Review of Teed Rockwell’s Neither Brain nor Ghost: A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory

Review of Teed Rockwell’s Neither Brain nor Ghost: A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theor

Review of Michael Wheeler: Reconstructing the cognitive world: the next step. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).

Review of Michael Wheeler: Reconstructing the cognitive world: the next step. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005)

Review Essay: Andy Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence.

Review Essay: Andy Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence

Review of Rob Wilson’s Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Cognition

Review of Rob Wilson’s Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Cognitio

Review Essay: Dennett’s Sweet Dreams\ud Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness. \ud

Review Essay: Dennett’s Sweet Dreams\ud Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness. \u

Introduction to the special issue “Perspectives on Social Cognition”\ud

Introduction to the special issue “Perspectives on Social Cognition”\u

Stigmergic epistemology, stigmergic cognition

To know is to cognize, to cognize is to be a culturally bounded, rationality-bounded and environmentally located agent. Knowledge and cognition are thus dual aspects of human sociality. If social epistemology has the formation, acquisition, mediation, transmission and dissemination of knowledge in complex communities of knowers as its subject matter, then its third party character is essentially stigmergic. In its most generic formulation, stigmergy is the phenomenon of indirect communication mediated by modifications of the environment. Extending this notion one might conceive of social stigmergy as the extra-cranial analog of an artificial neural network providing epistemic structure. This paper recommends a stigmergic framework for social epistemology to account for the supposed tension between individual action, wants and beliefs and the social corpora. We also propose that the so-called ‘‘extended mind’’ thesis offers the requisite stigmergic cognitive analog to stigmergic knowledge. Stigmergy as a theory of interaction within complex systems theory is illustrated through an example that runs on a particle swarm optimization algorithm.Social epistemology; Extended mind; Social cognition; Particle swarm optimization

Characteristics of the Pre-College Students at Parkland College

Parkland College is a community college of approximately 8,000 students located in Champaign, Illinois. The faculty and administrative staff is concerned with student retention, particularly the retention of those students in the pre-college or underprepared category who take courses that are below the college level. This retention study identified characteristics of underprepared students, interventions that had been successful at model community colleges, and recommended program implications for the future. The study provided base-line data regarding characteristics of the 1346 underprepared students at Parkland College who were taking remedial coursework in the fall of 1988. Data was also gathered for the 612 first-time developmental students with regard to full-time and part-time status, ethnicity, sex, age, program selection, high school rank, and ACT scores. This was compared with the data from the fall of 1989 to determine which students had returned to Parkland for another term and which students had dropped out. A Chi-square statistical analysis was performed at the University of Illinois using the Statistical Analysis System to discover which categories were significant at the .05 level. A profile was then drawn of the pre-college student at Parkland College. This profile indicated that members of the underprepared group were younger, predominantly fulltime, and more likely to be male and Black than the student population as a whole. Parkland was attracting a higher percentage of first-time students in the pre-college program than in its regular program. The first-time developmental students who were in the lower high school quartile, male, Black, part-time, or who had low ACT scores were the ones more likely to drop out. These students should be Parkland\u27s target population for curricular, advising, and budgetary intervention

Drosophila in the Study of Neurodegenerative Disease

As populations benefit from increasing lifespans, neurodegenerative diseases have emerged as a critical health concern. How can the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, contribute to curing human diseases of the nervous system? A growing number of neurodegenerative diseases, as well as other human diseases, are being modeled in Drosophila and used as a platform to identify and validate cellular pathways that contribute to neurodegeneration and to identify promising therapeutic targets by using a variety of approaches from screens to target validation. The unique properties and tools available in the Drosophila system, coupled with the fact that testing in vivo has proven highly productive, have accelerated the progress of testing therapeutic strategies in mice and, ultimately, humans. This review highlights selected recent applications to illustrate the use of Drosophila in studying neurodegenerative diseases

Embodying Citizenship in Brazilian Women's Film, Video, and Literature, 1971 to 1988.

This project considers the ways in which various women artists sought to transform society and politics in Brazil during the military regime and during the period of redemocratization, from 1971 to 1988. Through close textual analyses and a review of historical contexts, I discuss the ways in which Brazilian women’s cultural works functioned as modes of political participation to rethink and redefine citizenship during and after the military dictatorship in Brazil. It proceeds by considering the representation of the body in three different arenas of cultural expression – literature, film, and video – as each mode became a viable outlet for women’s voices. I discuss the collection of short stories A Via Crucis do Corpo (1974) by Clarice Lispector, the collection of short stories Nascimento de uma Mulher (1971) by Sonia Coutinho, the early feature-length fiction films by Ana Carolina Teixeira Soares (Mar de Rosas, 1977; Das Tripas Coração, 1982; Sonho de Valsa, 1986) and Tizuka Yamasaki (Gaijin: Os Caminhos da Liberdade, 1980; Parahyba, Mulher Macho, 1983; Patriamada, 1984), and films and videos by the independent film and videomaker Eunice Gutman, and videos by The Lilith Video Collective and the non-profit women’s organization SOS-Corpo. The women’s works I have selected reference different modalities of cultural production as well as come from different economic and regional backgrounds. Lastly, this project addresses issues of women’s sexuality and identity, both central to the discussion of citizenship in these women’s works. As it considers the transition process(es) taking place in Brazil from the 1970s and 1980s, this project addresses the ways in which women cultural producers challenged cultural beliefs and political practices. My key questions are: In what ways did these women artists make the body a site of political struggle? In what ways does the representation of the body change over time? How do these works of women’s literature, film, and video contribute to reinventing citizenship in Brazil?Ph.D.Romance Languages & Literatures: SpanishUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61637/1/llmarsh_1.pd