5,116 research outputs found
Only Friends, Despite the Rumors: Philosophy of Mind's Consciousness and Intentionality
Being evasive as it is, philosophers have often tried to do without consciousness. Despite this, it has played a key role in the endeavours of philosophy of mind, as witnessed by its reputation as a "mark of the mental" and works of philosophers like John Searle and Daniel Dennett. Intentionality has shared a similar role, such that one and the other have often been brought together in a symbiotic relationship (Searle 1990) or deemed coextensive (Crane 1998).\ud
Such promiscuity is not necessary. The revolution brought about by embodied and situated approaches seem to leave little place for such an association. Intentionality is seldom studied in the new paradigm, and when it is, new models of it are applicable to biological and robotic structures which, by most accounts, probably have no consciousness (Millikan 1984, Menary 2006). Menary (2009) also notes that the same could be said of scholastic accounts of intentionality. On the other hand, consciousness is being studied and various ways which do not involve intentionality or anything similar.\ud
I suggest that the association between these two notions has to do with the particular intellectual environment that prevailed in traditional philosophy of mind. Considerations about access and the good fortune of cognitivism, among other factors, made for a culture that emphasized the gap between behaviour on one hand and the the mental states that characterize us when we are in a disposition to cause behaviour on the other. In such conditions, concepts like intentionality and consciousness acted as bridge and allowed for a language which enabled accounts of the mind that remained somewhat comprehensive and unified, while leaving the gap unfilled. As they were covering the most problematic and elusive parts of our understanding of the mind, there was both enough similarity in the ways we used those concepts, and enough vagueness in how we accounted for their realization in physical systems, to make a rapprochement inevitable.\ud
When a new paradigm swept away the cognitivist conception of representation, some philosophers and cognitive scientists turned to more embodied and situated models of cognition. Representations in this paradigm (such as Millikan’s (1995) and Clark’s (1997)) are “action-oriented”, thus leaving no gap between action and representation – getting an account of the complex representations that we communicate in propositions is thus seen as a matter of empirical investigation. If there is no gap, concepts like intentionality and consciousness are called to play different roles in accounts of the mind – roles which do not permit any confusion.\ud
The poster will highlight relevant differences in the philosophical climate as they project themselves in accounts of representation (following Gallagher 2008), and make salient the link between this climate and the role of cognition in philosophy of mind
On hamiltonian colorings of block graphs
A hamiltonian coloring c of a graph G of order p is an assignment of colors
to the vertices of G such that for every two
distinct vertices u and v of G, where D(u,v) denoted the detour distance
between u and v. The value hc(c) of a hamiltonian coloring c is the maximum
color assigned to a vertex of G. The hamiltonian chromatic number, denoted by
hc(G), is the min{hc(c)} taken over all hamiltonian coloring c of G. In this
paper, we present a lower bound for the hamiltonian chromatic number of block
graphs and give a sufficient condition to achieve the lower bound. We
characterize symmetric block graphs achieving this lower bound. We present two
algorithms for optimal hamiltonian coloring of symmetric block graphs.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. A conference version appeared in the proceedings
of WALCOM 201
Loyalist Lieutenant Jeremiah French and His Uniform
There are many unique and remarkable uniforms in the collections of the Canadian War Museum, some of which go back quite far into our history. One of these, probably the oldest presently known uniform that can be assigned to a unit raised in Canada, is that of Lieutenant Jeremiah French of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York
Rainbow Connection Number and Connected Dominating Sets
Rainbow connection number rc(G) of a connected graph G is the minimum number
of colours needed to colour the edges of G, so that every pair of vertices is
connected by at least one path in which no two edges are coloured the same. In
this paper we show that for every connected graph G, with minimum degree at
least 2, the rainbow connection number is upper bounded by {\gamma}_c(G) + 2,
where {\gamma}_c(G) is the connected domination number of G. Bounds of the form
diameter(G) \leq rc(G) \leq diameter(G) + c, 1 \leq c \leq 4, for many special
graph classes follow as easy corollaries from this result. This includes
interval graphs, AT-free graphs, circular arc graphs, threshold graphs, and
chain graphs all with minimum degree at least 2 and connected. We also show
that every bridge-less chordal graph G has rc(G) \leq 3.radius(G). In most of
these cases, we also demonstrate the tightness of the bounds. An extension of
this idea to two-step dominating sets is used to show that for every connected
graph on n vertices with minimum degree {\delta}, the rainbow connection number
is upper bounded by 3n/({\delta} + 1) + 3. This solves an open problem of
Schiermeyer (2009), improving the previously best known bound of 20n/{\delta}
by Krivelevich and Yuster (2010). Moreover, this bound is seen to be tight up
to additive factors by a construction of Caro et al. (2008).Comment: 14 page
On the metric dimension of corona product graphs
Given a set of vertices of a connected graph , the
metric representation of a vertex of with respect to is the vector
, where ,
denotes the distance between and . is a resolving set for if
for every pair of vertices of , . The metric
dimension of , , is the minimum cardinality of any resolving set for
. Let and be two graphs of order and , respectively. The
corona product is defined as the graph obtained from and by
taking one copy of and copies of and joining by an edge each
vertex from the -copy of with the -vertex of . For any
integer , we define the graph recursively from
as . We give several results on the metric
dimension of . For instance, we show that given two connected
graphs and of order and , respectively, if the
diameter of is at most two, then .
Moreover, if and the diameter of is greater than five or is
a cycle graph, then $dim(G\odot^k H)=n_1(n_2+1)^{k-1}dim(K_1\odot H).
Synchronization of electrically coupled resonate-and-fire neurons
Electrical coupling between neurons is broadly present across brain areas and
is typically assumed to synchronize network activity. However, intrinsic
properties of the coupled cells can complicate this simple picture. Many cell
types with strong electrical coupling have been shown to exhibit resonant
properties, and the subthreshold fluctuations arising from resonance are
transmitted through electrical synapses in addition to action potentials. Using
the theory of weakly coupled oscillators, we explore the effect of both
subthreshold and spike-mediated coupling on synchrony in small networks of
electrically coupled resonate-and-fire neurons, a hybrid neuron model with
linear subthreshold dynamics and discrete post-spike reset. We calculate the
phase response curve using an extension of the adjoint method that accounts for
the discontinuity in the dynamics. We find that both spikes and resonant
subthreshold fluctuations can jointly promote synchronization. The subthreshold
contribution is strongest when the voltage exhibits a significant post-spike
elevation in voltage, or plateau. Additionally, we show that the geometry of
trajectories approaching the spiking threshold causes a "reset-induced shear"
effect that can oppose synchrony in the presence of network asymmetry, despite
having no effect on the phase-locking of symmetrically coupled pairs
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