Attention is necessary for the conscious perception of any object. Objects not attended to are not seen. What is it that captures attention when we are engaged in some attention-absorbing task? Earlier research has shown that there are only a very few stimuli which have this power and therefore are reliably detected under these conditions . The two most reliable are the observer’s own name and a happy face icon which seem to capture attention by virtue of their meaning. Three (...) experiments are described which explore whether these stimuli are detected under conditions, heretofore unexamined, which either cause inattentional blindness or are associated with a perceptual failure associated with the limits of attention. The evidence obtained indicates that these stimuli have a unique capacity to capture and extend the limits of attention under conditions in which this has been deemed highly unlikely. (shrink)

Of course there's every difference in the world between my merely saying something and its being so. My claim that I have a toothache is a far cry from the toothache itself. Words are not things: I neither sit in the word ‘chair’ nor eat the word ‘food.’.

We motivate the desire for self-driving and explain its potential and limitations, and explore the need for—and potential implementation of—morals, ethics, and other value systems as complementary “capabilities” to the Deep Technologies behind self-driving. We consider how the incorporation of such systems may drive or slow adoption of high automation within vehicles. First, we explore the role for morals, ethics, and other value systems in self-driving through a representative hypothetical dilemma faced by a self-driving car. Through the lens of engineering, (...) we explain in simple terms common moral and ethical frameworks including utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics before characterizing their relationship to the fundamental algorithms enabling self-driving. The concepts of behavior cloning, state-based modeling, and reinforcement learning are introduced, with some algorithms being more suitable for the implementation of value systems than others. We touch upon the contemporary cross-disciplinary landscape of morals and ethics in self-driving systems from a joint philosophical and technical perspective, and close with considerations for practitioners and the public, particularly as individuals may not appreciate the nuance and complexity of using imperfect information to navigate diverse scenarios and tough-to-quantify value systems, while “typical” software development reduces complex problems to black and white decision-making. (shrink)

In 19651 Richard Rorty defended a theory of mind which has since come to be called' eliminative materialism'. The theory has attained some status as a distinct, autonomous brand of materialism; and it has been criticized at length in the literature, ... \n.

Heightened concern with global issues has led to shifts in corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. To capture the distinct nature of this global focus, researchers have developed a three-generation CSR typology. In this paper, we first evaluate the usefulness of this typology for understanding corporate approaches to CSR by examining how several companies position themselves thematically in CEO introductions to sustainability reports. On the basis of this, we then evaluate the practical value of this typology for assisting those who work (...) with CSR strategy. The analysis revealed expressions of all three CSR generations, with third-generation thinking being apparent, but not dominant. It also verified that the three-generation CSR typology can be an instructive means of both evaluating as well as framing a company's approach to sustainability, though with modifications. On the basis of the identified strengths and weaknesses of the typology, we develop a practitioner-focused, three-tiered model that can strategically guide the development of CSR programs. (shrink)

International Relations's intellectual history is almost always treated as a history of ideas in isolation from both those discursive and political economies which provide its disciplinary and wider context. This paper contributes to this wider analysis by focusing on the impact of the field's discursive economy. Specifically, using Foucaultian archaeologico-genealogical strategy of problematization to analyse the emergence and disciplinary trajectories of Constructivism in IR, this paper argues that Constructivism has been brought gradually closer to its mainstream Neo-utilitarian counterpart through a (...) process of normalization, and investigates how it was possible for Constructivism to be purged of its early critical potential, both theoretical and practical. The first part of the paper shows how the intellectual configuration of Constructivism and its disciplinary fortunes are inseparable from far-from-unproblematic readings of the Philosophy of Social Science: the choices made at this level are neither as intellectually neutral nor as disciplinarily inconsequential as they are presented. The second and third parts chart the genealogies of Constructivism, showing how its overall normalization occurred in two stages, each revolving around particular practices and events. The second part concentrates on older genealogies, analysing the politics of early classificatory practices regarding Constructivism, and showing how these permitted the distillation and immunization of Constructivism – and thus of the rest of the mainstream scholarship which it was depicted as compatible with – against more radical Postmodernist/Post-structuralist critiques. Finally, the third part focuses attention on recent genealogies, revealing new attempts to reconstruct and reformulate Constructivism: here, indirect neutralization practices such as the elaboration of ‘Pragmatist’ Constructivism, as well as the direct neutralization such as the formulation of ‘Realist’ Constructivism, are key events in Constructivism's normalization. These apparently ‘critical’ alternatives that aim to ‘provide the identity variable’ in fact remain close to Neo-utilitarianism, but their successful representation as ‘critical’ help neutralize calls for greater openness in mainstream IR. Rather than a simple intellectual history, it is this complex process of reading and producing that counts as ‘Constructivism’, which explains both the normalization of Constructivism and the continued marginalization of Postmodernist/Post-structuralist approaches in mainstream IR's infra-disciplinary balance of intellectual power. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 218-219 [Access article in PDF] David Roochnik. Beautiful City: The Dialectical Character of Plato's Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 159. Cloth, $35.00. Plato makes no general assertions, certainly none about "universals" (108). The Republic does not advocate the creation of an ideal state (78, 93) but transcends utopias to acknowledge the merits of democracy and democratic diversity (...) (92). Nor does Plato hold the tripartite psychological theory associated with the Republic (18-20). Such theories are impossible for human souls with their essentially temporal natures (104). The Republic is a dialectical work (2). Its movement shows without Plato's saying it that diversity is a social good; that the psychological theory of Book 4 "is preserved in its partiality as a moment of the dialectical development of the dialogue" (3); and so on.David Roochnik belongs in the tradition of Leo Strauss, unearthing an odd and unknown Republic from beneath the dialogue familiar to hordes of readers (beginning with Aristotle) who evidently read it wrongly. Roochnik brings intelligence to his project, clear writing, and a mind inclined toward originality. Nevertheless Strauss's influence is everywhere. E.g.: The Republic is "a conversation that twists and turns, develops, and at times revises what was earlier said. In its totality it gives voice to the truth about the human soul" (131).Roochnik's main subject is that truth about the soul. He says that the Republic corrects Book 4's tripartite analysis with the temporally oriented psychology told in the anecdotes of Books 8 and 9. The wise reader respects both approaches. The soul is "erotic and therefore necessarily diverse, but... desires arithmetical simplicity," and both diversity and simplicity "must be included in an adequate psychology" (120). "Our souls are... suspended between... time and eternity, the divine and the beastly" (108). The erotic and the arithmetical serve as poles between which Plato navigates. Book 4 proposes a mathematical psychology, but Eros increasingly dominates the Republic and the rigid arithmetic designed to harness Eros fails. Book 4's arithmetical account of the soul is "inadequate, and... it is meant to be inadequate" (19). One should see the soul as arithmetical in one respect, irrepressibly erotic in another.Number plays a defining role in the Platonic city, too (38). Kallipolis battles Eros with an arithmetical ideal but loses (44-45). The failure of arithmetic amounts to the failure of utopia. The Republic "teaches that perfect justice is neither possible (the marriage number fails) nor desirable (we don't really want to exile everybody over ten)" (93). Notice: because "we"—Roochnik and his friends?—don't want to found a city among impressionable children, the Republic teaches that Kallipolis is not desirable.To similar effect: "if Kallipolis were to come into being, then the Republic could not. But since Kallipolis requires the Republic in order to come into being, it contains in itself the seeds of its dissolution" (69). Nonsense! Kallipolis needs the Republic in order to come into existence but not to remain existent. The dialogue's disappearance implies nothing about the city's dissolution.Straussians routinely deny that the Republic constructs its city. Though typical, Roochnik claims not to be (7 n. 4, 75). His reading "is not ironic": "the... revisions I have discussed take place on the surface of the dialogue itself, and the kinds of negations that follow are dialectical ones which... preserve what is negated in its partiality" (91).But garble about surfaces and dialectic will not rescue a hermeneutical method if one begins (Roochnik does, all Straussians do) by calling every flaw in a Platonic argument intentional. That Platonolatry is implausible in itself; it is methodologically shoddy for other reasons too. In the first place, it yields meager results. When every argumentative failure is intentional the Republic becomes platitudinous. Thus Roochnik's dialectical meaning is less memorable than the laziest reader's understanding of the Republic (Forms, cave, archons). He dismisses radical claims as unworthy of Plato but replaces them with the mealy... (shrink)

According to the Stoics, ordinary unified bodies—animals, plants, and inanimate natural bodies—each have a single cause of unity and being: pneuma. Pneuma itself has no distinct cause of unity; on the contrary, it acts as a cause of unity and being for itself. In this paper, I show how pneuma is supposed to be able to unify itself and other bodies in virtue of its characteristic tensile motion (τονικὴ κίνησις). Thus, we will see how the Stoics could have hoped to (...) account for corporeal unity by positing another body (pneuma) apparently itself in need of unification. (shrink)

At Plato’s Phaedrus 270c, Socrates asks whether one can know souls without knowing ‘the whole.’ Phaedrus answers that ‘according to Hippocrates’ the same demand on knowing the whole applies to bodies. What parallel is intended between soul-knowledge and body-knowledge and which medical passages illustrate the analogy have been much debated. Three dominant interpretations read ‘the whole’ as respectively (1) environment, (2) kosmos, and (3) individual soul or body; and adduce supporting Hippocratic passages. But none of these interpretations accounts for the (...) Phaedrus’ rhetorical method. A better reading sees the whole as the genos ‘soul,’ as the Phaedrus’ taxonomies divide that genus. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Acosta, José de (1539–1600) Alberdi, Juan Bautista (1810–84) Bello, Andrés (1781–1865) Bilbao, Francisco (1823–65) Bolkvar, Simón (1783–1830) Casas, Bartolomé de las (1484–1566) Caso, Antonio (1883–1946) Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la (1651–95) da Costa, Newton Carneiro Affonso (b. 1929) Dussel, Enrique (b. 1934) Frondizi, Risieri (1910–83) Gaos, José (1900–69) González Prada, Manuel (1848–1918) Gracia, Jorge J. E. (b. 1942) Haya de la Torre, Victor Raúl (1895–1979) Hostos, Eugenio Marka de (1839–1903) Ingenieros, José (1877–1925) Korn, Alejandro (...) (1860–1936) Lastarria, José Victorino (1817–88) Lemos, Miguel (1854–1917) Mariátegui, José Carlos (1895–1930) Martk, José (1853–95) Méndez Sierra, Justo (1848–1912) Mora, José Maria Luis (1794–1850) Miró Quesada, Francisco (b. 1918) Rabossi, Eduardo (1930–2005) Ramos, Samuel (1897–1959) Rodó, José Enrique (1872–1917) Romero, Francisco (1891–1962) Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de (1499–1590) Salazar Bondy, Augusto (1925–74) Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (1811–88) Ofelia Schutte (b. 1945) Sepslveda, Juan Ginés de (ca. 1494–1573) Torretti, Roberto (b. 1930) Vasconcelos, José (1882–1959) Vaz Ferreira, Carlos (1872–1958) Villoro, Luis (b. 1922) Vitoria, Francisco de (ca. 1483–1546) Zea Aguilar, Leopoldo (1912–2004) Acknowledgment Further Reading. (shrink)

Supervaluational accounts of vagueness have come under assault from Timothy Williamson for failing to provide either a sufficiently classical logic or a disquotational notion of truth, and from Crispin Wright and others for incorporating a notion of higher-order vagueness, via the determinacy operator, which leads to contradiction when combined with intuitively appealing ‘gap principles’. We argue that these criticisms of supervaluation theory depend on giving supertruth an unnecessarily central role in that theory as the sole notion of truth, rather than (...) as one mode of truth. Allowing for the co-existence of supertruth and local truth, we define a notion of local entailment in supervaluation theory, and show that the resulting logic is fully classical and allows for the truth of the gap principles. Finally, we argue that both supertruth and local truth are disquotational, when disquotational principles are properly understood. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a literary-critical reading of Modernity and the Holocaust, arguing that Bauman’s non-Hobbesian ethics is linked to a form of Orphic authorship. I contextualize this reading with a study of three literary authors: W.G. Sebald, Peter Weiss and Janina Bauman, and their respective versions of this post-Holocaust authorship. At stake is the drama of the forbidden gaze, the moment when Orpheus turns to look at Eurydice, killing her a second time. Using Levinas’ ethics and his scenario (...) of recognition, Bauman re-writes this fateful gaze as a loving gaze, implicitly proposing a counter-model to the Schmittian gaze — always ready to recognize the enemy, always ready to kill. (shrink)

This paper considers what function—if any—colocation of bodies may have in the Stoic theory of blending (κρᾶσις), by examining (1) whether colocation is part of the definition of what blending is; and (2) whether colocation is posited by the Stoics as a requirement necessary for the definition to be satisfied. I reconstruct the standard, Chrysippean definition of blending, and I show that the answer to (1) is ‘no’; further, I argue that the evidence gives no reason to affirm (2). Thus, (...) it appears that colocation does not have a central function in the Stoic theory of blending. (shrink)

By drawing on testimonies gathered in rural Vietnam, this article focuses on the violence to which local inhabitants were subjected when Vietnam was under French rule. On a self-imposed ‘civilizing mission’, the control of local bodies was critical for the colonial powers and they became the subject of brutal abuse. Violence was exercised with impunity in the occupied areas and rendered ‘logic’ in accordance with western imaginations about racial superiority. While such ideas informed colonial terror in general, the differentiated registers (...) of terror implemented in regard to women and men disclose how sovereign attempts of reducing local inhabitants to bare life were designed, in addition to race, along the lines of gender and sexuality. Vietnamese testimonies from the French colonial period reveal experiences of a reality of horror which in the article is considered through the prism of four different body typologies; typologies which elucidate the symbolic, physical, and imaginary metamorphoses through which women and men in differentiated ways were being increasingly dehumanized in the encounter with the colonial power. (shrink)

In Stoic physics, blending (κρᾶσις) is the relation between active pneuma and passive matter; natural bodies from rocks and logs to plants, animals and the cosmos itself are blends of pneuma and matter. Blending structures the Stoic cosmos. I develop a new interpretation of the Stoic theory of blending, based on passages from Hierocles. The theory of blending, I argue, has been misunderstood. Hierocles allows us to see in detail how the theory is supposed to work and how it fits (...) into Stoic physics. (shrink)

Based on a design-based research project and long-term observations of children’s play in school, this article develops the concept of play order, which points to interaction, coherence and holistic orientation as central values for the approach to play in school. Through concrete empirical analysis, the article shows how play in school is established and maintained, and how school as context interacts with play, which is often in ways that undermine the space and opportunities play is given. Based on existing research, (...) the article is critical of the tendency to accord a secondary role to play in school or to instrumentalize play as a didactic tool for learning. The article links to existing play theory, but at the same time develops the concept of play order, through an ecosystemic understanding, which makes it possible to look holistically at how play in school can be integrated and provided for. Considering that more and more pedagogues are working in schools and directly involved in teaching, and afterschool clubs are increasingly handling schooling tasks, the authors of the article argue that play is worthy of recognition in both practice and theory. (shrink)

Watersheds constitute a special case of multiple-use common pool resources (CPRs). In a textual sense, watersheds tend to be mosaics of privately owned and managed patches of land. At the same time, however, watersheds are also ecosystems in which multiple resources and people interact through an infinity of bio-physical processes. Through such interaction, new watershed-level qualities emerge that, together with other factors, condition watershed users' continued resource use and access. In this perspective, watersheds become common-pool resources. Hence, watershed users do (...) not only manage their individual plots, crops, forests, etc., knowingly or not, they manage landscape patterns and bio-physical processes that transcend their private property. In this context, drawing on experiences gained through participatory action research in a micro-watershed in the Andean hillsides of southern Colombia, this paper describes a process aimed at fostering collective watershed management. The paper illustrates the importance of platforms as a mechanism for negotiating and coordinating collective action by multiple users and discusses the issues of representation on such platforms as well as the importance of third party facilitation. (shrink)

Watersheds constitute a special case of multiple-use common pool resources (CPRs). In a textual sense, watersheds tend to be mosaics of privately owned and managed patches of land. At the same time, however, watersheds are also ecosystems in which multiple resources and people interact through an infinity of bio-physical processes. Through such interaction, new watershed-level qualities emerge that, together with other factors, condition watershed users' continued resource use and access. In this perspective, watersheds become common-pool resources. Hence, watershed users do (...) not only manage their individual plots, crops, forests, etc., knowingly or not, they manage landscape patterns and bio-physical processes that transcend their private property. In this context, drawing on experiences gained through participatory action research in a micro-watershed in the Andean hillsides of southern Colombia, this paper describes a process aimed at fostering collective watershed management. The paper illustrates the importance of platforms as a mechanism for negotiating and coordinating collective action by multiple users and discusses the issues of representation on such platforms as well as the importance of third party facilitation. (shrink)

John Dewey, widely known as "America's philosopher," provided important insights into education and political philosophy, but surprisingly never set down a complete moral or ethical philosophy. Gregory Fernando Pappas presents the first systematic and comprehensive treatment of Dewey's ethics. By providing a pluralistic account of moral life that is both unified and coherent, Pappas considers ethics to be key to an understanding of Dewey's other philosophical insights, especially his views on democracy. Pappas unfolds Dewey's ethical vision by looking carefully at (...) the virtues and values of ideal character and community. Showing that Dewey's ethics are compatible with the rest of his philosophy, Pappas corrects the reputation of American pragmatism as a philosophy committed to skepticism and relativism. Readers will find a robust and boldly detailed view of Dewey's ethics in this groundbreaking book. (shrink)

Cultural rights constitute one of the most exciting new frontiers of human rights research and practice. Cultural rights are also the ultimate law and humanities topic. These are good enough reasons for making cultural rights the main focus of a book. But there are other reasons, too. Cultural rights are both transformative and empowering rights. They enable people to aspire to a better future for themselves, their families, and the society in which they live, and they play a key role (...) in realizing all other human rights. Furthermore, they provide a much-needed discourse or common forum in which we can explore, negotiate, and come to new cross-cultural understandings. All of this is supremely important today, at a time when respect for cultural diversity is a key concern worldwide, and when migration and advances in technology are increasing the level of cultural exchange but also fostering cultural clashes and incompatibilities previously masked by distance. (shrink)

The Standard Progressive Matrices test was standardized in Estonia on a representative sample of 4874 schoolchildren aged from 7 to 19 years. When the IQ of Estonian children was expressed in relation to British and Icelandic norms, both demonstrated a similar sigmoid relationship. The youngest Estonian group scored higher than the British and Icelandic norms: after first grade, the score fell below 100 and remained lower until age 12, and after that age it increased above the mean level of these (...) two comparison countries. The difference between the junior school children and the secondary school children may be due to schooling, sampling error or different trajectories of intellectual maturation in different populations. Systematic differences in the growth pattern suggest that the development of intellectual capacities proceeds at different rates and the maturation process can take longer in some populations than in others. (shrink)

This volume contains the English translation of Felix Kaufmann's (1895-1945) main work Methodenlehre der Sozialwissenschaften (1936). In this book, Kaufmann develops a general theory of knowledge of the social sciences in his role as a cross-border commuter between Husserl's phenomenology, Kelsen's pure theory of law and the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. This multilayered inquiry connects the value-oriented reflections of a general philosophy of science with the specificity of the methods and theories of the social sciences, as opposed to (...) abstract natural science and psychology. The core focus of the study is the attempt to elucidate how and under what conditions scientific knowledge about social facts, empirically justified and theoretically embedded, can be obtained. The empirical basis of knowledge within the social sciences forms a phenomenological concept of experience. According to Kaufmann, this concept of experience exhibits a complex structure. Within the meaning-interpretation of human action as the core of knowledge in the social sciences, this structure reaches out across the isolated act of verification toward the synthesis of external and internal experiences. The book opens with a detailed and useful introduction by Ingeborg K. Helling, which introduces the historical and theoretical background of Kaufmann's study and specifically illuminates his relation to Alfred Schütz and John Dewey. Finally, it contains interviews with and letters to members of his family, colleagues and students. (shrink)

Anti-introduction: Paint it Black -- PART I: MESSAGES IN A BOTTLE: AESTHETIC THEORY CONTRA CRITICAL THEORY -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Critical Messages in a Bottle and Restoration -- 3. Excursus I: The Prevalence of a View: Being Uncompromisingly Critical at the Grand Hotel Abyss -- 4. Excursus II: The Prevalence of a View: 'Don't participate:' The Politics of Social Praxis -- 5. Aesthetic Messages in a Bottle and Progress -- 6. Messages in a Bottle as the Work of Art (...) -- PART II: ART ITSELF THINKS: THE POLITICS OF AESTHETIC (MIS-)EDUCATION -- 7. Introduction -- 8. The Politics of Artistic Practice: 'What artist isn't socially engaged?' -- 9. The Politics of Spectatorship: Shocking Spectators -- 10. The Politics of Aesthetic (Mis-)Education -- 11. Contemporary Art Itself Thinking: Making the Invisible Visible? -- Anti-conclusion: The Russian Ending. (shrink)