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"Maxwell, J."
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Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture
The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as \"shared expectations,\" the \"selective patterning of attention and behaviour,\" \"cultural evolution,\" \"cultural inheritance,\" and \"implicit learning\" are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require greater specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational (free-energy) approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process \"thinking through other minds\" (TTOM) - in effect, the process of inferring other agents' expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal (variational) treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism.
Journal Article
Airline maps : a century of art and design
\"In this gorgeously illustrated collection of airline route maps, Mark Ovenden and Maxwell Roberts look to the skies and transport readers to another time. Hundreds of images span a century of passenger flight, from the rudimentary trajectory of routes to the most intricately detailed birds-eye views of the land to be flown over. Advertisements for the first scheduled commercial passenger flights featured only a few destinations, with stunning views of the countryside and graphics of biplanes. As aviation took off, speed and mileage were trumpeted on bold posters featuring busy routes. Major airlines produced highly stylized illustrations of their global presence, establishing now-classic brands. With trendy and forward-looking designs, cartographers celebrated the coming together of different cultures and made the earth look ever smaller. Eventually, fleets got bigger and routes multiplied, and graphic designers have found creative new ways to display huge amounts of information. Airline hubs bring their own cultural mark and advertise their plentiful destination options. Innovative maps depict our busy world with webs of overlapping routes and networks of low-cost city-to-city hopping. But though flying has become more commonplace, Ovenden and Roberts remind us that early air travel was a glamorous affair for good reason. Airline Maps is a celebration of graphic design, cartographic skills and clever marketing, and a visual feast that reminds us to enjoy the journey as much as the destination\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
محاضرات الحائزين على جائزة نوبل للأدب، 2000-2010
يبدأ الكتاب بتقديم للدكتور \"مرزوق بشير مرزوق\" مدير إدارة البحوث والدراسات الثقافية في الدوحة ثم يتناول الكتاب عدة محاضرات وهي محاضرة ماريو برغاس يوسا 2010 بعنوان \"مديح القراءة والرواية\" ومحاضرة هرتا مولر 2009 بعنوان \"كل كلمة لديها ما تقوله حول الحلقة المفرغة\" ومحاضرة جان ماري لوكليزيو 7 ديسمبر 2008 بعنوان \"في غابة المفارقات\" ومحاضرة دوريس ليسنغ 2007 بعنوان \"حول عدم الفوز بجائزة نوبل\" ومحاضرة ارهان باموك 2006 بعنوان \"حقيبة أبي\" ومحاضرة هارولد بنتر 2005 بعنوان \"الفن والحقيقة والسياسة\" ومحاضرة ألفريدا ياليناك 2004 بعنوان \"في التماس\" ومحاضرات أخري وهذا الكتاب وثيقة أدبية فائقة الأهمية هي محاضرات تغوص في أزمنة مختلفة وتقدم أدباء ينتمون إلى لغات وثقافات مختلفة.
BOOK
Scaling of sensorimotor delays in terrestrial mammals
Whether an animal is trying to escape from a predator, avoid a fall or perform a more mundane task, the effectiveness of its sensory feedback is constrained by sensorimotor delays. Here, we combine electrophysiological experiments, systematic reviews of the literature and biophysical models to determine how delays associated with the fastest locomotor reflex scale with size in terrestrial mammals. Nerve conduction delay is one contributor, and increases strongly with animal size. Sensing, synaptic and neuromuscular junction delays also contribute, and we approximate each as a constant value independent of animal size. Muscle's electromechanical and force generation delays increase more moderately with animal size than nerve conduction delay, but their total contribution exceeds that of the four neural delays. The sum of these six component delays, termed total delay, increases with animal size in proportion to M 0.21 —large mammals experience total delays 17 times longer than small mammals. The slower movement times of large animals mostly offset their long delays resulting in a more modest, but perhaps still significant, doubling of their total delay relative to movement duration when compared with their smaller counterparts. Irrespective of size, sensorimotor delay is likely a challenge for all mammals, particularly during fast running.
Journal Article
Mechanically gated formation of donor–acceptor Stenhouse adducts enabling mechanochemical multicolour soft lithography
Stress-sensitive molecules called mechanophores undergo productive chemical transformations in response to mechanical force. A variety of mechanochromic mechanophores, which change colour in response to stress, have been developed, but modulating the properties of the dyes generally requires the independent preparation of discrete derivatives. Here we introduce a mechanophore platform enabling mechanically gated multicolour chromogenic reactivity. The mechanophore is based on an activated furan precursor to donor–acceptor Stenhouse adducts (DASAs) masked as a hetero-Diels–Alder adduct. Mechanochemical activation of the mechanophore unveils the DASA precursor, and subsequent reaction with a secondary amine generates an intensely coloured DASA. Critically, the properties of the DASA are controlled by the amine, and thus a single mechanophore can be differentiated post-activation to produce a wide range of functionally diverse DASAs. We highlight this system by establishing the concept of mechanochemical multicolour soft lithography whereby a complex multicolour composite image is printed into a mechanochemically active elastomer through an iterative process of localized compression followed by reaction with different amines.Mechanochemical generation of dyes with different photophysical properties generally requires the use of discrete mechanophore derivatives with unique chemical structures. Now it has been shown that diverse donor–acceptor Stenhouse adducts can be produced via a mechanically gated chromogenic reaction, enabling mechanochemical multicolour lithography.
Journal Article
Comparing the advantages and disadvantages of physics-based and neural network-based modelling for predicting cycling power
Models of physical phenomena can be developed using two distinct approaches: using expert knowledge of the underlying physical principles or using experimental data to train a neural network. Here, our aim was to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches. We chose to model cycling power because the physical principles are already well understood. Nine participants followed changes in cycling cadence transmitted through a metronome via earphones and we measured their cadence and power. We then developed and trained a physics-based model and a simple neural network model, where both models had cadence, derivative of cadence, and gear ratio as input, and power as output. We found no significant differences in the prediction performance between the models. Both models had good prediction accuracy despite using less input variables than traditional models and using more challenging prediction conditions by enforcing rapid speed changes during cycling. The advantages of the neural network model were that, for similar performance, it did not require an understanding of the underlying principles of cycling nor did it require measurements of fixed parameters such as system weight or wheel size. These same features also give the physics-based model the advantage of interpretability, which can be important when scientists want to better understand the process being modelled.
Journal Article
Multiscale integration
We present a multiscale integrationist interpretation of the boundaries of cognitive systems, using the Markov blanket formalism of the variational free energy principle. This interpretation is intended as a corrective for the philosophical debate over internalist and externalist interpretations of cognitive boundaries; we stake out a compromise position. We first survey key principles of new radical (extended, enactive, embodied) views of cognition. We then describe an internalist interpretation premised on the Markov blanket formalism. Having reviewed these accounts, we develop our positive multiscale account. We argue that the statistical seclusion of internal from external states of the system—entailed by the existence of a Markov boundary—can coexist happily with the multiscale integration of the system through its dynamics. Our approach does not privilege any given boundary (whether it be that of the brain, body, or world), nor does it argue that all boundaries are equally prescient. We argue that the relevant boundaries of cognition depend on the level being characterised and the explanatory interests that guide investigation. We approach the issue of how and where to draw the boundaries of cognitive systems through a multiscale ontology of cognitive systems, which offers a multidisciplinary research heuristic for cognitive science.
Journal Article
A small proton charge radius from an electron–proton scattering experiment
Elastic electron–proton scattering (e–p) and the spectroscopy of hydrogen atoms are the two methods traditionally used to determine the proton charge radius,
r
p
. In 2010, a new method using muonic hydrogen atoms
1
found a substantial discrepancy compared with previous results
2
, which became known as the ‘proton radius puzzle’. Despite experimental and theoretical efforts, the puzzle remains unresolved. In fact, there is a discrepancy between the two most recent spectroscopic measurements conducted on ordinary hydrogen
3
,
4
. Here we report on the proton charge radius experiment at Jefferson Laboratory (PRad), a high-precision e–p experiment that was established after the discrepancy was identified. We used a magnetic-spectrometer-free method along with a windowless hydrogen gas target, which overcame several limitations of previous e–p experiments and enabled measurements at very small forward-scattering angles. Our result,
r
p
= 0.831 ± 0.007
stat
± 0.012
syst
femtometres, is smaller than the most recent high-precision e–p measurement
5
and 2.7 standard deviations smaller than the average of all e–p experimental results
6
. The smaller
r
p
we have now measured supports the value found by two previous muonic hydrogen experiments
1
,
7
. In addition, our finding agrees with the revised value (announced in 2019) for the Rydberg constant
8
—one of the most accurately evaluated fundamental constants in physics.
A magnetic-spectrometer-free method for electron–proton scattering data reveals a proton charge radius 2.7 standard deviations smaller than the currently accepted value from electron–proton scattering, yet consistent with other recent experiments.
Journal Article