Sketching is a powerful means of working out and communicating ideas. Sketch understanding involves a combination of visual, spatial, and conceptual knowledge and reasoning, which makes it both challenging to model and potentially illuminating for cognitive science. This paper describes CogSketch, an ongoing effort of the NSF-funded Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, which is being developed both as a research instrument for cognitive science and as a platform for sketch-based educational software. We describe the idea of open-domain sketch understanding, the (...) scientific hypotheses underlying CogSketch, and provide an overview of the models it employs, illustrated by simulation studies and ongoing experiments in creating sketch-based educational software. (shrink)

There are growing discontinuities between the research practices of data science and established tools of research ethics regulation. Some of the core commitments of existing research ethics regulations, such as the distinction between research and practice, cannot be cleanly exported from biomedical research to data science research. Such discontinuities have led some data science practitioners and researchers to move toward rejecting ethics regulations outright. These shifts occur at the same time as a proposal for major revisions to the Common Rule—the (...) primary regulation governing human-subjects research in the USA—is under consideration for the first time in decades. We contextualize these revisions in long-running complaints about regulation of social science research and argue data science should be understood as continuous with social sciences in this regard. The proposed regulations are more flexible and scalable to the methods of non-biomedical research, yet problematically largely exclude data science methods from human-subjects regulation, particularly uses of public datasets. The ethical frameworks for Big Data research are highly contested and in flux, and the potential harms of data science research are unpredictable. We examine several contentious cases of research harms in data science, including the 2014 Facebook emotional contagion study and the 2016 use of geographical data techniques to identify the pseudonymous artist Banksy. To address disputes about application of human-subjects research ethics in data science, critical data studies should offer a historically nuanced theory of “data subjectivity” responsive to the epistemic methods, harms and benefits of data science and commerce. (shrink)

This paper explores how political theory may help us map algorithmic logics against different visions of the political. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theories of agonistic pluralism, this paper depicts algorithms in public life in ten distinct scenes, in order to ask the question, what kinds of politics do they instantiate? Algorithms are working within highly contested online spaces of public discourse, such as YouTube and Facebook, where incompatible perspectives coexist. Yet algorithms are designed to produce clear “winners” from information contests, (...) often with little visibility or accountability for how those contests are designed. In isolation, many of these algorithms seem the opposite of agonistic: much of the complexity of search, ranking, and recommendation algorithms is nonnegotiable and kept far from view, inside an algorithmic “black box.” But what if we widen our perspective? This paper suggests agonistic pluralism as both a design ideal for engineers and a provocation to understand algorithms in a broader social context: rather than focusing on the calculations in isolation, we need to account for the spaces of contestation where they operate. (shrink)

In his published texts and lectures on moral philosophy, Kant repeatedly singles out gratitude for discussion. Nevertheless, puzzles about the derivation, content, and nature of this duty remain. This paper seeks to solve some of these puzzles. Centrally, I argue that it is essential to attend to a distinction that Kant makes between well-wishing benevolence (Wohlwollen) and active beneficence (Wohlthun) on the part of a benefactor. On the Kantian account, I argue, a different type of gratitude is owed in response (...) to each. With this distinction in place, I argue further that we can construct what many have thought to be missing from Kant’s discussion of gratitude – an argument explicating the precise contradiction generated by a maxim of ingratitude. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which a fuller attention to suffering in the tradition of the early Frankfurt School might valuably inform international political thought. Recent poststructural writing argues that trauma is silenced to prevent it disrupting narratives of order and progress and instead advocates a continual ‘encircling’ of trauma that refuses incorporation into a broader historical narrative. This paper welcomes this challenge to mainstream international ethics: attention to particular suffering provides an important challenge to the abstraction, instrumentalism and (...) universalism of modernity. However, if we simply mark trauma and refuse to incorporate it into any kind of narrative, we cannot profit from the ways in which suffering can illuminate the structures and ways of thinking that create it. Drawing on Adorno's negative dialectics, the paper argues that a dialectical understanding of the relationship between universalising order and disrupting particularity can lead from individual suffering towards a political re-engagement with the universal. (shrink)

Feminist theorists have long looked to motherhood and mothering behaviour as an important site at which to examine women’s lives, gender inequality and the social construction of gendered institutions. One important line of theorisation has concerned itself with the de-essentialisation of motherhood, a project that I argue remains incomplete, as feminist theorisation of motherhood naturalises biological sex and therefore essentialises mothering as behaviour performed by ‘female bodies’ and fathering behaviour as performed by ‘male bodies’. Using two cases from a larger (...) qualitative interview project with LGBTQ parents, I show that current theories of motherhood fail to have explanatory power in cases – such as gay and transgender parents – when gendered embodiment and mothering (and/or fathering) fail to align as expected. I suggest that research related to queer parenting – particularly research on gay male co-parenting, on the experiences of transgender parents and their children, on non-white LGBTQ parents and on mothering from outside the nuclear family – will be especially fruitful in moving the de-essentialisation of mothering in new directions that will further contest heteronormative, cisnormative and nuclear assumptions about the family. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre is rarely discussed in the philosophy of religion. In 2009, however, Jerome Gellman broke the silence, publishing an article in which he argued that the source of Sartre’s atheism was neither philosophical nor existential, but mystical. Drawing from several of Sartre’s works – including Being and Nothingness, Words, and a 1943 review entitled ‘A New Mystic’ – I argue that there are strong biographical and philosophical reasons to disagree with Gellman’s conclusion that Sartre was a ‘mystical atheist’. Moreover, (...) I question the likelihood of drawing any definitive conclusions regarding the sources of Sartre’s ambiguous atheism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Turning the Tables on the Audience:Didactic Technique in Solon 13WKate StoddardSolon's great elegiac poem, variously called the "Hymn to the Muses" and the "Elegy Eis Heauton," is an odd work, one that has been the subject of exhaustive and varied study. Owing in part to its considerable length and to its complex paratactic style, the poem's unity continues to be the single most important issue for the scholars who (...) study it. The apparent interruption of the elegy's train of thought at line 33, as well as the puzzling statement about atē in lines 63-70 that seems to contradict the description of divine justice earlier in the poem, has caused many scholars to doubt the poem's integrity altogether.1 The interpretations of the elegy's structure range from those that discover in it little more than a rambling patchwork of philosophically inconsistent reflections to others that seek to demonstrate that the elegy is in fact a closely knit and conceptually coherent unity.2 [End Page 149]The great majority of scholars now accept the premise that Solon 13W is a unified whole that Solon composed more or less in the form that survives to us today. As a consequence of this admission, scholars are faced with the question of how to explain the breaks at lines 33 and 71. Beginning with Wilamowitz, the traditional way of explaining the structure of the elegy is to see it as a paratactic "chain" of observations in which each idea springs from the one that precedes it but is not necessarily connected to the other ideas in the poem.3 Wilamowitz argues that the poem's unity is rooted in the idea of the desire for wealth, which he sees as permeating every aspect of the elegy.4 Subsequent scholarship finds [End Page 150] different unifying themes of the elegy, with several scholars focusing on the last three lines of the poem (74-76) as the key to the poem's unity.5Allen, who argues that lines 74-76 restate the ideas of the first half of the poem and thus unify the poem by ring-composition, believes that the real unity of the poem depends on the content of the opening prayer: olbon moi pros theōn makarōn dote kai pros hapantōn / anthrōpōn aiei doxan echein agathēn (3-4). Allen interprets the prayer as a prayer not for wealth, over which the Muses have no jurisdiction, but for wisdom, specifically the wisdom needed to avoid committing injustice and falling victim to atē. In order, however, to make the content of the prayer harmonize with the last three lines of the poem Allen translates the kerdea of 74 to mean "unjust gains"6 rather than simply "gains," a qualification that is not at all justified by the text:7[End Page 151].8No limitation of wealth is visible for men,For those among us who now have the most abundant meansStrive twice as hard [to gain more]. Who could satisfy them all?The deathless gods grant gains to mortals,But ruin arises from these gains, which, whenever Zeus sends itAs punishment, afflicts now one man, now another.(71-76)It is this striking contradiction between the opening prayer for olbos (1-6) and the closing statement that atē arises from god-given wealth that is the subject of this article.9 In it I hope to demonstrate that the first half of the poem, and most especially the prayer itself, is "ironic" and set forth for the purpose of instructing the audience that the mindset it depicts represents a dangerous trap for mortals.At the beginning of Solon 13W the narrator prays for the traditional blessings of olbos and good repute:105Shining children of Memory and Olympian Zeus,Pierian Muses, hear me as I pray:Grant me to have wealth from the blessed godsAnd from all men always to have good repute;5 To be thus sweet to friends but bitter to enemies;An object of respect to the former, but to the latter an object ofdread to behold.(Solon 13.1-6)Although... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Models of Psychopathology and ReligionSuffering, Psychosis, and NeurodiversityKate Finley, PhD (bio)To draw out some implications of Scrutton’s paper, I will address a few points of clarification and objection as well as connections to empirical literature and topics for further research. Scrutton frames her discussion as an exploration of ‘both–and’ (BA) accounts, according to which “someone might experience both a religious experience and psychopathology” in contrast to an ‘either/or’ account, (...) which “presupposes that a person’s experience can be either psychopathological, or else a genuine religious experience” and focuses on instances of ‘voice hearing’ which may be a religious experience (i.e., God talking to you) and/or an instance of psychopathology (i.e., an auditory hallucination). She then defines religious experience as one which “comes from God... [specifically as] an instance of special divine action” and mental illness as dys-functional emotional, cognitive, and/or perceptual processes resulting in suffering that is in need of healing and/or treatment.1One potentially ambiguous point concerns the potential causes of psychopathology—while in some places, Scrutton seems to assume that psychopathology can only be caused by natural (biopsychosocial) causes, in others, she highlights “conjunctive causal explanations” on which divine action can occur within and through ‘natural’ (e.g., psychological, neurological) phenomena and processes. It is important to note that this latter approach is needed in order to truly entertain BA accounts which posit both natural and supernatural causes for the psychopathological experience in question. Relatedly, although Scrutton cites an intuitive view that a hallucination is a “distorted perception of reality,” instead an account of hallucination which allows for veridical as well as non-veridical hallucinations is needed.2 Without these assumptions, the categories of religious experience and psychopathology may seem to be mutually exclusive and thus an either/or account trivially true. For example, one might think that an instance of ‘hearing voices,’ if it is an auditory hallucination (and thus results from solely natural causes and is non-veridical), then cannot also be a religious experience (brought about by divine [End Page 261] action and veridical). These are friendly clarifications of Scrutton’s setup which also highlight the need for further explanation of the relationship between human and divine causation in such cases.There is also some ambiguity about what counts as a singular experience for Scrutton’s purposes—for example, ‘hearing voices over the course of a few minutes or hours’ or ‘hearing voices off and on over a period of a few months and reflecting on these occurrences.’ Scrutton seems to favor the latter, using ‘experience’ in a “diachronic and holistic sense,” and sees the former as too narrowly focused on only part of an experience. On Scrutton’s understanding, much more, perhaps even all of what is recounted about Abeo would count as parts of her experience—thus, a BA account of this experience being correct would mean that all of the individual instances of voice hearing would be both psychopathological and genuine religious experiences (in some sense). In contrast, on the former more circumscribed understanding, each instance in which Abeo “seem[ed] to hear God talk to her” would count as a distinct experience—and thus, a BA account might be correctly applied to only some of these instances. While Scrutton’s approach can sidestep skeptical worries stemming from this view—what to make of the fact that Abeo may genuinely hear God speak to her on one day, but only seem to hear God speaking to her on another—I believe the former understanding of ‘experience’ allows for important nuance and specificity when addressing these issues. As a friendly clarification, this point mainly draws attention to the different implications of understanding Scrutton’s models as employing either the first or the second understanding of ‘experience.’In objecting to the Mysterium Tremendum Model 1, she claims that because Christians (qua Christians) “do not undergo suffering pointlessly [(i.e., in a way that does not further their spiritual life)],” genuine (salutary) religious experience would not lead to psychopathology (presumably pointless suffering). Notably, the claim that psychopathology results in pointless suffering is seemingly challenged both by Scrutton’s preferred Model 4... (shrink)

This important book on Land Education offers critical analysis of the paths forward for education on Indigenous land. This analysis discusses the necessity of centring historical and current contexts of colonization in education on and in relation to land. In addition, contributors explore the intersections of environmentalism and Indigenous rights, in part inspired by the realisation that the specifics of geography and community matter for how environmental education can be engaged. This edited volume suggests how place-based pedagogies can respond to (...) issues of colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty. Through dynamic new empirical and conceptual studies, international contributors examine settler colonialism, Indigenous cosmologies, Indigenous land rights, and language as key aspects of Land Education. The book invites readers to rethink 'pedagogies of place' from various Indigenous, postcolonial, and decolonizing perspectives. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Environmental Education Research. _. (shrink)

This book deals with the relationship between feminism and liberalism in theory and practice. The author argues that rather than seeing liberalism as exclusionary of women's specificity, as many contemporary feminists do, we should look at variations in liberalism, and in particular at its democratization in the nineteenth century and how feminists have used liberalism as a resource. Liberalism is analyzed using a post-structuralist theory of hegemony: texts of liberal political philosophy are deconstructed to show how the term "women" is (...) used as an "undecidable" in the Derridean sense to produce the opposition between feminine private and masculine public spheres; these texts are then linked to liberal-democratic social and political practices, including feminism as a social movement. (shrink)

Objective: There is a demonstrated link between the mental health and substance use comorbidities experienced by young adults, however the vast majority of psychological interventions are disorder specific. Novel psychological approaches that adequately acknowledge the psychosocial complexity and transdiagnostic needs of vulnerable young people are urgently needed. A modular skills-based program for emotion regulation and impulse control addresses this gap. The current one armed open trial was designed to evaluate the impact that 12 weeks exposure to ERIC alongside usual care (...) had on young people's ability to regulate emotions, as well as examine potential moderating mechanisms.Methods: Seventy nine young people were enrolled to the 12 week intervention period. Twenty one practitioners from youth and community health services delivered relevant ERIC modules adjunct to usual care. Linear mixed effects regression was used to examine change over time across the primary outcome of emotion dysregulation and secondary outcomes of depression, anxiety, stress, experiential avoidance and mindfulness. Moderation analyses were conducted to test whether the magnitude of change in emotion dysregulation moderated change over time in secondary outcomes.Results: Analyses revealed significant improvement in the primary outcome of emotion dysregulation with a moderate effect size, in addition to decreases in the secondary outcomes of depression, anxiety, stress and experiential avoidance. No improvements in mindfulness were reported. Moderation analyses revealed that the residualised change over time in emotion dysregulation moderated the change over time in symptoms of distress, depression, anxiety, stress, experiential avoidance, and mindfulness.Conclusion: Reductions in the severity of emotion dysregulation, depression, anxiety, stress and experiential avoidance are promising, and were evident despite the complexity of the participants and the diversity of the service setting. The improvements found in each outcome were only observed for those young people whose emotion regulation also improved, providing preliminary evidence for the role of emotion regulation as a key treatment target in this population. (shrink)

Binz et al. argue that meta-learned models are essential tools for understanding adult cognition. Here, we propose that these models are particularly useful for testing hypotheses about why learning processes change across development. By leveraging their ability to discover optimal algorithms and account for capacity limitations, researchers can use these models to test competing theories of developmental change in learning.

Feminist theories are concerned to analyse how women can transform society so that they are no longer subordinated, by understanding how patriarchal relations control and constrict them. (Abbott and Wallace, 1997: 284) Feminisms start from the position that women are oppressed within a society, which is patriarchal and socially constructed within knowledge which is malestream. This traditionally defines men such that they are rendered subordinate, within a social world constructed by men. Feminisms are engaged with making transparent patriarchal constructs, and (...) illuminating the ‘spaces’ within which women-realities can become more visible. This paper presents research undertaken by two key services working with male sex workers in central London. The insights gained from this research are discussed, as they allow comparison between the traditionally subordinate position of women and the contextual experiences of the ‘hidden’ population of male sex industry workers. It demonstrates, that like women, for male sex workers, hegenomic and heterosexist constructs ensure that they also occupy a subordinated position within society. (shrink)

This article focuses on Francis Hutcheson'sReflections Upon Laughter, which was originally published in 1725 as a series of three letters toThe Dublin Journalduring his time in the city. Although rarely considered a significant example of Hutcheson's published work,Reflections Upon Laughterhas long been recognised in the philosophy of laughter as a foundational contribution to the ‘incongruity theory’ – one of the ‘big three’ theories of laughter, and that which is still considered the most credible by modern theorists. The article gives an (...) account of Hutcheson's text but, rather than evaluating it solely as an explanation of laughter, the approach taken is an historical one: it emphasises the need to reconnect the theory to the cultural and intellectual contexts in which it was published and to identify the significance of Hutcheson's arguments in time and place. Through this, the article argues that Hutcheson's theory of laughter is indicative of the perceived significance of human risibility in early eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland and, more broadly, that it contributed both to moral philosophical debate and polite conduct guidance. (shrink)

In conceptualizing vulnerability, it is common for researchers to assume that some participants are more vulnerable on the basis of their membership of a particular group or because they exhibit particular characteristics. Older people are often viewed as inherently more vulnerable by ethics committees and the ethical guidelines committees construct. Because age alone does not confer or cause vulnerability, risk of harm to older research participants is not purely associated with their intrinsic connection to a vulnerable group, and classifying older (...) research participants as vulnerable may not necessarily protect them from harm. Drawing on the preliminary findings of a qualitative study of older people who had survived a suicide attempt, we reflect on how the specific context of our study had the potential of framing older people as vulnerable, and describe ways in which these were managed and resolved. Specifically, we discuss potential for harm through the ethical principles of coercion and distress. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist Women and Interfaith Work in the United StatesKate DuganWomen from a wide array of backgrounds and interest areas continue to shape the face of Buddhism in the United States—from women who encountered Buddhism during the women's movement in the 1960s to ordained women founding temples for large immigrant populations; from women carving out a space for Buddhism in colleges and universities to Buddhist women engaged in interfaith dialogue (...) and working in interreligious settings. As Buddhist scholar Rita Gross notes, the experiences of women in Buddhism in the United States are wide and varied.1Increasingly, whether they are ordained Buddhist nuns or are Buddhist activists, women in the United States are engaging with questions of interfaith conversations within this multireligious nation. Around the country, Buddhist nuns dialogue with their Catholic counterparts. In local communities, Buddhist women assume leadership roles in interfaith groups. Behind prison walls, women offer Buddhist meditation instruction. Some women introduce tenets of Buddhism to their communities, while others promote justice with people from various faith traditions. On college campuses, Buddhist women work as chaplains and women Buddhologists integrate Buddhism and interfaith dialogue into their academic interests. This article aims to explore several snapshots of Buddhist women engaged in interfaith dialogue and working as Buddhists in interreligious settings; it is not intended to provide all-inclusive coverage of the many and diverse women in Buddhism in the United States engaged with an increasingly religiously diverse country.2Historical Glance: Buddhist Women and Interfaith Dialogue in the United StatesRita Gross suggests that women in the United States began practicing Buddhism in the 1960s and 1970s because "the basic teachings [of Buddhism] were gender-free and gender-neutral, and many found the practice of meditation... intensely liberating."3 Yet, the history of Buddhism is dominated by patriarchal structures and male-centered liturgical and ordination practices. As Buddhism [End Page 31] grew American roots, women found that "deeper explorations into the traditional texts revealed misogynistic passages as well as a strong overall tendency to favor men over women in matters of study and practice."4 No longer certain that Buddhism was any less fettered by patriarchy than other traditions, uneasiness bubbled within the experiences of Buddhist women.In the early 1980s, Cambridge Buddhist Association member Suzie Bowman noted the similarities among women's experiences of American Buddhism—including struggles of motherhood in a tradition that emphasizes the quiet of meditation halls and an alarming number of stories about abusive male teachers. In 1983, Bowman and the Providence Zen Center hosted a conference called "The Feminine in Buddhism"; seventy women attended. A two-day conference, with 120 participants, followed in 1984. In 1985, they hosted a three-day gathering.5These inspired budding Buddhist Sandy Boucher to take to the road to understand Buddhism in women's lives. She interviewed more than one hundred Buddhist women in their homes, workplaces, sangha. In Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism, Boucher paints portraits of women in Buddhism in the United States in the mid 1980s—immigrant women from Asia who transplanted their Buddhism, white women who discovered Buddhism in tandem with feminism, women of color who encountered a white-dominated Buddhism. In these women's experiences, she suggests, is American Buddhism with "the possibility for the creation of a religion fully inclusive of women's realities."6Against this background, Rita Gross was blazing a trail for Buddhist women in interfaith dialogue. In 1980, an eager Gross attended the first International Buddhist-Christian Dialogue conference. She presented ideas that, twenty years later she says, encompassed "everything to which I have devoted my scholarly attention:... feminism, non-Christian religions, accurate information about world religions, Buddhism, Buddhism and feminism, interreligious interchange, even theology of religion."7 After this first splash, Rita Gross attended the 1984 International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter—the only woman in attendance.8 The organizers were eager to have more women participate; so was Gross. After that conference, she made her further involvement contingent upon more women's involvement. Because of this insistence, members did, and continue to, work toward equal gender representation.9 In 1992, Gross explained, from a personal perspective, the potential... (shrink)

Among the thousands who arrive in Europe to seek asylum each year, a significant number are children traveling on their own. Like adults, they are fleeing from war and armed conflict situations, persecution, severe poverty, and deprivation. Some arrive because they have been trafficked and some are fleeing for reasons specifically related to their status as children. They need special attention, not only in terms of specialized care and assistance, but also in terms of the refugee status determination procedure. When (...) they arrive in a country of asylum they risk further violations of their rights. This paper intends to outline the rignts of these children under international law; to highlight key protection concerns facing them, particularly in the European context; to summarize ways of how a UN/ngo program has attempted to address these problems; and to make some specific recommendations. (shrink)

This article is concerned with post-Marxism and materialism in the work of Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. As `post-Marxists' these writers use `material' in a variety of ways, all of which indicate limits and constraints. The article focuses on one version of `materialism' in this work, a version that is more implied than elaborated, in which `material' is equivalent to institutionalized performativity or sedimented discourse: to `objective' social structures and institutions. Post-Marxists often use `the social' as equivalent to (...) `material' in this sense, to gesture towards the context in which politics succeeds or fails. I argue that the specificities of `the social' cannot be theorized from within the terms of post-Marxism itself and that Butler and Laclau acknowledge this limitation in their most recent work. I therefore conclude that post-Marxism needs a supplement that I call political sociology. This is a dangerous supplement in the Derridean sense: a necessary addition that destabilizes the value post-Marxism gives to the distinction between `social' and `political' in which the latter is the privileged term. (shrink)

White, Shelton, and Rivais (2018) invite us to consider the history of clinical ethics consultation and some of the key ideas that continue to inform professional ethics practice. That history now...

The increasing impact of humans on the earth might be expected to unite campaigners on behalf of animals and the environment. This is not always the case. There's more than a difference between animal welfare and conservation movements: identifying and understanding these differences will be an important factor in attempting to reconcile these two groups of people. Such reconciliation is worth aiming for, since the human threat is in many ways a real one, and animal and environmental campaigners would be (...) better off allied than divided. (shrink)

This collection of essays on the social history of disciplinary practices in education in North America, Northern Europe, and Colonial Bengal coverage upon an understanding that schools regulate the behavior of beliefs of students, teachers, and parents by enforcing certain disciplinary social norms.

Ecology and constructivism are motivated by broadly shared political aspirations and subscribe to similar critiques of technocratism, patriarchy. and "instrumental rational ity." But they diverge considerably in respect to the discourses they offer on "nature." By staging an encounter between ecological argument and feminist comtructivist theory, this article seeks to illuminate, and to indicate the means of resolving, the ontological tensions between these respective critiques of modernity. It recognizes that the constructivist emphasis on the "discursivity" of nature offers an important (...) corrective to the more simplistic, and potentially reactionary, aspects of ecological rhetoric but defends a realist perspective as essential to the coherence of any gender theory and politics. (shrink)