Although women have made important inroads in science and engineering since the early 1970s, their progress in these fields has stalled over the past several years. This study looks at women in science and engineering careers in the 1970s and 1980s, documenting differences in career outcomes between men and women and between women of different races and ethnic backgrounds. The panel presents what is known about the following questions and explores their policy implications: In what sectors are female Ph.D.s employed? (...) What salary disparities exist between men and women in these fields? How is marital status associated with career attainment? Does it help a career to have a postdoctoral appointment? How well are female scientists and engineers represented in management? Within the broader context of education and the labor market, the book provides detailed comparisons between men and women Ph.D.s in a number of measures: financial support for education, academic rank achieved, salary, and others. The study covers engineering; the mathematical, physical, life, and social and behavioral sciences; medical school faculty; and recipients of National Institutes of Health grants. Findings and recommendations in this volume will be of interest to practitioners, faculty, and students in science and engineering as well as education administrators, employers, and researchers in these fields. (shrink)

Darwinian evolution, as it was first conceived, has two dimensions: adaptation, that is, selection based upon “apt function”, defined as the “good fit” between an organism’s metabolic and biological demands and the environment in which it is embedded; and heredity, the transmissible memory of past apt function. Modern Darwinism has come to focus almost exclusively on hereditary memory, eclipsing the—arguably still-problematic—phenomenon of adaptation. As a result, modern Darwinism retains, at its core, certain incoherencies that, as long as they remain (...) unresolved, preclude the emergence of a fully-coherent theory of evolution. Resolving the incoherencies will involve clarifying the relationship between embodied memory and apt function. In short, adaptation is a problem of semiotics: the organism must interpret the environment to fit well into it. This is well-illustrated by the constructed environments built by colonies of social insects, such as hives or nests, and the ancillary structures that contain them, forming an organism-like system known as a superorganism. The superorganism is marked by a kind of extended physiology, in that these constructed environments often serve as adaptive interfaces between the nest and ambient environment, and are constructed to manage the matter and energy flows between environments that constitute the process of adaptation. These constructed environments are also semiotic phenomena: interpretive structures, governed by information flow between the member insects and the structures they build. I review our findings on one such example: the mounds built by the fungus-cultivating termites of the genus Macrotermes. These structures are dynamic forms that are sustained by flows of soil from deep horizons up into the mound. The form, and hence the function, of the mound is determined by several environmental cues, most notably water and wind, as well as how termites interpret these cues, and signals that flow between termites, both directly and vicariously through the structures they build. (shrink)

Suicide has long been the subject of philosophical, literary, theological and cultural–historical inquiry. But despite the diversity of disciplinary and methodological approaches that have been brought to bear in the study of suicide, we argue that the formal study of suicide, that is, suicidology, is characterized by intellectual, organizational and professional values that distinguish it from other ways of thinking and knowing. Further, we suggest that considering suicidology as a “social practice” offers ways to usefully conceptualize its epistemological, philosophical (...) and practical norms. This study develops the idea of suicidology as a social practice and considers the implications for research, practice and public discourse. (shrink)

Illegitimacy in a historic, single community at Penrith, Cumbria (1557–1812), has been studied using aggregative analysis, family reconstitution and time series analysis. This population was living under extreme conditions of hardship. Long, medium and short wavelength cycles in the rate of illegitimacy have been identified by time series analysis; each represents a different response to social and economic pressures. In a complex interaction of events, the peaks of the cycles in wheat prices were associated with rises in adult mortality (...) which promoted an influx of migrants and a concomitant rise in illegitimacy. The association between immigration and illegitimacy was particularly noticeable after the mortality crises of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Children of immigrant families also tended to produce illegitimate offspring. Native and immigrant families responded differently to extrinsic fluctuations, and variations in their reproductive behaviour were probably related to access to resources. (shrink)

_John Dewey and Continental Philosophy_ provides a rich sampling of exchanges that could have taken place long ago between the traditions of American pragmatism and continental philosophy had the lines of communication been more open between Dewey and his European contemporaries. Since they were not, Paul Fairfield and thirteen of his colleagues seek to remedy the situation by bringing the philosophy of Dewey into conversation with several currents in continental philosophical thought, from post-Kantian idealism and the work of Friedrich (...) Nietzsche to twentieth-century phenomenology, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism. This unique volume includes discussions comparing and contrasting Dewey with the German philosophers G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer on such topics as phenomenology, naturalism, organicism, contextualism, and poetry. Others investigate a series of connections between Dewey and contemporary French philosophy, including the notions of subjectivity, education, and the critique of modernity in Michel Foucault; language and politics in Jacques Derrida; and the concept of experience in Gilles Deleuze. Also discussed is the question of whether we can identify traces of _Bildung_ in Dewey’s writings on education, and pragmatism’s complex relation to twentieth-century phenomenology and hermeneutics, including the problematic question of whether Heidegger was a pragmatist in any meaningful sense. Presented in intriguing pairings, these thirteen essays offer different approaches to the material that will leave readers with much to deliberate. _ John Dewey and Continental Philosophy_ demonstrates some of the many connections and opportunities for cross-traditional thinking that have long existed between Dewey and continental thought, but have been under-explored. The intersection presented here between Dewey’s pragmatism and the European traditions makes a significant contribution to continental and American philosophy and will spur new and important developments in the American philosophical debate. (shrink)

Nos societes ont evolue au cours du XXe siecle selon un mode de developpement qui n'est tout simplement pas viable a long terme et qui provoquera de graves crises environnementales. Nous faisons presentement face au defi crucial de la survie de l'humanite, nous en sommes de plus en plus conscients. Aussi, mon propos ne consistera pas a enumerer toutes les catastrophes ecologiques qui nous menacent si nous persistons dans la voie du developpement non durable. Je veux plutot soulever une (...) serie de reflexions et suggerer quelques principes qui peuvent guider nos efforts pour amorcer les necessaires changements. J'expose donc dans cet ouvrage les elements de politique que j'estime souhaitables et realisables pour prendre le virage vers ce que j'appelle le Quebec vert et bleu. Scott McKay. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 369-372 [Access article in PDF] Unity of Agency and Volition:Some Personal Reflections Stephen Weiner The issues of unity of agency, self-as-narrative, and more generally, volition are highly personal to me. Indeed, I would say I have frequently been obsessed with them. I am 52 years old, and date the onset of my psychiatric symptoms—my long-term misery—very specifically: 11:00 pm Pacific Standard Time, (...) August 28, 1965. At almost precisely that time, I started obsessing that I was homosexual and, in fact, turning into a girl. Within days, derealization followed: for instance, the houses in my neighborhood seemed one-dimensional—they seemed as though they were painted, as though I could stick my hand or an object through them. Colors seemed less bright as well—but I hardly had words for all this at the time: it was an overwhelmingly preverbal feeling, but I found some words for it.I was also depressed, and knew I was depressed—that is, I was worried, had trouble sleeping, and had suicidal thoughts and feelings. Within weeks, I asked my parents if I could see a psychiatrist, and I did. I remember asking my psychiatrist if he ever thought about the possibility that everything might be an illusion, and he quoted the refrain from "Row, Row, Row Your Boat": "merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream." But just asking him produced a chilling feeling that he did not exist and, largely for this reason, I did not mention unreality feelings again to therapists for another 20 years.So, like Dr. Wells' patient Edward, described by James Phillips (2003), I was in trouble; like Edward, I was starting to construct a narrative. I started feeling that I had "to tell my story" at about this time—before then, I had not felt a need to do that. That may be partly because young children take life for granted (at least, I did), and it may be partly because suffering, by its very nature, demands explanation; both reasons were probably operating—certainly, both my parents told me years later that I had seemed emotionally distressed as a child, and my mother told they would have given me Ritalin if it had been available. So, to other people (my parents and my teachers) I was mentally ill in some sense, and I have some pretty clear memories of what I now recognize as depression, especially in the second and third grades; but I did not think of myself as sick and I did not think of myself as suffering—and I did not experience the duality (at least) of selves that I started to experience almost immediately in August 1965.Phillips further points out that the "future Edward" could look back in his narrative, at a later age, and reconstruct his history either as someone with a continuing mental illness, or as someone who had attained a secure, healthy adulthood and saw his experience as adolescent pain in the service of ultimate adult health and integration. I see my story, I am sorry to report, as [End Page 369] one of unremitting basic pain but with the positive dimension that I was able to go on, obtain a good education, work a good deal in my adult life, and father a child. But my narrative—and am I not, as a highly verbal person, almost constrained to think of my life as a narrative?—has been one, as Phillips (following Kleinman) realizes, of suffering. It is, above all else, an illness narrative. I find the approach of J. Melvin Woody (2003)—of privileging performing and performing arts and spatial metaphors over story—less relevant and true to myself, although I see no reason to argue with Mary's preference for such forms. It may be that the temporal discontinuities she has experienced predispose her to see herself in such terms—may, in fact, necessitate doing so. I am not exactly sure why, but it probably has to do with acting, with trying on and performing one role... (shrink)

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew. The point of departure for many (...) of those engaged in the debate has been the identification of Socratic method with "the elenchus" as a technique of logical argumentation aimed at refuting an interlocutor, which Gregory Vlastos highlighted in an influential article in 1983. The essays in this volume look again at many of the issues to which Vlastos drew attention but also seek to broaden the discussion well beyond the limits of his formulation. Some contributors question the suitability of the elenchus as a general description of how Socrates engages his interlocutors; others trace the historical origins of the kinds of argumentation Socrates employs; others explore methods in addition to the elenchus that Socrates uses; several propose new ways of thinking about Socratic practices. Eight essays focus on specific dialogues, each examining why Plato has Socrates use the particular methods he does in the context defined by the dialogue. Overall, representing a wide range of approaches in Platonic scholarship, the volume aims to enliven and reorient the debate over Socratic method so as to set a new agenda for future research. Contributors are Hayden W. Ausland, Hugh H. Benson, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Michelle Carpenter, John M. Carvalho, Lloyd P. Gerson, Francisco J. Gonzalez, James H. Lesher, Mark McPherran, Ronald M. Polansky, Gerald A. Press, François Renaud, and W. Thomas Schmid, Nicholas D. Smith, P. Christopher Smith, Harold Tarrant, Joanne B. Waugh, and Charles M. Young. (shrink)

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew. The point of departure for many (...) of those engaged in the debate has been the identification of Socratic method with "the elenchus" as a technique of logical argumentation aimed at refuting an interlocutor, which Gregory Vlastos highlighted in an influential article in 1983. The essays in this volume look again at many of the issues to which Vlastos drew attention but also seek to broaden the discussion well beyond the limits of his formulation. Some contributors question the suitability of the elenchus as a general description of how Socrates engages his interlocutors; others trace the historical origins of the kinds of argumentation Socrates employs; others explore methods in addition to the elenchus that Socrates uses; several propose new ways of thinking about Socratic practices. Eight essays focus on specific dialogues, each examining why Plato has Socrates use the particular methods he does in the context defined by the dialogue. Overall, representing a wide range of approaches in Platonic scholarship, the volume aims to enliven and reorient the debate over Socratic method so as to set a new agenda for future research. Contributors are Hayden W. Ausland, Hugh H. Benson, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Michelle Carpenter, John M. Carvalho, Lloyd P. Gerson, Francisco J. Gonzalez, James H. Lesher, Mark McPherran, Ronald M. Polansky, Gerald A. Press, François Renaud, and W. Thomas Schmid, Nicholas D. Smith, P. Christopher Smith, Harold Tarrant, Joanne B. Waugh, and Charles M. Young. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Desire of the Analysts: Psychoanalysis and Cultural CriticismVera J. Camden (bio)Desire of the Analysts: Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criticism. Ed. Greg Forter and Paul Allen Miller. New York: SUNY P, 2008. 258 pp.This collection takes up the uses of psychoanalysis for cultural studies in the new millennium. Its editors and contributors ask, “Where is psychoanalysis in contemporary thought?” At a time when the empirically based psychologies have long (...) repudiated the “talking cure” to the extent that the unconscious is not visible or easily measured, and when, on the other hand, psychoanalysis has been associated in the humanities with a radical political and social agenda, disappointed hopes for change have led many to throw the baby of psychoanalysis out with the bathwater of a utopian vision of transformation. The question now remains: “Whither psychoanalysis?” To answer this question (which is also a demand), the editors first acknowledge that the critique and curtailing of psychoanalytic thought in the cultural studies programs across the country in the last decade or so has been influenced by the works of Michel Foucault, his disciples, and the New Historicism. At the same time, they believe that the political, psychological, and moral dangers of embracing a knowing and cynical postmodernism that fosters hollow consumerism premised on modes of subjectivity that “neither ‘express’ interiority nor bear any relation to a lived past” are a real and present danger in contemporary life. “That the triumph of such a view has coincided with intellectuals’ renewed suspicion of psychoanalysis should, we believe, give us pause” (8). The essays that constitute the present volume thus insist on the persistence of the desire of the analyst: for knowledge of self and other, and by those who long for interpretive insight into interior lives and social places. The volume thus poses for its readers twin questions: “Why do we continue to desire psychoanalysis, and what should its role be in the cultural criticism of the new millennium?”This collection grew out of a conference organized around this question and thus reflects the varied but not necessarily interconnected papers offered in that setting. In an effort to provide some interconnections, the collection is divided into four sections grouped around the topics of psychoanalysis and the future of cultural criticism, collectivity, the author, and sexuality. The grouping does not, in my estimation, provide unity or coherence to the volume as a whole; nevertheless, each article emerges on its own terms as a strong contribution to the general field of psychoanalytic cultural criticism and critical theory. Henry Sussman’s “Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Cultural Criticism at the Millennium” provides an anchoring perspective to the volume, addressing with particular urgency the mutually transformative desire of and for analysis modeled on the transference/countertransference clinical encounter. This analogy [End Page 153] suggestively sets the stage for a like transformative intervention by the analyst in a cultural critique, while acknowledging that cultural studies provides the best interpretation and assessment of the ways that psychoanalysis operates historically and clinically in contemporary society. Sussman—and indeed many of the contributors—underscores the editors’ organizing declaration that since psychoanalysis derived from lived human experience it stands to reason that “analysis is both the product of and answer to suffering” (15).Thus it comes as something of a surprise that one of its editors, Greg Forter, in “F. Scott Fitzgerald, Psychobiography, and the Fin-de-Siecle Crisis in Masculinity,” locks the subject of psychoanalysis into a stranglehold with his presuppositions about the limits of history and the origins of psychoanalysis in the modern moment: “Because the theory and techniques of psychoanalysis were developed by analyzing modern men and women, psychoanalysis may be a theory of modern subjectivity rather than of subjectivity as such, and its mode of inquiry may be best suited to analyzing the phenomena of modernity” (148). Contrast this limiting and limited sense of the place of psychoanalysis in history (and the concomitant restriction of its utility expressed ironically in a volume with two major articles on premodern cultural texts!) to recent remarks in a new book by Christopher Bollas: “For thousands of years there has been an unconscious preconception of psychoanalysis. We [...] human beings [...] have been searching for... (shrink)

In the spring of 1780 there appeared a short work by J. H. de Magellan, published in London but written in French, which contained the first table of specific heats to appear in print. Magellan attributed the table to Richard Kirwan, but in none of his published works does Kirwan refer to it, so that the circumstances of its compilation are obscure. Kirwan's correspondence, however, provides evidence both of his association with Magellan and of his long concern with theories (...) of heat. In a series of letters concerned principally with his forthcoming publication, written to James Watt at the beginning of 1780, Magellan attacked Joseph Black for his failure to publish his own work on heat. (shrink)

This paper reviews the published empirical evidence concerning journal peer review consisting of 68 papers, all but three published since 1975. Peer review improves quality, but its use to screen papers has met with limited success. Current procedures to assure quality and fairness seem to discourage scientific advancement, especially important innovations, because findings that conflict with current beliefs are often judged to have defects. Editors can use procedures to encourage the publication of papers with innovative findings such as invited papers, (...) early-acceptance procedures, author nominations of reviewers, structured rating sheets, open peer review, results-blind review, and, in particular, electronic publication. Some journals are currently using these procedures. The basic principle behind the proposals is to change the decision from whether to publish a paper to how to publish it. (shrink)

The expanded use of genetic testing raises key ethical and policy questions about possible benefits and harms for those receiving disease‐risk information. As predictive testing for Huntington’s was initiated in a clinical setting, survey research posing hypothetical test scenarios suggested that the vast majority of at‐risk relatives wanted to know whether they carried a disease‐causing mutation. However, only a small minority ultimately availed themselves of this opportunity. Many at‐risk individuals concluded that a positive test result would be too psychologically overwhelming. (...) A substantial literature suggests that individuals are often more resilient than anticipated in coping with many different health‐related stresses. Much of my own work in the field has been through the Risk Evaluation & Education for Alzheimer’s Disease study (REVEAL), a series of randomized clinical trials assessing the impact of genetic susceptibility testing on asymptomatic individuals at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Our experience in developing and implementing four successive, multisite trials provides some potentially useful lessons for the field. More people will be asking for their personal genetic information. Better understanding will help us decide when access is appropriate and how best to disclose results in a manner that supports adjustment to test findings and promotes use of genetic information to improve human health. (shrink)

Phenotype, whether conventional or extended, is defined as a reflectionof an underlying genotype. Adaptation and the natural selection thatfollows from it depends upon a progressively harmonious fit betweenphenotype and environment. There is in Richard Dawkins' notion ofthe extended phenotype a paradox that seems to undercut conventionalviews of adaptation, natural selection and adaptation. In a nutshell, ifthe phenotype includes an organism's environment, how then can theorganism adapt to itself? The paradox is resolvable through aphysiological, as opposed to a genetic, theory of (...) natural selection andadaptation. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article describes the efforts of one fifty-year-old nuclear physics research center to stay relevant as the boundaries of nuclear physics have expanded and distributed collaborations have become increasingly common. In adapting to these shifts, SENSE, a university-based institute in the United States, has seen notable changes in power relations, forms of legitimation, and social structures. This article recognizes and investigates these changes through an interpretative investigation of four common media objects incorporated into research practice at the institute: collaboration wikis, (...) telephones, computer simulations, and government reports. In doing so, this article adopts an approach from media studies through which hard-to-see changes in social and cultural life can be investigated by observing media objects in research practice. Ultimately, this article tells the story of a research organization and an entire discipline working to adapt to a rapidly changing scientific landscape. (shrink)

Bribery is a complicated, multi-dimensional issue. Upon first glance, most westerners would immediately condemn it as an underhanded, unfair means of gaining an advantage in a competitive or legal situation, and so it is in virtually every case in the westernized world. However, the issue becomes much more complicated in the international context, particularly in developing nations, where giving and accepting bribes is often normal and expected. This paper serves to inform ethical decision-making in situations where the “right choice” is (...) unclear with regards to bribery, primarily for individuals performing aid work in foreign countries with corrupt officials and police officers. In such contexts, a simple offering of food, money, or a small trinket may make the difference between a person being able to accomplish meaningful, life-changing work for the local populace or having that work significantly slowed at best and being thrown out of the country, robbed, or imprisoned in worse cases. The larger scale bribery issues in international business and the laws pertaining to them are also discussed. (shrink)

The concept of contextual emergence has been introduced as a speci?c kind of emergence in which some, but not all of the conditions for a higher-level phenomenon exist at a lower level. Further conditions exist in contingent contexts that provide stability conditions at the lower level, which in turn accord the emergence of novelty at the higher level. The purpose of the present paper is to propose that consciousness is a contextually emergent property of self-sustaining systems. The core assumption is (...) that living organisms constitute self-sustaining embodiments of the contingent contexts that accord their emergence. We propose that the emergence of such systems constitutes the emergence of content-bearing systems because the lower-level processes of such systems give rise to and sustain the macro-level whole in which they are nested, while the emergent macro-level whole constitutes the context in which the lower- level processes can be for something . Such embodied functionality is necessarily and naturally about the contexts that it has embodied. It is this notion of self- sustaining embodied aboutness that we propose to represent a type of content capable of evolving into consciousness. (shrink)

Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the latest research to explore what birdsong can tell us about the biology of human speech and language and the consequences for evolutionary biology. They examine the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong learning and speech and language acquisition, considering vocal imitation, auditory learning, an early vocalization phase, the structural properties of birdsong and human language, and the (...) striking similarities between the neural organization of learning and vocal production in birdsong and human speech. After outlining the basic issues involved in the study of both language and evolution, the contributors compare birdsong and language in terms of acquisition, recursion, and core structural properties, and then examine the neurobiology of song and speech, genomic factors, and the emergence and evolution of language. Contributors: Hermann Ackermann, Gabriël J.L. Beckers, Robert C. Berwick, Johan J. Bolhuis, Noam Chomsky, Frank Eisner, Martin Everaert, Michale S. Fee, Olga Fehér, Simon E. Fisher, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Jonathan B. Fritz, Sharon M.H. Gobes, Riny Huijbregts, Eric Jarvis, Robert Lachlan, Ann Law, Michael A. Long, Gary F. Marcus, Carolyn McGettigan, Daniel Mietchen, Richard Mooney, Sanne Moorman, Kazuo Okanoya, Christophe Pallier, Irene M. Pepperberg, Jonathan F. Prather, Franck Ramus, Eric Reuland, Constance Scharff, Sophie K. Scott, Neil Smith, Ofer Tchernichovski, Carel ten Cate, Christopher K. Thompson, Frank Wijnen, Moira Yip, Wolfram Ziegler, Willem Zuidema. (shrink)

The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept 'self.' This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach (i.e., the event-control approach) that is (...) based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system (i.e., the distal-event system) that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action (i.e., effector-control systems) in a constraining, as opposed to 'causal' manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept 'self' onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify 'the self' as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order. (shrink)

A version of intuitionistic type theory is presented here in which all logical symbols are defined in terms of equality. This language is used to construct the so-called free topos with natural number object. It is argued that the free topos may be regarded as the universe of mathematics from an intuitionist's point of view.

The purported crisis and opportunity in liberal education may be approached via a reconsideration of the arts in liberal arts education. The advantage of such a view is that proponents of humanistic liberal education could speak in their own terms, while incorporating in a systematic way studies of ancient and modern liberal arts, addressing public questions of the value and substance of a liberal education. A plausible issue for consideration is whether the “arts” can address a crisis, its purported causes (...) and solutions, and the key role the humanities may have in building a renewed liberal arts education. At stake in the classroom is the realization of the possibilities, the intellectual freedom, which humans make for themselves in artistic making. This freedom differs from, but is complementary to, political freedom, the loadstone of standard liberal education defenses, because it is based in innovations and inventions of the arts and sciences, not in constitutions or politics of democracy. (shrink)

There is quite a bit of disagreement in cognitive science regarding the role that consciousness and control play in explanations of how people do what they do. The purpose of the present paper is to do the following: (1) examine the theoretical choice points that have lead theorists to conflicting positions, (2) examine the philosophical and empirical problems different theories encounter as they address the issue of conscious agency, and (3) provide an integrative framework (Wild Systems Theory) that addresses these (...) problems and potentially naturalizes conscious agency. It does so by grounding conscious and control in the notion of self-sustaining energy-transformation systems (i.e., living systems), versus computational or self- organizing systems, as is the case in information processing theory and dynamical systems theory, respectively. Given its assertion that content (and consciousness) emerges in self-sustaining systems, Wild Systems Theory may also provide a sound theoretical basis for a science of consciousness in general. (shrink)

Leading sociologists outline the historical development of the discipline in Britain and document its continuing influence in this essential and comprehensive reference work. Spanning the Scottish enlightenment of the 18th century to the present day this Handbook maps the discipline and the British contribution.

The rule of law is a necessary condition for any substantive theory of justice. If a theory sacrifices the rule of law, justice, too, is sacrificed. The connection between the necessary condition and justice is explored in the work of John Rawls, H. L. A. Hart, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Albert Camus and William Shakespeare. The conceptions of justice elaborated in each of these political thinker's works share very little more than the rule of law. Since the conceptions examined are (...) so different and the necessary condition is contained in each, I conclude that there is substantial support for the thesis. ;In order to do justice to the texts examined in this dissertation the plain language, the words on the page, must be given priority but cannot be fully determinative of the text's meaning. The immanent structure of the text, the rules of the text which give it shape and form, must also be discerned. There are no particular rules for interpretation in general, yet each text contains within it its own individual rules. The rules of the text are what allow the meanings of the text to play themselves out for different readers. Understanding the history of the text is also important for interpretation. ;Some interpretations of the theories of justice examined here have sought to change the substance of that theory through interpretation. For example, Marx's theory depends upon the law of equal commodity exchange. As shown in chapter three, if an alien supposition of distributive justice is interpreted into Marx's theory so that the surplus value which Marx claims belongs to the capitalist is redistributed, then the proposed transition to communism, which Marx analyzed and supported, will not occur. Doing justice to Marx's texts allows Marx's theory of justice to come through and be judged on its own terms. Only after that has been accomplished can it be evaluated and compared with other theories. The same association between interpretative method and substantive meaning is demonstrated for each theory. The conclusion compares interpretation in law and drama and connects doing justice to texts with justice. (shrink)

Cognitive psychologists tend to treat intentionality as a control variable during experiments, yet ignore it when generating mechanistic descriptions of performance. Wynn's work brings this conflict into striking relief and, when considered in relation to recent neurophysiological findings, makes it clear that intentionality can be regarded mechanistically if one defines it as the planning of distal effects.

Gold & Stoljar reveal that adherence to the radical neuron doctrine cannot be maintained via appeals to scientific principles. Using arguments from naturalism and materialism, unification, and exemplars, it is shown that the “mind-is-brain” materialism explicit in the trivial version of the neuron doctrine ultimately suffers the same theoretical fate. Cognitive science, if it is to adopt an ontology at all, would be better served by a metaphysically neutral ontology such as double-aspect theory or neutral monism.

The purpose of this special issue and the conference that inspired it was to address the issue of conceptual integration in a science of consciousness. We felt this to be important, for while current efforts to scientifically investigate consciousness are taking place in an interdisciplinary context, it often seems as though the very terms being used to sustain a sense of interdisciplinary cooperation are working against it. This is because it is this very array of common concepts that generates a (...) sense of unity among consciousness researchers, despite the fact the concepts mean different things in different disciplines. These Concepts of Consciousness include the following: realism, representation, intentionality, information, control, memory and self. Given this list, we believed we could best approach the issue of potential conceptual integration by addressing each concept from different perspectives and asking the following: how do uses of the concept differ, must these meanings be synthesized in order for there to be a unified science of consciousness, is a unified conceptual scheme necessary to establish an independent science of consciousness, is a unified conceptual scheme possible, if it is not possible, why not, and if it is possible, what might it look like? To this end we invited, for each concept, two scholars who made extensive use of the identified concept in their work. The papers entailed in this special issue constitute the outcome of this effort, and in what follows we offer a brief examination of possible forms of integration the papers seem to collectively suggest. (shrink)

Ballard et al. model eye position as a deictic pointer for spatial perception. Evidence from research on gaze control indicates, however, that shifts in actual eye position are neither necessary nor sufficient to produce shifts in spatial perception. Deictic context is instead provided by the interaction between two deictic pointers; one representing actual eye position, and the other, intended eye position.