Transformation can only occur through behavioural evolution. Global consciousness, collective intelligence and other similar utopian expressions fill the pages of books, websites, blogs and academic articles as once again the promise of transcendent transformation via new technology fills our techno-romantic hearts with hope. Past promises have often led to disappointment. It is clear that ideals will not be attained by the simple advance of technology. If, as Marshall McLuhan asserted, our tools shape us we need to examine our media, new (...) and old, from a behavioural perspective in two directions: how the media behave (as systems, as tools, as environments); and how we behave as users, participants and members of these systems and environments. This article illustrates this thesis using behavioural aspects of two current phenomena: social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and music. Using concrete examples, it indicates paths to lead us from a mechanical, consumerist, technology-oriented notion, the information society, based on quantitative accumulation, towards the transformation society in which meaningful human interactions are encouraged proactively. We need to educate our children about media behaviour, much as we have always educated children about other social behaviours. (shrink)

Any theory of how language is internally organized and how it interacts with other mental capacities must address the fundamental question of how syntactic and lexico-semantic information interact at one central linguistic compositional level, the sentence level. With this general objective in mind, we examine ““lightverbs””, so called because the main thrust of the semantic relations of the predicate that they denote is found not in the predicate itself, but in the argument structure of the syntactic object that such a (...) predicate licenses. For instance, in the sentence.. (shrink)

Describes the move from modern, mechanistic science to a post-modern, organismic science.

Examines the postmodern implications of Whitehead’s metaphysical system.

Maximization theory, which is borrowed from economics, provides techniques for predicing the behavior of animals - including humans. A theoretical behavioral space is constructed in which each point represents a given combination of various behavioral alternatives. With two alternatives - behavior A and behavior B - each point within the space represents a certain amount of time spent performing behavior A and a certain amount of time spent performing behavior B. A particular environmental situation can be described as a constraint (...) on available points (a circumscribed area) within the space. Maximization theory assumes that animals always choose the available point with the highest numerical value. The task of maximization theory is to assign to points in the behavioral space values that remain constant across various environmental situations; as those situations change, the point actually chosen is always the one with the highest assigned value. (shrink)

To examine whether anticipatory attention or expectancy is a cognitive process that is automatic or requires conscious control, we employed a paired-stimulus event-related potential paradigm during the transition to sleep. The slow negative ERP wave observed between two successive stimuli, the Contingent Negative Variation , reflects attention and expectancy to the second stimulus. Thirteen good sleepers were instructed to respond to the second stimulus in a pair during waking sessions. In a non-response paradigm modified for sleep, participants then fell asleep (...) while tones played. As expected, N1 decreased and P2 increased in amplitude systematically with the loss of consciousness at sleep onset; the CNV was increasingly more positive. Sleep onset latency was correlated with the amplitude of the CNV. The systematic attenuation of the CNV waveform at sleep onset and its absence in sleep indicates that anticipatory attention requires endogenous conscious control. (shrink)

We extend the concept of apartness spaces to the concept of quasi-apartness spaces. We show that there is an adjunction between the category of quasi-apartness spaces and the category of neighbourhood spaces, which indicates that quasi-apartness is a more natural concept than apartness. We also show that there is an adjoint equivalence between the category of apartness spaces and the category of Grayson’s separated spaces.

In many systems, the tensors used to describe physical properties must acquire their structure from one vector. Knowledge of that fact alone leads to an interesting line of analysis for such systems. The analysis begins with a discussion of the types of dyadics that can be constructed from one vector. Attention is focused on certain exemplary dyadic operators, which, because of their geometrical properties, would appear particularly basic; the algebra of these dyadics is developed in detail. The algebra is then (...) used in a derivation of the expansion of general functions of these dyadics. Several applications of the general expansion are presented: the inverse of a general dyadic operator (when it exists), a general rotation operator that includes strains and reflections, the determinant of a general dyadic operator, and operators, including some new ones, used in constructing Lorentz boosts. Finally, a coordinate-free representation of the Levi-Civita tensor is provided. (shrink)

This article is in praise of the labor of reading profound and rich texts, in this case the essay on 'estranged labor' by Karl Marx. Comparing in detail what Marx wrote on estranged labor with current social practices of learning and education leads us to comprehensive ideas about learning - including the social practices of alienated learning. We then emphasize the importance of distribution in the institutionalized production of alienated learning. And we end this article with critical reflections on the (...) importance of alienation for the relationship between teaching and learning in the social practice of scholars. (shrink)

The notion that "the holy reality wills it" can provide both the rational justification (the move from "is" to "ought") and the psychological motivation for acting morally. But can the will of God be the criterion for the morally right? Although what is right cannot be reduced to what God wills (due to the perceptual aspect of the meaning of "right"), it can be deduced from it, given an understanding of perception that implies that an omniscient perceiver would necessarily be (...) an impartial sympathizer. This, however, presupposes the ideal observer criterion of rightness, which is based upon an appeal to holiness. Recognizing that the criteriological and religious meanings of moral terms are finally identical overcomes the problems of justification and motivation inevitable in apparently non-religious moral theories. (shrink)

The present article is an attempt to update the author's article "Being Bold: Anticipating a Whiteheadian Century," which appeared in Process Studies 31 : 3-15. The earlier article was originally delivered at an International Whitehead Conference in 1998, whereas the present article was originally delivered as the banquet address at the International Whitehead Conference devoted to "Seizing an Altemative: Toward an Ecological Civilization" in 2015.

On March 14-15, 2006, at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, MD there took place the first Upper Ontology Summit (UOS). This was a convening of custodians of several prominent upper ontologies, key technology participants, and interested other parties, with the purpose of finding a means to relate the different ontologies to each other. The result is reflected in a joint communiqué, directed to the larger ontology community and the general public, and expressing a joint (...) intent to build bridges among the existing upper ontologies in ways designed to increase and rationalize their utilization and to enhance their semantic interoperability. (shrink)

A short book combining extracts from the work of one of the world's greatest thinkers with commentary from one of Britain's most distinguished writers on philosophy.

Willem Drees endorses not only minimal naturalism, understood as the rejection of supernatural interruptions of the world's normal causal processes, but also maximal naturalism, with its reductionistic materialism. Besides arguing that this reductionistic naturalism provides the best framework for interpreting science, he believes that it is compatible with religion (albeit of a minimalist sort). The “richer” naturalism advocated by Whiteheadians is, accordingly, unnecessary. Drees's position, however, cannot do justice to a number of “hard‐core commonsense notions,” which we inevitably presuppose in (...) practice and thereby in science as well as religion. His naturalism is too poor, in particular, to account for subjectivity, freedom, and mathematical, religious, and moral experience. (shrink)

This book takes a genuinely new spiritual stance reflecting the emergence of a post-modern science and differing from the relativistic nihilism that calls itself postmodern but is really modernism extended to its limit. Based on a direct experience of reality as divine, this postmodern spirituality transcends modernity's individualism and patriarchy, its forced choices between dualism and materialism, anthropocentrism and relativism, supernaturalism and atheism, intolerance and nihilism. Bringing moral and ethical values back into rational discourse, this book provides a critique of (...) various aspects of modern society--political, economic, social, agricultural, and technological aspects. This criticism, informed by the postmodern worldview, points toward a more satisfying form of personal existence and a sustainable form of global order. (shrink)

'There is no Nietzsche, just a shifting set of contradictory views' suggests Hayman in this stimulating and provocative guide. Those envious contemporaries who smeared Nietzsche with the mark of madness came closer than they knew in characterising a philosopher in whose thought ambivalence approximated to disintegration of the self. Yet while the nineteenth century's coherent, consistent systems of certainty came crashing down ingloriously at the very first touch of the twentieth, Nietzsche's discourses survived. He was more modern, it seemed, than (...) the moderns. Today is work is more contemporary than ever, his various voices speaking compellingly to a sensibility for which paradox is the only truth. (shrink)

Spanning forty years of Ray's career, these essays, for the first time collected in one volume, present the filmmaker's reflections on the art and craft of the cinematic medium and include his thoughts on sentimentalism, mass culture, ...

A study of the contribution semantics makes to the syntactic patterns of English: an intepretive theory of grammar.