Coordinating different viewpoints is an essential part of human interaction. Languages have evolved conventional ways of supporting this process: many linguistic items are somehow involved in viewpoint management, ranging from morphological elements and lexical units to grammatical constructions and narrative patterns. In this paper we propose a conceptual model for analysing how particular instances of such linguistic items can be used to coordinate the viewpoints of signallers, addressees, and third parties involved in an interaction event. In essence, our model augments (...) Langacker’s “viewing arrangement” through the addition of a third dimension to the existing two. We discuss the details of our model using a range of examples from spoken discourse, newspaper articles, and literary fiction, and end by placing it in broader discussions on human social cognition. (shrink)

Trevena and Miller provide further evidence that readiness potentials occur in the brain prior to the time that participants claim to have initiated a voluntary movement, a contention originally forwarded by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl . In their examination of this issue, though, aspects of their data lead them to question whether their measurement of the initiation of a voluntary movement was accurate. The current article addresses this concern by providing a direct analysis of biases in this task. This (...) was done by asking participants to make subjective timing decisions regarding a stimulus that could be measured objectively. Our findings suggest that their timing task was indeed biased such that participants' tend to report events as happening approximately 70 ms later than they actually happened. Implications for the original Libet et al. claims are discussed. (shrink)

The belief that conscious will is merely "an illusion created by the brain" appears to be gaining in popularity among cognitive neuroscientists. Its main adherents usually refer to the classic, but controversial 'Libet-experiments', as the empirical evidence that vindicates this illusion-claim. However, based on recent work that provides other interpretations of the Libet-experiments, we argue that the illusion-claim is not only empirically invalid, but also theoretically incoherent, as it is rooted in a category mistake; namely, the presupposition that neuronal activity (...) causes conscious will. We show that the illusion-claim is based on the behaviorist 'input-output' paradigm, and discuss the notions of 'self-organization' and 'self-steering' to provide an alternative perspective on the causal efficacy of conscious will. In the final sections, a tentative theoretical picture is sketched of conscious will as an instance of self-steered self-organization. We conclude that the subjective experience of conscious will is not a misguided one, but rather that the mechanisms supporting conscious will are considerably more complex than mainstream cognitive neuroscience currently acknowledges. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

In this paper we explore the phenomenon of writing online. We ask, 'Is writing by means of online technologies affected in a manner that differs significantly from the older technologies of pen on paper, typewriter, or even the word processor in an off-line environment?' In writing online, the author is engaged in a spatial complexity of physical, temporal, imaginal, and virtual experience: the writing space, the space of the text, cyber space, etc. At times, these may provide a conduit to (...) a writerly understanding of human phenomena. We propose that an examination of the phenomenological features of online writing may contribute to a more pedagogically sensitive understanding of the experiences of online seminars, teaching and learning. (shrink)

This text gives examples of how a different kind of human experience may be explored, and how the methods used for investigating phenomena may contribute to the process of human understanding.

In this paper, we examine the relationship between Christian religiosity, attitudes towards corporate social responsibility, and CSR behavior of executives. We distinguish four types of CSR attitudes and five types of CSR behavior. Based on empirical research conducted among 473 Dutch executives, we find that CSR attitudes mediate the influence of religiosity on CSR behavior. Intrinsic religiosity positively affects the ethical CSR attitude and negatively affects the financial CSR attitude, whereas extrinsic religiosity stimulates the philanthropic CSR attitude. Financial, ethical, and (...) philanthropic CSR attitudes significantly affect some types of CSR behaviors. However, because religiosity has opposing effects on the three attitudes, the joint mediation effect of the three attitudes is negligible. Furthermore, we find a direct negative influence of intrinsic religiosity on diversity and a direct positive influence on charity. (shrink)

We investigate the notion of minimal cognition, and claim that this notion already applies to bacterial behavior. On the basis of the example of E. coli, we argue that the basis of cognition can be profitably cast as sensorimotor coordinations which subserve the metabolic requirements of organisms.

Drowning has been the cause of over 2.5 million preventable deaths in the past decade. Despite the fact that the majority of drownings occur in open water, assessment of water safety competency typically occurs in swimming pools. The assessment of water safety competency in open water environments brings with it a few difficulties, but also promises tremendous benefits. The aim of this position paper is to discuss the benefits and caveats of conducting assessments in open water environments as opposed to (...) closed and controlled environments, and to provide recommendations for evidence-based practice. The first theoretical section discusses the effects of the environment and key variables on various factors of assessment. These discussions are linked to the two perspectives of representative learning design and information processing theory. The second section presents two pilot studies of relevance and provides practical implications for assessment of water safety competency. It seems that a combination of pool-based practice and open water education may be ideal in assessing aquatic skills competency. Assessment in open water presents clear benefits regarding validity, but often poses seemingly unsurmountable barriers, which providers may have reservations about in the absence of clear evidence. Hence this article provides a robust discussion about competency assessment and signals the practical importance of faithfully reproducing the environment in which skilled behavior is most relevant. (shrink)

Max van Manen offers an extensive exploration of phenomenological traditions and methods for the human sciences. It is his first comprehensive statement of phenomenological thought and research in over a decade. Phenomenology of practice refers to the meaning and practice of phenomenology in professional contexts such as psychology, education, and health care, as well as to the practice of phenomenological methods in contexts of everyday living. Van Manen presents a detailed description of key phenomenological ideas as they have evolved over (...) the past century; he then thoughtfully works through the methodological issues of phenomenological reflection, empirical methods, and writing that a phenomenology of practice offers to the researcher. Van Manen’s comprehensive work will be of great interest to all concerned with the interrelationship between being and acting in human sciences research and in everyday life. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are becoming increasingly significant areas of research for scholars in science and technology studies (STS) and media studies. In March 2020, Waymo, Google/Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle project, introduced the ‘Open Dataset Virtual Challenge’, an annual competition leveraging their Waymo Open Dataset. This freely accessible dataset comprises annotated autonomous vehicle data from their own Waymo vehicles. Yearly, Waymo has continued to host iterations of this challenge, inviting teams of computer scientists to tackle evolving machine learning (...) and vision problems using Google's data and tools. This article analyses these challenges, situating them within the context of the ‘Grand Challenges’ of artificial intelligence (AI), which aimed to foster accountable and commercially viable advancements in the late 1980s. Through two exploratory workshops, we adopted a ‘technographic’ approach to examine the pivotal role of challenges in the development and political economy of AI. Serving as an organising principle for the AI innovation ecosystem, the challenge connects companies and external collaborators, driving advancements in specific machine vision domains. By exploring six key themes—interface methods, incrementalism, metrics, AI vernacular, applied domains, and competitive advantages—the article illustrates the role of these challenges in shaping AI research and development. By unpacking the dynamic interaction between data, computation, and labour, these challenges serve as catalysts propelling advancements towards self-driving technologies. The study reveals how challenges have historically and presently shaped the evolving landscape of self-driving and AI technologies. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the phenomenon of writing online. We ask, ‘Is writing by means of online technologies affected in a manner that differs significantly from the older technologies of pen on paper, typewriter, or even the word processor in an off‐line environment?’ In writing online, the author is engaged in a spatial complexity of physical, temporal, imaginal, and virtual experience: the writing space, the space of the text, cyber space, etc. At times, these may provide a conduit to (...) a writerly understanding of human phenomena. We propose that an examination of the phenomenological features of online writing may contribute to a more pedagogically sensitive understanding of the experiences of online seminars, teaching and learning. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between religious belief and the dilemmas Dutch executives confront in daily business practice. We find that the frequency with which dilemmas arise is directly related to various aspects of religious belief, such as the belief in a transcendental being and the intensity of religious practice. Despite this relationship, only 17% of the dilemmas examined involve a religious standard. Most dilemmas originate from a conflict between moral and practical standards. We also find that 79% of the (...) identified dilemmas stem from a conflict between two or more internalized standards of the executive. (shrink)

Cognition played a pivotal role in the acceleration of technological innovation during the Industrial Revolution. Growing affluence may have provided favourable environmental conditions for a boost in cognition, enabling individuals to tackle more complex problems. Dynamical systems thinking may provide useful tools to describe sudden transitions like the Industrial Revolution, by modelling the recursive feedback between psychology and environment.

This chapter contains sections titled: Where Are We When We Write? Writing Public Cyberwriting Writing the Distance to the Other Entering the Page: Proximity and Distance Writing Revisited Note References.

Since the emergence of the innovative field of artificial intelligence in the 1960s, the late Hubert Dreyfus insisted on the ontological distinction between man and machine, human and artificial intelligence. In the different editions of his classic and influential book What computers can’t do, he posits that an algorithmic machine can never fully simulate the complex functioning of the human mind—not now, nor in the future. Dreyfus’ categorical distinctions between man and machine are still relevant today, but their relation has (...) become more complex in our increasingly data-driven society. We, humans, are continuously immersed within a technological universe, while at the same time ubiquitous computing, in the words of computer scientist Mark Weiser, “forces computers to live out here in the world with people” The cell phone reader. Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2006, p 20). Dreyfus’ ideas are therefore challenged by thinkers such as Weiser, Kevin Kelly, Bruno Latour, Philip Agre, and Peter Paul Verbeek, who all argue that humans are much more intrinsically linked to machines than the original dichotomy suggests—they have evolved in concert. Through a discussion of the classical concepts of individuum and ‘authenticity’ within Western civilization, this paper argues that within the ever-expanding data-sphere of the twenty-first century, a new concept of man as ‘aggregate of data’ has emerged, which further erodes and undermines the categorical distinction between man and machine. This raises political and ethical questions beyond the confines of technology and artificial intelligence. Moreover, this seemingly never-ending debate on what computers should do provokes the philosophical necessity to once again define the concept of what it is to be ‘human.’. (shrink)

In the early 1960s A. N. Prior was commissioned to write a review of J. L. Austin’s S ense and Sensibilia. The review was never published. The present article presents a transcription of the review from the material available in the Virtual Lab For Prior Studies maintained at Aalborg University, together with an edited version of the transcription of a longer commentary on Sense and Sensibilia from which the review was condensed.

The Overview Effect is the commonly reported experience of astronauts viewing planet Earth from space, and the subsequent reflection on, and processing of this experience. The Overview Effect is associated with feelings of awe, self-transcendence, and a change of perspective and identity that manifest themselves in taking steps towards protecting the fragile ecosystem. In the current study, we investigated whether the Overview Effect can be obtained in school children when simulated using virtual reality and whether the effect has a positive (...) impact on learning gains. Using questionnaires and attention data in an existing simulation environment used in the school system, we showed that the virtual reality simulation elicits an Overview Effect experience. Moreover, the experience yields learning gains in the domain of astrophysics. These findings are in line with past evidence regarding the positive impact of awe on learning and can be used to support further investigations of the relation between the Overview Effect and behavioral changes, specifically for educational purposes. (shrink)

Face perception and emotion categorization are widely investigated under laboratory conditions that are devoid of real social interaction. Using mobile eye-tracking glasses in a standardized diagnostic setting while applying the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, we had the opportunity to record gaze behavior of children and adolescents with and without Autism Spectrum Conditions during social interaction. The objective was to investigate differences in eye-gaze behavior between three groups of children and adolescents either with ASC or with unconfirmed diagnosis of ASC or (...) with neurotypical development during social interaction with an adult interviewer in a diagnostic standard situation using the ADOS-2. In a case control study, we used mobile eye-tracking glasses in an ecologically valid and highly standardized diagnostic interview to investigate suspected cases of ASC. After completion of the ASC diagnostic gold standard including the ADOS-2, the participants were assigned to two groups based on their diagnosis and compared with a matched group of neurotypically developed controls. The primary outcome measure is the percentage of total dwell times assessed for different areas of interest with regard to the face and body of a diagnostic interviewer and the surrounding space. Overall, 65 children and adolescents within an age range of 8.3–17.9 years were included in the study. The data revealed significant group differences, especially in the central-face area. Previous investigations under laboratory conditions gave preferential attention to the eye region during face perception to describe differences between ASC and NTD. In this study – using an ecologically valid setting within a standard diagnostic procedure – the results indicate that neurotypically developed controls seem to process faces and facial expressions in a holistic manner originating from the central-face region. Conversely, participants on the Autism Spectrum seem to avoid the central-face region and show unsystematic gaze behavior, not using the preferred landing position in the central-face region as the Archimedean point of face perception. This study uses a new approach, and it will be important to replicate these preliminary findings in future research. (shrink)

This article conducts a literature review of current and future challenges in the use of artificial intelligence in cyber physical systems. The literature review is focused on identifying a conceptual framework for increasing resilience with AI through automation supporting both, a technical and human level. The methodology applied resembled a literature review and taxonomic analysis of complex internet of things interconnected and coupled cyber physical systems. There is an increased attention on propositions on models, infrastructures and frameworks of IoT in (...) both academic and technical papers. These reports and publications frequently represent a juxtaposition of other related systems and technologies. We review academic and industry papers published between 2010 and 2020. The results determine a new hierarchical cascading conceptual framework for analysing the evolution of AI decision-making in cyber physical systems. We argue that such evolution is inevitable and autonomous because of the increased integration of connected devices in cyber physical systems. To support this argument, taxonomic methodology is adapted and applied for transparency and justifications of concepts selection decisions through building summary maps that are applied for designing the hierarchical cascading conceptual framework. (shrink)

In daily life we take it for granted that our minds have conscious control of our actions, at least for most of the time. But many scientists and philosophers deny that this is really the case, because there is no generally accepted theory of how the mind interacts with the body. Max Velmans presents a non-reductive solution to the problem, in which ‘conscious mental control’ includes ‘voluntary’ operations of the preconscious mind. On this account, biological determinism is compatible with experienced (...) free will. Velmans’ theory is put to the test by nine critics: Ron Chrisley, Todd Feinberg, Jeffrey Gray, John Kihlstrom, Sam Rakover, Ramakrishna Rao, Aaron Sloman, Steve Torrance andRobert Van Gulick, followed by Velmans' reply. (shrink)

The world currently faces the highest number in recorded history of people fleeing from war and violence. Refugee-hosting countries in the western part of the world experience the effects of global issues more than ever and face dealing with humanitarian logistics for refugees on an unprecedented scale. These countries continuously optimize their policies regarding refugees by navigating between obligations toward the Geneva Refugee Treaty, manageability of the situation, and worries of their citizens voiced through public opinion. The issue can be (...) considered a wicked problem because of its unpredictability, complexity, and global scale. Presuppositions about human flourishing affect the interpretation of well-being in refugee policies. In this article, we reflect on refugees’ experiences with Dutch asylum policies, analyzing these experiences through the theoretical lenses of Abraham Maslow, Manfred Max-Neef, and Herman Dooyeweerd. We learn from Maslow the importance of providing information for the satisfaction of basic needs; from Max-Neef we learn that, with the sole exception of the need for subsistence, all fundamental needs are equally important; and from Dooyeweerd we learn that trust, though often overlooked, is important for refugee well-being. (shrink)

W. V. Quine’s systematic development of mathematical logic has been widely praised for the new material presented and for the clarity of its exposition. This revised edition, in which the minor inconsistencies observed since its first publication have been eliminated, will be welcomed by all students and teachers in mathematics and philosophy who are seriously concerned with modern logic. Max Black, in Mind, has said of this book, “It will serve the purpose of inculcating, by precept and example, standards of (...) clarity and precision which are, even in formal logic, more often pursued than achieved.”. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is done by philosophers operating within the strict canons of the discipline. Environmental ethics has been pursued as the traditional ethics of pure reason. Real bioethics is not pure, traditional, reasoning ethics. Real bioethics is done by realistic scientists1 and concerned biologists and physicians who have an intuition to help build a "Bridge to the Future,"2 whether of not their effort is labeled " bioethics." Among this cohort is Physicians for Social Responsibility and the editors of their new (...) journal, Medicine and Global Survival.3 These people are not professional ethicists. As realists they see the survival and well-being of the human species as a matter of organizational morality—a civic society directed to the "common good" worldwide, as soon as possible, and with a long-range perspective. Real bioethics is not merely biocentric or merely anthropocentric. Instead, real bioethics calls for an idealistic mix of biocentrism and the kind of humanism that is concerned with the needs, interests, and welfare of human beings, or, in other words, an enlightened or realistic anthropocentrism that acknowledges the central role of the biosphere in the continued existence and "common good" of the human species, as previously discussed in connection with global bioethics,4 a subject foreign to environmental ethicists. From any point of view, real bioethics falls in the context of the ideals of two Wisconsin professors who lived in the early part of the twentieth century, Aldo Leopold and Max Otto, as will be discussed later. (shrink)

Summary Prägnanz was suggested by Max Wertheimer in the 1920s as subsuming all “Laws of Gestalt” as they apply to visual awareness. Thus, it assumes a prominent position in any account of Gestalt phenomena. From a phenomenological perspective, some visual stimuli evidently “have more Prägnanz” than others, so Prägnanz seems to be an intensive quality. Here, we investigate the intricacies that need to be faced on the way to a definition of formal scales. Such measures naturally depend both upon the (...) stimulus and upon the observer. Structural complexity bottlenecks of visual systems play a role, as well as the relevance to biological fitness, that is the affinity to the optical user interface. This positions the notion of Prägnanz squarely within the realm of biology. Indeed, the familiar “releasers” of ethology are singular cases of extremely high Prägnanz. (shrink)

In this essay I elaborate on the theoretical framework – that of Millian liberalism – that Max Charlesworth brought to many public issues, including that of the relation between education and religion. I will then apply this framework to a debate in which I have been recently involved myself: a debate around the provision of religious instruction in public schools. In the first section I expound Charlesworth’s rejection of secularism in education in a liberal pluralist state and his defence of (...) faith-based schooling. In the second section I uncover the religious motivations behind the Victorian government’s 1950 amendments to the apparently secularist Victorian Education Act of 1872. In section three, I explore the notion of secularism more fully and suggest that the struggle between those who espouse religious instruction in state schools and those who oppose it while advocating a more general form of education about religion is a symptom of a deeper tension between liberalism and communitarianism within the culture of modernist, liberal states. (shrink)

Summary In this paper we examine the reaction of the Leiden low-temperature laboratory of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes to new ideas in quantum theory. Especially the contributions of Albert Einstein (1906) and Peter Debye (1912) to the theory of specific heat, and the concept of zero-point energy formulated by Max Planck in 1911, gave a boost to solid state research to test these theories. In the case of specific heat measurements, Kamerlingh Onnes's laboratory faced stiff competition from Walter Nernst's Institute of (...) Physical Chemistry in Berlin. In fact, Berlin got the better of it because Leiden lacked focus. After the liquefaction of helium in 1908, Kamerlingh Onnes transformed his laboratory into an international facility for low temperature research, and for this reason it was impossible to make headway with the specific heat measurements. In the case of zero-point energy, Leiden developed a magnetic research programme to test the concept. Initially the balance of evidence seemed to be tipping in favour of zero-point energy. After 1914, however, Leiden would desert the theory in fovour, of a concept from calssical physics. A curious move that illustrates Kamerlingh Onnes's discomfort with the new quantum theory. (shrink)

Max Weber has shown that the informing spirit of Western capitalism originated from the Christian Reformation. The capitalist spirit can be regarded as a stand-in of Western modernity as a whole. Western modernity was initially the outcome of the theology of Calvinism. Calvinist modernity inspired political revolutions that since the seventeenth century irreversibly transformed Western feudal societies into bourgeois democratic nation-states. Something comparable happened in India in the nineteenth century with the rediscovery of Vedanta. Rediscovery, reinterpretation and public dissemination of (...) Vedanta constituted the Indian version of a Reformation. In the beginning of the twentieth century this Vedantic Reformation inspired the revolutionary political movement, which sought to free India from foreign domination. Vedanta was regarded as informing the spirit of Indian modernity because Vedanta emphasizes individual emancipation. This same emancipation was to imply collective emancipation from the bonds of colonialism and tyranny. These values of Vedantic modernity remain an important source of inspiration for the socio-political emancipation of the whole of the Indian population. (shrink)

The two great modern naturalists, Linnaeus and Darwin, expressed their intuition about how best to visualize patterns of affinities, that is, morphological similarities and divergences between taxa. Linnaeus suggested that “all plants show affinities on all sides, like a territory on a geographical map,” while Darwin thought that it was virtually impossible to understand the affinities between living and extinct species without a genealogical tree. Genealogical trees follow the diachronic, evolving logic of a timeline, whereas maps depict a synchronous pattern (...) of extant taxa. Although the two seem unrelated, various naturalists made attempts to combine them. Surprisingly, these resulted in three-dimensional images that, in order to be observed, had to be projected on paper. The naturalists Max Fürbringer and Richard Bowdler Sharpe were aware of this fact, but even Darwin himself twice combined the basic intuitions underlying the two modes of representation to produce three-dimensional images. This article is a brief history of the efforts to merge genealogical trees and map-like cross sections of affinities into one three-dimensional image. (shrink)

Summary In this paper we examine the reaction of the Leiden low-temperature laboratory of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes to new ideas in quantum theory. Especially the contributions of Albert Einstein (1906) and Peter Debye (1912) to the theory of specific heat, and the concept of zero-point energy formulated by Max Planck in 1911, gave a boost to solid state research to test these theories. In the case of specific heat measurements, Kamerlingh Onnes's laboratory faced stiff competition from Walter Nernst's Institute of (...) Physical Chemistry in Berlin. In fact, Berlin got the better of it because Leiden lacked focus. After the liquefaction of helium in 1908, Kamerlingh Onnes transformed his laboratory into an international facility for low temperature research, and for this reason it was impossible to make headway with the specific heat measurements. In the case of zero-point energy, Leiden developed a magnetic research programme to test the concept. Initially the balance of evidence seemed to be tipping in favour of zero-point energy. After 1914, however, Leiden would desert the theory in fovour, of a concept from calssical physics. A curious move that illustrates Kamerlingh Onnes's discomfort with the new quantum theory. (shrink)

SummaryIn the 1940s a controversy developed between John H. Northrop (Nobel Laureate, 1946) and Max Delbrück (Nobel Laureate, 1969) on the formation of bacteriophage. From the historiography of molecular biology there emerges a picture of an obstinate Northrop who repudiated the ‘correct’ insights revealed by the experiments of Delbrück. The established reputation of Northrop confronts one with the question of why Delbrück's epoch-making experiments were not convincing for Northrop. It will be argued that this was a consequence of local incommensurability (...) between Northrop's physiological/chemical research style and Delbrück's bacteriological/genetic research style. The analysis of this controversy reveals the elements that made up these two research styles. (shrink)

Max Weber's fragmentary writings on social status suggest that differentiation on this basis should disappear as capitalism develops. However, many of Weber's examples of status refer to the United States, which Weber held to be the epitome of capitalist development. Weber hints at a second form of status, one generated by capitalism, which might reconcile this contradiction, and later theorists emphasize the continuing importance of status hierarchies. This article argues that such theories have missed one of the most important forms (...) of contemporary status: celebrity. Celebrity is an omnipresent feature of contemporary society, blazing lasting impressions in the memories of all who cross its path. In keeping with Weber's conception of status, celebrity has come to dominate status “honor,” generate enormous economic benefits, and lay claim to certain legal privileges. Compared with other types of status, however, celebrity is status on speed. It confers honor in days, not generations; it decays over time, rather than accumulating; and it demands a constant supply of new recruits, rather than erecting barriers to entry. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt described the political in existential terms. The political consists in the distinction between friend and enemy, a distinction between collectivities that are existentially different. This led Richard Wolin to label Schmitt a “political existentialist” whose work relies on a specific cultural and philosophical climate of “vitalism.” Consequently, Schmitt’s thought is treated as ideology by Wolin. Instead of focusing on Schmitt’s underlying ideological affinity with a particular cultural climate, this paper attempts to conceptualize the notion of “political existentiality” as (...) a crucial element in Schmitt’s understanding of the political and defend it as a notion that reveals something about the political condition itself. In order to understand the meaning of existentiality, we will conceptualize it against the background of Max Weber’s disenchantment thesis and conclude that through the notion of political existentiality Schmitt conceptualizes the political sphere as a locus of meaning and values and thus reenchants the political. (shrink)