The defining principle of evolutionary biology is that all species, extant and extinct, evolved from ancient prokaryotic cells. Their initial appearance and adaptive evolution are proposed to have been accompanied by a cellular sentience, by feelings, subjectivity or, in a word, 'consciousness'. Prokaryotic cells, such as archaea and bacteria, have natural unitary, valence-marked 'mental' representations. They process and evaluate sensory information in a context-dependent manner. They learn, establish memories, and communicate using biophysical fields acting on excitable membranes. Symbiotic eukaryotic cells, (...) which evolved much later, initiated a compound cellular subjectivity utilizing 'senomic' and 'ephaptic' principles that evolved into the varieties of consciousness seen in multicellular species. This Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model provides a novel framework within which to approach fundamental issues such as the origins of life and the emergence of mind. (shrink)

In this new volume in the Oxford Psychology Series, the author presents a highly readable account of the cognitive unconscious, focusing in particular on the problem of implicit learning. Implicit learning is defined as the acquisition of knowledge that takes place independently of the conscious attempts to learn and largely in the absence of explicit knowledge about what was acquired. One of the core assumptions of this argument is that implicit learning is a fundamental, "root" process, one that lies at (...) the very heart of the adaptive behavioral repertoire of every complex organism. The author's goals are to outline the essential features of implicit learning that have emerged from the many studies that have been carried out in a variety of experimental laboratories over the past several decades; to present the various alternative perspectives on this issue that have been proposed by other researchers and to try to accommodate these views with his own; to structure the literature so that it can be seen in the context of standard heuristics of evolutionary biology; to present the material within a functionalist approach and to try to show why the experimental data should be seen as entailing particular epistemological perspectives; and to present implicit processing as encompassing a general and ubiquitous set of operations that have wide currency and several possible applications. Chapter 1 begins with the core problem under consideration in this book, a characterization of "implicit learning" as it has come to be used in the literature. Reber puts this seemingly specialized topic into a general framework and suggests a theoretical model based on standard heuristics of evolutionary biology. In his account, Reber weaves a capsule history of interest in and work on the cognitive unconscious. Chapter 2 turns to a detailed overview of the experimental work on the acquisition of implicit knowledge, which currently is of great interest. Chapter 3 develops the evolutionary model within which one can see learning and cognition as richly intertwining issues and not as two distinct fields with one dominating the other. Finally, Chapter 4 explores a variety of entailments and speculations concerning implicit cognitive processes and their general role in the larger scope of human performance. (shrink)

While acknowledging the psychological experience of intimacy, evolutionary theory postulates proliferation as the underlying grounds for human relationships. Intimacy, according to evolutionary theory, is merely a psychological mechanism whereby sexual selection and parental investment are facilitated. Unfortunately, the assumption of an underlying evolutionary mechanism which governs human relationships including romantic love, jealousy, and parent–child bonds is fraught with problematic consequences. Unlike the evolutionary understanding of intimacy, the philosophy of E. Levinas offers an alternative conceptualization in which human relationships themselves constitute (...) the grounds of intimacy. This alternative conceptualization escapes the problematic consequences of evolutionary theory. Intimacy from this grounding is inextricably tied to the infinite obligation we take on in relation to others. Implications of this conceptualization are explored. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The experience of a reward appears to enhance memory for recent prior events, adaptively making that information more available to guide future decision-making. Here, we tested whether reward enhances memory for associative item-location information and also whether the effect of reward spreads to other categorically-related but unrewarded items. Participants earned either points (Experiment 1) or money (Experiment 2) through a time-estimation reward task, during which stimuli-location pairings around a 2D-ring were shown followed by either high-value or low-value rewards. All stimuli (...) were then tested for location memory or recognition (yes/no), immediately and after a 24-hour delay. Across both experiments (combined analysis), there was a robust improvement in location memory following high-value rewards, even though evidence supporting this effect was reliable in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 1. The memory-enhancing effect of reward was observed on both the immediate and delayed location-memory tests. Reward-enhanced memory for both directly rewarded stimuli and categorically related stimuli that were not directly rewarded. No reliable effect of reward value on yes/no recognition-memory performance was observed in either experiment. We hypothesise that reward enhances the consolidation of recent experience and conceptually related memories to make these more available for future decisions. (shrink)

I examine the phenomenon of implicit learning, the process by which knowledge about the rule-governed complexities of the stimulus environment is acquired independently of conscious attempts to do so. Our research with the two seemingly disparate experimental paradigms of synthetic grammar learning and probability learning, is reviewed and integrated with other approaches to the general problem of unconscious cognition. The conclusions reached are as follows: Implicit learning produces a tacit knowledge base that is abstract and representative of the structure of (...) the environment; such knowledge is optimally acquired independently of conscious efforts to learn; and it can be used implicitly to solve problems and make accurate decisions about novel stimulus circumstances. Various epistemological issues and related problems such as intuition, neuroclinical disorders of learning and memory, and the relationship of evolutionary processes to cognitive science are also discussed. (shrink)

In this new volume in the Oxford Psychology Series, the author presents a highly readable account of the cognitive unconscious, focusing in particular on the problem of implicit learning. Implicit learning is defined as the acquisition of knowledge that takes place independently of the conscious attempts to learn and largely in the absence of explicit knowledge about what was acquired. One of the core assumptions of this argument is that implicit learning is a fundamental, "root" process, one that lies at (...) the very heart of the adaptive behavioral repertoire of every complex organism. The author's goals are to outline the essential features of implicit learning that have emerged from the many studies that have been carried out in a variety of experimental laboratories over the past several decades; to present the various alternative perspectives on this issue that have been proposed by other researchers and to try to accommodate these views with his own; to structure the literature so that it can be seen in the context of standard heuristics of evolutionary biology; to present the material within a functionalist approach and to try to show why the experimental data should be seen as entailing particular epistemological perspectives; and to present implicit processing as encompassing a general and ubiquitous set of operations that have wide currency and several possible applications. Chapter 1 begins with the core problem under consideration in this book, a characterization of "implicit learning" as it has come to be used in the literature. Reber puts this seemingly specialized topic into a general framework and suggests a theoretical model based on standard heuristics of evolutionary biology. In his account, Reber weaves a capsule history of interest in and work on the cognitive unconscious. Chapter 2 turns to a detailed overview of the experimental work on the acquisition of implicit knowledge, which currently is of great interest. Chapter 3 develops the evolutionary model within which one can see learning and cognition as richly intertwining issues and not as two distinct fields with one dominating the other. Finally, Chapter 4 explores a variety of entailments and speculations concerning implicit cognitive processes and their general role in the larger scope of human performance. (shrink)

In recent decades it has become increasingly clear that a substantial amount of cognitive work goes on independent of consciousness. The research has been carried out largely under two rubrics, implicit learning and implicit memory. The former has been concerned primarily with the acquisition of knowledge independent of awareness and the latter with the manner in which memories not readily available to conscious recall or recognition play a role in behavior; collectively these operations comprise the essential functions of the cognitive (...) unconscious. This paper reviews the recent history of work on these issues, identifies some of the problems confronting researchers, and introduces a theoretical framework based on principles of evolutionary biology within which to view them. The argument is that the cognitive unconscious, despite its apparent sophistication, is of considerable evolutionary antiquity and antedates conscious cognitive systems by a considerable amount of time. Various entailments of this evolutionary perspective are explored including such issues as phylogeny and ontogeny of implicit processes, the robustness of the implicit functions as displayed by the capacity to resist disruptions from psychological and neurological disorders, the relationship between implicit cognition and intelligence, and individual differences in implicit cognitive abilities. (shrink)

Recently, American Psychologist published a review of the evidence for parapsychology that supported the general claims of psi (the umbrella term often used for anomalous or paranormal phenomena). We present an opposing perspective and a broad-based critique of the entire parapsychology enterprise. Our position is straightforward. Claims made by parapsychologists cannot be true. The effects reported can have no ontological status; the data have no existential value. We examine a variety of reasons for this conclusion based on well-understood scientific principles. (...) In the classic English adynaton, “pigs cannot fly.” Hence, data that suggest that they can are necessarily flawed and result from weak methodology or improper data analyses or are Type I errors. So it must be with psi effects. What we find particularly intriguing is that, despite the existential impossibility of psi phenomena and the nearly 150 years of efforts during which there has been, literally, no progress, there are still scientists who continue to embrace the pursuit. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to put the work of the past several decades on the problems of implicit learning and unconscious cognition into an evolutionary context. Implicit learning is an inductive process whereby knowledge of a complex environment is acquired and used largely independently of awareness of either the process of acquisition or the nature of that which has been learned. Characterized this way, implicit learning theory can be viewed as an attempt to come to grips with the classic (...) epistemological issues of knowledge acquisition, representation and use. The argument is made that the process, despite its seeming cognitive sophistication, is of considerable evolutionary antiquity and that it antedates awareness and the capacity for conscious control of mentation. Various classic heuristics from evolutionary biology are used to substantiate this claim and several specific entailments of this line of argument are outlined. (shrink)

Our comment is based on a simple but, we believe, compelling principle. The proposed cognitive processes and functions that are components of Jablonka and Ginsburg’s Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) are real and are fundamental elements in the varieties of consciousness, cognition, problem solving, and sentience in the species they identify. But, from our perspective, they didn’t function as the metaphoric biomolecular ship that brought consciousness into being. The UAL functions are, and should be viewed as, evolutionary steps that built upon (...) a deeper and much older cognitive foundation. The appearance of UAL didn’t allow consciousness to emerge. It allowed it to change the manner in which sentience was instantiated − just as a host of other evolutionary developments did. In short, the emergence of UAL is a _token_ on a continuum of mental experience and not a distinct _type_ of mentation. (shrink)

The Cellular Basis of Consciousness theory places the first appearance of sentience at the emergence of life. It makes the radical, and previously unexplored, claim that prokaryotes, like bacteria, possess a primitive form of consciousness. The implications of the theory for the philosophy of mind, cell-biology, and cognitive neurosciences are explored.

We are sympathic with LeDoux’s primary goal here ─ to get a solid scientific grip on what has been dubbed one of the most elusive, important questions in scientific discourse, to identify the underlying biomolecular processes that give rise to consciousness. However, we have issues with the way he goes about it and have tried to present them in a constructive manner. Our commentary is built around our theory of the origins of minds, dubbed the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), (...) and the empirical research that supports it. The CBC is based on the proposition that life and sentience are co-terminous, that life without subjectivity, feeling, without valenced perception, without the capacity to learn and lay down memories would have been an evolutionary dead-end. It could not have survived in the hostile, chaotic world in flux that dominated our planet four billion years ago. The biological sciences operate on the principle that all species, extant and extinct, evolved from the first prokaryotes. The CBC theory is founded on the principle that all expressions of emotion, perception, and cognition did as well. (shrink)

Issues concerning technological risk have increasingly become the subject of deliberative exercises involving participation of ordinary citizens. The most popular topic for deliberation has been genetically modified foods. Despite the varied circumstances of their establishment, deliberative “minipublics” almost always produce recommendations that reflect a worldview more “precautionary” than the “Promethean” outlook more common among governing elites. There are good structural reasons for this difference. Its existence raises the question of why elites sponsor mini-publics and if policy is little affected by (...) the results of deliberations, questions the possibility of deliberative legitimation of public policy. We make this argument by looking at mini-publics on GM foods in France, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and Switzerland. Deliberative legitimation becomes plausible if elites can attenuate their Promethean outlook. This is possible if ecological modernization discourse pervades their politics; Denmark provides an illustration. (shrink)

Psycholinguistics re-emerged in an almost explosive fashion during the 1950s and 1960s. It then underwent an equally abrupt decline as an independent sub-discipline. This paper charts this fall and identifies five general factors which, it is argued, were responsible for its demise. These are: (a) an uncompromisingly strong version of nativism; (b) a growing isolation of psycholinguistics from the body psychology; (c) a preference for formal theory over empirical data; (d) several abrupt modifications in the Standard Theory in linguistics; and (...) (e) a failure to appreciate the strong commitment to functionalism that characterizes experimental psychology. In short, what looked like a revolution two decades ago turned out to be merely a local reformation that occurred along side of and largely independent from the real revolution in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Reviews the book, The handbook of humanistic psychology: Leading edges in theory, research, and practice by Kirk J. Schneider, James F. T. Bugental, and J. Fraser Pierson . Over 30 years ago Abraham Maslow envisioned a 3rd force psychology that would bring about “a change of basic thinking along the total front of man’s endeavors, a potential change in every social institution, in every one of the ‘fields’ of intellectual endeavor, and in every one of the professions.” Schneider, Bugental, and (...) Pierson must have been guided by a similar vision as they edited the Handbook of humanistic psychology: Leading edges in theory, research, and practice. The breadth of the handbook is impressive with chapters addressing everything from psychotherapy, pedagogy, medicine, and spirituality to ecology, literature, social action and the workplace. The editors have successfully recruited authors from a variety of disciplines—including psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, education, and politics—who are well respected both inside and outside humanistic circles and who are exceptionally qualified to address their topics. Fortunately, despite this far-reaching breadth, the editors have not spread the handbook too thin. In fact, in areas where it seems especially needed there is a much welcome depth and detail that is far from typical of other handbooks. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

To address the title question, the authors first conceptualize the worldview of theism in relation to its historical counterpart in Western culture, naturalism. Many scholars view the worldview of naturalism as not only important to traditional science but also neutral to theism. This neutrality has long provided the justification for psychological science to inform and even correct theistic understandings. Still, this view of neutrality, as the authors show, stems from the presumption that these two worldviews are philosophically compatible. The authors’ (...) review of the traditional candidates for compatibility suggests not only that these candidates fail to reconcile naturalism and theism but also that these worldviews are fundamentally incompatible. Therefore, attempts to use the insights gleaned from a naturalistic worldview to inform or correct the understandings of a theistic worldview could constitute a significant prejudice against theism and theists. The authors then provide practical examples of this prejudice in the following: mainstream psychology and its history, research design and explanation in the psychology of religion, and interpretations of important philosophers and scholars relevant to psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Perruchet & Vinter's article, for all its breadth and scope, has several deep problems: specifically, an eccentric notion of rule, a narrow notion of what it means for a mental instantiation to be abstract, and a failure to take into account fundamental principles of evolutionary biology. While not the only problems, these three are sufficient to seriously weaken their arguments.

The material in "TCU," as we've come to refer to this volume, began as a Master's Thesis that examined the manner in which knowledge of fairly complex, patterned material could be acquired without any conscious effort to learn it and with little to no awareness of what had been learned. It was dubbed implicit learning and, over a fifty-plus year span, became a vigorously researched area in the social sciences. TCU brings together several dozen scientists from a variety of backgrounds (...) and presents a broad (and deep) overview of how the exploration of the cognitive unconscious grew from that first study to a domain of research to which contributions have been made by sociologists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists, modelers, social and organizational psychologists, sport psychologists, primatologists, developmentalists, linguists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists, and measurement and assessment researchers. The core message seems fairly straightforward. Unconscious, implicit cognitive processes play a role in virtually everything interesting that human beings do. The implicit and explicit elements of cognition form a rich and complex interactive framework that make up who we are. The volume has contributions from over 30 distinguished authors from nine different countries and gives a balanced and thorough overview of where the field is today, a bit over a half-century since the first experiments were run. (shrink)

Information is more likely believed to be true when it feels easy rather than difficult to process. An ecological learning explanation for this fluency-truth effect implicitly or explicitly presumes that truth and fluency are positively associated. Specifically, true information may be easier to process than false information and individuals may reverse this link in their truth judgments. The current research investigates the important but so far untested precondition of the learning explanation for the fluency-truth effect. In particular, five experiments (total (...) N = 712) test whether participants experience information known to be true as easier to process than information known to be false. Participants in Experiment 1a judged true statements easier to read than false statements. Experiment 1b was a preregistered direct replication with a large sample and again found increased legibility for true statements—importantly, however, this was not the case for statements for which the truth status was unknown. Experiment 1b thereby shows that it is not the actual truth or falsehood of information but the believed truth or falsehood that is associated with processing fluency. In Experiment 2, true calculations were rated as easier to read than false calculations. Participants in Experiment 3 judged it easier to listen to calculations generally known to be true than to calculations generally known to be false. Experiment 4 shows an effect of truth on processing fluency independent of statement familiarity. Discussion centers on the current explanation for the fluency-truth effect and the validity of processing fluency as a cue in truth judgments. (shrink)

The dominant position in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is computationalism where the operative principle is that cognition in general and consciousness in particular can be captured by identification of the proper set of computations. This position has been attacked from several angles, most effectively, in my opinion, by John Searle in his now famous Chinese Room thought experiment. I critique this Searlean perspective on the grounds that, while it is probably correct in its essentials, it does not go (...) far enough. Quite simply, it runs afoul of the problem of emergentism. The proffered solution to this problem is that consciousness (or very rudimentary forms of it) needs to be viewed as an inherent property of organic form. While this recasting of the problem solves the emergentist dilemma it opens up a number of other issues. However, the new problems, unlike the old, appear in principle to be amenable to scientific analysis. (shrink)

Much theorizing about altruism has been undertaken within a naturalistic and deterministic sociobiological framework that has sought to explain altruistic action in terms of underlying genetic selfishness. Recently, however, social constructionist thinkers have developed an alternative to such theorizing which suggests that human action arises out of fundamentally open-ended and malleable social relationships. This paper intends to show, however, that a reductive egoism is nonetheless still at work in such accounts, typically taking the form of an underlying concern for matters (...) of personal status and social recognition. As a response, this paper will briefly outline the work of the French phenomenologists Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas as an example of non-reductive and fundamentally Other-oriented alternatives to both sociobiological and social constructionist accounts of altruistic action. (shrink)

After discussing a prominent theme of many of the comments, the prejudice against prejudice, the points at issue in this dialogue are explicated by addressing six questions: Issue 1: Are we trying to make psychology into a theistic enterprise? Issue 2: Are we ultimately arguing for some kind of dualism? Issue 3: Does theism’s involvement make science impossible? Issue 4: Is psychology’s treatment of theism truly a form of prejudice? Issue 5: Are some approaches to inquiry basically unbiased and neutral? (...) Issue #6: Can theism produce a viable program of psychological research? These issues are then followed by a description of some agreements and practical implications. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

There is no dispute over the existence of functions and processes that operate outside consciousness. No one knows what his or her liver is doing, and we all shed a tear when Lassie comes home, even though we know we are watching a movie with a dog who responds to off‐camera signals. Where matters become interesting (and contentious) is over such issues as whether unconscious processes are routinized and inflexible – in a word, stupid – or whether they can be (...) seen as sophisticated, flexible, and adaptive – in a word, intelligent. In the cognitive sciences, until recently, the former perspective dominated for reasons which are rooted not in any objective data base, but in philosophical considerations. The long‐standing presumption of a not‐very‐bright unconscious is, we suspect, the end product of a continuing adherence to Lockean and Cartesian epistemic traditions. While proponents of these two orientations didn't agree on much, they were of one mind with regard to the proposition that that which is mental is conscious. Contemporary psychologists and philosophers who feel comfortable with this position tend to view unconscious cognitive processes as low‐level, crude, primitively connectionistic, and rather stupid, since they equate sophisticated control operations with the functions of consciousness. (shrink)

Expert's independence is often highlighted in order to ensure the successful conduct of a scientific and technological evaluation. This chapter considers the attempt of the unusual science sociologist Bruno Latour to discover the functions to be summoned to form a new “parliament”, which will work as much on facts as on values to build a common world made of humans and non‐humans. His essay, involving the descriptive and normative dimensions of knowledge, is significant for the innovating participatory technology assessment (PTA) (...) and emerging responsible research and innovation (RRI) experiences. With the famous philosopher and historian Thomas Kuhn, the chapter explores the crucial role played by epistemic values not only in choosing scientific theories, but also in producing scientific facts, as the philosopher Hilary Putnam defended. Finally, the chapter shows what would be the possible links between epistemic values and ethical values. (shrink)

Bullot & Reber (B&R) provide compelling evidence that sensitivity to context, history, and design stance are crucial to theories of art appreciation. We ask how these ideas relate to broader aspects of human cognition. Further open questions concern how psychological essentialism contributes to art appreciation and how essentialism regarding created artifacts (such as art) differs from essentialism in other domains.

Reber and Collins are each major researchers in psychology and sociology respectively. Both focus on the analysis and investigation of tacit knowledge. Yet neither had read or cited the other’s work. Here we explore how this similarity of interest can coexist in the midst of ignorance. Over many months we explored the differences in our world views, our approaches to the topic and the difficulties of interdisciplinarity. This paper is a summary of that exchange presented as a kind of (...) case-study in doing science. We conclude with a list of the general properties of the dialogue associated with this kind of “incommensurability” and state our distaste for tribalism in academic life. (shrink)

Reber and Collins are each major researchers in psychology and sociology respectively. Both focus on the analysis and investigation of tacit knowledge. Yet neither had read or cited the other’s work. Here we explore how this similarity of interest can coexist in the midst of ignorance. Over many months we explored the differences in our world views, our approaches to the topic and the difficulties of interdisciplinarity. This paper is a summary of that exchange presented as a kind of (...) case-study in doing science. We conclude with a list of the general properties of the dialogue associated with this kind of “incommensurability” and state our distaste for tribalism in academic life. (shrink)

For more than two centuries in industrialized societies an inherent problem has persisted regarding the role of education and work. This is due in part to the entrenched cultural dogma of the Cartesian/Newtonian paradigm which views the world as a mechanical device and people as organic machines operating within such a world. More recently, it includes the scientific management approach of Frederick W. Taylor which defines individuals as “human capital” to be used and disposed of at will for the benefit (...) of an organizational enterprise or national economy. In opposition to this view the progressive educational movement was born and John Dewey as one of its champions developed a holistic approach to education and work. Over the course of time Dewey’s approach became the cornerstone of holistic education and more recently the eudaimonistic philosophical school in American culture. In parallel with Dewey’s progressivism, the field of systems thinking was developing and a prevalent belief emerged, which holds that all systems, both biological and social, evolve toward greater complexity and that a linear approach to understanding complex systems is ineffective. Therefore, it is the purpose of this paper to propose 1) a eudaimonistic definition of education and work and 2) a systems thinking approach toward human resources in order to create a more humane world. (shrink)

In today’s society, a peculiar understanding of distributive justice has developed which holds that “social justice must be distributed by the coercive force of government.” However, this is a perversion of the ideal of distributive justice. The perspective of distributive justice which should be considered is one with its roots in the school of thought referred to as self-actualization ethics or eudaimonism, which holds that each person is unique and each should discover whom he or she is—to actualize his or (...) her true potential and to live the “good life” within the congeniality and complementarity of personal excellences of his or her fellow members of community. When a eudaimonistic perspective is considered, a definition of distributive of justice could be “the allocation of goods and utilities via the voluntary ubiquitous human interaction of self-actualizing individuals who not only recognize the human dignity of the self and other and the rights which flow from and guarantee it, but also actively will goods and utilities toward the self and other so as to manifest human dignity.” Therefore, with a eudaimonistic understanding of distributive justice, one can argue that the free market is the ubiquitous interactions of self-actualizing individuals who are giving and receiving goods and utilities for one and another’s own “happiness,” i.e. the free market is the socio-economic mechanism by which distributive justice operates. In this paper I first will overview the philosophical foundations of distributive justice. Next, I will propose a eudaimonistic definition of distributive justice. Finally, I will highlight examples of distributive justice operating in a free market economy. (shrink)

In the US a dismal truth exists about the citizenry’s lack of understanding of economic fundamentals whether it is amongst our political leaders or our university graduates. This then leads one to ask, “What can be done to help people become literate in economics?” Perhaps the answer lies in the area of systems thinking, which is a way of thinking about the interconnections between the parts of a system and their synthesis into a unified view of the whole system. More (...) specifically, this means incorporating systems thinking and design in primary, secondary, and tertiary curricula. In this paper, the author gives a cursory review of General Systems Theory as developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and extended by others in the systems thinking field to illustrate the confluences of thought among Ludwig von Mises and systems scientists. From this the author argues the need for systems thinking and design in curricula and makes reference to non-prescriptive teaching and learning applications for the fostering of economic literacy. (shrink)

Ethics is being asked to respond to the globalization of the economy, and among the various responses one can see the emergence of inter-religious approaches including lay groups. This article examines certain of these concrete attempts to integrate ethics, spirituality and economics, and problematizes some of the theoretical underpinnings of these activities, specifically the question of beliefs.In January, 1998, two inter-religious and interdisciplinary organizations — Avicenne and the World Conference on Religion and Peace — participated for the first time in (...) the European Commission's conference on the future of Europe's economic and social order. It was recognized at this meeting that inter-religious dialogue constituted a paradigmatic example for the construction of a European society that must integrate different cultures. But paradigmatic does not mean it actually exists, for the inter-religious dynamic is still hesitating between globalization and integrationism. Nevertheless, religious plurality is apparent in the economy. The IMF recently hosted representatives of different religions, surpassing the framework of Christianity. In France, the University of Paris IX has planned a series of lectures on “Morality, Spirituality and Business Life”. Before looking at the theoretical questions connected with the emergence of a planetary, inter-religious ethics, let us come back to the question of the Christian religions and the social and economic order. I will restrict myself to mentioning some problematic points in order to defend the necessity of an inter-religious, interdisciplinary approach.Among the positions adopted by the churches at the January, 1998 conference, three points bear some examination: the dignity of labour and the community as specifically Christian values, and Europe constructed on the base of Christian values. (shrink)

L ’ ambition de cet article est double. D ’ une part, il tente de dépasser le fossé qui existe entre les travaux en philosophie morale et politique, qui traitent rarement de réels raisonnements moraux en contexte, et les recherches en sociologie, en sciences politiques ou en analyse de discours, qui éludent les contenus de ces raisonnements. D ’ autre part, le cas étudié, extrait d ’ une conférence de consensus, un publiforum suisse sur le génie génétique et l ’ (...) alimentation, a l ’ avantage de mettre en contact divers types d ’ experts en éthique et des citoyens ordinaires, convoqués au sein de nouvelles formes d ’ institutionnalisation, connues principalement en Europe sous le nom d ’ Évaluation technologique participative (ETP). Cet article propose une nouvelle méthode de sociologie éthique de l ’ évaluation qui vise la restitution de jugements de tiers en contexte, en tâchant de tirer le meilleur des ressources de la philosophie morale à des fins de clarification, tout en respectant les exigences de la sociologie, notamment son souci de mise à distance et d ’ objectivation. Il discute certaines des difficultés propres à ce type de recherche à l ’ interface de la sociologie et de la philosophie. Il analyse dans le détail diverses positions exhibées par des personnes de référence et la façon dont des citoyens s ’ en saisissent pour élaborer leurs préconisations dans un rapport, fruit de leurs travaux, transmis au Parlement du pays concerné et diffusé largement dans la société. La discussion qui clôt cet article remet en cause les solutions procédurales rawlsienne et habermassienne qui s ’ en remettent à une coopération équitable entre individus libres et égaux ou au droit, aboutissant à une abstinence épistémique ou à une sous-estimation de la capacité qu ’ aurait un individu de produire une justification rationnelle de son jugement moral. (shrink)

Current theories assume that perception and affect are separate realms of the mind. In contrast, we argue that affect is a genuine online-component of perception instantaneously mirroring the success of different perceptual stages. Consequently, we predicted that the success (failure) of even very early and cognitively encapsulated basic visual Processing steps would trigger immediate positive (negative) affective responses. To test this assumption, simple visual stimuli that either allowed or obstructed early visual processing stages without participants being aware of this were (...) presented briefly. Across 5 experiments, we found more positive affective responses to stimuli that allowed rather than obstructed Gestalt completion at certain early visual stages (Experiments 1–3; briefest presentation 100 ms with post-mask), and visual disambiguation in possible vs. impossible Necker cubes (Experiments 4 and 5; briefest presentation 100 ms with post-mask). This effect was observed both on verbal preference ratings (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and as facial muscle responses occurring within 2–4 s after stimulus onset (zygomaticus activity; Experiments 3 and 7). For instance, in participants unaware of spatial possibility we found affective discrimination between possible and impossible Necker cubes (the famous Freemish Crate) for 100 ms presentation timings, although a conscious discrimination took more than 2000 ms (Experiment 4). (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that consciousness of encoding is not necessary for the rapid formation of new semantic associations. We investigated whether unconsciously formed associations are as semantically precise as would be expected for associations formed with consciousness of encoding during episodic memory formation. Pairs of faces and written occupations were presented subliminally for unconscious associative encoding. Five minutes later, the same faces were presented suprathreshold for the cued unconscious retrieval of face-occupation associations. Retrieval instructions required participants to classify the presented (...) individuals according to their putative regularity of income, length of education, and creativity value of occupational activity. The three instructions yielded more classifications consistent with a person’s occupation if the person had been subliminally presented with his written occupation versus a meaningless word . This suggests that consciousness is not necessary to encode, long-term store, and retrieve semantically precise associations between primarily unrelated items. (shrink)

This introduction to the basic ideas of structural proof theory contains a thorough discussion and comparison of various types of formalization of first-order logic. Examples are given of several areas of application, namely: the metamathematics of pure first-order logic (intuitionistic as well as classical); the theory of logic programming; category theory; modal logic; linear logic; first-order arithmetic and second-order logic. In each case the aim is to illustrate the methods in relatively simple situations and then apply them elsewhere in much (...) more complex settings. There are numerous exercises throughout the text. In general, the only prerequisite is a standard course in first-order logic, making the book ideal for graduate students and beginning researchers in mathematical logic, theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. For the new edition, many sections have been rewritten to improve clarity, new sections have been added on cut elimination, and solutions to selected exercises have been included. (shrink)

Provability, Computability and Reflection.