Contextual emergence of intentionality

By means of an intriguing physical example, magnetic surface swimmers, that can be described in terms of Dennett's intentional stance, I reconstruct a hierarchy of necessary and sufficient conditions for the applicability of the intentional strategy. It turns out that the different levels of the intentional hierarchy are contextually emergent from their respective subjacent levels by imposing stability constraints upon them. At the lowest level of the hierarchy, phenomenal physical laws emerge for the coarse-grained description of open, nonlinear, and dissipative nonequilibrium systems in critical states. One level higher, dynamic patterns, such as, e.g., magnetic surface swimmers, are contextually emergent as they are invariant under certain symmetry operations. Again one level up, these patterns behave apparently rational by selecting optimal pathways for the dissipation of energy that is delivered by external gradients. This is in accordance with the restated Second Law of thermodynamics as a stability criterion. At the highest level, true believers are intentional systems that are stable under exchanging their observation conditions.Comment: 27 pages; 4 figures (Fig 1. Copyright by American Physical Society); submitted to Journal of Consciousness Studie

A biophysical observation model for field potentials of networks of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons

We present a biophysical approach for the coupling of neural network activity as resulting from proper dipole currents of cortical pyramidal neurons to the electric field in extracellular fluid. Starting from a reduced threecompartment model of a single pyramidal neuron, we derive an observation model for dendritic dipole currents in extracellular space and thereby for the dendritic field potential that contributes to the local field potential of a neural population. This work aligns and satisfies the widespread dipole assumption that is motivated by the "open-field" configuration of the dendritic field potential around cortical pyramidal cells. Our reduced three-compartment scheme allows to derive networks of leaky integrate-and-fire models, which facilitates comparison with existing neural network and observation models. In particular, by means of numerical simulations we compare our approach with an ad hoc model by Mazzoni et al. [Mazzoni, A., S. Panzeri, N. K. Logothetis, and N. Brunel (2008). Encoding of naturalistic stimuli by local field potential spectra in networks of excitatory and inhibitory neurons. PLoS Computational Biology 4 (12), e1000239], and conclude that our biophysically motivated approach yields substantial improvement.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figure

Judicial dissents from ideological allies in lower court cases are more likely to lead to en banc review.

In the US Court of Appeals, a panel of judges can vote to rehear a case which had previously been heard by the court, a procedure known as en banc review. In new research, Deborah Beim and colleagues find that when a judge who is an ideological ally dissents with the majority decision, this can act as a strong signal that something that is inappropriate has occurred, which in turn can increase the probability of an en banc review from 3 to 17 percent

W kierunku racjonalnej polityki urbanistycznej Polski

Changes in the spatial structure of Poland occur in a manner far from the principles of sustainable development. Polish legislation had not formed proper mechanisms for effective protection of sites against a chaotic development. Existing mechanisms, based on zoning plans have failed. Negative effects can be observed by the government, which proceeded to prepare assumptions of urban policy. The purpose of this text is to detain uncontrolled urbanization, to foster revitalization of the central districts and to reduce dependence on the car. This article is a reflection on necessary changes in government urban policy. This paper presents the most important problems of spatial development and possible solutions. Authors compare the best foreign practice and show its possible application in Polish conditions.Zmiany w strukturze zagospodarowania przestrzennego Polski następują w sposób daleki od zasad zrównoważonego rozwoju. Polskie prawodawstwo nie wykształciło mechanizmów pozwalających na skuteczną ochronę terenów przed chaotyczną zabudową. Dotychczasowe mechanizmy bazujące na planach strefowych zawiodły. Negatywne efekty zostały zauważone przez administrację rządową, która przystąpiła do sporządzania założeń polityki miejskiej. Celem tego dokumentu ma być zahamowanie niekontrolowanej suburbanizacji, ułatwienie rewitalizacji dzielnic centralnych i zmniejszenie uzależnienia od samochodu. Niniejszy artykuł zawiera rozważania nad koniecznymi zmianami w polityce urbanistycznej państwa. Przedstawiono w nim najważniejsze problemy rozwoju przestrzennego i możliwe rozwiązania. Autorzy porównują najlepszą zagraniczną praktykę i pokazują możliwości jej aplikacji w warunkach polskich

Inverse problems in neural field theory

We study inverse problems in neural field theory, i.e., the construction of synaptic weight kernels yielding a prescribed neural field dynamics. We address the issues of existence, uniqueness, and stability of solutions to the inverse problem for the Amari neural field equation as a special case, and prove that these problems are generally ill-posed. In order to construct solutions to the inverse problem, we first recast the Amari equation into a linear perceptron equation in an infinite-dimensional Banach or Hilbert space. In a second step, we construct sets of biorthogonal function systems allowing the approximation of synaptic weight kernels by a generalized Hebbian learning rule. Numerically, this construction is implemented by the Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse method. We demonstrate the instability of these solutions and use the Tikhonov regularization method for stabilization and to prevent numerical overfitting. We illustrate the stable construction of kernels by means of three instructive examples