Recently, there has been an upsurge of attention focused on bias and its impact on specialized artificial intelligence applications. Allegations of racism and sexism have permeated the conversation as stories surface about search engines delivering job postings for well-paying technical jobs to men and not women, or providing arrest mugshots when keywords such as “black teenagers” are entered. Learning algorithms are evolving; they are often created from parsing through large datasets of online information while having truth labels bestowed on them (...) by crowd-sourced masses. These specialized AI algorithms have been liberated from the minds of researchers and startups, and released onto the public. Yet intelligent though they may be, these algorithms maintain some of the same biases that permeate society. They find patterns within datasets that reflect implicit biases and, in so doing, emphasize and reinforce these biases as global truth. This paper describes specific examples of how bias has infused itself into current AI and robotic systems, and how it may affect the future design of such systems. More specifically, we draw attention to how bias may affect the functioning of a robot peacekeeper, a self-driving car, and a medical robot. We conclude with an overview of measures that could be taken to mitigate or halt bias from permeating robotic technology. (shrink)

This fascinating and thought-provoking book provides much-needed philosophical background for counselors, therapists, and healthcare workers looking for broader, deeper foundations in the struggle to help and make sense of others. While examining the best among 20th century philosophy it shows the wealth of inspiration of earlier centuries, and demonstrates with remarkable clarity the way in which the ideas of, and the relations between, these philosophers can inspire, inform, and underpin much of counseling and psychotherapy.

This article employs postcolonial perspectives to examine the possibilities and limitations of drawing on Pan-African ideas to establish practices and meanings for global citizenship education at an elite secondary school in Ghana. In this examination, the authors explore the ways in which the school’s interventions to reinforce sameness/unity produce different understandings of global citizenship between students from different social class backgrounds. The article addresses how the school attempts to dissociate students from their native cultures for the purpose of teaching them (...) the ways of knowing and doing necessary to live and work/study in the West. The authors illustrate the ways in which the lessons students are being taught about what it means to be a global citizen reinscribe hegemonic discourse through Pan-African rhetoric. The article concludes by calling for alternative forms of global citizenship education that emphasize critical consciousness. (shrink)

Without systems of public, external symbols for recording information, nonliterate communities have to rely on human memory for the retention and transmission of cultural knowledge. Religious expressions either evolved in directions that rendered them memorable or they were--quite literally--forgotten. Most religious systems, including all of the great world religions, emerged among populations that were mostly illiterate (even if there was a literate elite). Thus, it should come as no surprise that religious systems and ritual systems, in particular, have evolved so (...) as to exploit variables that facilitate memory. No doubt, the invention of literacy ameliorates these variables' influence, however, the availability of such cultural tools neither eliminates that influence nor even surmounts it. Experimental psychologists have clarified variables that contribute to extraordinary recall for events that arise in the normal course of life. Probably, the most obvious is frequency. Experiencing events of the same type frequently aids memory for that type of event, though not necessarily for the details of any of the particular instances of that type. When Jains carry out the Puja ritual day after day, they become adept at its performance. Although they are fluent with the ritual's details, it is possible that they do not remember even one of their previous performances distinctively. (shrink)

Despite being what is commonly regarded as major influence on Michel Foucault, Freud and psychoanalysis are rarely directly addressed in his works. A notable exception, often cited, is towards the very end of ‘Madness & Civilization’ . Where the early Foucault ends his thesis proposing the conception of madness as social structure with back handed praise by of Freud’s re-engagement with madness via dialogue. Madness, from the mid 1600’s onwards was ignored or 'silenced’ from its ‘zero-point’ of separation as a (...) distinct group from the social mainstream. Foucault’s hand swings quickly back however, as mere lines later Freud is criticized for; maintaining- in fact amplifying- the unbalanced power of the physician-patient relationship, reinforcing the ‘judging’ and ‘alienating’ figure of the doctor essential to psychoanalytic practice; and retaining much in its conception from religious and medical tradition. Foucault sees these traditions as means of exercising social control, and psychoanalysis is regarded as consistent with them in this disciplining respect. We will look at two aspects of psychoanalytic thought addressing this continuance of traditional authority, and conclude with a comparison of the two philosopher’s differing conceptions of the object of psychoanalysis- human mentality. (shrink)

Wakefield requires all disorders to arise from the harmful failure of a naturally selected mechanism, but as exaptive traits do not appear to be the direct result of natural selection describing their failure as disorder is problematic. We will look at issues surrounding both biological exaptations and cultural exaptation, however, in dealing with cultural exaptation by explaining that the ‘harmful’ trait need not be identical to the failing mechanism upon which it is based, this creates further difficulties with his analysis. (...) We will be primarily be looking at the correspondence between Wakefield and Lilienfeld & Marino in relation to these questions. (shrink)

Applying the framework proposed by Jeffery et al. to nonhuman primates moving in multilayer arboreal and terrestrial environments, we see that these animals must generate a mosaic of many bicoded spaces in order to move efficiently and safely through their habitat. Terrestrial light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology and three-dimensional modelling of canopy movement may permit testing of Jeffery et al.'s framework in natural environments.

This collection of groundbreaking studies breaks with the tradition of gauging inequality by looking 'down' at at-risk or poverty-disadvantaged schools and shifts the gaze of inquiry 'up' toward the experiences of privilege in educational environments characterized by wealth and the abundance of material resources.

How can teachers bridge the gap between their commitments to social justice and their day to day practice? This is the question author Adam Howard asked as he began teaching at an elite private school and the question that led him to conduct a six-year study on affluent schooling. Unfamiliar with the educational landscape of privilege and abundance, he began exploring the burning questions he had as a teacher on the _lessons _affluent students are taught in schooling about their place (...) in the world, their relationships with others, and who they are. Grounded in an extensive ethnographic account, _Learning Privilege _examines the concept of privilege itself and the cultural and social processes in schooling that reinforce and regenerate privilege. Howard explores what educators, students and families at elite schools value most in education and how these values guide ways of knowing and doing that both create high standards for their educational programs and reinforce privilege as a collective identity. This book illustrates the ways that affluent students construct their own privilege,not, fundamentally, as what they _have_, but, rather, as _who they are_. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Historical Survey with Interviews Moral Skepticism and the Serial Killer A Brief History of Serial Killers Serial Killers of the Ancient World Serial Killers of the Renaissance Serial Killers of the Nineteenth Century Serial Killers of the Early Twentieth Century The Golden Age of Serial Killers Serial Killers Today: Conversations on Motivation.

This article brings critical pressure to bear on two different critical terms: modernism and camp. Arguing that these two historically and theoretically weighted categories have much to tell us when read in relation to each other, this article revisits the short fiction of the canonical modernist Virginia Woolf, and debates the critical significance of the work of a hitherto overlooked late modernist, Charles Henri Ford. Comparing and contrasting the very different writing styles of these important modern cultural producers, this article (...) moves to affirm a fresh and queer object of significant scholarly interest: camp modernism. (shrink)

Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria aggressively foregrounds a term from the discourse of psychoanalysis, now a relic of twentieth-century philosophical and psychological thought, with which to negot...