This is the first book to explore the cognitive science of effortless attention and action. Attention and action are generally understood to require effort, and the expectation is that under normal circumstances effort increases to meet rising demand. Sometimes, however, attention and action seem to flow effortlessly despite high demand. Effortless attention and action have been documented across a range of normal activities--from rock climbing to chess playing--and yet fundamental questions about the cognitive science of effortlessness have gone largely unasked. (...) -/- This book draws from the disciplines of cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, behavioral psychology, genetics, philosophy, and cross-cultural studies. Starting from the premise that the phenomena of effortless attention and action provide an opportunity to test current models of attention and action, leading researchers from around the world examine topics including effort as a cognitive resource, the role of effort in decision making, the neurophysiology of effortless attention and action, the role of automaticity in effortless action, expert performance in effortless action, and the neurophysiology and benefits of attentional training. -/- Contributors: Joshua M. Ackerman, James H. Austin, John A. Bargh, Roy F. Baumeister, Sian L. Beilock, Chris Blais, Matthew M. Botvinick, Brian Bruya, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Marci S. DeCaro, Arne Dietrich, Yuri Dormashev, László Harmat, Bernhard Hommel, Rebecca Lewthwaite, Örjan de Manzano, Joseph T. McGuire, Brian P. Meier, Arlen C. Moller, Jeanne Nakamura, Evgeny N. Osin, Michael I. Posner, Mary K. Rothbart, M. R. Rueda, Brandon J. Schmeichel, Edward Slingerland, Oliver Stoll, Yiyuan Tang, Töres Theorell, Fredrik Ullén, Robert D. Wall, Gabriele Wulf. (shrink)

In this paper we present Drama, a distributed model of analogical mapping that integrates semantic and structural constraints on constructing analogies. Specifically, Drama uses holographic reduced representations (Plate, 1994), a distributed representation scheme, to model the effects of structure and meaning on human performance of analogical mapping. Drama is compared to three symbolic models of analogy (SME, Copycat, and ACME) and one partially distributed model (LISA). We describe Drama's performance on a number of example analogies and assess the model in (...) terms of neurological and psychological plausibility. We argue that Drama's successes are due largely to integrating structural and semantic constraints throughout the mapping process. We also claim that Drama is an existence proof of using distributed representations to model high‐level cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

Some philosophers deny the existence of composite material objects. Other philosophers hold that whenever there are some things, they compose something. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize an objection to these revisionary views: the objection that nihilism and universalism are both unacceptably uncharitable because each of them implies that a great deal of what we ordinarily believe is false. Our main business is to show how nihilism and universalism can be defended against the objection. A secondary point is (...) that universalism is harder to defend than nihilism. (shrink)

In Barrio et al. Barrio Pailos and Szmuc prove that there are systems of logic that agree with classical logic up to any finite meta-inferential level, and disagree with it thereafter. This article presents a generalized sense of meta-inference that extends into the transfinite, and proves analogous results to all transfinite orders.

Medical students newly arrived on the wards encounter frustrating ethical predicaments that are complicated by students' place in the hospital hierarchy. A careful scrutiny of medical social structure and culture may enable medical schools to offer their students a more effective ethics education.

The concept of argumentation in AI is based almost exclusively on the use of formal, abstract representations. Despite their appealing computational properties, these abstractions become increasingly divorced from their real world counterparts, and, crucially, lose the ability to express the rich gamut of natural argument forms required for creating effective text. In this paper, the demands that socially situated argumentation places on knowledge representation are explored, and the various problems with existing formalisations are discussed. Insights from argumentation theory and social (...) psychology are then adduced as key contributions to a notion of social context which is both computationally tractable and suitably expressive for handling the complexities of argumentation found in natural language. (shrink)

This article examines the prospects for an authentic regional architecture in the light of alternative development paradigms. It is argued that the failure of orthodox development strategies and the domination of western culture, including architecture, over non-Western cultures, is due to fundamental imbalances between northern and southern economic structures. By contrast, ecodevelopment, appropriate technology and regional architecture all represent significant devolutionary movements toward a global “eco-culture.” A cultural typology placing eco-culture in historical perspective is outlined. It is concluded that, to (...) be fully effective, changes in development patterns in the south have to be matched by equivalent cultural changes in the North. (shrink)

Concerns of intellectual property infringement in China slow the dissemination of clean technology (Cleantech) innovation that could help bring the pace of global warming under control. We use the U.S. post‐World War 2 policy decisions with respect to Japan and Europe (the Marshall Plan) to show how this problem can be addressed. To help Japan become a western style democracy and stem the tide of communism, the U.S. transferred much of its extant intellectual property to Japan with a promise to (...) open US markets to Japanese goods. The United States did not require Japan to open its markets to U.S. goods. As a result, Japan became a staunch U.S. political ally in Asia, but also a serious economic competitor to the United States. While the Marshall Plan deployed different resources, the political outcomes were similar to Japan: Western Europe was a bulwark against communism. As global warming has become a major strategic issue, we argue that a comparable IPR initiative is required for China. This is not just a matter of doing the right thing as members of global commons, but is also matter of national security. We propose that by facilitating and managing the flow and sharing of U.S., EU, and Japanese Cleantech intellectual property with China—through a Cleantech Marshall Plan—a positive strategic relationship may be built while helping to bring global warming under control. (shrink)

Support vector machines (SVMs) are being used increasingly in affective science as a data-driven classification method and feature reduction technique. Whereas traditional statistical methods typically compare group averages on selected variables, SVMs use a predictive algorithm to learn multivariate patterns that optimally discriminate between groups. In this review, we provide a framework for understanding the methods of SVM-based analyses and summarize the findings of seminal studies that use SVMs for classification or data reduction in the behavioral and neural study of (...) emotion and affective disorders. We conclude by discussing promising directions and potential applications of SVMs in future research in affective science. (shrink)

Confucianism has attracted some attention in business ethics, in particular as a form of virtue ethics. This paper develops ideas about Confucianism in business ethics by extending discussion about Confucian ideas of ritual. Ritual has figured in literature about organisational culture, but Confucian accounts can offer additional ideas about developing ethically desirable organisational cultures. Confucian ritual practice has diverged from doctrine and from the classical emphasis on requirements for concern and respect as parts of ritual. Despite some differences of emphasis (...) amongst early writers, classical texts like the Analects and Mencius allow for the importance of ritual as opportunity for interpersonal encounter. These are texts that bring out the flexibility and context-sensitivity of ritual, with associated implications about the need for care and attention to other individuals. They eschew ritual as unthinking repetition, in favour of ritual as meaningful expression. The mutual awareness such ritual can engender is an important part of human existence. Such ritual is a means to solving coordination problems through common knowledge, as opposed to unthinking routine. Undue routinisation can be one problem with organisational ritual, while another can be use of ritual as a means of oppressive control. In organisations, ritual should satisfy general requirements of concern and respect, and should maintain opportunities for mutual encounter. The difference between arrangements which do or do not offer such opportunities may suggest lines of development for virtue ethics in business. (shrink)

The examination of a scene of crime provides both an interesting case study and analogy for consideration of Distributed Cognition. In this paper, Distribution is defined by the number of agents involved in the criminal justice process, and in terms of the relationship between a Crime Scene Examiner and the environment being searched.

In this paper, a personalist ethical perspective on end-of-life care of severely ill newborns is presented by posing two questions. (1) Is it ethically justified to decide not to start or to withdraw life-sustaining treatment in severely ill newborns? (2) Is it ethically justified, in exceptional cases, to actively terminate the life of severely ill newborns? Based on five values—respect for life and for the dignity of the human person, quality of life, respect for the process of dying, relational autonomy, (...) and justice—an ethical assessment is conducted that brings us answers to the two ethical questions. (1) Noninitiation or withdrawal of life-sustaining medical treatment in severely ill newborns is ethically acceptable, and might even be a moral duty, when initiation or continuation of medical treatment can be considered futile or even harmful. (2) However, according to the personalist approach, it is not ethically acceptable to actively terminate the life of a severely ill newborn. (shrink)

The impact of neoliberal reforms of education systems on the work of teachers and school leaders, particularly in relation to high-stakes accountability frameworks, has been extensively studied in recent decades. One significant aspect of neoliberal schooling is the emergence of quasi-autonomous public schools (such as Academies in England, Charter Schools in the USA and Independent Public Schools in Australia), characterised by heterarchical governance models, the promotion of entrepreneurial leadership cultures, and the promotion of a discourse of pursuing educational equity by (...) means of ‘achievement for all’. This paper explores the emergence of a mode of teacher professionalism characteristic of these quasi-autonomous schools, and conceptualises this as being ‘neo-performative’. The neo-performative profession is shaped by the shift in the focus of the regulation and management of schools from ‘governing to governance’, and the consequential rise of the ‘responsibilised profession’, and marked by the emergence of an entrepreneurial model of school leadership. The paper argues that this new conceptualisation of teacher professionalism requires further, more focused, empirical study in order to explore how neoperformative teachers and school leaders articulate their vision of educational equity and social justice, and how they enact this vision in an increasingly intensified high-stakes accountability culture. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have disagreed about whether "the folk" are intuitively incompatibilists or compatibilists, and they have disagreed about the role of abstraction in generating such intuitions. New experimental evidence using Construal Level Theory is presented. The experiments support the views that the folk are intuitively both incompatibilists and compatibilists, and that abstract mental representations do shift intuitions, but not in a univocal way.

The paper establishes lower bounds on the provability of.

Ethical or ‘socially sustainable’ sourcing mechanisms mandating labour standards among the suppliers and subcontractors that organisations source goods and services from are becoming more common. The issue of how labour activist groups such as trade unions can encourage organisations to adopt and strengthen these mechanisms within domestic production networks is largely unexplored. Using three cases of domestic sustainable sourcing campaigns developed by unions in Britain, the strategies used by labour activists, the characteristics of the organisations targeted and the motivations of (...) lead firms for improving sourcing practices are analysed. The article makes a significant contribution by demonstrating that organisational susceptibility to reputational risk is a key factor influencing the capacity of activist groups to convince and compel their targets to improve sourcing practices. It argues that different types of organisations are susceptible to reputational damage in different ways, that risk events provide opportunities for unions to strengthen their leverage against target organisations, and that the multidimensional nature of corporate reputation needs to be better considered for understanding how campaigns are framed and executed. (shrink)

Bedwetting has confounded the presumed boundaries of the human body, existing in a fluid space, between the normal and pathological. Its treatment has demanded the application of a wide array of different technologies, each based on a distinct conception of the relationship between the body and personality, human organs and personal conduct. In tracing the social history of bedwetting and its regulation, this article examines the ontological assumptions underpinning the treatment of bedwetting and how they have changed over the past (...) two centuries. Through the analysis of medical journals, newspaper articles and magazine advertisements, different topologies are identified which redefine the boundaries of the human body and its capacities. From 16th-century naturalism, in which the human body is subordinated to a cosmic totality, to the circumscribed space of 19th-century paediatrics and the expansive circuits of behavioural psychology and modern psychoanalysis, the body has become multiplied, differently enacted through the application of diverse technologies. It will be shown how coordinating the messy and divergent conceptions of the human body has posed an endemic problem for the human sciences, and how the enduring tension between object enactment and subject constitution is an expression of modern ‘baroque’ subjectivity. (shrink)

An important book for philosophers of religion and students of Buddhism. It attempts to translate... the Mādhyamika articulation of the Buddhist dharma by comparing it with the language analysis of Ludwig Wittgenstein... Chris Gudmunsen has made a persuasive case for showing overlapping philosophical concerns and claims in different cultural traditions separated by two millennia.

Genia Schönbaumsfeld has recently argued for the view that our ordinary perceptual reasons provide support for heavyweight metaphysical and epistemological views, such as that there is a mind-independent physical world. Call this the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis. In this paper, I argue that we should reject the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis. I also argue that the rejection of the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis is compatible with the Factive Perceptual Reasons Thesis, the thesis that our perceptual reasons for our ordinary beliefs can be factive, (...) but that factive reasons aren’t necessarily better reasons than subjectively indiscriminable non-factive reasons. (shrink)

Law and the Formation of Modern Europe explores processes of legal construction in both the national and supranational domains, and it provides an overview of the modern European legal order. In its supranational focus, it examines the sociological pressures which have given rise to European public law, the national origins of key transnational legal institutions and the elite motivations driving the formation of European law. In its national focus, it addresses legal questions and problems which have assumed importance in parallel (...) fashion in different national societies, and which have shaped European law more indirectly. Examples of this are the post-1914 transformation of classical private law, the rise of corporatism, the legal response to the post-1945 legacy of authoritarianism, the emergence of human rights law and the growth of judicial review. This two-level sociological approach to European law results in unique insights into the dynamics of national and supranational legal formation. (shrink)

Stein has characterized one of the central problems in accounting for our knowledge in physics as that of getting the laboratory, or observatory, inside the theory -- that is, of understanding how the mathematical structures of fundamental physical theories have empirical content. He has argued that physicists respond to this problem by giving schematic representations of observers and experiments. In addition, Stein emphasizes the importance of regarding knowledge as an enterprise, with current theories providing guidance for future inquiry. I will (...) explore some ramifications of this way of thinking about the structure of scientific theories for contemporary cosmology. One goal of observational cosmology is to measure the six basic parameters appearing in the standard model of cosmology. These parameters are well-defined if the universe is suitably approximated at some scale by a perturbed FLRW model. The enormous extrapolations involved in the standard model are often justified by the consistent determination of these parameters via a variety of methods. Here I will consider two recent debates regarding this approach to cosmology, inspired by Stein's work. The first debate regards the impact of different ways of characterizing the propagation of light through a cosmological spacetime on the determination of cosmological parameters (such as H_0). The second regards how the highly symmetric FLRW models relate to describing the real universe, at small scales where it is very lumpy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A review of two of the strands of cultural studies that Mark Fenster contends are superior to Murray Edelman’s analysis of mass public opinion—Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and Bourdieu’s sociology—and a more general look at work in the field of cultural studies suggests that all of these alternatives suffer from severe theoretical and methodological limitations. Future studies of culture and politics need to pose questions similar to the ones that preoccupied Edelman, but they must move beyond the political and (...) interpretive biases that have dominated cultural studies (some of which Edelman shared), as well as the questionable view of “ideology” as a matter of elite domination of the masses, rather than as a mediating, constitutive force in the process of individual opinion formation. (shrink)

Alienation theory has acted as the stimulus for a great deal of research and writing in the history of sociology. It has formed the basis of many sociological ‘classics’ focused on the workplace and the experiences of workers, and has also been mobilized to chart wider social malaise and individual troubles. Alienation theory usage has, however, declined significantly since its heyday of the 1960s and 1970s. Here, the reasons why alienation theory was ‘forgotten’ and what can be gained by ‘remembering’ (...) alienation theory are explored. To realize this ambition this article proceeds by (1) briefly visiting differing definitions of alienation theory, before charting its high point, and the various debates and tensions of the time, during the 1960s and 1970s; (2) analysing the reasons why alienation theory fell from grace from the 1980s onwards; (3) elaborating how and why alienation theory is still relevant for sociology and the wider social sciences today. (shrink)

The essay below is excerpted from my forthcoming book, At Any Cost—A Guide to The Transhumanist Wager and the Ideas of Zoltan Istvan. It is an examination of, Jethro Knights, the iconoclastic and highly controversial protagonist of Zoltan’s philosophical novel, who views himself as already having partially transcended his human origins and conducts himself as though he is a highly evolved machine intelligence, possessed of a moral system an A.I. would likely adopt, according to Jethro’s vision of the post-human future (...) he is fighting to bring about. (shrink)

In this short essay, I report results from a representative national dataset from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program that shows that significantly more men than women intend to major in philosophy at the high‐school and pre‐university level. This lends credence to pre‐university effects hypotheses of women's underrepresentation in philosophy and successfully replicates a smaller analysis performed by Cheshire Calhoun at Colby College in 2009. I also defend my analysis against an objection that claims that intention to major is not a (...) good predictor of final major selection. Finally, I argue that this new analysis should lead to further investment in university‐level diversity programs. (shrink)

Focusing on the case of Colombia, this article sets out a sociological examination of constitutions marked by strong, activist judiciaries, by entrenched systems of human rights protection, and by emphatic implementation of global human rights law. Contra standard critiques of this constitutional model, it argues that such constitutions need to be seen as creating a new pattern of democracy, which is often distinctively adapted to structures in societies in which the typical patterns of legitimation and subject formation required for democratic (...) government were obstructed. In polities with such constitutions, legal institutions and norm setters have at times assumed the status offunctional equivalentsfor more typical democratically mandated actors and institutions. In such polities, further, global law assumes essential importance as it creates new sources of normative authorization for legislation and stimulates new lines of articulation between government and society. The article concludes that analysis of such polities, exemplified by Colombia, shows that the common categories of democratic-constitutional analysis are no longer always adequate for understanding current tendencies in democratic formation, and they can easily undermine democracy itself. (shrink)

According to Elizabeth Barnes’s minority body view, to say that a disability is value neutral is to say that it is neither automatically good nor bad, but rather can become good or bad depending on what it is combined with (including ableism and one’s aspirations, goals, and desires). Most people view dementia as intrinsically bad, that is, as something that makes one’s life go worse simply by its existence. In this paper, I argue that we are not currently able to (...) decide if dementia is value neutral or intrinsically bad. Arguments that say dementia is intrinsically bad are beset with problems such as negative feedback loops and a reliance on biased empirical evidence. Moreover, there are promising examples of people whose dementia is combined with certain traits that make their dementia good for them, which would undermine the intrinsic badness of dementia. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Habermasian ideal of deliberation has long been seen as an extension of, and complement to, political action. But Diana Mutz's empirical studies of face-to-face interactions reveal a conflict between political participation and political deliberation: The more likely people are to be exposed to diverse political opinions, the less likely they are to participate, and those who participate most tend to have the least exposure to diverse political opinions. She hypothesizes, however, that the infrastructure of the Internet might allow (...) for the creation of a forum for online political debate that is sufficiently generalizable to result in deliberation. Champions of the Internet's democratic potential similarly praise its diversifying influence on political discussion and the ways in which it lowers barriers to access. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that new technologies have truly transformed political action or produced meaningful deliberation at significant levels. It appears that many of the trends and behaviors Mutz identifies in face-to-face interaction apply to digital interaction as well. (shrink)

This book examines the way in which new discoveries about genetic and neuroscience are influencing our understanding of human behaviour. As scientists unravel more about the ways in which genes and the environment work together to shape the development of our brains, their studies have importance beyond the narrow confines of the laboratory. This emerging knowledge has implications for our notions of morality and criminal responsibility. The extent to which "biological determinism" can be used as an explanation for our behaviour (...) is of interest to philosophers reflecting on the free will versus determinism debate. It also has repercussions for the criminal justice system; in courtrooms around the world, defence lawyers are beginning to appeal to genetic and brain imaging data as grounds for finding their clients not guilty. Can a defendant's genes or the structure of his brain be used as an excuse for his behaviour? Is criminality "hardwired"? Is it legitimate to claim "I couldn't help it, my genes made me do it"? This book appeals to anyone interested in the link between behaviour and genetics, the science and philosophy of moral responsibility and/or criminal law. (shrink)

As the global prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease increases, the need to understand family caregiving becomes increasingly pressing. I argue that there is an under-recognized form of caregiving for people with early to mid-stage Alzheimer’s disease. This type of caregiving involves, roughly, helping people reason through their values. It arises along with the loss of the capacity for executive functioning. Moreover, it is prone to give rise to moral distress, which is an under-recognized vulnerability in family caregiving. Categories of family caregiving (...) thus need to be expanded, and moral distress needs to be recognized not only in the context of nursing. (shrink)

The original article was published without an acknowledgment section. The complete acknowledgment section is given.

Judgments of character traits tend to be overcorrelated, a bias known as the halo effect. We conducted two studies to test an explanation of the effect based on shared lexical context and connotation. Study 1 tested whether the context similarity of trait names could explain 39 participants’ ratings of the probability that two traits would co-occur. Over 126 trait pairs, cosine similarity between the word2vec vectors of the two words was a reliable predictor of the human judgments of trait co-occurrence (...) probability (cross-validated r2 =.19, p <.001). Two measures related to word similarity increased the variation accounted for in the human judgments to 45%, cross-validated (p <.001). In Experiment 2, 40 different participants judged similarity of word meaning within the pairs, confirming that the word pairs were not simply synonymous (Average [SD] = 40.8/100 [13.1/100]). Shared lexical context and word connotation play a role in shaping the halo effect. (shrink)

The central focus of this article is to share several experiential activities we have designed in our teaching careers that we use to help education students, primarily undergraduates and teacher candidates, access philosophical ideas and enter philosophical discussions. The examples shared below come from our attempts to help students reach key concepts and abstract ideas in some well-known educational philosophical discussions, through engaging in experiences relating to them. They are based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, John Dewey’s scientific method, (...) and Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue. The focus for this article is not so much on the specific content or philosophical interpretation of these works but instead on the activities themselves as a means towards better understanding the concept of experiential learning itself. The three examples we present serve to show ways in which well-designed and thoroughly-considered experiences can serve as a bridge to difficult and abstract material while also honoring a more expansive range of learning styles. (shrink)

A letter to the editor from Françoise Baylis and Chris Kaposy concerning the recent commentary by Toby Schonfeld and colleagues , which was written in response to Baylis and Kaposy’s article.

Experimental philosophy is comprised of two broad projects, the negative project and the positive project, each of which is a response to a kind of armchair use of intuitions. I examine two examples of the negative project-the analysis of knowledge and the theory of reference-and two examples of the positive project-free will and intentional action-and review criticisms of each example. I show how the criticisms can be met and argue that even if they could not have been met, experimental philosophy (...) raises important questions about methodology, opening the door on new questions and new ways of looking at old questions. For that reason, experimental philosophy as a movement is robust and full of potential. (shrink)

Successor views in the free will literature are views that reject the assumption behind the compatibility question, the question of whether free will is compatible with causal determinism. Specifically, they challenge the assumption that the compatibility question must be answered with either a yes or a no. One premise typically found in arguments for successor views is the premise that there are certain challenging cases where we have compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions within the same case. This paper gives empirical support (...) for that premise by presenting an experiment that yields an actor-observer asymmetry in intuitions about the compatibility questions. Given causal determinism, intuitions are incompatibilist when we think about someone else doing an action, but intuitions are compatibilist when we think about our own action as judged by someone else. (shrink)

This book is an excellent and accessible overview of the position that children learn the meanings of words by applying a variety of nonlinguistic cognitive tools to the problem. We take issue with Bloom's emphasis on Theory of Mind as an explanatory mechanism for language learning; and with his claim that only unitary objects are nameable.

Whatever else language may be, it is complex and multifaceted. Shanker & King (S&K) have tried to contrast a dynamic interactive view of language with an information processing view. I take issue with two main claims: first, that the dynamic interactive view of language is a “new paradigm” in either animal research or human language studies; and second, that the dynamic systems language-as-dance view of language is in any way incompatible with an information-processing view of language. That some information is (...) defined in coregulated social interaction guarantees the dancing. That all information is composed of relevant differences guarantees the information processing. (shrink)