Steps towards a Critical Neuroscience

This paper introduces the motivation and idea behind the recently founded interdisciplinary initiative Critical Neuroscience (http://www.critical-neuroscience.org). Critical Neuroscience is an approach that strives to understand, explain, contextualize, and, where called for, critique developments in and around the social, affective, and cognitive neurosciences with the aim to create the competencies needed to responsibly deal with new challenges and concerns emerging in relation to the brain sciences. It addresses scholars in the humanities as well as, importantly, neuroscientific practitioners, policy makers, and the public at large. Does neuroscience indeed have such wide-ranging effects or are we collectively overestimating its impacts at the expense of other important drivers of social and cultural change? Via what channels is neuroscience interacting with contemporary conceptions of selfhood, identity, and well-being? Importantly, Critical Neuroscience strives to make the results of these assessments relevant to scientific practice itself. It aspires to motivate neuroscientists to be involved in the analysis of contextual factors, historical trajectories, conceptual difficulties, and potential consequences in connection to their empirical work. This paper begins to spell out a philosophical foundation for the project by outlining examples of the interaction taking place between the neurosciences and the social and cultural contexts in which they are embedded and by exposing some of the assumptions and argumentative patterns underlying dominant approaches. Recent anthropological work will be discussed to convey a sense of the de facto interactions between neuroscientific knowledge, its promissory projections, and the self-understandings of laypeople. This can be seen as a first step towards a phenomenology of the “seductive allure” that the neurosciences are exerting upon both the academic and the popular imagination. The concept of “critique” relevant to the project's overall orientation is outlined in the final section.     

Steps Toward a Computational Metaphysics

In this paper, the authors describe their initial investigations in computational metaphysics. Our method is to implement axiomatic metaphysics in an automated reasoning system. In this paper, we describe what we have discovered when the theory of abstract objects is implemented in prover9 (a first-order automated reasoning system which is the successor to otter). After reviewing the second-order, axiomatic theory of abstract objects, we show (1) how to represent a fragment of that theory in prover9’s first-order syntax, and (2) how prover9 then finds proofs of interesting theorems of metaphysics, such as that every possible world is maximal. We conclude the paper by discussing some issues for further research.     

Steps Towards a Proof-Theoretical Semantics

The aim of this paper is to reconsider several proposals that have been put forward in order to develop a Proof-Theoretical Semantics, from the by now classical neo-verificationist approach provided by D. Prawitz and M. Dummett in the Seventies, to an alternative, more recent approach mainly due to the work of P. Schroeder-Heister and L. Halln?s, based on clausal definitions. Some other intermediate proposals are very briefly sketched. Particular attention will be given to the role played by the so-called Fundamental Assumption. We claim that whereas, in the neo-verificationist proposal, the condition expressed by that Assumption is necessary to ensure the completeness of the justification procedure (from the outside, so to speak), within the definitional framework it is a built-in feature of the proposal. The latter approach, therefore, appears as an alternative solution to the problem which prompted the neo-verificationists to introduce the Fundamental Assumption.     

Next Steps in Validation

No abstract available for this article.     

Steps Toward a Science of Free Will

A conceptual confusion might lie at the heart of the free will-determinism controversy. Reconceptualizing the issue by positing two independent bipolar dimensions (determinism versus nondeterminism and self-determination versus nonagentic mechanism), instead of the single free will versus determinism dimension, seems to create the conceptual space for belief in both free will and determinism. A number of recent agentic theories of human action, and a growing body of research with humans, suggest the joint action of agentic self-determination and nonagentic causation in the genesis of human behavior. Implications for counselors are offered.     

包容多样性的理论建构

Ye和Stam (2012)的评论中将Hong, Chao, Yang和Rosner (2010)标签成逻辑经验主义派, 他们认为这个派别常常“限制”了理论的应用和其本身的价值。为了向读者们提供一个对理论建立过程的更完整的理解, 同时也为了从这些迥异的观点中汲取更多知识, 在这篇文章中, 我们比较 Hong等人(2010)与Ye和Stam (2012)所建议的两种不同方法论之间的差异, 并将其放入更广阔的历史背景下进行论述。我们的主张是：每一种方法论都是有它自己的适用范围和局限性。对研究者来说, 保持在对待不同论点上开明和宽容的态度, 并避免本质化不同方法论间的差异也是十分重要的。     

Steps to a “Properly Embodied” cognitive science

Cognitive systems research has predominantly been guided by the historical distinction between emotion and cognition, and has focused its efforts on modelling the “cognitive” aspects of behaviour. While this initially meant modelling only the control system of cognitive creatures, with the advent of “embodied” cognitive science this expanded to also modelling the interactions between the control system and the external environment. What did not seem to change with this embodiment revolution, however, was the attitude towards affect and emotion in cognitive science. This paper argues that cognitive systems research is now beginning to integrate these aspects of natural cognitive systems into cognitive science proper, not in virtue of traditional “embodied cognitive science”, which focuses predominantly on the body’s gross morphology, but rather in virtue of research into the interoceptive, organismic basis of natural cognitive systems.     

Steps Toward Transformation:

No abstract available for this article.     

Behaviors observed during S- in a simple discrimination learning task

Key pecking of pigeons was reinforced with food in the presence of a horizontal line and never reinforced in the presence of a vertical line. Highly stereotyped behaviors, as well as key pecking, were observed and recorded in the presence of both stimuli. Results showed that a high proportion of time spent in the presence of the horizontal line was occupied by key pecking, a high proportion of time in the presence of the vertical line was occupied by stereotyped nonkey-pecking behaviors, and intermediate proportions of time spent in the presence of intermediate stimuli were occupied by each class of behavior during generalization tests. Similar running rates (number of key pecks divided by observed key-pecking time) were obtained in the presence of all stimuli, indicating that changes in time rather than tempo accounted for the changes in overall rates of key pecking. An exception occurred in responding to the horizontal line as differential performance was developing. In addition to an increase in time spent key pecking, increased running rates occurred in seven of eight birds, suggesting that both time allocation and tempo play a role in behavioral contrast of overall rates of key pecking.     

Steps Toward Evaluating Post-Traumatic Stress Reaction as a Psychiatric Disorder1

This brief paper summarizes comments made in discussing papers given in the November 1988 NIHM workshop “Traumatic Stress: Defining Terms and Instruments”. It raises questions about current criteria for posttraumatic stress in terms of the traumatic events considered appropriate, the coherence of the syndrome described, and the scarcity of data on its course, its familiarity, and its relationship to other syndromes. It is suggested that long-term studies of general population cases will be needed to answer these questions.     

Preliminary Steps in the Development of a Screening Instrument To Assess Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

The authors demonstrate the complexities and processes involved in constructing a screening test for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Discussion includes item development, field testing, and preliminary results.