Typically, public discussions of questions of social import exhibit two important properties: they are influenced by conformity bias, and the influence of conformity is expressed via social networks. We examine how social learning on networks proceeds under the influence of conformity bias. In our model, heterogeneous agents express public opinions where those expressions are driven by the competing priorities of accuracy and of conformity to one’s peers. Agents learn, by Bayesian conditionalization, from private evidence from nature, and from the public (...) declarations of other agents. Our key findings are that networks that produce configurations of social relationships that sustain a diversity of opinions empower honest communication and reliable acquisition of true beliefs, and that the networks that do this best turn out to be those which are both less centralized and less connected. (shrink)

There has been considerable debate in the literature about the relative merits of information processing versus dynamical approaches to understanding cognitive processes. In this article, we explore the relationship between these two styles of explanation using a model agent evolved to solve a relational categorization task. Specifically, we separately analyze the operation of this agent using the mathematical tools of information theory and dynamical systems theory. Information-theoretic analysis reveals how task-relevant information flows through the system to be combined into a (...) categorization decision. Dynamical analysis reveals the key geometrical and temporal interrelationships underlying the categorization decision. Finally, we propose a framework for directly relating these two different styles of explanation and discuss the possible implications of our analysis for some of the ongoing debates in cognitive science. (shrink)

Global issues rarely suggest conversations about aesthetics, as they conjure thinking about massive problems such as global warming, famine, and war rather than beautiful thoughts such as grace, love, and compassion. Students may engage in study of global issues in any number of venues, perhaps through a world geography class, within world literature, or as part of a course in Earth science. They would likely be exposed to readings, Web sites, and videos about the nature and extent of problems. Teachers (...) might engage them in small and large group discussions of problems, and, ideally, there would be some consideration of what they might do as citizens. Such processes, their outcomes, and subsequent civic directions .. (shrink)

David Hume is widely regarded as the greatest English thinker in the history of philosophy. His contributions to a huge range of philosophical debates are as important and influential now as they were in the eighteenth century. This book provides an introduction to the ideas of this hugely significant thinker.

This is a draft of the written version of comments on a paper by David Cole, presented orally at the American Philosophical Association Central Division meeting in New Orleans, 27 April 1990. Following the written comments are 2 appendices: One contains a letter to Cole updating these comments. The other is the handout from the oral presentation.

This essay examines multiple iterations of anti-juridicalism in relation to shifting forms of postwar imperialism and decolonization. The anti-juridical designates a differential political praxis of rights and law grounded in conditions of subalternity and revolutionary struggle. It stands in opposition to the abstract, neutraluniversality advanced by dominant theories of liberallegalism and hegemonic conceptions of the rule of law. In contemporary modalities, anti-juridical praxis serves as a necessary, critical supplement to the articulation of constituent power in the postcolony with profound implications (...) for constructing a state of law and justice, and for building of a new internationalism of peoples. (shrink)

In their effort to emphasize the positive role of nature in our lives, environmental thinkers have tended to downplay or even to ignore the negative aspects of our experience with nature and, even when acknowledging them, have had little to offer by way of psychologically and spiritually productive ways of dealing with them. The idea that the experience of value begins with the experience of existential shame—arising from awareness of the limitations that define the self—needs to be explored. The primary (...) purpose of the “technologies of the imagination”—myth, symbol, ritual and the arts—is to provide a passage through this shame to the experience of values such as community, meaning, beauty, and the sacred and, through these experiences, to inscribe them into conscience. The implications of this idea for environmental thinking and practice can be explored in two areas involving strong engagement with nature: ecological restoration and the production and eating of food. An environmentalism that fails to provide productive ways of dealing with existential shame may well prove inadequate to the task of providing means for achieving a healthy, sustain­able relationship between humans and the rest of nature. (shrink)

Public health preparedness must use a comprehensive approach that includes both communities and public health systems. There are three basic questions that should be asked when evaluating public health preparedness in communities of color: 1) Is the community basically healthy?; 2) Does the community have access, to necessary information, resources and services?; and 3) Are the information, resources and services available and provided to the community in a nondiscriminatory manner?Racial-based health disparities is a well documented fact for many communities of (...) color. Individuals from these communities tend to have more morbidity and higher mortality. This health disparity is race based and not just a function of social class. Similarly, access to basic goods and health care is racialized and class based. (shrink)

Public health preparedness must use a comprehensive approach that includes both communities and public health systems. There are three basic questions that should be asked when evaluating public health preparedness in communities of color: 1) Is the community basically healthy?; 2) Does the community have access, to necessary information, resources and services?; and 3) Are the information, resources and services available and provided to the community in a nondiscriminatory manner?Racial-based health disparities is a well documented fact for many communities of (...) color. Individuals from these communities tend to have more morbidity and higher mortality. This health disparity is race based and not just a function of social class. Similarly, access to basic goods and health care is racialized and class based. (shrink)

Porosity and permeability are key variables that link the thermal-hydrologic, geomechanical, and geochemical behavior in rock systems and are thus important input parameters for transport models. Neutron scattering studies indicate that the scales of pore sizes in rocks extend over many orders of magnitude from nanometer-sized pores with huge amounts of total surface area to large open fracture systems. However, despite considerable efforts combining conventional petrophysics, neutron scattering, and electron microscopy, the quantitative nature of this porosity in tight gas shales, (...) especially at smaller scales and over larger rock volumes, remains largely unknown. Nor is it well understood how pore networks are affected by regional variation in rock composition and properties, thermal changes across the oil window, and, most critically, hydraulic fracturing. To improve this understanding, we have used a combination of small- and ultrasmall-angle neutron scattering SANS with scanning electron microscope /backscattered electron imaging to analyze the pore structure of clay- and carbonate-rich samples of the Eagle Ford Shale. This formation is hydrocarbon rich, straddles the oil window, and is one of the most actively drilled oil and gas targets in the United States. Several important trends in the Eagle Ford rock pore structure have been identified using our approach. The SANS results reflected the connected and unconnected porosity, as well as the volume occupied by organic material. The latter could be separated using total organic carbon data and, at all maturities, constituted a significant fraction of the apparent porosity. At lower maturities, the pore structure was strongly anisotropic. However, this decreased with increasing maturity, eventually disappearing entirely for carbonate-rich samples. In clay- and carbonate-rich samples, a significant reduction in total porosity occurred at SANS scales, much of it during initial increases in maturity. This apparently contradicted SEM observations that showed increases in intraorganic porosity with increasing maturity. Organic-rich shales are, however, a very complex material from the point of view of scattering studies, and a more detailed analysis is needed to better understand these observations. (shrink)

Originally published in 1956, this survey of the interpretations of sex by the major figures in Christian thought and in psychoanalysis made an important contribution to the re-thinking of our sexual morality at the time. The author refutes the common belief that the negative attitude toward sex and the body, which had been predominant in western civilization, originated with Christianity. He shows that such a viewpoint was widespread in the early Hellenism Age, nearly three centuries before Christ. He emphasizes the (...) essentially positive view which Biblical religion demands and shows how Christianity’s attitude early became corrupted by the dualism of the Orient. He points to the need for a return to essential naturalism and the Biblical interpretation of sex. The first part of the book consists of a historical treatment in the Christian tradition, touching upon the teaching of Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and others. He analyses the classical and contemporary attitudes and ideas in both Catholic and Protestant circles and shows how Christian understanding comes into conflict with psychoanalysis. In the later portions of the book the author discusses sex and psychoanalysis and the major problems in sexual mores. He ends with a synthesis of the religious and psychoanalytic points of view and a critical reconstruction of a Christian interpretation. (shrink)