he design-based approach is a methodology for investigating mechanisms capable of generating mental phenomena, whether introspectively or externally observed, and whether they occur in humans, other animals or robots. The study of designs satisfying requirements for autonomous agency can provide new deep theoretical insights at the information processing level of description of mental mechanisms. Designs for working systems (whether on paper or implemented on computers) can systematically explicate old explanatory concepts and generate new concepts that allow new and richer interpretations (...) of human phenomena. To illustrate this, some aspects of human grief are analysed in terms of a particular information processing architecture being explored in our research group. We do not claim that this architecture is part of the causal structure of the human mind; rather, it represents an early stage in the iterative search for a deeper and more general architecture, capable of explaining more phenomena. However even the current early design provides an interpretative ground for some familiar phenomena, including characteristic features of certain emotional episodes, particularly the phenomenon of perturbance (a partial or total loss of control of attention). The paper attempts to expound and illustrate the design-based approach to cognitive science and philosophy, to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of the approach in generating interpretative possibilities, and to provide first steps towards an information processing account of `perturbant', emotional episodes. (shrink)

While slowness of movement is an obligatory characteristic of Parkinson’s disease (PD), there are conditions in which patients move uncharacteristically fast, attributed to deficient motor inhibition. Here we investigate deficient inhibition in an optimal sensory-motor integration framework, using a game in which subjects used a paddle to catch a virtual ball. Display of the ball was extinguished as soon as the catching movement started, segregating the task into a sensing and acting phase. We analyzed the behavior of 9 PD patients (...) (ON medication) and 10 age-matched controls (HC). The switching times (between sensing and acting phase) were compared to the predicted optimal switching time, based on the individual estimates of sensory and motor uncertainties. The comparison showed that deviation from predicted optimal switching times were similar between groups. However, PD patients showed a weaker correlation between variability in switching time and sensory-motor uncertainty, indicating a reduced propensity to generate exploratory behavior for optimizing goal-directed movements. Analysis of the movement kinematics revealed that PD patients, compared to controls, used a lower peak velocity of the paddle and intercepted the ball with greater velocity. Adjusting the trial duration to the time for the paddle to stop moving, we found that PD patients spent a smaller proportion of the trial duration for observing the ball. Altogether, the results do not show the premature movement initiation and truncated sensory processing that we predicted to ensue from deficient inhibition in PD. (shrink)

Critical evaluations of the current movement of corporate social responsibility commodification have neglected an important question: How do CSR professionals manage the tensions resulting from the search for both profit and social responsibility? This article addresses this question by analyzing the discourse of CSR consultants with the aim of understanding how they deal with such tensions through identity work. Our findings suggest that people who claim, or who are ascribed, paradoxical professional identities may engage in ‘paradoxical identity mitigation’ – a (...) process whereby the concomitant and paradoxical use of linguistic strategies is aimed at simultaneously embracing and distancing oneself from contradictory identity demands. In uncovering how CSR professionals discursively manage the tensions engendered by CSR commodification, our results also advance current knowledge of CSR by shedding light on the underlying processes whereby new ‘hybrid’ identities are constituted and mobilized by actors to make sense of their professional activities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to the CommentariesIan Wright, Aaron Sloman, and Luc BeaudoinWe are very grateful for the care with which the commentators have read our paper, and the sympathy with which they treated what we acknowledged to be at best a preliminary attempt to make sense of a range of phenomena involving grief and other emotions in terms of our draft architecture. We are fortunate to have commentators that are so (...) much in sympathy with what we have written.The comments of Castelfranchi and Miceli draw attention to a problem that we expect many readers to bring up, namely that there is a notion of “information processing” that cannot carry the explanatory weight that we attach to our information processing architecture. We believe that there is a concept of “information processing” such as is used by engineers who design software systems to perform such tasks as controlling an aircraft. We claim that within an appropriate system architecture, information processing states can have all the causal powers that we require for states like pain, pleasure, and the like. However this is not obvious, and defending this claim will have to await another occasion.Lloyd helpfully illustrates the relevance of our proposed architecture even to the effects of imagining the death of a loved one. He also makes the useful observation that second-order states can arise when a person who is suffering because events violate some important motivator, discovers that nothing can be done about the cause of the suffering, and then suffers even more because of feeling helpless in that situation. We acknowledge that these are phenomena that the architecture will have to accommodate, and accept the challenge to demonstrate this in due course.We believe that there is enough commonality between the commentators and ourselves to support our view that the research community is on the verge of an important new breakthrough in the study of mind, in which philosophers, psychologists, therapists, brain scientists, and AI researchers can collaborate fruitfully, and from which profound practical and theoretical consequences will follow.Related ArticlesFeature Article: Towards a Design-Based Analysis of Emotional EpisodesCommentary: Commentary by LloydCommentary: Commentary by Miceli and CastelfranchiCommentary: Commentary by BodenResponse: Response to the CommentariesCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Avoiding whinges from various and potentially conflicting stakeholders is a major challenge for sustainable development and for the identification of sustainability scenarios or policies for biodiversity and ecosystem services. It turns out that independently complying with whinge thresholds and constraints of these stakeholders is not sufficient because dynamic ecological-economic interactions and uncertainties occur. Thus more demanding no whinge standards are needed. In this paper, we first argue that these new boundaries can be endogenously exhibited with the mathematical concepts of viability (...) kernel and viable controls. Second, it is shown how these no whinge kernels have components, such as harvesting of resources, that should remain within safe corridor while some other components, in particular biodiversity, have only lower conservation limits. Thus, using radar charts, we show how this no whinge kernels can take the shape of a tree that we name viability tree. These trees of viability capture the idea that the unbounded renewal potential of biodiversity combined with a bounded use of the different ecosystem services are crucial ingredients for the sustainability of socio-ecosystems and the design of no whinge policies reconciling the different stakeholders involved. (shrink)

We show that either PFA + or Martin's maximum implies Fleissner's Axiom R, a reflection principle for stationary subsets of P ℵ 1 (λ). In fact, the "plus version" (for one term denoting a stationary set) of Martin's axiom for countably closed partial orders implies Axiom R.

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

As an alternative to universalism and particularism, Intermedialities: Philosophy, Arts, Politics proposes "intermedialities" as a new model of social relations and intercultural dialogue. The concept of "intermedialities" stresses the necessity of situating debates concerning social relations in the divergent contexts of new media and avant-garde artistic practices as well as feminist, political, and philosophical analyses.

I provide a taxonomy of the various circumstances under which one might reasonably say "P and I will believe that not-P" or violate the Reflection Principle.

There is a cognitive, an affective, a conative, and an attitudinal component to a genuine apology. In discussing these components, I address the following questions. Might apologies be due for non-culpable actions? Might apologies be due for choices in moral dilemmas? What is the link between sympathy, remorse and making amends? Is it meaningful for resilient akratics to apologize? How much moral renewal is required when one apologizes? Why should apologies be offered in a humble manner? And is there some (...) truth to P. G. Wodehouse's dictum that 'the right sort of people do not want apologies'? (shrink)

Currently, the widely used notion of activity is increasingly present in computer science. However, because this notion is used in specific contexts, it becomes vague. Here, the notion of activity is scrutinized in various contexts and, accordingly, put in perspective. It is discussed through four scientific disciplines: computer science, biology, economics, and epistemology. The definition of activity usually used in simulation is extended to new qualitative and quantitative definitions. In computer science, biology and economics disciplines, the new simulation activity definition (...) is first applied critically. Then, activity is discussed generally. In epistemology, activity is discussed, in a prospective way, as a possible framework in models of human beliefs and knowledge. (shrink)

We study function fields over p-adically closed fields in the first-order language of fields. Using ideas of Duret [D], we show that the field of constants is definable, and that the genus is an elementary property.

"Proceedings of the fourth Benelux-Scandinavian Symposium on Legal Theory."--T.p.

We study first-order properties of the quotient rings C(V)/P by a prime ideal P, where C(V) is the ring of p-adic valued continuous definable functions on some affine p-adic variety V. We show that they are integrally closed Henselian local rings, with a p-adically closed residue field and field of fractions, and they are not valuation rings in general but always satisfy ∀ x, y(x|y 2 ∨ y|x 2 ).

In “Judy Benjamin is a Sleeping Beauty” (2010) Bovens recognises a certain similarity between the Sleeping Beauty (SB) and the Judy Benjamin (JB). But he does not recognise the dissimilarity between underlying protocols (as spelled out in Shafer (1985). Protocols are expressed in conditional probability tables that spell out the probability of coming to learn various propositions conditional on the actual state of the world. The principle of total evidence requires that we not update on the content of the proposition (...) learned but rather on the fact that we learn the proposition in question. Now attention to protocols drives a wedge between the SB and the JB. We have shown that the solution to a close variant of the SB which involves a clear protocol is P*(Heads) = 1/3 and since Beauty’s has precisely the same information at her disposal in the original SB at the time that she is asked to state her credence for Heads, the same solution should hold. The solution to the JB, on the other hand, is dependent on Judy’s probability distribution over protocols. One reasonable protocol yields P(Red) = 1/2, but Judy could also defend alternative values or a range of values in the interval [1/3, 1/2] depending on her probability distribution over protocols. (shrink)

Les treize articles relatifs au premier thème analysent l'émergence ou la diffusion, encore difficile, de l'idée nationale dans l'Italie post unitaire, en particulier à travers la multiplication des statues de Dante, les campagnes militaires, souvent malheureuses, et les liens entre la représentation de la hiérarchie des pouvoirs et des classes sociales, et leur pouvoir politique effectif, à l'occasin de l'Exposition universelle de Milan en 1906. Trois questions sont privilégiées. La n...

Given two strings, text t of length n, and pattern p = p1…pk of length k, and given a natural number w, the subsequence matching problem consists in finding the number of size w windows of text t which contain pattern p as a subsequence, i.e. the letters p1,…,pk occur in the window, in the same order as in p, but not necessarily consecutively . Subsequence matching is used for finding frequent patterns and association rules in databases. We generalize the (...) Knuth–Morris–Pratt pattern matching algorithm; we define a non-conventional kind of RAM, the MP-RAMs which model more closely the microprocessor operations; we design an O on-line algorithm for solving the subsequence matching problem on MP-RAMs. (shrink)

P.H. Spaak and P. Harmel originnally were differently indoctrinated. They had very little in common, except that they both were brilliant diplomats. In addition they had the ability to lead Belgiums foreign policy. But due to Belgiums international context, «The continuation» was the most characteristic guidline in both men's successive policy. Owing to the force of circumstances, it is certainly not paradoxical that Belgium's options in the field of foreign policy are in any case limited.

Cet article a déjà paru dans le Bulletin de l'Association de géographes français, 2009-3, p. 345-357. Résumé : La communication s'inscrit dans le cadre d'une approche spatio-temporelle des systèmes urbains développée depuis une dizaine d'années autour des figures urbaines contemporaines déjà présentées de « la ville 24h/24 », de « la ville éphémère », « festive » ou « événementielle », de la « ville en mouvement » et de « la ville à la carte ». Une première typologie des (...) événements est proposée qui oblige à - Géographie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

An understanding of factors influencing the decision of rural people to keep sheep and/or goats is crucial when formulating technologies and policies that support village-based small ruminant production. The knowledge of such factors will also improve assessment of impact intervention strategies on the livelihoods of rural people. Structured questionnaires administered in 228 households were used to study the ownership patterns of small ruminants in southern Benin. The ownership of goats was higher (91%) than sheep (35%) because goats are not affected (...) by any ethnic or cultural restrictions. Goats are also perceived to be a less risky to invest into compared to sheep. Women represented 71% of the keepers of goats. Predictive models of ownership were developed using logistic regression. The results showed that younger household members (p < 0.05) especially young women (60%) are more likely to own small ruminants. Owners of small ruminants are less likely to be involved in off-farm activities and would often have no access to credit facilities. Gender, ethnicity, and perception of risk associated with species are the major factors affecting people’s choice of species. These findings highlight the financing and insurance roles that small ruminants, particularly goats, are playing in the study area. In order to develop suitable technologies and formulate policies to improve productivity and enhance livelihoods, the constraints to goat production need to be identified, and the local knowledge of the keepers should be investigated. (shrink)

Ce Livre de P. Ricoeur constitue, en fait, comme son titre l'indique une prise de position contre ceux qui, à l'instar de J. Derrida, font des concepts philosophiques des métaphores mortes, abolissant ainsi la spécificité du discours philosophique. Á la métaphore morte, «celle qui ne se dit pas, mais qui se dissimule dans la «releve» du concept qui se dit», P. Ricoeur oppose la metaphore vive qu'il définit ainsi: «La métaphore n'est pas vive seulement en ce qu'elle vivifie un langage (...) constitué. La métaphore est vive en ce qu'elle inscrit l'élan de l'imagination dans un « penser plus » au niveau du concept. » Les positions sont done claires: d'un côté, la métaphore morte qui dissout le discours philosophique, et de 1'autre, la métaphore vive qui en constitue le fondement dynamique. (shrink)