Interactions between area and numerosity

Summary The concept of filled area, i.e. the impressionistic ensemble of parts of a stimulus field occupied by dots, is used to account for various kinds of numerosity illusions due to perceptual interaction between a number of dots and their spatial arrangement. A measure of filled area is derived from a model for the perceptual clustering of dots on the basis of relative proximity. It is shown that the quantified concept of filled area successfully predicts illusion data from earlier studies. Subsequently, a two-alternatives forced-choice numerosity experiment is reported, the data of which gave further evidence of the predictive power of the filled-area hypothesis. Our approach is discussed with respect to spatial features of dot stimuli that might be in rivalry with the filled-area factor in numerosity-estimation tasks.     

The shaken realist: Bernard Williams,the war,and philosophy as cultural critique

Bernard Williams thought that philosophy should address real human concerns felt beyond academic philosophy. But what wider concerns are addressed by Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, a book he introduces as being “principally about how things are in moral philosophy”? In this article, we argue that Williams responded to the concerns of his day indirectly, refraining from explicitly claiming wider cultural relevance, but hinting at it in the pair of epigraphs that opens the main text. This was Williams's solution to what he perceived as the stylistic problem of how to pursue philosophy as cultural critique. Taking the epigraphs as interpretative keys to the wider resonances of the book, we show how they reveal Williams's philosophical concerns—with the primacy of character over method, the obligation to follow orders, and the possibility of combining truth, truthfulness, and a meaningful life in a disillusioned world—to be recognisably rooted in the cultural concerns of post-war Britain. In the light of its epigraphs, the book emerges as the critique of a philosophical tradition's inadequacies to the special difficulties of its cultural moment.     

On the psychometric properties of the Maudsley Marital Questionnaire (MMQ): Evaluation of self-ratings in distressed and ‘normal’ volunteer couples based on the dutch version

The current preliminary study presents data on reliability and validity of the Maudsley Marital Questionnaire (MMQ), a short 20-item scale which was designed to assess degree of favourableness of attitude towards one's own marriage. The MMQ contains three scales related to marital, sexual and general life adjustment, whose composition was initially based on those of analogue scales of the Structured and Scaled Interview to Assess Maladjustment (SSIAM). In addition to providing substantial support for an almost perfect similarity between hypothetical and empirical MMQ dimensional representations, findings, based on self-ratings of 125 volunteer couples from the community and 50 distressed couples, demonstrated that the MMQ scales have high internal consistency, sufficient test-retest reliability and validity and are only slightly correlated with social desirability.     

Patterns of interocular transfer of visuomotor coordination reveal differences in the representation of visual space

Acquisition and interocular transfer of adaptation to optical transformations of input were examined in strabismic and orthotropic subjects. Distinct patterns of behavior were displayed by three groups: strabismic alternating suppressors, strabismic and orthotropic constant suppressors, and orthotropes with normal binocularity of vision. It is suggested that these behaviors result from the way in which visual space is represented in each group, an outcome of the pattern of use of the eyes during early development. The conditions for modification of the representation of visual space appear to parallel those for initial acquisition.     

Expressivity results for deontic logics of collective agency

We use a deontic logic of collective agency to study reducibility questions about collective agency and collective obligations. The logic that is at the basis of our study is a multi-modal logic in the tradition of stit (‘sees to it that’) logics of agency. Our full formal language has constants for collective and individual deontic admissibility, modalities for collective and individual agency, and modalities for collective and individual obligations. We classify its twenty-seven sublanguages in terms of their expressive power. This classification enables us to investigate reducibility relations between collective deontic admissibility, collective agency, and collective obligations, on the one hand, and individual deontic admissibility, individual agency, and individual obligations, on the other.

     

How genealogies can affect the space of reasons

Synthese - Can genealogical explanations affect the space of reasons? Those who think so commonly face two objections. The first objection maintains that attempts to derive reasons from claims...     

Meditation and the startle response: a case study

The effects of two kinds of meditation (open presence and focused) on the facial and physiological aspects of the defensive response to an aversive startle stimulus were studied in a Buddhist monk with approximately 40 years of meditation experience. The participant was exposed to a 115-db, 100-ms acoustic startle stimulus under the 2 meditation conditions, a distraction condition (to control for cognitive and attentional load) and an unanticipated condition (startle presented without warning or instruction). A completely counterbalanced 24-trial, single-subject design was used, with each condition repeated 6 times. Most aspects of the participant's responses in the unanticipated condition did not differ from those of a comparison group of 12 age-matched male controls. Both kinds of meditation produced physiological and facial responses to the startle that were smaller than in the distraction condition. Within meditation conditions, open presence meditation produced smaller physiological and facial responses than focused meditation. These results from a single highly expert meditator indicate that these 2 kinds of meditation can differentially alter the magnitude of a primitive defensive response.