The Fragmented Mind

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Dirk Kindermann ◽  
Andrea Onofri

This collection of new essays discusses the hypothesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. This Introduction explains what this hypothesis amounts to. It begins by outlining what different approaches to fragmentation have in common and what motivates them, contrasting fragmentation with a rival model called ‘unity.’ It then discusses the relationship between fragmentation and theses about cognitive architecture, introduces two classical theories of fragmentation, and sketches recent developments of the idea in the literature. Finally, as an overview of the volume, it presents some of the open questions about and issues with fragmentation that the contributions to this volume address.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anabela Pinto

The word “belief” evokes concepts such as religious or political beliefs, however there is more to belief than cultural aspects. The formation of beliefs depends on information acquired through subjective sampling and informants. Recent developments in the study of animal cognition suggest that animals also hold beliefs and there are some aspects that underly the formation of beliefs which are shared with other animal species, namely the relationship between causality, predictability and utility of beliefs. This review explores the biological roots of belief formation and suggests explanations for how evolution shaped the mind to harbour complex concepts based on linguistic structures held by humans. Furthermore, it suggests that beliefs are shaped by the type and process of information acquisition which progresses through three levels of complexity.


Romanticism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-215
Author(s):  
Alex Broadhead

In 2009, Damian Walford Davies called for a counterfactual turn in Romantic studies, a move reflective of a wider growth of critical interest in the relationship between Romanticism and counterfactual historiography. In contrast to these more recent developments, the lives of the Romantics have provided a consistent source of speculation for authors of popular alternate history since the nineteenth century. Yet the aims of alternate history as a genre differ markedly from those of its more scholarly cousin, counterfactual historiography. How, then, might such works fit in to the proposed counterfactual turn? This article makes a case for the critical as well as the creative value of alternate histories featuring the Romantics. By exploring how these narratives differ from works of counterfactual historiography, it seeks to explain why the Romantics continue to inspire authors of alternate history and to illuminate the forking paths that Davies's counterfactual turn might take.


The essays collected in this book represent recent advances in our understanding of speech acts-actions like asserting, asking, and commanding that speakers perform when producing an utterance. The study of speech acts spans disciplines, and embraces both the theoretical and scientific concerns proper to linguistics and philosophy as well as the normative questions that speech acts raise for our politics, our societies, and our ethical lives generally. It is the goal of this book to reflect the diversity of current thinking on speech acts as well as to bring these conversations together, so that they may better inform one another. Topics explored in this book include the relationship between sentence grammar and speech act potential; the fate of traditional frameworks in speech act theory, such as the content-force distinction and the taxonomy of speech acts; and the ways in which speech act theory can illuminate the dynamics of hostile and harmful speech. The book takes stock of well over a half century of thinking about speech acts, bringing this classicwork in linewith recent developments in semantics and pragmatics, and pointing the way forward to further debate and research.


Author(s):  
Giovanna Bianchi

In 1994, an article appeared in the Italian journal Archeologia Medievale, written by Chris Wickham and Riccardo Francovich, entitled ‘Uno scavo archeologico ed il problema dello sviluppo della signoria territoriale: Rocca San Silvestro e i rapporti di produzione minerari’. It marked a breakthrough in the study of the exploitation of mineral resources (especially silver) in relation to forms of power, and the associated economic structure, and control of production between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. On the basis of the data available to archeological research at the time, the article ended with a series of open questions, especially relating to the early medieval period. The new campaign of field research, focused on the mining landscape of the Colline Metallifere in southern Tuscany, has made it possible to gather more information. While the data that has now been gathered are not yet sufficient to give definite and complete answers to those questions, they nevertheless allow us to now formulate some hypotheses which may serve as the foundations for broader considerations as regards the relationship between the exploitation of a fundamental resource for the economy of the time, and the main players and agents in that system of exploitation, within a landscape that was undergoing transformation in the period between the early medieval period and the middle centuries of the Middle Ages.


This survey of research on psychology in five volumes is a part of a series undertaken by the ICSSR since 1969, which covers various disciplines under social science. Volume Five of this survey, Explorations into Psyche and Psychology: Some Emerging Perspectives, examines the future of psychology in India. For a very long time, intellectual investments in understanding mental life have led to varied formulations about mind and its functions across the word. However, a critical reflection of the state of the disciplinary affairs indicates the dominance of Euro-American theories and methods, which offer an understanding coloured by a Western world view, which fails to do justice with many non-Western cultural settings. The chapters in this volume expand the scope of psychology to encompass indigenous knowledge available in the Indian tradition and invite engaging with emancipatory concerns as well as broadening the disciplinary base. The contributors situate the difference between the Eastern and Western conceptions of the mind in the practice of psychology. They look at this discipline as shaped by and shaping between systems like yoga. They also analyse animal behaviour through the lens of psychology and bring out insights about evolution of individual and social behaviour. This volume offers critique the contemporary psychological practices in India and offers a new perspective called ‘public psychology’ to construe and analyse the relationship between psychologists and their objects of study. Finally, some paradigmatic, pedagogical, and substantive issues are highlighted to restructure the practice of psychology in the Indian setting.


Cells ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 968
Author(s):  
Tyler J. Wildes ◽  
Bayli DiVita Dean ◽  
Catherine T. Flores

Our understanding of the relationship between the immune system and cancers has undergone significant discovery recently. Immunotherapy with T cell therapies and checkpoint blockade has meaningfully changed the oncology landscape. While remarkable clinical advances in adaptive immunity are occurring, modulation of innate immunity has proven more difficult. The myeloid compartment, including macrophages, neutrophils, and dendritic cells, has a significant impact on the persistence or elimination of tumors. Myeloid cells, specifically in the tumor microenvironment, have direct contact with tumor tissue and coordinate with tumor-reactive T cells to either stimulate or antagonize cancer immunity. However, the myeloid compartment comprises a broad array of cells in various stages of development. In addition, hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells at various stages of myelopoiesis in distant sites undergo significant modulation by tumors. Understanding how tumors exert their influence on myeloid progenitors is critical to making clinically meaningful improvements in these pathways. Therefore, this review will cover recent developments in our understanding of how solid tumors modulate myelopoiesis to promote the formation of pro-tumor immature myeloid cells. Then, it will cover some of the potential avenues for capitalizing on these mechanisms to generate antitumor immunity.


2003 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Rifkin

Abstract Recent developments in the biography of Josquin des Prez have focused new attention on the motet Ave Maria …… virgo serena. In 1974, Thomas Noblitt showed that watermark evidence assigned a copy of the piece in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. 3154 to 1476; the dating appeared unassailable philologically, and the style of the music tied it to a repertory created at the court of Milan in a period when Josquin supposedly worked there. But with the discovery by Lora Matthews and Paul Merkley that Josquin had no connection with Milan until 1484, a potential conflict between style, date, and perhaps authorship has emerged. Reexamination of the motet and its transmission affirms both the Milanese character of the music and Josquin's authorship; a more intensive investigation of the relationship between script and paper in Munich 3154, however, shows that the Ave Maria represents a previously unrecognized phase in the work of its copyist, datable to 1485 or an adjacent year. Even against this revised background, Munich 3154 remains the earliest securely datable source for any music of Josquin, and the Ave Maria seems in all likelihood the earliest composition of his that we can identify.


2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (12) ◽  
pp. 6167-6170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica K. Fiege ◽  
Ryan A. Langlois

Influenza A viruses display a broad cellular tropism within the respiratory tracts of mammalian hosts. Uncovering the relationship between tropism and virus immunity, pathogenesis, and transmission will be critical for the development of therapeutic interventions. Here we discuss recent developments of several recombinant strains of influenza A virus. These viruses have inserted reporters to track tropism, microRNA target sites to restrict tropism, or barcodes to assess transmission dynamics, expanding our understanding of pathogen-host interactions.


1987 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ram Sankar Pathak ◽  
Lokenath Debnath

This paper is concerned with recent developments on the Stieltjes transform of generalized functions. Sections 1 and 2 give a very brief introduction to the subject and the Stieltjes transform of ordinary functions with an emphasis to the inversion theorems. The Stieltjes transform of generalized functions is described in section 3 with a special attention to the inversion theorems of this transform. Sections 4 and 5 deal with the adjoint and kernel methods used for the development of the Stieltjes transform of generalized functions. The real and complex inversion theorems are discussed in sections 6 and 7. The Poisson transform of generalized functions, the iteration of the Laplace transform and the iterated Stieltjes transfrom are included in sections 8, 9 and 10. The Stieltjes transforms of different orders and the fractional order integration and further generalizations of the Stieltjes transform are discussed in sections 11 and 12. Sections 13, 14 and 15 are devoted to Abelian theorems, initial-value and final-value results. Some applications of the Stieltjes transforms are discussed in section 16. The final section deals with some open questions and unsolved problems. Many important and recent references are listed at the end.


2021 ◽  
pp. 135910452098621
Author(s):  
Rosie Oldham-Cooper ◽  
Claire Semple ◽  
Laura L. Wilkinson

We suggest a reconsideration of the role of ‘attachment orientation’ in the context of eating disorders and paediatric diabetes. Attachment orientation is a psychological construct that describes a relatively stable set of expectations and behaviours an individual relies upon in managing relationships. There is considerable evidence of an association between attachment orientation and the development and maintenance of disordered eating in individuals without diabetes, though evidence is more scant in populations with diabetes. We discuss the underpinning theory and critically examine the existing literature for the relationship between attachment orientation and disordered eating in paediatric diabetes. Finally, we draw on adjacent literatures to highlight potential future directions for research should this area be revisited. Overall, we contextualise our discussion in terms of patient-centred, holistic care that addresses the mind and body (i.e., our discussion of attachment orientation assumes a psycho-biological approach).


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