Self And Body: Sydney Shoemaker

A major objection to the view that the relation of persons to human animals is coincidence rather than identity is that on this view the human animal will share the coincident person's physical properties, and so should (contrary to the view) share its mental properties. But while the same physical predicates are true of the person and the human animal, the difference in the persistence conditions of these entities implies that there will be a difference in the properties ascribed by these predicates, with the result that the physical properties that determine the person's mental states will belong to the person and not to the human animal.     

Effects of chlordiazepoxide on pausing during rich-to-lean transitions

Extended pausing during discriminable transitions from rich-to-lean conditions can be viewed as escape (i.e., rich-to-lean transitions function aversively). Thus, an anxiolytic drug would be predicted to mitigate the aversiveness and decrease pausing. In the current experiment, pigeons' key pecking was maintained by a multiple fixed-ratio fixed-ratio schedule of rich (i.e., larger) or lean (i.e., smaller) reinforcers. Intermediate doses (3.0-10.0 mg/kg) of chlordiazepoxide differentially decreased median pauses during rich-to-lean transitions. Relatively small decreases in pauses occurred during lean-to-lean and rich-to-rich transitions. Effects of chlordiazepoxide on pausing occurred without appreciable effects on run rates. These findings suggest that signaled rich-to-lean transitions function aversively.