Using a new materialist line of questioning that looks at the agential potentialities of water and its entanglements with Big Data and surveillance, this article explores how the recent Snowden revelations about the National Security Agency have reignited media scholars to engage with the infrastructures that enable intercepting, hosting, and processing immeasurable amounts of data. Focusing on the expansive architecture, location, and resource dependence of the NSA’s Utah Data Center, I demonstrate how surveillance and privacy can never be disconnected from (...) the material infrastructures that allow and render natural the epistemological state of mass surveillance. Specifically, I explore the NSA’s infrastructure and the million of gallons of water it requires daily to cool its servers, while located in one of the driest states in the US. Complicating surveillance beyond the NSA, as also already imbricated with various social media companies, this article questions the emplacement and impact of corporate data centers more generally, and the changes they are causing to the landscape and local economies. I look at how water is an intriguing and politically relevant part of the surveillance infrastructure and how it has been constructed as the main tool for activism in this case, and how it may eventually help transform the public’s conceptualization of Big Data, as deeply material. (shrink)

Much has been written about the free energy principle (FEP), and much misunderstood. The principle has traditionally been put forth as a theory of brain function or biological self-organisation. Critiques of the framework have focused on its lack of empirical support and a failure to generate concrete, falsifiable predictions. I take both positive and negative evaluations of the FEP thus far to have been largely in error, and appeal to a robust literature on scientific modelling to rectify the situation. A (...) prominent account of scientific modelling distinguishes between model structure and model construal. I propose that the FEP be reserved to designate a model structure, to which philosophers and scientists add various construals, leading to a plethora of models based on the formal structure of the FEP. An entailment of this position is that demands placed on the FEP that it be falsifiable or that it conform to some degree of biological realism rest on a category error. To this end, I deliver first an account of the phenomenon of model transfer and the breakdown between model structure and model construal. In the second section, I offer an overview of the formal elements of the framework, tracing their history of model transfer and illustrating how the formalism comes apart from any interpretation thereof. Next, I evaluate existing comprehensive critical assessments of the FEP, and hypothesise as to potential sources of existing confusions in the literature. In the final section, I distinguish between what I hold to be the FEP—taken to be a modelling language or modelling framework—and what I term “FEP models.”. (shrink)

In _Animacies_, Mel Y. Chen draws on recent debates about sexuality, race, and affect to examine how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, or deathly animates cultural lives. Toward that end, Chen investigates the blurry division between the living and the dead, or that which is beyond the human or animal. Within the field of linguistics, animacy has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, sentience, or liveness. Chen turns to cognitive linguistics to stress how language habitually (...) differentiates the animate and the inanimate. Expanding this construct, Chen argues that animacy undergirds much that is pressing and indeed volatile in contemporary culture, from animal rights debates to biosecurity concerns. Chen's book is the first to bring the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and disability theory. Through analyses of dehumanizing insults, the meanings of queerness, animal protagonists in recent Asian/American art and film, the lead in toys panic in 2007, and the social lives of environmental illness, _Animacies_ illuminates a hierarchical politics infused by race, sexuality, and ability. In this groundbreaking book, Chen rethinks the criteria governing agency and receptivity, health and toxicity, productivity and stillness—and demonstrates how attention to the affective charge of matter challenges commonsense orderings of the world. (shrink)

The controversial issue of whether Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation is excessive or appropriate is examined in terms of two competing claims: that CEOs are overpaid for the value they provide to an enterprise, and that CEO compensation is inherently equitable. Various arguments and perspectives on both sides of the issue are assessed. Little evidence supports the claim that CEO performance justifies very high compensation. Further, the complex interactive alliance between boards of directors and CEOs compromises rational decision-making about CEO (...) compensation, with the Enron affair offered as an illustration of what can go wrong when dishonest CEO actions combine with lax board oversight. Recommendations for restoring trust in the system include continuing current regulatory actions, using different metrics for determining CEO compensation, making board member-CEO relationships transparent to all company stakeholders, and several more radical ideas for change. Stakeholders must resist being distracted by other social, economic, or political issues from pursuing serious, lasting reform. (shrink)

The principal target of this article is the reification Bruineberg et al. perceive of formalism within the literature on the variational free energy minimization (VFEM) framework. The authors do not provide a definition of reification, as none yet exists. Here I offer one. On this definition, the objects of the authors' critiques fall short of full-blown reification – as do the authors themselves.

Machine learning (ML) refers to a class of computer-facilitated methods of statistical modelling. ML modelling techniques are now being widely adopted across the sciences. A number of outspoken representatives from the general public, computer science, various scientific fields, and philosophy of science alike seem to share in the belief that ML will radically disrupt scientific practice or the variety of epistemic outputs science is capable of producing. Such a belief is held, at least in part, because its adherents take ML (...) to exist on novel epistemic footing relative to classical mathematical or statistical modelling approaches utilised in science. Namely, they take modelling with ML to be a “theory-free” enterprise, in the sense of not resting essentially on input from human conceptual grasp on the target phenomenon and domain expertise. I take this view to arise from the further, and more deeply entrenched belief that data is worldly and objective; i.e., data is viewed as recapitulating or representing with perfect fidelity the structure or properties of the systems in nature it is sampled from. Yet most contemporary philosophers of science take on board, in one version or other, the thesis of theory-ladenness or theory-mediation of observation or measurement. From this, it follows that most philosophers of science (and, I will venture, many scientists) hold irreconcilable views on the nature of data, an internal tension which threatens the integrity of their appraisals of ML in science. Taking the thesis of theory-ladenness on board---and its implications for the nature of data seriously---it follows that there is no reason to believe that ML differs fundamentally in its epistemic footing from established mathematical modelling approaches in the sciences. I show that usage and interpretation can differ from “standard practice” in scientific projects which wield the tools of ML without accepting a difference in the epistemic or representational status of such tools. (shrink)

Margaret Monahan Hogan; Catholic Health Care Institutions: Dinosaurs Awaiting Extinction or Safe Refuge in a Culture of Death, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenic.

Incongruent counterparts are pairs of objects which cannot be enclosed in the same spatial limits despite an exact similarity in magnitude, proportion, and relative position of their parts. Kant discerns in such objects, whose most familiar example is left and right hands, a “paradox” demanding “demotion of space and time to mere forms of our sensory intuition.” This paper aims at an adequate understanding of Kant’s enigmatic idealist argument from handed objects, as well as an understanding of its relation to (...) the other key supports of his idealism. The paper’s central finding is that Kant’s idealist argument from incongruent counterparts rests essentially on his theory of freedom. The surprising result sheds new light on deep and overlooked links among the pillars of transcendental idealism, pointing the way to a comprehensive and unified reading of Kant’s system of idealist arguments. (shrink)

Presentation of self (via Goffman) is becoming increasingly popular as a means for explaining differences in meaning and activity of online participation. This article argues that self-presentation can be split into performances, which take place in synchronous “situations,” and artifacts, which take place in asynchronous “exhibitions.” Goffman’s dramaturgical approach (including the notions of front and back stage) focuses on situations. Social media, on the other hand, frequently employs exhibitions, such as lists of status updates and sets of photos, alongside situational (...) activities, such as chatting. A key difference in exhibitions is the virtual “curator” that manages and redistributes this digital content. This article introduces the exhibitional approach and the curator and suggests ways in which this approach can extend present work concerning online presentation of self. It introduces a theory of “lowest common denominator” culture employing the exhibitional approach. (shrink)

Ancient schematic systems originating in the Jewish and Chinese traditions that demonstrate dynamic integration of human consciousness with the material world offer fresh insights into the process through which technoetic art forms are created at the intersections of art, science, technology, and culture. Kabbalah is Judaism's esoteric tradition that reveals the deep structure of biblical consciousness through a symbolic language, conceptual schema, and graphic model for exploring the creative process. The Tree of Life schema is a network of 22 pathways (...) linking 10 nodes (sephirot) that represent stages in the creative process. The first three sephirot represent the artist's undifferentiated intention to create and the cognitive dyad in which a flash of insight begins to crystallize into a viable idea. Two affective dyads, largess/restraint and success/gracefulness, are balanced by the sephirah (singular for sephirot) of Beauty, the aesthetic heart of the entire process. The ninth sephirah funnels the integrated flow of intention, thought, and emotion into the world of physical action that is the tenth sephirah. The Kabbalistic schema is used to trace the process of creating Inside/Outside: P'nim/Panim, a technoetic moist- media artwork in which a biofeedback imaging system forms a feedback loop between changing mind/body processes and corresponding changes in digital self-portraits. (shrink)

Part one: Overview of business ethics. Understanding business ethics -- Laying a foundation: ethical decision making, social responsibility, corporate governance, stakeholders and activism, and sustainability -- part two: Individual influences on business ethics. Why good people do bad things -- Individual factors that influence your ethics-based thoughts and actions -- Common ethical challenges and how to handle them -- Common organizational practices with ethics implications -- The double-edged sword of leadership and business ethics -- part three: Organizational influences on business (...) ethics. Organizational culture and business ethics -- The role of laws, codes, and training in business ethics -- Doing well by doing good -- part four: Global business ethics issues. A global perspective of business ethics -- Environmental sustainability issues at home and abroad -- The role of business in social justice and change -- Case study: The cause, effect, and impace of Amazon. (shrink)

This fine collection of essays is dedicated to Paul Guyer. It includes work by distinguished experts and younger scholars across a range of topics in Kant’s theoretical, moral, and political philosophy.Karl Ameriks’s “On the Many Senses of ‘Self-Determination’” responds to two misreadings of Kantian autonomy. One dismisses its notion of self-determination, the source of the auto-in autonomy, as an excessively subjective basis for morality; the other interprets its nomos as involving excessive determination of will by reason or sensibility. Ameriks responds (...) with careful analysis of Kant’s “provocative language” concerning the authorship and legislation of morality. This includes Kant’s famous description of... (shrink)

This essay considers how the JRE has engaged Catholic ethics in the last 50 years and how the concerns of Catholic ethics during this period of exceptional change are reflected and developed in the JRE. It discusses the transformation of Catholic ethics by focusing on the transitions: (i) from classical to historical consciousness; (ii) from an essentialist concept of human nature to a dynamic concept of the moral subject; (iii) from abstract to contextual moral reason; and (iv) from a discourse (...) that ignored the politics of power to one that reckons with it, analyzing the distinct ways in which the JRE engaged with these transformations. It concludes by looking to the future and suggests that a deeper engagement with the breadth of Catholic ethics internationally may help advance the Journal's mission and that a fuller interaction with the comparative and humanistic dimensions of the JRE's mission will enhance Catholic ethics. (shrink)

The basic biological situation -- Credulity, and the skeptical tradition -- The early period -- Construction of the inner realm -- Brain, mind, religion -- Infantile amnesia -- Prayer and faith -- Angelic encounters -- Are we 'wired for God'?.

The Second Edition of this celebrated book by two of the world's leading researchers in social work introduces readers to the main theories, theorists and perspectives that contribute to the debate on social work theory and social work ...

'Who am I?' In a world where randomness and chance make life transient and unpredictable, religion, psychology and philosophy have all tried, in their different ways, to answer this question and to give meaning and coherence to the human person. How we should construct a meaningful 'me' - and to make sense of one's life - is the question at the heart of Mel Thompson's illuminating book.Although Thompson begins by exploring the workings of the brain, he shows that if we (...) are to consider the nature of the self, it is not enough to argue about such things as how mind relates to matter, or whether neuroscience can fully explain consciousness. Such an approach fails to do justice to the self that we experience and the selves that we encounter around us. We need to engage with the more personal, existential questions: how do I make sense of my life? And am I responsible for the person I have become?Thompson investigates the gap between what we are and what others perceive us to be to ascertain whether we are genuinely knowable entities. He explores the central dilemma of how one can have a fixed idea of 'me' to shape and direct one's life when, in a world of constant change, events will rob us of that fixed idea at any moment. Perhaps we would be better to let go of the need for 'me', asks Thompson, but would a self-less life be possible, or desirable?Drawing on the writings of literature, philosophy, religion and science, as well as personal reflection and anecdote, Thompson has written an engaging and thought-provoking work that recaptures the notion of 'me' from the neuroscientists and situates it at the heart of finding a place in the world. (shrink)

The prevailing scientific paradigm is that matter is primary and everything, including consciousness can be derived from the laws governing matter. Although the scientific explanation of consciousness on these lines has not been realized, in this view it is only a matter of time before consciousness will be explained through neurobiological activity in the brain, and nothing else. There is an alternative view that holds that it is fundamentally impossible to explain how subjectivity can arise solely out of material processes—“the (...) hard problem of consciousness”—and instead consciousness should be regarded in itself as a primary force in nature. This view attempts to derive, for example, the laws of physics from models of consciousness, instead of the other way around. While as scientists we can understand and have an intuition for the first paradigm, it is very difficult to understand what “consciousness is primary” might mean since it has no intuitive scientific grounding. Here we show that worlds experienced through virtual reality are such that consciousness is a first order phenomenon. We discuss the Interface Theory of Perception which claims that in physical reality perceptions are not veridical and that we do not see the “truth” but that perception is based on evolutionary payoffs. We show that this theory may provide an accurate description of perception and consciousness within VR, and we put forward an experimental study that could throw light on this. We conclude that VR does offer an experimental frame that provides intuition with respect to the idea that “consciousness is first” and what this might mean regarding the perceived world. However, we do not draw any conclusions about the veracity of this notion with respect to physical reality or question the emergence of consciousness from brain function. (shrink)

The methodological foundations of any scientific discipline are shaped by the goals towards which that discipline is aiming. While it is almost universally accepted that the goals of explanation and prediction of natural and non-human phenomena have been met with great success since the scientific revolution, it is almost just as universally accepted that the social sciences have not even come close to achieving these goals. This raises the question addressed in this paper, namely, what is economics, and social science (...) more broadly speaking, for? What is their aim, and how is it similar and dissimilar to that of the natural sciences as we have come to classify them? I take up this question from a pragmatic perspective in this paper, setting economics within the wider context of social inquiry. Specifically, I turn to Hilary Putnam and John Dewey as exemplars of the pragmatic critique of any economics that sees its goals in line with those of the natural sciences, that is, as aiming for explanation and prediction according to governing laws of human behaviour. NB: this is a preprint that underwent some minor edits. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest an alternative approach to ethics in social work: virtue ethics. We argue that Habermas's theory of communicative action and discourse ethics needs to be supplemented with virtue ethics to provide an account useful to social work. In these times, sensitivity to others is needed for social work to succeed as a profession interested in combating the complacency, self-interest and lack of compassion evident in cutbacks to social welfare programmes and the resultant concerns with outcomes and (...) efficiencies that have all but obliterated care and compassion. We see in Habermas a furthering of Aristotelian and Thomist philosophy, most importantly with respect to his focus on emancipatory knowing?the critically reflective knower who knows self as the person doing the knowing. Habermas's distinction between values (objective), ethics (social) and morals (subjective) makes the province of emancipatory knowing (his epistemological theory) consistent with his moral theory?morality is personal. (shrink)

Before reinventing literary theory for the twenty-first century, we should consider what theory might do in principle. Both the functions of theory and its targets in literary study are often understood too narrowly. This chapter isolates three broad functions for theorization: description and explanation, both general and particular ; ethical-political or esthetic evaluation; and production of practical effects. From here, the chapter takes up the target orientations of literary study, organizing them into literature-oriented study and world-oriented study. These broadened conceptions (...) of the functions of theory and the orientations of literary study open up potentially valuable research programs beyond the theoretical practices of recent decades. (shrink)

In his famous chapter (3.82) on the revolutions engendered by the Peloponnesian War Thucydides notes that the effects of "stasis" ("faction" and "factional strife") reached even to the words people used. His overview should be translated ""Men changed the customary valuation [or" estimation"] of words in respect to deeds in judging what right was." Thucydides bases his understanding of distortions of language and understanding in revolutions on an implied idea that we need to use measures and standards in evaluating the (...) moral qualities of action. His ideas concerning revolutions and factions during the Peloponnesian War can and should be compared with Plato's, notably in "Republic" Books 1 and 8. (shrink)

Deictic coding offers a useful model for understanding the interactions between the dorsal and ventral streams of visual processing in the cerebral cortex. By extending Ballard et al.'s ideas on teleassistance, I show how dedicated low-level visuomotor processes in the dorsal stream might be engaged for the services of high-level cognitive operations in the ventral stream.

Roberto Frega’s Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy reformulates the question of democracy posed by our current historic conjuncture using the resources of a variety of pragmatic thinkers. He brings into the contemporary conversation regarding democracy’s fortunes both classical and somewhat neglected figures in the pragmatic tradition to deal with questions of power, ontology, and politics. In particular, Frega takes a social philosophical starting point and draws out the consequences of this fundamental shift in approach to questions of democratic (...) and political theory. This turn to social philosophy as a theoretically more sufficient conceptual vocabulary, extended in detail by Frega, raises questions regarding the work that a social ontology does in clarifying the role of economic and political approaches to democracy that are worth further exploration. Likewise, the practical proposals for moving beyond methodological nationalism with respect to forming publics for the sake of problem-solving, while providing a clarifying and fresh starting point, are still too beholden to models of agency and expressions of coordinated action that themselves are the very fruit of those systems which undermine democratic power in the first instance. (shrink)

This comprehensive, psychological, and naturalistic analysis of prayer offers an alternative to William James's model of prayer. Faber analyzes religious faith psychologically and anthropologically, concluding that subjective prayer is finally an instance of homeopathic "magical" conduct. It ritualistically conjures up a version of the first, primal, biological situation, in which the dependent "little" one cries out to a parental "big" one for physical and emotional nourishment. Eventually, religion, and its expression of faith through prayer, provides us with a magical protective (...) presence that is natural in its return to the primal, rather than supernatural, as James argues, in its presence and existence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The fact of pluralism has set a number of practical and theoretical problems for political theorists. One of the most serious difficulties is the question of the criteria for judgment. What critical standards are available when encountering a society's practices that are different from one's own? One strategy for dealing with this is to separate out questions of ethics from questions of morality. We argue that this is a particularly unfruitful conceptual strategy. Rather our position is that the concept (...) of real interests is already operant within the practices of judgment that constitute a community, or a form of life. Our strategy is to first explore the possibility of immanent normative critique of interests expressed in forms of life using Wittgenstein and Dewey in light of Rahel Jaeggi's Critique of Forms of Life. Properly understanding how these standards of immanent critique work dissolves the problem of how to apply these to external contexts. While Jaeggi's is an excellent contribution to the discourse on critique and justification, we find that there are commitments in her idea of “immanent critique” that require reformulation with respect to the question of real interests. (shrink)

Recent experiments suggest that search direction causally affects the discounted valuation of delayed payoffs. Comparisons between options can increase individuals’ patience toward future payoff options, while searching within options instead promotes impatient choices. We further test the robustness and specificity of this relationship using a novel choice task. Here individuals choose between pairs of delayed payoffs instead of single delayed outcomes. We observe a relationship between search styles and temporal discounting that are the opposite of those previously reported. Integrators – (...) those who tend to compare attributes within alternatives – discount and choose more slowly than comparators – those who are more likely to compare between alternatives. This finding supports and augments the view that individuals’ search strategy is predictive of subsequent discount rates. In particular, the direction of this relationship is further modifiable based on the spatial layout and varying information within an individual’s decision-making environment. (shrink)

In many ways, the 1707 Act of Union encouraged various practices of literary nation-building and the search for authentic ’British’ voices. In their desire to assert the politeness of this newly constituted British identity, writers such as Joseph Addison, Thomas Blackwell and James Macpherson shared a preoccupation with a quality which Addison termed ‘majestick Simplicity’. The implicit codification of polite manners and taste in the Spectator might at first appear to contradict this literary fascination with the search for exemplars of (...) native British simplicity. This article explores the continuity of these concerns in the writings of Addison, Blackwell and Macpherson, suggesting some of the ways that authenticity and politeness exerted conflicting demands on the eighteenth-century literary culture of Britishness. (shrink)

More than half of all pre‐twentieth century presidents communicated with the public on policy matters. Some gave speeches or wrote public letters and messages, while others utilized the façade of a presidential newspaper. The partisan affiliations of the presidents who communicated with the public suggest that even before the full articulation of the concept of the “rhetorical” presidency by Woodrow Wilson, there was underlying disagreement among American political leaders about the proper role of the public in influencing public policy—and of (...) the role of the president in influencing public opinion. (shrink)

Investigates the gap between what we are and what others perceive us to be to ascertain whether we are genuinely knowable entities. This book explores the central dilemma of how one can have a fixed idea of 'me' to shape and direct one's life when, in a world of constant change, events will rob us of that fixed idea at any moment.

Philosophy for life is the definitive introduction to the history of Western thought, but more than that, it is a toolkit for using philosophy in your daily life. As you read, you will develop your own critical and creative thinking, exploring the key ideas in Western Philosophy and the arguments that continue to shape our world. You will discover what philosophy is really about, learn to be a skeptic, meet Plato and Aristotle, explore the concept of mind, question free will, (...) use philosophy to be happy, find out about Marx and materialism, see how philosophy relates to everything from comics to coffee, and ask whether god exists. Philosophy is a life-tool, a set of skills for engaging with any subject, and in Philosophy For Life, you will discover a body of wisdom and a way to develop your own critical and creative thinking. (shrink)

Scholars who write about Fanon's engagement with Hegel in Black Skin, White Masks divide into roughly two groups. One group takes it that Fanon engages with Hegel to critique his philosophical views. This group takes it that Fanon views Hegel as irrelevant to the Black struggle against modern, anti‐Black racism. It is easy to see why this reading is natural and tempting, given the widely held belief that Hegel's philosophy is essentially racist. The second group believes that Fanon relies on (...) Hegel to explain the predicament of Black people who face racial discrimination. Indeed, some in this group believe that Fanon relies on Hegel to justify his call to violence in The Wretched of the Earth. I side with the second group. Fanon's engagement with Hegel is not a critique, but a thoughtful application of Hegel's thought that illustrates the connection between self‐consciousness, autonomy, and interpersonal recognition. In this article, I'll explain the positions of both camps and provide reasons to think the second camp has a better take on Fanon's reading of Hegel. (shrink)

James Bohman’s Democracy across borders: from demos to demoi is a rich and deep text. It is also deceptively short in length in comparison to those authors he engages and compactly reconstructs. Bohman puts forward strong normative arguments for a ‘reconstructed’ ideal of transnational democracy and provides models for realizing these ideals that also aim to meet standards of practicability. Bohman articulates the minimum necessary conditions for any democratic ideal in terms of freedom from domination and freedom to initiate and (...) engage in efficacious democratic deliberation across the borders of currently existing political communities. The argument charts a novel democratic ideal in terms of the global deliberative situation that is fundamentally different from the authors he discusses in light of existing facts about globalization, institutions, and the pluralism of demoi. In these comments I will focus on two main areas. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the possibility of sin as intellectual evil as operative in the contemporaneous culture in the debate over the essential nature of marriage and the accomplishment of the ends of marriage. It presents an account of theology as a science and the application of this understanding and its canons of operation to the issues presented in two recent documents—the Statement of the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research and the Affirmation of the Church’s Teaching on the Gift of (...) Sexuality, each of which addresses the encyclical Humanae vitae on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. The paper concludes with an examination of the essential nature of marriage to guide the fulfillment of its ends now described as intrinsic/essential and intrinsic/contingent. (shrink)

The authors explain our attraction to strange, literary places as resulting from our attraction to strange places in real life. I believe this is correct and important. The aim of the following commentary is to show that their main conclusion is closely related to – even (retrospectively) predictable from – the operation of simulation and the consequences of that operation for storytelling.