scholarly journals The shift from life in water to life on land advantaged planning in visually-guided behavior

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ugurcan Mugan ◽  
Malcolm A. MacIver
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Action Selection ◽  
Visually Guided ◽  
Aquatic Animals ◽  
Spatial Complexity ◽  
Limited Ability ◽  
Cognitive Faculty ◽  
The World ◽  
Visual Range

AbstractOther than formerly land-based mammals such as whales and dolphins that have returned to an aquatic existence, it is uncontroversial that land animals have developed more elaborated cognitive abilities than aquatic animals. Yet there is no apparent a-priori reason for this to be the case. A key cognitive faculty is the ability to plan. Here we provide evidence that in a dynamic visually-guided behavior of crucial evolutionary importance, prey evading a predator, planning provides a significant advantage over habit-based action selection, but only on land. This advantage is dependent on the massive increase in visual range and spatial complexity that greeted the first vertebrates to view the world above the waterline 380 million years ago. Our results have implications for understanding the evolutionary basis of the limited ability of animals, including humans, to think ahead to meet slowly looming and distant threats, toward a neuroscience of sustainability.

The Role of Gesture in the Establishment of Symbolic Abilities

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Lock
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Major Significance ◽  
The World ◽  
On Line

Language develops in infancy as emerging cognitive abilities come on-line to handle the infant's experience of the world, and thereby enrich it. The attentional and motivational structuring of that experience is elaborated in the course of social interaction, but from a base in the a priori values that 'being an infant' create as to what infants find 'interesting' in their experiential worlds. There is a continuity of experience, but a reworking of it that yields apparently discontinuous stages. These stages do not map onto traditional notions such as preverbal stage, one-word stage, and combinatorial stage, but are more appropriately captured as presymbolic, symbolic, and propositional. Thus, some early word uses are pre-symbolic, and some later non-verbal gestures are propositional: that the production media might differ for words versus gestures does not appear to be a fact of major significance.

1968: On Social, Epistemic, and Historiographic(?) Revolutions

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto D. Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Young Students ◽  
Historic Significance ◽  
Agent Of Change

This article addresses the meaning and significance of the “world revolution of 1968,” as well as the historiography of 1968. I critically interrogate how the production of a narrative about 1968 and the creation of ethnic studies, despite its world-historic significance, has tended to perpetuate a limiting, essentialized and static notion of “the student” as the primary actor and an inherent agent of change. Although students did play an enormous role in the events leading up to, through, and after 1968 in various parts of the world—and I in no way wish to diminish this fact—this article nonetheless argues that the now hegemonic narrative of a student-led revolt has also had a number of negative consequences, two of which will be the focus here. One problem is that the generation-driven models that situate 1968 as a revolt of the young students versus a presumably older generation, embodied by both their parents and the dominant institutions of the time, are in effect a sociosymbolic reproduction of modernity/coloniality’s logic or driving impulse and obsession with newness. Hence an a priori valuation is assigned to the new, embodied in this case by the student, at the expense of the presumably outmoded old. Secondly, this apparent essentializing of “the student” has entrapped ethnic studies scholars, and many of the period’s activists (some of whom had been students themselves), into said logic, thereby risking the foreclosure of a politics beyond (re)enchantment or even obsession with newness yet again.

How Reality is Reasonable

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C. Williams
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Dimensional Manifold ◽  
The World ◽  
Being There ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Fundamental Entity ◽  
Spatiotemporal Relations ◽  
Priori Knowledge

This chapter begins with a systematic presentation of the doctrine of actualism. According to actualism, all that exists is actual, determinate, and of one way of being. There are no possible objects, nor is there any indeterminacy in the world. In addition, there are no ways of being. It is proposed that actual entities stand in three fundamental relations: mereological, spatiotemporal, and resemblance relations. These relations govern the fundamental entities. Each fundamental entity stands in parthood relations, spatiotemporal relations, and resemblance relations to other entities. The resulting picture is one that represents the world as a four-dimensional manifold of actual ‘qualitied contents’—upon which all else supervenes. It is then explained how actualism accounts for classes, quantity, number, causation, laws, a priori knowledge, necessity, and induction.

Kant’s ‘Transcendental Deduction’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Structural Description ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
The World ◽  
Empirical Realism

This chapter presents a straightforward structural description of Immanuel Kant’s conception of what the transcendental deduction is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it. The ‘deduction’ Kant thinks is needed for understanding the human mind would establish and explain our ‘right’ or ‘entitlement’ to something we seem to possess and employ in ‘the highly complicated web of human knowledge’. This is: experience, concepts, and principles. The chapter explains the point and strategy of the ‘deduction’ as Kant understands it, as well as the demanding conditions of its success, without entering into complexities of interpretation or critical assessment of the degree of success actually achieved. It also analyses Kant’s arguments regarding a priori concepts as well as a posteriori knowledge of the world around us, along with his claim that our position in the world must be understood as ‘empirical realism’.

scholarly journals Frequency of Recent Binge Drinking Is Associated With Sex-Specific Cognitive Deficits: Evidence for Condition-Dependent Trait Expression in Humans

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 147470492095444
Author(s):  
Liana S. E. Hone ◽  
John E. Scofield ◽  
Bruce D. Bartholow ◽  
David C. Geary
Keyword(s):  
Binge Drinking ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Multilevel Models ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Visuospatial Abilities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Binge Drinkers ◽  
Visuospatial Tasks

Evolutionary theory suggests that commonly found sex differences are largest in healthy populations and smaller in populations that have been exposed to stressors. We tested this idea in the context of men’s typical advantage (vs. women) in visuospatial abilities (e.g., mental rotation) and women’s typical advantage (vs. men) in social-cognitive (e.g., facial-expression decoding) abilities, as related to frequent binge drinking. Four hundred nineteen undergraduates classified as frequent or infrequent binge drinkers were assessed in these domains. Trial-level multilevel models were used to test a priori Sex × Group (binge drinking) interactions for visuospatial and social-cognitive tasks. Among infrequent binge drinkers, men’s typical advantage in visuospatial abilities and women’s typical advantage in social-cognitive abilities was confirmed. Among frequent binge drinkers, men’s advantage was reduced for one visuospatial task (Δ d = 0.29) and eliminated for another (Δ d = 0.75), and women’s advantage on the social-cognitive task was eliminated (Δ d = 0.12). Males who frequently engaged in extreme binges had exaggerated deficits on one of the visuospatial tasks, as did their female counterparts on the social-cognitive task. The results suggest sex-specific vulnerabilities associated with recent, frequent binge drinking, and support an evolutionary approach to the study of these vulnerabilities.

Hegel's Critique of Foundationalism in the “Doctrine of Essence”

1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 18-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Houlgate
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
The World

It is a commonplace among certain recent philosophers that there is no such thing as the essence of anything. Nietzsche, for example, asserts that things have no essence of their own, because they are nothing but ceaselessly changing ways of acting on, and reacting to, other things. Wittgenstein, famously, rejects the idea that there is an essence to language and thought — at least if we mean by that some a priori logical structure underlying our everyday utterances. Finally, Richard Rorty urges that we “abandon […] the notion of ‘essence’ altogether”, along with “the notion that man's essence is to be a knower of essences”.It would be wrong to maintain that these writers understand the concept of essence in precisely the same way, or that they are all working towards the same philosophical goal. Nevertheless, they do share one aim in common: to undermine the idea that there is some deeper reality or identity underlying and grounding what we encounter in the world, what we say and what we do. That is to say, they may all be described as anti-foundationalist thinkers — thinkers who want us to attend to the specific processes and practices of nature and humanity without understanding them to be the product of some fundamental essence or “absolute”.

scholarly journals The weirdest people in the world?

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 61-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Henrich ◽  
Steven J. Heine ◽  
Ara Norenzayan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Spatial Reasoning ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Behavioral Sciences ◽  
The World ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Behavioral Phenomenon

AbstractBehavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.

scholarly journals PENERAPAN MEDIA PEMBEMBELAJARAN KOGNITIF DALAM MATERI PERSAMAAN GARIS LURUS MENGGUNAKAN VIDEO DI ERA 4.0

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-10
Author(s):  
Fine Siwi ◽  
Nicky Dwi Puspaningtyas
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Learning Mathematics ◽  
The World ◽  
Video Based Learning

AbstractAt this time thinking creativity is low in the world of education. To improve creative thinking patterns urgently, as educators must have ways to improve them. Learning mathematics can be done only through the medium of learning mathematics. Audio-visual media, is a type of media used in learning activities with hearing and vision in one process or activity. Messages and information that can be channeled through this media can consist of verbal and nonverbal messages that depend on the sight whether hearing. In this 4.0 era, students are required to be better able to think cognitive in learning. Fully creative thinking including in the current era is needed. However, at this time creative thinking in the world of education is low. To improve the importance of creative thinking patterns, as educators who already have a way to improve it by using learning media. Therefore the material explanation method is made using video-based media to facilitate students in understanding the material and also improve their cognitive abilities. This research can prove through video-based learning media can be an effective method in improving students' cognitive abilities. Keywords: Media, Video, Cognitive

scholarly journals Reconstruindo sentidos na interface de histórias: uma discussão fenomenológico-existencial da constituição do sujeito borderline

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Anna Karynne da Silva MELO ◽  
Georges Daniel Janja Bloc BORIS ◽  
Violeta STOLTENBORG
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Gestalt Therapy ◽  
Disease Classification ◽  
Existential Phenomenology ◽  
Borderline Disorder ◽  
The World ◽  
Borderline Patients ◽  
Health And Sickness

This paper discusses a clinical case of a 40 years old woman, diagnosed as a borderline personality disorder, conforming to CID-10 (2003). The paper proposes, by a concrete clinical experience, to discuss the phenomenological and existential psychopathology. At first, it describes borderline disorder according to existential phenomenology. So, the authors discuss the conceptions about the relation between health and sickness in Gestalt-Therapy and Daseins-analysis, trying to understand the way of 'being-in-the-world' and the constitution of the psychopathological phenomenon in borderline patients from the perspective of the construction of his life story, that is unique. At the end, the authors detach the great challenge of existential-phenomenological psychotherapist: putting the patient's clinical picture in stand by 'a priori' and considering how she expresses herself and sees the world, giving up the mere disease classification itself.

scholarly journals A benchmarking procedure for PIGE related differential cross-sections

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
M. Axiotis ◽  
A. Lagoyannis ◽  
S. Fazinić ◽  
S. Harrisopulos ◽  
M. Kokkoris ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Differential Cross Section ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Cross Sections ◽  
Differential Cross ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Light Element ◽  
Thick Target ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Differential Cross Sections ◽  
The World

The application of standard-less PIGE requires the a priori knowledge of the differential cross section of the reaction used for the quantification of each detected light element. Towards this end, a lot of datasets have been published the last few years from several laboratories around the world. The discrepancies found can be resolved by applying a rigorous benchmarking procedure through the measurement of thick target yields. Such a procedure is proposed in the present paper and is applied in the case of the 19F(p,p’γ)19F reaction.

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