Durand of St.-Pourçain on Cognitive Acts: Their Cause, Ontological Status, and Intentional Character

The present dissertation concerns cognitive psychology—theories about the nature and mechanism of perception and thought—during the High Middle Ages (1250–1350). Many of the issues at the heart of philosophy of mind today—intentionality, mental representation, the active/passive nature of perception—were also the subject of intense investigation during this period. I provide an analysis of these debates with a special focus on Durand of St.-Pourcain, a contemporary of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Durand was widely recognized as a leading philosopher until the advent of the early modern period, yet his views have been largely neglected in the last century. The aim of my dissertation, then, is to provide a new understanding of Durand’s cognitive psychology and to establish a better picture of developments in cognitive psychology during the period. Most philosophers in the High Middle Ages held, in one form or another, the thesis that most forms of cognition (thought, perception) involve the reception of the form of the object into the mind. Such forms in the mind explain what a given episode of cognition is about, its content. According to what has been called the conformality theory of content, the content of our mental states is fixed by this form in the mind. Durand rejects this thesis, and one of the primary theses that I pursue is that Durand replaces the conformality theory of content with a causal theory of content, according to which the content of our mental states is fixed by its cause. When I think about Felix and not Graycat, this is to be explained not by the fact that I have in my mind the form of Felix and not Graycat, but rather by the fact that Felix and not Graycat caused my thought. This is both a controversial interpretation and, indeed, a controversial theory. It is a controversial interpretation because Durand seems to reject the thesis that objects are the causes of our mental states. In the first half of the present dissertation, I argue that Durand does not reject this thesis but he rejects another nearby thesis: that objects as causes give to us ‘forms’. On Durand’s view, an object causes a mental state even though it does not give to us a new ‘form’. In the second half of the dissertation I defend Durand’s causal theory of content against salient objections to it

The Relation-Theory of Mental Acts: Durand of St.-Pourcain on the Ontological Status of Mental Acts

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy showcases the best scholarly research in this flourishing field. The series covers all aspects of medieval philosophy, including the Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew traditions, and runs from the end of antiquity into the Renaissance. It publishes new work by leading scholars in the field, and combines historical scholarship with philosophical acuteness. The papers will address a wide range of topics, from political philosophy to ethics, and logic to metaphysics. OSMP is an essential resource for anyone working in the area

Information Security Governance Of Enterprise Information Systems: An Approach To Legislative Compliant

Enterprises are now operating in the network economy.  The network economy is dependent on the information infrastructure via the Internet.  Organizations of all types (business, academia, government, etc.) are facing risks resulting from their ever-increasing reliance on the information infrastructure.  Because of this, the US government implemented a number of legislations to secure cyberspace.  This paper will examine the issue of Information Security Governance (ISG) of an enterprise information system, it will elaborate on the ISG framework, discuss the legislations and finally, assess how ISG can be framed to meet legislations to show due diligence and continuous process monitoring. &nbsp

Privacy-preserving architecture for forensic image recognition

Forensic image recognition is an important tool in many areas of law enforcement where an agency wants to prosecute possessors of illegal images. The recognition of illegal images that might have undergone human imperceptible changes (e.g., a JPEG-recompression) is commonly done by computing a perceptual image hash function of a given image and then matching this hash with perceptual hash values in a database of previously collected illegal images. To prevent privacy violation, agencies should only learn about images that have been reliably detected as illegal and nothing else. In this work, we argue that the prevalent presence of separate departments in such agencies can be used to enforce the need-to-know principle by separating duties among them. This enables us to construct the first practically efficient architecture to perform forensic image recognition in a privacy-preserving manner. By deriving unique cryptographic keys directly from the images, we can encrypt all sensitive data and ensure that only illegal images can be recovered by the law enforcement agency while all other information remains protected

The Potential of Paper Pulp Bottles with Inner Protective Coatings: A Review on Sustainable Alternatives to Petroleum Plastic Packaging

Part A: The need to replace petroleum-based plastic vessels for containing liquids has prompted the packaging industry to develop novel materials to store and transport different liquids, such as foods, beverages, colloids, detergents and soaps. This has the effect of reducing pollution and waste emitted from the production, consumption and disposal of plastic. The major issue in using sustainable biomaterials is barrier functionality. Innovative inner protective coatings have been used to overcome the shortcomings of these materials. Many containers use sustainable materials with a plastic-based coating. A novel wax-based coating has been developed by Pulpex to remove plastic entirely. Permeability issues regarding barrier functionality to moisture and homogeneity have yet to be fully resolved and are currently under investigation. Part B The mechanical strength found in cellulose fibres is highly suitable for packaging. When water makes contact, the strength is lost, due to weakening of van-der-Waals forces resulting in reduced structural integrity. Wax coatings are being considered as a protective layer due to their natural water repellence and biodegradability. There are, however, issues with stress fractures which impact barrier functionality. In this study a rice bran wax based emulsion was formulated and applied via a spray gun to paper samples to investigate the impacts of coating homogeneity on barrier functionality. Initial findings via fluorescence microscopy showed that inhomogeneous surface coatings correlate with a weak barrier function as evident from high water permeability throughout the paper. To perform a systematic investigation of the wax deposition process, the effect spraying temperature on. the surface morphology and permeability was conducted. Scanning electron microscopy and Raman confocal spectroscopy were used to visualise the wax layers. Analysis showed the number of fractures, pores and cracks present decreased with the increase of curing temperature. The hydrophobicity of the samples were tested, and again the curing temperature had a positive correlation with barrier functionality against moisture. The results of this study and the methodologies developed provide a powerful platform for investigation of surface coatings used in direct-contact packaging applications

John Pouilly and John Baconthorpe on Reflex Acts

When I think that I am now thinking about a rose, are there two mental acts present in the intellect at once, the one direct (about the rose) and the other reflex (about the thought about the rose)? According to a generally accepted principle in medieval psychology, a given mental power cannot have or elicit multiple mental acts at the same time. Hence, many medieval thinkers were unwilling to admit that during such a case of mental reflection there are two acts present in the mind. In this paper, I will look at two theories about mental reflection. According to John Pouilly (1312), during a case of mental reflection there is just one act present in the mind. However, this one act is somehow identical with the direct mental act about the rose that immediately preceded it. If it were not identical with this act, then the sentence "I am thinking that I am thinking about a rose" would be false, since in order for this sentence to be true the direct mental act of thinking about the rose must be present with the reflex mental act of thinking about that act, either as a distinct act, or as somehow identical with it. According to John Baconthorpe (ca. 1325), such a view fails, for even if the reflex mental act were somehow identical with the direct mental act that immediately preceded it, still we would have to admit that it does not coexist with it. On his view, what is sufficient here is that the direct mental· act exist merely as a kind of represented object. Hence, for Baconthorpe, when I think that I am thinking about a rose, there is just one act present in the mind, and this one act has as its content another distinct act (the direct act). However, the direct act does not really exist at the same time as it, although it is represented as if it did

The Relation-Theory of Mental Acts: Durand of St.-Pourcain on the Ontological Status of Mental Acts

The relation-theory of mental acts proposes that a mental act is a kind of relative entity founded upon the mind and directed at the object of perception or thought. While most medieval philosophers recognized that there is something importantly relational about thought, they nevertheless rejected the view that mental acts are wholly relations. Rather, the dominant view was that a mental act is either in whole or part an Aristotelian quality added to the mind upon which such a relation to the object can be founded. In this paper, I examine Durand of St.-Pourçain's defense of the relation-theory of mental acts against two objections raised against it: the first from John Duns Scotus, among others, and the second from an anonymous Thomist and Adam Wodeham

The Multitude of Molecular Hydrogen Knots in the Helix Nebula

We present HST/NICMOS imaging of the H_2 2.12 \mu m emission in 5 fields in the Helix Nebula ranging in radial distance from 250-450" from the central star. The images reveal arcuate structures with their apexes pointing towards the central star. Comparison of these images with comparable resolution ground based images reveals that the molecular gas is more highly clumped than the ionized gas line tracers. From our images, we determine an average number density of knots in the molecular gas ranging from 162 knots/arcmin^2 in the denser regions to 18 knots/arcmin^2 in the lower density outer regions. Using this new number density, we estimate that the total number of knots in the Helix to be ~23,000 which is a factor of 6.5 larger than previous estimates. The total neutral gas mass in the Helix is 0.35 M_\odot assuming a mass of \~1.5x10^{-5} M_\odot for the individual knots. The H_2 intensity, 5-9x10^{-5} erg s^{-1} cm^{-2} sr^{-1}, remains relatively constant with projected distance from the central star suggesting a heating mechanism for the molecular gas that is distributed almost uniformly in the knots throughout the nebula. The temperature and H_2 2.12 \mu m intensity of the knots can be approximately explained by photodissociation regions (PDRs) in the individual knots; however, theoretical PDR models of PN under-predict the intensities of some knots by a factor of 10.Comment: 26 pages, 3 tables, 10 figures; AJ accepte