Involuntary autobiographical memories are spontaneously arising memories of personal events, whereas voluntary memories are retrieved strategically. Voluntary remembering has been studied in numerous experiments while involuntary remembering has been largely ignored. It is generally assumed that voluntary recall is the standard way of remembering, whereas involuntary recall is the exception. However, little is known about the actual frequency of these two types of remembering in daily life. Here, 48 Danish undergraduates recorded their involuntary versus voluntary autobiographical memories during a day (...) using a mechanical counter. Involuntary memories were reported three times as frequently as voluntary memories. Compared to voluntary memories, they were associated less with problem solving and social sharing and more with day dreaming, periods of boredom, no reasons for remembering and predominantly came to mind during unfocused attention. The findings suggest that involuntary recall is a typical way of accessing the personal past. (shrink)

A major difficulty for currently existing theories of inductive inference involves the question of what to do when novel, unknown, or previously unsuspected phenomena occur. In this paper one particular instance of this difficulty is considered, the so-called sampling of species problem.The classical probabilistic theories of inductive inference due to Laplace, Johnson, de Finetti, and Carnap adopt a model of simple enumerative induction in which there are a prespecified number of types or species which may be observed. But, realistically, this (...) is often not the case. In 1838 the English mathematician Augustus De Morgan proposed a modification of the Laplacian model to accommodate situations where the possible types or species to be observed are not assumed to be known in advance; but he did not advance a justification for his solution. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 18, Issue 4, Page 43-61, December 2013.

Available methods such as technology assessment and risk analysis have failed to predict the effects of technological choices. We need to give up the futile predictive ambitions of previous approaches and instead base decisions on systematic studies of alternative future developments. It will then be necessary to cope with mere possibility arguments, i.e., arguments in which a conclusion is drawn from a mere possibility that a course of action may have certain consequences. A five-step procedure is proposed for the assessment (...) of such arguments. It includes a search for mere possibility arguments pointing in different directions, a scientific evaluation that may lead to the specification or refutation of some of these arguments, two symmetry tests, evaluation of the seriousness of the arguments in terms of novelty, spatio-temporal unlimitedness and interference with complex systems, and hypothetical retrospection that aims at finding a course of action that will be defensible in retrospect. (shrink)

The unpredictability of maternal sensory signals in caregiving behavior has been recently found to be linked with infant neurodevelopment. The research area is new, and very little is yet known, how maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms and specific parental characteristics relate to the unpredictable maternal care. The aims of the current study were to explore how pre- and postnatal maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms and self-regulation capacity associate with the unpredictability of maternal sensory signals. The study population consisted of (...) 177 mother-infant dyads. The unpredictability of the maternal sensory signals was explored from the video-recorded mother-infant free play situation when the infant was 8 months of age. Pre- and postnatal anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured by questionnaires prenatally at gwks 14, 24, 34, and 3 and 6 months postpartum. Maternal self-regulation capacity, a trait considered to be stable in adulthood, was assessed using adult temperament questionnaire when the infant was 12 months of age. We found that elevated prenatal maternal anxiety symptoms associated with higher unpredictability in the maternal care while depressive symptoms were unrelated to the unpredictability of maternal care. Moreover, the association was moderated by maternal self-regulation capacity, as higher anxiety symptoms during pre-and postnatal period were associated more unpredictability among the mothers with low self-regulation capacity. The combination of higher amount of maternal anxiety symptoms and lower self-regulation capacity seems to constitute specific risk for the unpredictable maternal care. (shrink)

In this article, Hannah Arendt's concept of action will be used to problematize current transformations of the health care sector and examine some responses by ethicists in light of those transformations. The sphere of human interaction that should typify health care work is identified as an action of unpredictable praxis in contrast to controllable procedures and techniques which increasingly take place in the health care sector.

ExcerptAt its core, the concept of biopolitics refers to the constitution of the life of a population as the object and objective of politics. Of course, Michel Foucault pioneered this concept in his analyses from the late 1970s, first in his Collège de France course from the academic year 1975–76, “Society Must Be Defended”, and subsequently in the first volume of The History of Sexuality, published in the fall of 1976.1 Taking as his cue the analysis in the latter publication, (...) Giorgio Agamben, in a few highly schematic but rich and provocative passages from the introduction to his now seminal…. (shrink)

This article considers the contribution that Jacques Derrida’s work Of Hospitality might make to higher music education as it unsettles the usual ascription of normative value to learning and teaching music at the university. Along these lines, what is most at issue in the encounter with Derrida’s thinking is the concomitant notion of forms of temporality—unpredictability, slowability, immeasurability, anticipation, serendipity, and surprise. Higher music education is seen as the practice of social transformation through the realization of the notion of unpredictability (...) of the “oral” being-together with and through music educational interactions that are not sacrificed to economically driven performance indicators and measurable outcomes. Furthermore, the article draws on the learning and teaching practices of de-familiarization of educational spaces and pedagogical responsibility to the others as ways to disrupt students’ fixed expectations about what good music teaching and mastery are. Overall, this article is a call to see unpredictability as another framework through which higher music education can seek to re-invent theoretical concepts as well as codes and conventions of teaching and learning practices by inviting us to contemplate their own insufficiency, incompleteness, and discontent. (shrink)

From the beginning of chaos research until today, the unpredictability of chaos has been a central theme. It is widely believed and claimed by philosophers, mathematicians and physicists alike that chaos has a new implication for unpredictability, meaning that chaotic systems are unpredictable in a way that other deterministic systems are not. Hence, one might expect that the question ‘What are the new implications of chaos for unpredictability?’ has already been answered in a satisfactory way. However, this is not (...) the case. I will critically evaluate the existing answers and argue that they do not fit the bill. Then I will approach this question by showing that chaos can be defined via mixing, which has never before been explicitly argued for. Based on this insight, I will propose that the sought-after new implication of chaos for unpredictability is the following: for predicting any event, all sufficiently past events are approximately probabilistically irrelevant. (shrink)

Wittgenstein famously criticizes the philosophical practice of analyzing the meaning of words outside their ordinary use in everyday language, whereby often self-made pseudo-problems arise. In order to shed further light on Wittgenstein’s critique, this article makes use of the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. First, starting from the remark in Vol. I, §52, his criticism of the philosophical method of selection and generalization is explained in detail. Next, I give a brief outline of Wittgenstein’s own way of philosophizing by (...) reference to a selection of comments concerning the use of psychological words in everyday language, which will also further elucidate his critique. Finally, I enter into the question which significance everyday language according to Wittgenstein has for philosophy. (shrink)

A phenomenon resulting from a computationally irreducible (or computationally incompressible) process is supposedly unpredictable except via simulation. This notion of unpredictability has been deployed to formulate recent accounts of computational emergence. Via a technical analysis, I show that computational irreducibility can establish the impossibility of prediction only with respect to maximum standards of precision. By articulating the graded nature of prediction, I show that unpredictability to maximum standards is not equivalent to being unpredictable in general. I conclude that (...) computational irreducibility fails to fulfill its assigned philosophical roles in theories of computational emergence. (shrink)

Models of risk-taking as used in the social sciences may be improved by including concepts from life history theory, particularly environmental unpredictability and life expectancy. Community college students completed self-report questionnaires measuring these constructs along with several well-known correlates. The frequency of risk-taking was higher for those with higher future unpredictability beliefs and shorter lifespan estimates (as measured by the Future Lifespan Assessment developed for this study), and unpredictability beliefs remained significant after accounting for standard predictors, such as sex and (...) temperament. The results demonstrate the usefulness of applying concepts from life history theory to enhance our understanding of human behavior. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 1, Page 20-22, January 2012.

It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of psycho-physical parallelism and about how we could define probabilities for our individual future observations given our individual present and previous observations. The complexity of the problems is underlined by arguments that unpredictability in ordinary everyday neural functioning, ultimately stemming from small-scale uncertainties (...) in molecular motions, may overwhelm, by many orders of magnitude, many conventionally recognized sources of observed ``quantum'' uncertainty. Some possible ways of avoiding the problems are considered but found wanting. It is proposed that a complete understanding of the relationship between subjective experience and its physical correlates requires the introduction of mathematical definitions and indeed of new physical laws. (shrink)

Both patterns of maternal sensory signals and sensitive care have shown to be crucial elements shaping child development. However, research concerning these aspects of maternal care has focused mainly on maternal sensitivity with fewer studies evaluating the impact of patterns of maternal behaviors and changes in these indices across infancy and childhood. The aims of this study were to explore how maternal unpredictability of sensory signals and sensitivity develop and associate with each other from infancy to toddlerhood and whether elevated (...) maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms relate to maternal unpredictable signals and sensitivity in toddlerhood. The study population consisted of 356 mother–child dyads assessed at 30 months; a subset of 103 mother–child dyads additionally participated in 8 months assessment. Maternal unpredictability and sensitivity were assessed from video-recorded free-play episodes at 8 and 30 months. Maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were assessed with questionnaires at gestational weeks 14, 24, 34 and 3, 6, 12, and 24 months. Mean level of mothers’ unpredictability decreased on average whereas sensitivity did not change between infancy and toddlerhood. Both maternal unpredictability and sensitivity showed moderate level of individual stability from infancy to toddlerhood and these two measures were modestly correlated within each age. Elevated maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were not related to unpredictability but related to lower maternal sensitivity in toddlerhood. These results identify unpredictable sensory signals as a characteristic of parental care that is independent of standard quality measures and suggest that it may be less influenced by maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms. (shrink)

This article explores an example of person-centred care: the work of so-called renal care coordinators. The empirical basis of the article consists of qualitative interviews with renal care coordinators, alongside participant observations of their patient interactions. During the analyses of the empirical material, I found that that one of the coordinators’ most fundamental ambitions is to get to know who the patient is. This is also a central tenet of person-centred care. The aim of the article is not only to (...) argue for the plausibility of this tenet, but also, and more importantly, to highlight and explore its implications in the context of healthcare, through the example of renal care coordination. By drawing on the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, the article shows that the disclosure of who the patient is that takes place in person-centred care requires speech and action, which are modes of human activity that initiate processes characterized by unpredictability, uncertainty, and irreversibility. This unpredictability, uncertainty, and irreversibility, found to be inherent in person-centred care, is then discussed in relation to the pursuit of certainty characterizing contemporary evidence-based medicine. At the end of the article the conclusion is drawn that, if healthcare is to be person-centred, it must find ways of accommodating the contradictory pursuits of certainty and uncertainty found in evidence-based medicine and person-centred care respectively. (shrink)

The impact of emotion on executive functioning is gaining interest. It has led to the differentiation of “cool” Executive Functioning processes, such as cognitive flexibility, and “hot” EF processes, such as affective flexibility. But how does affective flexibility, the ability to switch between cognitive and affective information, vary as a function of age and sex? How does this construct relate to “cool” executive functioning and cognitive-emotion regulation processes? In this study, 266 participants, including 91 adolescents and 175 adults, completed a (...) cognitive–affective switching task with specific unpredictable switches, as well as measures of inhibition, attention, and cognitive-emotion coping strategies. We expected cognitive to affective switching to be more costly than affective to cognitive switching in females versus males, as well as higher switch costs in adolescents. Using linear mixed modelling, we analysed the effect of age, sex, and types of switching on reaction time. Results show that adolescents are slower switchers than adults, and demonstrate that females, although faster switchers than males, are slower when switching from cognitive to affective content than when they are switching from affective to cognitive content. Multiple regression analyses revealed age-specific associations between cognitive-affective switching and inhibition. These results converge with reported developmental and gender specificities in EF and emotion processing, respectively. Additionally, affective flexibility could relate to differences in vigilance and inhibition. (shrink)

Determinism and unpredictability are compatible since deterministic flows can produce, if sensitive to initial conditions, unpredictable behaviors. Within this perspective, the notion of scenario to chaos transition offers a new form of predictability for the behavior of sensitive to initial condition systems under the variation of a control parameter. In this paper I first shed light on the genesis of this notion, based on a dynamical systems approach and on considerations of structural stability. I then suggest a link to (...) the figure of epigenetic landscape, partially inspired by a dynamical systems perspective, and offering a theoretical framework to apprehend developmental noise. (shrink)

In this article, Aislinn O'Donnell offers a set of reflections on the relation between therapy and education. In the first section, she examines criticisms of therapeutic education, mobilizing the example of prison education to highlight the difficulties that arise from imposing prescriptive modes of subjectification and socialization in pedagogy. In the second section, she addresses the relation between therapy and education by focusing on just one element of the experience of education: those moments at which a subject has the potential (...) of becoming significant in the life of a student. An important dimension of the educator's authority involves noticing such moments, fostering the conditions that make them more likely, and engaging in the creative process and practice of deciding how best pedagogically to respond to these moments. In the third section, O'Donnell develops this idea by detailing a philosophical approach and practice that understands “effectiveness” in education as bound to practice, creative responsiveness, and the judgment of the educator in concrete, singular pedagogical situations, rather than construed in terms of generic models of “best practice.”. (shrink)

The article develops the idea of forming postcapitalist social relations as a social revolution of an individual, which consists in the fact that popularity becomes a key advantage, the “possession” of which is a desired goal and a significant resource of political influence. At the same time, it is shown that this process leads to forming a new dominant stratum — personalities (“people with personality”): celebrities, popular bloggers, social media influencers, micro- and nanosignature. It is substantiated that the personaliat domination (...) is a consequence of contradictory social relations between the new aristocracy represented by the representatives of the personaliat and many people who do not “possess” a popular personality - the impersonaliat (“extra people”, “lower” precariat, those who turn out to be outsiders in the world of social platforms). This contradiction is associated with the rooting of a celebrity’s culture, which encourages a lot of people to fight for popularity and focus on finding advantageous differences from others in the process of self-realization. However, this struggle in the end for the overwhelming majority turns into an increase in creative competition and subtraction. Various new forms of subtraction that appear in situations of widespread self-realization are revealed. Accordingly, arguments are given in favor of the fact that in the context of the “personality revolution”, the truly left will be rather an alternative that will call into question the ways of solving social problems formulated by popular personalities. In other words, it will be possible to oppose the total pursuit of popularity with the projects of society, in which the person is relied not as someone who rises above the others, but as an involved person who values life in harmony with others higher than his own “I”. (shrink)

Numerous studies have examined the acoustic correlates of sentential stress and its underlying linguistic functionality. However, the mechanism that connects stress cues to the listener's attentional processing has remained unclear. Also, the learnability versus innateness of stress perception has not been widely discussed. In this work, we introduce a novel perspective to the study of sentential stress and put forward the hypothesis that perceived sentence stress in speech is related to the unpredictability of prosodic features, thereby capturing the attention of (...) the listener. As predictability is based on the statistical structure of the speech input, the hypothesis also suggests that stress perception is a result of general statistical learning mechanisms. To study this idea, computational simulations are performed where temporal prosodic trajectories are modeled with an n-gram model. Probabilities of the feature trajectories are subsequently evaluated on a set of novel utterances and compared to human perception of stress. The results show that the low-probability regions of F0 and energy trajectories are strongly correlated with stress perception, giving support to the idea that attention and unpredictability of sensory stimulus are mutually connected. (shrink)

It is emphasized that environmental predictability is another important condition that plays roles in slow strategies that are related to innovation; that economic inequality, except as measured by Gross Domestic Product per capita, influences innovation; and that switching global life history from a slow to a fast strategy is a response adopted in response to new challenges during the post-Industrial Revolution period.

Using psychosocial acceleration theory, this multimethod, multi-reporter study examines how early adversity adaptively shapes the development of a self-regulation construct: effortful control. Investigation of links between early life harshness and unpredictability and the development of effortful control could facilitate a nuanced understanding of early environmental effects on cognitive and social development. Using the Building Strong Families national longitudinal data set, aspects of early environmental harshness and early environmental unpredictability were tested as unique predictors of effortful control at age 3 using (...) multiple regression. Early harshness variables were financial harshness, mothers’ and fathers’ observed parenting, mothers’ and fathers’ reported use of harsh discipline, and harsh neighborhood conditions. Early unpredictability was measured by number of paternal transitions. Cues of harshness, specifically observed unresponsive parenting, observed harsh parenting, and neighborhood harshness, did significantly negatively predict effortful control. Paternal transitions also significantly predicted effortful control, but in the opposite (i.e., positive) direction. The results corroborate previous research linking quality of parenting to the development of children’s effortful control and place it within an evolutionary-developmental theoretical framework. Further, the results suggest that neighborhood harshness may also direct developmental trajectories of effortful control in young children, though the mechanisms through which this occurs are still unclear. This is the first study to explicitly investigate effortful control development in early childhood within the harshness and unpredictability framework. (shrink)

The contribution addresses a possible implication of Arendt’s ideas in the constitution of an education committed to offering a place where the uniqueness and free expression of subjects can multiply (Arendt, 1961). According to Arendt’s perspective, uniqueness is present in all human activities, but only action fully realizes it. Since action is always unpredictable, it is not possible to presume in advance what form and in what way uniqueness will manifest itself. Following this argument, we will argue that the (...) unpredictability of action, as defined by Arendt, submits a critical analysis of the educational models that guide the aims of educational action: to be brought out and germinated for what we do not yet know and for the uniqueness that each generation brings itself. This perspective invites us to rethink the questions through which we problematize educational action. (shrink)

Denmark was once at the forefront of nuclear research, operating three experimental nuclear reactors at the research facility at Risø, close to Copenhagen. However, the 1985 resolution of the Danish Parliament excluded nuclear power from the national energy mix. In 2003, the Parliament passed a resolution on the decommissioning of the nuclear facility at Risø, including plans for establishing a permanent solution for radioactive waste management. To understand the ensuing socio-technical controversy, we employ the “hybrid forum” framework that emphasizes the (...) entangled political-epistemological role of the municipalities and protest groups. They mobilized political resistance while also performing “research in the wild.” In 2016, the protest groups became part of an institutionalized “hybrid forum” where they could negotiate directly with experts and government representatives. We conclude that municipalities and protest groups were instrumental in changing the Danish position on radioactive waste management from final repository to long-term storage at Risø. (shrink)

The concept of randomness has been unjustly neglected in recent philosophical literature, and when philosophers have thought about it, they have usually acquiesced in views about the concept that are fundamentally flawed. After indicating the ways in which these accounts are flawed, I propose that randomness is to be understood as a special case of the epistemic concept of the unpredictability of a process. This proposal arguably captures the intuitive desiderata for the concept of randomness; at least it should suggest (...) that the commonly accepted accounts cannot be the whole story and more philosophical attention needs to be paid. 1. Randomness in science1.1Random systems1.2Random behaviour1.3Random sampling1.4Caprice, arbitrariness and noise2. Concepts of randomness2.1Von Mises/church/martin-löf randomness2.2KCS-randomness3. Randomness is unpredictability: preliminaries3.1Process and product randomness3.2Randomness is indeterminism?4. Predictability4.1Epistemic constraints on prediction4.2Computational constraints on prediction4.3Pragmatic constraints on prediction4.4Prediction defined5. Unpredictability6. Randomness is unpredictability6.1Clarification of the definition of randomness6.2Randomness and probability6.3Subjectivity and context sensitivity of randomness7. Evaluating the analysis[R]andomness … is going to be a concept which is relative to our body of knowledge, which will somehow reflect what we know and what we don't know. Henry E. Kyburg, Jr ([1974], p. 217)Phenomena that we cannot predict must be judged random. Patrick Suppes ([1984], p. 32). (shrink)

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data were used to test predictions from life history theory. We hypothesized that (1) in young adulthood an emerging life history strategy would exist as a common factor underlying many life history traits (e.g., health, relationship stability, economic success), (2) both environmental harshness and unpredictability would account for unique variance in expression of adolescent and young adult life history strategies, and (3) adolescent life history traits would predict young adult life history strategy. These (...) predictions were supported. The current findings suggest that the environmental parameters of harshness and unpredictability have concurrent effects on life history development in adolescence, as well as longitudinal effects into young adulthood. In addition, life history traits appear to be stable across developmental time from adolescence into young adulthood. (shrink)

The 21st century is characterized by an unpredictable and challenging work environment, and the Intrapreneurial Self-Capital (ISC) career and life construct can be seen as a core of individual intrapreneurial resources that enables people to cope with ongoing challenges, changes, and transitions founding innovative solutions when confronted with the constraints imposed by such an environment. The ISC is a challenging construct since it can enhance behavior and attitudes through specific training, unlike personality traits, which are considered substantially stable in (...) the literature. Against this background, the present study examined the relationship between ISC and well-being (hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being) controlling for the effects of personality traits. The Big Five Questionnaire (BFQ), the Intrapreneurial Self-Capital Scale (ISCS), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), and the Flourishing Scale (FS) were administered to 258 Italian workers. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that ISC explained a percentage of incremental variance beyond that explained by personality traits in relation to both life satisfaction and flourishing. These results indicate that ISC is a key resource for hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being and that it offers new research and intervention opportunities. (shrink)

The nonlinear dynamical process of self-organized criticality provides a new that explains a number of unresolved anomalies: Why are the really big events in human history usually unpredictable? Why is it impossible to anticipate sudden political, economic, and social changes? Why do distributions of historical data almost always contain a few extreme events that seem to have had a different cause from all the rest? Why do so many of our fail to predict important future events? As people, organizations, (...) and nations become increasingly sensitive to each other's behavior, trivial occurrences sometimes propagate into sudden changes. Such events are unpredictable because in the self-organized criticality environment that characterizes human history, the magnitude of a cause often is unrelated to the magnitude of its effect. (shrink)

Political action is unpredictable because it unfolds among a plurality of independent actors. This unpredictability generates a fundamental puzzle: If an actor cannot know where her initiative will lead, what motivates and guides her in her doings? The aim of this paper is to develop and defend the solution to the puzzle that we can find in the thought of Hannah Arendt, namely the idea that political action is – or should be – motivated and guided by principles, principles (...) like justice, equality, or honour. Such principles must be distinguished from goals because they do not designate a specific state of affairs, but are general ideas that allow for diverse implementations. I show that this distinction is of great practical importance for the actors involved, since their outlook and their attitude towards others will differ depending on whether they see their activity as aimed at a goal or as guided by a principle. (shrink)

This article examines how the existence of unpredictability should influence the quest to promote distributive justice in education. First, the article briefly discusses resource allocation in education finance policy and its relationships with existing philosophical theories of distributive justice. It then explains why unpredictability comes into play in education and how this endangers the achievements of distributive justice. It is argued that unpredictability poses a real challenge to enhancing educational justice. Second, the article examines the common policy conception that educational (...) justice can best be promoted by reducing unpredictability through means of increased control. It is maintained that the costs of this solution exceed its benefits. Finally, the article offers alternative routes for dealing with unpredictability in educational resource allocations. It is argued that we have good reasons, both normative and practical, to embrace a new approach for furthering distributive justice in education that takes into account the complexity of the educational system. (shrink)

Cosmology has undergone a revolution in recent years. The exciting interplay between astronomy and fundamental physics has led to dramatic revelations, including the existence of the dark matter and the dark energy that appear to dominate our cosmos. But these discoveries only reveal themselves through small effects in noisy experimental data. Dealing with such observations requires the careful application of probability and statistics. But it is not only in the arcane world of fundamental physics that probability theory plays such an (...) important role. It has an impact in many aspects of our everyday life, from the law courts to the lottery. Why then do so few people understand probability? And why do so few people understand why it is so important for science? Why do so many people think that science is about absolute certainty when, at its core, it is actually dominated by uncertainty? This book attempts to explain the basics of probability theory, and illustrate their application across the entire spectrum of science. (shrink)