Adaptation to displaced vision: Reafference is a special case of the cue-discrepancy hypothesis

Subjects were exposed to a prismatically displaced view of their actively-moved right hand which was optically “stopped”; they achieved as much adaptation in this condition as in one in which they were allowed full “reafferent” stimulation. This provides further evidence against Held's “reafference“ hypothesis.     

Timing behavior and conditioned fear

Rats were trained on a two-response timing procedure which required that response B follow response A by at least a minimum specified interval in order to be reinforced with food. Repeated presentation (5 min on, 5 min off) of an auditory warning stimulus terminated by a brief electric shock to the feet (conditioned fear) produced a marked suppression in the frequency of A-to-B response sequences during the warning stimulus. The distribution of A-to-B interresponse times (timing behavior), however, did not change during the warning stimulus.     

Overt “mediating” behavior during temporally spaced responding

A rat was trained on a schedule that programmed reinforcements only when a minimum waiting time between successive responses was exceeded (DRL schedule). It was observed to fill much of the pause between lever presses with a stereotyped behavioral chain: it would take its tail in its mouth and nibble it. This behavior was shown to be functionally related to the efficiency with which the subject spaced its responses. It is thought to have served as mediating behavior, providing discriminating stimuli for appropriate lever presses.     

“Rules” of language: A reply

Philosophical Studies -     

Modelling visual detection: Luminance response non-linearity and internal noise

Two experiments that investigate the effect of various display factors on the detectability of a thin line signal in random visual noise are described. Three statistical decision models are described, together with their ability to account for the results. The first is an “ideal detector” model, the second an “energy integrator” model, and the third a model based upon the operation of retinal ganglion cells which incorporates a gain control mechanism. The ideal detector model fails to give a good account of human performance, whereas the other two models provide a good fit to the data. The digital Laplacian with gain control model has the slight advantage over the energy integrating model in being able to account for a small superiority in the detection of dark as opposed to bright signals. Finally, both models require the inclusion of an estimate of the internal noise of the human visual system to account for the pattern of performance observed under changing conditions of display contrast.     

BOOK REVIEW

Chang, Leo S. and Yu Feng, The Four Political Treatises of the Yellow Emperor
Yates, Robin D. S., Five Lost Classics: Tao, Huang-Lao, and Yin-Yang in Hun China     

Lefort as a reader of Machiavelli and Marx

This essay begins with the contention that phenomenology has taken a “hermeneutic turn,” “the things themselves” are always already interpreted. Philosophers often elaborate their own positions through a “reading” of the works of other philosophers. This is the case for Claude Lefort. Through his interpretive reading of the works of Machiavelli one sees the origin of Lefort’s idea of the autonomy and the anonymity of the political and thus his notion of political modernity. In tracing the evolution of Lefort’s relationship to Marx, we witness the process by which he disengages himself from his early “enchantment” with the works of Marx and the idea of the proletariat as a class bearing universal interest. Ultimately he criticizes Marx for his attempt to derive the political from the dimension of the social. This issues in his theory of totalitarianism as the attempt of a regime to close in on itself, thus denying any gesture to the dimension of the other.