Our differences with Croll and Moses centre on their interpretation of the term 'inclusion', the way in which they theorise their findings, and their use of the terms 'pragmatism' and 'ideology' as instruments of analysis in trying to understand a patchy move to inclusion. In particular, a taken-as-given use of the term 'ideological' to describe the views of others is troublesome, carrying as it does intimations of partisanship in others, but only rationality in the user. We suggest that if informants (...) and commentators employ the term 'ideological', the use of this descriptor by these informants and commentators should form a principal focus of scholarly analysis. (shrink)

Since the 1970s Gary Watson has published a series of brilliant and highly influential essays on human action, examining such questions as: in what ways are we free and not free, rational and irrational, responsible or not for what we do? Moral philosophers and philosophers of action will welcome this collection, representing one of the most important bodies of work in the field.

With its unique combination of depth, clarity, and humor that has enchanted millions, this beloved classic by bestselling author Gary Zukav opens the fascinating world of quantum physics to readers with no mathematical or technical background. "Wu Li" is the Chinese phrase for physics. It means "patterns of organic energy," but it also means "nonsense," "my way," "I clutch my ideas," and "enlightenment." These captivating ideas frame Zukav's evocative exploration of quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Delightfully easy to read, (...) The Dancing Wu Li Masters illuminates the compelling powers at the core of all we know. (shrink)

Can what we know change what we see? Does language affect cognition and perception? The last few years have seen increased attention to these seemingly disparate questions, but with little theoretical advance. We argue that substantial clarity can be gained by considering these questions through the lens of predictive processing, a framework in which mental representations—from the perceptual to the cognitive—reflect an interplay between downward-flowing predictions and upward-flowing sensory signals. This framework provides a parsimonious account of how what we know (...) ought to change what we see and helps us understand how a putatively high-level trait such as language can impact putatively low-level processes such as perception. Within this framework, language begins to take on a surprisingly central role in cognition by providing a uniquely focused and flexible means of constructing predictions against which sensory signals can be evaluated. Predictive processing thus provides a plausible mechanism for many of the reported effects of language on perception, thought, and action, and new insights on how and when speakers of different languages construct the same “reality” in alternate ways. (shrink)

Le Michigan est le site de trois pipelines : pétrole, plomb et marchandises. Cet essai retrace les crises de ces pipelines et les possibilités de lutte contre leur établissement. En examinant les limites et les potentiels du blocage propre à « l’action éco-directe », nous pouvons dégager certaines leçons qui pourraient être généralisées à d’autres luttes. En particulier, dans une phase capitaliste de circulation, une tactique consistant à arrêter les flux peut être utile dans des scénarios impliquant d’aller au-delà du (...) simple arrêt de la construction d’un oléoduc. Mais, si une interruption peut ralentir la reproduction du capital, elle pose des défis à la reproduction du social. Ces défis peuvent être surmontés par des blocages qui cherchent non seulement à mettre fin à la situation génératrice du conflit, mais également à créer de nouveaux rapports sociaux. (shrink)

This is the first visual history of Arunachal Pradesh, a state in northeast India bordering on Tibet/China, Burma and Bhutan. Based on archival and field research, it illustrates a century and a half of cultural change in this culturally diverse and little-known region of the Himalayas. More than 200 photographs, half archival and half contemporary, reveal that tribal cultures in this remote mountainous region have been continually reacting to external forces and initiating internal innovations. The Introduction places the archival photographs (...) in their wider context, emphasising the complexity of the colonial encounter and uncovering personal stories behind many of the images. The sequence of photographs, juxtaposing the historical and the contemporary, shows us the uneven and sometimes confusing mixture of past and present that is emerging in Arunachal Pradesh. (shrink)

Does feature evolution stop once we have acquired sufficient features to perform a recognition task? With extended practice, novices may develop a more sophisticated feature space that allows them to perform more accurately or quickly. Our work on perceptual expertise indicates that feature learning and reorganization can continue even after an initial set of features is available to represent a novel class of objects.

The distinction between occurrent and non-occurrent mental states is frequently appealed to by contemporary philosophers, but it has never been explicated in any significant detail. In the literature, two accounts of the distinction are commonly presupposed. One is that occurrent states are conscious states. The other is that non-occurrent states are dispositional states, and thus that occurrent states are manifestations of dispositions. I argue that neither of these accounts is adequate, and therefore that another account is needed. I propose that (...) occurrent states are active states. (shrink)

Theories of language production propose that utterances are constructed by a mechanism that separates linguistic content from linguistic structure, Linguistic content is retrieved from the mental lexicon, and is then inserted into slots in linguistic structures or frames. Support for this kind of model at the phonological level comes from patterns of phonological speech errors. W present an alternative account of these patterns using a connectionist or parallel distributed proceesing (PDP) model that learns to produce sequences of phonological features. The (...) model's errors exhibit some of the properties of human speech errors, specifically, properties that have been attributed to the action of phonological rules, frames, or other structural generalizations. (shrink)

This paper addresses the criticism recently directed at Internet companies who have chosen to do business in China. Currently, in order to conduct business in China, companies must agree to the Chinese government’s rule of self-censoring any information the government deems inappropriate. We start by explaining how some of these companies have violated the human rights of Chinese citizens to freely trade information. We then analyze whether the justifications and excuses offered by these companies are sufficient to absolve them of (...) moral responsibility. We argue that both justifications and excuses offered are insufficient. Wilfully abiding by unjust laws, albeit necessary to do business in China, should not trump moral actions that protect rights. (shrink)

This paper addresses the criticism recently directed at Internet companies who have chosen to do business in China. Currently, in order to conduct business in China, companies must agree to the Chinese government's rule of self-censoring any information the government deems inappropriate. We start by explaining how some of these companies have violated the human rights of Chinese citizens to freely trade information. We then analyze whether the justifications and excuses offered by these companies are sufficient to absolve them of (...) moral responsibility. We argue that both justifications and excuses offered are insufficient. Wilfully abiding by unjust laws, albeit necessary to do business in China, should not trump moral actions that protect rights. (shrink)

Laying foundations -- Rejecting aggression -- Safeguarding cooperation -- Enforcing law -- Rectifying injury -- Liberating society -- Situating liberation.

Made-Up Minds addresses fundamental questions of learning and concept invention by means of an innovative computer program that is based on the cognitive ...

Theories of language production have long been expressed as connectionist models. We outline the issues and challenges that must be addressed by connectionist models of lexical access and grammatical encoding, and review three recent models. The models illustrate the value of an interactive activation approach to lexical access in production, the need for sequential output in both phonological and grammatical encoding, and the potential for accounting for structural effects on errors and structural priming from learning.

Drawing heavily on recent empirical research to update R.M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism and expand Hare's treatment of "intuitive level rules," Gary Varner considers in detail the theory's application to animals while arguing that Hare should have recognized a hierarchy of persons, near-persons, & the merely sentient.

Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful—being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of (...) embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution. (shrink)

Consciousness -- Freedom -- Bad faith -- Authenticity.

Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful—being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of (...) embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution. (shrink)

A growing number of people are relying on technologies like Google Maps not only to navigate and locate themselves in cartographic space but also to search, discover and evaluate urban places. While the spatial data that underlies such technology frequently appears as a combination of Google-created maps and locational information passively collected from mobile (GPS-enabled) devices, in this article we argue that for such systems to function as both useful tools for exploration for users and sources of revenue, users must (...) actively produce massive quantities of granular spatial data that would otherwise be significantly more difficult and expensive to collect. The production of this qualitative information about places constitutes significant unremunerated affective labour. In this article, we build on the tradition of feminist geographies, especially feminist and critical Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to examine how the labour done by gendered, raced and often classed members of a local community is alienated by Google (i.e. Alphabet, Inc.) to produce commodified spatial data/media in the Local Guides platform. We analyse how Google’s presentation of the platform hails women as care labourers—sharing their thoughts, feelings and knowledge of place for free in the name of supporting and caring for a community, however vaguely it may be constituted. At the same time, we argue that digital labour that produces the Local Guides platform draws from and reproduces specific gendering of spaces. We draw on a case study of a commercial corridor in the US city of Worcester, Massachusetts to show how the dialectic between affective digital labour and urban space has material effects on the production of raced, classed and gendered spaces and places. The article concludes with a call to maintain critical, feminist engagements with these types of platforms in order to further develop forms of digital praxis towards more just cities. (shrink)

This article describes the emerging bipartisan political coalition supporting commercial competitiveness as a rationale for research and development, points to selected changes in legal and funding structures in the 1980s that stem from the success of the new political coalition and suggests some of the connections between these changes and academic science and technology, and examines the consequences of these changes for universities. The study uses longitudinal secondary data on changes in business strategies and corporate structures that made business elites (...) in the defense and health industries consider supporting competitiveness R&D policies. The article identifies and assesses an array of national R&D legislation concerned with competitiveness that was passed in the 1980s and 1990s and that has implications for academic R&D. The effects of competitiveness R&D policies on universities and academic science and technology are appraised by analyzing changes in time-series data on science and technology indicators compiled by the National Science Foundation. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that voluntary environmental governance mechanisms operate to enhance a firm’s environmental legitimacy as opposed to being a driver of proactive environmental performance activities. To understand how these mechanisms contribute to the firm’s environmental legitimacy, we investigate whether environmental corporate governance characteristics are associated with voluntary environmental disclosure. We examine an increasingly important attribute of a firm’s disclosure setting, namely the disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) information. GHG information represents proprietary non-financial information about the firm’s exposure to environmental (...) concerns and is related to the firm’s operations and future profitability. Thus, we expect governance participants would view such information as a potentially important strategic device for managing stakeholders’ demands for information concerning environmental risks. We find that the presence of an environmental committee and a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) is positively associated with the likelihood of GHG disclosure and that CSOs are associated with disclosure transparency. Further analysis reveals that the likelihood of disclosure is associated with committee size, number of committee meetings, expertise of committee members and CSO, and overlap between the environmental committee and audit committee. Only expertise of the environmental committee members and the CSO are associated with GHG disclosure transparency, while larger committees tend to be associated with lower transparency. Our results are particularly important to those with interests in evaluating the potential role that corporate governance mechanisms play in responding to stakeholder concerns about environmental risks. Directors and officers who are considering appointment to similar governance positions, may wish to consider what attributes would make such governance positions more influential. (shrink)

The standard means of seeking the classical limit in Bohmian mechanics is through the imposition of vanishing quantum force and quantum potential for pure states. We argue that this approach fails, and that the Bohmian classical limit can be realized only by combining narrow wave packets, mixed states, and environmental decoherence.