Open peer commentary on the article “Exploring the Depth of Dream Experience: The Enactive Framework and Methods for Neurophenomenological Research” by Elizaveta Solomonova & Xin Wei Sha. Upshot: This commentary focuses on an ontological claim made by the authors of this target article: that perceiving, imagining and dreaming are inseparable. It explores how best to understand this “inseparability condition.” It is shown that the evidence needed to justify a strict reading of the inseparability condition is lacking, while there is room (...) for a more relaxed rendition of the inseparability condition. The inferred lesson is that in developing an enactive neurophenomenology of dreaming, it is a non-trivial task to achieve clarity about the ontology of dreaming, and its relationship to imagining as well as perceiving. (shrink)

Upshot: We respond to three main challenges that the commentaries have raised. First, we argue that to deal successfully with the hard problem of consciousness, it is not enough to posit a remedy by which to move beyond the hard problem. Second, we argue that it makes no sense to explain identity. Yet this does not commit us to definitions by fiat. The strategy we pursue here, and in the target article, is not to explain identity but to explain away (...) the appearance of non-identity. Finally, while we are sympathetic to Varela’s call for a paradigm shift in consciousness studies, we argue here, and in the target article, that this call can only be properly successful if the hard problem is dismantled. (shrink)

Radical enactive and embodied approaches to cognitive science oppose the received view in the sciences of the mind in denying that cognition fundamentally involves contentful mental representation. This paper argues that the fate of representationalism in cognitive science matters significantly to how best to understand the extent of cognition. It seeks to establish that any move away from representationalism toward pure, empirical functionalism fails to provide a substantive “mark of the cognitive” and is bereft of other adequate means for individuating (...) cognitive activity. It also argues that giving proper attention to the way the folk use their psychological concepts requires questioning the legitimacy of commonsense functionalism. In place of extended functionalism—empirical or commonsensical—we promote the fortunes of extensive enactivism, clarifying in which ways it is distinct from notions of extended mind and distributed cognition. (shrink)

We present a multiscale integrationist interpretation of the boundaries of cognitive systems, using the Markov blanket formalism of the variational free energy principle. This interpretation is intended as a corrective for the philosophical debate over internalist and externalist interpretations of cognitive boundaries; we stake out a compromise position. We first survey key principles of new radical views of cognition. We then describe an internalist interpretation premised on the Markov blanket formalism. Having reviewed these accounts, we develop our positive multiscale account. (...) We argue that the statistical seclusion of internal from external states of the system—entailed by the existence of a Markov boundary—can coexist happily with the multiscale integration of the system through its dynamics. Our approach does not privilege any given boundary, nor does it argue that all boundaries are equally prescient. We argue that the relevant boundaries of cognition depend on the level being characterised and the explanatory interests that guide investigation. We approach the issue of how and where to draw the boundaries of cognitive systems through a multiscale ontology of cognitive systems, which offers a multidisciplinary research heuristic for cognitive science. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness” by Michael D. Kirchhoff & Daniel D. Hutto. Upshot: We point out that the significance of the neurophenomenological approach to the “hard problem” of consciousness is underrated and misunderstood by the authors of the target article. In its original version, neurophenomenology implies nothing less than a change in our own being to dispel the mere sense that there is a problem (...) to be theoretically solved or dissolved. Neurophenomenology thus turns out to be much more radical than the enactivist kind of dissolution promoted by the authors. (shrink)

ch. 1. Ontologii︠a︡ razuma -- ch. 2. Gnoseologii︠a︡ razuma.

Open peer commentary on the article “Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness” by Michael D. Kirchhoff & Daniel D. Hutto. Upshot: I strongly agree with Kirchhoff and Hutto that consciousness and embodied action are one and the same, but I disagree when they say this identity cannot be fully explained and must simply be posited. Here I attempt to sketch the outlines of just such an explanation.

Disjunctivism about sensory experience is frequently put forward in defence of a particular conception of perception and perceptual experience known as naïve realism. In this paper, I present an argument against naïve realism that proceeds through a rejection of disjunctivism. If the naïve realist must also be a disjunctivist about the phenomenal nature of experience, then naïve realism should be abandoned.

The received theories of epistemology identify abductive inferences with the cognitive patterns of speculation (hypothesis formation) and insist that they cannot verify or confirm hypotheses. I criticize various descriptions of abduction, offer a structural analysis of abductive inference,, characterize abduction without alluding to its putative role in inquiry, and then demonstrate that some abductions do provide evidence and that not all scientific hypotheses derive from abductive inferences. This result challenges those notions of scientific k knowledge that dismiss some central scientific (...) ideas (for example, evolution) as ‘meta-physical research programs’ or ‘just theories’ when they are instead well substantiated by abductive evidence. (shrink)

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social (...) sciences using a pre–post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

How ought the historian to reconcile themselves philosophically with the fact of evental contingency and of its relationship to structural determination? Does the existence of contingent causation undermine the very concept of historical necessity, or do the two instead in dialectical entanglement? In this essay, I engage with the problem of historical contingency from a transcendental-materialist perspective informed by the work of Slavoj Žižek, tendering a philosophically serious response to the famous Pascalian conundrum of Cleopatra’s nose and its challenge to (...) structuralist accounts of historical causation. The position associated with Laplace – that is to say, that the course of history would be entirely predictable were one provided with a complete account of initial conditions – is firmly rejected. Instead, I revive Althusser’s attempt to craft a theory of ‘aleatory materialism’, in which the determinative power of structural forces nevertheless leave space for the radical and unpredictable transformation of a situation by the chance crystallisation of events and encounters. In this effort, I recruit conceptual architecture not only from the fields of historiography and philosophy, but also quantum physics, psychoanalysis, and mathematics. (shrink)

Objective: The field of clinical ethics is relatively new and expanding. Best practices in clinical ethics against which one can benchmark performance have not been clearly articulated. The first step in developing benchmarks of clinical ethics services is to identify and understand current practices.Design and setting: Using a retrospective case study approach, the structure, activities, and resources of nine clinical ethics services in a large metropolitan centre are described, compared, and contrasted.Results: The data yielded a unique and detailed account of (...) the nature and scope of clinical ethics services across a spectrum of facilities. General themes emerged in four areas—variability, visibility, accountability, and complexity. There was a high degree of variability in the structures, activities, and resources across the clinical ethics services. Increasing visibility was identified as a significant challenge within organisations and externally. Although each service had a formal system for maintaining accountability and measuring performance, differences in the type, frequency, and content of reporting impacted service delivery. One of the most salient findings was the complexity inherent in the provision of clinical ethics services, which requires of clinical ethicists a broad and varied skill set and knowledge base. Benchmarks including the average number of consults/ethicist per year and the hospital beds/ethicist ratio are presented.Conclusion: The findings will be of interest to clinical ethicists locally, nationally, and internationally as they provide a preliminary framework from which further benchmarking measures and best practices in clinical ethics can be identified, developed, and evaluated. (shrink)

LIFE offers various amusements, and anyone these days who can choose among them will come late to the study of hiatus in Greek prose. Germany in the 1880s, so it seems, was less fortunate, and few greater excitements were known to young or old than the hunt for hiatus; but now that we no longer strait-waistcoat our classical authors and the austerity of those times is discredited, few collectors of hiatus are to be found, and there are people even in (...) Germany who have never identified a single specimen. Yet there is nothing to be said for underrating an author' stylistic pretensions, still less for encouraging others to do the same; and the textual critic, whose path is slippery enough at the best of times, can ill afford to dispense with footholds. There has been no broad study of hiatus in Greek prose since 1841, when Benseler in a long and original book De hiatu in oratoribus et historicis Graecis went through the text of 27 authors and attempted to determine their practice. (shrink)

In a brief article under the present title, Adam Parry raised a simple but profound question: were there certain things that the inherited vocabulary of oral poets did not allow them to sayF; The mere raising of this question, whatever his answer, is enough to make the article one of the more important contributions to Homeric studies in the last fifty years. As it happens, his answer was affirmative, and it has not been contested. Contested it will now be.

The editorial in the September 1982 issue of this journal and many articles before and since have addressed the problem of informed consent. Is it possible? Is it a useful concept? Is there anything new to be said about it? In this article the basic rationale of the rule (patient autonomy) is explained and the extent of the rule explored. Various exceptions have been offered by the law and an attempt is made to catalogue the chief of these. A number (...) of specially vulnerable groups are then identified, the most important, and vexed, being children. How can informed consent be secured in the case of young patients? Finally, a few problems are mentioned in an attempt to get this subject back to reality. The appeal to the principle primum non nocere may be medical paternalism in disguise. Informed consent is the competing principle that reminds us of the primacy of human autonomy. A pointer is given to the future: even the use of sound recordings to explain medical procedures and to activate informed consent so that it may become a reality and not just a lawyer's myth, should be considered. (shrink)

My paper has three parts. First I will outline the act/object theory of perceptual experience and its commitments to (a) a relational view of experience and (b) a view of phenomenal character according to which it is constituted by the character of the objects of experience. I present the traditional adverbial response to this, in which experience is not to be understood as a relation to some object, but as a way of sensing. In the second part I argue that (...) acceptance of (a) is independent of acceptance of (b). I then present a modified adverbialism that presents experience as relational in nature but whose character is nevertheless to be explained in terms of the way in which one senses an object. Finally, I will offer an explanation of how a naïve realist about experience can adopt this modified adverbialism and in so doing accommodate the possibility of perceptual error. (shrink)

No speech in Attic tragedy has made a stronger impression on later generations than Medea's farewell to her children. Four changes of mind and two displays of maternal affection lay bare the depths of a tortured soul; ‘there, in a short space, arelove and hatred, firmness and hesitation, fierce joy and unfathomable sorrow’.

Statius' Silvae owe their preservation to a copy made in Switzerland for Poggio in 1417 by a local scribe. This copy, brought to light by G. Loewe in 1879, was recognized for what it was by A.C. Clark and A. Klotz twenty years later, and since then its descendants have had at best historical interest. To extract much of that from them an editor must endeavour to survey all the extant material, and A. Marastoni in the recent Teubner edition claims (...) to have done just that: ‘omnes manuscriptos libros veteresque editiones iterum contuli’ he says at the opening of his preface, and the reviewers echo his words. (shrink)

When did Livy write his history? How many books had it, and what did the lost ones cover? Such answers as can be given to these questions come almost entirely from the one extant summary, the Periochae. The manuscripts of the Periochae disagree, however, on a matter of considerable interest: out of a hundred or so, only three, supported by a lost fourth, have been cited as adding to the title Ex libro CXXI the subtitle qui editus post excessum Augusti (...) dicitur. When the latest editor, P. Jal in the Collection Budé , declares himself unconvinced of its authenticity , he leaves the reader to decide whether authenticity means truth, authorial origin, or presence in the archetype; but whatever it means, seeds of suspicion have been sown. (shrink)