Positing Nonconceptual Representations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Neander
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Young Woman ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Psychological Process ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Normal Human ◽  
Visual Targets ◽  
Work Done ◽  
The Way

In the second chapter, the author describes some research by cognitive scientists, who posit nonconceptual representations to explain certain perceptual capacities (and incapacities). This research and the way in which it is reported illustrate the type of theoretical work done by an error-permitting notion of nonconceptual representation, alongside a malfunction-permitting notion of function. One set of studies (led by McCloskey) that is described in some detail focuses on an unusual deficit in locating visual targets (in a young woman, AH), which were intended to contribute to understanding normal human vision. The author makes clear why the contents ascribed to the underlying representational states, where the errors first occur, are referential-intentional contents, not merely (natural-factive) informational contents, and why their ascriptions count as intensional, according to standard criteria. Toward the end of the chapter, the author reminds readers of a familiar conundrum: if a representation’s having content is not causally potent in a psychological process, why is it (still) a central tenet of mainstream cognitive science that such a process should be understood as representational?

scholarly journals The optics of the human eye at 8.6 μm lateral resolution

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Bonaque-Gonzalez ◽  
Juan M. Trujillo-Sevilla ◽  
Miriam Velasco-Ocana ◽  
Oscar Casanova-Gonzalez ◽  
Miguel Sicilia-Cabrera ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pupil Diameter ◽  
Current Measurement ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Lateral Resolution ◽  
Measurement Systems ◽  
Human Eye ◽  
New Information ◽  
Normal Human ◽  
The Way

Ocular optics is normally estimated based on 2,600 measurement points within the pupil of the eye, which implies a lateral resolution of approximately 175 microns for a 9 mm pupil diameter. This is because information below this resolution is not thought to be relevant or even possible to obtain with current measurement systems. In this work, we characterize the in vivo ocular optics of the human eye with a lateral resolution of 8.6 microns, which implies roughly 1 million measurement points for a pupil diameter of 9 mm. The results suggest that the normal human eye presents a series of hitherto unknown optical patterns with amplitudes between 200 and 300 nm and is made up of a series of in-phase peaks and valleys. If the results are analysed at only high lateral frequencies, the human eye is also found to contain a whole range of new information. This discovery could have a great impact on the way we understand some fundamental mechanisms of human vision and could be of outstanding utility in certain fields of ophthalmology.

scholarly journals The optics of the human eye at 8.6 µm resolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Bonaque-González ◽  
Juan M. Trujillo-Sevilla ◽  
Miriam Velasco-Ocaña ◽  
Óscar Casanova-González ◽  
Miguel Sicilia-Cabrera ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pupil Diameter ◽  
Current Measurement ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Lateral Resolution ◽  
Measurement Systems ◽  
Human Eye ◽  
New Information ◽  
Normal Human ◽  
The Way

AbstractOcular optics is normally estimated based on up to 2,600 measurement points within the pupil of the eye, which implies a lateral resolution of approximately 175 µm for a 9 mm pupil diameter. This is because information below this resolution is not thought to be relevant or even possible to obtain with current measurement systems. In this work, we characterize the in vivo ocular optics of the human eye with a lateral resolution of 8.6 µm, which implies roughly 1 million measurement points for a pupil diameter of 9 mm. The results suggest that the normal human eye presents a series of hitherto unknown optical patterns with amplitudes between 200 and 300 nm and is made up of a series of in-phase peaks and valleys. If the results are analysed at only high lateral frequencies, the human eye is also found to contain a whole range of new information. This discovery could have a great impact on the way we understand some fundamental mechanisms of human vision and could be of outstanding utility in certain fields of ophthalmology.

Peculiarity Parameters

1976 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 233-254
Author(s):  
H. M. Maitzen
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
Magnetic Fields ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Observational Evidence ◽  
Rotator Model ◽  
Peculiar Behaviour ◽  
Field Spectrum ◽  
Oblique Rotator ◽  
Ap Stars ◽  
The Way

Ap stars are peculiar in many aspects. During this century astronomers have been trying to collect data about these and have found a confusing variety of peculiar behaviour even from star to star that Struve stated in 1942 that at least we know that these phenomena are not supernatural. A real push to start deeper theoretical work on Ap stars was given by an additional observational evidence, namely the discovery of magnetic fields on these stars by Babcock (1947). This originated the concept that magnetic fields are the cause for spectroscopic and photometric peculiarities. Great leaps for the astronomical mankind were the Oblique Rotator model by Stibbs (1950) and Deutsch (1954), which by the way provided mathematical tools for the later handling pulsar geometries, anti the discovery of phase coincidence of the extrema of magnetic field, spectrum and photometric variations (e.g. Jarzebowski, 1960).

Social Cognition in Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 243-249
Author(s):  
Ronja Weiblen ◽  
Melanie Jonas ◽  
Sören Krach ◽  
Ulrike M. Krämer
Keyword(s):  
Tourette Syndrome ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Mirror Neuron System ◽  
Mirror Neuron ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Decision Making System ◽  
Social Decision Making ◽  
Work Done

Abstract. Research on the neural mechanisms underlying Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) has mostly concentrated on abnormalities in basal ganglia circuits. Recent alternative accounts, however, focused more on social and affective aspects. Individuals with GTS show peculiarities in their social and affective domain, including echophenomena, coprolalia, and nonobscene socially inappropriate behavior. This article reviews the experimental and theoretical work done on the social symptoms of GTS. We discuss the role of different social cognitive and affective functions and associated brain networks, namely, the social-decision-making system, theory-of-mind functions, and the so-called “mirror-neuron” system. Although GTS affects social interactions in many ways, and although the syndrome includes aberrant social behavior, the underlying cognitive, affective, and neural processes remain to be investigated.

A family with oedipal dynamics

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-118
Author(s):  
Li Yanling ◽  
David E. Scharff
Keyword(s):  
Family Therapy ◽  
Parental Care ◽  
Young Woman ◽  
Discussion Group ◽  
Entire Group ◽  
Group Leaders ◽  
Couple And Family Therapy ◽  
Supervision Group ◽  
The Way

The following case presents the way that overtly oedipal identification in a young woman covered failure in early parental care and discontent between her parents. The case was presented by Li Yanling to her supervision group, and the commentary and elaboration have been gathered from comments from the entire group of advanced supervisees, all of whom were discussion group leaders in the Beijing Continuous Program in Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Therapy.

Minds, Machines, and Giving a Damn

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Chodat
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Walker Percy ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Partial Success ◽  
The Way

The 1960s saw the triumph of cognitive science over behaviorism. This chapter examines three literary–philosophical objections to this shift: “West Coast” phenomenology, Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2, and the writings of Walker Percy, the first of the postwar sages featured in this book. For “West Coast” philosophers, cognitive science ignores the way human action is structured by what we “give a damn” about—a sense of significance that orients our actions. Powers’s novel goes a step further: no more than machines do we know what to give a damn about. Percy’s essays and fiction challenge both these positions, asking us to see analogies between the significance we find in language and the significance we find in living a Christian life. Establishing such an analogy is the goal of Percy’s 1971 Love in the Ruins, which seeks to embody—with only partial success—what terms such as “faith” and “community” might mean.

Ibsen and the Irish Theatre

1990 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-28
Author(s):  
Katharine Worth
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Psychological Process ◽  
Dramatic Literature ◽  
Social Activities ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Lady Gregory ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
George Moore ◽  
Irish School ◽  
The Way

The Irish Literary Theatre, from which a new Irish theatre was to develop, came to birth at the very point when Ibsen was about to depart from the European theatrical scene. His last play, When We Dead Awaken, appeared in 1899, the year in which Yeats's The Countess Cathleen and Edward Martyn's The Heather Field were produced in Dublin. They were the first fruits of the resolve taken by the two playwrights, with Lady Gregory and George Moore, to ‘build up a Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature’ and they offered decidedly different foretastes of what that ‘school’ might bring forth. Yeats declared himself an adherent of a poetic theatre that would use fantasy, vision and dream without regard for the limits set by the realistic convention. Martyn, on the other hand, was clearly following Ibsen in his careful observance of day-to-day probability. The central symbol of his play, the heather field, represents an obscure psychological process which might have received more ‘inward’ treatment. But instead it is fitted into a pattern of social activities in something like the way of the prosaically functional but symbolic orphanage in Ghosts.

scholarly journals Further Investigations on the Function of the Electrical Organ of the Skate

1889 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burdon Sanderson ◽  
F. Gotch
Keyword(s):  
Central Nervous System ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
Electromotive Force ◽  
Electric Organ ◽  
Physiological Laboratory ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
Work Done ◽  
The Way

During the month of September, 1888, we availed ourselves of the facilities afforded by the Laboratory for the purpose of continuing the investigations began by us the year before, of the function of the electrical organ of the skate. In the record of the work done by us in 1887 at St. Andrews, published in the Journal of Physiology, vol. ix, p. 137, we indicated several new lines of investigation which we hoped to pursue if the opportunity offered. Two of these indications we have now been able to fulfil satisfactorily, namely, those relating to the electromotive force of the shock, and to the way in which the function of the electric organ is controlled and influenced by the central nervous system. In the first of these inquiries, we used apparatus which was brought from the Oxford Physiological Laboratory, and temporarily fitted up in the room at Plymouth, which is set apart for physiological researches, and which we found well adapted for this purpose. For the second, a large number of experiments and consequently a considerable number of fish were requisite. Forty skates of various species (Raia Batis, R. clavata, R. microcellata, and R. maculata) were supplied to us and used in our researches, of which the result will shortly be ready for publication.We desire to express in the strongest terms our appreciation of the advantages afforded by the Laboratory for physiological researches. We would also record our personal obligation to the Director for his uniform courtesy and untiring zeal in obtaining for us, in spite of considerable difficulties, the material required for our work.

scholarly journals How Efficiency Shapes Human Language, TICS 2019

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Gibson ◽  
Richard Futrell ◽  
Steven T. Piantadosi ◽  
Isabelle Dautriche ◽  
Kyle Mahowald ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Language Research ◽  
The Way

Cognitive science applies diverse tools and perspectives to study human language. Recently, an exciting body of work has examined linguistic phenomena through the lens of efficiency in usage: what otherwise puzzling features of language find explanation in formal accounts of how language might be optimized for communication and learning? Here, we review studies that deploy formal tools from probability and information theory to understand how and why language works the way that it does, focusing on phenomena ranging from the lexicon through syntax. These studies show how apervasive pressure for efficiency guides the forms of natural language and indicate that a rich future for language research lies in connecting linguistics to cognitive psychology and mathematical theories of communication and inference.

scholarly journals Movement Variability and the Use of Nonlinear Tools: Principles to Guide Physical Therapist Practice

2009 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regina T Harbourne ◽  
Nicholas Stergiou
Keyword(s):  
Complex Systems ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Physical Therapist ◽  
Biological Systems ◽  
Movement Variability ◽  
Functional Movement ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Way

Fields studying movement generation, including robotics, psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience, utilize concepts and tools related to the pervasiveness of variability in biological systems. The concepts of variability and complexity and the nonlinear tools used to measure these concepts open new vistas for physical therapist practice and research in movement dysfunction of all types. Because mounting evidence supports the necessity of variability for health and functional movement, this perspective article argues for changes in the way therapists view variability, both in theory and in action. By providing clinical examples, as well as applying existing knowledge about complex systems, the aim of this article is to create a springboard for new directions in physical therapist research and practice.

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