The theoretical construction and practical use of prior probabilities, in particular for systems having many degrees of freedom, are investigated. It becomes clear that it is operationally unsound to use mutually consistent priors if one wishes to draw sensible conclusions from practical experiments. The prior cannot usefully be identified with a state of knowledge, and indeed it is not so identified in common scientific practice. Rather, it can be identified with the question one asks. Accordingly, priors are free constructions. Their (...) informal, ill-defined and subjective characteristics must carry over into the conclusions one chooses to draw from experiments or observations. (shrink)

Summary This paper reports on the perspectives of elite athletes on anti-doping work in general and on the whereabouts system in particular, and uses a figurational perspective to explore the unintended consequences of the planned introduction of the whereabouts system. A cross-sectional survey of all the athletes in the Norwegian registered testing pool was carried out in 2006, using a structured questionnaire. Overall, 70.6% of the athletes agreed that doping was a problem in elite sport in general, but paradoxically only (...) 17.5% agreed that doping was a problem in their own sport. However, more than four in ten of the athletes agreed that the whereabouts information system made a contribution to a “cleaner” sport. Some athletes thought the system was unfair. The whereabouts information system had, despite all good intentions, outcomes other than those planned and intended by the WADA. Thus, athletes’ views might fruitfully be integrated with other perspectives when anti-doping work is developed further. (shrink)

Stichter’s The Skillfulness of Virtue provides an original and contemporary discussion of virtue-acquisition from an interdisciplinary standpoint. By equating virtues to skills, he offers an empirically informed progression towards virtue expertise. With the focus on gaining proficiency, there is little room to analyse the status of the virtue-novice, who is equated to a novice in any other skill: an agent consciously following simple rules, gaining experience in order to respond to normatively-laden situations with more automaticity in the following stages (...) of skill-acquisition. This paper argues for a disanalogy between the virtue novice and novices in other skills, resulting from the understanding that follows from learning virtue words such as ‘kindness’ and ‘honesty’. Our brains are structured to find and subsequently use patterns to skilfully move around in our environment. These patterns can be represented in what Stichter calls ‘schemas’ or mental models of categorisations. Virtue words refer to patterns that would be difficult to categorise without linguistic labels, as instances of these categories are highly divergent. Virtue words are thus learned through examples of virtuous behaviour. Moreover, as virtue words are thick ethical concepts, they contain a normative load. I argue that due to these characteristics, novices who use virtue vocabulary are in a more advanced position than novices in other skills. So, a kindness novice who understands the word ‘kind’ has a better idea of how to act kindly than the chess novice has an idea of how to play chess by understanding the word ‘chess’. (shrink)

Since social skills are highly significant to the evolutionary success of humans, we should expect these skills to be efficient and reliable. For many Evolutionary Psychologists efficiency entails encapsulation: the only way to get an efficient system is via information encapsulation. But encapsulation reduces reliability in opaque epistemic domains. And the social domain is darkly opaque: people lie and cheat, and deliberately hide their intentions and deceptions. Modest modularity [Currie and Sterelny (2000) Philos Q 50:145–160] attempts to (...) combine efficiency and reliability. Reliability is obtained by placing social skills in un-encapsulated central cognition; efficiency by having the social system sensitive to encapsulated socially tagged cues. In this paper, I argue that this approach fails. I focus on eye-gaze as a plausible example of a socially significant encapsulated cue. I demonstrate contra modest modularity that eye-gaze is subject to influence from central cognition. (shrink)

The goal of the Reason! project is to develop an effective and affordable method for improving informal reasoning. In this paper we sketch the background to the project, briefly describe the Reason! software, and report positive results from a detailed study of the first full-scale trial.

This article, first of all, supports the idea that the undeniable process of ICT-based technological convergence implies the social, cultural and business unification of the world of media and culture. The poor performance of the megamerger is a clear indicator of the unstable ground of the convergence hypothesis. Secondly, it argues in favour of cooperation between different expertise, skills and cultures to make multimedia products or to supply multimedia services, instead of creating from scratch a brand new class of (...) hybrid skills and professions. Thirdly, a variety of new possible and realistically achievable professional profiles in cultural industries and institutions are illustrated. Eventually a set of public policies, in the light of a new role for cities and regions, is developed. (shrink)

Developing countries are endeavoring to advance into the 21st century information age. Their progress, however, is hamstrung by the dire lack of trained, skilled and knowledgeable IS workers who are able to interact with online and off‐line information sources. These countries can tap from the rich intellectual capital lying dormant within the ranks of disabled people to boost the pool of IS workers in their societies. However, before developing countries can draw on the information systems capabilities of (...) disabled workers, these workers themselves must be able to function at par with their able‐bodied counterparts as information workers. This presupposes the availability of special‐purpose information systems devices and approaches developed for disabled users. In this paper, therefore, we examine several issues that are pertinent to IS and disabled people in developing countries, and propose an integrated infrastructure to enhance the interaction of disabled people with on‐line information sources. The study includes issues related to the suitability of different interaction methodologies and technologies for people with disabilities. Additionally, we propose the design of customized interfaces that can be used by disabled people to develop Web‐based database applications and to access and query on‐line databases. (shrink)

Alternative Learning System (ALS) has been adopted in Philippine basic education, yet there is no academic institution in the region prepares ALS teachers in teaching life skills. ALS teachers graduated from different programs of teacher education for formal education. In response, an extension project was conceptualized and implemented to enhance the teaching capacity and effectiveness of ALS teachers. Case study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the project. It explored the transfer of life skills among ALS teachers. (...) Data were collected from multiple sources. Interview and written responses, and feedbacks were analyzed using thematic narrative analysis. Other data were analyzed using document and descriptive analyses. The project had achieved its objectives and rated best by participants. These indicate that the project was implemented effectively and successfully. ALS teachers have acquired life skills and transferred them to others. Thus, the project has made a difference in the lives of these teachers. (shrink)

El trabajo ofrece los requerimientos teórico-metodológicos para el desarrollo de habilidades en la obtención de información científica. Se parte del análisis teórico de la información como proceso y resultado de la interacción del sujeto con su realidad y de asumir las habilidades para obtener información científica dentro de las habilidades informativas que pueden potencialmente trabajarse a la luz de las diferentes disciplinas académicas. Finalmente se brindan los fundamentos metodológicos para la implementación de los procedimientos propuestos desde el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje (...) en estudiantes universitarios, encaminados a sistematizar las operaciones de estas habilidades genéricas comunes a toda profesión. The work offers the theoretical-methodological requirements for the development of skills in the obtaining of scientific information. It begins with the theoretical analysis of the information as a process and result of the interaction of the subject with the reality and of assuming the skills to obtain scientific information as a part of the informative skills which can be potentially worked by the light of the different academic disciplines. Finally the methodological foundations are offered for the implementation of the procedures proposed from the teaching-learning process in university students, guided to systematize the operations of these generic skills that are common to any profession. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a framework for fostering argumentative skills in a systematic way in Philosophy and Ethics classes. We start with a review of curricula and teaching materials from the German-speaking world to show that there is an urgent need for standards for the teaching and learning of argumentation. Against this backdrop, we present a framework for such standards that is intended to tackle these difficulties. The spiral-curricular model of argumentative competences we sketch helps teachers introduce the (...) relevant concepts and skills to students early on in their school career. The focus is on secondary schools, but the proposal can also be of use for learning and teaching in universities, especially in introductory classes. (shrink)

Diversas investigaciones confirman que la evaluación de la información estadística constituye una limitante para el profesional de la Medicina. Incluso en ocasiones se tiende a posturas éticas y bioéticas inadecuadas que generan problemas para las ciencias médicas; y por ende, para la sociedad. Por esa razón, el objetivo del artículo consistió en fundamentar teóricamente la competencia evaluar información estadística para el profesional de la Medicina. Los resultados obtenidos evidencian la necesidad de concebir el proceso de evaluación de la información estadística (...) como una competencia para dicho profesional. Various investigations confirm that the evaluation of statistical information constitutes a limitation for health professionals. There are potentially inappropriate ethical and bioethical positions garnered from data with limited evaluation that can generate problems for the medical science fields and potentially, for society as a whole. For that reason, the objective of this article was to theoretically support the health professional's skill to evaluate statistical information. The results obtained suggest the need to develop a competency process for health professionals in the evaluation of statistical information. (shrink)

An attempt is made to defend a general approach to the spatial content of perception, an approach according to which perception is imbued with spatial content in virtue of certain kinds of connections between perceiving organism's sensory input and its behavioral output. The most important aspect of the defense involves clearly distinguishing two kinds of perceptuo-behavioral skills—the formation of dispositions, and a capacity for emulation. The former, the formation of dispositions, is argued to by the central pivot of spatial (...) content. I provide a neural information processing interpretation of what these dispositions amount to, and describe how dispositions, so understood, are an obvious implementation of Gareth Evans' proposal on the topic. Furthermore, I describe what sorts of contribution are made by emulation mechanisms, and I also describe exactly how the emulation framework differs from similar but distinct notions with which it is often unhelpfully confused, such as sensorimotor contingencies and forward models. (shrink)

Visual perception relies on stored information and environmental associations to arrive at a determinate representation of the world. This opens up the disturbing possibility that our visual experiences could themselves be subject to a kind of racial bias, simply in virtue of accurately encoding previously encountered environmental regularities. This possibility raises the following question: what, if anything, is wrong with beliefs grounded upon these prejudicial experiences? They are consistent with a range of epistemic norms, including evidentialist and reliabilist standards (...) for justification. I argue that we will struggle to locate a flaw with these sorts of perceptual beliefs so long as we focus our analysis at the level of the individual and her response to information. We should instead broaden our analysis to include the social structure within which the individual is located. Doing so lets us identify a problem with the way in which unjust social structures in particular “gerrymander” the regularities an individual is exposed to, and by extension the priors their visual system draws on. I argue that in this way, social structures can cap perceptual skill. (shrink)

The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presented by this evidence. The (...) central idea is that neural plasticity incorporates metarepresentational rules for constructing representational systems and linking them. The structure of the cognition-motor interface is constructed flexibly during development and skill learning based on information processing demands. (shrink)

Extant models of moral judgment assume that an action’s intentionality precedes assignments of blame. Knobe (2003b) challenged this fundamental order and proposed instead that the badness or blameworthiness of an action directs (and thus unduly biases) people’s intentionality judgments. His and other researchers’ studies suggested that blameworthy actions are considered intentional even when the agent lacks skill (e.g., killing somebody with a lucky shot) whereas equivalent neutral actions are not (e.g., luckily hitting a bull’s-eye). The present five studies offer an (...) alternative account of these provocative findings. We suggest that people see the morally significant action examined in previous studies (killing) as accomplished by a basic action (pressing the trigger) for which an unskilled agent still has sufficient skill. Studies 1 through 3 show that when this basic action is performed unskillfully or is absent, people are far less likely to view the killing as intentional, demonstrating that intentionality judgments, even about immoral actions, are guided by skill information. Studies 4 and 5 further show that a neutral action such as hitting the bull’s-eye is more difficult than killing and that difficult actions are less often judged intentional. When difficulty is held constant, people’s intentionality judgments are fully responsive to skill information regardless of moral valence. The present studies thus speak against the hypothesis of a moral evaluation bias in intentionality judgments and instead document people’s sensitivity to subtle features of human action. (shrink)

The problem of the relationship between actors and the social structures in which they are embedded is central to sociological theory. This paper suggests that the "new institutionalist" focus on fields, domains, or games provides an alternative view of how to think about this problem by focusing on the construction of local orders. This paper criticizes the conception of actors in both rational choice and sociological versions of these theories. A more sociological view of action, what is called "social skill," (...) is developed. The idea of social skill originates in symbolic interactionism and is defined as the ability to induce cooperation in others. This idea is elaborated to suggest how actors are important to the construction and reproduction of local orders. I show how its elements already inform existing work. Finally, I show how the idea can sensitize scholars to the role of actors in empirical work. (shrink)

The nature of the cognition-motor interface has been brought to prominence by Butterfill & Sinigaglia, who argue that the representations employed by the cognitive and motor systems should not be able to interact with each other. Here I argue that recent empirical evidence concerning the interface contradicts several of the assumptions incorporated in Butterfill & Sinigaglia’s account, and I seek to develop a theoretical picture that will allow us to explain the structure of the interface presented by this evidence. The (...) central idea is that neural plasticity incorporates metarepresentational rules for constructing representational systems and linking them. The structure of the cognition-motor interface is constructed flexibly during development and skill learning based on information processing demands. (shrink)

According to agent-centered virtue ethics, acting well is not a matter of conforming to agent-independent moral standards, like acting so as to respect humanity or maximize utility. Instead, virtuous agents determine what is called for in their circumstances through good practical reason. This is an attractive view, but it requires a plausible account of how good practical reason works. To that end, some theorists invoke the skill model of virtue, according to which virtue involves essentially the same kind of practical (...) reason as ordinary skills. I contend, however, that ordinary skills provide a plausible and informative model of good practical reason only insofar as they are assessed by agent-independent standards. And so virtue, likewise, must be assessed primarily by agent-independent moral standards, if the skill model is to serve its purpose. I consider how agent-centered virtue ethics might avert this dilemma. But I ultimately suggest proceeding a different way. (shrink)

Two fundamentally distinct approaches to the teaching of philosophy are contrasted: On the one hand, there is the “information-oriented” approach which has dominated classrooms and which emphasizes the understanding of historically important philosophical works. On the other hand, there is the “cognitive skills” approach. The two approaches may be distinguished under the headings of ‘knowing that’ as opposed to ‘knowing how’. This paper describes and discusses four perspectives relating to the teaching of cognitive skills: (i) the discovery-oriented (...) approach, (ii) Piagetian learning cycles, (iii) protocol analysis, and (iv) conceptual therapy. The latter approach reflects the author’s interest in helping students to develop “therapeutic” skills that enable them to identify and eliminate concepts which they employ in their thinking and which are incompatible with their own presuppositional bases and are therefore self-refuting. ●●●●● -/- 2022 UPDATE: The approach of this paper has been updated and developed further in Appendix II, "Epistemological Intelligence," of the author’s 2021 book _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_. The book is available both in a printed edition (under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6 from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other booksellers) and an Open Access eBook edition (available through Philpapers under the book’s title and other philosophy online archives). (shrink)

We argue for the addition of trauma informed awareness, training, and skill in clinical ethics consultation by proposing a novel framework for Trauma Informed Ethics Consultation (TIEC). This approach expands on the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) framework for, and key insights from feminist approaches to, ethics consultation, and the literature on trauma informed care (TIC). TIEC keeps ethics consultation in line with the provision of TIC in other clinical settings. Most crucially, TIEC (like TIC) is systematically sensitive (...) to culture, history, difference, power, social exclusion, oppression, and marginalization. By engaging a neonatal intensive care ethics consult example, we define our TIEC approach and illustrate its application. Through TIEC we argue it is the role of ethics consultants to not only hold open moral spaces, but to furnish them in morally habitable ways for all stakeholders involved in the ethics consultation process, including patients, surrogates, and practitioners. (shrink)

Practical wisdom is the intellectual virtue that enables a person to make reliably good decisions about how, all-things-considered, to live. As such, it is a lofty and important ideal to strive for. It is precisely this loftiness and importance that gives rise to important questions about wisdom: Can real people develop it? If so, how? What is the nature of wisdom as it manifests itself in real people? I argue that we can make headway answering these questions by modeling wisdom (...) on expert skill. Presenting the main argument for this expert skill model of wisdom is the focus of this paper. More specifically, I’ll argue that wisdom is primarily the same kind of epistemic achievement as expert decision-making skill in areas such as firefighting. Acknowledging this helps us see that, and how, real people can develop wisdom. It also helps to resolve philosophical debates about the nature of wisdom. For example, philosophers, including those who think virtue should be modeled on skills, disagree about the extent to which wise people make decisions using intuitions or principled deliberation and reflection. The expert skill model resolves this debate by showing that wisdom includes substantial intuitive and deliberative and reflective abilities. (shrink)

The meshed control theory assumes that cognitive control and automatic processes work together in the natural attention of experts for superior performance. However, the methods adopted by previous studies limit their capacity to provide in-depth information on the neuromotor processes. This experiment tested the theory with an alternative approach. Twelve skilled golfers were recruited to perform a putting task under three conditions: (1) normal condition, with no focus instruction (NC), (2) external focus of attention condition (EC), and (3) internal (...) focus of attention condition (IC). Four blocks of 10 putts each were performed under each condition. The putting success rate and accuracy were measured and electroencephalographies (EEGs) were recorded. The behavioral results showed that the NC produced a higher putting success rate and accuracy than the EC and IC. The EEG data showed that the skilled golfers’ attentional processes in the NC initially resembled those in the EC and then moved toward those in the IC just before putting. This indicates a switch from more automatic processes to cognitive control processes while preparing to putt. The findings offer support for the meshed control theory and indicate the dynamic nature of neuromotor processes for the superior performance of athletes in challenging situations. (shrink)

Today, the skills-based approach is increasingly in demand by companies due, in large part, to the fact that it favors the management of human resources by focusing on individual capabilities; which, finally, improves the job profile of a company. As a result, choosing the right candidates has become increasingly selective. Universities, therefore, need to teach skills to improve the incorporation of graduates into the workplace making it as successful as possible. For this reason, it is of special relevance (...) to know if college students consider that the acquisition of skills is key for their incorporation into the workplace. The main objective of this study was to analyze and compare the importance assigned to the acquisition of basic skills in the university education of 694 students studying four different bachelor degrees: pedagogy, early childhood education, primary education, and psychology. For this purpose, a Likert-type questionnaire on basic skills was distributed with four possible options and the following five dimensions that grouped basic skills: organizational and planning capacity; access to information sources; analysis and synthesis of texts, situations, and people; teamwork; and problem solving. The results show that as a whole all students across different bachelor degrees gave a high score to the acquisition of basic skills, with early childhood education students giving it greater importance compared to the students from other disciplines and, more specifically, differences were observed in some dimensions depending on the bachelor degree that they have started. (shrink)

Examining movement learning though Piercean semiotics, this article affirms the basic embodied notion that to utilize one’s body constitutes a form of thought. Through a case study that focuses on theorization of skilled movement in a Japanese martial art that has been transported into North America, I examine processes involved in somatic learning, including both ontological as well as epistemological aspects. I suggest that embodied skills are passed on through story telling, rather than through more conventional models of “passing (...) down information.” Learning somatic skills, or learning more generally, can thereby be conceptualized as a process of attuning judgment, in contrast to acquiring a set of internalized representations about the world. (shrink)

The temporal structure for motivating, monitoring, and making sense of agency depends on encoding, maintaining, and accessing the right contents at the right times. These functions are facilitated by memory. Moreover, in informing action, memory is itself often active. That remembering is essential to and an expression of agency and is often active suggests that it is a type of action. Despite this, Galen Strawson (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103, 227–257, 2003) and Alfred Mele (2009) deny that remembering is (...) an action. They claim that memory fails to admit of control. Remembering is automatic—once remembering starts, the process can neither be stopped nor intervened on. Moreover, the agent does not initiate remembering. An agent has control over an event or process if and only if she has the capacity and opportunity to initiate and intervene on that event or process. Actions are events over which an agent has control. Since it is automatic, we fail to have control over remembering. Thus, remembering is not an action. In this paper, I draw out an assumption of Strawson’s and Mele’s accounts: an event-type whose tokens exhibit automaticity cannot, for that reason, be an action (§2). Against this assumption, I draw parallels between skilled bodily action and memory. I show that memory exhibits two defining features of skill: it can be learned with practice and it admits of attributions of excellence (§3). These features reveal how intelligent control is exerted in the exercise of skill despite apparent automaticity—control is gained over time (§4). Since exercises of skill are by definition actions and since memory exemplifies the defining features of skill, memory is a skill and instances of remembering are actions too. (shrink)

Austin's distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts has offered a fruitful way of focussing the relation between language and communication. In particular, by adopting the distinction we attend to linguistic and communicative subjects as actors, not just processors or conduits of information. Yet in many attempts to explicate the constitution of illocutionary acts the subject as actor is subsumed within the role of linguistic rules or conventions. I propose an account of illocutionary acts in which rules or conventions are (...) secondary to what I call communicative skills. These skills are taken as the primary component of communicative competence. They are derived from the principle that linguistic communication is not ultimately a linguistic matter, but relates instead to the way a communicator uses language. This principle is found in the work of Donald Davidson, but Davidson has tended to concentrate on semantics, and leaves the details of linguistic communication for pragmatics. The aim of this paper is to defend the general principle and supply some pragmatic details. (shrink)

[Andy Clark] What is the relation between perceptual experience and the suite of sensorimotor skills that enable us to act in the very world we perceive? The relation, according to 'sensorimotor models' (O'Regan and Noë 2001, Noë 2004) is tight indeed. Perceptual experience, on these accounts, is enacted via skilled sensorimotor activity, and gains its content and character courtesy of our knowledge of the relations between (typically) movement and sensory stimulation. I shall argue that this formulation is too extreme, (...) and that it fails to accommodate the substantial firewalls, dis-integrations, and special-purpose streamings that form the massed strata of human cognition. In particular, such strong sensorimotor models threaten to obscure the computationally potent insensitivity of key information-processing events to the full subtleties of embodied cycles of sensing and moving. /// [Naomi Eilan] The strong sensorimotor account of perception gives self-induced movements two constitutive roles in explaining visual consciousness. The first says that self-induced movements are vehicles of visual awareness, and for this reason consciousness 'does not happen in the brain only'. The second says that the phenomenal nature of visual experiences is consists in the action-directing content of vision. In response I suggest, first, that the sense in which visual awareness is active should be explained by appeal to the role of attention in visual consciousness, rather than self-induced movements; and second, that the sense in which perceptual consciousness does not happen in the brain only should be explained by appeal to the relational nature of perceptual consciousness, appeal to which also shows why links with action cannot exhaust phenomenal content. (shrink)

Se realizó un estudio descriptivo transversal en la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de Camagüey en el período comprendido entre septiembre del 2011 y marzo del 2012 con el objetivo de caracterizar el desarrollo de las habilidades de razonamiento clínico en los estudiantes de la carrera de Medicina. La muestra fue de 14 profesores de la disciplina de Medicina Interna y 110 estudiantes que terminaron recientemente el tercer año de la carrera de Medicina. La información fue recogida a través de una (...) entrevista a profundidad a informantes claves, un grupo focal con profesores del colectivo de la asignatura de Medicina Interna; además se encuestaron a través de un cuestionario con preguntas mixtas a la muestra de estudiantes seleccionada. Los profesores y alumnos coinciden en que hay deficiencias en el aprovechamiento del fondo de tiempo en la educación en el trabajo para el desarrollo de las habilidades de razonamiento clínico, así como insuficiencias en la orientación y evaluación de la actividad. A transverse descriptive study was conducted at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of Camagüey in the period between September 2011 and March 2012 with the aim of characterizing the development of the skills of clinical reasoning in medical students. The sample was composed by 14 teachers in the disciplines of Internal Medicine and 110 students who recently completed the third year of Medicine. The information was collected through an in-depth interview with key informants, a focus group with professors of the course of Internal Medicine;the sample of students selected was alsosurveyed through a questionnaire with mixed questions. Teachers and students agree that there are deficiencies in the use of the amount of time in education at work for the development of skills in clinical reasoning, as well as inadequacies in guidance and evaluation of the activity. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to the ethical and goal-oriented functions of touch in professional practice. Touch is both an increasingly visible topic today and a core skill in many professions, especially in health, education and social work. This book combines helpful theoretical discussions and practical information, offering a balanced and culturally-informed introduction to an issue that both students and professionals often find difficult to navigate. Chapters discuss the various functions of touch and its uses, giving readers a deeper understanding (...) of the potential of tactile work practices. The authors offer clear legal and ethical guidance to empower learners. They discuss key issues such as harmful touch and the increasing digitisation of patient work. Activities, case studies and further readings promote learning and help readers reflect on their own relationship to touch. This book will be an invaluable resource for students in undergraduate and graduate courses in healthcare, nursing, education and social work, and to practitioners looking for guidance on this topic. (shrink)

[Andy Clark] What is the relation between perceptual experience and the suite of sensorimotor skills that enable us to act in the very world we perceive? The relation, according to 'sensorimotor models' is tight indeed. Perceptual experience, on these accounts, is enacted via skilled sensorimotor activity, and gains its content and character courtesy of our knowledge of the relations between movement and sensory stimulation. I shall argue that this formulation is too extreme, and that it fails to accommodate the (...) substantial firewalls, dis-integrations, and special-purpose streamings that form the massed strata of human cognition. In particular, such strong sensorimotor models threaten to obscure the computationally potent insensitivity of key information-processing events to the full subtleties of embodied cycles of sensing and moving. /// [Naomi Eilan] The strong sensorimotor account of perception gives self-induced movements two constitutive roles in explaining visual consciousness. The first says that self-induced movements are vehicles of visual awareness, and for this reason consciousness 'does not happen in the brain only'. The second says that the phenomenal nature of visual experiences is consists in the action-directing content of vision. In response I suggest, first, that the sense in which visual awareness is active should be explained by appeal to the role of attention in visual consciousness, rather than self-induced movements; and second, that the sense in which perceptual consciousness does not happen in the brain only should be explained by appeal to the relational nature of perceptual consciousness, appeal to which also shows why links with action cannot exhaust phenomenal content. (shrink)

Informed consent is an essential step in helping patients be aware of consequences of their treatment decisions. With surgery, it is vitally important for patients to understand the risks and benefits of the procedure and decide accordingly. We explored whether a written IC form was provided to patients; whether they read and signed it; whether they communicated orally with the physician; whether these communications influenced patient decisions. Adult postsurgical patients in nine general hospitals of Italy’s Campania Region were interviewed via (...) a structured questionnaire between the second and seventh day after the surgery at the end of the first surgical follow up visit. Physicians who were independent from the surgical team administered the questionnaire. The written IC form was given to 84.5% of those interviewed. All recipients of the form signed it, either personally or through a delegate; however, 13.9% did not know/remember having done so; 51.8% said that they read it thoroughly. Of those who reported to have read it, 90.9% judged it to be clear. Of those receiving the written consent form, 52.0% had gotten it the day before the surgery at the earliest 41.1% received it some hours or immediately before the procedure. The written IC form was explained to 65.6% of the patients, and 93.9% of them received further oral information that deemed understandable. Most attention was given to the diagnosis and the type of surgical procedure, which was communicated respectively to 92.8 and 88.2% of the patients. Almost one in two patients believed that the information provided some emotional relief, while 23.2% experienced increased anxiety. Younger patients and patients with higher levels of education were more likely to read the written IC form. The written IC form is not sufficient in assuring patients and making them fully aware of choices they made for their health; pre-operative information that was delivered orally better served the patients’ needs. To improve the quality of communication we suggest enhancing physicians’ communication skills and for them to use structured conversation to ensure that individuals are completely informed before undergoing their procedures. (shrink)

This article conceptualizes the evolution of the German political economy as the codevelopment of technological and institutional change. The notion of skill-biased liberalization is introduced to capture this process and contrasted with the two dominant theoretical frameworks employed in contemporary comparative political economy scholarship—dualization and liberalization. Integrating theories from labor economics, the article argues that the increasing centrality of high skills complementary in production to information and communications technology has weakened the traditional complementarity among specific skills, regulated (...) industrial relations, and generous social protection in core sectors. The liberalization of industrial relations and social protection is shown in fact to be instrumental for high-end exporting firms to concentrate wages and benefits on increasingly important high-skilled workers. Strong evidence based on descriptive statistics, union and industry documents, and twenty-one elite interviews is found in support of the article’s alternative perspective. (shrink)

Using an observational sample of players of a simple online game, we are able to trace the development of skill in that game. Information on playing time, and player location, allows us to estimate time of day during which practice took place. We compare those whose breaks in practice probably contained a night's sleep and those whose breaks in practice probably did not contain a night's sleep. Our analysis confirms experimental evidence showing a benefit of spacing for skill learning, (...) but it fails to find any additional benefit of sleeping during a break from practice. We discuss reasons why the well-established phenomenon of sleep consolidation might not manifest in an observational study of skill development. We put the spacing effect into the context of the other known influences on skill learning: improvement with practice, and individual differences in initial performance. Analysis of performance data from games allows experimental results to be demonstrated outside of the lab and for experimental phenomenon to be put in the context of the performance of the whole task. (shrink)

Recommender systems are artificial intelligence technologies, deployed by online platforms, that model our individual preferences and direct our attention to content we’re likely to engage with. As the digital world has become increasingly saturated with information, we’ve become ever more reliant on these tools to efficiently allocate our attention. And our reliance on algorithmic recommendation may, in turn, reshape us as moral agents. While recommender systems could in principle enhance our moral agency by enabling us to cut through the (...) information saturation of the internet and focus on things that matter, as they’re currently designed and implemented they’re apt to interfere with our ability to attend appropriately to morally relevant factors. In order to analyze the distinctive moral problems algorithmic recommendation poses, we develop a framework for the ethics of attention and an account of judicious attention allocation as a moral skill. We then discuss empirical evidence suggesting that attentional moral skill can be thwarted and undermined in various ways by algorithmic recommendation and related affordances of online platforms, as well as economic and technical considerations that support this concern. Finally, we consider how emerging technologies might overcome the problems we identify. (shrink)

Using an observational sample of players of a simple online game, we are able to trace the development of skill in that game. Information on playing time, and player location, allows us to estimate time of day during which practice took place. We compare those whose breaks in practice probably contained a night's sleep and those whose breaks in practice probably did not contain a night's sleep. Our analysis confirms experimental evidence showing a benefit of spacing for skill learning, (...) but it fails to find any additional benefit of sleeping during a break from practice. We discuss reasons why the well-established phenomenon of sleep consolidation might not manifest in an observational study of skill development. We put the spacing effect into the context of the other known influences on skill learning: improvement with practice, and individual differences in initial performance. Analysis of performance data from games allows experimental results to be demonstrated outside of the lab and for experimental phenomenon to be put in the context of the performance of the whole task. (shrink)

The demand in the workplace is rapidly changing brought about by the educational reforms and the emergence of disruptive technology. The changes increase the importance of employability skills and literacy that would ensure career success and degree program relevance. On this premise, a study was carried out using a scoping review to examine the existing literature that published information related to employability skills of Teacher Education graduates in the Philippines. The review covered fifteen published articles that qualified (...) in inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results revealed the top employable skills which include communication; information and communication technology; problem-solving and critical thinking; collaboration, cooperation, and teamwork; research; and leadership. This study offers these skills as a framework in the curriculum enhancement of teacher education programs. It was recommended to Teacher Education Institutions to revisit their curriculum and find out if these competencies were given considerable emphasis in instruction. The partially employable skills of graduates from teacher education programs imply the furtherance of the inquiry to confirm if these skills are employable or not. Future tracer studies may take the lens of the framework in evaluating the responsiveness of the curriculum. (shrink)

Dichotomous thinking about mental phenomena is abundant in philosophy. One particularly tenacious dichotomy is between “automatic” and “controlled” processes. In this characterization automatic and unintelligent go hand in hand, as do non-automatic and intelligent. Accounts of skillful action have problematized this dichotomous conceptualization and moved towards a more nuanced understanding of human agency. This binary thinking is, however, still abundant in the philosophy of joint action. Habits and skills allow us agentic ways of guiding complex action routines that would (...) otherwise overwhelm our reflective capacities. In this paper, I look at how theories of skill, habit, and know-how in individual action can inform a non-dichotomous account of joint action. I argue that a fuller understanding of joint agency has to understand not only group know-how, but also the role of attention and the highly integrated types of control that allow agents to act together. (shrink)

El artículo tiene como objetivo describir las competencias informacionales a desarrollar durante la formación profesional. Se presenta los referentes teóricos a partir del empleo de un enfoque de sistema que supone el análisis y la síntesis, la inducción y la deducción como métodos de investigación, con el propósito de dar conocer los hitos en las universidades y organizaciones internacionales relacionadas. La modelación fue empleada para la construcción de un nuevo proyecto de desarrollo de competencias informacionales desde la perspectiva de la (...) formación profesional universitaria ajustada a las necesidades de la educación superior en Cuba. El nuevo proyecto se configura en tres unidades básicas, con sus respectivos elementos de competencia, saberes esenciales e indicadores para la evaluación del desempeño. El artículo fundamenta la tesis de que el desarrollo de competencias informacionales debe ser sistemáticamente estructurado, planificado y ejecutado como parte integral de la formación curricular en interacción con los contenidos de las disciplinas docentes, bajo la dirección del profesor y la participación protagónica de los profesionales en formación. The article aims at describing the competence to be developed during professional training. It presents the theoretical referents by means of an approach system that includes synthesis and analysis, induction and deduction as research methods in order to reveal the milestones of information skills development in universities and related international organizations. Modeling was used for the construction of a new skills development project from the perspective of university professional training according to the needs of Higher Education in Cuba. The new project is composed of three basic units, with their respective competence elements, essential knowledge and indicators for the evaluation of the performance. The article supports the theory that information development skills must be systematically structured, planned and implemented as an integral part of the curricular training in interaction with the contents of subjects, under the teacher´s guidance and the active participation of profesionals in training. (shrink)