Learning to perceive in the sensor motor approach: Piaget's theory of equilibration interpreted dynamically

Learning to perceive is faced with a classical paradox: if understanding is required for perception, how can we learn to perceive something new, something we do not yet understand? According to the sensorimotor approach, perception involves mastery of regular sensorimotor co-variations that depend on the agent and the environment, also known as the "laws" of sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs). In this sense, perception involves enacting relevant sensorimotor skills in each situation. It is important for this proposal that such skills can be learned and refined with experience and yet up to this date, the sensorimotor approach has had no explicit theory of perceptual learning. The situation is made more complex if we acknowledge the open-ended nature of human learning. In this paper we propose Piaget's theory of equilibration as a potential candidate to fulfill this role. This theory highlights the importance of intrinsic sensorimotor norms, in terms of the closure of sensorimotor schemes. It also explains how the equilibration of a sensorimotor organization faced with novelty or breakdowns proceeds by re-shaping pre-existing structures in coupling with dynamical regularities of the world. This way learning to perceive is guided by the equilibration of emerging forms of skillful coping with the world. We demonstrate the compatibility between Piaget's theory and the sensorimotor approach by providing a dynamical formalization of equilibration to give an explicit micro-genetic account of sensorimotor learning and, by extension, of how we learn to perceive. This allows us to draw important lessons in the form of general principles for open-ended sensorimotor learning, including the need for an intrinsic normative evaluation by the agent itself. We also explore implications of our micro-genetic account at the personal level.Thanks to Leonardo Bich, Marieke Rohde, and John Stewart useful comments on earlier versions of this article, This work is funded by the eSMCs: Extending Sensorimotor Contingencies to Cognition project, FP7-ICT-2009-6 no: 270212. Thanks also to IAS-Research group funding IT590-13 from the Basque Government

Cloud System Evolution in the Trades (CSET): Following the Evolution of Boundary Layer Cloud Systems with the NSFNCAR GV

The Cloud System Evolution in the Trades (CSET) study was designed to describe and explain the evolution of the boundary layer aerosol, cloud, and thermodynamic structures along trajectories within the North Pacific trade winds. The study centered on seven round trips of the National Science FoundationNational Center for Atmospheric Research (NSFNCAR) Gulfstream V (GV) between Sacramento, California, and Kona, Hawaii, between 7 July and 9 August 2015. The CSET observing strategy was to sample aerosol, cloud, and boundary layer properties upwind from the transition zone over the North Pacific and to resample these areas two days later. Global Forecast System forecast trajectories were used to plan the outbound flight to Hawaii with updated forecast trajectories setting the return flight plan two days later. Two key elements of the CSET observing system were the newly developed High-Performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research (HIAPER) Cloud Radar (HCR) and the high-spectral-resolution lidar (HSRL). Together they provided unprecedented characterizations of aerosol, cloud, and precipitation structures that were combined with in situ measurements of aerosol, cloud, precipitation, and turbulence properties. The cloud systems sampled included solid stratocumulus infused with smoke from Canadian wildfires, mesoscale cloudprecipitation complexes, and patches of shallow cumuli in very clean environments. Ultraclean layers observed frequently near the top of the boundary layer were often associated with shallow, optically thin, layered veil clouds. The extensive aerosol, cloud, drizzle, and boundary layer sampling made over open areas of the northeast Pacific along 2-day trajectories during CSET will be an invaluable resource for modeling studies of boundary layer cloud system evolution and its governing physical processes

Stratospheric Gravity Wave Fluxes and Scales during DEEPWAVE

During the Deep Propagating Gravity Wave Experiment (DEEPWAVE) project in June and July 2014, the Gulfstream V research aircraft flew 97 legs over the Southern Alps of New Zealand and 150 legs over the Tasman Sea and Southern Ocean, mostly in the low stratosphere at 12.1-km altitude. Improved instrument calibration, redundant sensors, longer flight legs, energy flux estimation, and scale analysis revealed several new gravity wave properties. Over the sea, flight-level wave fluxes mostly fell below the detection threshold. Over terrain, disturbances had characteristic mountain wave attributes of positive vertical energy flux (EFz), negative zonal momentum flux, and upwind horizontal energy flux. In some cases, the fluxes changed rapidly within an 8-h flight, even though environmental conditions were nearly unchanged. The largest observed zonal momentum and vertical energy fluxes were MFx = −550 mPa and EFz = 22 W m−2, respectively. A wide variety of disturbance scales were found at flight level over New Zealand. The vertical wind variance at flight level was dominated by short “fluxless” waves with wavelengths in the 6–15-km range. Even shorter scales, down to 500 m, were found in wave breaking regions. The wavelength of the flux-carrying mountain waves was much longer—mostly between 60 and 150 km. In the strong cases, however, with EFz \u3e 4 W m−2, the dominant flux wavelength decreased (i.e., “downshifted”) to an intermediate wavelength between 20 and 60 km. A potential explanation for the rapid flux changes and the scale “downshifting” is that low-level flow can shift between “terrain following” and “envelope following” associated with trapped air in steep New Zealand valleys

The origin and evolution of the normal Type Ia SN 2018aoz with infant-phase reddening and excess emission

SN~2018aoz is a Type Ia SN with a $B$-band plateau and excess emission in the infant-phase light curves $\lesssim$ 1 day after first light, evidencing an over-density of surface iron-peak elements as shown in our previous study. Here, we advance the constraints on the nature and origin of SN~2018aoz based on its evolution until the nebular phase. Near-peak spectroscopic features show the SN is intermediate between two subtypes of normal Type Ia: Core-Normal and Broad-Line. The excess emission could have contributions from the radioactive decay of surface iron-peak elements as well as ejecta interaction with either the binary companion or a small torus of circumstellar material. Nebular-phase limits on H$\alpha$ and He~I favour a white dwarf companion, consistent with the small companion size constrained by the low early SN luminosity, while the absence of [O~I] and He~I disfavours a violent merger of the progenitor. Of the two main explosion mechanisms proposed to explain the distribution of surface iron-peak elements in SN~2018aoz, the asymmetric Chandrasekhar-mass explosion is less consistent with the progenitor constraints and the observed blueshifts of nebular-phase [Fe~II] and [Ni~II]. The helium-shell double-detonation explosion is compatible with the observed lack of C spectral features, but current 1-D models are incompatible with the infant-phase excess emission, $B_{\rm max}-V_{\rm max}$ color, and absence of nebular-phase [Ca~II]. Although the explosion processes of SN~2018aoz still need to be more precisely understood, the same processes could produce a significant fraction of Type Ia SNe that appear normal after $\sim$ 1 day.Comment: Submitted for publication in ApJ. 35 pages, 16 figures, 7 table

Anti-Utilitarians: Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on Motivation, Agency and the Formation of a Higher Self

This thesis examines the moral philosophical commitments that Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche advance in their respective oppositions to utilitarianism. Though not always under that title, all three reject the claim that promoting happiness is the ultimate end that we pursue, or ought to pursue, through moral principles and values. Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche see this rejection reflected in human nature itself. Each develops a distinctive conception of 'higher self,' or of higher purposes already belonging, in some sense, to each of us, in accordance with which we ought to shape our character. Self-formation, not the mere pursuit of happiness (whether our own or that of others), is thus our true moral project. I focus on each philosopher's account of agency and motivation as the locus in which this view of morality is developed, highlighting the differences that emerge from the details of their respective accounts. This thesis shows that a tight relation between cognition and motive feeling is central, though in different ways, for Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to the motivational structure of those actions through which we develop moral character. According to Kant, recognition of being bound by the moral law (our 'practical cognition' of freedom) is indissolubly linked to the feeling of respect for it, which in turn is explicable only through such recognition. For Schopenhauer, the 'intuitive cognition' that our existence as distinct individuals is illusory is the feeling of compassion. Nietzsche radically expands this point, arguing that, in every act of will, the motive feeling and guiding cognition are uniquely linked. Only a superficial grasp of human motivation supports the idea that pleasure and pain are the common motive forces underlying all our actions. The inner conflict in human nature, the creative tension in self-formation, is not, for Nietzsche, that between a uniquely moral form of motivation and a 'lower' instrumental pursuit of pleasure. Rather, this inner tension, expressed most strikingly and distressingly in extreme ascetic and guilt-ridden strands of Christian morality, is the product of a complex historical conflict between two different modes of behavioural selection – our evolutionary development and the processes of socialization.Ph