bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Bimonads and Hopf monads on categories
Authors: Mesablishvili Bachuki , Wisbauer Robert 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of bimonads and Hopf monads on arbitrary categories thus providing the possibility to transfer the essentials of the theory of Hopf algebras in vector spaces to more general settings. There are several extensions of this theory to monoidal categories which in a certain sense follow the classical trace. Here we do not pose any conditions on our base category but we do refer to the monoidal structure of the category of endofunctors on any category and by this we retain some of the combinatorial complexity which makes the theory so interesting. As a basic tool we use distributive laws between monads and comonads (entwinings) on : we define a bimonad on as an endofunctor B which is a monad and a comonad with an entwining λ : BB → BB satisfying certain conditions. This λ is also employed to define the category of (mixed) B-bimodules. In the classical situation, an entwining λ is derived from the twist map for vector spaces. Here this need not be the case but there may exist special distributive laws τ : BB → BB satisfying the Yang-Baxter equation (local prebraidings) which induce an entwining λ and lead to an extension of the theory of braided Hopf algebras.An antipode is defined as a natural transformation S : B → B with special properties. For categories with limits or colimits and bimonads B preserving them, the existence of an antipode is equivalent to B inducing an equivalence between and the category of B-bimodules. This is a general form of the Fundamental Theorem of Hopf algebras.Finally we observe a nice symmetry: If B is an endofunctor with a right adjoint R, then B is a (Hopf) bimonad if and only if R is a (Hopf) bimonad. Thus a k-vector space H is a Hopf algebra if and only if Homk(H,−) is a Hopf bimonad. This provides a rich source for Hopf monads not defined by tensor products and generalises the well-known fact that a finite dimensional k-vector space H is a Hopf algebra if and only if its dual H* = Homk(H,k) is a Hopf algebra. Moreover, we obtain that any set G is a group if and only if the functor Map(G,−) is a Hopf monad on the category of sets.
Electron diffraction chez Thomson: early responses to quantum physics in Britain
Authors: NAVARRO JAUME 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIn 1927, George Paget Thomson, professor at the University of Aberdeen, obtained photographs that he interpreted as evidence for electron diffraction. These photographs were in total agreement with de Broglie's principle of wave–particle duality, a basic tenet of the new quantum wave mechanics. His experiments were an initially unforeseen spin-off from a project he had started in Cambridge with his father, Joseph John Thomson, on the study of positive rays. This paper addresses the scientific relationship between the Thomsons, father and son, as well as the influence that the institutional milieu of Cambridge had on the early work of the latter. Both Thomsons were trained in the pedagogical tradition of classical physics in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, and this certainly influenced their understanding of quantum physics and early quantum mechanics. In this paper, I analyse the responses of both father and son to the photographs of electron diffraction: a confirmation of the existence of the ether in the former, and a partial embrace of some ideas of the new quantum mechanics in the latter.
Muriel Rukeyser, America, and the “Melville Revival”
Authors: GANDER CATHERINE 
Published: February 2010

Whilst Muriel Rukeyser's poetic affinity with Walt Whitman is generally acknowledged, the close relation of her work and poetic sensibility to the thought and writing of Herman Melville has somehow gone relatively unnoticed, and almost wholly unexamined. In 1918, Van Wyck Brooks called for the creation of a usable past that would energize America by recasting its cultural tradition. His plea addressed the need to rebuild a national heritage via the rediscovery of culturally “great” figures. By the late 1930s, many scholars and writers had answered the call, and the new discipline of American studies was beginning to take shape, aided by a reclamation of one of the country's greatest, most neglected, writers – Herman Melville. This was also the period in which Rukeyser “came of age”; a time when political and international conflicts and economic crises generated both the stark, documentary representation of present social realities and the drive to retrieve or reconstruct a more golden age that might mobilize a dislocated nation. The following article examines the importance of Melville to Rukeyser's work, and situates her within the “Melville revival” as an important figure in the movement throughout the first half of the twentieth century to reconstruct an American cultural character.
‘Who are we to judge?’ – On the Proportionment of Happiness to Virtue
Authors: Williams Garrath 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe claim that happiness and virtue ought to be proportionate to one another has often been expressed in the idea of a future world of divine justice, despite many moral difficulties with this idea. This paper argues that human efforts to enact such a proportionment are, ironically, justified by the same reasons that make the idea of divine justice seem so problematic. Moralists have often regarded our frailty and fallibility as reasons for abstaining from the judgment of others; and doubts about our deserving some proportionment of happiness or unhappiness often arise insofar as virtue and vice may be explained on a causal basis. This paper argues that our fallibility and our susceptibility to social influence render judgment and response indispensable, because – given these characteristics – our actions and responses decide the morality that we actually share with one another. In this situation, to ‘judge not’ is to abandon the field to those with no such scruples.
Can Theoretical Underdetermination support the Indeterminacy of Translation? Revisiting Quine's ‘Real Ground’
Authors: Allen Sophie R. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIt is commonly believed that Quine's principal argument for the Indeterminacy of Translation requires an untenably strong account of the underdetermination of theories by evidence, namely that that two theories may be compatible with all possible evidence for them and yet incompatible with each other. In this article, I argue that Quine's conclusion that translation is indeterminate can be based upon the weaker, uncontroversial conception of theoretical underdetermination, in conjunction with a weak reading of the ‘Gavagai’ argument which establishes the underdetermination of the sense and reference of subsentential terms. If underdetermination is considered to be a widespread phenomenon in science, or in inductive reasoning more generally, then the Indeterminacy of Translation will be widespread too. Finally, I briefly consider two issues concerning the scope of this conclusion about the Indeterminacy of Translation: first, whether the argument presupposes behaviourism; and second, whether indeterminacy is restricted to the case of radical translation. I argue that the answer to both these questions is negative, and thus that the thesis of semantic indeterminacy remains relevant to those who disagree with Quine about some issues concerning the nature of mind and language.
“A logos that increases itself”: response to Burley
Authors: Chappell Timothy 
Published: February 2010

Mikel Burley says that he thinks that the Makropoulos debate can make no sense unless talk about eternal life makes sense. Here is his most striking argument that it doesn't – that immortality is inconceivable:
…the concepts [of birth, death, and sexual relations] are internally related to the concept of a human being in the sense that they form part of the complex system of interrelated concepts of which ‘human being’ is a member. To understand what a human being is, and hence to be able to operate competently with that concept, one must also have some understanding of, among many other things, what it means for a human being to be born, to form sexual relationships, and to die. (Burley, ‘Immortality and meaning: reflections on the Makropoulos debate’, Philosophy84, 543–544)
Religion and the ‘sensitive branch’ of human nature
Authors: CROWE BENJAMIN D. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractWhile the theses that (1) human beings are primarily passional creatures and that (2) religion is fundamentally a product of our sensible nature are both closely linked to David Hume, Hume's contemporary Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782), also defended them and explored their implications. Importantly, Kames does not draw the same sceptical conclusions as does Hume. Employing a sophisticated account of the rationality of what he calls the ‘sensitive branch’ of human nature, Kames argues that religion plays a central role in the development and perfection of human life.
Partnership with God: a partial solution to the problem of petitionary prayer
Authors: SMITH NICHOLAS D. , YIP ANDREW C. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractWhy would God make us ask for some good He might supply, and why would it be right for God to withhold that good unless and until we asked for it? We explain why present defences of petitionary prayer are insufficient, but argue that a world in which God makes us ask for some goods and then supplies them in response to our petitions adds value to the world that would not be available in worlds in which God simply supplied such goods without our asking for them. This added value, we argue, is what we call ‘partnership with God’.
Rules and representations
Authors: Chomsky Noam 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe book from which these sections are excerpted (N. Chomsky,Rules and Representations, Columbia University Press, 1980) is concerned with the prospects for assimilating the study of human intelligence and its products to the natural sciences through the investigation of cognitive structures, understood as systems of rules and representations that can be regarded as “mental organs.” These mental structui′es serve as the vehicles for the exercise of various capacities. They develop in the mind on the basis of an innate endowment that permits the growth of rich and highly articulated structures along an intrinsically determined course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of experience, which fixes parameters in an intricate system of predetermined form. It is argued that the mind is modular in character, with a diversity of cognitive structures, each with its specific properties arid principles. Knowledge of language, of the behavior of objects, and much else crucially involves these mental structures, and is thus not characterizable in terms of capacities, dispositions, or practical abilities, nor is it necessarily grounded in experience in the standard sense of this term.Various types of knowledge and modes of knowledge acquisition are discussed in these terms. Some of the properties of the language faculty are investigated. The basic cognitive relation is “knowing a grammar”; knowledge of language is derivative and, correspondingly, raises further problems. Language as commonly understood is not a unitary phenomenon but involves a number of interacting systems: the “computational” system of grammar, which provides the representations of sound and meaning that permit a rich range of expressive potential, is distinct from a conceptual system with its own properties; knowledge of language must be distinguished from knowledge of how to use a language; and the various systems that enter into the knowledge and use of language must be further analyzed into their specific subcomponents.
Methodological solipsism considered as a research strategy in cognitive psychology
Authors: Fodor J. A. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe paper explores the distinction between two doctrines, both of which inform theory construction in much of modern cognitive psychology: the representational theory of mind and the computational theory of mind. According to the former, propositional attitudes are to be construed as relations that organisms bear to mental representations. According to the latter, mental processes have access only to formal (nonsemantic) properties of the mental representations over which they are defined.The following claims are defended: (1) That the traditional dispute between “rational” and “naturalistic” psychology is plausibly viewed as an argument about the status of the computational theory of mind. Rational psychologists accept a formality condition on the specification of mental processes; naturalists do not. (2) That to accept the formality condition is to endorse a version of methodological solipsism. (3) That the acceptance of some such condition is warranted, at least for that part of psychology which concerns itself with theories of the mental causation of behavior. This is because: (4) such theories require nontransparent taxonomies of mental states; and (5) nontransparent taxonomies individuate mental states without reference to their semantic properties. Equivalently, (6) nontransparent taxonomies respect the way that the organism represents the object of its propositional attitudes toitself, and it is this representation which functions in the causation of behavior.The final section of the paper considers the prospect for a naturalistic psychology: one which defines its generalizations over relations between mental representations and their environmental causes, thus seeking to account for the semantic properties of propositional attitudes. Two related arguments are proposed, both leading to the conclusion that no such research strategy is likely to prove fruitful.
Computation and cognition: issues in the foundations of cognitive science
Authors: Pylyshyn Zenon W. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe computational view of mind rests on certain intuitions regarding the fundamental similarity between computation and cognition. We examine some of these intuitions and suggest that they derive from the fact that computers and human organisms are both physical systems whose behavior is correctly described as being governed by rules acting on symbolic representations. Some of the implications of this view are discussed. It is suggested that a fundamental hypothesis of this approach (the “proprietary vocabulary hypothesis”) is that there is a natural domain of human functioning (roughly what we intuitively associate with perceiving, reasoning, and acting) that can be addressed exclusively in terms of a formal symbolic or algorithmic vocabulary or level of analysis.Much of the paper elaborates various conditions that need to be met if a literal view of mental activity as computation is to serve as the basis for explanatory theories. The coherence of such a view depends on there being a principled distinction between functions whose explanation requires that we posit internal representations and those that we can appropriately describe as merely instantiating causal physical or biological laws. In this paper the distinction is empirically grounded in a methodological criterion called the “cognitive impenetrability condition.” Functions are said to be cognitively impenetrable if they cannot be influenced by such purely cognitive factors as goals, beliefs, inferences, tacit knowledge, and so on. Such a criterion makes it possible to empirically separate the fixed capacities of mind (called its “functional architecture”) from the particular representations and algorithms used on specific occasions. In order for computational theories to avoid being ad hoc, they must deal effectively with the “degrees of freedom” problem by constraining the extent to which they can be arbitrarily adjusted post hoc to fit some particular set of observations. This in turn requires that the fixed architectural function and the algorithms be independently validated. It is argued that the architectural assumptions implicit in many contemporary models run afoul of the cognitive impenetrability condition, since the required fixed functions are demonstrably sensitive to tacit knowledge and goals. The paper concludes with some tactical suggestions for the development of computational cognitive theories.
Précis ofThe evolution of human sexuality
Authors: Symons Donald 
Published: February 2010

AbstractPatterns in the data on human sexuality support the hypothesis that the bases of sexual emotions are products of natural selection. Most generally, the universal existence of laws, rules, and gossip about sex, the pervasive interest in other people's sex lives, the widespread seeking of privacy for sexual intercourse, and the secrecy that normally permeates sexual conduct imply a history of reproductive competition. More specifically, the typical differences between men and women in sexual feelings can be explained most parsimoniously as resulting from the extraordinarily different reproductive opportunities and constraints males and females normally encountered during the course of evolutionary history. Men are more likely than women to desire multiple mates; to desire a variety of sexual partners; to experience sexual jealousy of a spouse irrespective of specific circumstances; to be sexually aroused by the sight of a member of the other sex; to experience an autonomous desire for sexual intercourse; and to evaluate sexual desirability primarily on the bases of physical appearance and youth.The evolutionary causes of human sexuality have been obscured by attempts to find harmony in natural creative processes and human social life and to view sex differences as complementary. The human female's capacity for orgasm and the loss of estrus, for example, have been persistently interpreted as marriage-maintaining adaptations. Available evidence is more consistent with the view that few sex differences in sexuality are complementary, that many aspects of sexuality undermine marriage, and that sexuality is less a unifying than a divisive force in human affairs.
Sex differences in human brain asymmetry: a critical survey
Authors: McGlone Jeannette 
Published: February 2010

AbstractDual functional brain asymmetry refers to the notion that in most individuals the left cerebral hemisphere is specialized for language functions, whereas the right cerebral hemisphere is more important than the left for the perception, construction, and recall of stimuli that are difficult to verbalize. In the last twenty years there have been scattered reports of sex differences in degree of hemispheric specialization. This review provides a critical framework within which two related topics are discussed: Do meaningful sex differences in verbal or spatial cerebral lateralization exist? and, if so, Is the brain of one sex more symmetrically organized than the other? Data gathered on right-handed adults are examined from clinical studies of patients with unilateral brain lesions; from dichotic listening, tachistoscopic, and sensorimotor studies of functional asymmetries in non-brain-damaged subjects; from anatomical and electrophysiological investigations, as well as from the developmental literature. Retrospective and descriptive findings predominate over prospective and experimental methodologies. Nevertheless, there is an impressive accummulation of evidence suggesting that the male brain may be more asymmetrically organized than the female brain, both for verbal and nonverbal functions. These trends are rarely found in childhood but are often significant in the mature organism.
A perceptual-defensive-recuperative model of fear and pain
Authors: Bolles Robert C. , Fanselow Michael S. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractA model of fear and pain is presented in which the two are assumed to activate totally different classes of behavior. Fear, produced by stimuli that are associated with painful events, results in defensive behavior and the inhibition of pain and pain-related behaviors. On the other hand, pain, produced by injurious stimulation, motivates recuperative behaviors that promote healing. In this model injurious stimulation, on the one hand, and the expectation of injurious stimulation, on the other hand, activate entirely different motivational systems which serve entirely different functions. The fear motivation system activates defensive behavior, such as freezing and flight from a frightening situation, and its function is to defend the animal against natural dangers, such as predation. A further effect of fear motivation is to organize the perception of environmental events so as to facilitate the perception of danger and safety. The pain motivation system activates recuperative behaviors, including resting and body-care responses, and its function is to promote the animal's recovery from injury. Pain motivation also selectively facilitates the perception of nociceptive stimulation. Since the two kinds of motivation serve different and competitive functions, it might be expected that they would interact through some kind of mutual inhibition. Recent research is described which indicates that this is the case. The most important connection is the inhibition of pain by fear; fear has the top priority. This inhibition appears to be mediated by an endogenous analgesic mechanism involving the endorphins. The model assumes that fear triggers the endorphin mechanism, thereby inhibiting pain motivation and recuperative behaviors that might compete with effective defensive behavior.
Are central pattern generators understandable?
Authors: Selverston Allen I. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractMost rhythmic behaviors are produced by a specialized ensemble of neurons found in the central nervous system. These central pattern generators (CPGs) have become a cornerstone of neuronal circuit analysis. Studying simple invertebrate nervous systems may reveal the interactions of the neurons involved in the production of rhythmic motor output. There has recently been progress in this area, but due to certain intrinsic features of CPGs it is unlikely that present techniques will ever yield a complete understanding of any but the simplest of them. The chief impediment seems to be our inability to identify and characterize the total interneuronal pool making up a CPG. In addition, our general analytic strategy relies on a descriptive, reductionist approach, with no analytical constructs beyond phenomenological modeling. Detailed descriptive data are usually not of sufficient depth for specific model testing, giving rise instead to ad hoc explanations of mechanisms which usually turn out to be incorrect. Because they make too many assumptions, modeling studies have not added much to our understanding of CPCs; this is due not so much to inadequate simulations as to the poor quality and incomplete nature of the data provided by experimentalists.A basic strategy that would provide sufficient information for neural modeling would include: (1) identifying and characterizing each element in the CPG network; (2) specifying the synaptic connectivity between the elements; and (3) analyzing nonlinear synaptic properties and interactions by means of the connectivity matrix. Limitations based on our present technical capabilities are also discussed.