Self to Self brings together essays on personal identity, autonomy, and moral emotions by the distinguished philosopher J. David Velleman. Although each of the essays was written as an independent piece, they are unified by an overarching thesis, that there is no single entity denoted by 'the self', as well as by themes from Kantian ethics, psychoanalytic theory, social psychology, and Velleman's work in the philosophy of action. Two of the essays were selected by the editors of (...) Philosophers' Annual as being among the ten best papers in their year of publication. Aimed primarily at professional philosophers and advanced students, Self to Self will also be of interest to psychologists and others who theorize about the self. (shrink)

Irregular self-selection is a demonstration of active involvement in interaction. English as a foreign language learners’ talk-in-interaction is one of such cases. Yet, little research has explored when, how, and why learners implement this action. The aim of this article is to address these issues in Chinese postgraduate EFL learners’ conversations from the perspective of multimodal interaction. To this end, we provide descriptive statistics and use multimodal conversation analysis to investigate the detailed process of irregular self-selection. (...) The results show the interactional sensitivity of learners, and all the successful irregular self-selection can be divided into the following three types: turn interruption, turn competition TC), and turn holding abortion. Learners implement this action by using multimodal resources, including lexis, syntax, pitch reset, intensity enhancement, gaze, and so forth. However, their body movements lack diversity, causing behaviors to be constrained and inactive. The main purpose of irregular self-selection is to provide knowledge that contributes to topical development. This study reveals that Chinese postgraduate EFL learners are interactionally competent members. They are able to achieve communicative goals but in a low diversity of body movements. The findings help to understand the detailed process of speakership claiming in EFL learners’ conversations. (shrink)

Firms’ choice of legal regime is not uniform. Despite Delaware’s significant advantages and success in attracting corporations, many firms still choose to incorporate in their home state, and some firms incorporate in a third state, most notably Nevada. Several factors - lawyers’ advice, political influence in the home state, and relative costs of out of state incorporation - were identified as contributing to these patterns. Yet none of these factors neither their combination, fully account for firms’ choices. This Article suggests (...) that unidentified heterogeneity, potentially in managers’ preferences for legal protection, might have contributed to, and could help in explaining, these patterns. Among other factors, this heterogeneity could result, for example, from variations in market forces and, in turn, private benefits that managers extract. Introducing heterogeneity in managers’ preferences, this Article suggests that managers that share a relatively strong preference for insider protection should be less inclined to incorporate in Delaware, and more inclined to incorporate in their home state where they have political clout, or in Nevada if their strong preference for protection is not satisfied in their home state. The analysis is too preliminary for normative implications to be derived, rather the Article suggests that more research into firms’ heterogeneity and their choice of law could prove valuable. (shrink)

Natural selection is the main mechanism that drives the evolution of species, including human societies. Under natural selection, human species responds through genetic and cultural adaptations to internal and external selection pressures for survival and reproductive success. However, this theory is ineffective in explaining human societal evolution in the Holocene and a cultural selection argument has been made to remedy the theory. The present article provides a critique of the cultural selection argument and proposes an (...) alternative conception that treats human self-selection as an emergent mechanism of human societal evolution characterized by a new type of selection pressure and a separate fitness criterion. Specifically, the evolution of human societies is divided into two major periods, each driven by a different mode of selection: natural selection acting on genes and cultures for survival and reproductive success prior to the Neolithic Revolution, and human self-selection acting on cultures – and potentially genes as well – for thrival and prosperous living after the Neolithic Revolution. The conditions for the transition from the first mode of selection to the second and the implications of this transition for social research are also discussed. (shrink)

Several game-theoretical lab experiments helped establish the belief that economists are more selfish than non-economists. Since differences in behaviour between experiment participants who are students of economics and those who are not may be observed among junior students as well, it is nowadays widely believed that the origin of the greater selfishness is not the training they undergo, but self-selection. In other words, selfish people voluntarily enrol in economics. Yet, I argue that such explanation is unsatisfactory for several (...) reasons. I also suggest alternative explanations for the observed differences, which have been so far unduly disregarded. (shrink)

Essays on the role of the body in self-consciousness, showing that full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness is built on a rich foundation of primitive, nonconceptual self-consciousness. These essays explore how the rich and sophisticated forms of self-consciousness with which we are most familiar—as philosophers, psychologists, and as ordinary, reflective individuals—depend on a complex underpinning that has been largely invisible to students of the self and self-consciousness. José Luis Bermúdez, extending the insights of his groundbreaking 1998 book, (...) The Paradox of Self-Consciousness, argues that full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness is built on a rich foundation of primitive, nonconceptual self-consciousness, and that these more primitive forms of self-consciousness persist in ways that frame self-conscious thought. They extend throughout the animal kingdom, and some are present in newborn human infants. Bermúdez makes the case that these primitive forms of self-awareness can indeed be described as forms of self-consciousness, arguing that they share certain structural and epistemological features with full-fledged, linguistic self-consciousness. He offers accounts of certain important classes of states of nonconceptual content, including the self-specifying dimension of visual perception and the content of bodily awareness, considering how they represent the self. And he explores the general role of nonconceptual self-consciousness in our cognitive and affective lives, examining in several essays the relation between nonconceptual awareness of our bodies and what has been called our “sense of ownership” for our own bodies. (shrink)

Abstract:Suppose we want to know whether the ethics of persons with one characteristic differ from the ethics of persons having another characteristic. Self-selection bias occurs if people have control over that characteristic. When there is self-selection bias, we cannot be sure observed differences in ethics are correlated with the characteristic or are the result of individual self-selection. Self-selection bias is germane to many important business ethics questions. In this paper I explain what (...) self-selection bias is, how it relates to business ethics research, and how to correct for it. I also illustrate the correction process in an empirical analysis of the effect of organizational rank on worker ethics. Using data from the European Values Survey, I find that being a supervisor is positively correlated with worker ethics. However, I also find a negative self-selection effect. Workers with relatively lower ethics are selected into supervisory roles. (shrink)

Marko Jurjako’s article “Self-deception and the selectivity problem” (Jurjako 2013) offers a very interesting discussion of intentionalist approaches to self-deception and in particular the selectivity objection to anti-intentionalism raised in Bermúdez 1997 and 2000. This note responds to Jurjako’s claim that intentionalist models of self-deception face their own version of the selectivity problem, offering an account of how intentions are formed that can explain the selectivity of self-deception, even in the “common or garden” cases that Jurjako (...) emphasizes. (shrink)

Self-organization -- Organisms, finalisms, programs, machines -- Spinoza -- Judaism, determinism, and rationalities -- Fabricating the living -- Ethics.

The Darwinian concept of natural selection was conceived within a set of Newtonian background assumptions about systems dynamics. Mendelian genetics at first did not sit well with the gradualist assumptions of the Darwinian theory. Eventually, however, Mendelism and Darwinism were fused by reformulating natural selection in statistical terms. This reflected a shift to a more probabilistic set of background assumptions based upon Boltzmannian systems dynamics. Recent developments in molecular genetics and paleontology have put pressure on Darwinism once again. (...) Current work on self-organizing systems may provide a stimulus not only for increased problem solving within the Darwinian tradition, especially with respect to origins of life, developmental genetics, phylogenetic pattern, and energy-flow ecology, but for deeper understanding of the very phenomenon of natural selection itself. Since self-organizational phenomena depend deeply on stochastic processes, self-organizational systems dynamics advance the probability revolution. In our view, natural selection is an emergent phenomenon of physical and chemical selection. These developments suggest that natural selection may be grounded in physical law more deeply than is allowed by advocates of the autonomy of biology, while still making it possible to deny, with autonomists, that evolutionary explanations can be modeled in terms of a deductive relationship between laws and cases. We explore the relationship between, chance, self-organization, and selection as sources of order in biological systems in order to make these points. (shrink)

The goal of the paper is to offer a model of self-awareness that fits the testimony of both good and bad responders to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), of which fluoxetine (Prozac; Lilly, Indianapolis, IN) is probably the most well known. After a review of troubling current uncertainties concerning how and for whom SSRIs are therapeutic, it is argued that SSRIs, as a rule, lessen the emotionality of SSRI subjects in favor of an increased cognitive and volitional orientation. Traditional (...) empiricist and rationalist accounts self-awareness fail to provide models that adequately explain how such a shift from an active emotional response to an increased cognitive/volitional orientation is possible. Instead, notions of self-awareness, as understood by founding phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl, fit the testimony of SSRI subjects. (shrink)

In this article I discuss and evaluate the selectivity problem as a problem put forward by Bermudez (1997, 2000) against anti-intentionalist accounts of self-deception. I argue that the selectivity problem can be raised even against intentionalist accounts, which reveals the too demanding constraint that the problem puts on the adequacy of a psychological explanation of action. Finally I try to accommodate the intuitions that support the cogency of the selectivity problem using the resources from the framework provided by an (...) anti-intentionalist account of self-deception. (shrink)

The improbability of a spontaneously generated self-assembling molecule has suggested that life began with a set of simpler, collectively replicating elements, such as an enclosed autocatalytic set of polymers (or autocell). Since replication occurs without a self-assembly code, acquired characteristics are inherited. Moreover, there is no strict distinction between alive and dead; one can only infer that an autocell was alive if it replicates. These features of early life render natural selection inapplicable to the description of its (...) change-of-state because they defy its underlying assumptions. Moreover, natural selection describes only randomly generated novelty; it cannot describe the emergence of form at the interface between organism and environment. Self-organization is also inadequate because it is restricted to interactions amongst parts; it too cannot account for context-driven change. A modified version of selection theory or self-organization would not work because the description of change-of-state through interaction with an incompletely specified context has a completely different mathematical structure, i.e. entails a non-Kolmogorovian probability model. It is proposed that the evolution of early life is appropriately described as lineage transformation through context-driven actualization of potential, with self-organized change-of-state being a special case of no contextual influence, and competitive exclusion of less fit individuals through a selection-like process possibly (but not necessarily) playing a secondary role. It is argued that natural selection played an important role in evolution only after genetically mediated replication was established. (shrink)

Abstract:Facial transplantation is emerging as a therapeutic option for self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The self-inflicted nature of this injury raises questions about the appropriate role of self-harm in determining patient eligibility. Potential candidates for facial transplantation undergo extensive psychosocial screening. The presence of a self-inflicted gunshot wound warrants special attention to ensure that a patient is prepared to undergo a demanding procedure that poses significant risk, as well as stringent lifelong management. Herein, we explore the ethics of (...) considering mechanism of injury in the patient selection process, referring to the precedent set forth in solid organ transplantation. We also consider the available evidence regarding outcomes of individuals transplanted for self-inflicted mechanisms of injury in both solid organ and facial transplantation. We conclude that while the presence of a self-inflicted gunshot wound is significant in the overall evaluation of the candidate, it does not on its own warrant exclusion from consideration for a facial transplantation. (shrink)

Stuart Kauffman here presents a brilliant new paradigm for evolutionary biology, one that extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order widely observed throughout nature. Kauffman here argues that self-organization (...) plays an important role in the emergence of life itself and may play as fundamental a role in shaping life's subsequent evolution as does the Darwinian process of natural selection. Yet until now no systematic effort has been made to incorporate the concept of self-organization into evolutionary theory. The construction requirements which permit complex systems to adapt remain poorly understood, as is the extent to which selection itself can yield systems able to adapt more successfully. This book explores these themes. It shows how complex systems, contrary to expectations, can spontaneously exhibit stunning degrees of order, and how this order, in turn, is essential for understanding the emergence and development of life on Earth. Topics include the new biotechnology of applied molecular evolution, with its important implications for developing new drugs and vaccines; the balance between order and chaos observed in many naturally occurring systems; new insights concerning the predictive power of statistical mechanics in biology; and other major issues. Indeed, the approaches investigated here may prove to be the new center around which biologicalscience itself will evolve. The work is written for all those interested in the cutting edge of research in the life sciences. (shrink)

This article explores the alleged “selectivity problem” for Alfred Mele’s deflationary position on self-deception, a problem that can allegedly be solved only by appealing to intentions to bring it about that one acquires certain beliefs, or to make it easier for oneself to acquire certain beliefs, or to deceive oneself into believing that p. This article argues for the following thesis: the selectivity problem does not undermine this deflationary position on self-deception, and anyone who takes it to be (...) a problem for this position should regard it as being just as serious a problem for those who advocate the intention-featuring solution at issue. (shrink)

Taking the BCS Hamiltonian written in second-quantized form, a modified form of Umezawa's self-consistent field theory method is applied, and a unitarily nonequivalent representation is selected in which the Hamiltonian obviously describes a superconducting system. This result is not at all obvious, since the original Hamiltonian is completely symmetric, and there is no reason a priori for expecting it to describe an asymmetric superconducting configuration. All higher order terms are accounted for, and in doing so, one finds the existence (...) of the energy-gap condition for Cooper pairs. The representation is picked out without using the adiabatic theorem or pair approximation, as is typically done in the self-consistent method for superconductivity. (shrink)

Demonstration of illusiveness of basic beliefs of the Modern Synthesis implies the existence of evolutionary mechanisms that do not require natural selection for the origin of adaptations. This requires adaptive changes that occur independently from replication, but can occasionally become heritable. Plastic self-organizational changes regulated by genome are largely incorporable into the old theory. A fundamentally different source of adaptability is semiosis which includes the agent’s free choice. Adding semiosis into the theory of Extended Evolutionary Synthesis completes the (...) distancing from the Modern Synthesis. I focus here on the importance of semiosis as the necessary factor in organisms’ meaning making. (shrink)

This paper examines self-legitimation in selected speeches of Abubakar Shekau, the longest-serving leader of Boko Haram terrorists (BHT). The article analyses seven of the speeches Shekau delivered during his reign as the BHT leader between 2009 and 2021, using f4analyse as a coding tool and Theo van Leeuwen’s (2008. Discourse and practice: New tools for critical discourse analysis) Discourse Legitimation approach to discourse analysis. The analysis discloses that Shekau uses three legitimation strategies: authorisation, moralisation and rationalisation to justify the (...) actions and practices of BHT. The three legitimation strategies are linguistically realised through positive self-presentation strategy by engaging in self-glorification, personalising and collectivising victory, and claiming and announcing success to legitimate the mission of the group in carrying out the struggle. The strategies are deployed to positively present Abubakar Shekau as fighting a legitimate struggle. (shrink)

Online learning resources play an important role in teaching and learning in the process of online learning. Teachers will be satisfied with selectable and suitable online learning resources, which can promote their self-efficacy to facilitate online teaching and learning. This study proposed a model to examine the effects of the selectivity of online learning resources and the suitability of online learning resources on teachers’ online teaching satisfaction, and the mediating role of technology self-efficacy and online teaching self-efficacy (...) between them. The results indicated that SE-OLR and SU-OLR positively affected teachers’ online teaching satisfaction; TECHN-SE and OT-SE positively influenced teachers’ online teaching satisfaction, while TECHN-SE and OT-SE played mediating roles between SE-OLR and SU-OLR and teachers’ online teaching satisfaction. The findings have implications for the design and development of online learning resources to improve teachers’ satisfaction and facilitate students’ learning effectiveness and teachers’ online teaching. (shrink)

According to Zurek, decoherence is a process resulting from the interaction between a quantum system and its environment; this process singles out a preferred set of states, usually called “pointer basis”, that determines which observables will receive definite values. This means that decoherence leads to a sort of selection which precludes all except a small subset of the states in the Hilbert space of the system from behaving in a classical manner: environment-induced-superselection (einselection) is a consequence of the process (...) of decoherence. The aim of this paper is to present a new approach to decoherence, different from the mainstream approach of Zurek and his collaborators. We will argue that this approach offers conceptual advantages over the traditional one when problems of foundations are considered; in particular, from the new perspective, decoherence in closed quantum systems becomes possible and the preferred basis acquires a well founded definition. (shrink)

Recent work on self organization promises an explanation of complex order which is independent of adaptation. Self-organizing systems are complex systems of simple units, projecting order as a consequence of localized and generally nonlinear interactions between these units. Stuart Kauffman offers one variation on the theme of self-organization, offering what he calls a ``statistical mechanics'' for complex systems. This paper explores the explanatory strategies deployed in this ``statistical mechanics,'' initially focusing on the autonomy of statistical explanation as (...) it applies in evolutionary settings and then turning to Kauffman's analysis. Two primary morals emerge as a consequence of this examination: first, the view that adaptation and self-organization should be seen as competing theories or models is misleading and simplistic; and second, while we need a synthesis treating self-organization and adaptation as geared toward different problems, at different levels of organization, and deploying different methods, we do not yet have such a synthesis. (shrink)

In their book, Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection, Depew and Weber argued for the need to address the relationship between self-organization and natural selection in evolutionary theory, and focused on seven “visions” for doing so. Recently, Batten et al. in a paper in this journal, entitled “Visions of evolution: self-organization proposes what natural selection disposes,” picked up the issue with the work of Depew and Weber as a starting point. While (...) the efforts of both sets of authors are to be commended, there are substantive errors in both the presentations of my work and of my work with colleagues that undermine theirs. My purpose here is to correct the errors in question, thereby removing the undermining effects and in so doing reassert the position my colleagues and I first advanced more than two decades ago, and that I still stand by and argue for today. The central points are as follows: Self-organization or spontaneous ordering is a process of selection; this selection process is governed by a “physical selection principle”; this principle is the law of maximum entropy production; and natural selection is a special case where the components are replicating. (shrink)

In nature, gregarious animals, insects, or bacteria usually exhibit paradoxical behaviors in the form of group fission and fusion, which exerts an important influence on group’s pattern formation, information transfer, and epidemiology. However, the fission-fusion dynamics have received little attention compared to other flocking behavior. In this paper, an intermittent selective interaction based control algorithm for the self-organized fission-fusion behavior of flocking system is proposed, which bridges the gap between the two conflicting behaviors in a unified fashion. Specifically, a (...) hybrid velocity coordination strategy that includes both the egalitarian and selective interactions is proposed, where the egalitarian interaction is to maintain the flock’s order and achieve the fusion behavior while the selective interaction strategy is for the response to external stimulus information and generates the fission behavior. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed control algorithm can realize the self-organized fission-fusion behavior of flocking system under a unified framework. The influences of the main control parameters on the performance of the fission-fusion behavior are also discussed. In particular, the trade-off parameterαbalances the exploration and exploitation behaviors of flocking system and significantly enhances its movement flexibility and environmental adaptivity. (shrink)

Two studies were performed to test the relationship between readiness for self-improvement and selected measures of well-being. The first study investigated whether readiness for self-improvement is related to the selected measures of overall subjective well-being. The second one investigated in what way readiness for self-improvement is related to subjective well-being at workplace. The results obtained in both cases showed that readiness for self-improvement is indeed related to and does account for well-being. In the first study, readiness (...) for self-improvement accounted for overall life satisfaction within important human life domains and satisfaction with the present and future life. In the second study, work engagement, was significantly linked to readiness to improve oneself but was not with readiness to take care of one’s health. (shrink)

This is my first book from Partridge International In Association with Penguin Random House in 2018. I wanted to enrich self through my creativity on selected topics as far as a Google Scholar.

To understand how complex dynamic systems, living or non-living, linguistic or non-linguistic, come to be organized as systems, to understand how their inherent dynamic nature gives rise to organisations and forms that have found a balance between potentiality for change and evolution on the one hand, and requisite stability in a given environment on the other, is the main ambition of the study of evolutionary systems. The aim of the present volume is to elucidate the scientific and philosophical backgrounds that (...) play a role in one of the major debates taking place in that field, namely that on the relation between selection and self-organization. The book represents a genuine interdisciplinary forum in which the major representatives of evolutionary systems take part. Audience: This volume will be interest to biologists, philosophers of science, systems scientists, mathematicians, physicists, sociologists of science. It is highly recommended to those interested in an interdisciplinary and complex approach to evolution, as well as to those interested in developing a genuinely historical viewpoint in the sciences. (shrink)