Conscious attention to an object, singling it out in experience, provides knowledge of the reference of a demonstrative term. Knowledge of reference is the foundation of the ability to verify propositions about the object and of the ability to act on the object. To understand the relations between knowledge of reference, verification, and action, we have to look at the relations between conscious attention, visual information processing, and the motor system.
Why should it be specifically conscious attention that provides the knowledge of reference? Knowledge of reference demands acquaintance with the individual, categorical substances around us, and not merely collections of affordances. I argue that only experience of objects can provide this kind of acquaintance with individual substances.
The approach is extended beyond understanding one's own uses of visual demonstratives to cases of joint attention and to memory demonstratives. The approach has implications for Dummett's anti‐realism and Quine's theses of inscrutability and indeterminacy. The book concludes with remarks on the metaphysics of individual substances.
SUMMARYThe concepts and potential advantages of local and global least squares smoothing of discontinuous finite element functions are introduced.The relationship between local smoothing and the 'reduced' integration' technique is established.
Examples are presented to illustrate the application of the two smoothing techniques to the finite elementThe paper concludes with some practical recommendations for discontinuous finite element function stresses from several structural analysis problems.smoothing.
The diversity of research methods applied to psychiatric disorders results in a confusing plethora of causal claims. To help make sense of these claims, the interventionist model (IM) of causality has several attractive features. First, it connects causation with the practical interests of psychiatry, defining causation in terms of 'what would happen under interventions', a question of key interest to those of us whose interest is ultimately in intervening to prevent and treat illness. Second, it distinguishes between predictive-correlative and true causal relationships, an essential issue cutting across many areas in psychiatric research. Third, the IM is non-reductive and agnostic to issues of mind-body problem. Fourth, the IM model cleanly separates issues of causation from questions about the underlying mechanism. Clarifying causal influences can usefully structure the search for underlying mechanisms. Fifth, it provides a sorely needed conceptual rigor to multi-level modeling, thereby avoiding a return to uncritical holistic approaches that 'everything is relevant' to psychiatric illness. Sixth, the IM provides a clear way to judge both the generality and depth of explanations. In conclusion, the IM can provide a single, clear empirical framework for the evaluation of all causal claims of relevance to psychiatry and presents psychiatry with a method of avoiding the sterile metaphysical arguments about mind and brain which have preoccupied our field but yielded little of practical benefit.
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