In the summer of 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, an event which led to the horror of World War I and which many historians suggest marked the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1992, Sarajevo again lurched into prominence as the focal point of one of the century’s bloodiest civil wars. Yet Sarajevo at one point epitomized the dreams of the Enlightenment, a city where Christians, Jews, and Muslims peacefully coexisted. In the midst of Sarajevo’s recent decline (...) into chaos and destruction, Susan Sontag decided to produce Act I of Waiting for Godot, which, despite ever-looming danger, played to packed houses. Why? Why did this city of hope lie crushed at the end of the twentieth century? Why did Sontag stage an artistic production in the middle of such overwhelming tragedy? Why Waiting for Godot ? And, most important, why the appreciative, silent tears of audience members who risked their lives to attend a play in the middle of a war?These are the questions that guide David Toole’s theological reflections in Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, where he seeks to come to terms with what it means to live a life of dignity in a world of undeniable suffering. Toole skillfully weaves together Friedrich Nietzsche’s views on nihilism with Michel Foucault’s analysis of power to produce a metaphysics of tragedy, or a “politics of dying.” Such politics are then used to shed new theological light on the Christian apocalypse and what it means to be alive at the end of the twentieth century. In making his argument, Toole draws innovative connections between such diverse figures as John Milbank, Alasdair MacIntyre, Euripides, John Howard Yoder, and Norman Maclean (author of A River Runs Through It and Young Men and Fire ), all the while using Beckett’s play as a compass for his direction. The end result is a fascinating, eminently readable, unexpectedly adventurous theological inquiry into the meaning of life. (shrink)

Short interspersed repetitive elements, or SINEs, are tRNA-derived retroposons that are dispersed throughout eukaryotic genomes and can be present in well over 104 total copies. The enormous volume of SINE amplifications per organism makes them important evolutionary agents for shaping the diversity of genomes, and the irreversible, independent nature of their insertion allows them to be used for diagnosing common ancestry among host taxa with extreme confidence. As such, they represent a powerful new tool for systematic biology that can be (...) strategically integrated with other conventional phylogenetic characters, most notably morphology and DNA sequences. This review covers the basic aspects of SINE evolution that are especially relevant to their use as systematic characters and describes the practical methods of characterizing SINEs for cladogram construction. It also discusses the limits of their systematic utility, clarifies some recently published misunderstandings, and illustrates the effective application of SINEs for vertebrate phylogenetics with results from selected case studies. BioEssays 22:148–160, 2000. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Due to the socio-demographic change in most developed western countries, elderly populations have been continuously increasing. Therefore, preventive and assistive systems that allow elderly people to independently live in their own homes as long as possible will become an economical if not ethical necessity. These respective technologies are being developed under the term "Ambient Assistive Technologies". The EU-funded AAT-project Ambient Lighting Assistance for an Ageing Population has established the long-term goal to create an adaptive system capable of improving the residential (...) lighting conditions of single living elderly persons also aiming at supporting the preservation of their independence. Results of an earlier survey revealed that the elderly perceived their current lighting situation as satisfactory, whereas interviewers assessed in-house lighting as too dark and risk-laden. The overall results of ALADIN showed a significant increase in well-being from the baseline final testing with the new adaptive lighting system. Positive results for wellbeing and life quality suggest that the outcome effects may be attributed to the introduction of technology as well as to social contacts arising from participating in the study. The technological guidance of the study supervisors, in particular, may have produced a strong social reactivity effect that was first observed in the famous Hawthorne experiments in the 1930s. As older adults seem to benefit both from meaningful social contacts as well as assistive technologies, the question arises how assistive technology can be socially embedded to be able to maximize positive health effects. Therefore ethical guidelines for development and use of new assistive technologies for handicapped/older persons have to be developed and should be discussed with regard to their applicability in the context of AAT. (shrink)

A recent article argued that signals from conventional Raman spectroscopy of organic materials are overwhelmed by edge filter and fluorescence artefacts. The article targeted a subset of Raman spectroscopic investigations of fossil and modern organisms and has implications for the utility of conventional Raman spectroscopy in comparative tissue analytics. The inferences were based on circular reasoning centered around the unconventional analysis of spectra from just two samples, one modern, and one fossil. We validated the disputed signals with in situ Fourier‐Transform (...) Infrared (FT‐IR) Spectroscopy and through replication with different lasers, filters, and operators in independent laboratories. Our Raman system employs a holographic notch filter which is not affected by edge filter or other artefacts. Multiple lines of evidence confirm that conventional Raman spectra of fossils contain biologically and geologically meaningful information. Statistical analyses of large Raman and FT‐IR spectral data sets reveal patterns in fossil composition and yield valuable insights into the history of life. (shrink)

In the context of climate change, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, growing food insecurity, and rising inflation, the inequities in the dominant food system and subsequent vulnerabilities are being made ever more visible. Policies and programs that can support social and economic security while responding to intensifying environmental challenges are urgently needed. Basic income is receiving increasing attention as one such policy tool in jurisdictions around the world. However, its applications to food systems are underdeveloped. This discussion paper considers (...) basic income as a policy tool for supporting food systems sustainability in Canada drawing on our collaborative research as part of Coalition Canada’s Case for Basic Income Series. We suggest that a basic income may contribute to addressing precarity in livelihoods and food access while offering potential co-benefits for local food production and community well-being. We also underscore that basic income is not a panacea for all problems facing food systems and must be considered alongside other public supports and initiatives. We conclude by identifying areas for further research and policy investigation for food systems scholars and practitioners. (shrink)

Design and Development of software controlled stand-alone instruments have been identified as the most vital component of national and international programs on earthquake hazard and risk management. For in depth investigation and studies, the development of precise instruments designed around computer is emerging very fast. Interfacing of personal computer with seismic instrument is an important design task. A design technique based on minimum hardware has been worked out around the parallel printer interface of computer. Hardware and Software for this purpose (...) has been designed to make the instrument interact with computer through parallel port interface. Incorporation of software for seismic signal analysis has been considered the extremely powerful tool to view and analyze seismic data collected by seismic instruments. In this paper efforts have been made to describe the various design aspects for interfacing of Seismic Data Recorder and Analyser to computer through parallel printer port and computation steps incorporated in the software tool for seismic data analysis. (shrink)

Our earliest tools are our bodies. Our hands raise and turn and toss and carry and push and pull, our legs walk and climb and kick allowing us to move and act in the world and to create the multitude of artifacts that improve our lives. The list of actions made by our hands and feet and other parts of our bodies is long. What is more remarkable is we turn those actions in the world into actions on thought (...) through gestures, language, and graphics, thereby creating cognitive tools that expand the mind. The focus here is gesture; gestures transform actions on perceptible objects to actions on imagined thoughts, carrying meaning with them rapidly, precisely, and directly. We review evidence showing that gestures enhance our own thinking and change the thought of others. We illustrate the power of gestures in studies showing that gestures uniquely change conceptions of time, from sequential to simultaneous, from sequential to cyclical, and from a perspective embedded in a timeline to an external perspective looking on a timeline, and by so doing obviate the ambiguities of an embedded perspective. We draw parallels between representations in gesture and in graphics; both use marks or actions arrayed in space to communicate more immediately than symbolic language. (shrink)

Tables are widely used for storing, retrieving, communicating, and processing information, but in the literature on the study of representations they are still somewhat neglected. The strong structural constraints on tables allow for a clear identification of their characteristic features and the roles these play in the use of tables as representational and cognitive tools. After introducing syntactic, spatial, and semantic features of tables, we give an account of how these affect our perception and cognition on the basis of (...) fundamental principles of Gestalt psychology. Next are discussed the ways in which these features of tables support their uses in providing a global access to information, retrieving information, and visualizing relational structure and patterns. The latter is particularly important, because it shows how tables can contribute to the generation of new knowledge. In addition, tables also provide efficient means for manipulating information in general and in structured notations. In sum, tables are powerful and efficient representational tools. (shrink)

This book features papers from CEPE-IACAP 2015, a joint international conference focused on the philosophy of computing. Inside, readers will discover essays that explore current issues in epistemology, philosophy of mind, logic, and philosophy of science from the lens of computation. Coverage also examines applied issues related to ethical, social, and political interest. -/- The contributors first explore how computation has changed philosophical inquiry. Computers are now capable of joining humans in exploring foundational issues. Thus, we can ponder machine-generated explanation, (...) thought, agency, and other quite fascinating concepts. The papers are also concerned with normative aspects of the computer and information technology revolution. They examine technology-specific analyses of key challenges, from Big Data to autonomous robots to expert systems for infrastructure control and financial services. -/- The virtue of a collection that ranges over philosophical questions, such as this one does, lies in the prospects for a more integrated understanding of issues. These are early days in the partnership between philosophy and information technology. Philosophers and researchers are still sorting out many foundational issues. They will need to deploy all of the tools of philosophy to establish this foundation. This volume admirably showcases those tools in the hands of some excellent scholars. -/- . (shrink)

The problem of the biology of money is twofold: It subsumes both the identification of behavioral mechanisms that account for the power of money as an incentive, and the elucidation of the phylogeny of such mechanisms. The drugs–tool distinction, as articulated by Lea & Webley (L&W) in their fascinating synthesis, is a welcome step toward their solution. Compared to the direct invocation of instinctual drives, however, conditioning processes provide a conceptually and empirically clearer road from evolution to money. (Published (...) Online April 5 2006). (shrink)

Education is a part and parcel of human life itself irrespective of the field of activity. Every field of human activity has developed its own value systems. Education has also accumulated its own value systems over a period of time. In order to make value education a powerful tool, education should be made more open, more reflective and more vocal with greater participation of teachers, students, parents and the society in deciding all major aspects of education. So far, the education (...) system in India is a closed one with outdated teacher training programmes and syllabi, heavy and mind bogging exercises with lots of paper work. There is little that a student can look into the society and learn and much less the relevance of his learning to the society. For most of the times, parents look at their children like scapegoats, since they cannot participate in their children’s education. Thus, in our country education itself has became a blunt and invalid tool. Therefore, education has lost its relevance to the social, economic, political, ethical, cultural and spiritual values of our country. Under such circumstances one cannot expect education to play the role of a most effective powerful tool that can influence human life. Therefore, there is a need to examine which type of value systems we have to develop in our educational institutions in India, that are most suitable in our socio-religious, philosophical and historical background. (shrink)

This paper examines Marcuse’s complex relationship to feminism, both in his own time and today. It examines Marcuse’s celebration of and comments on the feminism of his time alongside Ellen Willis’s criticisms of Marcuse’s characterization of consumerism as “feminized.” The paper suggests that the widespread “one-dimensionality” of Marcuse’s 1964 diagnosis remains an apt diagnostic tool when the continued exploitation of women in many ways includes their mass entry into the workforce—once seen as a liberation from the domestic sphere—and the continued (...) pushing of consumerist models of existence as supposedly characterizing the “good life.”. (shrink)

Personality disorders are usually treated with face-to-face sessions and/or digital mental health services. Among many schools of therapies, schema therapy stands out because rather than simply targeting the symptoms of PD, it cordially targets the cause of PD and heals the early maladaptive schema, thus is exceptionally good at soothing emotional disturbances before enacting cognitive restructuring, resulting in long-term efficacy. However, according to Piaget’s genetic epistemology, the unmet needs lie in the fact that the schemata that determine the adaptive behavior (...) can only be formed in the interaction with the real world that the patient is living in and reconsolidated by the feedback from the object world upon the patient’s newly-formed behavior. Therefore, in order to reshape the patient’s schema modes to support adaptive behavior and regain emotional regulation capabilities of the healthy adult, one may have to reconstruct the object world surrounding the patient. Metaverse, the bestowed successor to the Internet with the cardinal feature of “the sense of full presence,” can become a powerful tool to reconstruct a new object world for the patient with the prescription of a psychotherapist, so as to transform the treatment techniques in schema therapy into the natural autobiographical experiences of patients in the new object world, thus gradually reshape the patient’s schema modes that can ultimately result in an adaptive, and more inclusive, interaction with the real world. This work describes the underlying theory, the mechanism, the process, and ethical considerations of such promising technology for the not-too-far future. (shrink)

© British Society of Aesthetics 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] is an ambitious and wide-ranging book. Here are some of its central claims. Human life is pervaded by ‘organized activities’, which are activities in which human agents interact with the environment and other agents, sometimes deliberatively but more typically semi-automatically, yet always intelligently and responsively, exercising the cognitive powers such agents are naturally endowed (...) with or naturally develop. ‘Technologies’ are patterns of use of a thing, or a ‘tool’, thanks to which organized activities have the structures that they do. For example, breast-feeding, dancing and perceiving are all organized activities, and the lullaby the mother might sing to soothe the baby, the slings she might use to hold him securely, the body of the dancer, the system of... (shrink)

Clahsen's compelling evidence for the dual-mechanism model of the lexicon derives in part from the use of cross-linguistic data in psycholinguistic research. This approach reflects a growing (and positive) trend toward incorporating data from several languages when analyzing and modeling human language behavior. This perspective should be expanded to include data from typologically distinct languages to develop more explanatory models of language.

Traditionally, plant viruses are viewed as harmful, undesirable pathogens. However, their genomes can provide several useful ‘designer functions’ or ‘sequence modules’ with which to tailor future gene vectors for plant or general biotechnology.The majority (77 %) of known plant viruses have single‐stranded RNA of the messenger (protein coding) sense as their genetic material. Over the past 4 years, improved in vitro transcription systems and the construction of partial of fulllength DNA copies of several plant RNA viruses have enhanced our ability (...) to manipulate and study their genomes, particularly in the context of their pathogenic interactions with host plants.Recently, two forms of genetically engineered protection against plant virus infections have been reported. In both, a virus‐related ‘interfering’ molecule was stably introduced into plants via the DNA‐transfer mechanism of Agro‐bacterium tumefaciens. To date, the choice of ‘interfering’ molecule has been guided by empirical field‐observations and each is effective against only a narrow range of closely‐related viruses. As yet, we do not fully understand the molecular mechanism(s) responsible for the observed protection.The ability to manipulate the plant–pathogen relationship is a powerful tool to increase our knowledge and improve future strategies for uncoventional cropprotection by genetic engineering techniques. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Ernst Fraenkel’s seminal study about Nazi law, in which he described the co-existence of a ‘normative state’ and a ‘prerogative state’ as principles of government, is to be rediscovered in the new age of the prerogative. Through a critical reading of The Dual State and other important texts by Fraenkel, this article seeks to contribute to the contemporary debate on regime types and governmental power in three regards: first, by clarifying Fraenkel’s concept of and perspective on law; second, (...) by discussing the methodological demands for the beneficial application of the dual state concept; and, third, by showing the usefulness of such an application, even beyond the field of authoritarian states in the narrower sense. Law-eroding prerogative developments cannot only be witnessed in hybrid regimes, but also in democratic states, which resort to reflections and practices of an ‘enemy criminal law’, and in the European Union’s recent crisis politics. (shrink)

Realizing that the survival of the Church within the Roman Empire was at stake as the empire experienced constant attacks and invasions from the so-called barbarians, the early Church articulated a vision of peace that used war as a legitimate means for realizing it. What is most important in this response to war is the reality of the sociopolitical markers defining the era. Contemporary societies are faced with different sociopolitical realities. The fact that the nation-state is coded with its own (...) existential markers as a political entity that defines the contemporary world makes it necessary to articulate a vision of peacebuilding that does not necessarily follow the response of the early Church in a slavish manner. Consequently, the African palaver approach to peacebuilding is a deliberate attempt to respond to the signs of the times such that it leads to the cultivation of socio-cosmological harmony. (shrink)

The powerful new methods, expansive scope, and accelerated pace of human molecular genetics combine to catapult us into ethically unfamiliar territory. These features lend special urgency to questions of genetic ownership and privacy, disease and normalcy, identity and genetic determinism, and early diagnosis and therapy.

The release of AlphaFold2 (AF2), a deep‐learning‐aided, open‐source protein structure prediction program, from DeepMind, opened a new era of molecular biology. The astonishing improvement in the accuracy of the structure predictions provides the opportunity to characterize protein systems from uncultured Asgard archaea, key organisms in evolutionary biology. Despite the accumulation in metagenomics‐derived Asgard archaea eukaryotic‐like protein sequences, limited structural and biochemical information have restricted the insight in their potential functions. In this review, we focus on profilin, an actin‐dynamics regulating protein, (...) which in eukaryotes, modulates actin polymerization through (1) direct actin interaction, (2) polyproline binding, and (3) phospholipid binding. We assess AF2‐predicted profilin structures in their potential abilities to participate in these activities. We demonstrate that AF2 is a powerful new tool for understanding the emergence of biological functional traits in evolution. (shrink)

Crowdsourcing platforms are powerful tools for academic researchers. Proponents claim that crowdsourcing helps researchers quickly and affordably recruit enough human subjects with diverse backgrounds to generate significant statistical power, while critics raise concerns about unreliable data quality, labor exploitation, and unequal power dynamics between researchers and workers. We examine these concerns along three dimensions: methods, fairness, and politics. We find that researchers offer vastly different compensation rates for crowdsourced tasks, and address potential concerns about data validity by (...) using platform-specific tools and user verification methods. Additionally, workers depend upon crowdsourcing platforms for a significant portion of their income, are motivated more by fear of losing access to work than by specific compensation rates, and are frustrated by a lack of transparency and occasional unfair treatment from job requesters. Finally, we discuss critical computing scholars’ proposals to address crowdsourcing’s problems, challenges with implementing these resolutions, and potential avenues for future research. (shrink)

Locus equations offer promise for an understanding of at least some aspects of perceptual invariance in speech, but they were discovered almost fortuitously. With the present availability of powerful machine learning algorithms, ignorance -based automatic discovery procedures are starting to supplant knowledge-based scientific inquiry. Principles of self-learning and self-organization are powerful tools for speech research but remain somewhat under-utilized.

Theoretical substantiations and practical recommendations on media educational contain against gender stereotypes in the Ukrainian mass media are given in the work. Attention is paid to the pathogenic factor of the use of gender-sensitive content. The work is based on propedeutic theoretic studies of cultural and psychosocial background of Ukraine. We also used a content analysis of news and advertising materials of heterogenic media; sociologic methods ; modelling of educational situations and forecasting of expected results. That was an end-to-end method (...) of generalization that covered theoretical and practical stages of the study. It is proved that despite the weakening of gender divisions in the socio-cultural sphere in the world, in developing countries gender stereotypes remain a powerful tool for affective approach of media and advertising to the consumer. Author's ways to increase the level of media literacy and critical thinking with the help of gender-sensitive experiments, mini-projects, filling the media space with "mirror" about sexist content and creating a personal media field are proposed. (shrink)

Artistic images, of a universal nature and validated by global culture, are carriers of an emotional potential that can be used for therapeutic purposes in cultural centers as well as in clinical spaces. Esthetic studies reveal the mobilizing power in their contemplation and the capacity to bring out personal stories with healing potential. The general objective of this paper is to design and validate the PROJECTA instrument, consisting of the therapeutic use of artistic images to approach trauma or difficult (...) conditions in therapy, by means of the association between art images and emotions, feelings or states of mind related with a traumatic experience. A mixed approach of investigation with a concurrent triangulation design has been used for the integration of qualitative and quantitative results, where qualitative research outweighs quantitative, but both have been QUAL → quan sequentially developed. The study was carried out in two phases. The first was a systematic review of the literature. The second, divided into five steps, consisted of the validation of artworks and the associated emotions with the participation of students, experts in art therapy, psychologists and educators through focus groups, interviews and an online questionnaire. The analysis techniques were qualitative and quantitative. A set of 220 artistic images linked to emotional states were proposed by experts in education, psychology and art therapy, and validated through an online questionnaire. The respondents included 228 students and professionals and for 64.55% of these images a consensus of over 80% was obtained. These images and their associated emotions were again reviewed by a confirmatory focus group. Finally, 92 artistic works were linked to primary, secondary and tertiary emotions such as love, joy, victory, surprise, balance, sense of humor, anger, sadness, fear, and emptiness. In addition, there are mobilizing images that have not been related to any emotion because of the polysemy of their meanings. It concludes that PROJECTA is a visual art therapy tool that provides professionals with a resource that helps facilitate the identification, expression or demonstration of emotions or feelings related with trauma, and in challenging situations of vulnerability, psychological discomfort or post-traumatic stress. (shrink)

Ns2 is an open-source communications network simulator primarily used in research and teaching. Ns2 provides substantial support for simulation of TCP, routing, and multicast protocols over wired and wireless networks. Although Ns2 is a widely used powerful simulator, it lacks a way to measure networks that are used to assess reliability and performance metrics and it does not analyse the trace files it produces. The data obtained from the simulations are not straightforward to analyse. Ns2 is still unable to provide (...) any data analysis statistics or graphics as requested. Moreover, the analysis of the Ns2 trace file using any software scripts requires further steps by a developer to do data processing and then produce graphical outputs. Lack of standardisation of tools means that results from different users may not be strictly comparable. There are alternative tools; however, most of them are not standalone applications, requiring some additional libraries. Also, they lack a user-friendly interface. This article presents the architecture and development considerations for the NsGTFA tool, which intends to simplify the management and enable the statistical analysis of trace files generated during network simulations. NsGTFA runs under Windows and has a friendly graphical user interface. This tool is a very fast standalone application implemented in VC++, taking as input an Ns2 trace file. It can output two-dimensional and 3D graphs or data sets, whatever the trace file format. It is also possible to specify the output of standard network performance metrics. NsGTFA satisfies most user needs. There is no complex installation process, and no external libraries are needed. (shrink)

This article outlines the potential for Research Higher Degree supervisors at universities and similar institutions to use ethical review as a constructive, dynamic tool in guiding RHD students in the timely completion of effective, innovative research projects. Ethical review involves a bureaucratized process for checking that researchers apply risk management strategies when dealing with human participants. Ethical review can also be a powerful instrument for RHD supervisors in the creative arts if they use it to lead students through processes of (...) imagining, articulating, and improving their methodologies and relationships with research participants. Proposed strategies involve adaptation of theories of visualization and imagination from several disciplines—imagined interaction from the social sciences and psychology, dramatic rehearsal from political science, and creative visualization from the health professions, sports coaching and many other personal–professional development contexts. By using creativity and imagination, supervisors can use ethical review to help students to ‘walk through’ the potential, progressive phases of proposed research in order to refine or redesign both ‘big picture’ strategies and specific steps taken to reach research goals. This can stimulate students to unearth possibilities that improve the quality and quantity of knowledge that their research generates and to avoid or manage problems that might disrupt their research. (shrink)

Despite triggering one of the largest civilian death tolls in modern history, the policy and human consequences of economic sanctions on Iraq between 1990-2003 remain largely unexamined. This lack of scrutiny mirrors the euphemism and mis-information surrounding the embargo itself and the Oil-for-Food program ostensibly adopted to protect Iraq's civilian population. But it also reflects incomprehension among Western publics - long removed from the realities of hunger and economic destitution - of the intimate link between economic conditions and mortality. Iraq (...) suffered an estimated 1.5 million excess deaths because of a catastrophic undermining of civilian livelihood triggered by the embargo; an outcome termed slow famine in the demographic literature. With much of the population fully dependent on daily food rations of less than 21 cents per person for much of the sanctions period, OfF `relief' was inherently incapable of substituting for a functioning civil economy. Recent positive accounts of the impact of OfF, in the form of the Independent Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-Food Program, are refuted by close analysis of malnutrition and mortality rates across the sanctions period. The example of Iraq reveals the danger in treating economic sanctions as a cheap, `non-violent' tool for conflict resolution. In reality their deadly power is terrorizing for societies not protected from their application by permanent member status on the UN Security Council, a threat which continues to generate global insecurity. The Iraq experience reveals how current, narrowly framed, international law prohibitions on starvation as a weapon of war need to be extended to cover interference with civilian livelihood and hence access to food. (shrink)

Important sceptical arguments by Sextus Empiricus, Hume and Boghossian (concerning disputes, induction, and relativism respectively) are based on circularities and infinite regresses. Yet, philosophers' practice does not keep circularities and infinite regresses clearly apart. In this metaphilosophical paper I show how circularity and infinite regress arguments can be made explicit, and shed light on two powerful tools of the sceptic.

This paper discusses literacy as a socio-political phenomenon from the perspective of several relatively independent educational discourses. The first is critical education theory and research revealing the hidden mechanisms by which education policies act in the interests of a global market economy. The second is the perspective of critical pedagogy scholars on contemporary educational challenges, who offer responses similar to those discussed in current discourse on informal civic education. The third is the heated discussion of high-stakes literacy testing (related to (...) OECD literacy studies such as PISA, IALS, etc.) the results of which are used as a source of argumentation for diverse attitudes and educational consequences. Based on an analysis of literacy theory, research on active citizenship and civic education, the term “civic literacy” is proposed and argued as a relevant conceptual frame for conceptualizing school as an institution which can be involved in resistance to all forms of power politics or ideological indoctrination and manipulation, while at the same time, respecting the traditional values and aims of general education. (shrink)

One of the world’s leading philosophers offers aspiring thinkers his personal trove of mind-stretching thought experiments. Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, (...) and free will. With patience and wit, Dennett deftly deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built. Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to "think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions." A sweeping work of intellectual seriousness that’s also studded with impish delights, Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers—in all walks of life—delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers. (shrink)

In this article, I question the use of the notion of ‘constituent power’ as a tool for the democratization of the European Union (EU). Rather than seeing the absence of a transnational constituent power as a cause of the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’, I identify it as an _opportunity_ for unfettered democratic participation. Against the reification of power-in-action into a power-constituted-in-law, I argue that the democratization of the EU can only be achieved through the multiplication of ‘constituent (...) moments’. I begin by deconstructing the normative justifications surrounding the concept of constituent power. Here I analyze the structural aporia of constituent power and question the autonomous and emancipatory dimension of this notion. I then test the theoretical hypothesis of this structural aporia of the popular constituent power by comparing it with the historical experiments of a European popular constituent power. Finally, based on these theoretical and empirical observations, I propose to replace the ambivalence of the concept of popular constituent power with a more cautious approach to the bottom-up democratization of European integration: that of a multiplication of transnational constituent moments. (shrink)

Mathematical models are a well established tool in most natural sciences. Although models have been neglected by the philosophy of science for a long time, their epistemological status as a link between theory and reality is now fairly well understood. However, regarding the epistemological status of mathematical models in the social sciences, there still exists a considerable unclarity. In my paper I argue that this results from specific challenges that mathematical models and especially computer simulations face in the social sciences. (...) The most important difference between the social sciences and the natural sciences with respect to modeling is that in the social sciences powerful and well confirmed background theories (like Newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity in physics) do not exist in the social sciences. Therefore, an epistemology of models that is formed on the role model of physics may not be appropriate for the social sciences. I discuss the challenges that modeling faces in the social sciences and point out their epistemological consequences. The most important consequences are that greater emphasis must be placed on empirical validation than on theoretical validation and that the relevance of purely theoretical simulations is strongly limited. (shrink)

Our methods of inquiry predetermine most of what we are able to know. While our modes of understanding ought to correspond to the complexities confronting us in our modern technological society, they do not. “Soft” systems methodology helps us focus on what is problematic and how it can be approached — and offers direction to exert moral control over our tools and technologies. [Powerful new technologies] pose basic threats to people and to life on Earth . . . Unless (...) we learn to live with them in safety, our future is likely to be both exciting and short. We cannot hope to foresee all the problems ahead, yet by paying attention to the big, basic issues, we can perhaps foresee the greatest challenges and get some idea of how to deal with them (K. Erik Drexler, 1986). (shrink)

Why are people interested in money? Specifically, what could be the biological basis for the extraordinary incentive and reinforcing power of money, which seems to be unique to the human species? We identify two ways in which a commodity which is of no biological significance in itself can become a strong motivator. The first is if it is used as a tool, and by a metaphorical extension this is often applied to money: it is used instrumentally, in order to (...) obtain biologically relevant incentives. Second, substances can be strong motivators because they imitate the action of natural incentives but do not produce the fitness gains for which those incentives are instinctively sought. The classic examples of this process are psychoactive drugs, but we argue that the drug concept can also be extended metaphorically to provide an account of money motivation. From a review of theoretical and empirical literature about money, we conclude that (i) there are a number of phenomena that cannot be accounted for by a pure Tool Theory of money motivation; (ii) supplementing Tool Theory with a Drug Theory enables the anomalous phenomena to be explained; and (iii) the human instincts that, according to a Drug Theory, money parasitizes include trading (derived from reciprocal altruism) and object play. (Published Online April 5 2006) Key Words: economic behaviour; evolutionary psychology; giving; incentive; money; motivation; play; reciprocal altruism. (shrink)

Research on perception without awareness has provoked strong emotional responses from individuals within and outside the scientific community, due in part to the perceived potential for abuse of subliminal techniques. In this paper, four basic issues regarding the use of subliminal techniques for propaganda purposes are discussed: whether exposure to subliminal stimuli can produce significant, predictable changes in affect, cognition and behavior; whether these effects are robust and powerful enough to make the use of subliminal techniques for propaganda purposes feasible; (...) whether the effects of subliminal stimulation are stable over time; and whether subliminal influences can be resisted by unwilling subjects. Research suggests that exposure to simple drive-or affect-related subliminal stimuli can produce ecologically significant, temporally stable changes in attitudes and behavior, and therefore may have potential for use as propaganda tools. Implications of these findings for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying subliminal perception are discussed. Technical problems which would need to be addressed before subliminal propaganda techniques could be employed are also discussed. Ethical issues raised by the use of covert attitude and behavior manipulation techniques are addressed. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is a dynamic, young, ambitious, attractive, and heterogeneous scientific discipline. It is constantly developing and changing, which makes societal evaluation of this emerging new science a challenging task, prone to misunderstandings. Synthetic biology is difficult to capture, and confusion arises not only regarding which part of synthetic biology the discussion is about, but also with respect to the underlying concepts in use. This book offers a useful toolbox to approach this complex and fragmented field. It provides a biological (...) access to the discussion using a 'layer' model that describes the connectivity of synthetic or semisynthetic organisms and cells to the realm of natural organisms derived by evolution. Instead of directly reviewing the field as a whole, firstly our book addresses the characteristic features of synthetic biology that are relevant to the societal discussion. Some of these features apply only to parts of synthetic biology, whereas others are relevant to synthetic biology as a whole. In the next step, these new features are evaluated with respect to the different areas of synthetic biology. Do we have the right words and categories to talk about these new features? In the third step, traditional concepts like "life" and "artificiality" are scrutinized with regard to their discriminatory power. This approach may help to differentiate the discussion on synthetic biology. Lastly our refined view is utilized for societal evaluation. We have investigated the public views and attitudes to synthetic biology. It also includes the analysis of ethical, risk and legal questions, posed by present and future practices of synthetic biology. This book contains the results of an interdisciplinary research project and presents the authors' main findings and recommendations. They are addressed to science, industry, politics and the general public interested in this upcoming field of biotechnology. (shrink)

In contrast to the recent rise to economic importance of offshore finance centres (OFCs), the topic of taxation has so far created little interest among scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This paper makes two contributions to addressing this lacuna. Applying a range of influential normative theories of ethics, it first offers an ethical evaluation of tax havens. Second, the paper examines what use large firms that are headquartered in two OFCs—Bermuda and the Cayman Islands—make of formal CSR tools. (...) The emerging duplicity in tax havenbased companies professing social responsibility highlights once more the political nature of CSR, where at least some firms and/or industries can successfully limit government power to enact regulation as well as shape the discourse around CSR. The study of CSR in OFC-based firms thus calls into question the usefulness of the often quoted definition of CSR as going beyond the law. (shrink)

It is well-known that racism is encoded into the social practices and institutions of medicine. Less well-known is that racism is encoded into the material artifacts of medicine. We argue that many medical devices are not merely biased, but materialize oppression. An oppressive device exhibits a harmful bias that reflects and perpetuates unjust power relations. Using pulse oximeters and spirometers as case studies, we show how medical devices can materialize oppression along various axes of social difference, including race, gender, (...) class, and ability. Our account uses political philosophy and cognitive science to give a theoretical basis for understanding materialized oppression, explaining how artifacts encode and carry oppressive ideas from the past to the present and future. Oppressive medical devices present a moral aggregation problem. To remedy this problem, we suggest redundantly layered solutions that are coordinated to disrupt reciprocal causal connections between the attitudes, practices, and artifacts of oppressive systems. (shrink)

Bayesian methods are currently underdoing a deep transformation due to the use of computing power. The aim of this chapter is to analyze this transformation by examining a specific example: the use of Baysian methods in climate science.

Hippocampal neurogenesis has been implicated in the pathogenesis of and recovery from depression. However, most of the underlying studies were endpoint investigations in experimental animals yielding conflicting results, and it has been under debate to which extent these results could be transferred to human patients. Now, researchers have developed a powerful new tool to address these questions by a non‐invasive method in humans and animals in vivo, using magnetic resonance spectroscopy to detect a biomarker for proliferating progenitor cells that give (...) rise to new neurons.1 This makes it possible to study the role of neural progenitor cells in a wide variety of human brain disorders. BioEssays 30:806–810, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

A kind of “ruthless reductionism” characterized the experimental practices of the first two decades of molecular and cellular cognition. More recently, new research tools have expanded experimental practices in this field, enabling researchers to image and manipulate individual molecular mechanisms in behaving organisms with an unprecedented temporal, sub-cellular, cellular, and even circuit-wide specificity. These tools dramatically expand the range and reach of experiments in MCC, and in doing so they may help us transcend the worn-out and counterproductive debates (...) about “reductionism” and “emergence” that divide neuroscientists and philosophers alike. We describe examples of these new tools and illustrate their practical power by presenting an exemplary recent case of MCC research using them. From these tools and results, we provide an initial sketch of a new image of the behaving organism in its full causal-interactive complexity, with its molecules, cells, and circuits combined within the single system that it is. This new image stands in opposition to the traditional “levels” image of the behaving organism, and even the initial sketch we provide of it here offers hope for avoiding the dreary metaphysical debates about “emergence” and “downward causation,” and even the reduction vs. anti-reduction dispute, all dependent upon the familiar “levels” image. (shrink)