European Identity Today: Thought or Feeling?

In the Mood for Thought: Feeling and Thinking in Philosophy

Demographic Strengthening of European Identity

THE EUROPEAN UNION is currently undergoing a major crisis within its institutions. Many observers think the EU is doomed, particularly in view of the current refugee situation, when in many countries the national agenda overrides the European project and the aggregate result is widely perceived as a failure of European-level governance. This skepticism is heightened by the UK referendum on cont...

Emotional Thought or Thoughtful Emotions?

The anatomical circuits for emotion are straightforward: prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, and the amygdala. However, neurophysiologists have not yet uncovered any robust neurophysiological differences among what we perceive to be as radically different emotions. Nevertheless, they believe that someday, they will be able to discover local anatomical or physiological differences among our dif...

Global Governance and European Identity

The peaceful and democratic integration of the European countries, including the Eastern enlargement of the Union, cannot be completed if the EU does not become a true, though not federal, polity. Making the European institutions fully legitimate and accountable requires the development of political identity in a shape which is different from both national and cultural identity, but is not oppo...

Feeling by Sight or Seeing by Touch?

We have addressed the role of occipital and somatosensory cortex in a tactile discrimination task. Sight-ed and congenitally blind subjects rated the roughness and distance spacing for a series of raised dot patterns. When judging roughness, intermediate dot spacings were perceived as being the most rough, while distance judgments generated a linear relation. Low-frequency rTMS applied to somat...