An excess of meaning : conceptual over-interpretation in confabulation and schizophrenia

I argue that ordinary (non-pathological) confabulation is a side-effect of an interpretive faculty that makes sense of the world by rationalising our experience within the context of a personal and cultural narrative. However, I argue that a hyperactivity of the same process manifests as schizotypy—latent schizophrenic tendencies—that can lead to extreme dissociation of interpretation from experience. I first give a phenomenological account of the process of interpretation, arguing that it is enacted through the creation of conceptual cognitive content from an originary non-conceptual experience. I then ground this account in empirical evidence, showing how our direct perception is moulded and adapted as it is conceptualised to fit our individual and collective expectations. Finally, I argue that hyperactive over-interpretation results in schizotypic dissociation, thus suggesting that schizophrenia should be understood as a disorder of interpretation, the extreme end of a spectrum that includes ordinary confabulation

Being-in-the-flow : expert coping as beyond both thought and automaticity

Hubert Dreyfus argues that explicit thought disrupts smooth coping at both the level of everyday tasks and of highly-refined skills. However, Barbara Montero criticises Dreyfus for extending what she calls the ‘principle of automaticity’ from our everyday actions to those of trained experts. In this paper, I defend Dreyfus’ account while refining his phenomenology. I examine the phenomenology of what I call ‘esoteric’ (as opposed to ‘everyday’) expertise to argue that the explicit thought Montero invokes belongs rather to ‘gaps’ between or above moments of reflexive coping. However, I agree that the ‘principle of automaticity’ does not adequately capture the experience of performing such skills. Drawing on examples of expert performance in sport and improvised music and dance, I argue that esoteric action, at its best, is marked by a distinct state of non-conceptual awareness- an experience of spontaneity, flow and ‘owned-ness’- that distinguishes it from the automaticity of everyday actions

Chemistry of Chern-Simons Supergravity: reduction to a BPS kink, oxidation to M-theory and thermodynamical aspects

We construct a supersymmetric extension of the two dimensional Kaluza-Klein-reduced gravitational Chern-Simons term, and globally study its solutions, labelled by mass and U(1) charge c. The kink solution is BPS, and in an appropriate conformal frame all solutions asymptotically approach AdS. The thermodynamics of the Hawking effect yields interesting behavior for the specific heat and hints at a Hawking-Page-like transition at T_{critical} \sim c^{3/2}. We address implications for higher dimensions ("oxidation"), in particular D=3,4 and 11, and comment briefly on AdS/CFT aspects of the kink.Comment: 39 pages, 2 figures. v2: reference added, minor changes, typo

Comment on: Reply to comment on `Perfect imaging without negative refraction'

Whether or not perfect imaging is obtained in the mirrored version of Maxwell's fisheye lens is debated in the comment/reply sequence [Blaikie-2010njp, Leonhardt-2010njp] discussing Leonhardt's original paper [Leonhardt-2009njp]. Here we show that causal solutions can be obtained without the need for an "active localized drain", contrary to the claims in [Leonhardt-2010njp].Comment: v2 (added MEEP ctl file), v3 (publisher statement

O melaço de cana na alimentação dos pintos em crescimento

Two groups of 51 one day chickens were placed on a diet in which 10% of corn meal in the ration has been substituted by cane molasses. It was found that in the diet with cane molasses the chickens had a better development and the difference was found to be statistically significant. Since corn meal is more expensive than cane molasse, that substitution is recommended