We propose an extension of Discourse Respresentation Theory (DRT) for analyzing pictorial narratives. We test drive our PicDRT framework by analyzing the way authors represent characters’ mental states and perception in comics. Our investigation goes beyond Abusch and Rooth (2017) in handling not just free perception sequences, but also a form of apparent perspective blending somewhat reminiscent of free indirect discourse.

BackgroundSome persons conceived with donor gametes react negatively when they found their birth via donor conception. They request access to information about and seek to communicate with the donor. However, some countries mandate donor anonymity. Other countries allow donor-conceived persons to access donor information, but they can only use this access if their parents have disclosed donor conception to them. We investigated a thorny issue of donor conception: whether donor conception should be shifted from an anonymous basis to a non-anonymous (...) basis.MethodsWe review the issues and concerns regarding donor conception. We then consider the impact of direct-to-consumer genetic testing on donor conception, as well as the influence of donor conception on offspring’s identity and the potential of different types of donors. To discuss the future policy of donor conception, the policies on the anonymity of gamete donors were investigated using publicly-available documents in 15 countries.ResultsThe aim of mandating donor anonymity is to protect the privacy of the donor and intended parents. However, the diffusion of direct-to-consumer genetic testing may make it impossible to maintain anonymity. Birth via donor conception shapes the offspring’s identity, and the donor may further influence the development of offspring’s identity through communications. It remains important to disclose donor conception to donor-conceived offspring and to provide them with donor information. However, that information might be insufficient for some donor-conceived persons. Here are benefits to having open-identity donors and known donors. Such donors can make an agreement with the parents regarding future communication with the offspring, although both sides should respect privacy. Subsequent counseling for all parties involved can result in better tripartite communication agreements.ConclusionsIn sum, ethical and practical issues that complicate donor anonymity are driving a shift to non-anonymous donor conception, in which all parties come to a communication agreement. To pave the way for such a donor conception system, transitional measures can be put into place. For countries that already adopted non-anonymous donor conception, ensuring the communication agreements is important to protect the rights of parents, donor, and offspring. (shrink)

This study examines the role of foreign institutional ownership in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect as a quasi-natural experiment, our difference-in-differences estimation shows that foreign institutional ownership drives firms’ CSR corporate social responsibility. Further, the positive effect of foreign institutional ownership on CSR is motivated by foreign institutional investors shifting the stakeholders’ logics about social responsibility, not by profit maximization. We also provide evidence that this effect of foreign institutional ownership on CSR is more (...) pronounced among firms with fewer political connections and with non-overconfident CEOs. Overall, our results indicate that foreign institutional investors transmit social norms and shift stakeholders’ logics regarding social responsibility and, in turn, propel firms to improve CSR to satisfy their stakeholders’ expectations. (shrink)

Recent literature describing the process and pathways of the agrarian transition in Southeast Asia suggests that the rise of agricultural intensification and the growth of commodity markets will lead to the demise of swidden agriculture. This paper offers a longitudinal overview of the conditions that drive the agrarian transition amongst indigenous swidden cultivators and migrant paddy farmers in central Palawan Island, the Philippines. In line with regional agrarian change, we describe how a history of conservation policies has criminalized and (...) pressured swidden farmers to adopt more intensive “modern” agricultural practices. We examine how indigenous swidden cultivators adjust their practice in response to recent changes in policies, security of harvests, and socio-cultural values vis-à-vis intensification. Rather than suggest that this transition will lead to the demise of swidden, results reveal that farmers instead negotiate a shifting ground in which they lean on and value swidden as a means of negotiating agrarian change. (shrink)

This paper deals with Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of the death drive from the perspective of speculative philosophy. For this purpose, three philosophers have been chosen: Nick Land, Ray Brassier, and Reza Negarestani. I claim that they gradually radicalised the Freudian thought: Land expanded it to capitalist economy and terrestrial geotrauma; Brassier shifted it towards a solar catastrophe and the prospect of extinction; Negarestani incorporated it into the exteriority of cosmic contingency. This way, Freud’s legacy emerges as a transcendental, epistemological (...) and speculative instrument to tackle Meillassoux’s problem of correlation. I consider why this trajectory has ceased: I suggest a hypothesis that Bataille’s influence has not been overcome, especially in the case of Negarestani. I offer several vectors, according to which, Bataille could serve as an opportunity for openness to the Outside and a chance to continue the trajectory of the speculative death drive. I suggest that it is possible to reconsider Bataille as one of the precursors to the contemporary speculative thought. (shrink)

The moral importance of liability to harm has so far been ignored in the lively debate about what self-driving vehicles should be programmed to do when an accident is inevitable. But liability matters a great deal to just distribution of risk of harm. While morality sometimes requires simply minimizing relevant harms, this is not so when one party is liable to harm in virtue of voluntarily engaging in activity that foreseeably creates a risky situation, while having reasonable alternatives. On plausible (...) assumptions, merely choosing to use a self-driving vehicle typically gives rise to a degree of liability, so that such vehicles should be programmed to shift the risk from bystanders to users, other things being equal. Insofar vehicles cannot be programmed to take all the factors affecting liability into account, there is a pro tanto moral reason not to introduce them, or restrict their use. (shrink)

Chemistry is engaged with a subject that is not static but evolving in time, in chemical space, namely, the collection of all substances and reactions reported over time. If we accept that premise, we can identify the path dependencies and self-reinforcing mechanisms that determined its current space and selected it across historical alternatives. In particular, data analysis allows us to identify two crucial turning points. One was the introduction of structural theory in 1860, the other a technological shift around 1980.

Public debate about who or what is to blame for the rising rates of obesity and overweight shifts between two extreme opinions. The first posits overweight as the result of a lack of individual will, the second as the outcome of bodily drives, potentially triggered by the environment. Even though apparently clashing, these positions are in fact two faces of the same liberal coin. When combined, drives figure as a complication on the road to health, while a strong will should (...) be able to counter obesity. Either way, the body’s propensity to eat is to be put under control. Drawing on fieldwork in several obesity clinics and prevention sites in the Netherlands, this paper first traces how this ‘logic of control’ presents itself in clinical practices targeted at overweight people, and then goes on to explore how these practices move beyond that logic. Using the concepts of ‘will’ and ‘drives’ as analytical tools, I sketch several modes of ordering reality in which bodies, subjects, food and the environment are configured in different ways. In this way it appears that in clinical practices the terms found in public discourse take on different meanings and may even lose all relevance. The analysis reveals a richness of practiced ideals. The paper argues, finally, that making visible these alternative modes of ordering opens up a space for normative engagements with obesity care that move beyond the logic of control and its critiques. (shrink)

The concept of Triebfeder, commonly translated into English as “incentive,” plays a crucial role in Kant’s moral philosophy. In the Critique of Practical Reason, in which a whole chapter is dedicated to the Triebfedern of pure practical reason, Kant argues that the moral law is not only the objective determining ground of the will but also functions as a Triebfeder, that is, as a subjective determining ground of the will. Kant’s concept of Trieb, by contrast, is much less clearly defined, (...) and its meaning remains in many ways ambivalent. In the second part of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, for instance, Kant refers to Blumenbach’s idea of Bildungstrieb in order to describe the unique formative powers of organic nature. This chapter offers a detailed comparison of the two etymologically related but philosophically distinct conceptions of Triebfeder and Trieb and draws special attention to the shift of focus that occurs in the third Critique. (shrink)

Cushman characterizes rationalization as the inverse of rational reasoning, but this distinction is psychologically questionable. Coherence-based reasoning highlights a subtler form of bidirectionality: By distorting task attributes to make one course of action appear superior to its rivals, a patina of rationality is bestowed on the choice. This mechanism drives choice and action, rather than just following in their wake.

Franco “Bifo” Berardi tells us that the current transformation of every domain of social life into economy has led to “the subjugation of the soul to work processes.” There is a newfound love of work and, consequently, writes Berardi, “no desire, no vitality seems to exist anymore outside of the economic enterprise.” Concerned as it once was with “fostering the soul,” and concerned as it now is with preparing students for the job market, what role might education have in Berardi’s (...) musings? Can “creativity,” “self-actualization” and “curiosity,” which are so valued in education, still speak and help foster a sense of the soul that exceeds economy and work? In this paper, I explore these questions by providing an account of what is at stake in Berardi’s conception of the soul and its subjugation to work. I draw on his ideas to critically appraise the seemingly-benign aspirations of the “creative class,” a term coined to signal a new era for human flourishing afforded by shifts towards personal creativity in the digital economy. I then move to consider how, in particular, the ubiquitous promotion of “creativity” and “curiosity” in education tends to replicate a form of learning that puts the soul to work, as it were, promoting a narrow, self-enterprising subject with a frantic instrumental orientation towards the world. I conclude with a discussion on how demands on learners, to be always curious, innovative, nimble and open to discovery lead to panic, collapse and depression: the diseases of the soul. (shrink)

This essay sets out to explain how educational semiotics as a discipline can be used to reform medical education and assessment. This is in response to an ongoing paradigm shift in medical education and assessment that seeks to integrate more qualitative, ethical and professional aspects of medicine into curricula, and develop ways to assess them. This paper suggests that a method to drive this paradigm change might be found in the Peircean idea of suprasubjectivity. This semiotic concept is rooted (...) in the scholastic philosophy of John of St Thomas, but has been reintroduced to modern semiotics through the works of John Deely, Alin Olteanu and, most notably, Charles Sanders Peirce. I approach this task as both a medical educator and a semiotician. In this paper, I provide background information about medical education, paradigm shift s, and the concept of suprasubjectivity in relation to modern educational semiotic literature. I conclude by giving examples of what a suprasubjective approach to medical education and assessment might look like. I do this by drawing an equivalence between the notion of threshold concepts and suprasubjectivity, demonstrating the similarities between their positions. Fundamentally, medical education suffers from tensions of teaching trainee doctors the correct balance of biological science and situational ethics/judgement. In the transcendence of mind-dependent and mind-independent being the scholastic philosophy of John of St Thomas may be exactly the solution medicine needs to overcome this dichotomy. (shrink)

Our human embryonic stem cell debates are not simply about good or bad ethical arguments. The fetus and the embryo have instead become symbols for a larger set of value conflicts occasioned by social and cultural changes. Beneath our stem cell debates lie conflicts between those who would privilege scientific progress and individual choice and others who favour the sanctity of family life and traditional family roles. Also at work, on both the national and international levels, is the use of (...) the embryo by newly emergent social groups to express resentment against cultural elites. The organisational needs of religious groups have also played a role, with the issue of protection of the embryo and fetus serving as a useful means of rallying organisational allegiance in the Roman Catholic and evangelical communities. Because the epiphenomenal moral positions on the status and use of the embryo are driven by the powerful social, cultural or economic forces beneath them, they will most likely change only with shifts in the underlying forces that sustain them. (shrink)

Behrendt & Young (B&Y) propose that a dysfunction in the reticular thalamic nucleus contributes to disinhibition of specific thalamic nuclei, allowing cortical attention mechanisms to engage thalamic relay neurons, causing underconstrained activation of the cortex and hallucinations. The following hypothesis challenges the notion of impaired sensory gating by providing the alternative view that hypofrontality reduces the power of incoming stimuli, causing internal drives to override consciousness, resulting in hallucinations.

In the 2016 film Doctor Strange, the title character undergoes a radical transition from successful neurosurgeon to highly skilled sorcerer. Unsurprisingly, he finds this transition difficult, in no small part because he thinks that sorcery seems somehow “unscientific.” Nevertheless, he eventually comes to adopt sorcery as wholeheartedly as he had embraced medicine. Some of his reasons for making this transition are personal, such as his desire to fix his injured hands and, later, to help others. Strange also displays the same (...) sorts of motivations that might drive any scientist: his intellectual curiosity drives him to understand how the Ancient One cured a paraplegic, and his desire to make a positive difference leads him to push the boundaries of sorcery. -/- This chapter will examine what Strange’s transition can teach us about the nature of scientific inquiry. More specifically, we’ll think about when it might make sense for scientists like Dr. Strange to change their approach. This will also allow us to explore what it means to practice science more generally. Some of what we learn might be surprising. For example, while it might seem obvious to us (and maybe even to Strange) that sorcery can’t count as a science, there are reasons for doubting this quick conclusion, at least in the sort of world that Dr. Strange lives in. Finally, we’ll consider what all of this means for science in our world, where things differ quite significantly. (shrink)

"Golf day 2005 @ federal golf club, red hill." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (196), pp. 7.

Shifting the focus from fear, guilt, and indignation related to deteriorating environmental quality, the authors hypothesized that people who see greater potential for restorative experiences in natural environments also do more to protect them by behaving ecologically, as with recycling or reduced driving. University students rated a familiar freshwater marsh in terms of being away, fascination, coherence, and compatibility, qualities of restorative person-environment transactions described in attention restoration theory. They also reported on their performance of various ecological behaviors. The (...) authors tested a structural equation model with data from a randomly drawn subset of participants and then confirmed it with the data from a second subset. For the combined subsets, perceptions of the restorative qualities predicted 23% of the variance in general ecological behavior. As the only direct predictor, fascination mediated the influences of coherence, being away, and compatibility. (shrink)

Technological shifts within the video game industry have enabled many games to evolve into platforms for repeated expenditure, rather than a one-time purchase product. Monetising a game as a service is challenging, and there is concern that some monetisation strategies may constitute unfair or exploitative practices which are not adequately covered by existing law. We asked 1104 players of video games to describe a time when they had been exposed to transactions which were perceived to be misleading, aggressive or unfair. (...) We found 35 separate techniques over eight domains: game dynamics designed to drive spending, product not meeting expectations, monetisation of basic quality of life, predatory advertising, in-game currency, pay to win, general presence of microtransactions and other. Notably, several of these reported practices seem to not align with existing UK consumer protection regulations. We discuss this potential misalignment, as well as the implications of identifying what players believe to be problematic monetisation techniques. (shrink)

Capitalist reforms usually drive outmigration of peasants to cities, while elders, children, and women responsible for their care are “left behind” in the countryside. The plight of these “left behind” populations is a major focus of recent agrarian studies in China. However, rural women are not merely passive victims of these transformations. Building on ethnographic research in Guangxi and Henan provinces from 2013 to 2017, and drawing on critical gender studies and feminist political ecology, I show how the food (...) safety crisis in China creates conditions for peasant women to increase control and income from organic food production, often establishing alternative food networks with the support of female scholars and NGO organizers. Thus, I shift focus of scholarship on rural women from “left behind” to leaders in struggles for justice and food sovereignty. (shrink)

A new theory of how the brain constructs emotions that could revolutionize psychology, health care, law enforcement, and our understanding of the human mind Emotions feel automatic, like uncontrollable reactions to things we think and experience. Scientists have long supported this assumption by claiming that emotions are hardwired in the body or the brain. Today, however, the science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology--and (...) this paradigm shift has far-reaching implications for us all. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose theory of emotion is driving a deeper understanding of the mind and brain, and shedding new light on what it means to be human. Her research overturns the widely held belief that emotions are housed in different parts of the brain and are universally expressed and recognized. Instead, she has shown that emotion is constructed in the moment, by core systems that interact across the whole brain, aided by a lifetime of learning. This new theory means that you play a much greater role in your emotional life than you ever thought. Its repercussions are already shaking the foundations not only of psychology but also of medicine, the legal system, child-rearing, meditation, and even airport security. Why do emotions feel automatic? Does rational thought really control emotion? How does emotion affect disease? How can you make your children more emotionally intelligent? How Emotions Are Made answers these questions and many more, revealing the latest research and intriguing practical applications of the new science of emotion, mind, and brain. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:On the Inconvenience of Other People by Lauren BerlantNicholas AdlerBerlant, Lauren. On the Inconvenience of Other People. Duke University Press, 2022. 256pp.An Ambivalent TriumphAttachment is a double-edged sword. This idea is the scaffolding of the late Lauren Berlant's pivotal work, Cruel Optimism (2011), which explores the idea that attachment to a collectively invested fantasy of "the good life" acts in disservice of personal growth and lasting fulfillment. The (...) Inconvenience of Other People ostensibly repeats this structure while reattributing the role of fantasy. The premise here is that attachments to other people act in disservice to the fantasy of personal sovereignty. Of course, both texts argue for collectivity and for a recasting of the ordinary that structures current fantasies. But while Cruel Optimism builds around the unavoidable condition of fantasy, Inconvenience takes relations within the present as its fundamentally unavoidable condition, specifically the drive to be in relation even though such relations are inconvenient. "People" in the work's title stands for any attachment, any person or thing to which we exist in relation. To be part of the world is to be constantly taking in and living with the objects around us. This constant process of adjustment generates constant friction with our fantasy of sovereignty, or control, over ourselves. In Berlant's words, "inconvenience is another way of pointing to the experience of nonsovereign relationality," making our inconvenience drive the urge to maintain and explore those nonsovereign relations despite the uncomfortable friction they produce (18). Berlant's final monograph investigates the complexities of living with that inconvenience as well the potential for "loosening [those inconvenient objects] and becoming loose with them" in order to make that inconvenience generative of new perspectives and approaches (150).The prospect of overhauling our relationship with inconvenience takes place on multiple registers, both in terms of the affective states that guide the experience of inconvenience and the frameworks that determine its expression in the world. Refiguring ambivalence and dissociation, [End Page 123] the traditional affective responses to inconvenience, as well as offering a more dynamic structure for engaging with inconvenience than that of the institution, Berlant demonstrates—in a contained and structured way—the very object-loosening for which the text advocates. Although the book is presented as a collection of "assays...clusters of actions that become forms of life that shift the pressures of being in relation," it is nonetheless broken into three distinct chapters that focus on the role of the inconvenient in political relations, sexual relations, and relations with the self (11). These chapters, respectively, take up the inconvenient with regard to infrastructure, ambivalence, and dissociation.To productively engage with inconvenience, it must be accommodated within a social infrastructure. The term infrastructure positions the material of lived relationality as more flexible than that of institutions and more legible than that of expressive causality. For Berlant, "infrastructures are productive, durationally extensive spaces for the pliable forms of life that people use to make rules and norms and other means of extending the world" (23). In Chapter 2, they invoke the concept of the commons, "an orientation toward life and value unbound by concepts of property as constituted by division and ownership," using it as a way to illustrate infrastructuralism in effect (82). The commons can refer to as concrete a physical space as the Boston Common, as explored through Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature," or as abstract an inheritance as shared language, as explored through Juliana Spahr's lyrical autobiography, The Transformation (2007).The commons of both Emerson and Spahr make use of the concept of analogy. For Emerson, it stands for "the separation within the nonsovereign relation [of the commons] that makes linking possible" (Berlant 94). Spahr takes a more critical approach, continuing Emerson's use of the term while shining light on the glitches that emerge when any analogy is examined too closely. Acknowledging the rhetorical gymnastics required to "figure equally valued social being" within "imperialist capitalist infrastructures" reveals every possible analogy as both grossly oversimplifying and only temporarily comprehensible (105). Objects within these commons are constantly adjusting and generating new relations. The sense of an ongoing dynamic is what Berlant hopes this... (shrink)

Throughout the history of mankind, energy security has been always seen as a means of protection from disruptions of essential energy systems. The idea of protection from disorders emerged from the process of securing political and military control over energy resources to set up policies and measures on managing risks that affect all elements of energy systems. The various systems placed in a place to achieve energy security are the driving force towards the energy innovations or emerging trends in the (...) energy sector. Our paper discusses energy security status and innovations in the energy sector in European Union (EU). We analyze the recent up-to-date developments of the energy policy and exploitation of energy sources, as well as scrutinize the channels of energy streaming to the EU countries and the risks associated with this energy import. Moreover, we argue that the shift to the low-carbon production of energy and the massive deployment of renewable energy sources (RES) might become the key issue in ensuring the energy security and independency of the EU from its external energy supplies. Both RES, distributed energy resources (DER) and “green energy” that will be based on the energy efficiency and the shift to the alternative energy supply might change the energy security status quo for the EU. (shrink)

Liberalism, Miguel de Beistegui argues in The Government of Desire, is best described as a technique of government directed towards the self, with desire as its central mechanism. Whether as economic interest, sexual drive, or the basic longing for recognition, desire is accepted as a core component of our modern self-identities, and something we ought to cultivate. But this has not been true in all times and all places. For centuries, as far back as late antiquity and early Christianity, (...) philosophers believed that desire was an impulse that needed to be suppressed in order for the good life, whether personal or collective, ethical or political, to flourish. Though we now take it for granted, desire as a constitutive dimension of human nature and a positive force required a radical transformation, which coincided with the emergence of liberalism. By critically exploring Foucault’s claim that Western civilization is a civilization of desire, de Beistegui crafts a provocative and original genealogy of this shift in thinking. He shows how the relationship between identity, desire, and government has been harnessed and transformed in the modern world, shaping our relations with others and ourselves, and establishing desire as an essential driving force for the constitution of a new and better social order. But is it? The Government of Desire argues that this is precisely what a contemporary politics of resistance must seek to overcome. By questioning the supposed universality of a politics based on recognition and the economic satisfaction of desire, de Beistegui raises the crucial question of how we can manage to be less governed today, and explores contemporary forms of counter-conduct. ​Drawing on a host of thinkers from philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis, and concluding with a call for a sovereign and anarchic form of desire, The Government of Desire is a groundbreaking account of our freedom and unfreedom, of what makes us both governed and ungovernable. (shrink)

Sacred values differ from material or instrumental values in that they incorporate moral beliefs that drive action in ways dissociated from prospects for success. Across the world, people believe that devotion to essential or core values – such as the welfare of their family and country, or their commitment to religion, honor, and justice – are, or ought to be, absolute and inviolable. Counterintuitively, understanding an opponent's sacred values, we believe, offers surprising opportunities for breakthroughs to peace. Because of (...) the emotional unwillingness of those in conflict situations to negotiate sacred values, conventional wisdom suggests that negotiators should either leave sacred values for last in political negotiations or try to bypass them with sufficient material incentives. Our empirical findings and historical analysis suggest that conventional wisdom is wrong. In fact, offering to provide material benefits in exchange for giving up a sacred value actually makes settlement more difficult because people see the offering as an insult rather than a compromise. But we also found that making symbolic concessions of no apparent material benefit might open the way to resolving seemingly irresolvable conflicts. We offer suggestions for how negotiators can reframe their position by demonstrating respect, and/or by apologizing for what they sincerely regret. We also offer suggestions for how to overcome sacred barriers by refining sacred values to exclude outmoded claims, exploiting the inevitable ambiguity of sacred values, shifting the context, provisionally prioritizing values, and reframing responsibility. (shrink)

The past few years have witnessed an exponentially growing body of work conducted under the ‘second person’ heading. This idea has been explored in various areas of philosophy , in developmental psychology, in psychiatry, and even in neuroscience. We may call this interest in the second person the ‘You Turn’. To put it at its most general, and ambitious, the idea driving much of the work is this: proper attention to the ways in which we relate to one another when (...) we stand in second person relation to each other can deliver something like a paradigm shift in the way in which we address questions about a range of fundamental issues in these fields. There is, however, very little agreement about what second person relations are, and a huge variation in why people think they are important. The contributions to this book focus on developing key second-person claims in the philosophy of mind, ethics and epistemology, with the aim of beginning to provide a framework for assessing and relating the multitude of fascinating new questions that come up under the second person heading. This book was originally published as a special issue of Philosophical Explorations. (shrink)

The significance of big data for driving health research and improvements in patient care is well recognised. Along with these potential benefits, however, come significant challenges, including those concerning the sharing and linkage of health and social care records. Recently, there has been a shift in attention towards a paradigm of data sharing centred on the ‘trusted research environment’ (TRE). TREs are being widely adopted by the UK’s health data initiatives including Health Data Research UK (HDR UK),1 Our Future Health2 (...) and Genomics England.3 A recent review commissioned by the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care (hereafter referred to as the ‘Goldacre Review’) places TREs at the heart of its recommendations around the future of National Health Service (NHS) health data sharing for research, describing them as the ‘clear path forward’ to a health data system in which trust is ‘earned’ through ‘provable, credible steps to protect patient privacy, and by being transparent with everyone about everything that is done with their deepest medical secrets’.4 We argue that rather than building public trust, the TRE model actually reduces the need for trust in the use and sharing of patient health data. This is because trust is importantly connected to vulnerability and uncertainty; an essential part of trusting someone is accepting that one’s trust could be disappointed or betrayed. In attempting to provide assurances or guarantees of data privacy and security, TREs strive to remove this vulnerability, and so remove the need for trust. We do not see this as a problem and are broadly supportive of this kind of data sharing model because of the increased security and oversight it provides. However, having argued that TREs are not actually concerned with trust, we consider the importance of being precise about the words that we use …. (shrink)

It is not uncommon to hear that poor school performance, welfare dependancy, youth unemployment, and criminal activity result more from shortcomings in the personal makeup of individuals than from societal forces beyond their control. Are American values declining as so many suggest? And are those values at the root of many social problems today?Shaped by experience and public policies, people's values and social norms do change. What role can or should a democratic government play in shaping values? And how do (...) these values conditon the efficacy of public policy?In this book, six distinguished social scientists identify trends in America's values and their consequences, and consider public policy tools with which some of those values might be changed.Daniel Yankelovich begins with a discussion of how American values have shifted in the last half-century, and argues that affluence is the driving force behind these changes in values. James Q. Wilson argues that destructive habits which can lead to social pathologies, like crime and drug use, are set early in life; he examines how public policy might intervene when children are young to promote better values. David Popenoe maintains that America has veered too far towards industrialist values, and explores the resulting decline of families and many attendant social ills. Nathan Glazer describes the history and present status of the dispute over multicultural education. Jane Mansbridge examines the process of building cooperation, consensus, and public spirit. And George Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen discuss the problem of gang criminality.Inthe past, social scientists have often sidestepped questions about values as undefinable, unquantifiable, and somehow unscientific. The essays in this volume address these questions at last.Henry J. Aaron, director of the Economic Studies program at Brookings, is the authorof numerous books, including most recently Serious and Unstable Condition: Financing America's Health Care (1991), and coeditor of Setting Domestic Priorities (1992). Thomas E. Mann is director of the Brookings Governmental Studies program, coeditor of Media Polls in American Politics (1992), and coauthor of the Renewing Congress series (1993). Timothy Taylor is managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives at Stanford University. (shrink)

My thesis in this paper is: the modern concept of laws of motion—qua dynamical laws—emerges in 18th-century mechanics. The driving factor for it was the need to extend mechanics beyond the centroid theories of the late-1600s. The enabling result behind it was the rise of differential equations. -/- In consequence, by the mid-1700s we see a deep shift in the form and status of laws of motion. The shift is among the critical inflection points where early modern mechanics turns into (...) classical mechanics as we know it. Previously, laws of motion had been channels for truth and reference into mechanics. By 1750, the laws lose these features. Instead, now they just assert equalities between functions; and serve just to entail (differential) equations of motion for particular mechanical setups. This creates two philosophical problems. First, it’s unclear what counts as evidence for the laws of motion in the Enlightenment. Second, it’s a mystery whether these laws retain any notion of causality. That subverts the early-modern dictum that physics is a science of causes. (shrink)

Amidst broad debates about the “New Green Revolution” in Africa, input-intensive agriculture is on the rise in some parts of Africa. This paper examines the underlying drivers of the recent and rapid adoption of herbicides and genetically modified seeds in the Burkina Faso cotton sector. Drawing on 8 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Houndé region, this article contends that economic and cultural dynamics—often considered separately in analyses of technology adoption—have co-produced a self-reinforcing technological treadmill. On the one hand, male (...) farmers seek to increase cotton production in response to an economic squeeze. At the same time, broader cultural shifts toward individualism have created labor shortages as a result of families splitting apart, parents putting their children in school, and some women and young men refusing to provide free labor. Male cotton farmers thus increase production by turning to labor-saving inputs like herbicides, but these inputs create more debt, further locking farmers into intensive production. This article thus expands on the classic concept of the technological treadmill, demonstrating how economic and cultural processes intersect within a process of agrarian change to drive labor-saving agricultural technology adoption in the Burkinabè cotton sector. This expanded treadmill concept illuminates the complex dynamics compelling farmers’ choices to opt into input-intensive agriculture, and also helps explain rising farmer differentiation, as poorer farmers struggle to stay afloat and wealthier farmers expand. (shrink)

We review the relationships between language, inner speech, and cognitive control in children and young adults, focusing on the domain of cognitive flexibility. We address the role that inner speech plays in flexibly shifting between tasks, addressing whether it is used to represent task rules, provide a reminder of task order, or aid in task retrieval. We also consider whether the development of inner speech in childhood serves to drive the development of cognitive flexibility. We conclude that there (...) is a close association between inner speech and cognitive flexibility in both adults and children. Experimental work has begun to specify in detail the role that inner speech might play in adult performance, suggesting that language plays a facilitative but not essential role in representing and activating the relevant task set, processes that occur on both switch and nonswitch trials. While developmental studies suggest an increase in the spontaneous use of verbal strategies with age, implying an increase in top-down control during shifting, experimental work is needed to specify more precisely the nature and precise role that inner speech plays in the development of cognitive control through childhood. (shrink)

‘Type’ in biology is a polysemous term. In a landmark article, Paul Farber (Journal of the History of Biology 9(1): 93–119, 1976) argued that this deceptively plain term had acquired three different meanings in early nineteenth century natural history alone. ‘Type’ was used in relation to three distinct type concepts, each of them associated with a different set of practices. Important as Farber’s analysis has been for the historiography of natural history, his account conceals an important dimension of early nineteenth (...) century ‘type talk.’ Farber’s taxonomy of type concepts passes over the fact that certain uses of ‘type’ began to take on a new meaning in this period. At the closing of the eighteenth century, terms like ‘type specimen,’ ‘type species,’ and ‘type genus’ were universally recognized as referring to typical, model members of their encompassing taxa. But in the course of the nineteenth century, the same terms were co-opted for a different purpose. As part of an effort to drive out nomenclatural synonymy – the confusing state of a taxon being known to different people by different names – these terms started to signify the fixed and potentially atypical name-bearing elements of taxa. A new type concept was born: the nomenclatural type. In this article, I retrace this perplexing nineteenth century shift in meaning of ‘type.’ I uncover the nomenclatural disorder that the new nomenclatural type concept dissolved, and expose the conceptual confusion it left in its tracks. What emerges is an account of how synonymy was suppressed through the coinage of a homonym. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to assess the impact of Big Data technologies for insurance ratemaking, with a special focus on motor products.The first part shows how statistics and insurance mechanisms adopted the same aggregate viewpoint. It made visible regularities that were invisible at the individual level, further supporting the classificatory approach of insurance and the assumption that all members of a class are identical risks. The second part focuses on the reversal of perspective currently occurring in data analysis (...) with predictive analytics, and how this conceptually contradicts the collective basis of insurance. The tremendous volume of data and the personalization promise through accurate individual prediction indeed deeply shakes the homogeneity hypothesis behind pooling. The third part attempts to assess the extent of this shift in motor insurance. Onboard devices that collect continuous driving behavioural data could import this new paradigm into these products. An examination of the current state of research on models with telematics data shows however that the epistemological leap, for now, has not happened. (shrink)

This paper situates Günther Anders’s diagnosis of a shift in the modes of human self-production from hermeneutic and educational practices to techno-scientific interventions in the broader context of observations concerning posthumanism and biopolitics. It proposes to reframe the problem of human self-production within the philosophy of media and traces a common anti-hermeneutic trajectory to which both technoscientific transhumanism and certain strands of posthumanism belong, insofar as they are based on an ontology that exclusively considers causally effective agency. With Anders and (...) Martin Heidegger it is argued that such a focus on agency neglects the dimension of meaning that irreducibly guides technoscientific interventions. The paper claims that, with regard to the escalating dynamics both of human enhancement and of the Anthropocene, neither a truly critical theoretical stance nor a practical subversion is possible without taking the horizons of meaning into account that drive these dynamics. The last section sketches an outline of the complex interrelations of humans, technologies and meaning that cannot be mapped in terms of causally effective agency. (shrink)

In a recent issue of Analysis I gave a critique of some arguments made by Di Nucci concerning the so-called Simple View – the view that an agent performs an action intentionally only if he intends so to act. In turn Di Nucci offers a reply that concentrates on two points. The first has to do with a group of examples, one having to do with waking a flatmate, and the others with routine actions such as shifting gears while (...) driving. I rejected these examples, arguing that it is not at all obvious that in them the Simple View is violated. Additionally, I pointed out that these are not cases of agents doing something they thought they could not do, and so have no direct bearing on the issues of practical rationality that motivate Bratman's treatment of the Simple View, which Di Nucci is concerned to defend . Di Nucci accepts this second point. He claims, however, that I failed to understand the dialectic of his argument. …. (shrink)

The sheer impact of the recent global financial turmoil and scandals (such as Enron and WorldCom) has demonstrated that unbridled commercial entrepreneurs who are allowed to pursue their short-term opportunities regardless of the consequences has led to a massive depreciation of the wealth of nations, social livelihood and environmental degradation. This article suggests that the time has come for entrepreneurs to adopt a more integrative view of business that blends economic, social and environmental values. Social entrepreneurs present such a proposition (...) through their deep commitment towards the social vision, appreciation of sustainable practices, innovativeness, ability to build social networks and also generate viable financial returns. It could be expected that social entrepreneurs often possess certain distinct personality characteristics which define their behaviours/actions. Personality traits are partly developed by innate nurturing, socialization and education. These tacit traits are also formed values/beliefs held and play an important role in driving social entrepreneurial decision making. Thus, personality traits may influence the intentions and the manner in which the individual acts. We hold that if social entrepreneurship is to be effective and impactful, business and management education can facilitate the development of these critical personality traits. Thus, this study primes at determining the personality traits that influence social entrepreneurs’ start-up intentions. It also reinforces the findings that personality traits do influence entrepreneurship in general. This study examines the influence of the Big Five personality traits on social entrepreneurship dimensions. The findings reveal that agreeableness positively influences all dimensions of social entrepreneurship, whereas openness exerts a positive influence on social vision, innovation and financial returns. Methodologically, this study develops valid and reliable scales for social entrepreneurship and verifies the adopted Big Five personality measure of Schmit et al. (Pers Psychol 53:153–193, 2000) using the five-point Likert scale. The implication of this study is that element of appreciation of social responsibility, sustainability and character development needs to be integrated within the business education curriculum to support social entrepreneurs in realizing genuine value and impact to the causes and communities they serve. Future business leaders also need to be equipped with entrepreneurship skills, while exuding independent and reflective thinking in the pursuit life-long learning. The originality of this study lies in its focus on personality traits on social rather than commercial entrepreneurship. It is hoped that the findings will trigger a paradigm shift towards greater social entrepreneurship through education by nurturing sustainable development values in future business graduates. (shrink)

In a range of digital creative productions and digital culture, questions of how to deal with finitude are on the rise. On the one hand, sectors of the digital entertainment industry – specifically computer games developers – are concerned with the question of how to manage `death' digitally. On the other hand, death and suicide have become the impetus for humorous artistic expression. This article tracks the emergence of a digital ethos that is cognizant of consequence, finitude and even death. (...) Rather than pit a 1990s `will to life' against an emerging `death drive', I argue that the shift to an ethos in which dark consequences ensue from digital actions must be understood by working through digital code's technicity and unfolding this relation of technics to both ethics and politics. Although Bernard Stiegler's analysis of technicity goes some way toward unfolding a political analysis of the aesthetics of digital code, his articulation of noopolitics fails to provide us with a way to conduct ourselves digitally in an era of cognitive capitalism. I look to critical software practices and their provisional networked publics, with potential lines of flight for contemporary technoculture via novel digital `codings'. (shrink)

While a significant body of literature has highlighted the moral obligations of companies regarding the sustainable use of common pool resources, business activities that contribute to the sustenance of common pool resources remain embryonic. Studies in this area have largely focused on environmental stimuli rather than on the complex motivational structures that drive or hinder businesses’ contributions to common pool resources. We explore the different motives and behaviors of businesses and their contributions to common pool resources, and propose four (...) roles by which companies’ motives and behaviors toward common pool resources can be categorized—namely, free riders, followers, believers, and altruists. We shift the focus from moral reasoning to Platt’s :641–651, 1973) notion of social trapping and his “ways out” as Platt’s “ways out” include propositions that address not only environmental stimuli but also companies’ motives. Both types of propositions are important for businesses to be able to respond rapidly to the scarcity of certain common pool resources and to use and maintain common pool resources in a sustainable way. Based on our categorization and Platt’s typology of social traps and “ways out,” we propose a theoretical framework by which companies and other stakeholders are provided with a differentiating perspective that allows for propositions addressing the complex nature of motivational structures and common pool resources. Our framework helps business leaders, institutions, and policy makers decide on actions that can contribute to the sustainability of common pool resources and that differ from actions that solely serve organizational self-interests. (shrink)

Contemporary natural-language semantics began with the assumption that the meaning of a sentence could be modeled by a single truth condition, or by an entity with a truth-condition. But with the recent explosion of dynamic semantics and pragmatics and of work on non- truth-conditional dimensions of linguistic meaning, we are now in the midst of a shift away from a truth-condition-centric view and toward the idea that a sentence’s meaning must be spelled out in terms of its various roles in (...) conversation. This communicative turn in semantics raises historical questions: Why was truth-conditional semantics dominant in the first place, and why were the phenomena now driving the communicative turn initially ignored or misunderstood by truth-conditional semanticists? I offer a historical answer to both questions. The history of natural-language semantics—springing from the work of Donald Davidson and Richard Montague—began with a methodological toolkit that Frege, Tarski, Carnap, and others had created to better understand artificial languages. For them, the study of linguistic meaning was subservient to other explanatory goals in logic, philosophy, and the foundations of mathematics, and this subservience was reflected in the fact that they idealized away from all aspects of meaning that get in the way of a one-to-one correspondence between sentences and truth-conditions. The truth-conditional beginnings of natural- language semantics are best explained by the fact that, upon turning their attention to the empirical study of natural language, Davidson and Montague adopted the methodological toolkit assembled by Frege, Tarski, and Carnap and, along with it, their idealization away from non-truth-conditional semantic phenomena. But this pivot in explana- tory priorities toward natural language itself rendered the adoption of the truth-conditional idealization inappropriate. Lifting the truth-conditional idealization has forced semanticists to upend the conception of linguistic meaning that was originally embodied in their methodology. (shrink)

In our everyday life, we have the genuine feeling that when something we use works very well, we forget that we are doing something that is mediated by something else. It happens when we read through our glasses, or when we drive home, or when we play guitar. In all those cases, it can be said that the device becomes an extension of our body, or that we have incorporated it. In this paper I want to discuss the extension/incorporation (...) dichotomy as presented in contemporary cognitive sciences. I will present the state of the art in the debate in order to promote a methodological shift, namely to adopt two concept borrowed from Material Engagement Theory developed by Lambros Malafouris. By advocating the concepts of temporality and metaplasticity, I will argue for two different but related things: 1) extension and incorporation don’t have to be conceived only spatially, but temporally. This shift leads to two distinctive implications: first, the sooner two entities establish a prosthetic contact, the higher the chances to reach incorporation; second, extension temporally precedes incorporation; the former being an early-staged phenomenon of – a condition of possibility for – the latter. 2) Such a temporal perspective is at the base of metaplasticity, which describes, in the context of MET, the constant, co-constitutive loop between humans and things: metaplasticity deflates the privileged role traditionally attributed to the subject in the making of phenomenal experience. Finally, I will discuss extension and incorporation in media theory, relying on the concept of radical mediation. (shrink)

There are strong indications that many consumers are switching towards more socially and environmentally responsible products and services, reflecting a shift in consumer values indicated in several countries. However, little is known about the motives that drive some toward, or deter others from, higher levels of ethical concern and action in their purchasing decisions. Following a qualitative investigation using ZMET and focus group discussions, a questionnaire was developed and administered to a representative sample of consumers; nearly 1,000 usable questionnaires (...) were collected. The degree of awareness, concern and action regarding 16 ethical issues was quantified, using a measure developed from the Stages of Change concept within the Transtheoretical model. Motivations for ethical behaviour, in relation to each individual’s most salient ethical issue, were investigated using initially 22 motive statements within the framework of the Decisional Balance Scale (DBS). The findings suggest that the DBS and Stages model have an explanatory value within the ethical decision-making context, and that the motives identified do reflect the Decisional Balance Constructs. Indeed the study suggests that respondents’ motivational attitudes are a function of their stage of ethical awareness, concern and action. Therefore, the Decisional Balance Scale may well prove useful for designing appropriate interventions and communications to facilitate movement towards more ethical decision-making. These findings yield strategic insight for communicating messages to ethical consumers and for better understanding their purchasing decisions. (shrink)

The global pesticide complex has transformed over the past two decades, but social science research has not kept pace. The rise of an enormous generics sector, shifts in geographies of pesticide production, and dynamics of agrarian change have led to more pesticide use, expanding to farm systems that hitherto used few such inputs. Declining effectiveness due to pesticide resistance and anemic institutional support for non-chemical alternatives also have driven intensification in conventional systems. As an inter-disciplinary network of pesticide scholars, we (...) seek to renew the social science research agenda on pesticides to better understand this suite of contemporary changes. To identify research priorities, challenges, and opportunities, we develop the pesticide complex as a heuristic device to highlight the reciprocal and iterative interactions among agricultural practice, the agrochemical industry, civil society-shaped regulatory actions, and contested knowledge of toxicity. Ultimately, collaborations among social scientists and across the social and biophysical sciences can illuminate recent transformations and their uneven socioecological effects. A reinvigorated critical scholarship that embraces the multifaceted nature of pesticides can identify the social and ecological constraints that drive pesticide use and support alternatives to chemically driven industrial agriculture. (shrink)

This chapter examines the apparent proximity between Schopenhauer’s and Freud’s views on the nature and importance of what is called, amongst other things, ‘sexuality’, the ‘sexual impulse’, the ‘sexual instinct’ or ‘the ‘sexual drive’. It argues, against the idea that Freud's conception is basically borrowed from Schopenhauer, for the originality of Freud’s early theory of sexuality and suggest that the significance of this theory, apart from its obvious psychiatric and social import, lies in its possible contribution to a philosophical (...) anthropology. The chapter returns to the first, 1905 edition of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality to argue for the originality of Freud’s conception of the sexual drive, in relation to both his philosophical and his psychiatric predecessors. It argues that Freud’s terminological shift in the Three Essays from the Geschlechtstrieb to the Sexualtrieb, both of which Strachey translates as ‘sexual instinct’ is evidence of a theoretical shift. Examining the notion of the Geschlechtstrieb in Freud’s predecessors and its relation to presumptions about the difference between the sexes allows the distinctiveness of Freud’s conception of the Sexualtrieb and thus his theory of sexuality to stand out. After examining the claims in the literature concerning the relation between Schopenhauer and Kant on the question of sexuality, it lays out the conception of the Geschlechtstrieb in Freud’s immediate psychiatric predecessors and its connection to the treatment of the same topic in Kant, Schopenhauer and Hartmann. It then demonstrates, with reference to Freud’s shift to the use of the term Sexualtrieb, how Freud develops a conception of the sexual drive and of sexuality that is quite different to the conception of the Geschlechtstrieb in Schopenhauer et al. The chapter ends by suggesting how Freud’s theory of sexuality is a contribution to a philosophical anthropology based on considerations quite foreign to his predecessors. (shrink)

This paper begins by examining the natural function of the feeling of love of honor. Like all natural drives, it has been implanted by nature to secure the survival and progress of the human species. However, mechanically, through the interplay of social forces, it soon turns into a competitive drive for superiority, what Kant calls “love of honor in a bad sense” (V-MS/Vigil 27: 695). This drive, which also enables the progress of human civilization, brings with it all (...) the “vices of culture” (RGV 6: 27). However, from “mere semblance and glittering misery” (IaG 8: 26) can emerge “something quite serious” (Anth 7: 153), for even the worst forms of love of honor contain a nugget of virtue. A shift thereby transforms its natural function from an inclination to fake virtue to an inclination that aids it, thereby going from generating the appearance of worth to generating moral worthiness. The feeling of the love of honor thus has a dual nature, as a means to preserve the species and as an aid to morality. As I will show, these two functions converge in the role of culture, at once anchored in natural predispositions and oriented towards morality, at once an end of civilization and a means to moralization. In this sense, as part of human culture, the feeling love of honor can be seen as the locus of the convergence, if not the reconciliation, of the perspective of nature and that of morality. (shrink)

In the aftermath of a terrorist attack political stakes are high: legislators fear being seen as lenient or indifferent and often grant the executive broader authorities without thorough debate. The judiciary's role, too, is restricted: constitutional structure and cultural norms narrow the courts' ability to check the executive at all but the margins. The dominant 'Security or Freedom' framework for evaluating counterterrorist law thus fails to capture an important characteristic: increased executive power that shifts the balance between branches of government. (...) This book re-calculates the cost of counterterrorist law to the United Kingdom and the United States, arguing that the damage caused is significantly greater than first appears. Donohue warns that the proliferation of biological and nuclear materials, together with willingness on the part of extremists to sacrifice themselves, may drive each country to take increasingly drastic measures with a resultant shift in the basic structure of both states. (shrink)

As the world held its breath for news surrounding COVID-19 and hunkered down amidst stay-at-home orders, medical students across the U.S. wondered if they would be called to serve on the front lines of the pandemic. Medical school administrators faced the challenge of protecting learners while also minimizing harm to their medical education. This balancing act raised critical questions in medical education as institutions reacted to changing guidelines. COVID-19 has punctuated already contentious areas of medical education and has forced institutions (...) and organizations to take quick action. From the perspectives of a recent medical school graduate and current resident and a practicing clinician-educator, we examine the pandemic’s impact on undergraduate medical education through an ethical lens. First, we explore the value of medical education, what drives this value, and how COVID-19 may alter it. We next consider student choice and how shifts toward utilitarianism in healthcare during a pandemic may affect learning and career exploration. Then, we inquire how access to technology may impact the experience of medical students from diverse backgrounds and varied institutions during a rapid shift to socially distanced learning. We identify vulnerabilities for students at several phases of the journey: premedical, preclinical, clinical, and preparation for residency. Finally, we address the hidden curriculum of COVID-19, its potential erosion of empathy among current medical students, and possible long-term consequences for future physicians and patients. (shrink)

Addiction: A Philosophical Approach CHAPTER ABSTRACTS “Introduction: Dismantling the Catchphrase” by Candice Shelby Shelby dismantles the catchphrase “disease of addiction.” The characterization of addiction as a disease permeates both research and treatment, but that understanding fails to get at the complexity involved in human addiction. Shelby introduces another way of thinking about addiction, one that implies that is properly understood neither as a disease nor merely as a choice, or set of choices. Addiction is a phenomenon emergent from a complex (...) dynamic system that is at once physical, psychological, social, and more. “A Philosophical Analysis of Addiction” by Candice Shelby Shelby brings much-needed clarity to the discourse surrounding the topic of addiction. Arguing that addiction can neither properly be understood as a disease nor as merely a set of choices, Shelby exposes the weaknesses of both approaches. She shows that addicted persons do not exhibit the elements characteristic of compulsion, nor does an account of addiction in terms of weakness of will, or irrational choosing, provide a satisfying explanation. Instead, by replacing traditional substance ontology with process ontology, and accepting the reality of emergent entities, a coherent account of persons, minds, and addiction can be provided. A fundamental philosophical shift is necessary to see that bodies, minds, values, and addictions are all part of the natural world. “Addiction at the Individual Level” by Candice Shelby Shelby discusses the most influential accounts of addiction as it is understood at the purely individual level. From hedonic theories to incentive sensitization, to habit theories of addiction, to behavioral theories and the ego depletion theory, Shelby considers a variety of approaches to understanding addiction in individuals, as framed in both psychological and in neuroscientific terms. She notes some important caveats that should be considered before accepting the research regarding addiction at the individual level, namely that the scanning studies that are so popularly used to characterize addiction in neurobiological terms are ambiguous, and rely on numerous assumptions that may be false, and that certainly mislead. Shelby provides much-needed critique of both disease and choices models as they characterize addiction at the individual level. “Addiction and the Local Environment” by Candice Shelby Shelby argues that human addiction cannot be understood without serious consideration of the individual’s local environment, her home and family. From the gestational environment to interactions with caregivers during post-natal development to the adult environment in which people become addicted, Shelby shows that no one becomes an addict in a vacuum. Stress is a major influence in the environment throughout life, and has serious consequences for addictive vulnerability. Genetic influences as well are important to addictive vulnerability, but genes always express in interaction with their environment. Social acceptance or rejection is another particularly important factor in the local environment with respect to both coming to be addicted and transitioning out of it. “The Relation Between Addiction and Culture” by Candice Shelby Shelby provides a groundbreaking analysis of the relation between addicts and the cultures that breed them. In this cultural critique, Shelby shows that addictions to certain substances have historically been both the solution to the problem of how to grow economies and control people, and a problem for economic productivity and controlling citizens. Not all cultures have even the concept of addiction, while others, such as the contemporary Western world, and the U.S. in particular, seem to foster it. Shelby shows that addiction is both a cultural construct and, from another way of thinking about it, the result of conditions created by particular cultures. Social inequities, alienation, driving capitalism, and in particular the power of pharmaceutical companies, all contribute to the spiraling endemic of addiction. “Addiction and Meaning” by Candice Shelby Shelby provides a unique argument that understanding how meanings work is essential to a complete analysis of addiction. Individuals experiencing addiction and those who care about and for them often utterly fail to communicate. This is because their respective systems of meanings come to be significantly different. Meanings are not, Shelby argues, best understood in the symbolic terms that characterized the theory of language in the 20th century, but are better apprehended as emotion-rich prototypes carved from repeated interaction with the world. Becoming addicted essentially changes one’s entire system of meanings. Requisite to transitioning out of addiction is a Gestalt-type shift in one’s system of meanings. This holistic way of understanding meanings also provides one level of explanation of what happens when an addict relapses. “The Phenomenology of Addiction and its Implications” by Candice Shelby One way of judging theories of addiction is by how well they capture the phenomenal descriptions that addicts give of their own experiences. Shelby considers variations on 5 basic patterns of addictive experience through the eyes of particular individuals who lived through addictive periods, and shows how even the most influential theories of addiction fail to capture all of them. She argues that an important implication of taking the details of individuals’ addictive stories seriously is that addiction must be understood as a personal phenomenon emergent from a particular complex dynamic system. As her theory of addiction would lead one to expect, no two addicts are the same, and no single-focus theory can explain why not. “Possibilities for Transitioning Out of Addiction” by Candice Shelby Shelby provides numerous strategies for transitioning out of addiction. Given that the vast majority of addiction treatment programs currently available are 12-step based and only successful about 5-8% of the time, it is essential that other approaches be undertaken. Shelby canvasses a variety of options for helping addicted individuals to make the transition out of their troubled pattern of thinking and behaving. From direct brain interventions to drugs to trauma therapy to exercise and nutrition to habit reformation to use of narrative and changing one’s social context as ways of redefining the self, Shelby shows that the possibilities for transitioning out of addiction are legion. Perhaps the best approach is to understand addiction treatment in terms of providing physical, psychological, and social tool kits. “Addiction Emerges from a Complex Dynamic System” by Candice Shelby Shelby considers whether there truly exists such a thing as “an addict” or “addictive thinking” in the universal sense. She concludes that within the context of disruptive substance use or repetitive engagement in certain activities, ordinary human cognitive biases and behavior patterns are categorized as addictive. Addiction, she argues, is best understood as an irreducible human reality, emergent from a sufficiently complex dynamic system (an organism with self-awareness, within a particular cultural milieu) that is both shaped by and contributes to the shaping of its environment. Attempts to simplify addiction into one or a few dimensions may create a solvable problem, but by doing so they fail to solve the real one. (shrink)

Since the emergence of our species at least, natural selection based on genetic variation has been replaced by culture as the major driving force in human evolution. It has made us what we are today, by ratcheting up cultural innovations, promoting new cognitive skills, rewiring brain networks, and even shifting gene distributions. Adopting an evolutionary perspective can therefore be highly informative for cognitive science in several ways: It encourages us to ask grand questions about the origins and ramifications of (...) our cognitive abilities; it equips us with the means to investigate, explain, and understand key dimensions of cognition; and it allows us to recognize the continued and ubiquitous workings of culture and evolution in everyday instances of cognitive behavior. Taking advantage of this reorientation presupposes a shift in focus, though, from human cognition as a general, homogenous phenomenon to the appreciation of cultural diversity in cognition as an invaluable source of data. (shrink)