A Mark of the Mental

Author(s):  
Karen Neander

How do thoughts get to be about the world, how do they refer to their contents? This book tackles the most tractable part of this ancient problem by offering a theory of original intentionality for (nonconceptual) sensory-perceptual representations. To pave the way, Neander discusses the role played by the notions of representation and representational content in cognitive science, and explain how it stems from combining a standard biological strategy for explaining how bodies and brains operate or function with a mainstream information-processing approach to explaining cognitive (including perceptual) capacities. The author also argues that this supports an informational version of teleosemantics, and develops the theory of content in three stages. First she elucidates how sensory-perceptual systems have response functions, and why the sensory-perceptual representations they produce may be said to refer to the causes in response to which they are, in that sense, supposed to be produced. Second, she explains how sensory-perceptual systems might therefore have functions to produce inner state changes that are both caused by and the analogs of their contents, and thus how analog relations (i.e., relations of second-order similarity) as well as causal-information relations can be content-constitutive. Finally, she discusses the notorious problem of distal content and offers a solution that ismost suited for (nonconceptual) sensory-perceptual representations. Along the way, the author solves six aspects of the content-indeterminacy problem.

Author(s):  
Karen Neander

Supporters of standard teleosemantics argue that informational teleosemantics turns teleosemantics on its head, because functions are effects but a representation’s information relations concern its causes. In chapter 6, the author responds to this influential objection by explaining that, while functions must involve effects, this is not to the exclusion of triggering causes. According to the etiological theory, which is employed by most proponents of teleosemantics, functions are (roughly speaking) selected effects; however, they can also be selected dispositions or selected causal roles, and so can involve inputs as well as outputs. The author explains that there are response functions (functions to do something in response to something), that sensory-perceptual systems have them, and so can have information-processing functions, at least given a simple causal analysis of information. This clears the path for the causal-informational version of teleosemantics, which ties the contents of (nonconceptual) sensory-perceptual representations to their normal causes, as opposed to the so-called Normal conditions for their use.


Author(s):  
Karen Neander

In chapter 8, the author brings causal, teleosemantic and resemblance theories of content together by extending CT (as presented in chapter 7) to explain how homomorphism (more specifically, analog relations, or second-order similarity relations) can play a content-constitutive role. While the idea that some systems have the function to model the world might explain why a natural representational system counts as a representational system, it is neutral between iconic mental representation and a more language-like version of Mentalese. The author then addresses traditional objections to resemblance theories of content, to show how they can now be met. She argues that sensory-perceptual systems can have functions to produce inner state changes that are caused by and the analogs of their contents, and that this casts light on the intuitive appeal of resemblance theories of mental representation, and that it permits some sensory-perceptual simples to represent novel and non-existent contents. Chapter 8 also addresses the fourth and fifth content-determinacy challenges: why does R have the content there’s C and not there’s Q, when (iv) C is a determinate of Q, or (v) C is a determinable for Q? In the last few sections, Berkeley’s problem of abstraction and two contemporary strategies for its solution are discussed, insofar as it concerns the representation of perceptible properties (e.g., shape and color).


2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.


CCIT Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Untung Rahardja ◽  
Meta Amalya Dewi ◽  
Fitri Lisnawati

Advances in information technology and communications which we achieve now actually been recognized and felt in the world of education in general. Currently College Prog implement a Tridharma terms Tridharma iDuHelp!. Tridharma is one of the basic responsibilities that students must be developed simultaneously and together. In this Tridharma still there are problems in the system iDuHelp! service. So IRAN (iLearning Prog Ask and News) in collaboration with iDuHelp! in providing answers and information needed by the student. In its application in Tridharma iDuHelp! IRAN There is a related method in it, such as iLearning methods that are currently being developed. With iLearning method can facilitate conduct research in detail, accurately, and clearly by using mindmapping. Besides the method of analysis is also done with three stages  namely the identification of the problem, identifying needs, and identifying system requirements. In this study using 4 literature reviews that can be used as references in preparing this paper. In this article explained about the problems that arise and solving problems in accurately using the flow Flowchart. In the implementation of the prototype shown iDuHelp! As well as the performance of Iran. So the end result of the study is a system performance to information and communication media of Iran can maximize iDuHelp! care system  It is widely integrated in a university.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-443
Author(s):  
Paul Mazey

This article considers how pre-existing music has been employed in British cinema, paying particular attention to the diegetic/nondiegetic boundary and notions of restraint. It explores the significance of the distinction between diegetic music, which exists in the world of the narrative, and nondiegetic music, which does not. It analyses the use of pre-existing operatic music in two British films of the same era and genre: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), and demonstrates how seemingly subtle variations in the way music is used in these films produce markedly different effects. Specifically, it investigates the meaning of the music in its original context and finds that only when this bears a narrative relevance to the film does it cross from the diegetic to the nondiegetic plane. This reveals that whereas music restricted to the diegetic plane may express the outward projection of the characters' emotions, music also heard on the nondiegetic track may reveal a deeper truth about their feelings. In this way, the meaning of the music varies depending upon how it is used. While these two films may differ in whether or not their pre-existing music occupies a nondiegetic or diegetic position in relation to the narrative, both are characteristic of this era of British film-making in using music in an understated manner which expresses a sense of emotional restraint and which marks the films with a particularly British inflection.


The Eye ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (128) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Gregory DeNaeyer

The world-wide use of scleral contact lenses has dramatically increased over the past 10 year and has changed the way that we manage patients with corneal irregularity. Successfully fitting them can be challenging especially for eyes that have significant asymmetries of the cornea or sclera. The future of scleral lens fitting is utilizing corneo-scleral topography to accurately measure the anterior ocular surface and then using software to design lenses that identically match the scleral surface and evenly vault the cornea. This process allows the practitioner to efficiently fit a customized scleral lens that successfully provides the patient with comfortable wear and improved vision.


Author(s):  
Adrián Bertorello

RESUMENEl trabajo examina críticamente la afirmación central de la hermenéutica de Paul Ricoeur, a saber, que el soporte material de la escritura es el rasgo determinante para que una secuencia discursiva sea considerada como un texto. La escritura cancela las condiciones fácticas de la enunciación y crea, de este modo, un ámbito de sentido estable en el que se puede validar una concepción de la subjetividad que está implicada en las dos estrategias de lecturas (el análisis estructural y la apropiación), esto es, un sujeto pasivo que se constituye por la idealidad del significado. Asimismo, el trabajo intentará precisar una serie de ambigüedades en el uso que Ricoeur hace del «ser en el mundo» para sostener la referencialidad del discurso.PALABRAS CLAVETEXTO, ESCRITURA, REFERENCIA, SUBJETIVIDAD, MUNDOABSTRACTThis paper critically examines the main assertion of Paul Ricoeur´s hermeneutics, i.e., that the material base of writing is the determining feature to consider a discursive sequence as a text. Writing cancels the factual conditions of enunciation and creates, in this way, a background of stable meaning where it is possible to validate a conception of subjectivity implicated in the two reading strategies (the structural analysis and the appropriation), i.e., a passive subject constituted by the ideality of meaning. Likewise, this paper aims to clarify some ambiguities in the way Ricoeur uses the «beings in the world» to support the discourse referentiality.KEY WORDSTEXT, WRITING, REFERENCE, SUBJECTIVITY, WORLD


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Gisa Jähnichen

The Sri Lankan Ministry of National Coexistence, Dialogue, and Official Languages published the work “People of Sri Lanka” in 2017. In this comprehensive publication, 21 invited Sri Lankan scholars introduced 19 different people’s groups to public readers in English, mainly targeted at a growing number of foreign visitors in need of understanding the cultural diversity Sri Lanka has to offer. This paper will observe the presentation of these different groups of people, the role music and allied arts play in this context. Considering the non-scholarly design of the publication, a discussion of the role of music and allied arts has to be supplemented through additional analyses based on sources mentioned by the 21 participating scholars and their fragmented application of available knowledge. In result, this paper might help improve the way facts about groups of people, the way of grouping people, and the way of presenting these groupings are displayed to the world beyond South Asia. This fieldwork and literature guided investigation should also lead to suggestions for ethical principles in teaching and presenting of culturally different music practices within Sri Lanka, thus adding an example for other case studies.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner

Perceptual representations – e.g., of objects or approximate magnitudes –are often invoked as building blocks that children combine with linguisticsymbols when they acquire the positive integers. Systems of numericalperception are either assumed to contain the logical foundations ofarithmetic innately, or to supply the basis for their induction. Here Ipropose an alternative to this general framework, and argue that theintegers are not learned from perceptual systems, but instead arise toexplain perception as part of language acquisition. Drawing oncross-linguistic data and developmental data, I show that small numbers(1-4) and large numbers (~5+) arise both historically and in individualchildren via entirely distinct mechanisms, constituting independentlearning problems, neither of which begins with perceptual building blocks.Specifically, I propose that children begin by learning small numbers(i.e., *one, two, three*) using the same logical resources that supportother linguistic markers of number (e.g., singular, plural). Several yearslater, children discover the logic of counting by inferring the logicalrelations between larger number words from their roles in blind countingprocedures, and only incidentally associate number words with perception ofapproximate magnitudes, in an *ad hoc* and highly malleable fashion.Counting provides a form of explanation for perception but is not causallyderived from perceptual systems.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barner

Why did humans develop precise systems for measuring experience, like numbers, clocks, andcalendars? I argue that precise representational systems were constructed by earlier generationsof humans because they recognized that their noisy perceptual systems were not capturingdistinctions that existed in the world. Abstract symbolic systems did not arise from perceptualrepresentations, but instead were constructed to describe and explain perceptual experience. Byanalogy, I argue that when children learn number words, they do not rely on noisy perceptualsystems, but instead acquire these words as units in a broader system of procedures, whosemeanings are ultimately defined by logical relations to one another, not perception.


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