Perception involves the processing of content or information about the world. In what form is this content represented? I argue that perception is widely compositional. The perceptual system represents many stimulus features (including shape, orientation, and motion) in terms of combinations of other features (such as shape parts, slant and tilt, common and residual motion vectors). But compositionality can take a variety of forms. The ways in which perceptual representations compose are markedly different from the ways in (...) which sentences or thoughts are thought to be composed. I suggest that the thesis that perception is compositional is not itself a concrete hypothesis with specific predictions; rather it affords a productive framework for developing and evaluating specific empirical hypotheses about the form and content of perceptual representations. The question is not just whether perception is compositional, but how. Answering this latter question can provide fundamental insights into perception. (shrink)

One of the more compelling beliefs about vision is that it is based on representations that are coherent and complete, with everything in the visual field described in great detail. However, changes made during a visual disturbance are found to be difficult to see, arguing against the idea that our brains contain a detailed, picture-like representation of the scene. Instead, it is argued here that a more dynamic, "just-in-time" representation is involved, one with deep similarities to the way that users (...) interact with external displays. It is further argued that these similarities can provide a basis for the design of intelligent display systems that can interact with humans in highly effective and novel ways. (shrink)

Do psychologists and computer/cognitive scientists mean the same thing by the term `information'? In this essay, I answer this question by comparing information as understood by Gibsonian, ecological psychologists with information as understood in Barwise and Perry's situation semantics. I argue that, with suitable massaging, these views of information can be brought into line. I end by discussing some issues in (the philosophy of) cognitive science and artificial intelligence.

Chapter 1 First Person Access to Mental States. Mind Science and Subjective Qualities -/- Abstract. The philosophy of mind as we know it today starts with Ryle. What defines and at the same time differentiates it from the previous tradition of study on mind is the persuasion that any rigorous approach to mental phenomena must conform to the criteria of scientificity applied by the natural sciences, i.e. its investigations and results must be intersubjectively and publicly controllable. In Ryle’s view, philosophy (...) of mind needs to adopt an antimentalist stance to achieve this aim. Antimentalism not only definitively rejects the idea that mind is a substance separated from the body, it also denies that mental phenomena radically differ from physical phenomena by virtue of several unique features. Most problematically, mental phenomena have a conscious character (mental states are related to specific qualitative feelings) and are accessible only to the first-person (only the subject knows directly what s/he is experiencing inside his/her mind). Ryle takes a strong stance on antimentalism going so far as to maintain that an approach to mind which aims to meet the criteria of scientificity set by the natural sciences must avoid any reference to internal, unobservable mental states. In his view (which is considered a specifically philosophical version of psychological behaviorism and also addresses questions put forward in psychological research), mental states can be redescribed in terms of behavioral dispositions. In this chapter, we address the historical roots of the antimentalist view and analyze its relation to the later tradition of research on mind. We show that, compared to the antimentalist stance, functionalism and cognitivism take a step back when they maintain that direct reference to mental states is necessary since mental states cause and therefore explain human behavior. This step backwards is often interpreted as a return to mentalism. However, this is only partially true. Indeed, we suggest that these later traditions retain one important element of Ryle’s antimentalism, i.e. the idea that mental states must be uniquely identified using external and publicly observable criteria, while excluding any reference to introspection and those qualitative dimensions of a mental state, which are accessible only to the first-person. According to the perspective we put forward, this epistemological stance has continued to influence contemporary research on mind and current philosophical and psychological theories which both tend to exclude the subjective qualities of human experience from their accounts of how the mind works. The issue we raise here is whether this is legitimate or whether subjective qualities do play a role with respect to the way our mind works. The conclusion of this chapter anticipates the argument the book makes in in favor of this latter position, starting from a particular angle, i.e. the problem of how we categorize concepts related to our internal states. -/- Chapter 2 The Misleading Aspects of the Mind/Computer Analogy. The Grounding Problem and the Thorny Issue of Propriosensitive Information -/- Abstract. After the crisis of behaviorism, cognitivism and functionalism became the predominant models in the field of psychology and of philosophy, respectively. Their success is mainly due to the new key they use for interpreting mental processes: the mind/computer analogy. On the basis of this analogy, mental operations are seen as cognitive processes based on computations, i.e. on manipulations of abstract symbols which are in turn understood as informational unities (representations). This chapter identifies two main problems with this model. The first is how these symbols can relate to and communicate with perception and thus allow us to identify and classify what we perceive through the senses. Here we limit ourselves to presenting this issue in relation to the classical symbol grounding problem originally put forward by Harnad on the basis of Searle’s Chinese room argument. An attempt to address the problem raised here will be made in chap. 3. The second point we discuss in relation to the mind/computer analogy concerns the idea of information it fosters. Indeed, following this analogy, information is something available in the external world which can be captured by the senses and transmitted to the central system without being influenced or modified by the procedures of transmission. This perspective does not take into account that – unlike computers – in living beings information is acquired by means of the body. As Ulric Neisser has already pointed out, the body is itself an informational source that provides us with additional sensory experience that influences (modifies or complements) the information extracted from the external world by the senses. To develop this line of analysis and to determine exactly what information is provided by the body and how this might influence cognition, we examine Sherrington’s and Gibson’s positions. Moving on from their views, we qualify bodily information in terms of ‘proprioception’. We use ‘proprioception’ in a broad sense to describe any kind of experience we have of our internal states (including postural information as well as sensations related to the general state of the body and its parts). Following Damasio’s and Craig’s studies, we further elaborate this position, arguing that living beings are equipped with an internal propriosensitive monitoring system which maps all the changes that constantly occur in our body and that give us perceptual (‘proprioceptive’ or propriosensitive) information about what happens inside us. Moreover, relying on Goldie’s and Ratcliffe’s view, we show that emotional information can also be considered as a form of ‘proprioception’ which contributes to determining everything we perceive. This analysis leads us to the second main thesis of this book: ‘proprioception’ is a form of internal perception and it is an essential component of the sensory information we can access and use for all cognitive purposes. -/- Chapter 3 Semantic Competence from the Inside: Conceptual Architecture and Composition -/- Abstract. Concepts are essential constituents of thought: they are the instruments we use to categorize our experience, i.e. to classify things and group them together in homogeneous sets. Here we define concepts as the internal mental information (representations) that allows us, among other things, to master words in natural language. By analyzing the way in which individuals master word meanings we explore a number of hypotheses regarding the nature of concepts. Following Diego Marconi’s research, we differentiate between two kind of abilities that underpin lexical competence – so-called ‘referential’ and ‘inferential competence’ – and we suggest that, in order to support these abilities, concepts must also include two corresponding kinds of information, i.e. inferential and referential information. We point out that the most widely used and acknowledged theories of concepts do not make this distinction, instead broadly characterizing the information used for categorization in terms of propositionally described feature lists. However, we show that while feature lists can explain inferential competence, they do not account for referential competence. To address the issue of referential competence we examine Ray Jackendoff’s hypothesis that to account for the possibility of linking perceptual and conceptual information we need to assume the existence of a (visual) representation that encodes the geometric and topological properties of objects and bridges the gap between the percept and the concept. Furthermore, we analyze the extension of this work by Jesse Prinz who introduced the notion of a proxytype, a perceptual representation of a class of objects that incorporates structural and parametric information related to their appearance. However, as we point out, proxytypes can only explain the relationship between perception and concepts with respect to instances that can be perceived through the senses and that belong to the same class by virtue of their physical similarity. We suggest that this notion be extended to include larger conceptual classes. To accomplish this, we further develop Mark Johnson, George Lakoff and Jean Mandler’s idea of a schematic image and argue that conceptual representations include a perceptual schema. Perceptual schemata are non-linguistic, structured experiential gestalts (patterns or maps) that make use of information taken from all sensory modalities, including body perception. They accomplish a quasi-conceptual function: they allow us to recognize and to classify different instances. In this work, we hypothesize that perceptual schemata are an essential component of concepts, but not identical to them. Instead, we suggest that concepts include both perceptual and propositional information with perceptual schemata providing the ‘perceptual core concept’ that grounds related propositional information. -/- Chapter 4 In the Beginning There Were Categories. The Bodily Origin of Prelinguistic Categorical Organization: The Example of Folkbiological Taxonomies -/- Abstract. Studies of categorization in psychology and the cognitive sciences have made use of the notions of ‘category’ and ‘concept’ without precisely defining what is meant by either; in fact, often these terms have been used as synonyms, making it difficult to address specific issues related to conceptual development. This chapter begins by discussing the definitions of, as well as the distinctions between, ‘categories’ and ‘concepts’ in the classical philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Kant and Husserl). We introduce our view of categories with reference to Husserl. Categorization is defined as the way in which our experience is originally (pre-linguistically) organized in a passive and fully unconscious manner on the basis of universal structuring principles. Conceptualization is explained as a later process in which the earlier categorical macro-classes are further subdivided into more specific and detailed sets; this later process also relies on linguistic learning and exposure to culture. On the basis of Ray Jackendoff, Jean Mandler, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, we hypothesize that categorization is a two-step process that begins with the formation of homogeneous sets of entities partitioned into regions that describe the ontological boundaries of the objects that humans perceive (categories) and continues at a later stage with the development of more specific classifications (concepts). In this chapter, we mainly address three related issues: Why should we assume that there is categorical organization which precedes the development of a conceptual system? How do categories and concepts relate to each other? Shall we hypothesize that categories are innate or that they are formed before concepts on the basis of information and organizational structure available at a very early developmental stage? We show that categorical partitions are necessary for categorization and, following Mandler, that the general categories we form at an early age do not match our adult superordinate concepts. As for the third issue, we argue that there might be no need to assume that categories are innately present in the human mind, since their formation can be explained – at least in certain cases – by basic mechanisms that work on body (propriosensitive) information. This hypothesis will not be discussed in general, but in relation to a particularly relevant example of categorical partition, i.e. the folk-biological dichotomy between ANIMATE/INANIMATE. This is compared with other dichotomies that derive from it, but are not directly categorical such as LIVING/NON-LIVING and BIOLOGICAL/NON-BIOLOGICAL. -/- Chapter 5 Internal States: From Headache to Anger. Conceptualization and Semantic Mastery -/- Abstract. Here we ask if we can also apply the distinction between referential and inferential competence we introduced in Chapter 3 to words that do not refer to things that are perceived using the external senses, especially to words/concepts that denote bodily experiences (such as pain, thirst, hunger, etc.) or emotions. We introduce and discuss the hypothesis that – even though such words/concepts do not refer to intersubjectively identifiable entities in the external world – they do have a kind of referent that can be accessed via direct perception, more specifically ‘proprioception’, as we have defined it in terms of all propriosensitive information we can consciously access. In the first part of the chapter, we specifically consider terms denoting bodily experiences such as ‘pain’ or ‘hunger’ and argue that their referents are identified and classified from a first-personal point of view on the basis of four main characteristics: their specific intensity, their localization in the body, their co-occurrence with other signals and above all their specific qualitative sensations. Emotions are addressed in the second part of the chapter. We suggest that there is a continuity between bodily experiences and emotions. In particular, we argue for a perceptual theory of emotions in line with that proposed by James and Lange at the end of the 19th century and developed more recently by authors such as Damasio (see also chap. 2§5, §6). The hypothesis we put forward is that the referential information that supports the categorization of emotions and therefore also our mastery of terms referring to emotions consists in the perception (i.e. the ‘proprioception’) of those bodily states and changes in bodily states which constitute our emotional experience. In the context of this discussion we examine some objections to this line of reasoning that arise from a cognitivist perspective and following authors such as Oatley, Johnson-Laird and Frijda, we distinguish between basic emotions that can be identified and classified solely on the basis on how they feel and complex emotions whose identification and classification additionally depends on cognitive factors. To describe how emotions are identified and classified on the basis of how they feel, we rely on Marcel and Lambie’s distinction between an ‘emotion state’ and an ‘emotion experience’. Both notions indicate kinds of feelings that we consciously experience. However, they describe first-order and second order emotion awareness respectively. The emotion state is the feeling we have of the bodily states and changes that occur when we are experiencing an emotion, while the emotion experience is the fully developed and integrated emotion we both experience and are, with reflection, aware of experiencing. On the basis of this differentiation, we also show that the same characteristics that aid in the identification and classification of bodily experiences (specific qualitative sensations; somatic localization; specific intensity; presence/absence of specific concomitant sensations) can also be used for the identification and classification of emotions – at least basic emotions. In the last two sections of the chapter we present some clinical evidence on the semantic competence of people who suffer from Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder which supports the conclusions of our preceding analyses. -/- Chapter 6 The ‘Proprioceptive’ Component of Abstract Concepts -/- Abstract. In this chapter, we address the issue of whether the mastery of abstract words requires only inferential knowledge and thus, if the concepts that support the mastery of abstract words include only linguistic information. We start by differentiating the notions of ‘abstract’ and ‘general’ which are often erroneously confused. We then identify a strict definition of abstract, as contrasted with ‘concrete’, that applies to words or concepts whose referent cannot be experienced by the senses. We argue that abstract words/concepts would be better described as theoretical, because they are usually conceived as structured sets of inferential knowledge expressed linguistically; that is, as small theories. Pointing out parallels with Carnap’s analysis of this issue in philosophy of science, we hypothesize that words/concepts denoting non-observable entities are not all ‘equally theoretical’, because their link to sensory experience can be stronger or weaker. We revive the distinction, inspired by Quine, between theoretical and intertheoretical concepts/words. This distinction relies on the fact that the former – unlike the latter – retains a strong, although indirect, connection with perception. In Quine’s discussion, perception is understood uniquely in terms of observability, i.e. of external sensory experience. Here we argue, however, that bodily, ‘proprioceptive’ (i.e. propriosensitive) experience can also serve to referentially ground theoretical (i.e. abstract) concepts/words. We frame this issue using the example of the theoretical concept ‘freedom’ and Lakoff’s hypothesis that this concept is developed on the basis of bodily information. We contrast this with the example of ‘democracy’ which more closely resembles an intertheoretical concept/word. Furthermore, we show that one of the classical views put forward in psycholinguistic research to explain how abstract concepts are mentally represented – i.e. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory – points in the same direction as our analysis. The same is true of Barsalou’s work suggesting that we use internal information to understand at least some abstract words. To sustain this position, we put forward two lines of evidence: the first comes from psycholinguistic studies while the second examines deficits of semantic competence exhibited by people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. On the basis of our analysis, we put forward a classification that distinguishes between different kinds of concreteness and different degrees of abstraction: concepts/words referring to body experiences and basic emotions are described as analogous to concrete concepts/words because they are grounded in perceptual (i.e. propriosensitive) experience, while abstract concepts/words are considered more or less abstract depending on whether they are intratheoretical (and rely entirely on inferential information) or theoretical (and are partially grounded in perceptual – or more often in propriosensitive perceptual – information). In the last section of the chapter we consider two scales that have been used in psycholinguistic research to measure the degree of concreteness vs. abstractness of words and we show that – used conjointly – they can provide a measure of the internal vs. external grounding of specific words. (shrink)

Traditional explanations of multistable visual phenomena (e.g. ambiguous figures, perceptual rivalry) suggest that the basis for spontaneous reversals in perception lies in antagonistic connectivity within the visual system. In this review, we suggest an alternative, albeit speculative. explanation for visual multistability - that spontaneous alternations reflect responses to active, programmed events initiated by brain areas that integrate sensory and non-sensory information to coordinate a diversity of behaviors. Much evidence suggests that perceptual reversals are themselves more closely related to (...) the expression of a behavior than to passive sensory responses: (1) they are initiated spontaneously, often voluntarily, and are influenced by subjective variables such as attention and mood; (2) the alternation process is greatly facilitated with practice and compromised by lesions in non- visual cortical areas; (3) the alternation process has temporal dynamics similar to those of spontaneously initiated behaviors; (4) functional imaging reveals that brain areas associated with a variety of cognitive behaviors are specifically activated when vision becomes unstable. In this scheme, reorganizations of activity throughout the visual cortex, concurrent with perceptual reversals, are initiated by higher, largely non- sensory brain centers. Such direct intervention In the processing of the sensory input by brain structures associated with planning and motor programming might serve an important role in perceptual organization, particularly in aspects related to selective attention. (shrink)

How we come to know the external world has intrigued thinkers throughout the history of philosophy. Medieval philosophers understood that a theory of perception requires an account of the categorization of sensory information: to perceive things as being dangerous or beneficial and even as being individuals that belong to certain kinds (e.g., 'this is a dog'). A key question is whether this requires the intervention of rational cognitive capacities, cooperating with sensory ones in normal instances of perception. (...) The contributions to this volume investigate how thinkers from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries answer this and other related questions about human perception. Contributors are Fabrizio Amerini, Joel Biard, Veronique Decaix, Christian Kny, Lydia Schumacher, Josee Filipe Silva, and Jorg Alejandro Tellkamp. (shrink)

Traditional explanations of multistable visual phenomena (e.g. ambiguous figures, perceptual rivalry) suggest that the basis for spontaneous reversals in perception lies in antagonistic connectivity within the visual system. In this review, we suggest an alternative, albeit speculative, explanation for visual multistability – that spontaneous alternations reflect responses to active, programmed events initiated by brain areas that integrate sensory and non-sensory information to coordinate a diversity of behaviors. Much evidence suggests that perceptual reversals are themselves more closely related to (...) the expression of a behavior than to passive sensory responses: (1) they are initiated spontaneously, often voluntarily, and are influenced by subjective variables such as attention and mood; (2) the alternation process is greatly facilitated with practice and compromised by lesions in non-visual cortical areas; (3) the alternation process has temporal dynamics similar to those of spontaneously initiated behaviors; (4) functional imaging reveals that brain areas associated with a variety of cognitive behaviors are specifically activated when vision becomes unstable. In this scheme, reorganizations of activity throughout the visual cortex, concurrent with perceptual reversals, are initiated by higher, largely non-sensory brain centers. Such direct intervention in the processing of the sensory input by brain structures associated with planning and motor programming might serve an important role in perceptual organization, particularly in aspects related to selective attention. (shrink)

Although much evidence indicates that young infants perceive unitary objects by analyzing patterns of motion, infantsÕ abilities to perceive object unity by analyzing Gestalt properties and by integrating distinct views of an object over time are in dispute. To address these controversies, four experiments investigated adultsÕ and infantsÕ perception of the unity of a center-occluded, moving rod with misaligned visible edges. Both alignment information and depth information affected adultsÕ and infantsÕ perception of object unity in similar (...) ways, and infants perceived object unity by integrating information about object features over time. However, infants perceived a moving, misaligned, three-dimensional object as indeterminate in its connectedness, whereas adults perceived it as connected behind the occluder. These findings indicate that the effectiveness of common motion in specifying unified surfaces across an occluder is reduced by misalignment of edges. Alignment information enhances perception of object unity either by serving directly as information for unity or by optimizing the detectability of motion-carried information for unity. In addition, young infants are able to retain information about edge orientation over short intervals in determining connectedness via a process of spatiotemporal integration. Ó 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. (shrink)

It is increasingly common in cognitive science and philosophy of perception to regard perceptual processing as a probabilistic engine, taking into account uncertainty in computing representations of the distal environment. Models of this kind often postulate probabilistic representations, or what we will call probabilistic states,. These are states that in some sense mark or represent information about the probabilities of distal conditions. It has also been argued that perceptual experience itself in some sense represents uncertainty (Morrison _Analytic Philosophy_ (...) 57 (1): 15 48, 2016 ). In this article, we will first consider three models of sensory activity from perceptual neuroscience, namely signal detection theory (SDT), probabilistic population codes (PPC), and sampling. We will then reflect on the sense in which the probabilistic states introduced in these models are probabilistic representations. To sharpen this discussion, we will compare and contrast these probabilistic states to credences as they are understood in epistemology. We will suggest that probabilistic representation, in an appropriately robust sense, can be understood as a form of analog representation. In the last part of the paper, we apply this to the issue of whether conscious experience represents uncertainty—we will interpret this as the claim that there are phenomenal features of experience that serve as analog probabilistic representations. (shrink)

Event concepts are unstructured atomic concepts that apply to event types. A paradigm example of such an event type would be that of diaper changing, and so a putative example of an atomic event concept would be DADDY'S-CHANGING-MY-DIAPER.1 I will defend two claims about such concepts. First, the conceptual claim that it is in principle possible to possess a concept such as DADDY'S-CHANGING-MY-DIAPER without possessing the concept DIAPER. Second, the empirical claim that we actually possess such concepts and that they (...) play an important role in our cognitive lives. The argument for the empirical claim has the form of an inference to the best explanation and is aimed at those who are already willing to attribute concepts and beliefs to infants and nonhuman animals. Many animals and prelinguistic infants seem capable of re-identifying event-types in the world, and they seem to store information about things happening at particular times and places. My account offers a plausible model of how such organisms are able to do this without attributing linguistically structured mental states to them. And although language allows adults to form linguistically structured mental representations of the world, there is no good reason to think that such structured representations necessarily replace the unstructured ones. There is also no good reason for a philosopher who is willing to explain the behavior of an organism by appealing to atomic concepts of individuals or kinds to not use a similar form of explanation when explaining the organism's capacity to recognize events. -/- We can form empirical concepts of individuals, kinds, properties, event-types, and states of affairs, among other things, and I assume that such concepts function like what François Recanati calls ‘mental files’ or what Ruth Millikan calls ‘substance concepts’ (Recanati 2012; Millikan 1999, 2000, 2017). To possess such a concept one must have a reliable capacity to re-identify the object in question, but this capacity of re-identification does not fix the reference of the concept. Such concepts allow us to collect and utilize useful information about things that we re-encounter in our environment. We can distinguish between a perception-action system and a perception-belief system, and I will argue that empirical concepts, including atomic event concepts, can play a role in both systems. The perception-action system involves the application of concepts in the service of (often skilled) action. We can think of the concept as a mental file containing motor-plans that can be activated once the individual recognizes that they are in a certain situation. In this way, recognizing something (whether an object or an event) as a token of a type, plays a role in guiding immediate action. The perception-belief system, in contrast, allows for the formation of beliefs that can play a role in deliberation and planning and in the formation of expectations. I distinguish between two particular types of belief which I call where-beliefs and when-beliefs, and I argue that we can model the formation of such perceptual beliefs in nonlinguistic animals and human infants in terms of the formation of a link between an empirical concept and a position on a cognitive map. According to the account offered, seemingly complex beliefs, such as a baby's belief that Daddy changed her diaper in the kitchen earlier, will not be linguistically structured. If we think that prelinguistic infants possess such concepts and are able to form such beliefs, it is likely that adults do too. The ability to form such beliefs does not require the capacity for public language, and we can model them in nonlinguistic terms; thus, we have no good reason to think of such beliefs as propositional attitudes. Of course, we can use sentences to refer to such beliefs, and thus it is possible to think of such beliefs as somehow relations to propositions. But it is not clear to me what is gained by this as we have a perfectly good way to think about the structure of such beliefs that does not involve any appeal to language. (shrink)

In a seminal 1977 article, Rumelhart argued that perception required the simultaneous use of multiple sources of information, allowing perceivers to optimally interpret sensory information at many levels of representation in real time as information arrives. Building on Rumelhart's arguments, we present the Interactive Activation hypothesis—the idea that the mechanism used in perception and comprehension to achieve these feats exploits an interactive activation process implemented through the bidirectional propagation of activation among simple processing units. We (...) then examine the interactive activation model of letter and word perception and the TRACE model of speech perception, as early attempts to explore this hypothesis, and review the experimental evidence relevant to their assumptions and predictions. We consider how well these models address the computational challenge posed by the problem of perception, and we consider how consistent they are with evidence from behavioral experiments. We examine empirical and theoretical controversies surrounding the idea of interactive processing, including a controversy that swirls around the relationship between interactive computation and optimal Bayesian inference. Some of the implementation details of early versions of interactive activation models caused deviation from optimality and from aspects of human performance data. More recent versions of these models, however, overcome these deficiencies. Among these is a model called the multinomial interactive activation model, which explicitly links interactive activation and Bayesian computations. We also review evidence from neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies supporting the view that interactive processing is a characteristic of the perceptual processing machinery in the brain. In sum, we argue that a computational analysis, as well as behavioral and neuroscience evidence, all support the Interactive Activation hypothesis. The evidence suggests that contemporary versions of models based on the idea of interactive activation continue to provide a basis for efforts to achieve a fuller understanding of the process of perception. (shrink)

The concept of brain death as equivalent to cardiopulmonary death was initially conceived following developments in neuroscience, critical care, and transplant technology. It is now a routine part of medicine in Western countries, including the United States. In contrast, Eastern countries have been reluctant to incorporate brain death into legislation and medical practice. Several countries, most notably China, still lack laws recognizing brain death and national medical standards for making the diagnosis. The perception is that Asians are less likely (...) to approve of brain death or organ transplant from brain dead donors. Cultural and religious traditions have been referenced to explain this apparent difference. In the West, the status of the brain as home to the soul in Enlightenment philosophy, combined with pragmatism and utilitarianism, supports the concept of brain death. In the East, the integration of body with spirit and nature in Buddhist and folk beliefs, along with the Confucian social structure that builds upon interpersonal relationships, argues against brain death. However, it is unclear whether these reasoning strategies are explicitly used when families and medical providers are faced with acknowledging brain death. Their decisions are more likely to involve a prioritization of values and a rationalization of intuitive responses. Why and whether there might be differences between East and West in the acceptance of the brain death concept requires further empirical testing, which would help inform policy-making and facilitate communication between providers and patients from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. (shrink)

This article discusses nurses’ and elderly patients’ perceptions of the realization of autonomy, privacy and informed consent in five European countries. Comparisons between the concepts and the countries indicated that both nurses and patients gave the highest ratings to privacy and the lowest to informed consent. There were differences between countries. According to the patient data, autonomy is best realized in Spain, privacy in the UK (Scotland), and informed consent in Finland. For the staff data, the best results tended to (...) concentrate in the UK. The conceptual and methodological limitations of the study are identified and discussed. Implications of the results are divided into three areas: nursing practice, education and research. In practice, the analysis of patients’ values and the ethical sensitivity of nurses are important as part of ethically good care. In nurse education, students should learn to recognize ethical problems, generally and particularly, among vulnerable groups of patients. Multicultural international research is needed in this area. This is the last of a set of five articles published together in this issue of Nursing Ethics in which the results of this comparative research project are presented. (shrink)

There is debate among virtue epistemologists concerning what is the nature of an intellectual virtue. Linda Zagzebski in Virtues of the Mind , for instance, argues that an intellectual virtue has both a success and motivational component. Furthermore, Zagzebski defines knowledge with reference to acts of intellectual virtue. An agent S knows p iff S performs an act of intellectual virtue in forming the belief that p. This means that Zagzebski is committed to the counter-intuitive claim that low-grade knowledge requires (...) the agent to be epistemically motivated to form such low-grade beliefs. In this project I look at empirical research in cognitive psychology which suggests that epistemic motivations are involved in low-grade processing. Research on the role of attention in vision and memory suggests that attentional focus is necessary in order to have low-grade knowledge. And research on the relationship between motivation and attentional processing suggests that motivation informs attentional operations. The next step in the argument aims to show that such motivations are epistemic in that they are motivations to attain a cognitive state whose value is alethically related. Thus, one's epistemic motivations are necessary for low-grade knowledge. The second half of my project turns to higher-grade knowledge, i.e., testimony. It is here that I apply Zagzebski's account of knowledge to testimony. I do this to give a heretofore counterexample free definition of testimonial knowledge. Altogether, the project shows how Zagzebski's theory can account for the major modes by which we acquire empirical knowledge. (shrink)

The focus of this article is on elderly patients’ and nursing staff perceptions of informed consent in the care of elderly patients/residents in five European countries. The results suggest that patients and nurses differ in their views on how informed consent is implemented. Among elderly patients the highest frequency for securing informed consent was reported in Finland; the lowest was in Germany. In contrast, among nurses, the highest frequency was reported in the UK (Scotland) and the lowest in Finland. In (...) a comparison of patients’ and nurses’ perceptions, nurses had more positive views than patients in all countries except Finland. Patients with less need for nursing interventions in Greece and Spain gave their consent less often. The German and Greek patients were older, and the results also point to an association between this and their lower frequency of giving consent. In Spain, patients who were married or who had a family member or friend to look after their personal affairs were more likely to be included in the group whose consent was sought less often. This is the fourth of a set of five articles published together in this issue of Nursing Ethics in which the results of this comparative research project are presented. (shrink)

Evidence for a dysfunction in cognitive coordination in schizophrenia is emerging, but it is not specific enough to prove (or disprove) this long-standing hypothesis. Many aspects of the external world are spatially mapped in the brain. A comprehensive internal representation relies on integration of information across space. Focus on spatial integration in the perceptual and cognitive processes will generate empirical data that shed light on the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.

Ethical issues in the care of elderly people have been identified in many countries. We report the findings of a comparative research project funded by the European Commission, which took place between 1998 and 2001. The project explored the issues of autonomy (part I), privacy (part II) and informed consent (part III) in nursing practice. Data were collected from elderly residents/patients (n = 573) and nursing staff (n = 887) in five European countries: Finland, Spain, Greece, Germany and the UK (...) (Scotland). Questionnaires were used as the data collection tool (self-completion questionnaires for staff, structured interviews for the elderly participants). Four basic nursing interventions in the care of elderly people were targeted: hygiene, fluid intake and nutrition, medication, and elimination. The data were analysed statistically. The results indicated differences within all five countries between staff and patient perceptions of autonomy, privacy and informed consent. There were also similar differences between individual countries. Conclusions were reached concerning practice, education and research. This is the first of a set of five articles published together in this issue of Nursing Ethics in which the results of this comparative research project are presented. (shrink)

Normal perception involves conscious experience of the world. What I call the Content View, (CV), attempts to account for this in terms of the representational content of perception (Brewer, 2011, esp. ch. 4). I offer a new argument here against this view. Ascription of personal level content, either conceptual or nonconceptual, depends on the idea that determinate predicational information is conveyed to the subject. This determinate predication depends upon the exercise of certain personal level capacities for categorization (...) and discrimination. Exercise of such personal level capacities depends in turn upon conscious selective attention. Yet conscious visual acquaintance with the world is the prior ground for the possibility of any such conscious selective attention. Acquaintance obtains throughout the visual field: where conscious attention is not actually directed as well as where it is. So acquaintance does not depend upon conscious selective attention. Thus, acquaintance is not sufficient for the exercise of the relevant personal level capacities. Exercise of these capacities is nevertheless necessary for personal level content. Therefore visual acquaintance cannot be understood in terms of perceptual content: basic conscious experience of the world is not a matter of anything like the predication involved in perceptual content. It is rather the relational ground for the possibility of such predication. (shrink)

Communicating genetic information to family members has been the subject of an extensive debate recently in bioethics and law. In this context, the extent of the relatives’ right to know and not to know is examined. The mainstream in the bioethical literature adopts a liberal perception of patient autonomy and offers a utilitarian mechanism for solving familial tensions over genetic information. This reflects a patient-centred approach in which disclosure without consent is justified only to prevent serious harm (...) or death to others. Based on a legal and bioethical analysis on the one hand, and an examination of empirical studies on the other, this paper advocates the adoption of a relational perception of autonomy, which, in the context of genetics, takes into account the effect that any decision—whether to disclose or not to disclose—will have on the familial relationship and the dynamics of the particular family. Adding this factor to the criteria usually advocated by lawyers and ethicists will facilitate reaching a sensitive decision, which recognises the various interests of family members beyond the risk to physical health. Taking this factor into account will require a process of deliberation both between doctors and patients, and in the family. It will also require a relaxation of medical confidentiality, as the family rather than the patient is gradually perceived as the unit of care. Moreover, adopting such a relational approach will accord with current views of doctors and patients who base their decision primarily on the nature of the familial relationship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Positive Change in Perception and Care for a Difficult PatientMelissa CavanaughIf you asked any healthcare professional if they had ever cared for a difficult patient, I am certain the answer would be a resounding "Yes!" I have encountered many over my forty-two years as an RN. The story of Ms. E. is one of exceptional challenge and, I hope, success.I met Ms. E. in 2012 when I took (...) a nursing position in an outpatient primary care Geriatric Clinic. The clinic was located within an inner city, Level 1 Trauma health system whose mission is to care for the underserved. This organization had cared for the most vulnerable in the area for decades. The clinic model is unique in that it provides a "one-stop shop" for the common medical needs of the older adult. Other specialties, including podiatry, rheumatology, dementia care, and stroke, held appointments in this clinic area. The supporting staff team members assisted in each of these clinics, leading them to interact with the same patients frequently.Most of my previous experiences had been in inpatient units with a quick turnover of patients. There was no time or need to develop a long-term relationship with the patients in these settings. However, the comprehensive services found in this clinic coupled with the low staff turnover, led to a stable group of seniors receiving care in this office. Many of these individuals had been attending this clinic for over twenty years.I heard about Ms. E. before I ever met her. She was well known to the clinic team as a "problem" patient. The general response when she was on the schedule was eye rolling and audible moans. I soon learned that in addition to her scheduled visits, she would randomly appear outside the full glass interior doors. She would hover in the area, tapping on the glass to get the attention of a staff member. She did not hesitate to interrupt staff and other patients to make her needs known when she was in the exam room hallway. Often team members would scatter and hide to avoid dealing with her. If she was not in the building, she was on the triage line with a question or physical complaint. To complicate matters even further, her husband was our patient as well, and they always attended appointments together.Ms. E. suffered from common geriatric chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and osteoarthritis. Her morbid obesity complicated her diagnoses. Though she was able to safely ambulate with an assistive device such as a cane or walker, she routinely used a motorized chair. She and her husband admitted visiting fast food restaurants often even though they had met with a dietician for counseling on several occasions. They often requested help obtaining medications, yet related stories about visiting the local casino. Ms. E. spoke with a small, weak voice that added to the countenance of helplessness and pity. Unfortunately, these behaviors of noncompliance, attention seeking, and dependency on others extended to her immediate community, and she is estranged from family and friends who may have been a source of support to her. [End Page E1]Ms. E.'s appointments were scheduled at the end of the day due to the expectation and pattern of the extended time they would take. No matter her expressed concerns or needs, our recommendations and interventions were never enough. She continually questioned the assessment information and did not want to accept the education and orders given as the correct response to her problems. As one can see, her appointments could be exhausting!Ms. E. certainly deserved the best and most comprehensive care available from our team. Developing a more therapeutic relationship for her within the clinic became a priority for me. However, it was a daunting task to provide this level of care and to convince her that she deserved and was receiving such care. She presented a laundry list of characteristics that could lead to biases from the staff. Overcoming such individual biases toward her may be a barrier as well. These included her obesity, her lack of initiative, her self-centered behaviors, and her constant need for attention.As healthcare professionals... (shrink)

Faces provide information about a person's identity, as well as their sex, age, and ethnicity. People also infer social and personality traits from the face — judgments that can have important societal and personal consequences. In recent years, deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have proven adept at representing the identity of a face from images that vary widely in viewpoint, illumination, expression, and appearance. These algorithms are modeled on the primate visual cortex and consist of multiple processing layers of (...) simulated neurons. Here, we examined whether a DCNN trained for face identification also retains a representation of the information in faces that supports social‐trait inferences. Participants rated male and female faces on a diverse set of 18 personality traits. Linear classifiers were trained with cross validation to predict human‐assigned trait ratings from the 512 dimensional representations of faces that emerged at the top‐layer of a DCNN trained for face identification. The network was trained with 494,414 images of 10,575 identities and consisted of seven layers and 19.8 million parameters. The top‐level DCNN features produced by the network predicted the human‐assigned social trait profiles with good accuracy. Human‐assigned ratings for the individual traits were also predicted accurately. We conclude that the face representations that emerge from DCNNs retain facial information that goes beyond the strict limits of their training. (shrink)

Fodor has argued that observation is theory neutral, since the perceptual systems are modular, that is, they are domain‐specific, encapsulated, mandatory, fast, hard‐wired in the organism, and have a fixed neural architecture. Churchland attacks the theoretical neutrality of observation on the grounds that (a) the abundant top‐down pathways in the brain suggest the cognitive penetration of perception and (b) perceptual learning can change in the wiring of the perceptual systems. In this paper I introduce a distinction between sensation, (...) class='Hi'>perception, and observation and I argue that although Churchland is right that observation involves top‐down processes, there is also a substantial amount of information in perception which is theory‐neutral. I argue that perceptual learning does not threaten the cognitive impenetrability of perception, and that the neuropsychological research does not provide evidence in favor of the top‐down character of perception. Finally, I discuss the possibility of an off‐line cognitive penetrability of perception. (shrink)

BackgroundThe principles of informed consent, confidentiality and privacy are often neglected during patient care in developing countries. We assessed the degree to which doctors in Lahore adhere to these principles during outpatient consultations.Material & MethodThe study was conducted at medical out-patient departments (OPDs) of two tertiary care hospitals (one public and one private hospital) of Lahore, selected using multi-stage sampling. 93 patients were selected from each hospital. Doctors' adherence to the principles of informed consent, privacy and confidentiality was observed through (...) client flow analysis performed by trained personnel. Overall patient perception was also assessed regarding these practices and was compared with the assessment made by our data collectors.ResultsSome degree of informed consent was obtained from only 9.7% patients in the public hospital and 47.8% in the private hospital. 81.4% of patients in the public hospital and 88.4% in the private hospital were accorded at least some degree of privacy. Complete informational confidentiality was maintained only in 10.8% and 35.5% of cases in public & private hospitals respectively. Informed consent and confidentiality were better practiced in the private compared to the public hospital (two-sample t-test > 2, p value < 0.05). There was marked disparity between the patients' perspective of these ethical practices and the assessment of our trained data collectors.ConclusionObservance of medical ethics is inadequate in hospitals of Lahore. Doctors should be imparted formal training in medical ethics and national legislation on medical ethics is needed. Patients should be made aware of their rights to medical ethics. (shrink)

Introduction: Uncertainty is omnipresent in cancer care, including the ambiguity of diagnostic tests, efficacy and side effects of treatments, and/or patients' long-term prognosis. During second opinion consultations, uncertainty may be particularly tangible: doubts and uncertainty may drive patients to seek more information and request a second opinion, whereas the second opinion in turn may also affect patients' level of uncertainty. Providers are tasked to clearly discuss all of these uncertainties with patients who may feel overwhelmed by it. The aim (...) of this study was to explore how oncologists communicate about uncertainty during second opinion consultations in medical oncology.Methods: We performed a secondary qualitative analysis of audio-recorded consultations collected in a prospective study among cancer patients who sought a second opinion in medical oncology. We purposively selected 12 audio-recorded second opinion consultations. Any communication about uncertainty by the oncologist was double coded by two researchers and an inductive analytic approach was chosen to allow for novel insights to arise.Results: Seven approaches in which oncologists conveyed or addressed uncertainty were identified: specifying the degree of uncertainty, explaining reasons of uncertainty, providing personalized estimates of uncertainty to patients, downplaying or magnifying uncertainty, reducing or counterbalancing uncertainty, and providing support to facilitate patients in coping with uncertainty. Moreover, oncologists varied in their choice of words/language to convey uncertainty.Discussion: This study identified various approaches of how oncologists communicated uncertain issues during second opinion consultations. These different approaches could affect patients' perception of uncertainty, emotions provoked by it, and possibly even patients' behavior. For example, by minimizing uncertainty, oncologists may consciously steer patients toward specific medical decisions). Future research is needed to examine how these different ways of communicating about uncertainty affect patients. This could also facilitate a discussion about the desirability of certain communication strategies. Eventually, practical and evidence-based guidance needs to be developed for clinicians to optimally inform patients about uncertain issues and support patients in dealing with these. (shrink)

In modern times, the ways of acquiring and transferring religious knowledge are mostly shaped around the possibilities brought by technology. Social media platforms have become the channels where religious information is shared as well as current news, and this has led to the uncontrolled mass interaction of religious information. Based on the assumption that special importance is attached to religious days and nights in our country, many individuals, institutions and platforms produce religious content about the times that are (...) sacred to the masses they address in these time periods. For a news site to produce content that covers all areas of religion from taharah to testament, issuing fatwas and recommending some guiding practices requires significant preparation and infrastructural work, apart from sharing religious information. The fact that those who produce religious content act with the copy-paste way, that is often done in modern times, can pave the way for religious disinformation on platforms with millions of followers. In addition to this, carelessness in the selection of the visuals included in the shared information may cause the masses' perceptions of religion to be negatively shaped. In fact, the issues of accuracy and reliability rather than sharing information in the internet environment, which is an open-ended platform, are gaining more and more importance day by day, as well as the fact that the contents carry mediatic forms/magazine creates another problem. On the website called haber7.com, which states in its publication principles that “believing in the universality of knowledge, he presents informative and educational publications with an obsessive approach free from prejudices for the development of society”, religious content is shared under the subtitle of Yasemin section Masiva. In this section, there is information on many subjects such as signs of doomsday, fortune-telling, torment in the grave, prayer on the eve, the virtue of the three months, the prayers of repentance, marriage, acts to ensure domestic peace, and wearing an evil eye bead. Masiva platform uses some visuals while sharing religious information. In this paper, the subject of mediatization of religion will be emphasized and the role of popular religion perception in sharing religious content will be touched upon. The religious content produced on the website haber7.com, which is considered to have a conservative broadcasting style, will be examined in terms of accuracy and reliability principles, especially about the three months among the occasions considered religious/blessed. In addition, the analysis of the data will be carried out in terms of the science of fiqh, especially hadith; in particular, the sources and authenticity values of the texts mentioned as hadith will be determined. The ultimate goal of the study is to identify some problematics such as the purpose, nature, source, accuracy and reliability of the information assumed to be religious, and to point out the points to be considered when using religious information as a means of information. (shrink)

Background and objectives: There are few insights from sub-Saharan Africa on research participants’ experiences of the informed consent process, particularly in the context of randomised controlled trials, where issues of randomisation and the use of placebos may be confusing concepts for participants. This study investigated the knowledge and perceptions of the informed consent process among individuals participating in influenza vaccine trials in two disadvantaged communities in South Africa.Method: Four to 12 months after completion of the trials, participants were contacted to (...) return to participate in the informed consent study. The semistructured questionnaire administered to assess recall of trial procedures and the informed consent process covered key issues including: purpose of the study; awareness that the study was not part of routine treatment; voluntary nature of participation and freedom to withdraw; randomisation; placebos; and remuneration.Results: A total of 334 participants completed the questionnaire. Only 21% were able to recall that they were allocated randomly to the different treatment arms. Only 19% of those involved in the placebo controlled study had interpreted the concept of placebo as an inactive medication.Conclusion: Although a good general recall of trial concepts was demonstrated, only a small proportion of the participants correctly interpreted and recalled the concepts of randomisation and placebos. Informed consent in this and similarly disadvantaged communities may often be inadequate and new ways to improve understanding of the research process should be explored. (shrink)

The current doctrine of informed consent for clinical care has been developed in cultures characterized by low-context communication and monitoring-style coping. There are scarce empirical data on patients' norm perception of information disclosure in other cultures.

Background: According to the Declaration of Helsinki, patients who take part in a clinical trial must be adequately informed about the trial's aims, methods, expected benefits, and potential risks. The declaration does not, however, elaborate on what “adequately informed” might amount to, in practice. Medical researchers and Local Research Ethics Committees attempt to ensure that the information which potential participants are given is pitched at an appropriate level, but few studies have considered whether the patients who take part in (...) such trials feel they have been given adequate information, or whether they feel able to understand that information.Objectives: To explore trial participants' views on the amount of information provided, and of their own understanding of that information.Design: Structured interviews of patients participating in clinical trials for the treatment of chronic medical condition.Findings: Patients generally felt they were given an appropriate amount of information, and that they were able to understand all or most of it. They felt they were given adequate time to ask questions before agreeing to take part. In comparison with treatment given outwith the research setting, patients generally felt they received more information when participating in a clinical trial.Conclusions: Researchers sometimes complain that patients are given too much information during clinical trials, and have limited understanding of that information. The present study shows that this perception is not necessarily shared by patients. More research is needed in this area, particularly to gauge whether patient understanding is indeed accurate. (shrink)

In a backward masking paradigm Epstein, Hatfield, and Muise (1977) found that presentation of a frontoparallel pattern mask caused the perceived shape of elliptical figures which were rotated in depth to conform to a projective shape function. The current study extended the masking function by examining the effect of a mask which was partially or wholly cotemporal with the target. The study also assessed the functional equivalence of the masking treatment and the conventional treatment for minimizing depth information. Reports (...) of perceived shape and perceived orientation were obtained under three conditions: binocular without mask, binocular with mask, monocular without mask. Under the first condition, perceived shape conformed to objective shape and perceived orientation was proportional to objective orientation. Under the latter two conditions, perceived shape was in very close agreement to projective shape and the two functions did not differ. Orientation was underestimated greatly under both conditions. We concluded that the effect of the mask on perceived shape is mediated by its effect on encoding of orientation information, although an additional effect on the subsequent stage of shape-slant integration cannot be excluded. (shrink)

Summary Recent studies explored the contribution of auditory information in ecological contexts to biological motion perception and its influence on movement execution. This work provides an overview of the most influential scientific contributions in this domain and analyzes the most recent findings, both in sport and motor rehabilitation. Overall, the literature indicates that ecological sounds associated with movements are relevant for perceiving some important features of sport movements. Auditory information is also relevant during performance execution, and can (...) be used to create training protocols. Also, similarly auditory information can be used in clinical contexts to provide rhythmic information to enhance the efficacy of motor rehabilitation protocols. In conclusion, we can say that the role of ecological sounds of movements is examined in conveying complexity of information from a gestalt perspective. (shrink)

This paper describes a novel perspective on the foundations of mathematics: how mathematics may be seen to be largely about “information compression via the matching and unification of patterns”. That is itself a novel approach to IC, couched in terms of nonmathematical primitives, as is necessary in any investigation of the foundations of mathematics. This new perspective on the foundations of mathematics reflects the facts that mathematics is almost exclusively the product of human brains, and has been developed, as (...) an aid to human thinking, mathematics is likely to be consonant with much evidence for the importance of IC in human learning, perception, and cognition. This perspective on the foundations of mathematics has grown out of a long-term programme of research developing the SP Theory of Intelligence and its realization in the SP Computer Model, a system in which a generalised version of ICMUP—the powerful concept of SP-multiple-alignment—plays a central role. This paper shows with an example how mathematics, without any special provision, may achieve compression of information. Then, it describes examples showing how variants of ICMUP may be seen in widely used structures and operations in mathematics. Examples are also given to show how several aspects of the mathematics-related disciplines of logic and computing may be understood as ICMUP. Also discussed is the intimate relation between IC and concepts of probability, with arguments that there are advantages in approaching AI, cognitive science, and concepts of probability via ICMUP. Also discussed is how the close relation between IC and concepts of probability relates to the established view that some parts of mathematics are intrinsically probabilistic, and how that latter view may be reconciled with the all-or-nothing, “exact,” forms of calculation or inference that are familiar in mathematics and logic. There are many potential benefits and applications of the mathematics-as-IC perspective. (shrink)

This paper discusses the issue of informed consent from an African perspective with a particular emphasis on the problems posed by the documentation of consent in the African socio-cultural environment. The paper presents two small-scale surveys which typify and exemplify the African perspective with regard to procedures for obtaining consent (agreement) and for documenting it. To avoid causing moral pain to African research participants and the feeling of having been used as mere sources of data, this paper suggests, as a (...) short-term solution, that African cultural values be incorporated in the procedures and regulations aimed at protecting their human rights. As a long-term solution, the paper encourages universities and research institutions operating in Africa to come up with clear guidelines of ethical conduct which would satisfy both the interests of ordinary Africans (particularly the rural and uneducated population) and legal requirements to which Western research institutions and funding agencies are subjected. (shrink)

This research explored how (a) information regarding consequences and (b) personal information regarding the potential victim influences perceptions of moral intensity and ethical behavioral intent. An experimental vignette research design was used and 314 professional managers participated. The results of the study indicated that personal information impacted ethical behavioral intent through its influence on perceptions of proximity. In contrast, consequential information''s impact depended on the presence of personal information or prior knowledge. Implications for management and (...) future ethical research are discussed. (shrink)

Objectives: To elicit the perceptions and preferences of patients with rheumatoid arthritis regarding information and participation in treatment decision-making. To analyse the patients’ narratives on the background of the ethical discourse on various approaches to treatment decision-making. Design: In-depth interviews with themes identified using principles of grounded theory. Participants: 22 patients with long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. Main outcome measures: Qualitative data on patients’ perceptions and preferences regarding information and participation in decision-making about treatment. Results: Decision-making about treatment has been (...) described by the patients as a process consisting of different stages with shifting loci of control and responsibility. Patients initially received one treatment recommendation and were not aware of alternative treatment options. Those participants in this study who wanted information about negative effects of a treatment cited “interest in one’s own health” and the potential “use of information” as reasons for their preference. The physicians’ expert knowledge and clinical experience regarding the effects of medication were cited as arguments by patients for a treatment recommendation. Conclusions: The patients’ accounts of decision-making about treatment differ from models of physician–patient relationship that have been put forward in ethical discourse. These differences may be relevant with respect to the starting point of an ethical analysis of treatment decision-making. Patients’ accounts with respect to a lack of information on treatment alternatives point to ethically relevant challenges regarding treatment decision-making in clinical practice. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a novel account of the phenomenality of language by focusing on characteristics of perceived speech. I explore the extent to which the spoken word can be said to have a horizonal structure similar to that of spatiotemporal objects: our perception of each is informed by habitual associations and expectations formed through past experiences of the object or word and other associated objects and experiences. Specifically, the horizonal structure of speech in use can fruitfully be (...) compared to that of a tool in use. The comparison suggests an account of our linguistic faculty as continuous with more foundational faculties of perception and action. I provide empirical corroboration of this account by drawing on recent neuroimaging studies of the multimodal, sensorimotor bases of speech comprehension. I then discuss how such an understanding of our linguistic ability helps advocates of embodied, non-representationalist accounts of cognition respond to a common objection. Critics grant that embodied approaches may be adequate to account for lower-level, online modes of cognition, such as perception and action, which directly engage their object. But they question whether such approaches can “scale up” to higher modes of cognition, such as imagination, memory, thought, and language, which can entertain absent, non-existent, or abstract objects. By providing a plausible account of the continuity of lower cognition and language-involving cognition, my approach responds to this objection, at least where language is concerned. (shrink)

The outlines of a novel, fully naturalistic theory of perception are provided, that can explain perception of an object X by organism Z in terms of reflexive causality. On the reflexive view proposed, organism Z perceives object or property X just in case X causes Z to acquire causal dispositions reflexively directed back upon X itself. This broadly functionalist theory is potentially capable of explaining both perceptual representation and perceptual content in purely causal terms, making no use of (...) informational concepts. However, such a reflexive, naturalistic causal theory must compete with well entrenched, supposedly equally naturalistic theories of perception that are based on some concept of information, so the paper also includes some basic logical, naturalistic and explanatory criticisms of such informational views. (shrink)