Much of our information comes to us indirectly, in the form of conclusions others have drawn from evidence they gathered. When we hear these conclusions, how can we modify our own opinions so as to gain the benefit of their evidence? In this paper we study the method known as geometric pooling. We consider two arguments in its favour, raising several objections to one, and proposing an amendment to the other.

As machine learning has gradually entered into ever more sectors of public and private life, there has been a growing demand for algorithmic explainability. How can we make the predictions of complex statistical models more intelligible to end users? A subdiscipline of computer science known as interpretable machine learning (IML) has emerged to address this urgent question. Numerous influential methods have been proposed, from local linear approximations to rule lists and counterfactuals. In this article, I highlight three conceptual challenges (...) that are largely overlooked by authors in this area. I argue that the vast majority of IML algorithms are plagued by (1) ambiguity with respect to their true target; (2) a disregard for error rates and severe testing; and (3) an emphasis on product over process. Each point is developed at length, drawing on relevant debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. Examples and counterexamples from IML are considered, demonstrating how failure to acknowledge these problems can result in counterintuitive and potentially misleading explanations. Without greater care for the conceptual foundations of IML, future work in this area is doomed to repeat the same mistakes. (shrink)

BackgroundThe use of electronic nicotine delivery systems, also known as vaping, is becoming popular among young adults. Few studies have explored the psychological factors that predict ENDS use and susceptibility in young adults, in addition to known demographic predictors.MethodIn a cross-sectional survey design, 521 young adults, ages 18–25 from the United States, were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk in 2019, to answer an online survey measuring demographic characteristics and psychological characteristics related to mental health and the Big Five (...) personality traits. The survey also included measures of ENDS ever-use, current use, and susceptibility, which we predicted from the demographic and psychological measures using independent and multiple binary logistic regression analyses.ResultsOf those surveyed, 282 were ENDS ever-users, 93 were current ENDS users, and 61 were ENDS susceptible; 62 were current smokers. Demographically, young adults lower in adulthood socioeconomic-status, not pursuing education further than high school, and current smokers were more likely to be ENDS users. Psychologically, young adults higher in anxiety and lower in conscientiousness more likely to have ever-used ENDS. Lower conscientiousness further predicted current ENDS use and ENDS susceptibility.ConclusionIn this sample of MTurk workers, young adults with experience in vaping were more demographically and psychologically vulnerable than young adults with no experience in vaping. Young adults interested in vaping, but without prior experience, were less conscientious than their non-interested peers. Interventions to target vaping use should focus on economically disadvantaged young adults and those lower in conscientiousness. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on the use of intelligent tutoring system for education and training of students specialized in electricity in the field of technical and vocational education. The use of modern systems in training and education will have a great positive impact in improving the level of students receiving training and education; this will improve the level of the local economy by producing students of professionals who are able to engage in society efficiently, especially for those who have specialized in (...) electricity. It is known that students in electrical specialties face many problems because of time and cost. Learning and training is not as easy as you imagine, so intelligence is how to overcome these limitations effectively. Motivating the Intelligent Tutorial System (ITS) for this type of training. This system consists of a student model, which in turn will contain lessons, exercises and examples that will be used by the student in addition to the user interface model which makes the teacher to be able to manage lessons, examples, and questions and make changes to the system. Expert System (ES) model representing the Artificial Intelligence (AI) here has been used to determine the level of the student and gives him the results, directions and levels. The program was implemented and was used by trainees to show the extent of its impact. The students expressed their surprise and admiration in this way of education as the system used focuses on individual education which can be used at any time and without restrictions. After this experience, the dedicated (ITS) system needs to be developed in several ways such as to be used on mobile systems and web systems in addition to linking some of the specialized programs in the field of electricity. (shrink)

Background: Direct–to–consumer genetic testing (DTCGT) offers risk estimates for a variety of complex diseases and conditions, yet little is known about its impact on actual users, including their decisions about sharing the information gleaned from testing. Ethical considerations include the impact of unsolicited genetic information with variable validity and clinical utility on relatives, and the possible burden to the health care system if revealed to physicians. Aims: The qualitative study explored primary care patients’ views, attitudes, and decision making considerations (...) regarding DTCGT. This article focuses on the disclosure decisions participants made regarding participation, testing, and results of DTCGT, a topic which arose as a secondary aim of the study. Methods: Through four longitudinal interviews (pre–test, results, 3 and 12 months post–test) we examined twenty primary care patients’ decisions, expressed intentions, and actions regarding disclosure to immediate and extended family, friends and coworkers, and physicians about participation in and results of DTCGT. Individual interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis and a summative approach to describe the global themes. Results: Most participants disclosed to some immediate family; less than half disclosed to extended family; approximately half talked to friends. Most participants stated they would or might disclose to physicians about DTCGT and a few did. Conceptual themes that emerged from the data analysis include ambivalence about disclosure, consistency between intention and actual disclosure behavior and decisions, and conditional information sharing. Conclusions: Participants’ intentional and actual disclosure patterns offer insight into how they view DTCGT, weigh results, and the potential impact of DTCGT. (shrink)

Software users have different sets of personal values, such as benevolence, self-direction, and tradition. Among other factors, these personal values influence users’ emotions, preferences, motivations, and ways of performing tasks—and hence, information needs. Studies of user acceptance indicate that personal traits like values and related soft issues are important for the user’s approval of software. If a user’s dominant personal value were known, software could automatically show an interface variant which offers information and functionality that best matches his or (...) her dominant value. A user’s dominant personal value is the one that most strongly influences his or her attitudes and behaviors. However, existing methods for measuring a user’s values are work intensive and/or interfere with the user’s privacy needs. If interface tailoring for very large groups of users is planned, value approximation has to be achieved on a large scale to assign individualized software to all users of the software. Our work focuses on approximating the dominant values of a user with less effort and less impact on privacy. Instead of probing for a user’s values directly, we explore the potential of approximating these values based on the user’s preferences for key tasks. Producing tailored versions of software is a separate topic not in the focus here. In this paper we rather describe a method to identify user values from task preferences and an empirical study of applying parts of this method. We are proposing the method in this paper for the first time except for a preliminary version orally presented at a workshop. The method consists of a research process and an application process. In the research process a researcher has to identify key tasks occurring in a context under investigation which have a relationship to personal values. These key tasks can be used in the application process to approximate the dominant values of new users in a similar context. In this empirical study we show that the research process of our method allows us to determine key tasks which approximate values in the shared context of nursing. The majority of the nurses were found to have one of the three following dominant values: benevolence, self-direction, or hedonism. Data confirmed common expectations: that nurses with the value of benevolence, when compared to all other nurses, had a higher preference for tasks which helped people immediately or improved their circumstances of the treatment. In relation to all other nurses, participants with self-direction disliked tasks which affected their personal freedom, and users with hedonism had a lower preference for tasks which involved physical work and preferred tasks which promised gratification. Our findings advance measurement of personal values in large user groups by asking questions with less privacy concern. However, the method requires substantial efforts during the initial research process to prepare such measurements. Future work includes replicating our method in other contexts and identifying value-dependent tasks for users with other values than the three values our empirical study mainly focused on. (shrink)

In recent years, the debate on emotions has been influenced by postconstructionist research, particularly the use of performativity as a key concept. According to Judith Butler (1993, 1997) the construction of emotions is a process open to constant change and redefinition. The final result of emotionlanguage “natural” development is what is known as technoscience. New ways of naming emotions have emerged within technoscience. In our research on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by cyber-café and call shop (...) users, we came to understand how these technologies are significant in those users’ daily life. The emphasis will be on analyzing emotions related to the use of ICT in the aforementioned settings. Using the concept of performance (Butler, 1990), we will explore how narratives create a need for particular emotions, which did not exist before they were performed. To understand this performance, we use an ad hoc tool called Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) as it is used by the Manchester School. Analysis has revealed the existence of a membership category in which velocity is salient as performance. This ‘velocity’ seems to follow the evolution of technoscience in the social sciences. We will observe velocity in the context created by two concepts, Donna Haraway’s (1990) cyborg and Alessandro Baricco’s (2007) mutant. (shrink)

Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has become widely available in recent years. While initially used to screen for trisomies 21, 18, and 13, the test has expanded to include a range of other conditions and will likely expand further. This paper addresses the ethical issues that arise from one particularly controversial potential use of NIPT: screening for adult‐onset conditions (AOCs). We report data from our quantitative survey of Australian NIPT users' views on the ethical issues raised by NIPT for AOCs. The (...) survey ascertained support for NIPT for several traits and conditions including AOCs. Participants were then asked about their level of concern around implications of screening for AOCs for the future child and parent(s). Descriptive and comparative data analyses were conducted. In total, 109 respondents were included in data analysis. The majority of respondents expressed support for NIPT screening for preventable (70.9%) and nonpreventable AOCs (80.8%). Most respondents indicated concern around potential harmful impacts associated with NIPT for AOCs, including the psychological impact on the future child and on the parent(s). Despite this, the majority of participants thought that continuation of a pregnancy known to be predisposed to an AOC is ethically acceptable. The implications of these data are critically discussed and used to inform the normative claim that prospective parents should be given access to NIPT for AOCs. The study contributes to a body of research debating the ethical acceptability and regulation of various applications of NIPT as screening panels expand. (shrink)

Providing meaningful and actionable explanations for end-users is a situated problem requiring the intersection of multiple disciplines to address social, operational, and technical challenges. However, the explainable artificial intelligence community has not commonly adopted or created tangible design tools that allow interdisciplinary work to develop reliable AI-powered solutions. This paper proposes a formative architecture that defines the explanation space from a user-inspired perspective. The architecture comprises five intertwined components to outline explanation requirements for a task: (1) the end-users’ mental models, (...) (2) the end-users’ cognitive process, (3) the user interface, (4) the Human-Explainer Agent, and (5) the agent process. We first define each component of the architecture. Then, we present the Abstracted Explanation Space, a modeling tool that aggregates the architecture’s components to support designers in systematically aligning explanations with end-users’ work practices, needs, and goals. It guides the specifications of what needs to be explained (content: end-users’ mental model), why this explanation is necessary (context: end-users’ cognitive process), to delimit how to explain it (format: Human-Explainer Agent and user interface), and when the explanations should be given. We then exemplify the tool’s use in an ongoing case study in the aircraft maintenance domain. Finally, we discuss possible contributions of the tool, known limitations or areas for improvement, and future work to be done. (shrink)

But even with respect to inductive arguments there are a number of different philosophical problems. One is to make explicit the fundamental or most general pattern or patterns of inductive argument. Once these patterns are known a second and third problem arise. The second is to justify man's use of and faith in inductive arguments. And the third is to formulate some general propositions about nature which could reasonably be accepted by users of inductive arguments and which when added (...) to the premises of these arguments make them explicitly deductive. (shrink)

A sociological revision of Aron Gurwitsch provides a helpful layered theory of conscious experience as a four-domain structure: _the theme_, _the thematic field_, _the halo_, and _the social horizon_. The social horizon—the totality of the social world that is unknown, vaguely known, taken for granted, or ignored by the subject despite objectively influencing the thoughts and actions of the subject—, helps conceptualize how everyday human–computer interaction (HCI) can obscure social structures. Two examples illustrate the usefulness of this framework: (1) (...) illuminating new forms of social control known as “surveillance capitalism” that influence the other domains of consciousness despite being invisible to the subject and (2) explaining how computer use tends to “hide” the ecological impacts of digital-technological systems from the attention of subjects. A sociological four-domain theory of consciousness supplements ethnomethodological HCI research by preserving the field’s long-standing focus on micro-level interactions and user experience while simultaneously drawing attention to a “commonsense ignorance of social structure”—in this case, the invisibility of the social structures behind personal computer use. Social structure can be reproduced even when actors are unaware of engaging in its reproduction. (shrink)

Social robots progressively enter children’s lives, but little is known about children’s acceptance of social robots and its antecedents. To fill this research gap, this narrative review surveyed 34 articles on child-robot interaction published between 2000 and 2017. We focused on robot, user, and interaction characteristics as potential antecedents of children’s intentional and behavioral social robot acceptance. In general, children readily accept robots. However, we found that social, adaptive robot behavior, children’s sex and age, as well as frequency of (...) the interaction seem to affect acceptance. Additionally, we found various theoretical and methodological shortcomings in the field. The review concludes with recommendations and directions for future research on children’s acceptance of social robots. (shrink)

In light of the widespread use of algorithmic (intelligent) systems across numerous domains, there is an increasing awareness about the need to explain their underlying decision-making process and resulting outcomes. Since oftentimes these systems are being considered as black boxes, adding explanations to their outcomes may contribute to the perception of their transparency and, as a result, increase users’ trust and fairness perception towards the system, regardless of its actual fairness, which can be measured using various fairness tests and measurements. (...) Different explanation styles may have a different impact on users’ perception of fairness towards the system and on their understanding of the outcome of the system. Hence, there is a need to understand how various explanation styles may impact non-expert users’ perceptions of fairness and understanding of the system’s outcome. In this study we aimed at fulfilling this need. We performed a between-subject user study in order to examine the effect of various explanation styles on users’ fairness perception and understanding of the outcome. In the experiment we examined four known styles of textual explanations (case-based, demographic-based, input influence-based and sensitivity-based) along with a new style (certification-based) that reflect the results of an auditing process of the system. The results suggest that providing some kind of explanation contributes to users’ understanding of the outcome and that some explanation styles are more beneficial than others. Moreover, while explanations provided by the system are important and can indeed enhance users’ perception of fairness, their perception mainly depends on the outcome of the system. The results may shed light on one of the main problems in explainability of algorithmic systems, which is choosing the best explanation to promote users’ fairness perception towards a particular system, with respect to the outcome of the system. The contribution of this study is reflected in the new and realistic case study that was examined, in the creation and evaluation of a new explanation style that can be used as the link between the actual (computational) fairness of the system and users’ fairness perception and in the need of analyzing and evaluating explanations while taking into account the outcome of the system. (shrink)

Social media is the preferred communication platform for today’s youth, yet little is known of how online intergender communication is shaped by social identity norms. Drawing from the Social Identity and Deindividuation Effects (SIDE) approach, we argue that through depersonalization, online interactions are marked by the salience of social identities and identity performance conforming to perceived norms of behavior (traditional as well as developing). We specifically look at discursive terms and their meaning-making as a strategic performance of gender in (...) uncontrolled social media interactions. We examined a corpus of 442 comments from selected public Indian Facebook pages in two phases over a span of 1 year (2020–2021). Thematic discourse analysis revealed established (#mansplaining, pseudofeminism) and emerging (choice feminism, MGTOW, #fuckboi etc.) discursive strategies within the major themes on feminism and antifeminism, men’s rights, intersectional feminism, and sexual behavior. These meaningful terms are used to modulate identity performance in a heavily contested space, reflecting both consolidation as well as mobilization functions, as proposed by SIDE. The findings highlight that intergender communication on social media is both dependent on existing offline norms, while challenging the same to create new discourses of gender. (shrink)

The central aim of The Philosopher's Dictionary is to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date guide of philosophical terms. Definitions are brief, clear, and user-friendly. Notes on usage, spelling, and pronunciation are included, and there are brief entries on hundreds of the best-known philosophers. Throughout, Martin writes in a style at once informative and authoritative, making difficult concepts intelligible without distorting them. The third edition has been revised throughout, and includes many new entries on philosophical concepts, from Berry's paradox to (...) the Chinese room example to perfectionism and satisfice. The number of entries on active philosophers has also been considerable increased. (shrink)

KM (Knowledge Management) systems have recently been adopted within the realm of enterprise management. On the other hand, data mining technology is widely acknowledged within Information systems' R&D Divisions. Specially, acquisition of meaningful information from Web usage data has become one of the most exciting eras. In this paper, we employ a Web based KM system and propose a framework for applying Web Usage Mining technology to KM data. As it turns out, task duration varies according to different user operations (...) such as referencing a table-of-contents page, down-loading a target file, and writing to a bulletin board. This in turn makes it possible to easily predict the purpose of the user's task. By taking these observations into account, we segmented access log data manually. These results were compared with results abstained by applying the constant interval method. Next, we obtained a segmentation rule of Web access logs by applying a machine-learning algorithm to manually segmented access logs as training data. Then, the newly obtained segmentation rule was compared with other known methods including the time interval method by evaluating their segmentation results in terms of recall and precision rates and it was shown that our rule attained the best results in both measures. Furthermore, the segmented data were fed to an association rule miner and the obtained association rules were utilized to modify the Web structure. (shrink)

The ArugmentThis essay answers a single question: what was Robert Hooke, the Royal Society's curator of experiments, doing in his well-known 1665 work,Micrographia?Hooke was articulating a “universal cure of the mind” capable of bringing about a “reformation in Philosophy,” a change in philosophy's interpretive practices and organization. The work explicated the interpretive and political foundations for a community of optical instrument users coextensive with the struggling Royal Society. Standard observational practices would overcome the problem of using nonstandard instruments, while (...) inherent inrepresentation– the interpretive practice championed in the text – were important theological and political meanings. Hooke's kind of experimental philosophy undermined the claims made by “atheists” and “enthusiasts” – the enemies of the restored church and state – while also producing useful knowledge. Equally important, Hooke modeled the community described inMicrographiaupon the classicalres publica, but his community made important concessions to Restoration political realities, especially the growing role of commercial or transactional relationships. (shrink)

The aim of this exploratory study was to examine client demographics and expectations, reasons for use, sensations during treatment, and perceived outcomes of Pranic Healing, an energy healing system lacking in scientific documentation but whose use in the general population is becoming more widespread internationally. This study consisted of a cross-sectional survey of adults (18+ years of age) receiving care from 12 Pranic Healing practices in four different states in the U.S. (N = 179) completing online questionnaires. Closed-ended response sets (...) were analyzed descriptively, while qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. Reasons to use the therapy included physical, mental/emotional, and metaphysical issues, dissatisfaction with conventional care, and overall well-being. Expectations of care included enhanced abilities, cure or relief, or unsure. Respondents were more likely to cite a specific problem from which they needed alleviation than to cite overall health or wellness as their goal. Sensations experienced were reported to be of a relaxing nature and not, as was hypothesized, of an energizing nature. Results show that those who use Pranic Healing fit the sociodemographic profile of CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) users in the United States, that their reasons for use are not homogeneous, and that preliminary descriptive data from a selective subsample of respondents indicated that some respondents are experiencing positive outcomes attributed to this modality. (shrink)

Peircean scholars in particular and historians of philosophy in general will welcome this initial volume of a new critical edition of the most important writings of this scientist/philosopher, not inaptly referred to as the "Socrates of America" because of the richness of seminal ideas to be found in his philosophical speculations. Until now, students of his basic philosophy have had to rely mainly on the topological Hartshorne-Weiss edition of his "collected works," which introduced the philosophical world to the goldmine of (...) original conceptions to be found in this hitherto unknown thinker. Like virtually all systematic philosophers, however, Peirce's seminal notions underwent development during almost six decades of literary activity. Those reading his collected works soon discovered that to reach any adequate idea of his system, they needed to know not only the time the item was written but also its context, and this meant going back to the manuscripts in the Houghton Library of Harvard, available in microfilm. It was here the enterprising researcher was confronted with substantial problems, for the material contained therein, would run to approximately a hundred thousand printed pages. Many of the manuscripts were repetitious, representing subsequent working drafts, but each with some new and exciting idea or important digression. The serious and intrigued scholar was both prompted on the one hand to pursue a particular topic further and at the same time repelled by the time and effort required to do so. It was to remedy this unhappy situation, particularly in view of the widespread growing interest in America's most original thinker both here and abroad, that resulted in the creation of the "Pierce Edition Project" at Indiana University/purdue University of Indianapolis under the general editorship of that internationally famous Peirce scholar, Max H. Fisch, aided by a staff directed by Professor Edward C. Moore. Almost a decade has passed since they began the gargantuan task of sifting through the mass of unpublished manuscripts, arranging dated items in chronological order, and determining as far as possible from paper watermarkings, similarity of thought and expression, etc. the approximate time of composition of the numerous bits and pieces of undated material spanning a period of some sixty years. More than three years time was devoted to this dating process alone, and the job of determining the final ordering and renumbering of the known manuscripts assigned to the project's principal associate editor, Christian J. W. Kloessel. In the Preface to the present volume, Moore sets out the general plan of this elaborate edition. "Each volume will contain a brief historical introduction giving an account of the activities of Peirce within its time span, including the work he was doing in the sciences, in mathematics, and in the history of science. Each volume will also include a single chronological list of all the papers Peirce wrote within the period covered by that volume. Thus readers who wish to make a thorough study of Peirce's work will find within each volume a guide to the complete Peirce corpus for the years of the particular volume. The historical introduction near the beginning and the chronological list near the end of each volume will serve as a frame for the papers that appear between them. It is hoped that reference to these additional materials will provide a comprehensive sense of Peirce's work in mathematics, the sciences, and philosophy". Because most of the texts in this initial volume exist only in a manuscript form of a working copy, never intended for publication as they exist, with their haphazard punctuation, phonetic spellings, abbreviations, etc., the editors felt it necessary to append over a hundred pages of editorial notes to satisfy the most meticulous historiophile who might like to reconstruct the original form of the writings in question, but which to the general user will probably seem to be an unnecessary expenditure of time and effort that might have been used to better purpose. Be that as it may, those interested in the history of ideas will be more than gratified that the many years of careful and patient labor by the editorial staff of the Peirce Edition Project at the Indiana University/ Purdue University of Indianapolis has begun to bear fruit. (shrink)

In this paper I evaluate Michael Dummett's notion of implicit knowledge by examining his answers to these two questions: (1) Why should we ascribe knowledge of a meaning-theory of a language to a language-user, and why the mode of this knowledge is implicit, but not pure theoretical, pure practical, or unconscious in a Chomskian sense? (2) How could a meaning-theory, which is known implicitly, function as a rule to be followed by the language-user? To answer (1) I shall construct (...) Dummett's argument for implicit knowledge, which includes three sub-arguments: the argument from rationality, the argument from dilemma, and the argument from communicability. As to (2), I argue that Dummett's answer confuses knowledge of a meaning-theory with knowledge of a set of grammars. (shrink)

The role of automated or semiautomated social media accounts, commonly known as “bots,” in social and political processes has gained significant scholarly attention. The current body of research discusses how bots can be designed to achieve specific purposes as well as instances of unexpected negative outcomes of such use. We suggest that the interplay between social media affordances and user practices can result in incidental effects from automated agents. We examined a Twitter network data set with 1,782 nodes and (...) 5,640 edges to demonstrate the engagement and outreach of a retweeting bot called Siripalabot that was popular among Sri Lankan Twitter users. The bot served the simple function of retweeting tweets with hashtags #SriLanka and #lk to its follower network. However, the co-use of #Sri Lanka and/or #lk with #PresPollSL, a hashtag used to discuss politics related to Sri Lanka’s presidential election in 2015, resulted in the bot incidentally amplifying the political voice of less engaged actors. The analysis demonstrated that the bot dominated the network in terms of engagement (out-degree) and the ability to connect distant clusters of actors (betweenness centrality) while more traditional actors, such as the main election candidates and news accounts, indicated more prestige (in-degree) and power (eigenvector centrality). We suggest that the study of automated agents should include designer intentions, the design and behavior of automated agents, user expectations, as well as unintended and incidental effects of interaction. (shrink)

Adolescents have gradually become a vital group of interacting with social media recommendation algorithms. Although numerous studies have been conducted to investigate negative reactions that the dark side of recommendation algorithms brings to social media users, little is known about the resistance intention and behavior based on their agency in the daily process of encountering algorithms. Focusing on the concept of algorithm resistance, this study used a two-path model to investigate the algorithmic resistance of rural Chinese adolescents in their (...) daily use of short video apps. The findings revealed that the perceived threat to freedom, algorithmic literacy, and peer influence were positively associated with the resistance willingness and intention; while the independent psychology on algorithmic recommendations significantly weakened resistance willingness and intention. Furthermore, this study verified the mediating role of resistance willingness and intention between the above independent variables and resistance behavior. Additionally, the positive impact of resistance willingness on resistance intention was confirmed. In conclusion, this study offers a comprehensive approach to further understanding adolescents’ algorithmic resistance awareness and behavior by combining psychological factors, personal competency, and interpersonal influences, as well as two types of resistance reactions. (shrink)

A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a playful and emphatically practical elaboration of the major collaborative work of the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. When read along with its rigorous textual notes, the book also becomes the richest scholarly treatment of Deleuze's entire philosophical oeuvre available in any language. Finally, the dozens of explicit examples that Brian Massumi furnishes from contemporary artistic, scientific, and popular urban culture make the book an important, perhaps even central text within (...) current debates on postmodern culture and politics.Capitalism and Schizophrenia is the general title for two books published a decade apart. The first, Anti-Oedipus, was a reaction to the events of May/June 1968; it is a critique of "state-happy" Marxism and "school-building" strains of psychoanalysis. The second, A Thousand Plateaus, is an attempt at a positive statement of the sort of nomad philosophy Deleuze and Guattari propose as an alternative to state philosophy.Brian Massumi is Professor of Comparative Literature at McGill University. (shrink)

The ‘multicultural clinical interaction’ presents itself as a dilemma for the mental health practitioner. Literature describes two problematic areas where this issues emerges - how to make an adequate distinction between religious rituals and the rituals that may be symptomatic of ‘obsessive compulsive disorder’ (OCD), and how to differentiate ‘normative’ religious or spiritual beliefs, behaviours, and experiences from ‘psychotic’ illnesses. When it comes to understanding service user’s ‘idioms of distress’, beliefs about how culture influences behaviour can create considerable confusion and (...) ‘normative uncertainty’ for mental health practitioners. In the absence of clear diagnostic and assessment criteria on distinguishing between ‘culture’ and ‘psychopathology’, practitioners have had to rely on their own intuition and seek out possible ‘strategies’ or ‘procedures’ from a contradictory and cross-disciplinary evidence base. Decontextualisation of service users’ experiences may result in the pathologisation of culturally ‘normative’ phenomenon, ‘category fallacy’ errors, and poor health care experiences and outcomes for service users. This paper situates this dilemma within a wider debate that has concerned both the biomedical and social sciences, namely, the unresolved question of ‘normality’ or ‘abnormality’. Indeed, issues that arise from dilemmas surrounding the question of ‘culture’ or ‘psychopathology’ are intimately tied to wider cultural ideas about what is considered ‘normal’. The disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, and medical anthropology have struggled to establish workable criteria against which to judge behaviour as ‘normal’, ‘abnormal’, or ‘pathological’. Three models for understanding mental ‘abnormality’ are evident in ‘transcultural psychiatry’ (what is now commonly known as ‘cultural psychiatry’), and these models have corresponded closely to the interpretive models used by anthropologists attempting to make sense of the apparent diversity of human societies. The three models of ‘absolutism’, ‘universalism’ and ‘cultural relativism’ have not only important consequences for the nature and conduct of research enquiry, but also have implications for how the dilemma of ‘culture’ or ‘psychopathology’ is attended to in clinical practice. (shrink)

Role-based database management systems are most widely used for information storage and analysis but are known as vulnerable to insider attacks. The core of intrusion detection lies in an adaptive system, where an insider attack can be judged if it is different from the predicted role by performing classification on the user’s queries accessing the database and comparing it with the authorized role. In order to handle the high similarity of user queries for misclassified roles, this paper proposes a (...) deep metric neural network with strategic sampling algorithm that properly extracts salient features and directly learns a quantitative measure of similarity. A strategic sampling method of heuristically generating and learning training pairs through Monte Carlo search is proposed to select a training pair that can represent the entire dataset. With the TPC-E–based benchmark data trained with 11,000 queries for 11 roles, the proposed model produces the classification accuracy of 95.41%, which is the highest compared with the previous models. The results are verified through comparison of quantitative and qualitative evaluations, and the feature space modelled in the neural network is analysed by t-SNE algorithm. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Authority, Reading, Reflexivity: Pierre Bourdieu and the Aesthetic Judgment of KantKoenraad Geldof (bio)Translated by Alex Martin (bio)1. AuthorityFor some time now, Pierre Bourdieu has been a true author 1 —a producer, in other words, of an impressive number of theoretical and analytical discourses in a wide variety of research fields. 2 Whether in anthropology or ethnology, in the sociology of institutions or of the structure and workings of the (...) market of symbolic goods, or in the sociology of literature, the name Bourdieu imposes itself: it establishes authority. Contributing to this is another particularity quite typical of authority: it gets itself talked about; it generates, at accelerated speed, discourses that in one way or another (re-)produce and thus reinforce the authority of the author who was their point of departure and origin. The international proliferation of articles dealing with one aspect or another of Bourdieu’s thought, 3 essay collections, 4 and introductions to Bourdieu’s work 5 testifies to this. The intensity of metadiscursive production not only gives material form to the intrinsic analytic pertinence and richness of the discourse on which it comments—these are evident—but also shows, independent of the pieces’ intentions, that the proliferation is situated in a process of (re-)production of authority, that it is an integral part of a canonizing effort. The articles and introductions problematize, implicitly or explicitly, the direct accessibility of Bourdieu’s discourse. They make the oeuvre into a complex totality, difficult and diversified to the extreme, whose coherence can be revealed only with the help of a gradual, exegetic, and essentially submissive reading practice.To put it another way, and to examine the question more closely, the metadiscursive (re-)production of the authority of the author we call Pierre Bourdieu reveals itself to be [End Page 20] ambivalent: it is at once innovative—it invites the uninitiated to get to know a fascinating new universe of thought—and authoritarian, indeed even conservative. An introduction is never a simple mediation of discourse between an author and his or her potential readers: it provides a sort of user’s guide, it (re-)produces a reading habitus, an ideology of the correct interpretation the reader must learn and interiorize to be able to distinguish orthodox from false, heterodox, readings. Between the metadiscourse/commentary and the authority it discusses, a relationship of tautological circularity is established that surreptitiously transforms the discourse read into a legend (into what must be read): the possibility of an autonomous reading practice is erased by a pedagogy of legendary decoding. 6The authority of an author, that of Bourdieu for example, is consequently implicated in a dynamic of opening (the proliferation of metadiscourses) and closing (the tendency to discipline reading, to make it obey certain norms of legibility). It would be erroneous, however, to attribute the paradoxical aspect of authority simply to the ambivalent effect of metadiscourses/commentaries. This is because authors who establish authority can only rarely escape the canonizing efforts of which they are the object: in many cases, authors themselves participate in the production and reproduction of a mode of reading and interpretation judged to be legitimate. The fact that no authority can completely and exhaustively control its discursive and institutional space does not in any way contradict, therefore, that other distinctive and essential feature of authority: its intrinsic animation by a desire to control, by the desire to see itself respected. Authority wants to become Law and be recognized as such. Thus the tendency of certain authors to become actively involved in the modes of appropriation of their name and their discourses, to endeavor to make the reading of the author’s work not simply an act of connaissance but also a proof of reconnaissance. Authority detests being insufficiently or poorly known. Let us take the case of Bourdieu. As an author, he is first and foremost the one to whom we owe Raisons pratiques, La distinction, Homo academicus and Les règles de l’art, the producer, in other words, of a series of momentous works that, upon publication, established authority. Furthermore, Bourdieu is also the author of a considerable number of accompanying discourses, dominated by the... (shrink)

The distinctive security features of the Spanish electronic national identity card, known as Documento Nacional de Identidad electrónico, allow us to propose the usage of this cryptographic smart card in an authentication framework that can be used during the registration and login phases of internet services where the validation of the user’s age and real identity are key elements, as it is the case for example of the so-called social networks. Using this mechanism with NFC-capable devices, the identity and (...) age of the potential user can be determined, allowing or denying the access to the service based on that information. (shrink)

This paper delves into a two-agent scheduling problem in which two agents are competing for a single resource. Each agent has a set of jobs to be processed by a single machine. The processing time, release time, weight, and the due dates of each job are known in advance. Both agents have their objectives, which are conflicting in nature. The first agent tries to minimize the total completion time, while the second agent tries to minimize the number of tardy (...) jobs. The two agents’ scheduling problem, an NP-hard problem, has a wide variety of applications ranging from the manufacturing industry to the cloud computing service provider. Due to the wide applicability, each variation of the problem requires a different algorithm, adapted according to the user’s requirements. This paper provides mathematical models, heuristic algorithms, and two nature-based metaheuristic algorithms to solve the problem. The algorithm’s performance was gauged against the optimal solution obtained from the AMPL-CPLEX solver for both solution quality and computational time. The outlined metaheuristics produce a solution that is comparable with a short computational time. The proposed metaheuristics even have a better solution than the CPLEX solver for medium-size problems, whereas the computation times are much less than the CPLEX solvers. (shrink)

Through this paper, we convey a comparative analysis of how Google Inc. and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) discursively construct and contest Android, a dominant mobile operating system. Methodologically, we use political discourse theory to engage in the textual analysis; identify and compare key signifiers and nodal points across the exemplary texts from the two actors, and interpret their meaning vis à vis contextual insights about the political economy of Android’s production. Albeit being marketed as ‘the first truly open (...) platform’ for mobiles, through our analysis we find Google’s definition of open source practices strictly conditional. We argue that Google’s usage of compatibility rhetorically as well as techno-legally justifies the conglomerate’s control over the platform. By contrast, the discursive moment by free software activists, through a campaign ‘Free Your Android’ deconstructs the discourse on open source and attempts to politicize the access to code in the mobile domain. This is done by extending from the well-known developer’s four freedoms onto users’ privacy, due to personal character of mobile devices. Such articulation of free software in relation to privacy of user data is a new development and arguably has a potential to contribute to widening support to the movement. (shrink)

In the process of searching for suspected person, there is a case where an eyewitness looks through some photographs of criminal's face, or mug shots, to identify witnessed suspect's face or a searcher examines some mug shots in order to find some photographs that seem similar to a montage. However the eyewitness or the searcher has a heavy load to look through many photographs. It is widely known that this load causes a marked decline in human's ability to identify (...) photographs. Therefore there is a need for a facial image retrieval system that can help humans to identify the facial images. An interactive facial image retrieval system combined the retrieval using linguistic keywords and the simulated breeding was proposed in order to reduce the user's load. The system performs the retrieval by using the impressive adjective first, and then retrieves the facial images by using simulated breeding that can treat the user's subjectivity. However, this method still requires the user to do heavy work. In order to improve the system, we add a retrieval method using Euclidean distance to the system for retrieving the facial images that are displayed for the user's first selection. In our experiment, firstly displayed facial images in the proposed system are similar to the target, which leads to the reduction of user's load. (shrink)

Preference queries from databases aim to retrieve the best answers w.r.t. user's requirements. The integration of preferences in database queries has known many advances in the last decade. Most of works however are based on comparative preference statements obeying more or less strong semantics. Representing and reasoning about comparative preference statements has also been widely investigated in Artificial Intelligence. In this paper, we bridge the two frameworks and develop a simple and unified framework to reason about preferences in database (...) queries. Our framework is based on insights from non-monotonic reasoning. (shrink)

Counterfeiting has become a prevalent business worldwide, resulting in high losses for many businesses. Considerable attention has been paid to research an individual attitude toward purchasing luxury counterfeit products in the offline context. However, there is currently lesser-known literature on the given phenomenon in the context of social commerce. Moreover, researchers observed that counterfeiting consumption is associated with consumer ethical values or beliefs. Practitioners and researchers are keen to find those factors that affect consumers’ ethical consumption behavior to reduce (...) pirated products’ demand. However, the role of religion in shaping ethical behavior is less documented in the counterfeiting context. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of religiosity on the counterfeiting of luxury products in Pakistan. A five-dimensional Islamic religiosity model was adopted to understand the consumption phenomena. For quantitative research, cross-sectional data were collected from the generation M of Pakistan through self-administrative questionnaires. A total of 394 valid responses from active online users were collected to empirically examine the conceptual model by employing the partial least square structural equation model. The results reveal that all five dimensions of religiosity negatively affect the attitude of generation M. Moreover, it is found that knowledge has the highest negative effect on attitude, followed by orthopraxis, experience, central duties, and basic duties. The study also explains the theoretical and practical implications of the research. Finally, limitations and future research were also discussed. (shrink)

A User's Guide to Melancholy takes Robert Burton's encyclopaedic masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy (first published in 1621) as a guide to one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance. Burton's Anatomy is perhaps the largest, strangest, and most unwieldy self-help book ever written. Engaging with the rich cultural and literary framework of melancholy, this book traces its causes, symptoms, and cures through Burton's writing. Each chapter starts with a case study of melancholy - from (...) the man who was afraid to urinate in case he drowned his town to the girl who purged a live eel - as a way into exploring the many facets of this mental affliction. A User's Guide to Melancholy presents in an accessible and illustrated format the colourful variety of Renaissance melancholy, and contributes to contemporary discussions about wellbeing by revealing the earlier history of mental health conditions. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on spatial formations when interacting via mobile robotic telepresence systems. Previous research has found that those who used a MRP system to make a remote visit tended to use different spatial formations from what is typical in human-human interaction. In this paper, we present the results of a study where a pilot user interacted with ten elderly via a MRP system. Intentional deviations from known accepted spatial formations were made in order to study their (...) effect on interaction quality from the local user perspective. Using a retrospective interviews technique, the elderly commented on the interaction and confirmed the importance of adhering to acceptable spatial configurations. The results show that there is a mismatch between pilot user behaviour and local user preference and that it is important to evaluate a MRP system from two perspectives, the pilot user’s and the local user’s. Keywords: F-formations; Mobile Robotic Telepresence; MRP systems; Quality of Interaction; Retrospective Interview; Spatial Formations; Spatial Configurations. (shrink)

In legal methodology (usul al-fiqh), the problem of the defining istiḥsān and the legitimacy of its definition is among the critical discussion topics. To overcome the rigorism of law, istiḥsān was used by the founder scholars of Ḥanafī school of law and Malik b. Anas - however this use received various objections. Although the Mālikī scholars also used istiḥsān strong criticisms of istiḥsān have been directed on the Ḥanafīs. After the severe criticism of Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī, the Ḥanafī scholars (...) carried out various intellectual activities to define istiḥsān and to prove that it is legitimate. This process -which started especially with Abū’l-Ḥasan al-Karkhī and Abū Bakr al-Jaṣṣāṣ, revealed a rich accumulation with the contribution of the legal theorists in other school of laws. It is known that al-Karkhī's definition of istiḥsān has become widespread among the legal theorists, and the legitimacy of istiḥsān in the works of legal theory was based on his definition. Al-Karkhī's considerations on the legaliticamy of using istiḥsān can be traced in his student al-Jaṣṣāṣ, in the following centuries, Abū Zayd al-Dabūsī, Abū l-‘Usr al-Bazdawī and al-Sarakhsī’s works. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ' explanations on the legitimacy of istiḥsān begin with the criticism of Imam al-Shāfiʿī's against istiḥsān. He provides the proof of legitimacy for istiḥsān in divided two sub-headings. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ, who deals with istiḥsān in two parts as word and meaning, argues that there is no disagreement about the use of istiḥsān and that all mujtahids accept istiḥsān, and even al-Shāfiʿī, who opposes to the use of istiḥsān, employs istiḥsān in this sense. The type of istiḥsān on which there is a deabte is the istiḥsān used in relation to its meaning. Al-Jaṣṣāṣ states that this use is a qiyas operation; he justifies his point of view by referring to the works of Muḥammad b. Hasan al-Shaybānī. Indeed, when we look at how al-Shaybānī explained the istiḥsān’s examples in his works, it is seen that there are two conflicting juristic analogy (qiyas) made in many examples. Moreover, al-Shaybānī openly considered some types of istiḥsān part of qiyas by stating that some examples “can be included in this type of istiḥsān” Ḥanafī scholars wanted to break the hostile atmosphere toward istiḥsān by defining and evaluating the istiḥsān in a way that their opponents could accept. The definition of Istiḥsān “to abandon the judgment given to similar ones due to stronger evidence.” has been generally accepted. In this definition, istiḥsān is defined by associating with qiyas, and referred to an istihsan that is presented as the more substantial evidence, and qiyas is the weaker evidence. Although it is appropriate to define istiḥsān in relation to qiyas, the claim that in the definition istiḥsān is put in stronger place than qiyas might casuse to some the contradictions- in particular when the example’s of al-Shaybānī are taken into consideration. Because in most cases, when qiyas conflicts with istiḥsān, istiḥsān is taken. But in an opposite case, qiyas might be taken. Apart from these, there are examples of the types of istiḥsān that al-Karkhī has classified in the works of al-Shaybānī, but sometimes there are also strange situations such as taking the qiyas by istiḥsān. This also means that the term is not sufficiently defined. The negative attitude towards istiḥsān in some Shāfiʿī circles and the criticisms against the legitimacy of istiḥsān continued in the works of the fiqh method. Istiḥsān is defined as making a judgment without evidence by Shāfiʿī circles. Therefore, they did not accept the abandonment of qiyas, which is a sharī proof, because of istiḥsān, which is a non-sharī notable proof. Based on the examples given by the users of istiḥsān, Ibn Ḥazm, one of the Ẓāhirītes, claims that istiḥsān opens the door to arbitrariness. According to him, a situation that is accepted as istiḥsān according to Ḥanafīs can be taken as istiḥsān according to Mālikīs. This creates an apparent contradiction. There are some valid points in the assessment of Ibn Ḥazm. Because while it is seen that the istiḥsān of Mālikīs is criticized in al-Shaybānī's book named al-Ḥujjah, it can be also found that the istiḥsān of Ḥanafīs is charged in the works of Abū’l-Walīd al-Bājī, one of the Mālikīs. The criticism toward istiḥsān was continued by Shāfiʿīs such as Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī, Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwaynī and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. While al-Juwaynī sees istiḥsān as a method based on the lust of the soul, not istinbat/legal deduction, al-Ghazālī understands istiḥsān as a personal comment. The main reason for the negative attitude towards istiḥsān is that the content based on the definitions, has been neglected most of the time. However, when we look at the works of al-Shaybānī, it can be seen that there is a proof of istiḥsān contrary to what is believed-and that this can be sometimes a work, sometimes a necessity, sometimes another comparison, or sometimes a custom. (shrink)

Body representations are known to be dynamically modulated or extended through tool use. Here, we review findings that demonstrate the importance of a user's tool experience or expertise for successful tool embodiment. Examining expert tool users, such as individuals who use tools in professional sports, people who use chopsticks at every meal, or spinal injury patients who use a wheelchair daily, offers new insights into the role of expertise in tool embodiment: Not only does tool embodiment differ between novices (...) and experts, but experts may experience enhanced changes to their body representation when interacting with their own, personal tool. The findings reviewed herein reveal the importance of assessing tool skill in future studies of tool embodiment. (shrink)

We argue that there is a tension between two types of design arguments-the fine-tuning argument (FTA) and the biological design argument (BDA). The tension arises because the strength of each argument is inversely proportional to the value of a certain currently unknown probability. Since the value of that probability is currently unknown, we investigate the properties of the FTA and BDA on different hypothetical values of this probability. If our central claim is correct this suggests three results: 1. It is (...) not very plausible that a cumulative case for theism include both the FTA and the BDA (with one possible qualification); 2. Self-organization scenarios do not threaten theism but in fact provide the materials for a good FTA. 3. A plausible design argument of one sort or another (either FTA or BDA) will be available for a wide variety of values of the key probability. (shrink)

In recent years the concept of “user’s rights” has gained considerable currency in discussions of the limits of intellectual property in general, and of copyright in particular. Those arguing in favour of the public domain and increased limitations on copyright have increasingly sought to fight fire with fire – to place substantive user’s rights against the claims of intellectual property. User’s rights have in some jurisdictions received explicit Supreme Court imprimatur and they are expressly recognised in key charters of human (...) rights. Yet there is a residual uncertainty about the appropriateness of this language. Is it correct, as a general conceptual and normative matter, to speak of the broad liberties citizens have regarding access to ideas and information as rights? The few treatments dealing directly with this question have argued – often from a Hohfeldian footing – that ascriptions of user’s rights are inappropriate. Even commentators largely sympathetic to the public domain have found themselves drawn to this conclusion. In this paper, I vindicate the general applicability of rights language by arguing these deflationary accounts are mistaken – and are mistaken even in terms of the theories of rights they themselves deploy. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga has famously argued that metaphysical naturalism is self-defeating, and cannot be rationally accepted. I distinguish between two different ways of understanding this argument, which I call the "probabilistic inference conception", and the "process characteristic conception". I argue that the former is what critics of the argument usually presuppose, whereas most critical responses fail when one assumes the latter conception. To illustrate this, I examine three standard objections to Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism: the Perspiration Objection, the Tu Quoque (...) Objection, and the "Why Can't the Naturalist Just Add a Little Something?" Objection. I show that Plantinga's own responses to these objections fail, and propose counterexamples to his first two principles of defeat. I then go on to construct more adequate responses to these objections, using the distinctions I develop in the first part of the paper. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 141-144. This January, while preparing a new course, Robert Seydel was struck and killed by an unexpected heart attack. He was a critically under-appreciated artist and one of the most beloved and admired professors at Hampshire College. At the time of his passing, Seydel was on the brink of a major artistic and career milestone. His Book of Ruth was being prepared for publication by Siglio Press. His publisher describes the book as: “an alchemical assemblage that composes (...) the life of his alter ego, Ruth Greisman— spinster, Sunday painter, and friend to Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. Through collages, drawings, and journal entries from Ruth’s imagined life, Seydel invokes her interior world in novelistic rhythms.” This convergence of his professional triumph with the tragedy of his death makes now a particularly appropriate time to think about Robert Seydel and his work. This feature contains a selection of excerpts from Book of Ruth (courtesy of Siglio Press) alongside a pair of texts remembering him and giving critical and biographical insights into his art and his person. These texts, from a former student and a colleague respectively, were originally prepared for Seydel's memorial at Hampshire College and have since been revised for publication in continent. For more information on Book of Ruth, please visit the book's page at the Siglio Press website. —Ben Segal draughty R. * Lauren van Haaften-Schick 2011 “The most apt way to order Smithson's library is with the conjunction 'and'; science and religion; modernism and mass culture; what is present and what is missing.” —Alexander Alberro, 248 Robert Seydel's classes on collage and collecting immersed his students in a curious world of cabinets, oddities, exhaustive archives and obscure histories, explored always with critical rigor and a sincere eye for wonder. His office was a compendium of the ancient, mythic, potential and unworldy, where seemingly unrelated references were endlessly pulled, piled and fused in an ecstatic dance of hyper-annotation. The small room and all its contents overflowed with notes tucked in every margin and corner. Books coated the walls like a switchboard, anxious and humming, waiting for infinite links to be activated. William Blake's books of Job and Urizen summoned Greek mythology and the animal as metaphor, leading to 19th century cryptozoology and the cave paintings at Lascaux, Gaston Bachelard's description of the bird in his garden and Robert Rauschenberg's Canyon . Tracking archetypes and following tangential threads, new revelations and ancient narratives were compiled and ordered to form a new text, a bibliography as assemblage, portrait and poem. Robert's library—one of his many collections—is a portrait, an “artifact, collage of time, a token and remnant” (Seydel, 2007) He is humming with it still. The imagination of this room—of Robert—breathes through the pages of Book of Ruth, as every decision and detail unfolds to a cosmos. Allegory, invention, personal and art histories are entangled and leveled, rendering lived, perceived and absorbed experiences indistinguishable. Anonymous scraps discovered on the street or studio floor, careful clippings and drawn figures are chosen and animated through serendipitous destruction and whimsical, delicate positioning. A precise vocabulary of characters and terms erupts and collapses as personas and passers-by wave and whisper, “Every figure reveals aspects of the total form, which is open and green” (Seydel, 2007). The initials R.S. repeat, a nod to Robert's true family tree and further complicating identification. Robt, Robert's sometimes alter-ego, appears in myriad forms as a trickster “half-wit,” mercurial and skittish, or soft and worn thin. Saul is a solemn tinkerer, parsing the world and sometimes blind. Ruth, the speaker of the book, records and translates all, her voice wavering between poetic verse and a cryptic half-speech as complex as it is sparse. The rhythm of frayed edges sets time - the weight of the world and the lightness of paper. Robert wrote of his process, “Material is essential; scuffings carry history, which wanders throughout” (Seydel, 2007). Collectors, assemblers, sway between careful movements of selection and placement as they pull from the found world, mediating calculated and unconscious association to form a lexicon of gestures, symbols and allusion, the “artifacts of a life... the refuse and rejecta of days” (Seydel, 2007). These assembled fragments shift and chatter, at home in their homelessness, actors performing in their own lives, populating an invented world of similar orphans. Such accumulated, severed parts carry the injury of their cutting and retain the evidence of their source, binding loss to creation in a symbiosis of trauma and repair. Mourning and remembrance are deeply embedded in the histories and acts of such practices. Grievance, acceptance, and the fragility of life are conveyed in the 18th century allegorical arrangements of fetal specimens by Frederik Ruysch. A certain melancholy reverence colors Joseph Cornell's intimately tactile assemblages rendering the universe tangible in miniature, or made in devotion to unrequited loves. Preserved in stasis, these ghosts and idols are kept in a purgatory where fact and fiction, past and present are irrelevant distinctions. Catalogued and contained, the subject of loss is transferred to an artifact. Every thread, scrap and letter may be glued, gathered and placed in a museum, a tomb, a box, a page, ripe and open for possession. Holding on to grief and reveling in disrepair, we opt to be haunted. Forever unbalanced and in flux, the sublime of collage is its resolve to irresolution. For Robert, “Art, as creation and as sign of primary Imagination, is not objects but a state, a kind of fluid” (Seydel, 2007) Reflecting on his work, life, and death, I am drawn to my library and the myriad titles acquired through his inspiration. There is Daniel Spoerri's An Anecdoted Topography of Chance , Susan Stewart's On Longing , various Borges, Barthes, Perec, and especially Life: A User's Manual , which concludes that the perfect puzzle will have no solution. I think of the drawers of miscellaneous swallowed objects at the Mutter Museum, Ray Johnson coding the every day in riddles, Wallace Berman twisting tongues, and Susan Hiller laying every detail to bear. Collectors and makers working in endless cycles of observation, ingestion and display. Every gesture informs and is defined by others, every space is shaped by that which surrounds and fills it, the knot has an inner logic, the gigantic is not so different from the miniature, there is a world in every detail, and “All art is collage” (Seydel, 2011) These thoughts have molded my life, my art, and all the minutia that keep the two so profoundly intertwined; There is no difference between life and what we do with our time. “I write my life. I make me up.” What a gift to share this secret way of knowing the world, and to leave this knowledge for us to do with what we please. “Art begins in admiration” (Seydel, 2011) Lauren van Haaften-Schick is a curator, writer and artist based in New York. Upcoming curatorial projects include "Cancelled" at the Center for Book Arts, and "The Spirit of the Signal" at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York. Recent activities include the workshops "Market, Alternative" and "Alternative Art Economies" at Trade School and Momenta Art, and the e-flux Time/Store, New York. She is the founding director of two arts spaces in Northampton, MA and Philadelphia, PA. She received a BA in Art History and Studio Art from Hampshire college in 2006. Sura Levine on Robert Seydel If early on in his time at Hampshire College I was officially his “mentor,” Robert Seydel quickly became one of my great teachers. Over the years we talked about everything, from art, music, collage, and poetry, to campus politics, this latter far too often. It was always a sublime pleasure, if all too rarely done, to enter his apartment to look at his work in progress, to peruse his bookshelves where, inevitably, there were always new treats to examine. And, while he was working on his Book of Ruth , I was given the opportunity over the course of many meals at the Korean and other restaurants, to talk with him about image and poem ordering. To see how he thought through each comma, each juxtaposition across the gutters of the Book, was to watch a brilliant curator at work. Each day, I walk past his wonderful collaged portrait of Ruth, purchased, after much haggling, as a birthday present, a couple of years ago. And each day, I think how lucky I am to have known Robert as he produced this magnum opus. One of my greatest pleasures in 24 years at the College was to teach “The Collector” with Robert. One of my greatest regrets is that the magic we created together in the classroom will not, and cannot, be duplicated. Its various incarnations, its utter intelligence and magic, were all so deeply Robert’s. His was a mind that put poetry, philosophy, history of science, and history together with art, and art together with music. His intellect and eye were unparalleled. He introduced us to so many artists. He shared his fascination with the cabinets of curiosity of Aldrovandi, of Seba, and Peter the Great’s collection of fetal anomalies, as well as the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. Robert knew them all and so many more. He was a walking encyclopedia, his home a great archive. Arcane knowledge, perhaps, but oh so important for another of Robert’s heroes, the mid-20th century Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, whose name he invariably mispronounced as “Broadthayers.” In speaking his name, Robert would always look in my direction in a panic, and then he go on and maul it. I absolutely loved his various mispronunciations of French names and terms! “The Collector” was always filled with talented young artists, art historians, philosophers and writers who all came to understand the wondrous obsessions of the figure of the collector. Students in this course created dazzling projects each term. He always moved while looking and speaking. He read deeply, and commented on everyone’s work with wonderful generosity. Robert always found something to praise even in the least developed of projects. Robert inspired and mentored all of his students into making work that far exceeded their expectations—and ours. For those of you who were lucky enough to have been touched by or to have had an evaluation written by Robert, savor it, keep it, reread it, and share it. He loved working with you all; it is somehow fitting that he died while prepping yet another new course. Robert, it’s almost impossible to speak of you in the past tense, even though you left us a month ago. No doubt, if you knew about our gatherings and celebrations of you, you would be embarrassed that we are making a fuss over you; you always placed the focus on others rather than on yourself. This trait is exactly why so many people miss you now. We’re here to love you publicly as we all did privately for the eleven years you were among us. Robert, my very dear friend, you were an extraordinary artist—you were my brother of choice. My heart broke when yours did. I miss you profoundly. —Sura Levine, February 26, 2011 Sura Levine is a professor of art history at Hampshire College. Her field of specialty is 19th century Belgian and French art, particularly realism and impressionism. Having worked in museums for a number of years both prior to coming to the College, and, as guest curator and co-author of exhibition catalogues, she became particularly interested in the history of museum and trends in collecting. It was because of their shared interests that she and Robert Seydel developed their course, The Collector, which they co-taught for many years. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionMarc Redfield (bio)In recent years, and particularly in the United States, the concept of addiction has come to operate as one of those rhetorical switching points through which practically any discourse or practice or experience can be compelled to pass. As Eve Sedgwick points out in a well-known essay, one can, in contemporary parlance, claim to be addicted not just to illegal or dangerous substances, but also to (...) forms of activity or consumption—work, eating, exercise—that constitute officially approved ways to pursue happiness in middle-class society. It would seem that what matters is not the self’s particular wishes or activities, but the integrity of its will or being. “We do not object to the drug user’s pleasure per se,” Jacques Derrida comments, “but to a pleasure taken in an experience without truth” [236]. Sedgwick, for her part, suggests that “so long as ‘free will’ has been hypostatized and charged with ethical value, for just so long has an equally hypostatized ‘compulsion’ had to be available as a counterstructure always internal to it, always requiring to be ejected from it” [133–34]. The thought of addiction thus spreads to the point of infecting the founding tropes of Western philosophy. The logos becomes hooked on itself: always already it becomes the pharmakon, the remedy that poisons.Yet as Derrida, Sedgwick, and many other critics have also pointed out, the notion of addiction is in certain crucial respects a nineteenth- and twentieth-century invention. Though inscribed within a sequence of representations of human agency that goes back to the Odyssey, the “addict” as such becomes possible only within a political and medico-social regime capable of rewriting identity as pathology. (Hence, in part, the persistent overlap between the addict and the “homosexual” in twentieth-century Western culture.) This is also to say that the addict emerges as part of the development of consumer capitalism, disciplinary society, and the modern state. Like the question of technology from which it is inseparable, the thought of addiction returns us to the West’s most ancient topics and texts only to confront us with some of the most prosaic, specific, and in certain cases disastrous characteristics of our own modernity. 1When addiction is at issue, in other words, metaphysical complications acquire empirical importance. Like “diction” or “dictation,” the term “addiction” derives from the Latin dicere (“say, relate”), which returns to the Greek deiknunai, “show, point out, bring to light”; in Roman law, however, the word addicere had the more prosaic job of signifying a giving or binding-over of something or someone by sentence of a court: the assignation of slave to master, debtor to creditor. The modern recasting of addiction as pathology has occurred as a massive institutional and sociohistorical articulation of [End Page 3] metaphysical values, tensions, and contradictions. In what Mark Seltzer has termed “machine culture,” the figure of the addict channels anxieties about the uncertain differences between machines and bodies; about the “nature” of technology; about the ways in which identities and desires get produced within a consumer economy that represents subjectivity both as inalienably natural and as compulsively iterative and artificial. In such contexts, as Seltzer shows, seemingly abstract paradoxes, such as the psychoanalytic notion of primal identification—where the subject forecloses and reiterates the act of mimesis that enables it to be (other than) itself—can no longer be dismissed as merely “theoretical” figures: they bleed irretrievably into sociohistorical reality. The subject is always already the addicted subject, ready at any moment to become the “addict”; the addict, in turn, becomes a (medical and juridical) “case” or case history only by becoming a frightening, alluring mirror image of the normative subject of consumer society.The discourse of addiction not only disciplines and deconstructs the subject of consumerism; as enacted in drug policies and politics, this discourse has violently reshaped the day-to-day operations of local governments and societies and left its mark on the global economies of the new world order. Hong Kong, the earliest drug spoil of the British Empire, may have returned to China, but the postcolonial world remains more hooked than ever on narcopolitics. From the vertically integrated cocaine... (shrink)

The purpose is to improve the teaching quality of Russian spatial prepositions in colleges. This work takes teaching Russian spatial prepositions as an example to study the key technologies in 3D Virtual Simulation teaching. 3D VS situational teaching is a high-end visual teaching technology. VS situation construction focuses on Human-Computer Interaction to explore and present a realistic language teaching scene. Here, the Steady State Visual Evoked Potential is used to control Brain-Computer Interface. An SSVEP-BCI system is constructed through the Hybrid (...) Frequency-Phase Modulation. The acquisition system can obtain the current SSVEP from the user's brain to know which module the user is watching to complete instructions encoded by the module. Experiments show that the recognition accuracy of the proposed SSVEP-BCI system based on HFPM increases with data length. When the data length is 0.6-s, the Information Transfer Rate reaches the highest: 242.21 ± 46.88 bits/min. Therefore, a high-speed BCI character input system based on SSVEP is designed using HFPM. The main contribution of this work is to build a SSVEP-BCI system based on joint frequency phase modulation. It is better than the currently-known brain computer interface character input system, and is of great value to optimize the performance of the virtual simulation situation system for Russian spatial preposition teaching. (shrink)

Picking up where Peggy McKintosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” left off, this essay looks further into the ways that racial privilege manifests itself in the lives of white Americans. It explores some of the reasons that white privilege is hard for whites to see and it explores the question of how white people can act responsibly given the unavoidable realities of racial privilege.

Causation is at once familiar and mysterious. Neither common sense nor extensive philosophical debate has led us to anything like agreement on the correct analysis of the concept of causation, or an account of the metaphysical nature of the causal relation. Causation: A User's Guide cuts a clear path through this confusing but vital landscape. L. A. Paul and Ned Hall guide the reader through the most important philosophical treatments of causation, negotiating the terrain by taking a set of examples (...) as landmarks. They clarify the central themes of the debate about causation, and cover questions about causation involving omissions or absences, preemption and other species of redundant causation, and the possibility that causation is not transitive. Along the way, Paul and Hall examine several contemporary proposals for analyzing the nature of causation and assess their merits and overall methodological cogency.The book is designed to be of value both to trained specialists and those coming to the problem of causation for the first time. It provides the reader with a broad and sophisticated view of the metaphysics of the causal relation. (shrink)

Bainbridge’s well known “Ironies of Automation” Analysis, design and evaluation of man–machine systems. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 129–135, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-029348-6.50026-9) laid out a set of fundamental criticisms surrounding the promises of automation that, even 30 years later, remain both relevant and, in many cases, intractable. Similarly, a set of ironies in technologies for sensor driven self-quantification is laid out here, spanning from instrumental problems in human factors design to much broader social problems. As with automation, these ironies stand in the (...) way of many of the promised benefits of these wearable technologies. It is argued here that without addressing these ironies now, the promises of wearables may not come to fruition, and instead users may experience outcomes that are opposite to those which the designers seek to afford, or, at the very least, those which consumers believe they are being offered. This paper describes four key ironies of sensor driven self-quantification: know more, know better versus no more, no better; greater self-control versus greater social control; well-being versus never being well enough; more choice versus erosion of choice. (shrink)