Bradford Books

This book covers the period of US history from 1775 to 1850 and it's primary subject centers about 12 officers of the US Navy. Each one of these individuals were the ones that laid the very foundation of what the the US Navy is today.

The most interesting thing about the book is that there are 12 seperate authors, not one. In addition, at the conclusion of each chapter (which covers the life of each seperate officer) there is a rather healthy listing of additional references.

The beauty of the book is that each naval officer, who is a hero in the best of naval traditions, is described with all the laurels and warts of a human being. Their professional knowledge, attitudes towards their fellow officers and the men that served under them, their skill as diplomats and their families is very well described.

For those who have either served a career in the nations sea going service or are just plain history buffs, the investment in this book is worth while. A splendid addtion to any ones library.

Richard Detjen USNA, Class 1958.

Anyone curious as to extent to which various human cognitive and neural capabilities are can exist in nervous systems that are much smaller and simpler than humans will gain a lot from the perusal of this book. But more importantly, the book also offers a glimpse of how these nervous systems are able to deal with their environment in ways that perpetuate the survival of the organisms that possess them. Their abilities in many ways surpass those of humans, but the comparison with humans should really not be the focus of attention. The most important thing to gain from the reading of this book is that nervous systems have evolved in ways that are advantageous to the organism. As two authors in the book expressed it, "the abilities of an animal seem to be governed largely by what it needs to pursue its lifestyle." All of the articles in this book are interesting, but for lack of space only three of them will be reviewed here.

The authors of the article "Exploration of Cognitive Capability in Honeybees: Higher Functions Emerge from a Small Brain", give a brief but fascinating overview of the research that has been performed in the neural and learning capabilities of honeybees. It is incredible fact, as brought out in the article, that the brain of the worker honeybee is only one cubic millimeter in volume, has a mass of only 1 mg, and has less than a million neurons. In spite of these dimensions however, honeybees are still able to process visual and motion information in ways that are very similar to the way that humans do. Indeed the honeybee is able to engage in pattern recognition, perception, and the learning of complex tasks. Honeybees are able to take pattern presented to them, train on these patterns, and use what they have learned to evaluate new patterns presented to them. Most interestingly, the authors describe experiments that show that honeybees are able to perceive some of the illusions that humans do. Other abilities discussed include learning to negotiate complex mazes, and are able to count landmarks as they do. Furthermore, they make use of rules that worked in the past in order to navigate through mazes. Thus bees exhibit a remarkable ability to construct concepts. The authors also mention the exciting prospect of constructing a learning machine that is capable of performing behavior similar to the honeybee. Given the size of the honeybee brain, this certainly seems like a goal that could be readily accomplished.

In the article "In the Mind of a Hunter: The Visual World of Praying Mantis", the authors present the mantis as being an insect that is very complex from the standpoint of its ability to process information, being manifested in what the authors refer to as "plastic behaviors." Anyone who has observed a praying mantis in a garden or other places outdoors cannot help but be fascinated by their behavior. This article puts these behaviors on a neurological foundation, and the picture the authors paint is a very interesting one. The reader learns of the compound eyes of the praying mantis, which allow visualization in every direction. The range of light intensity (four log units) allows the mantis to distinguish between different objects. Amazingly, their eyes have about nine thousand sampling units or `ommatidia' as the authors call them. But it is the "prey recognition" algorithm used by mantids that is of primary interest to the authors. They have found through their research that this algorithm depends on the simultaneous assessment of a collection of stimulus parameters. From the standpoint of its nervous system, prey recognition is accomplished by a movement-sensitive cell called the lobula giant movement detector (LGMD). The LGMD is presynaptic to the descending contralateral movement detector (DCMD). They mention the construction of an artificial neural network of the LGMD-DCMD systems that learns to respond to the same types of stimuli that mantids recognize as prey, but unfortunately do not discuss it in any detail.

The author of the article "Motion Perception Shapes the Visual World of Amphibians" discusses how frogs and toads are able to catch their prey, avoid predators, and find mates without the benefit of eye movements. The emphasis in the article is in on how these different entities are classified and discriminated, how retinal images of moving objects are discriminated from self-induced moving images, on whether or not toads employ concepts or engage in learning, and how toads analyze visual stimuli without the benefit of a cerebral neocortex. The distinction between prey and nonprey is correlated with the geometry of the object relative to the direction of movement. In order to justify what is happening at the neuronal level, the author describes the properties of the retinal ganglion cells (which mediate the output of the retinal network) and the neurons of the retinal projection fields in terms of their receptive fields. A table is given along with extension discussion of their properties. Toads also make use of the odor of their prey, and the author discusses, with a detailed diagram, the brain structures involved in visual-olfactory learning. Most interesting is the author's discussion of backpropagation artificial neural networks used to model the feature detection abilities of amphibians. A two-layered artificial neural network is trained to classify and evaluate objects of different lengths moving in prey and nonprey configurations.

If, as I believe, persons enjoy what they do well, then Dr. Paul Thagard must enjoy computational philosophy of science very much. Computational philosophy of science is the new frontier in philosophy of science today, and it portends to become essential to and definitive of twenty-first century philosophy of science.

Thagard is one of the few academic philosophers of science who has demonstrated the requisite technical skills in computer systems analysis to make contributions to this new area. I believe that all of his works are worth reading, and this Introduction should be requisite reading for the graduate student in philosophy of science preparing for the twenty-first century. Five stars are not enough!

Readers interested in my commentary on Thagard are to view my online book titled History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science at my com web site philsci with free downloads.

Thomas J. Hickey

As the title says, the book analyses the development of concepts in children. It starts with explanation of the classical theories of concepts, the reasons of their forming, and what they are lacking.
Starting from that, it goes carefully, without presuming anything, through a set of empirical studies done with young children (pre-school, and early school ages), tightening the ring arround the possible theories.
As a result, at the end the theory of theory based concepts seems to be best fitted.
Closing chapter made me eager to read following books of the author, where he is supposed to analyze what kind of early theories there are in children, if there is just few general , or more specific ones.
Very clearly and well written.

For linguistics and the philosophy of language to make any headway, the psychological nature of concepts cannot be ignored.

In "Core Readings," Margolis and Laurence performed the admirable job of keeping us on this task by assembling writings and criticisms of five theories of concepts: Classical, Prototype, Theory-Theory, Neoclassical, and Conceptual Atomism. What emerges from this assembly is an identification of the core questions that any theory of concepts must address.

No serious student of concepts should neglect this important collection.

This book is both an excellent introduction and thorough treatment of many of the thorniest philosophical and methodological issues in evolutionary biology. It is a must read for anyone who is serious about grappling with the deeper meaning of the study of evolution (i.e. deeper than the relatively simple concern of evolution versus creation).

Here is a short, resonant book on a topic that concerns us all: medical ethics.

Alfred I. Tauber is a biochemist and an M.D. (medical doctor). He is also a professor of medicine and a professor of philosophy at Boston University.

Tauber provides us with hard-to-get knowledge: (1) a thoughtful historical overview of the development of twentieth century medicine (1880 to the end of the 1990s), with particular focus on the doctor-patient relationship; and (2) a philosophically sophisticated analytical scheme that enables the reader to assess current developments (crudely: How is my HMO or managed care plan doing?).

Although Tauber subtitles his book "An Essay in Popular Philosophy," the word "popular" is somewhat misleading. The reader entirely innocent of twentieth-century Anlgo-American analyic philosophy as well as of its differences from Continental (European) philosophy, may intially have a bit of hard time following the argument.

Nevertheless, CONFESSIONS OF A MEDICINE MAN is the right book at the right time. Deeply philosophical and factually up-to-the-minute, it provides the compass we need to understand the real causes of the "crisis in medical care" that most average Americans face. For example, Tauber gives an extended--and brilliant--critique of one of those causes: the total acceptance of the idea of the "autonomous self" within the context of the doctor-patient relationship.

For the interested reader, Tauber provides a valuable (& wonderfully readable) section called "Bibliographic Notes." Here the reader can trace out the origins of Tauber's thinking on the key topics covered in the book: changes in American medicine over the past 120 years; the various concepts of "self" that doctors and HMOs adopt and how these varous concepts directly affect the patient's relationship with her doctor; the whole notion of "medical ethics" itself and what its various interpretations may mean to the patient and her family (one of Tauber fresh observations: "medical ethics" is fast becoming a specialty, just like surgery or gastroenterology--and that is just the direction we do NOT want to go).

A serious, needed book, one that challenges American medicine's dangerous and unacknowledged assumptions about exactly who the doctor is and who the patient is. Bravo!

Conjunctions has for a long time been a source of truly new and groundbreaking writing in American Literature. The current issue not only continues this trend, but even exceeds the high water mark set by earlier editions of the journal, taking the time, as it does, to focus only on prose (saving the poetry, I understand, for the next issue). Collected in one place we have stories by some of our finest writers, set alongside works by newer, promising authors. From Coover's phantasmagoric and playful "Alice in the Time of the Jabberwock" to Paul West's haunting tale, this collection is thought-provoking and expansive.

Contours of Agency is a great book in several respects. First, the essays by several philosophers summarize aspects of work covering the career of Harry Frankfurt. Second, almost every essay in this volume is offering something critical of Frankfurt's work. The best part is not only are these criticisms coming from some of the brightest philosophers in the field, but one gets to see how Frankfurt responds to each of them. So, if you are interested in autonomy, freedom, personal identity, action, and all issues related, this is a must have book. Jonathan Lear's paper, "Love's Authority," states:

"However contentious the analytic-philosophical community tends to be, I think everyone would agree with this claim: that Harry Frankfurt is interesting. He is interested in interesting ways about interesting things. For over thirty years he has been delighting us with deep and fascinating thoughts about what is involved in being a person. And if we reflect on that delight, I think we shall see that Frankfurt has elicited a response that comes from the best of ourselves."

In my opinion, Jonathan Lear is correct. The papers and responses in this book are evidence of this truth.

Dr. DeCoo's book is a fascinating expose of plagiarism at all levels of academia. I am grateful that I did not read it before embarking on a three year journey to rectify the copyright infringement of my dissertation by a Dutch team (not once, but in six separate publications). Dr. DeCoo's descriptions of the perils of whistle blowing are painfully accurate.

As as an on-line college instructor, each semester I encounter plagiarism, and despite my university's "honor code," first offensives for even extensive plagiarism are handled lightly. Crisis on Campus is a must read for all teachers and administrators of higher education. At the very least, it will prompt a review of institutional policies for detecting, handling, and detering plagiarism.

To Dr. DeCoo, Merci beaucoup.