Fire & Language: The Two-Faced Process of Progress in Deep-Structural Sociocultural Evolution

Abstract

This paper attempts to show how the inherent structure of human becoming is evolutionarily determined to work toward a “meta-system transition” to a higher order of control with a growing risk of extinction as humanity approaches the “event horizon.” The “double helix” of progress technological and social caused manifold cultural surface structures according to the law of increasing entropy, which, however, are mechanically determined to reunite following the same law. Separate individual centers of cybernetic processing thus gradually turn themselves into discursive (“neural”) units, possibly collapsing into a super-conscious single will once information transmission in the network reaches a certain density and noise decreases below a certain threshold.     

Alter Egos: Notes on the basic Processes of specular Identification

Although identity is always dependant on observing minds, identification in physics and biology remains merely external, avoiding therefore the more serious problems of identity which arise in the presence of observed minds. Minds are defined in this paper as specular machines, i.e. systems capable of crossed self‐representations. Specularity is introduced as the primary condition of any objective identification, and self‐identification is presented as the core of specularity. Elementary illustrations are given of the role of specularity in both sociology and psychopathology.     

额叶与非额叶脑肿瘤患者分心记忆和符号数字作业的比较研究

本文以95例额叶、颞叶和顶枕叶脑肿瘤患者为被试,探讨了脑肿瘤部位同分心记忆和符号数字的关系。结果表明,额叶患者的故事意义分的分心消耗值显著高于正常人,其词的分心回忆和分心消耗值显著差于颞叶组,表明额叶在分心作业中较颞叶参与较多。右顶叶也有涉及分心注意较多的趋势,提示大脑前部可能与分心注意关系较密切。“符号数字”作业中,则“写”的作业有颞叶组好于额叶组,“说”的作业颞叶组好于顶枕组的趋势。     

Newborns discriminate utterance-level prosodic contours

Prosody is the fundamental organizing principle of spoken language, carrying lexical, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic information. It, therefore, provides highly relevant input for language development. Are infants sensitive to this important aspect of spoken language early on? In this study, we asked whether infants are able to discriminate well-formed utterance-level prosodic contours from ill-formed, backward prosodic contours at birth. This deviant prosodic contour was obtained by time-reversing the original one, and super-imposing it on the otherwise intact segmental information. The resulting backward prosodic contour was thus unfamiliar to the infants and ill-formed in French. We used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in 1-3-day-old French newborns (n = 25) to measure their brain responses to well-formed contours as standards and their backward prosody counterparts as deviants in the frontal, temporal, and parietal areas bilaterally. A cluster-based permutation test revealed greater responses to the Deviant than to the Standard condition in right temporal areas. These results suggest that newborns are already capable of detecting utterance-level prosodic violations at birth, a key ability for breaking into the native language, and that this ability is supported by brain areas similar to those in adults.

Research Highlights

• At birth, infants have sophisticated speech perception abilities.
• Prosody may be particularly important for early language development.
• We show that newborns are already capable of discriminating utterance-level prosodic contours.
• This discrimination can be localized to the right hemisphere of the neonate brain.

     

Legal and Ethical Considerations for Requiring Consent for Apnea Testing in Brain Death Determination

Abstract

The past decade has witnessed escalating legal and ethical challenges to the diagnosis of death by neurologic criteria (DNC). The legal tactic of demanding consent for the apnea test, if successful, can halt the DNC. However, US law is currently unsettled and inconsistent in this matter. Consent has been required in several trial cases in Montana and Kansas but not in Virginia and Nevada. In this paper, we analyze and evaluate the legal and ethical bases for requiring consent before apnea testing and defend such a requirement by appealing to ethical and legal principles of informed consent and battery and the right to refuse medical treatment. We conclude by considering and rebutting two major objections to a consent requirement for apnea testing: (1) a justice-based objection to allocate scarce resources fairly and (2) a social utility objection that halting the diagnosis of brain death will reduce the number of organ donors.