In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 65-70 [Access article in PDF] Top-Down and Bottom-Up in Delusion Formation Jakob Hohwy Keywords delusions, top-down, bottom-up, predictive coding Some delusions may arise as responses to unusual experiences (Davies et al. 2001; Maher 1974;). The implication is that delusion formation in some cases involves some kind of bottom-up mechanism—roughly, from perception to belief. Delusion formation may also involve some kind (...) of top-down mechanism. This could be in the shape of a patient's flawed background beliefs, or biases, which somehow modulate perception or ensure delusional interpretations of experience. There is little agreement about what kind of mechanism is primary in delusion formation, or, indeed, what the particular mechanisms and their neural substrates might be.In the evaluation of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in delusion formation, a number of conceptual questions should be addressed (Davies and Coltheart 2000). For example, if there is an experiential component, why is a hypothesis with a delusional explanation of the unusual experience seen as relevant? Why do the subjects come to believe it tenaciously? How come some unusual experiences do not develop into delusions?A number of empirical findings also need to be taken into account: for example, the damage to the autonomic system in Capgras delusion (Ellis et al. 1997), the decreased ability for fast error correction in schizophrenia (Frith and Done 1989), modulation of activity in parietal cortex in delusions of alien control and other passivity experiences (Blakemore, Oakley, and Frith 2003), and also in schizophrenia, the increased sensitivity to self-produced stimuli, such as tickling oneself (Blakemore et al. 2000) and the sound of one's own voice (Ford et al. 2001).Theory choice can also be guided by philosophical doctrines about, for example, the nature of belief, the constitutive role of rationality, and intersubjectivity and the nature of judgements about the external world. It is natural, however, to let beliefs about philosophical doctrine be secondary to empirical findings and conceptual issues.The distinction between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms is particularly sharp in John Campbell's (2001) account of delusions and in Tim Bayne and Elisabeth Pacherie's (2004) discussion of Campbell. In this discussion, top-down approaches are associated with the general philosophical doctrine of rationalism, and bottom-up approaches with the philosophical doctrine of empiricism. Campbell's account is top-down because he posits delusional framework beliefs that arise directly as a result of brain damage or malfunction, and that work in some top-down fashion on the interpretation of experience. Bayne [End Page 65] and Pacherie convincingly defend empiricism against Campbell's rationalist account. Among their many other objections, they briefly puzzle about how a delusional framework belief (e.g., that one's spouse is an impostor) in a top-down fashion could cause the damage to the autonomic system seen in the Capgras and Cotard delusions (2004, 1). I think this is a very important objection because skin conductance data are part of the evidence for the bottom-up hypothesis concerning the Capgras delusion. We could add to this, for example, that it is mysterious how belief in a top-down fashion could cause people with schizophrenia to be worse at fast error correction than normal controls, to be better at tickling themselves than normal controls, and to have an increased response to the sound of their own voice.On the other hand, although the skin conductance response (SCR) evidence suggests a bottom-up approach to the Capgras delusion, it does not explain the character of the subjective experience that is hypothesized to give rise to the delusional belief: reduced SCR is not part of the experience itself (thanks to Ian Gold for discussion of this). Something more is required to give a full account of the type of experience that gives rise to the delusion. Further, as they stand, most bottom-up accounts are unable to account for why reality testing fails for beliefs based on these experiences.Neither rationalism nor empiricism on their own seem able to address the conceptual questions while paying... (shrink)

A bottom-up approach grounded in micro-level understanding of the thinking, feeling, behavioral, and social aspects of living with low income and associated low literacy can lead to greater understanding and improvement of interactions in the health arena. This paper draws on what we have learned about marketplace interactions in subsistence economies to inform innovations in medical education, design and delivery of healthcare for lowincome patients, outreach education, and future micro-level research at the human-healthcare interface.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 65-70 [Access article in PDF] Top-Down and Bottom-Up in Delusion Formation Jakob Hohwy Keywords delusions, top-down, bottom-up, predictive coding Some delusions may arise as responses to unusual experiences (Davies et al. 2001; Maher 1974;). The implication is that delusion formation in some cases involves some kind of bottom-up mechanism—roughly, from perception to belief. Delusion formation may also involve some kind (...) of top-down mechanism. This could be in the shape of a patient's flawed background beliefs, or biases, which somehow modulate perception or ensure delusional interpretations of experience. There is little agreement about what kind of mechanism is primary in delusion formation, or, indeed, what the particular mechanisms and their neural substrates might be.In the evaluation of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in delusion formation, a number of conceptual questions should be addressed (Davies and Coltheart 2000). For example, if there is an experiential component, why is a hypothesis with a delusional explanation of the unusual experience seen as relevant? Why do the subjects come to believe it tenaciously? How come some unusual experiences do not develop into delusions?A number of empirical findings also need to be taken into account: for example, the damage to the autonomic system in Capgras delusion (Ellis et al. 1997), the decreased ability for fast error correction in schizophrenia (Frith and Done 1989), modulation of activity in parietal cortex in delusions of alien control and other passivity experiences (Blakemore, Oakley, and Frith 2003), and also in schizophrenia, the increased sensitivity to self-produced stimuli, such as tickling oneself (Blakemore et al. 2000) and the sound of one's own voice (Ford et al. 2001).Theory choice can also be guided by philosophical doctrines about, for example, the nature of belief, the constitutive role of rationality, and intersubjectivity and the nature of judgements about the external world. It is natural, however, to let beliefs about philosophical doctrine be secondary to empirical findings and conceptual issues.The distinction between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms is particularly sharp in John Campbell's (2001) account of delusions and in Tim Bayne and Elisabeth Pacherie's (2004) discussion of Campbell. In this discussion, top-down approaches are associated with the general philosophical doctrine of rationalism, and bottom-up approaches with the philosophical doctrine of empiricism. Campbell's account is top-down because he posits delusional framework beliefs that arise directly as a result of brain damage or malfunction, and that work in some top-down fashion on the interpretation of experience. Bayne [End Page 65] and Pacherie convincingly defend empiricism against Campbell's rationalist account. Among their many other objections, they briefly puzzle about how a delusional framework belief (e.g., that one's spouse is an impostor) in a top-down fashion could cause the damage to the autonomic system seen in the Capgras and Cotard delusions (2004, 1). I think this is a very important objection because skin conductance data are part of the evidence for the bottom-up hypothesis concerning the Capgras delusion. We could add to this, for example, that it is mysterious how belief in a top-down fashion could cause people with schizophrenia to be worse at fast error correction than normal controls, to be better at tickling themselves than normal controls, and to have an increased response to the sound of their own voice.On the other hand, although the skin conductance response (SCR) evidence suggests a bottom-up approach to the Capgras delusion, it does not explain the character of the subjective experience that is hypothesized to give rise to the delusional belief: reduced SCR is not part of the experience itself (thanks to Ian Gold for discussion of this). Something more is required to give a full account of the type of experience that gives rise to the delusion. Further, as they stand, most bottom-up accounts are unable to account for why reality testing fails for beliefs based on these experiences.Neither rationalism nor empiricism on their own seem able to address the conceptual questions while paying... (shrink)

A brief account is given of the author's life as a physicist and then a priest. The twin foundations of the author's theological endeavors have been a respect for traditional Christian thinking, though not exempting it from revision where this is needed, and a style of argument termed bottom‐up thinking, which seeks to proceed from experience to understanding. The diversity of the world faith traditions is perceived as a major source of perplexity. A revised and modest natural (...) theology and the issue of divine action have been at the top of a science and theology agenda. A defense is sketched in realist terms of the metaphysical strategy of using an ontological interpretation of the unpredictabilities of chaos theory to support a notion of top‐down causality through active information. The success of Christian theology as a resource of total explanation depends on a credible account of eschatological hope. Reference is made to practical experience of ethics in the public square. (shrink)

The exploration of penal censure in this book is inspired by the fortieth anniversary in 2016 of the publication of Andreas von Hirsch's Doing Justice, which opened up a fresh set of issues in theorisation about punishment that eventually led von Hirsch to ground his proposed model of desert-based sentencing on the notion of penal censure. Von Hirsch's work thus provides an obvious starting-point for an exploration of the importance of censure for the justification of punishment, both within von Hirsch's (...) theory of just deserts and from the perspectives of other theoretical approaches. It also provides an opportunity for engaging with censure more broadly from philosophical, sociological-anthropological and individual-psychological perspectives. The essays in this collection map the conceptual territory of censure from these different perspectives, address issues for desert theory that arise from fuller understandings of censure, and consider afresh the role of censure within the jurisprudence of punishment. They show that analyses of censure from different vantage points can significantly enrich punishment theory, not least by providing a conceptual basis for perceiving common ground between and thus connecting different strands of penal theory. (shrink)

In this statement, the author poses a number of questions that he believes John Polkinghorne left untouched in his response to Pannenberg's article “God as Spirit—and Natural Science.” These questions include the role of philosophy in the interaction between theology and science, the concepts of space and time as prior to measurement, the relation between top‐down and bottom‐up thinking, and the concept of field.

The current interaction of science and theology is surveyed. Modern physics describes a world of intrinsic unpredictability and deep relationality. Theology provides answers to the metaquestions of why that world is rationally transparent and rationally beautiful and why it is so finely tuned for carbon‐based life. Biology's fundamental insight of evolutionary process is to be understood theologically as creation “making itself.” In the twenty‐first century, biology may be expected to move beyond the merely mechanical. Neuroscience will not have much useful (...) interaction with theology until it attains theories of wide explanatory scope. Computer models of the brain do not meet this requirement. A theological style of bottom‐up thinking comes closest to scientific habits of thought. Complexity theory suggests that information will prove to be an increasingly important scientific concept, encouraging theology to revive the Thomistic notion of the soul as the form of the body. Another gift of science to theology will lie in providing a meeting point for the encounter of the world faith traditions. (shrink)

This paper argues that Moore's specifist defence of critical thinking as ‘diverse modes of thought in the disciplines’, which appeared in Higher Education Research & Development, 30(3), 2011, is flawed as it entrenches relativist attitudes toward the important skill of critical thinking. The paper outlines the critical thinking debate, distinguishes between ‘top-down’, ‘bottom-up’ and ‘relativist’ approaches and locates Moore's account therein. It uses examples from one discipline-specific area, namely, the discipline of Literature, to show that the (...) generalist approach to critical thinking does not ‘leave something out’ and outlines why teaching ‘generic’ critical thinking skills is central to tertiary education, teaching and learning, and employment opportunities for students. The paper also defends the assessment of critical thinking skills. (shrink)

In ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Turing, sceptical of the question ‘Can machines think?’, quickly replaces it with an experimentally verifiable test: the imitation game. I suggest that for such a move to be successful the test needs to be relevant, expansive, solvable by exemplars, unpredictable, and lead to actionable research. The Imitation Game is only partially successful in this regard and its reliance on language, whilst insightful for partially solving the problem, has put AI progress on the wrong foot, prescribing (...) a top-down approach for building thinking machines. I argue that to fix shortcomings with modern AI systems a nonverbal operationalisation is required. This is provided by the recent Animal-AI Testbed, which translates animal cognition tests for AI and provides a bottom-up research pathway for building thinking machines that create predictive models of their environment from sensory input. (shrink)

Whether active and passive, top-down and bottom-up, or endogenous and exogenous, attention is typically divided into two types. To show the relationship between attention and other functions (sleep, memory, learning), one needs to show whether the type of attention in question is of the active or passive variety. However, the division between active and passive is not sharp in any area of consciousness research. In phenomenology, the experience of voluntariness is taken to indicate activity, but this experience is often (...) confused with others. In psychology, task-dependent behavior is taken to indicate activity, but is often conflated with complex automatic behavior. In neuroscience, top-down processes are taken to exclusively indicate activity despite the fact that both top-down and bottom-up activations are always present in the brain. Moreover, work in attention has shown that the results of so-called passive and active processes are sometimes inseparable. Carrasco, et al. (2004), for example, show that active attention results in the same change in perceptual contrast that is enacted by bottom-up mechanisms. Likewise, Reynolds and Desimone (2003) show that top-down and bottom-up attention effect neural contrast in the same way. Thus, the passive-active distinction does not seem to neatly separate two types of attention. Perhaps a more convincing model of attention combines active and passive processing into a single mechanism of control. One such potential model is what we call the Unitary Saliency Map Model, first suggested by Koch and Ullman (1985) and developed by Treue (2003). In such a model, top-down and bottom-up processes each feed into the same saliency map, from which attention is controlled. We argue that this makes sense of the phenomenological, psychological, and neuroscientific data. Finally, the acceptance of such a model will force us to review some of our previous findings on attention and its relation to consciousness. (shrink)

This article evaluates the moral implications of two leading theories on biodiversity preservation/conservation (Paul Taylor's biocentric egalitarianism and J. Baird Callicott's holistic communitarianism). Taylor argues for the moral equality of all members of the Earth's community of life, calling for an ethic of respect for nature to conserve biodiversity. Callicott argues for the moral consideration of ecosystems to maintain their integrity, stability, and beauty. The article makes two major claims. First, we need a plausible account of moral egalitarianism to disrupt (...) ethical anthropocentrism. Second, the ethics of respect for nature requires a critical bottom-up character-based ethical theory to be morally forceful. These missing elements are central to the ubuntu philosophy about personhood and are significant for enriching egalitarian-communitarian solutions to biodiversity loss. (shrink)

Experiments in particle physics have hitherto failed to produce any significant evidence for the many explicit models of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) that had been proposed over the past decades. As a result, physicists have increasingly turned to model-independent strategies as tools in searching for a wide range of possible BSM effects. In this paper, we describe the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SM-EFT) and analyse it in the context of the philosophical discussions about models, theories, and ( (...) class='Hi'>bottom-up) effective field theories. We find that while the SM-EFT is a quantum field theory, assisting experimentalists in searching for deviations from the SM, in its general form it lacks some of the characteristic features of models. Those features only come into play if put in by hand or prompted by empirical evidence for deviations. Employing different philosophical approaches to models, we argue that the case study suggests not to take a view on models that is overly permissive because it blurs the lines between the different stages of the SM-EFT research strategies and glosses over particle physicists' motivations for undertaking this bottom-up approach in the first place. Looking at EFTs from the perspective of modelling does not require taking a stance on some specific brand of realism or taking sides in the debate between reduction and emergence into which EFTs have recently been embedded. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on the evolution of human social norm psychology. More precisely, I want to show how the emergence of our distinctive capacity to follow social norms and make social normative judgments is connected to the lineage explanation of our capacity to form shared intentions, and how such capacity is related to a diverse cluster of prototypical moral judgments. I argue that in explaining the evolution of this form of normative cognition we also require an understanding of the developmental (...) trajectory of this capacity. For this purpose, the thesis is organized as follow. In the first chapter, I make some methodological remarks and provide the general overview and plan for the dissertation. In the second chapter, I explain what my explanatory target is and why it matters. On the view I am defending, shared intentional psychology gives rise to a special form of psychology that enables us to engage in social normative thinking. These norms are represented as shared intentional states. Moral psychology, in contrast, is more diverse. For moral judgments define a quite heterogeneous class of mental states—although some moral judgments may involve the representation and execution of norms, certainly not all of them do. I show that although much of our distinctive social norm psychology can be explained within the framework of shared intentionality, moral judgments cannot be unified in the same way. In the third chapter, I provide the baseline of social-cognitive capacities that serve as starting point for my lineage explanation. I argue that hominin social cognition was for a very long period of our evolutionary history essentially a matter of low-level cognitive and motivational processes. On this picture, bottom-up affective processes regulated the social lives of early hominins without requiring any special top-down mechanism of normative thinking such as a capacity for understanding and representing social norms. In the fourth chapter, I argue that human-like social norm psychology evolved as a result of the selective pressures that gave rise to shared intentionality, especially the demands that came from collective hunting. Yet collective hunting was not the whole story of the evolution of shared intentionality, for our capacity to form shared intentional mental states emerged from the interplay between the selective pressures that led to cooperative breeding in humans as well as organized, goal-oriented, collective hunting. Thus, I propose an evo-devo account of shared intentionality and its normative dimension since I argue that explaining the evolution of this particular form of normative thinking crucially depends on information about the developmental trajectory of this capacity. Finally, in the fifth chapter, I focus on how social norms are acquired and how the way we learn them gives rise to some prototypical cluster of moral judgments. Thus, this chapter returns to some of themes and arguments of the first chapter by explaining how the distinction between moral judgments and nonmoral judgments can be culturally transmitted. (shrink)

John Polkinghorne is a significant contributor to the religion and science dialogue, bringing the expertise of a scientist coupled with serious theological study, ordination, and service as a parish priest. He takes both theology and science with utmost seriousness and describes himself as a bottom‐up thinker, confronting the scriptural record as a scientist does data. But he refrains from giving scientific explanations of scripture. Polkinghorne's concern is with hope, and specifically with eschatological hope. The framework for his theological (...) class='Hi'>thinking is the Nicene Creed, in which is found the counterintuitive openness common to theoretical physics. He acknowledges the need for thinking beyond the confines of present scientific understanding in proposing active information as a concept for considering the mind. (shrink)

The declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, led to unprecedented events. All regions of the world participated in implementing preventive health measures such as physical distancing, travel restrictions, self-isolation, quarantines, and facility closures. The pandemic started global disruption of socio-economic systems, covering the postponement or cancellation of public events, supply shortages, schools and universities’ closure, evacuation of foreign citizens, a rise in unemployment and inflation, misinformation, the anti-vaccine movement, and incidents of discrimination (...) toward people affected by or suspected of having coronavirus disease. Attempts have been made to protect the oldest age group at risk, but in many cases, this has led to over-restriction and age discrimination. The rationale for working on the Research Topic "Socio-economic systems in the post-pandemic world: Design thinking, strategic planning, management, and public policy" was the need to start reflecting on resilience and lessons learned from this public health event that revealed the global unpreparedness in critical areas. Also, the pandemic triggered both top-down and bottom-up responses that needed more in-depth analyzes. This Research Topic covers interdisciplinary contributions addressing new thinking, challenges, and transformations required for post-pandemic global, national, regional, and local realities. The presented Research Topic combines studies focused on recognizing the actions and interventions leading to the recovery of socio-economic systems during the tail end and after the pandemic. The studies delivered recommendations regarding, among others, the care of vulnerable, planning socio-economic restart, and imagining the "new normal.". (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 (...) respondents in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

The paper examines the fundamental concepts of the political publicist Miloš Štefanovi?, which in the 1980ies and 1990ies suggested the transformation of Slovak political thinking as well as abandoning the voluntarily adopted passive attitude. Štefanovi? developed a consistent conception of national politics based on self-respon- sible, independent, bottom up political work grounded in patriotic self-criticism. He was also one of the prime movers of the cooperation between nationalities in Hungary as well as a critique of the distorted political (...) culture of the government establishment. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 (...) respondents in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

In this paper, in answering the question why Kant didn’t think very highly of music, I argue that for Kant (i) music unlike other art forms, lends itself more easily to combination judgments involving judgments of sense, which increases the propensity to make aesthetic mistakes and is ill-suited as an activity for improving one’s taste; (ii) music expresses aesthetic ideas and presents rational ideas only by taking advantage of existing associations while other art forms do so by breaking with the (...) laws of association and creating new associations. I propose that (ii) constitutes the reason why music is not a rich source for reflection and thereby cannot stimulate the enlargement of the cognitive faculties. Given that the standard Kant uses in setting up the hierarchy of fine arts in terms of their cultivating role is the enlargement of cognitive faculties, this explains why music is placed at the bottom of his hierarchy. (shrink)

We present a skill learning model CLARION. Different from existing models of high-level skill learning that use a topdown approach (that is, turning declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge), we adopt a bottom-up approach toward low-level skill learning, where procedural knowledge develops first and declarative knowledge develops later. CLAR- ION is formed by integrating connectionist, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line learning. We compare the model with human data in a minefield navigation task. A match between the model (...) and human data is found in several respects. (shrink)

This paper introduces a hybrid model that unifies connectionist, symbolic, and reinforcement learning into an integrated architecture for bottom-up skill learning in reactive sequential decision tasks. The model is designed for an agent to learn continuously from on-going experience in the world, without the use of preconceived concepts and knowledge. Both procedural skills and high-level knowledge are acquired through an agent’s experience interacting with the world. Computational experiments with the model in two domains are reported.

Although the UN and EU focus their climate policies on the prevention of a 2 8C global mean temperature rise, it has been estimated that a rise of at least 4 8C is more likely. Given the political climate of inaction, there is a need to instigate a bottom-up approach so as to build domestic support for future climate treaties, empower citizens, and motivate leaders to take action. A review is provided of the predominant top-down cap-and-trade policies in place (...) – the Kyoto Protocol and EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) – with a focus on the grandfathering of emissions entitlements and the possibility of offsetting emissions. These policies are evaluated according to two criteria of justice and it is concluded that they fail to satisfy them. Some suggestions as to how the EU ETS can be improved so as to enable robust climate action are also offered. (shrink)

A popular approach to monothematic delusions in the recent literature has been to argue that monothematic delusions involve broadly rational responses to highly unusual experiences. Campbell calls this the empiricist approach to monothematic delusions, and argues that it cannot account for the links between meaning and rationality. In place of empiricism Campbell offers a rationalist account of monothematic delusions, according to which delusional beliefs are understood as Wittgensteinian framework propositions. We argue that neither Campbell's attack on empiricism nor his rationalist (...) alternative to empiricism is successful. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 (...) respondents in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/Protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/Proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

The writing out of agency from the study of globalization resulted in its portrayal as an uncontrollable, unstoppable and unchangeable force. Ordinary people have been conceptualized as victims or beneficiaries. Alternatively, grassroots activism has been romantically portrayed as an unproblematic force for good. Inspired by the work of Mary Kaldor on global civil society and new wars, the authors explore complex, counterintuitive and even unintended forms and consequences of bottom-up politics as the state loses its dominance as a political (...) actor in the global era. Leading theorists such as Albrow, Falk, Held, Rothschild and Sassen, together with young scholars demonstrate the importance of agency to our understanding of globalization. They offer a critical evaluation of bottom-up politics from a variety of disciplines, including those of sociology, law, economics, history and politics. The book is an invaluable guide to a paradigm shift not just in studying but also in doing politics. Adopting a people-centered perspective to globalization, the authors explore complex, counterintuitive and even unintended forms and consequences of bottom-up politics, going beyond simplistic understandings of ordinary people as either victims or beneficiaries of globalization. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review critical emancipatory literature to identify a discourse that could be used to successfully customise generic Enterprise Resource Planning systems to particular user‐needs. The customisation exercise is posited in the context of contemporary society, which has to try to become more sustainable amidst uncertainty about the complex interrelationships between elements of the ecosystem. It raises new challenges for the customisation exercise, that of fostering the precautionary ethos and engaging realistically with complexity and uncertainty (...) inherent in emergent knowledge about ecological resilience.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that draws on published research papers to tease out political constructs which are vital for facilitating sustainable decisions.FindingsThis paper argues that the critical emancipatory influence on systems design has generated attempts to formulate socio‐ethical information systems. However, these systems are limited by their inability to engage with the politics of asymmetrical distribution of power, even though these systems rely on bottom‐up participation to change the status quo. Hence, it is suggested that systems design should learn from Gandhi's experiences in mobilising social reform to instil a precautionary ethos in the context of asymmetrical power relations. The discourse used to customise ERP should facilitate social learning about ecological resilience as it affects the capacity to reform in the interest of sustainable outcomes. It is proposed that the discourse be socially constructed on the vocabulary of integrated risk because it would enable management to take advantage of lived experiences and enhance the organisation's capacity to learn about formulating sustainable business practices.Practical implicationsThe recommended approach to identifying user‐needs is based on Gandhi's tried‐and‐tested approaches of mobilising bottom‐up participation in social reform.Originality/valueThis paper brings in Eastern philosophy into the predominately Western‐dominated systems design arena. Its value lies in its practical applicability to real‐world design challenges. (shrink)

The robust behavior of the patent citation network is a complex target of recent bottom-up models in science. This paper investigates the purpose and testing of three especially simple bottom-up models of the citation count distribution observed in the patent citation network. The complex causal webs in the models generate weakly emergent patterns of behavior, and this explains both the need for empirical observation of computer simulations of the models and the epistemic harmlessness of the resulting epistemic opacity.

The distinction between top-down and bottom-up effects is widely relied on in experimental psychology. However, there is an important problem with the way it is normally defined. Top-down effects are effects of previously-stored information on processing the current input. But on the face of it that includes the information that is implicit in the operation of any psychological process – in its dispositions to transition from some types of representational state to others. This paper suggests a way to distinguish (...) information stored in that way from the kind of influence of prior information that psychologists are concerned to classify as a top-down effect. So-drawn, the distinction is not just of service to theoretical psychology. Asking about the extent of top-down processing is one way to pose some of the questions at issue in philosophical debates about cognitive penetrability – about the extent of the influence of cognitive states on perception. The existence of a theoretically-useful perception-cognition distinction has come under pressure, but even if it has to be abandoned, some of the concerns addressed in the cognitive penetrability literature can be recaptured by asking about the extent of top-down influences on any given psychological process. That formulation is more general, since it can be applied to any psychological process, not just those that are paradigmatically perceptual. (shrink)

There is a long history, dating back to the 50s, which examines the manner in which team roles contribute to effective team performance. However, much of this work has been built on ad-hoc teams working together for short periods of time under conditions of minimal stress. Additionally, research has been conducted with little attention paid to the importance of temporal factors, despite repeated calls for the importance of considering time in team research (e.g., Mohammed, Hamilton, & Lim, 2009). To begin (...) to understand team roles and how temporal aspects may impact the types of team roles employed when teams are working in extreme mission critical environments, the current manuscript uses a data-driven, bottom-up approach. Specifically, we employ the use of retrospective historical data as our input and a historiometric approach (Simonton, 2003). Source documents consist primarily of autobiographies, memoires, biographies, and first-hand accounts of crew interaction during spaceflight. Critical incidents regarding team interaction were extracted from these source documents and independently coded for team roles by two trained raters. Results of the study speak to the importance of task and social roles within teams that are predominantly intact and operating in extreme environments where mistakes can be life threatening. Evidence for the following task (i.e., coordinator, boundary spanner, team leader, evaluator, critic, information provider, team player, and innovator) and social roles (i.e., team builder, nurturer, harmonizer, entertainer, jokester, and the negative roles of attention seeker and negativist) were found. While it is often task roles that receive the greatest attention, results point to the importance of not neglecting the socioemotional health of the team (and the corresponding roles). Results also indicated that while some roles were consistently enacted independent of temporal considerations (e.g., mission length), the degree to which others were enacted varied across missions of differing lengths. Additionally, based on the current sample we see the following trends: (1) increased enactment of the team builder role as mission duration increases, (2) prominence of the entertainer role, and (3) increased emphasis on the visionary/problem solver role on missions over two years. (shrink)

Top-down models typically used to explain social behavior involve specific adaptations and higher level cognition. The Pavlovian conditioning model proposed can be extended to explain formation of dominance hierarchies and group structure, can replace a pheromonal model of reproductive suppression, and can be applied to language learning. This bottom-up approach based on general learning principles is a refreshing alternative to top-down models.

In Brazil, abortion is only allowed in cases of rape, serious risk to a woman's life or fetal anecephaly. Legal abortion services cover less than 4% of the Brazilian territory and only 1,800 procedures are performed, in average, per year. During the COVID‐19 pandemic, almost half of the already few Brazilian abortion clinics shut down and women had to travel even longer distances, reaching abortion services at later gestational ages. In this paper, we describe three bottom‐up advocacy strategies that (...) emerged from difficulties deepened during the COVID‐19 pandemic at a single abortion service in Brazil, amidst anti‐gender policies from the federal government. Telemedicine abortion, outpatient surgical abortion and the provision of abortion after 20 weeks' gestation are important strategies that may reduce inequalities that impact the most vulnerable populations, such as black and indigenous women, children, adolescents and women experiencing domestic violence. (shrink)

Counting models for a two conjunctive formula $F$, a problem known as $\sharp $2Sat, is a classic $\sharp $P complete problem. Given a 2-CF $F$ as input, its constraint graph $G$ is built. If $G$ is acyclic, then $\sharp $2Sat can be computed efficiently. In this paper, we address the case when $G$ has cycles. When $G$ is cyclic, we propose a decomposition on the constraint graph $G$ that allows the computation of $\sharp $2Sat in incremental way. Let $T$ be (...) a cactus graph of $G$ containing a maximal number of independent cycles, and let $\overline{T}=-E)$ be a subset of frond edges from $G$. The clauses in $\overline{T}$ are ordered in connected components $\{K_1, \ldots, K_r\}$. Each $, i=1,\ldots,r$ is a knot of the graph. The arrangement of the clauses of $\overline{T}$ allows the decomposition of $G$ in knots and provides a way of computing $\sharp $2Sat in an incremental way. Our procedure has a bottom-up orientation for the computation of $\sharp $2Sat. It begins with $F_0 = T$. In each iteration of the procedure, a new clause $C_i \in \overline{T}$ is considered in order to form $F_i = $ and then to compute $\sharp $2Sat$$ based on the computation of $\sharp $2Sat$$. (shrink)

Prominent models of attentional control assert a dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up control, with the former determined by current selection goals and the latter determined by physical salience. This theoretical dichotomy, however, fails to explain a growing number of cases in which neither current goals nor physical salience can account for strong selection biases. For example, equally salient stimuli associated with reward can capture attention, even when this contradicts current selection goals. Thus, although 'top-down' sources of bias are sometimes (...) defined as those that are not due to physical salience, this conception conflates distinct - and sometimes contradictory - sources of selection bias. We describe an alternative framework, in which past selection history is integrated with current goals and physical salience to shape an integrated priority map. (shrink)

In fourteen scholarly yet delightfully readable essays, Ober solves some ancient mysteries and reveals the secret kinks and passions of famous and obscure historical figures.

Mechanisms play a crucial role in scientific research across various disciplines, and philosophers of science have devoted significant effort into understanding their ontology and epistemology. This paper examines the relationship between mechanisms and phenomena, highlighting the inherent dependence of mechanistic delineation on the characterization of phenomena. By acknowledging that characterizing phenomena is influenced by pragmatic considerations and research interests, the paper argues that mechanistic inquiry is inherently shaped by researchers’ perspectives. This dependence raises concerns about the possibility of a realist (...) view of mechanisms. To address these concerns, the paper explores how top-down constraints, rooted in researchers’ interests and pragmatic concerns, can be balanced by bottom-up constraints derived from empirical considerations. In conclusion, I argue that the interplay between these constraints forms an empirical and realist counterweight to the perspectival nature of top-down constraints. (shrink)

This paper explores the interaction between implicit and explicit processes during skill learning, in terms of top-down learning (that is, learning that goes from explicit to implicit knowledge) versus bottom-up learning (that is, learning that goes from implicit to explicit knowledge). Instead of studying each type of knowledge (implicit or explicit) in isolation, we stress the interaction between the two types, especially in terms of one type giving rise to the other, and its effects on learning. The work presents (...) an integrated model of skill learning that takes into account both implicit and explicit processes and both top-down and bottom-up learning. We examine and simulate human data in the Tower of Hanoi task. The paper shows how the quantitative data in this task may be captured using either top-down or bottom-up approaches, although top-down learning is a more apt explanation of the human data currently available. These results illustrate the two different directions of learning (top-down versus bottom-up), and thereby provide a new perspective on skill learning. Ó 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In his article, “Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty,” Nigel Pleasants argues that killing an innocent, non-threatening person is wrong. It is, he argues, “a basic moral certainty.” He believes our basic moral certainties play the “same kind of foundational role as [our] basic empirical certaint[ies] do.” I believe this is mistaken. There is not “simply one kind of foundational role” that certainty plays. While I think Pleasants is right to affiliate his proposition with a Wittgensteinian form of certainty, he exposes (...) himself to a tension that exists in On Certainty regarding how we acquire it: is certainty natural, is it social? In this paper, I present two ways in which we come to possess certainty: a bottom-up approach, where certainty is part of our instinctual predisposition, and a top-down approach, where certainty is acquired through positive reinforcement by family and culture. (shrink)