action-oriented ecological rationality and enhanced capabilities to interact with a rich landscape of affordances. The downside is that in today’s world where social institutions such as science a priori separate noise from signal, some reactions to predictive dissonance might propagate ecologically unsound (underfitted, confirmation-biased) mental models such as climate denialism. (shrink)

Despite their popularity, relatively scant attention has been paid to the upshot of Bayesian and predictive processing models of cognition for views of overall cognitive architecture. Many of these models are hierarchical ; they posit generative models at multiple distinct "levels," whose job is to predict the consequences of sensory input at lower levels. I articulate one possible position that could be implied by these models, namely, that there is a continuous hierarchy of perception, cognition, and action control comprising (...) levels of generative models. I argue that this view is not entailed by a general Bayesian/predictive processing outlook. Bayesian approaches are compatible with distinct formats of mental representation. Focusing on Bayesian approaches to motor control, I argue that the junctures between different types of mental representation are places where the transitivity of hierarchical prediction may be broken, and I consider the upshot of this conclusion for broader discussions of cognitive architecture. (shrink)

Predictive Processing (PP) framework construes perception and action (and perhaps other cognitive phenomena) as a matter of minimizing prediction error, i.e. the mismatch between the sensory input and sensory predictions generated by a hierarchically organized statistical model. There is a question of how PP fits into the debate between traditional, neurocentric and representation-heavy approaches in cognitive science and those approaches that see cognition as embodied, environmentally embedded, extended and (largely) representation-free. In the present paper, I aim to investigate (...) and clarify the cognitivist or ‘conservative’ reading of PP. I argue that the conservative commitments of PP can be divided into three distinct categories: (1) representationalism, (2) inferentialism, and (3) internalism. I show how these commitments and their relations should be understood and argue for an interpretation of each that is both non-trivial and largely ecumenical towards the 4E literature. Conservative PP is as progressive as conservatism gets. (shrink)

Phenomenal qualities are embodied spaciotemporal abstractions subjectively perceived by a conscious observer. Specific examples, i.e., qualia, include the color purple, the taste of chocolate, and the fragrance of a rose. The question of whether phenomenal awareness can be empirically understood forms one important facet of the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” (Chalmers, 1995, pp. 200–219). It is the position of this analysis that we will never understand why we experience sensory qualities in the manner we do until we first comprehend (...) how they may have evolved in the very distant past. This examination explores the evolutionary development of phenomenal experience. In so doing, it proposes that behind the mechanisms through which external stimuli interface with our sensory apparatus, there lies a long evolutionary process of standardization, approximation, and synchronization that has ultimately forged the close links between the two. The consistent and efficient correlations that the resultant evolutionary links give rise to cumulatively generate conscious experience. There is a tight correspondence between our sensations and incoming stimuli, and this synchronous covariance is meaningful and functional; however, it does not result from a strict cause-and-effect relationship between the physical properties of external objects and our internal neurophysiology. As such, this investigation endorses Hoffman’s (1998, 2003, 2008, 2009) view that the external world is largely hidden from direct sensory evaluation. The following inquiry utilizes Jung’s (1952) “Acausal Connecting Principle” to further explore the concept of complementary sensory phenomena as it may have originally been envisioned by Wolfgang Pauli. (Meier, 2001) This thesis, with respect to meaningful acausality and synchronicity, is first used to provide a plausible explanation for the initial genetic development of color perception, and then employed to examine the analogous evolutionary ties that ultimately engender all sensory modalities. Without invoking the Quantum-Mind hypothesis, this paper supports the idea that our five senses are not direct, or true, or even approximate abstract representations of any underlying material properties of incoming stimuli; instead, they efficiently provide useful higher-order assumptions pertaining to the macro properties of spacetime, matter, and motion, as well as the causal-objective of all life. The overall investigation concludes that it is the structural categorization, hierarchical organization, and qualitative characterization of this indirect presumptive meta-information that has engendered meaningful sensory experience, and all conscious thought over evolutionary time. (shrink)

The emphasis on evidence based medicine (EBM) has placed increased focus on finding timely answers to clinical questions in presence of patients. Using a combination of natural language processing for the generation of clinical excerpts and information theoretic distance based clustering, we evaluated multiple approaches for the efficient presentation of context-sensitive EBM excerpts.

Moral (or ethical) sensitivity is widely viewed as a foundational learning goal in engineering ethics education. We have argued in this paper is that this view of moral sensitivity cannot be readily transported from the nursing context to the engineering context on the basis of a care-analogy. The particularized care characteristic of the nursing context is decisively different from the generalized and universalized forms of care characteristic of the engineering context. Through a focus on care and maintenance, the (...) engineering student’s moral sensitivity can be refined, opening up a perceptual awakening and affectivity towards the complex nature of the engineer’s Other. This awakening is in part promoted through an understanding of the ideology of neutrality as a moment in the history engineering. Becoming aware of this ideology as an ideology can then be seen as an activity of dividing loyalties that allows for a reflexive and critical view of the biases and presuppositions inherited within the world of engineering. This process of deepening the engineering student’s moral sensitivity is perhaps as much a process of the student becoming aware of her professional world, how it shapes her understanding of herself, and what it means to be a good engineer. (shrink)

We argue that prediction success maximization is a basic objective of cognition and cortex, that it is compatible with but distinct from prediction error minimization, that neither objective requires subtractive coding, that there is clear neurobiological evidence for the amplification of predicted signals, and that we are unconvinced by evidence proposed in support of subtractive coding. We outline recent discoveries showing that pyramidal cells on which our cognitive capabilities depend usually transmit information about input to their basal dendrites and amplify (...) that transmission when input to their distal apical dendrites provides a context that agrees with the feedforward basal input in that both are depolarizing, i.e., both are excitatory rather than inhibitory. Though these intracellular discoveries require a level of technical expertise that is beyond the current abilities of most neuroscience labs, they are not controversial and acclaimed as groundbreaking. We note that this cellular cooperative context-sensitivity greatly enhances the cognitive capabilities of the mammalian neocortex, and that much remains to be discovered concerning its evolution, development, and pathology. (shrink)

Is vision merely a state of the beholder’s sensory organ which can be explained as an immediate effect caused by external sensible objects? Or is it rather a successive process in which the observer actively scanning the surrounding environment plays a major part? These two general attitudes towards visual perception were both developed already by ancient thinkers. The former is embraced by natural philosophers (e.g., atomists and Aristotelians) and is often labelled “intromissionist”, based on their assumption that vision (...) is an outcome of the causal influence exerted by an external object upon a sensory organ receiving an entity from the object. The latter attitude to vision as a successive process is rather linked to the “extramissionist” theories of the proponents of geometrical optics (such as Euclid or Ptolemy) who suggest that an entity – a visual ray – is sent forth from the eyes to the object. The present paper focuses on the contributions to this ancient controversy proposed by some 13th-century Latin thinkers. [...]. (shrink)

How much does stimulus input shape perception? The common-sense view is that our perceptions are representations of objects and their features and that the stimulus structures the perceptual object. The problem for this view concerns perceptual biases as responsible for distortions and the subjectivity of perceptual experience. These biases are increasingly studied as constitutive factors of brain processes in recent neuroscience. In neural network models the brain is said to cope with the plethora of sensory information by predicting stimulus (...) regularities on the basis of previous experiences. Drawing on this development, this chapter analyses perceptions as processes. Looking at olfaction as a model system, it argues for the need to abandon a stimulus-centred perspective, where smells are thought of as stable percepts, computationally linked to external objects such as odorous molecules. Perception here is presented as a measure of changing signal ratios in an environment informed by expectancy effects from top-down processes. (shrink)

This work aims to contribute to the explanation of cognitive capacities that are essential to human intelligence: commonsense and situation holism. The attempt to explain them within the field of cognitive sciences raises a foundational challenge. How can human cognition distinguish what’s relevant and what’s not in an open-ended set of contexts? The challenge is characterized by a circularity. Potential solutions end up relying on the very capacity that they should be explaining, i.e. the sensitivity to what’s contextually relevant. (...) The argument here developed is an attempt to get out of this circularity. It is grounded on a bi-dimensional analysis of the problem. The first one is representational and is about how cognitive knowledge on what’s relevant can be stored. This dimension is related to the frame problem from artificial intelligence. I claim that this representational aspect of the issue can be neutralized by abandoning language-like representational schemes and sticking to a plurality of structural ones. They allow representational states to play a clear and non-trivial explanatory role while enabling a kind of representational productivity that is not bothered by the frame problem. The second dimension is the inferential one. It encompasses our relevance-sensitive inferential productivity, i.e. our capacity to efficiently infer what’s relevant in indefinitely many contexts, including ones we’ve never faced before. I argue that such relevance sensitivity cannot be neither innate, for innate mechanisms result in the aforementioned circularity, nor learned through innate mechanisms, for learning processes themselves rely on relevance sensitivity. The suggested alternative is that relevance sensitivity is a cognitive gadget. A kind of mental mechanism that is culturally, rather than genetically, inherited. This possibility is rendered plausible within Cecilia Heyes’ “cognitive gadgets” framework. She shows how developmental tweaks and biases culturally established can participate in the constitution of cognitive mechanisms. Thus, cultural elements can participate in human cognition not only as information sources, but also in the form of tweaks that bias the processing of that information towards what’s culturally established as contextually relevant. (shrink)

In sensorimotor integration, representation involves an anticipatory model of the action to be performed. This model integrates efferent signals (motor commands), its reafferent consequences (sensory consequences of an organism’s own motor action), and other afferences (sensory signals) originated by stimuli independent of the action performed. Representation, a form of internal modeling, is invoked to explain the fact that behavior oriented to the achievement of future goals is relatively independent from the immediate environment. Internal modeling explains how a cognitive (...) system achieves its goals despite variations in the environment with insufficient and noisy sensory–perceptual data. In a self that acts intentionally on the environment, knowledge is dependent upon the necessity to guide actions directed toward an aim. The self-inner model, a representation of internal and external environments (including reafferent and afferent messages) and also of the behavior plans and desirable future states (aims) and efferent intentions (motor planning and motor command messages), is intrinsically linked to a thinking capacity, which is supposed to emerge from the binding of multiple influences. Thinking emerges when higher behavior strategies are considered possible and capable of leading to aims or the fulfillment of intentions. In this model, symbolization processes are projective and anticipatory and, in this way, beyond present referents. Symbolization occurs linked to action planning, command, and regulation in mental simulation. Meaning is related to an inner sense of a self that acts over the environment. (shrink)

Some physicians, in their care of patients at risk of misusing opioids, use machine learning (ML)-based prediction drug monitoring programmes (PDMPs) to guide their decision making in the prescription of opioids. This can cause a conflict: a PDMP Score can indicate a patient is at a high risk of opioid abuse while a patient expressly reports oppositely. The prescriber is then left to balance the credibility and trust of the patient with the PDMP Score. Pozzi1 argues that a prescriber who (...) downgrades the credibility of a patient’s testimony based on a low PDMP Score is epistemically and morally unjustified and contributes to a form of testimonial injustice. This results in patients being silenced, excluded from decision-making processes and subjected to structural injustices. Additionally, the use of ML systems in medical practices raises concerns about perpetuating existing inequalities, overestimating their capabilities and displacing human authority. However, almost the very same critiques apply to human-based systems. Formalisation, ML systems included, should instead be viewed positively,2 and precisely as a powerful means to begin eroding these and other problems in ethically sensitive domains. In this case, the epistemic virtues of formalisation include promoting transparency, consistency and replicability in decision making. Rigorous ML systems can also help ensure that models …. (shrink)

This paper presents a view of nature as a network of infocomputational agents organized in a dynamical hierarchy of levels. It provides a framework for unification of currently disparate understandings of natural, formal, technical, behavioral and social phenomena based on information as a structure, differences in one system that cause the differences in another system, and computation as its dynamics, i.e. physical process of morphological change in the informational structure. We address some of the frequent misunderstandings regarding the natural/morphological (...) computational models and their relationships to physical systems, especially cognitive systems such as living beings. Natural morphological infocomputation as a conceptual framework necessitates generalization of models of computation beyond the traditional Turing machine model presenting symbol manipulation, and requires agent-based concurrent resource-sensitive models of computation in order to be able to cover the whole range of phenomena from physics to cognition. The central role of agency, particularly material vs. cognitive agency is highlighted. (shrink)

The nature of “the self” has been one of the central problems in philosophy and more recently in neuroscience. This raises various questions: Can we attribute a self to animals? Do animals and humans share certain aspects of their core selves, yielding a trans-species concept of self? What are the neural processes that underlie a possible trans-species concept of self? What are the developmental aspects and do they result in various levels of self-representation? Drawing on recent literature from both human (...) and animal research, we suggest a trans-species concept of self that is based upon what has been called a “core-self” which can be described by self-related processing as a specific mode of interaction between organism and environment. When we refer to specific neural networks, we will here refer to the underlying system as the “core-SELF.” The core-SELF provides primordial neural coordinates that represent organisms as living creatures—at the lowest level this elaborates interoceptive states along with raw emotional feelings while higher medial cortical levels facilitate affective-cognitive integration . Developmentally, SRP allows stimuli from the environment to be related and linked to organismic needs, signaled and processed within core-self structures within subcorical-cortical midline structures that provide the foundation for epigenetic emergence of ecologically framed, higher idiographic forms of selfhood across different individuals within a species. These functions ultimately operate as a coordinated network. We postulate that core SRP operates automatically, is deeply affective, and is developmentally and epigenetically connected to sensory-motor and higher cognitive abilities. This core-self is mediated by SCMS, embedded in visceral and instinctual representations of the body that are well integrated with basic attentional, emotional and motivational functions that are apparently shared between humans, non-human mammals, and perhaps in a proto-SELF form, other vertebrates. Such a trans-species concept of organismic coherence is thoroughly biological and affective at the lowest levels of a complex neural network, and culturally and ecologically molded at higher levels of neural processing. It allows organisms to selectively adapt to and integrate with physical and social environments. Such a psychobiologically universal, but environmentally diversified, concept may promote novel trans-species studies of the core-self across mammalian species. (shrink)