This paper develops a new ascending-price multi-unit auction protocol that has following characteristics: it has an open format, sincere bidding is an equilibrium strategy even if the marginal utilities of each agent can increase and agents can submit false-name bids. False-name bids are bids submitted under fictitious names such as multiple e-mail addresses, which can be done easily in the Internet. This is the first protocol that has these two characteristics. (...) We show that our new protocol outperforms an existing protocol, which satisfies, with respect to the social surplus and the seller's revenue. (shrink)

This paper presents a new multi-unit auction protocol that is robust against false-name bids. Internet auctions have become an integral part of Electronic Commerce and a promising field for applying agent and Artificial Intelligence technologies. Although the Internet provides an excellent infrastructure for executing auctions, the possibility of a new type of cheating called false-name bids has been pointed out. A false-name bid is a bid submitted under a fictitious (...) class='Hi'>name. A protocol called LDS has been developed for combinatorial auctions of multiple different items and has proven to be robust against false-name bids. Although we can modify the LDS protocol to handle multi-unit auctions, in which multiple units of an identical item are auctioned, the protocol is complicated and requires the auctioneer to carefully pre-determine the combination of bundles to obtain a high social surplus or revenue. For the auctioneer, our newly developed IR protocol is easier to use than the LDS, since the combination of bundles is automatically determined in a flexible manner according to the declared evaluation values of agents. The evaluation results show that the IR protocol can obtain a better social surplus than that obtained by the LDS protocol. (shrink)

The practical importance of auction theory is widely recognized. Indeed, economists have been recognized for their contribution to the design of several auction-like mechanisms, such as the U. S. Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions, the 3G auctions in Europe and beyond, and the auction markets for electricity markets around the world. This book provides a step-by-step, self-contained treatment of the theory of auctions. The aim is to provide an introductory textbook that will allow students and readers with a calculus background (...) to work through all the basic results. Coverage includes: the basic independent-private-model; the effects of introducing correlation in valuations on equilibrium behaviour and the seller's expected revenue; mechanism design; and the theory of multi-object auctions. The paperback edition of the text includes a new chapter which acts as a guide to current developments in auction theory. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary enterprise aimed at explaining cognition and behavior. It appears to be succeeding. What accounts for this apparent explanatory success? According to one prominent philosophical thesis, cognitive neuroscience explains by discovering and describing mechanisms. This "mechanist thesis" is open to at least two interpretations: a strong metaphysical thesis that Carl Craver and David Kaplan defend, and a weaker methodological thesis that William Bechtel defends. I argue that the metaphysical thesis is false and that the (...) methodological thesis is too weak to account for the explanatory promise of cognitive neuroscience. My argument draws support from a representative example of research in this field, namely, the neuroscience of decision-making. The example shows that cognitive neuroscience explains in a variety of ways and that the discovery of mechanisms functions primarily as a way of marshaling evidence in support of the models of cognition that are its principle unit of explanatory significance. -/- The inadequacy of the mechanist program is symptomatic of an implausible but prominent view of scientific understanding. On this view, scientific understanding consists in an accurate and complete description of certain "objective" explanatory relations, that is, relations that hold independently of facts about human psychology. I trace this view to Carl Hempel's logical empiricist reconceptualization of scientific understanding, which then gets extended in Wesley Salmon's causal-mechanistic approach. I argue that the twin objectivist ideals of accuracy and completeness are neither ends we actually value nor ends we ought to value where scientific understanding is concerned. -/- The case against objectivism motivates psychologism about understanding, the view that understanding depends on human psychology. I propose and defend a normative psychologistic framework for investigating the nature of understanding in the mind sciences along three empirically-informed dimensions: 1) What are the ends of understanding? 2) What is the nature of the cognitive strategy that we deploy to achieve those ends; and 3) Under what conditions is our deployment of this strategy effective toward achieving those ends? To articulate and defend this view, I build on the work of Elliot Sober to develop a taxonomy of psychologisms about understanding. Epistemological psychologism, a species of naturalism, is the view that justifying claims about understanding requires appealing to what scientists actually do when they seek understanding. Metaphysical psychologism is the view that the truth-makers for claims about understanding include facts about human psychology. I defend both views against objections. (shrink)

I analyze optimal auction design in the presence of linear type-dependent negative externalities. I characterize the properties of the optimal mechanism when externalities are “strongly decreasing” and “increasing” in the agent’s valuation and I discuss its implementation with sealed-bid auctions. Interestingly, bidding strategies are not necessarily increasing in valuations, and the optimal mechanism can be implemented by setting a price ceiling instead of a reserve price.

The design and analysis of norms is a somewhat neglected topic in AI and Law, but this is not so in other areas of Computer Science. In recent years powerful techniques to model and analyse norms have been developed in the Multi-Agent Systems community, driven both by the practical need to regulate electronic institutions and open agent systems, and by a theoretical interest in mechanism design and normative systems. Agent based techniques often rely heavily on enforcing norms (...) using the software to prevent violation, but I will also discuss the use of sanctions and rewards, and the conditions under which compliance by autonomous agents (including humans) can be expected or encouraged without sanctions or rewards. In the course of the paper a suggested framework for the exploration of these issues is developed. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to demonstrate how cooperative sharers and uncooperative free riders can be placed in different groups of an electronic society in a decentralised manner. We have simulated an agent-based open and decentralised P2P system which self-organises itself into different groups to avoid cooperative sharers being exploited by uncooperative free riders. This approach encourages sharers to move to better groups and restricts free riders into those groups of sharers without needing centralised control. Our approach is (...) suitable for current P2P systems that are open and distributed. Gossip is used as a social mechanism for information sharing which facilitates the formation of groups. Using multi-agent based simulations we demonstrate how the adaptive behaviour of agents lead to self-organisation. We have tested with varying the gossip level and checked its impact in the system’s behaviour. We have also investigated the impact of false gossip in this system where gossip is the medium for information sharing which leads to self-organisation. (shrink)

Aspect-level sentiment classification is an interesting and challenging research task to identify the sentiment polarities of aspect words in sentences. Previous attention-based methods rarely consider the position information of aspect and contextual words. For an aspect word in a sentence, its adjacent words should be given more attention than the long distant words. Based on this consideration, this article designs a position influence vector to represent the position information between an aspect word and the context. By combining the position influence (...) vector, multi-head self-attention mechanism and bidirectional gated recurrent unit, a position-enhanced multi-head self-attention network based BiGRU model is proposed. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed model, this article makes a large number of experiments on SemEval2014 restaurant, SemEval2014 laptop, SemEval2015 restaurant, and SemEval2016 restaurant data sets. The experiment results show that the performance of the proposed PMHSAT-BiGRU model is obviously better than the baselines. Specially, compared with the original LSTM model, the Accuracy values of the proposed PMHSAT-BiGRU model on the four data sets are improved by 5.72, 6.06, 4.52, and 3.15%, respectively. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives are increasingly used as a default mechanism to address human rights challenges in a variety of industries. MSI is a designation that covers a broad range of initiatives from best-practice sharing learning platforms to certification bodies and those targeted at addressing governance gaps. Critics contest the legitimacy of the private governance model offered by MSIs. The objective of this paper is to theoretically develop a typology of MSIs, and to empirically analyze the legitimacy of one specific (...) type of MSI, namely industry-specific MSIs. We argue that industry-specific MSIs that set out to govern corporate behavior have great potential to develop legitimacy. We analyze two industry-specific MSIs—the Fair Labor Association and the Global Network Initiative—to get a better understanding of how these MSIs formed, how they define and enforce standards, and how they seek to ensure accountability. Based on these empirical illustrations, we discuss the value of this specific MSI model and draw implications for the democratic legitimacy of private governance mechanisms. (shrink)

Mechanism design is a form of optimization developed in economic theory. It casts economists as institutional engineers, choosing an outcome and then arranging a set of market rules and conditions to achieve it. The toolkit from mechanism design is widely used in economics, policymaking, and now in building and managing online environments. Mechanism design has become one of the most pervasive yet inconspicuous influences on the digital mediation of social life. Its optimizing schemes structure online advertising markets (...) and other multi-sided platform businesses. Whatever normative rationales mechanism design might draw on in its economic origins, as its influence has grown and its applications have become more computational, we suggest those justifications for using mechanism design to orchestrate and optimize human interaction are losing traction. In this article, we ask what ideological work mechanism design is doing in economics, computer science, and its applications to the governance of digital platforms. Observing mechanism design in action in algorithmic environments, we argue it has become a tool for producing information domination, distributing social costs in ways that benefit designers, and controlling and coordinating participants in multi-sided platforms. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present implications of the seller's ability to bid in the four classical auction forms, with independent private values: English, Dutch, first‐ and second‐price auctions.Design/methodology/approachUnder each auction form, the identity of the winning bidder and the expected winning bid are compared between the case when the seller may bid and when he cannot, using equilibrium bidder strategies. The seller's incentive to bid is evaluated.FindingsThe strategies and the welfare results differ with auction type and underlying (...) information assumptions – bidders are either aware or unaware of the seller's ability to bid. In the Dutch and the first‐price auctions, seller‐bidding does not affect any classical results. In the English and the second‐price auctions, it leads to no lower expected prices than without it and higher prices with positive probability. In the English and the second‐price auctions, the seller bids above his reservation value and may unintentionally win the auction. These auctions result in inefficiency with positive probability.Practical implicationsThe English and the second‐price auctions are the most common real‐world auctions. In these auctions, the seller's ability to bid – secretly or publicly – redistributes welfare among participants and introduces a possibility of inefficiency. Making this ability publicly known does not solve the latter problem. Auctioneers must prevent the seller from bidding, or must select a different auction form when seller‐bidding is anticipated.Originality/valueThe paper clarifies to regulators, auction designers, bidders, and other readers which auction forms are susceptible to subversion by seller‐bidding and what the potential damages are. (shrink)

A session-based recommendation system is designed to predict the user’s next click behavior based on an ongoing session. Existing session-based recommendation systems usually model a session into a sequence and extract sequence features through recurrent neural network. Although the performance is greatly improved, these procedures ignore the relationships between items that contain rich information. In order to obtain rich items embeddings, we propose a novel Recommendation Model based on Multi-channel Convolutional Neural Network for session-based recommendation, RMMCNN for brevity. Specifically, (...) we capture items' internal features from three dimensions through multi-channel convolutional neural network firstly. Next, we merge the internal features with external features obtained by a GRU unit. Then, both internal features and external features are merged by an attention mechanism together as the input of the transformation function. Finally, the probability distribution is taken as the output after the softmax function. Experiments on various datasets show that our method's precision and recommendation performance are better than those of other state-of-the-art approaches. (shrink)

The complex organization of syntax in hierarchical structures is one of the core design features of human language. Duality of patterning refers, for instance, to the organization of the meaningful elements in a language at two distinct levels: a combinatorial level, where meaningless forms are combined into meaningful forms; and a compositional level, where meaningful forms are composed into larger lexical units. The question remains wide open regarding how such structures could have emerged. The aim of this paper is (...) to address these two aspects in a self-consistent way. First, we introduce suitable measures to quantify the level of combinatoriality and compositionality in a language, and we present a framework to estimate these observables in human natural languages. Second, we show that a recently introduced multi-agent modeling scheme, namely the Blending Game, provides a mathematical framework to address the problem of how a population of individuals can bootstrap combinatoriality and compositionality. Theoretical predictions based on this model turn out to be in good agreement with empirical data. It is remarkable that the two sides of duality of patterning emerge simultaneously as a consequence of a pure cultural dynamics in a simulated environment that contains meaningful relations, provided a simple constraint on message transmission fidelity is also considered. (shrink)

In this paper we examine optimal bidding without the independence axiom in a unified framework which allows for a clear graphical representation. Thus, we can show very simply the independence axiom to be a necessary and sufficient condition on preferences for strategical equivalence of the two first-price and second-price auctions, respectively, and for the second-price sealed-bid auction to be demand revealing. The analysis reveals that the betweenness property is necessary and sufficient for the ascending-bid auction to be demand revealing while (...) optimal bids exceed (are less than) bidders' valuations, iff preferences are quasiconcave (quasiconvex). Furthermore, it can be shown that fanning out (fanning in) leads to a higher (lower) selling-price in open than in sealed-bid auctions. (shrink)

In trying to control various aspects concerning utterance production in multi-party human–computer dialogue, argumentative considerations play an important part, particularly in choosing appropriate lexical units so that we fine-tune the degree of persuasion that each utterance has. A preliminary step in this endeavor is the ability to place an ordering relation between semantic forms (that are due to be realized as utterances, by the machine), concerning their persuasion strength, with respect to certain (explicit or implicit) conclusions. Thus, in this (...) article, we propose a mechanism for assessing utterances, in terms of their argumentative force. The framework designed conflates insights from Asher and Lascarides’ SDRT (“Segmented Discourse Representation Theory”), and from Anscombre and Ducrot’s AT (“Argumentation Theory”). These mechanisms are included in a language generation component of a multi-party dialogue system for book reservation applications (i.e., a “virtual librarian”), and thus evaluated via typical human–machine conversations. (shrink)

BOOK REVIEW Patrick Todd, OPEN FUTURE: WHY FUTURE CONTINGENTS ARE ALL FALSE, Oxford University Press, United Kingdom, 2021 Print ISBN: 9780192897916, Online ISBN: 9780191919497, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192897916.001.0001 Hardcover, $70.00, e-book, $69.99.

The paper reports experimental data on the behavior in the first-price sealed-bid auction for a varying number of bidders when values and bids are private information. This feedback-free design is proposed for the experimental test of the one-shot game situation. We consider both within-subjects and between-subjects variations. In line with the qualitative risk neutral Nash equilibrium prediction, the data show that bids increase in the number of bidders. However, in auctions involving a small number of bidders, average (...) class='Hi'>bids are above, and in auctions involving a larger number of bidders, average bids are below the risk neutral equilibrium prediction. The quartile analysis reveals that bidding behavior is not constant across the full value range for a given number of bidders. On the high value quartiles, however, the average bid–value ratio is not different from the risk neutral prediction. The behavior is different when the winning bid is revealed after each repetition. (shrink)

Concerns with cultural variation and epistemic perspectives have played major roles in experimental semantics. They dominate Li's book (2023). Li's own experimental work provides two promising explanations of the cultural variation: Chinese, but not Americans, tend to agree with a character's false statement because they think it is not her fault that she is wrong or because they are socially conforming. So, the notice argues, the cultural variation is a red herring to the theory of reference. Li preferred explanation (...) is that Chinese and Americans take different epistemic perspectives. The notice argues that this is misguided and another red herring. (shrink)

This paper defends global realism about the units of selection, the view that there is always (or nearly always) an objective fact of the matter concerning the level at which natural selection acts. The argument proceeds in two stages. First, it is argued that global conventionalist-pluralism is false. This is established by identifying plausible sufficient conditions for irreducible selection at a particular level, and showing that these conditions are sometimes satisfied in nature. Second, it is argued that local pluralism (...) – the view that while realism is true of some selection regimes, pluralist conventionalism holds for others – should also be rejected. I show that the main arguments for local pluralism are consistent with global realism. I also suggest that local pluralism offers an unacceptably disunified view of the metaphysics of selection. It follows that we should accept global realism. But this leaves open the question of how to classify so called ‘multi-level selection type 1’ (MLS1) processes, such as Wilson’s classic trait-group model for the evolution of altruism: should they be interpreted as particle selection or collective selection? On the assumption of global realism, at most one of these is correct. I argue, against global realists such as Sober, that MLS1 processes should be understood as particle, not collective, selection, due to three features of MLS1: the reducibility of collective fitness, the absence of collective reproduction, and the dispensable role of collectives. (shrink)

Agitation is one of the most common behavioural and psychological symptoms in people living with dementia. This behaviour can cause tremendous stress and anxiety on family caregivers and healthcare providers. Direct observation of PLwD is the traditional way to measure episodes of agitation. However, this method is subjective, bias-prone and timeconsuming. Importantly, it does not predict the onset of the agitation. Therefore, there is a need to develop a continuous monitoring system that can detect and/or predict the onset of agitation. (...) In this study, a multi-modal sensor platform with video cameras, motion and door sensors, wristbands and pressure mats were set up in a hospital-based dementia behavioural care unit to develop a predictive system to identify the onset of agitation. The research team faced several barriers in the development and initiation of the study, namely addressing concerns about the study ethics, logistics and costs of study activities, device design for PLwD and limitations of its use in the hospital. In this paper, the strategies and methodologies that were implemented to address these challenges are discussed for consideration by future researchers who will conduct similar studies in a hospital setting. (shrink)

We study a dynamic auction mechanism in the context of private provision of a discrete public good under incomplete information. The bidders have private valuations, and the cost of the public good is common knowledge. No bidder is willing to provide the good on her own. We show that a natural application of open ascending auctions in such environments fails dramatically: The probability of provision is zero in any equilibrium. The mechanism effectively auctions off the ‘right’ to (...) be the last one to contribute, but intuition suggests that neither player wishes to be the last one to contribute. Since the player who contributes first has the advantage of being able to free ride on the contributions of the other players, no player wants to ‘win’ the auction. (shrink)

Repression has become an empirical fact that is at once obvious and problematic. Fragmented clinical and laboratory traditions and disputed terminology have resulted in a Babel of misunderstandings in which false distinctions are imposed (e.g., between repression and suppression) and necessary distinctions not drawn (e.g., between the mechanism and the use to which it is put, defense being just one). “Repression” was introduced by Herbart to designate the (nondefensive) inhibition of ideas by other ideas in their struggle for (...) consciousness. Freud adapted repression to the defensive inhibition of “unbearable” mental contents. Substantial experimental literatures on attentional biases, thought avoidance, interference, and intentional forgetting exist, the oldest prototype being the work of Ebbinghaus, who showed that intentional avoidance of memories results in their progressive forgetting over time. It has now become clear, as clinicians had claimed, that the inaccessible materials are often available and emerge indirectly (e.g., procedurally, implicitly). It is also now established that the Ebbinghaus retention function can be partly reversed, with resulting increases of conscious memory over time (hypermnesia). Freud's clinical experience revealed early on that exclusion from consciousness was effected not just by simple repression (inhibition) but also by a variety of distorting techniques, some deployed to degrade latent contents (denial), all eventually subsumed under the rubric of defense mechanisms (“repression in the widest sense”). Freudian and Bartlettian distortions are essentially the same, even in name, except for motive (cognitive vs. emotional), and experimentally induced false memories and other “memory illusions” are laboratory analogs of self-induced distortions. Key Words: avoidance; Bartlett; defense; denial; distortion; Ebbinghaus; false-memories; Freud; inhibition; repression; suppression. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 6–21. The French philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia was born in Toulouse in 1981. This makes him rather young to have written such an imaginative work of systematic philosophy as Forme et objet , 1 the latest entry in the MétaphysiqueS series at Presses universitaires de France. But this reference to Garcia’s youthfulness is not a form of condescension: by publishing a complete system of philosophy in the grand style, he has already done what none of us (...) in the older generation of speculative realists has done so far. His book is sophisticated, erudite, rigorous, imaginatively rich, and abundant in worldly wisdom– despite the author’s conclusion that wisdom does not exist. The quality and scope of Forme et objet took few observers by surprise, since Garcia has been treated as an emerging philosopher to watch across half a decade of Parisian oral tradition. But Garcia was not just the subject of rumor, being already well known to the French public as a writer of fiction. His debut novel, La meilleure part des hommes , 2 was awarded the 2008 Prix de Flore 3 and has already appeared in English as Hate: A Romance . 4 His follow-up novel, Mémoires de la jungle , 5 made clever use of a chimpanzee narrator. Nor was Garcia only published as a novelist before last November: his philosophical study L’Image 6 had already appeared when the author was just twenty-six, a year before he was crowned by the muses at the historic Café de Flore. And then in 2011, just months before the appearance of Forme et objet , Garcia published a widely distributed work entitled Nous, animaux et humains , 7 with its focus on Jeremy Bentham’s ideas about animals. Given this prolific and versatile track record, an optimistic scenario might envisage the young Garcia as one of those combined literary/philosophical talents who appear intermittently in France across the centuries: Jean-Paul Sartre is merely the most famous recent case. While more time is needed to see how Garcia will channel his impressive mental energies, Forme et objet displays such breadth of insight that its author has a good chance to emerge as one of the leading philosophers of his generation. If we accept Aristotle’s dictum that the peak mental age is fifty-one, then to read Garcia’s massive book is to gain some idea of what European philosophy might look like in the futuristic-sounding 2030’s. The present article is confined to Forme et objet . At 486 pages, the work is obviously daunting in size. Indeed, it is even longer than it sounds, given that many of its early sections are printed in a smaller typeface to designate them as supplemental commentary to the main flow of the argument. But while the length of the book reportedly led to delays in French publication, and will probably slow the inevitable appearance of an English translation, the length of the book should not deter interested readers– much of it results from Garcia’s teacherly writing style. Whereas Quentin Meillassoux’s prose displays an arctic economy of means, Garcia’s style is reminiscent of the repeated lessons of oral classroom proceedings. Rarely is the reader given fewer than three or four chances to master an idea before the author moves on to the next. In practice, the style feels welcoming rather than long-winded. Otherwise, the structure of Forme et objet is surprisingly simple. There is a useful Introduction of less than twenty pages. Then comes Book I: Formally , running to approximately 135 pages. Here Garcia outlines the most basic features of a thing “no matter what it is,” or n’importe quoi , an everyday phrase that Garcia shapes into a technical term. This part of the book feels at times like a more amiable version of Hegel’s Science of Logic , a parallel emphasized further by the threefold articulation of its theme: 1. Thing; 2. Thing and World; 3. Being and Understanding. This is followed by the much longer Book II: Objectively , totaling more than 300 pages. It contains sixteen essay-like meditations on specific kinds of objects—including time, animals, humans, history, gender, and death. Here each chapter rolls smoothly into the next, making this second part of the book feel more like a different work of Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit . But these are merely analogies. Garcia is no Hegelian, even if the book contains a few dialectical flourishes that seem to reflect his early enthusiasm for the Frankfurt School. Forme et objet ends with a six-page Coda, followed by the usual page of acknowledgments. In what follows, I will briefly summarize each of these four parts of the book before ending with some more general remarks. Before doing so, it will be useful to situate Garcia biographically (as much as I am able) and philosophically. Though Toulouse is his native city, his formative years were spent largely in Algeria, where his family has deep roots. During our sole private conversation, Garcia mentioned that his parents are professors of literature. 8 As a student of philosopher Garcia flourished so early that many of his current ideas date to his teenaged years: “There are sentences in Forme et objet that I wrote when I was seventeen,” he said in response to a question on that cold night on the Canal St.-Martin. I recalled that remark when reading his brilliant account, late in the book, of the central role of adolescence in contemporary culture. While many prodigies blow through their formal academic training without serious obstruction, Garcia’s student memories are rich in tales of isolation and struggle, though equally rich in gratitude for a half-dozen or so exceptional teachers who provided the intellectual space he needed: Meillassoux and Alain Badiou are simply two of the most prominent figures on that list. Though there are many points of agreement between Garcia’s philosophical position and my own, he not only reached his position years before reading my work, 9 he arrived along a rather different path: not through phenomenology, but via the Frankfurt School, which may be one of the reasons for his profound fascination with aesthetics. Garcia’s cultural background is as broad as one could wish: he is no less informed about punk rock and European football leagues than about the spiritualist roots of Bergson’s philosophy. Curious about everything and contemptuous towards nothing, Garcia can be expected to write insightfully on dozens of topics in the years to come. Given that his philosophy is so personally tantalizing in its agreements and disagreements with my own, and given the great internal richness of Forme et objet itself, the present review is no better than a first effort at coming to terms with the challenges posed by this minstrel from the rising generation. This is especially intriguing for older Generation X’ers like me, since confrontation with the younger generation is one of the many themes treated insightfully in Garcia’s book. 1. Introduction Garcia begins in defense of a so-called “flat ontology,” in which all things are equally things. While Roy Bhaskar 10 used this term pejoratively to refer to anti-realist philosophies that flatten everything onto an epistemic plane of human access, Manuel DeLanda 11 (an admirer of Bhaskar) reversed it into the positive principle that all realities are equally realities. Similar notions can be found in the “absistence” of Alexius Meinong, 12 the “irreduction” of Bruno Latour, 13 and my own critique 14 of the undermining/overmining pair. Also noteworthy is Levi Bryant’s use of the term “flat ontology” throughout The Democracy of Objects 15 and his earlier essay “The Ontic Principle.” 16 But for Garcia, flatness is only one face of the cosmos, and one that he ultimately declares to be rather impoverished. Even so, he always remains an advocate of a flat ontology. Insofar as everything is equally something, no matter what it is ( n’importe qui ), everything is equally a thing, equally solitary in its relation with world. This is why his book abounds in those long lists of random, ontologically equivalent entities that Ian Bogost has playfully termed “Latour Litanies.” 17 The first litany in Garcia’s book runs as follows: “We live in this world of things, where a cutting of acacia, a gene, a computer-generated image, a transplantable hand, a musical sample, a trademarked name, or a sexual service are comparable things.” (7) Yet Garcia is frankly dualistic; his flat ontology only lasts until page 159 and the end of Book I (entitled “Formally”), which deals entirely with things that are equally things. Thereafter Garcia turns his attention from things to objects, which are not flat in the least, but engage in hierarchical relations with one another. In agreement with both DeLanda and the speculative realists, Garcia proclaims that his book “proposes to put to the test a thought about things rather than a thought about our thought about things .” (8) Just as ducklings are “imprinted” (9) after hatching and treat the first creature they see as their mother, philosophers are imprinted by the idea with which they begin. Hence, philosophies that begin with human access will never truly find their way back to things. This makes Garcia rather suspicious of twentieth century philosophy, since “the twentieth century—to which in some way this work proposes to bid adieu—has been a period of theorizing modes of access to things rather than things...” (9) Among other possible benefits of the philosophy of things that Garcia proposes, it is fully able to account for thought as a special variant of things, while the reverse is not possible.(10) In Book I of Forme et objet , Garcia’s “things” are so flat, so de-determined, that he is forced to renounce some of the most basic features ascribed to things by most realists. As he tells us in his foreboding third footnote: “We will maintain that the solitude [of things] is less than unity, less than identity, and that it does not imply acceptance (any more than refusal) of the principle of non-contradiction.” (11) In a contemporary world cluttered with too many things, Garcia’s flat and formal plane provides us with some breathing room: “The formal plan of thought enables or re-enables us to cut short all accumulation—whether of knowing, experience, or action—by a simplicity, an impoverished surface...” (13) As Garcia says elsewhere in responding to a Deleuzian critic of the book, his starting point in flat ontology is designed to obstruct the claims of both analytic philosophy and Hegelianism: “Hence, this work seeks to protect each thing—real, imaginary, inconsistent, contradictory—both against Ockham’s Razor and against the Aufhebung or dialectical process.” 18 Yet contrary to the equalizing spirit of many flat ontologies, “we will add to our formal ontology of the equal, an objective ontology of the unequal.” (13) But initially, Garcia joins all flat ontologists in holding that everything is irreducible: “this irreducibility, which we will term the ‘chance’ of each thing... also marks the refusal of a positive thought that reduces things exclusively to natural things, or social things, or historical things, etc.” (15) This irreducible “chance” of a thing emerges as an important technical term in the book, always paired with its inverted brother, the “price to pay” ( prix à payer ). On pages 17-19, we find the only diagrams in the book. What they illustrate is that Garcia wishes to avoid two equally dangerous extremes. The first is the philosophy of substance, featuring the thing-in-itself as a mighty river fed by attributes as if by subordinate tributary streams. This model can be found in many of the classic thinkers of West and East alike. In it, “there is obviously a hierarchization between that which is dragged towards something other than itself, and this other which serves it as an ontological support while supporting its proper being.” (16) For Garcia, the second extreme worth avoiding is the philosophy of events: “One thus conceives trajectories of being, identified as events, facts, powers, intensities, or intentionality. These vectors of being come first, bearing and supporting being, displacing it, but without ever finding a stopping point, a buffer, an objective consistency.” (17) The first model gives us a thing too wrapped up in itself, too compact . This word “compact” (the French and the English are the same) is another technical term for Garcia. But if the “compact” model of things leads us to something more than things, the philosophy of events gives us less than things, by dissolving them into a play of vectors. Garcia’s alternative lies midway between these two extremes: Being enters the thing, being comes out of it. And a thing is nothing other than the difference between the enters and the being that comes out. Thus, the circuit of being is never halted. In the thing, there is never the thing-in-itself. And the thing is never in-itself, but outside of itself. Nonetheless, being is not eventally “pollinated” by vectors: it possesses an objecting halting-point... (19) This single idea is the key to Garcia’s book: the thing is neither a self-contained durable lump nor some sort of evental flux. Instead, the thing is the difference between its various components and its relations with its environment. Or stated differently: “the price to pay for this disposition is a circulation of being that systematically distinguishes two senses of things: that which is in the thing , and that in which the thing is , or that which encompasses it and that which it encompasses,” (19) translating comprendre here as “encompass.” 19 In a beautiful description of a piece of black slate, Garcia sums up the various minerals, qualities, and shapes that compose [ comprend ] it, and calls them “that which is in the thing,” (20) noting that this tells us nothing about “that in which [the slate] is”—namely, all the various situations in which the black slate can be found. Instead, the slate is the difference between these two: the most characteristic principle of Garcia’s philosophy. 2. Formally Book One of Forme et objet , “Formally,” is concerned with the formal equality of all things in a flat world. “Two questions mark the boundaries of reflection: of what is everything composed [ composé ], and: what do all things compose?” (27) Looking downward, we wish to know what everything is made of; looking upward, we want to know the ultimate result of the combination of all things. Here we must turn our attention to the thing n’importe quoi— no matter what it is. (30) Anything with finite qualities is obviously too specific to be relevant to global ontological questions. To an equal degree, something possessing all qualities (think of Whitehead’s God) 20 would not be n’importe quoi either, since it would still be too definite, even if incredibly vast. The same holds for contradictions, since these all differ from each other. The square circle, the non-white black white, and the non-city city are all too distinct to count as the thing no matter what it is. The n’importe quoi must be devoid of all specific qualities, including contradictory ones. In one of the more intriguing points in his book, so reminiscent of Meinong, Garcia proclaims that “the ‘no matter what it is’ is neither a reality nor an abstract construction, nor both of these at once; the ‘no matter what it is’ is simply the plane of equality of that which is real, that which is possible, that which is inexistent, that which is past, that which is impossible, that which is true, that which is false, that which is bad.”(39-40) Since everything has two faces, it would be a grievous mistake to focus on just one of them at the expense of the other, as physicalism or materialism do when reducing the world to minuscule physical underpinnings. For scientistic materialism, “it is either atoms, particles, or fields of force... which are the things.” (47-48) Moreover, “these more-than-things are accompanied by less-than-things: for example, ideas or facts of consciousness are determined by the state of matter and are not autonomous things, but manifestations reduced to secondary effects of material processes...” (48) On this point, Garcia’s position is in complete accord with my own critique of undermining and overmining. 21 Where we disagree is that Garcia is more deeply suspicious of the notion of substance, which I view as salvageable with a few needed changes, while Garcia sees this operation as hopeless: “A substance, in the history of philosophy, is the more-than-thing par excellence.” (51) Another agreement between our positions is visible when Garcia claims (correctly, in my opinion) “that it is vain to distinguish between things which are material and those which are not.” (52) Yet we also find an even more important disagreement, since for Garcia withdrawal cannot be the quality of a thing. Instead, the absence of a thing is simultaneous with it, embodied in all that is not it– the absence of the sculpture of a woman is to be found in the mold that appears at the same time as it, and thus withdrawal must be viewed as an “event” rather than as something pertaining to an object. For Garcia, nothing withdraws beyond access. Since we must distinguish between “that which is something” and “that which something is,” and since the former is identified with “no matter what it is is” and the latter with “ not no matter what it is,” we can say that “everything is thus a milieu, a fragile link between ‘no matter what it is’ and ‘ not no matter what it is.’” (62) And here we find Garcia’s critique of the thing-in-itself: “A thing is never defined en bloc . We can affirm that a thing is this or that, but that does not suffice. It is still necessary to state precisely that which is this thing .” (62) Stated differently, “something is not in itself : for that which is in the thing is not the thing, and that in which the thing is is not the thing.” (62) And here Garcia and I, facing the same evidence, draw opposite conclusions. For me, the fact that nothing can be identified with either its components or its concrete location means that the thing must be something in-itself distinct from both of these. Yet for Garcia, to be in-itself would mean to be identified with just one of these two extreme terms, and hence the thing can only be the difference between them. Garcia is equally suspicious of the classical tendency to view “unity” as a property of the thing, since in his eyes unity is too relational a property to belong to things. (65) While specific things are situated determinately with respect to other things, we are still speaking here about the thing no matter what it is, and this can be viewed only in terms of solitude, which all things share: a human being, a hand, or a chair or all equally things insofar as they are on their own , not insofar as they are one . (64) A thing is alone, and relates only to the one thing that is not another thing: world. In a striking parallel to my own argument for a partial revival of occasionalism, Garcia tells us that “the things communicate only by their solitude: it is because everything is equally on its own in the world that things can be together, enmeshed in one another.” (67) Alone in their solitude, things all relate to world, which serves as a mediator allowing them to become mixed up in one another. As we have seen, one reason that nothing can be in itself is because everything is in something else. For Garcia, “to be in something and to be something are equivalent.” (69) Stated more broadly, “being is thus the difference between the two aspects of each thing: that which is it, and that which it is.” (70) And even more vividly: “a thing is almost like a sack: there is that which one puts in the sack and that which remains outside the sack.” (70) But not quite like a sack, “since a thing is not a thin skin or film. Instead, a thing is comparable to a sack that is immaterial and without thickness: it is nothing other than the difference between that which is this thing and that which thing is, between content and container.” (71) Nothing can be in-itself because everything is two selves at once. For example, we cannot say that our self is defined by our consciousness: “Everything has a self because nothing is in itself. The self is not the quality of that which is related to itself (which is conscious, for example) or which thinks itself related to itself. Nonetheless, for an entity called ‘conscious’ to be related to itself, it is necessary that this very relation should be another thing than the self to which it is related.” (71) Consciousness cannot be the self, precisely because it is other than that of which it is conscious. Nothing is able to grasp itself. The self is “the function by which being and composition [ compréhension ] are mutually excluded...” (72) The self is “the point of shadow of everything that projects some light...” (72) The in-itself faces two opposite dangers: “For something to be in-itself is to be a self. Something which is a self flies out through one of its two sides... Stated differently, being in-itself is simply the possibility of a double failure.” (73) The in-itself can be termed compact : “There remains to us a means of thinking that which does not fully enter into the world, though without exiting from it. This means is what we call the compact.” (76) In a sense, the compact is the opposite of the world. For in the case of the world, everything enters it and it enters nothing; as for the compact, it enters the world (since it is something, after all) while nothing enters it. (77) The compact marks the presence of the impossible in the world. (78) It is not impossible, but possible only on the condition that it fails. (78) The time has come to speak of where a thing is located. “The sole condition of a thing is that of being in another thing than itself, and thus in another thing than something.” (78) A condition is “that which determines something, that which forms something, that in which something is.” (78) As for humans, “the condition of someone is his situation; my social condition is that which socially determines me, my place and my function...” (79) More generally, “to be conditioned is to find oneself reduced to that in which one is.” (79) Everything is conditioned, but nothing is reducible to this condition. To determine the condition of something is to determine in what it is. A thing is located in that which contradicts it, just as a statue exists in its mold, which is precisely that which it is not. Since the thing is finite and definite, its condition or form must be infinite and indefinite. That in which all things are is the world, which Garcia also terms “the whole.” (81) “To try to be in-itself is to attempt to remain outside the world. And indeed, to try to be in-itself is only a path of entry into the world.” (83) For Garcia, “the world is not the pre-existent container of the things it contains, a priori , nor the construction by the mind of a fictional ensemble of all things, a posteriori .” (85) Instead, the world is simultaneous with all things; the two always go together. The world cannot be a determinate world, such as the physical universe or mathematical space, since these are already too specific and limited. “Every determinate world, which is in fact a universe , is a ‘big thing’ [ grosse chose ]: it is a set, however vast, of composite things which itself embodies a thing.” (85) Every determinate world is really just a “big thing.” Stated differently, “it is nothing other than a balanced milieu between the things that compose it and the thing that it composes.” (85) We generally picture the world as a physical univer. (shrink)

Multi-point Temperature Measurement has always been very important aspect of physical instrumentation mainly in environmental and Industrial application. A multi-point temperature measurement system has been developed to measure temperature at different points simultaneously. This multi-channel system is designed specifically for measuring snow temperature at 28 different points In snow layers and this multi-point data is used in modeling of snow cover. The interfacing of such multi-channel system to Data acquisition system is one of the most (...) critical design aspects, which affect the overall performance of the system. The temperature sensor system and Data Acquisition System may be working satisfactorily when operated independently but total system integrity is absolutely important when these two sub-systems are interfaced together. Further operating conditions in snow causes many performance and reliability issues to be tackled through proper design. This paper discusses the design aspects involved in the interfacing of the multi-channel temperature measurement system with the Data Acquisition System specifically for Snow hydrological applications. (shrink)

Ijmā is ranked as the third shariah evidence after the Qur’ān and Sunnah in the science of Uṣūl. Shafi was the first one who made Uṣūl which had been known and used by the Islamic scholars, into a written document and who ascertained that Ijmā was the third of the shariah evidences. Kalām is one of the sciences in which Ijmā evidence is used. The scholars of Kalām used this evidence as far as the science of Uṣūl made it possible. (...) They always used it without changing any basics of religious beliefs and acceptances. That the aqidah of Ahl al-Sunnah has been supported with Ijmā which is regarded as one of naqly evidences, played an important role in eliminating suspicions which were tried to be aroused in momins’ mind. In this article, the function and importance of Ijmā evidence, which is one of the primary sources of the science of Uṣūl, in the science of Kalām and Aqidah of Ahl al-Sunnah has been studied.SummaryWhat the Qur’ān demands from us is to emphasize the spirit of unity among ummah and to keep out the factors that could trigger separation and division. Indeed, Allah emphasizes in the following verses in the Qur’ān on the protection of the unitary structure of the ummah: “And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided” (Āl a-Imrān 3/103) and “And do not be like the ones who became divided and differed after the clear proofs had come to them” (Āl al-Imrān 3/105). Allah has commanded the Ulul ‘Azm Prophets to hold the religion upright and to avoid division. (al-Shūrā 42/13). The command of holding the religion upright and not to be divided in this religion means to certify what needs to be confirmed in the religion of Allah and to obey those that must be obeyed. This is also the proclamation of the principle of religion that all the prophets have consensus over.Ahl al-Sunnah understanding of Islam is identical to the understanding of the Prophet and his companions. For this reason, Ahl al-Sunna is the school that represents the main backbone of Islam. In Ahl al-Sunna, in many subjects, be it usūlî / primary or furū’ī / secondary, there has been ijmā. These ijmās are Sahaba ijmās and deductive ijmās that come from mutakallimūn (theologians) ijtihāds. Therefore, ijmā and ijtihād are closely connected to each other. Ijmā is supported by ijtihād and ijtihād is also the source of ijmā. Thus, the issue is no longer just a pure ijtihād; it turns out to be a degree that gives a solid knowledge after it has risen to some degree just after the nass/texts.Ahl al- Sunnah theologians are talking about two kinds of ijmā. The first is “ijmā taṣdīqī” (approval consensus) which is the consensus based on Sahaba İjmā. These are the ijmās that occur on the principles called ḍaruratal-diniyya (necessities of the religion), and accepted as solid proofs in religion. Issues such as the principles of faith, obligation of prayer and the fasting are the subjects that are determined by the solid/definite ijmā. Such ijmās are valid approvals on existing provisions. These ijmās based on solid nass (verses and hadiths). Such ijmās do not give any new information. The existing information is strengthened by the alliance of Muslims. In these areas, ijtihād cannot be done and Muslims do not need ijtihād on these issues. There is an consensus of Ahl al-Sunnah scholars about the unfaithfulness of the one who denies one or more of the principles which are accepted as the main obligatory principles in Islam. The other is the “deductive ijmā which the ijtihāds have roles over. This kind of ijmās, are formed as a result of mujtahids’ consensus over the same opinion on the issue of theological secondary issues. The issues related to the secondary theological issues which were open to the ijtihāds and the different results obtained on matters are not accepted as the cause of takfīr. However, depending on the subject he/she can be a sinner. Istidlālī/deductive ijmās are not considered as an independent proofs in ‘Ilm al-Kalām, rather a supportive ones and are considered as textual evidences.Since, texts that are accepted as sources give supposed information. In this regard, the Ahl al-Sunnah scholars accepted other members of the sect who have in secondary theological issues opposed the ijmā of the salaf / predecessor as Ahl al-Qibla, but named them as Ahl al-Bid’a (innovator in religion) because of their opposition to Salaf’s İjmās. Moreover, the scholars of the Ahl al-Sunnah did not see them appropriate to participate in the Ijmās, which could occur between the generations that come after Sahābas/companions.Not all disputes have been criticized in Islam. It is a blessing for the ummah to claim different opinions on the issues subject to ijtihād. Since the ummah, in this way, will bring new solutions to emerging issues and as a result, Islam will have a mechanism to produce a dynamic solution. This can only be possible through ijtihād. Dispute is to propose different views on a subject. If this view is not in the actual matters that could harm the unity of the Ummah, rather in the case of ijtihādi issues, this conflict could turn to be mercy.The reason why the methodists evaluate the ijmā within the scope of the authorized evidence is that because they think it is essential that the ijmā be based on a proof. From this point of view, the alliances that occurred in mental matters were not considered as ijmā. The theologians always tried to support their claims with nass/textual proofs. When the ijmā is realized, whether known or not, they have stated that there is certainly a religious proof behind it. Because, the provisions that were reached through ijmā, cannot be against the provisions of the Prophet.Many issues in Islamic Belief and Kalām works are supported by the mental and textual evidences as well as by deductive ijmā. However, many of the claims of Ijmās in these works reflect the inter-sect ijmās of the Ahl al-Sunnah. The sects outside the Ahl al-Sunnah were excluded. This attitude is, above all, the aim of ensuring the integrity within the sect, and trying to protect the Ahl al-Sunnah belief. Since the ijmā evidence has a function that prevents all kinds of arbitrary and divisive thoughts and turns the supposed knowledge into the qat’ī/certain one, it raises the provision to the next level just after the nass, rather than merely being a ijtihādi provision. In the case of the forerunner of the Ahl al-Sunnah, the Māturīdes and Ash‘arites have not differed in in understanding of ijmā in terms of methodology.Although they have different views on the definition and content of the ijmā, they have a common understanding of alliances of Mujtahids on the same view. The mutakallims (theologians) of Māturīdī and Ash’arī schools have used the proof of ijmā as supportive evidence in the cases related to Kalām. al-Ash’arī not only adopted the proof of ijmā but also used it in practice in. He did not make any distinction in proof of ijmā as practical, theological, methodological or sub-divisional; he used it freely in every field. Māturīdī and Ash’arī scholars decided that the ijmā could occur in religious matters and that there would be evidence when it was formed; In the case of mental issues, they have required the knowledge to be based on solid information. In the case of ijmā in purely mental issues, they have disputed over the issue. While some Ahl al-Sunnah scholars stated that since purely mental matters were certain knowledge and therefore don’t need ijmā, they also ruled that because the mujtahids could get this knowledge from religious texts, therefore ijmā could occur in mental matters as well. (shrink)

This contribution investigates the use of the Czech particle jako in naturally occurring conversations. Inspired by interactional research on unfinished or suspended utterances and on turn-final conjunctions and particles, the analysis aims to trace the possible development of jako from conjunction to a tag-like particle that can be exploited for mobilizing affiliative responses. Traditionally, jako has been described as conjunction used for comparing two elements or for providing a specification of a first element [“X like Y”]. In spoken Czech, however, (...) jako can be flexibly positioned within a speaking turn and does not seem to operate as a coordinating or hypotactic conjunction. As a result, prior studies have described jako as a polyfunctional particle. This article will try to shed light on the meaning of jako in spoken discourse by focusing on its apparent fuzzy or “filler” uses, i.e., when it is found in a mid-turn position in multi-unit turns and in the immediate vicinity of hesitations, pauses, and turn suspensions. Based on examples from mundane, video-recorded conversations and on a sequential and multimodal approach to social interaction, the analyses will first show that jako frequently frames discursive objects that co-participants should respond to. By using jako before a pause and concurrently adopting specific embodied displays, participants can more explicitly seek to mobilize responsive action. Moreover, as jako tends to cluster in multi-unit turns involving the formulation of subjective experience or stance, it can be shown to be specifically designed for mobilizing affiliative responses. Finally, it will be argued that the potential of jako to open up interactive turn spaces can be linked to the fundamental comparative semantics of the original conjunction. (shrink)

It has been said that new discoveries and developments in the human, social, and natural sciences hang “in the air” (Bowler, 1983; 2008) prior to their consummation. While neo-Darwinist biology has been powerfully served by its mechanistic metaphysic and a reductionist methodology in which living organisms are considered machines, many of the chapters in this volume place this paradigm into question. Pairing scientists and philosophers together, this volume explores what might be termed “the New Frontiers” of biology, namely contemporary areas (...) of research that appear to call an updating, a supplementation, or a relaxation of some of the main tenets of the Modern Synthesis. Such areas of investigation include: Emergence Theory, Systems Biology, Biosemiotics, Homeostasis, Symbiogenesis, Niche Construction, the Theory of Organic Selection (also known as “the Baldwin Effect”), Self-Organization and Teleodynamics, as well as Epigenetics. Most of the chapters in this book offer critical reflections on the neo-Darwinist outlook and work to promote a novel synthesis that is open to a greater degree of inclusivity as well as to a more holistic orientation in the biological sciences. (shrink)

In this essay we collect and put together a number of ideas relevant to the under- standing of the phenomenon of creativity, confining our considerations mostly to the domain of cognitive psychology while we will, on a few occasions, hint at neuropsy- chological underpinnings as well. In this, we will mostly focus on creativity in science, since creativity in other domains of human endeavor have common links with scientific creativity while differing in numerous other specific respects. We begin by briefly (...) introducing a few basic notions relating to cognition, among which the notion of ‘concepts’ is of basic relevance. The myriads of concepts lodged in our mind constitute a ‘conceptual space’ of an enormously complex structure, where con- cepts are correlated by beliefs that are themselves made up of concepts and are as- sociated with emotions. The conceptual space, moreover, is perpetually in a state of dynamic evolution that is once again of a complex nature. A major component of the dynamic evolution is made up of incessant acts of inference, where an inference occurs essentially by means of a succession of correlations among concepts set up with beliefs and heuristics, the latter being beliefs of a special kind, namely, ones relatively free of emotional associations and possessed of a relatively greater degree of justification. Beliefs, along with heuristics, have been described as the ‘mind’s software’, and con- stitute important cognitive components of the self-linked psychological resources of an individual. The self is the psychological engine driving all our mental and physical activity, and is in a state of ceaseless dynamics resulting from one’s most intimate ex- periences of the world accumulating in the course of one’s journey through life. Many of our psychological resources are of a dual character, having both a self-linked and a shared character, the latter being held in common with larger groups of people and imbibed from cultural inputs. We focus on the privately held self-linked beliefs of an individual, since these are presumably of central relevance in making possible inductive inferences – ones in which there arises a fundamental need of adopting a choice or making a decision. Beliefs, decisions, and inferences, all have the common link to the self of an individual and, in this, are fundamentally analogous to free will, where all of these have an aspect of non-determinism inherent in them. Creativity involves a major restructuring of the conceptual space where a sustained inferential process eventually links remote conceptual domains, thereby opening up the possibility of a large number of new correlations between remote concepts by a cascading process. Since the process of inductive inference depends crucially on de- cisions at critical junctures of the inferential chain, it becomes necessary to examine the basic mechanism underlying the making of decisions. In the framework that we attempt to build up for the understanding of scientific creativity, this role of decision making in the inferential process assumes central relevance. With this background in place, we briefly sketch the affect theory of decisions. Affect is an innate system of response to perceptual inputs received either from the exter- nal world or from the internal physiological and psychological environment whereby a positive or negative valence gets associated with a perceptual input. Almost every sit- uation faced by an individual, even one experienced tacitly, i.e., without overt aware-ness, elicits an affective response from him, carrying a positive or negative valence that underlies all sorts of decision making, including ones carried out unconsciously in inferential processes. Referring to the process of inferential exploration of the conceptual space that gener- ates the possibility of correlations being established between remote conceptual do- mains, such exploration is guided and steered at every stage by the affect system, analogous to the way a complex computer program proceeds through junctures where the program ascertains whether specified conditions are met with by way of generating appropriate numerical values – for instance, the program takes different routes, depending on whether some particular numerical value turns out to be positive or negative. The valence generated by the affect system in the process of adoption of a choice plays a similar role which therefore is of crucial relevance in inferential processes, especially in the exploration of the conceptual space where remote domains need to be linked up – the affect system produces a response along a single value dimension, resembling a number with a sign and a magnitude. While the affect system plays a guiding role in the exploration of the conceptual space, the process of exploration itself consists of the establishment of correlations between concepts by means of beliefs and heuristics, the self-linked ones among the latter having a special role in making possible the inferential journey along alternative routes whenever the shared rules of inference become inadequate. A successful access to a remote conceptual domain, necessary for the creative solution of a standing problem or anomaly – one that could not be solved within the limited domain hitherto accessed – requires a phase of relatively slow cumulative search and then, at some stage, a rapid cascading process when a solution is in sight. Representing the conceptual space in the form of a complex network, the overall process can be likened to one of self-organized criticality commonly observed in the dynamical evolution of complex systems. In order that inferential access to remote domains may actually be possible, it is necessary that restrictions on the exploration process – necessary for setting the context in ordinary instances of inductive inference – be relaxed and a relatively free exploration in a larger conceptual terrain be made possible. This is achieved by the mind going into the default mode, where external constraints – ones imposed by shared beliefs and modes of exploration – are made inoperative. While explaining all these various aspects of the creative process, we underline the supremely important role that analogy plays in it. Broadly speaking, analogy is in the nature of a heuristic, establishing correlations between concepts. However, analo- gies are very special in that these are particularly effective in establishing correlations among remote concepts, since analogy works without regard to the contiguity of the concepts in the conceptual space. In establishing links between concepts, analogies have the power to light up entire terrains in the conceptual space when a rapid cas- cading of fresh correlations becomes possible. The creative process occurs within the mind of a single individual or of a few closely collaborating individuals, but is then continued by an entire epistemic community, eventually resulting in a conceptual revolution. Such conceptual revolutions make pos- sible the radical revision of scientific theories whereby the scope of an extant theory is broadened and a new theoretical framework makes its appearance. The emerging theory is characterized by a certain degree of incommensurability when compared with the earlier one – a feature that may appear strange at first sight. But incommen- surability does not mean incompatibility and the apparently contrary features of the relation between the successive theories may be traced to the multi-layered structureof the conceptual space where concepts are correlated not by means of single links but by multiple ones, thereby generating multiple layers of correlation, among which some are retained and some created afresh in a conceptual restructuring. We conclude with the observation that creativity occurs on all scales. Analogous to correlations being set up across domains in the conceptual space and new domains being generated, processes with similar features can occur within the confines of a domain where a new layer of inferential links may be generated, connecting up sub- domains. In this context, insight can be looked upon as an instance of creativity within the confines of a domain of a relatively limited extent. (shrink)

This paper analyses one specific conversational practice of formulation called ‘notionalization’. It consists in the transformation of a description by a prior speaker into a categorization by the next speaker. Sequences of this kind are a “natural laboratory” for studying the differences between descriptions and categorizations regarding their semantic, interactional, and rhetorical properties: Descriptive/narrative versions are often vague and tentative, multi unit turns, which are temporalized and episodic, offering a lot of contingent, situational, and indexical detail. Notionalizations turn (...) them into condensed, abstract, timeless, and often agentless categorizations expressed by a noun (phrase) within one turn constructional unit (TCU). Drawing on audio- and video-taped German data from various types of interaction, the paper focuses on one particular practice of notionalization, the formulation of purportedly common ground by TCUs prefaced with the connective also . The paper discusses their turn-constructional and morphological properties, pointing out affinities of notionalization with language for special purposes. Notionalizations are used for reducing detail and for topical closure. They provide grounds for emergent keywords, which can be reused to re-contextualize topical issues and interactional histories efficiently. Notionalizations are powerful means for accomplishing intersubjectivity while pursuing (sometimes one-sided) practical relevancies at the same time. Their inevitably perspective design thus may lead to re-open the issue they were deemed to settle. The paper closes with an outlook to other practices of notionalization, pointing to dimensions of interactionally relevant variation and commonalities. (shrink)

The effects of public announcements, private communications, deceptive messages to groups, and so on, can all be captured by a general mechanism of updating multi-agent models with update action models, now in widespread use. There is a natural extension of the definition of a bisimulation to action models. Surely enough, updating with bisimilar action models gives the same result. But the converse turns out to be false: update models may have the same update effects without being bisimilar. (...) We propose action emulation as a notion of equivalence more appropriate for action models, and generalizing standard bisimulation. It is proved that action emulation provides a full characterization of update effect. We first concentrate on the general case, and next focus on the important case of action models with propositional preconditions. Our notion of action emulation yields a simplification procedure for action models, and it gives designers of multi-agent systems a useful tool for comparing different ways of representing a particular communicative action. (shrink)

The effects of public announcements, private communications, deceptive messages to groups, and so on, can all be captured by a general mechanism of updating multi-agent models with update action models, now in widespread use. There is a natural extension of the definition of a bisimulation to action models. Surely enough, updating with bisimilar action models gives the same result (modulo bisimulation). But the converse turns out to be false: update models may have the same update effects without (...) being bisimilar. We propose action emulation as a notion of equivalence more appropriate for action models, and generalizing standard bisimulation. It is proved that action emulation provides a full characterization of update effect. We first concentrate on the general case, and next focus on the important case of action models with propositional preconditions. Our notion of action emulation yields a simplification procedure for action models, and it gives designers of multi-agent systems a useful tool for comparing different ways of representing a particular communicative action. (shrink)

Causal mediation mechanisms are well supported by available experimental evidence and provide a practicable way to reductive physicalism. According to the causal mediation account of mechanistic explanation, descriptions as diverse as ‘black-box’ phenomena, mechanistic sketches and schemas mixing physically interpreted and operationalized biological, psychological and social variables, and detailed descriptions of mechanisms refer to the same causal structure circumscribed within the spatiotemporal boundaries of a replicable experimental setup. The coreference of coarser- and finer-grained descriptions of causal structures opens new possibilities (...) for testing the reductive physicalism conjecture. I discuss experimental designs supporting the causal mediation account and show how recent studies demonstrating the biological mediation of mind-mind causal processes can provide evidence for reductive physicalism. (shrink)

We show that linear logic can serve as an expressive framework in which to model a rich variety of combinatorial auction mechanisms. Due to its resource-sensitive nature, linear logic can easily represent bids in combinatorial auctions in which goods may be sold in multiple units, and we show how it naturally generalises several bidding languages familiar from the literature. Moreover, the winner determination problem, i.e., the problem of computing an allocation of goods to bidders producing a certain amount of (...) revenue for the auctioneer, can be modelled as the problem of finding a proof for a particular linear logic sequent. (shrink)

This paper presents a human-computer interaction model with a three layers learning mechanism in a pervasive environment. We begin with a discussion around a number of important issues related to human-computer interaction followed by a description of the architecture for a multi-agent cooperative design system for pervasive computing environment. We present our proposed three- layer HCI model and introduce the group formation algorithm, which is predicated on a dynamic sharing niche technology. Finally, we explore the cooperative reinforcement learning (...) and fusion algorithms; the paper closes with concluding observations and a summary of the principal work and contributions of this paper. (shrink)

From an institutional perspective we contribute to corporate governance of firms by (1) proposing a procedurally fair mechanism that is ethically desirable, and (2) experimentally testing whether procedural fairness crowds-in ethical behavior of managers (on behalf of shareholders) and workers. The experiment sees one ‘manager’ and three ‘workers’ (possibly representing three sections of the firm) co-determining an efficiency-enhancing investment which could harm some workers. Firstly, the manager claims a share of the investment surplus, then workers ‘bid’ for the investment (...) to express their willingness to satisfy the manager’s claim in case the investment is implemented. If the sum of workers’ bids is less than the manager’s claim, the investment is not implementable, which means its surplus will be lost. Workers’ behavior is ‘ethical’ when they veto unfair managerial claims, because the workers have to sacrifice own earnings. Hence, a manager’s fair claim is the ethical response to the threat of workers’ veto. If the manager claims fairly, workers’ ethical behavior is to ‘truthfully’ bid their investment evaluations; by all doing so, they equally share whatever surplus the manager has left for them. The experimental results show ethical behavior of managers in the form of fair claims. Despite these fair claims, workers behave less ethically by strategically underbidding. So the procedurally fair mechanism only partially crowds-in ethical behavior. This study should interest theorists of stakeholder management, especially those engaged in designing the rules of corporate governance. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 310—311. Writing Death . Jeremy Fernando, foreword by Avital Ronell. Den Haag: Uitgeverij. 2011 ISBN: 978-90-817091-0-1 Rite and ceremony as well as legend bound the living and the dead in a common partnership. They were esthetic but they were more than esthetic. The rites of mourning expressed more than grief; the war and harvest dance were more than a gathering of energy for tasks to be performed; magic was more than a way of commanding forces of nature (...) to do the bidding of man; feasts were more than a satisfaction of hunger. Each of these communal modes of activity united the practical, the social, and the educative in an integrated whole having esthetic form.(1) Jeremy Fernando’s Writing Death is a sensitive attempt at exploring the depths and heights to which the processes of mourning can take us. Death, as an absence, renders all gestures (for what is mourning but a gesture with many faces) surrounding it at once as a possibility and an impossibility. Fernando poses questions that often elude the mourner and the mourned—the same, and different—by raising the specter of subject and object; by compelling the examination of what it actually means to mourn; and most crucially, by considering the very status of possibility itself that the act of mourning foregrounds. Mourning, he reminds us, is premised upon memory (remembrance, recollection), the shadow of forgetting upon which is perpetually cast—the inextricability between memory and forgetting haunts the living more than it does the dead. And if grief has anything to do with it, mourning can quite easily be mistaken for an attempt to remember in order to forget; an attempt, in other words, to deny death, deny the one thing that confirms mortality. As if living has anything to do with it. What, then, of writing death? It becomes an unceasing process of locating—and addressing—possibility itself: the passing as possibility; loss as possibility; impossibility as, and of, naming this possibility. In confronting the passing on, it is possible, nay inevitable, to move on, move away from the site of loss, of grief. All the while, we forget, Fernando reminds us, that mourning has little to do with the dead, and a whole lot to do with the living, the mourning self. Here, he echoes Dewey’s consolidation of rituals and ceremonies, of the dead and of the living, all as parts of a larger unity, of a social, public gesture meant to sate a private need: In trying to “get over it,” are we trying to get over ourselves? Or more than that: are we trying to get over the fact that we can never quite get over ourselves? (Fernando, 77) As if guilt has anything to do with it. And “it” continues to be the point that he is driving at, driving towards. “It” is the possibility and impossibility, death and life, memory and forgetting, lost and cherished. “It” is what eludes mourning, eludes attempts to overcome grief. Nonetheless, move on, he must. And Fernando does this in fewer moves than a 12-step program—hardly therapeutic, but intellectually satisfying. Writing Death attends to some of the pertinent aspects of the act of mourning—both as gesture and as meditation: eulogy, distress (call), tears, and the question of how (beyond ritual, beyond sentimentality) to mourn. And what’s love got to do with it? Everything and nothing. Mourning, after all, is an articulation of love, but it is also one that forces the mourner to be selective, as with myth-making, in the recollection: Remembering only ever occurs in exception to memory—quite possibly in betrayal of a memory. In this way, each remembrance is a naming of that memory, a naming of something as memory, bringing with it an act of violence. (40) Mourning is thus not only an act of fictionalizing, it is also an act of reading, to continually be compelled to respond to another, all the while keeping vigil against a reconceptualization of the dead, without, therefore, misreading the dead. This can only be done, Fernando argues, by all the while “maintaining the otherness of the other. After all, one must try not to forget that one cannot be too close—space is needed—to touch.” (82) There is also tacit acknowledgement that doing so foregrounds the fact that the selectivity of memory becomes exclusive, and concretizes into a singularity, thus negating the multi-dimensionality of a life lived – and thus killing the already dead. Writing Death is framed by two eulogies—or the approximations of eulogies; approximation because both foreground and call into question the eulogy as a genre. The first is Avital Ronell’s foreword to the book, remembering Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe; the second is Fernando’s own response to the passing of a mentor, Jean Baudrillard. Both are not merely attempts to philosophize their way out of the act of mourning. Both are in fact deeply moving pieces that remind us of the emotional possibilities that may reside within any intellectual undertaking, that the latter need not be cold and devoid of feelings. And whereas Writing Death does not attempt to make any philosophical claim for humanism, the underlying wistfulness of both pieces does suggest that there is a proper place for deep-seated human response to death. We can (and the book does) intellectualize and problematize the acts of mourning and grieving, but these do not diminish the fact that we mourn and grieve. And, framing Writing Death as the two eulogies do, Jeremy Fernando perhaps finally, and inadvertently, names “It”—it is, above everything else, Human. August, 2011 Singapore NOTES (1) Dewey, John. Art as Experience . New York: Perigee, 1934. (shrink)

As the_number of clinical trials continues to grow, there is an increasing need for education and training in the field. The clinical research climate is less forgiving of errors and oversights and therefore requires more knowledge of regulations and requirements. This brand new edition details new laws and regulations in protecting children participating in clinical trials and how a new focus on privacy of individual health information in the United States has changed how medical records are handled. Includes a manual (...) for investigators, research nurses and study coordinators with minimal experience or who are new to clinical research An easy-to-read and open text design using ‘sidebars’ of examples and information boxes related to the main text Includes a list of Frequently Asked Questions and Glossary Duke Clinical Research Institute is the world’s largest academic clinical research organisation and is well known and respected within the clinical research community. (shrink)

The social function of jazz in its theoretical aspects is the subject of the present article. The author opens his discussion with a technical analysis of jazz music, on the basis of which the social significance of jazz phenomena is elucidated.The peculiar effects of jazz music are by no means limited to the upper layers of society ; they permeate the whole of society. The music has a pseudo-democratic quality, characteristic of the monopolistic phase of capitalism.Jazz music is usually trite, (...) and its orginality, however limited, manifests itself chiefly in the variations of forms in which it is reproduced*The realm of jazz ranges from „salon music“ to the military march* The former expresses a false individualism ; the latter a false collectivism. The Jazz represents a sort of conduit between these two poles, particularly in its form of „hot music“. A theory of jazz will have to dwell especially on this ambivalence. Its meaning is explained by an analogy to eccentric clowns whose inability to obey the norm of regular movement reveals itself finally as a superiority over these rules, which allows the eccentric to play with them. Thus the idea of jazz is to prove that divergence from the norm is observed as a rule throughout the total structure.The pattern of this breaking and observing of the rule at the same time is the syncope. The mechanism of its function is interpreted as a kind of unconscious and paradoxical unity of fear and fulfillment, through obedience and reward by society. The antagonistic character of jazz is expressed by the formula that the „subject of jazz“ permits itself to be annihilated by society in order to feel itself endorsed and vindicated by society.L'article présente certains éléments d'une théorie sociale du Jazz* Il utilise en particulier l'analyse technique, dont les résultats sont interprétés comme expression psychologique de réalités sociales. Le Jazz est défini „phénomène d'interférence“ entre une liberté d'improvisation du sujet, liberté tout apparente, et l'instance sociale à laquelle le sujet est soumis et qui est représenté dans la musique par le rythme et le son fondamentaux rigidement maintenus. Le Jazz lui-même n'est pas irrationnel ou archaïque, il est donné comme tel, il est „fuite du monde des marchandises dans le monde des marchandises“ ; ses traits archaïques sont en tant que tels modernes, c'est-à-dire des régressions psychologiques. C'est pourquoi, précisément en tant que marchandise, il doit se donner à la fois pour ancien et nouveau, original et banal.A l'origine, le produit est banal, originales sont, dans des limites très étroites, les transformations de celui-ci par la reproduction. Mais l'apparente liberté de la reproduction est démasquée par la démonstration qu'elle ne touche pas à la „substance“ banale. Même la rationalisation, en apparence progressive, du processus du travail entre production et reproduction ne correspond pas à la réalité. Particulièrement importante, sur ce point,, est la signification de l'amateur comme représentant du public. Au pôle opposé on trouve la musique d'art d'hier, dépravée et dépouillée de ses éléments progressifs : celle de l'impressionnisme.L'extension du Jazz est limitée par les pôles extrêmes de la musique de salon d'une part, et de la marche d'autre part, celle-là expression d'une illusoire subjectivité, celle-ci expression d'une instance sociale inhumaine. Entre ces extrêmes la „Hot Musique“ prend une position intermédiaire paradoxale et elle s’est stabilisée aujourd’hui en „Jazz classique“. C’est celui-ci que doit considérer en premier lieu la théorie du Jazz. Celle-ci est rapprochée de la figure de 1’ „excentrique“ : de même que l’incapacité de celui-ci d’obéir aux lois du mouvement s’affirme comme un jeu supérieur, ainsi l’idée du Jazz est de démontrer la rupture de la norme — la syncope — à travers toute la structure comme l’achèvement de la norme même. Le mécanisme qui agit dans ce cas, comme dans celui des „steeps“ ralentis (Gehtanz) est de nature érotique : unité d’angoisse, de tentative d’évasion, et d’assouvissement par le fait de trouver dans la société à la fois place et récompense. (shrink)

The mechanistic framework traditionally comes bundled with a multi-level view. Some ascribe ontological weight to these levels, whereas others claim that characterising a higher-level entity and the corresponding lower-level mechanism are only different descriptions of the same thing. The goal of this paper is to develop a consistent metaphysical picture that can underly the latter position. According to this flat view, wholes and their parts are embedded in the same network of interacting units. The flat view preserves the (...) original virtues of the mechanistic approach and is able to avoid the problems associated with the multi-level view. (shrink)

Anticipatory looking on mindreading tasks can indicate our expectation of an agent's action. The challenge is that social situations are often more complex, involving instances where we need to track an agent's false belief to successfully identify the outcome to which an action is directed. If motor processes can guide how action goals are understood, it is conceivable— where that kind of goal ascription occurs in false-belief tasks— for motor representations to account for someone's belief-like state. Testing adults (...) (N = 42) in a real-time interactive helping scenario, we discovered that participants' early mediolateral motor activity (leftwards– rightwards leaning on balance board) foreshadowed the agent's belief-based action preparation. These results suggest fast belief-tracking can modulate motor representations generated in the course of one's interaction with an agent. While adults' leaning, and anticipatory looking, revealed the contribution of fast false-belief tracking, participants did not correct the agent's mistake in their final helping action. These discoveries suggest that adults may not necessarily use another's belief during overt social interaction or find reflecting on another's belief as being normatively relevant to one's own choice of action. Our interactive task design offers a promising way to investigate how motor and mindreading processes may be variously integrated. (shrink)

This research aims to show grammatical relations between the elements of the sentence based around the syntactic connection. The phenomenon of syntactic connection is one of the basic concepts for al-Jurjānī’s theory of nazm (construction). This view, which makes more understanding the structure of Arabic sentence, is studied in the light of the ideas of classic and modernists linguists. This attempt to facilitate Arabic grammar has continued routinely from relationships between grammar and meaning. The integration of grammar, which consists of (...) words, is an important property for native speakers and others. This field is open to new developments considering the successive developments in the field of linguistics. It is important to develop the principles that will help in understanding the grammatical structure of a language in which communication pathways are growing. Reinterpretation of prominent approaches appeared in classical sources and updating the concepts that explain the basic structures of language are needed to increase the effectiveness of Arabic.Summary: The linguists, who accept the language structures as a system of expressing thoughts, search out the relationship between meaning and grammar. The rules of grammar, which maintain its importance from the past to the present is one of the basic language areas. In the looking at the researches in the field of Arabic language, it is seen that the grammatical structures of this language is much emphasized. In this context, the grammatical markers theory, which is trying to explain the connection between the sentence elements in the light of different scientific disciplines, such as philosophy and logic is a theory, which the linguists put to explain the Arabic grammar. The grammatical discussions around the grammatical markers have continued for a long time. ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078) is one of the most prominent Arabic grammarians whose opinions are widely mentioned in this field. Al-Jurjānī, who found that the discipline of grammar area was limited, established a new method in language studying. In this context, the linguistic researches continue around the views of al-Jurjānī’s theory of construction. The term of construction, which describes the relationship between meaning and grammar, means composition and arrangement. The current linguistic studies have ensured the magnificence and accuracy of this theory. According to this theory, grammar meaning is arising from the choice of word and grammatical elements. The relation between words in the sentence is explained as a construction. According to al-Jurjānī, grammar is the result of various language skills beyond the distinction of truth and error. This comprehensive language understanding, which evaluates the grammar from a different point of view, has started as of Sībawayhi (d. 180/796). The Arabic linguistic studies from the early period are characterized by taking care of both form and meaning, in addition to semantic.Term of the syntactic connection is one of the basic concepts, which al-Jurjānī focuses on while explaining views on grammar. He gives much importance to the method of linking words and to the way they join each other to form sentences. The syntactic connection is an interaction between words and grammatical meanings. In this process, the mechanism of affixation and association occur between the elements of sentence. The term affixation refers to direct connection relations of the elements of sentence, while the term association refers to indirect relations. This term used to describe the grammar structures, is also closely related with the meanings of the words. The basic sentence in classical Arabic consists of the musnad and the musnad ilayhi. In the Arabic language, besides the basic elements of the sentence, other units are important as well. These units work together to express a central idea that may be further developed or refined by other elements. The factor, which determines the function of a word in the sentence, is the place of word. In this context, the linguistic studies carried out within the syntactic connection will make an important contribution to language teaching.The other thing in the context of the syntactic connection is the terms of “deep and surface structure”, which are the basic concepts of the transformational grammar theory developed by Chomsky. While the deep structure consists of simple sentence structures, the surface structure is composed of sentences. According to the transformational grammar theory, the deep structure is an important factor for determining the meaning. They draw attention to the mental side of the language. It is because the language is a phenomenon, which produces unlimited sentences with limited elements. In this form, the language cannot be explained by a mechanical interpretation. The language should be examined in the light of human dynamics. The competence and performance are the cause of the emergence of deep and surface structure terms. The purpose of the word is effective in determining the structure of speech. The target language is to express unlimited meanings with limited words. Classical Arabic grammarians have introduced the idea of transformation to Arabic grammar – though they may not know this term. The Arabic grammarians have talked about preposing, postposing, deletion, increase and interpretation, which used and developed by Chomsky. Transformational grammar theory has produced a new paradigm in grammar. This theory is widely discussed among modern linguists. The term grammatical coherence is a new terminology used by the modern linguists for definition of sentence structure. This term, which shows evidence and relation between both things, is divided into two namely: verbal and semantic coherence. When the definitions of grammatical terms in the classical grammar sources, it is possible to see the emphasis of the grammatical coherences. This language understanding, which tries to substitute the inflection theory, aims to bring innovations in sentence analysis. The linguists point to the importance of this theory, which bring a new perspective in understanding the Arabic grammar. Tammām Ḥassān (1918-2011) attempts to link the grammatical coherences with ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī’s theory of semantic formation and its relationship to linguistic analysis. Tammām Ḥassān, likened to Sībawayhi, is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the innovative language understanding with his theory. According to him, the system of language, which provides a framework to shape man's thinking, is constituted by three subsystems: phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. Grammar may be defined as a system of word changing and other means of expressing relations of words in the sentence. In this context, the concepts of syntagmatic and paradigmatic structure are important to understand the general structure of languages. According to linguistics, grammar should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of sentences. The syntagmatic structure refers to the relationship between language units depending on the language system in the language. The relationship network between words that belong to the same semantic field is called paradigmatic structure. The paradigmatic structure provides similar criteria for all languages. Such approaches that introduced by linguistics, provides significant contributions to language learning. The modern linguistic studies have made the sentence a starting point to clarify the linguistic structures and relations to achieve the sound linguistic communication. A sentence is the largest unit in a language described by grammar. (shrink)

The multi-disciplinary unit Social Responsibility in Action was developed for students with an interest in ethics who were completing undergraduate degrees in Arts, Commerce, Design or Science at an Australian research-intensive university. The academic objectives of this unit were to increase student awareness, knowledge, understanding and critical thinking skills related to various ethical issues. Lecturers from five disciplines collaborated in the design and delivery of SRA, which comprised lectures, tutorials and a research-based project. Anonymous surveys were administered (...) at the start and end of the semester to obtain feedback on student expectations and learning experience, respectively. Data across three student cohorts showed that at the start of semester, 80% of student comments indicated a desire to expand their interest of ethical matters, 59% a desire to gain understanding and knowledge and 59% to gain critical thinking or communication skills. SRA was extremely well received by students, with 98% of respondents indicating that this multi-disciplinary ethics unit had met their expectations. Students also found that the variety of teaching styles, unit content and multi-disciplinary approach stimulated learning. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Henri Bergson’s notion of the meaning of life by focusing on two places where he discusses it in his work. The first is Creative Evolution (1907, CE), where a bio-ontological meaning of life is proposed in terms of the ongoing ‘advance’ of the élan vital. Bergson conceives of this vital tendency towards freer activity in terms of nature’s pursuit of a mechanics that would triumph over mechanism. The second is a lesser-known paper called ‘Psycho-physical (...) Parallelism and Positive Metaphysics’ (1901, ‘PPPM’), where Bergson articulates the same themes concerning the evolutionary relationship between life and matter, only this time gives an ethical rendition of the meaning of life. Discerning the true sense of the distinction between mind and body, he claims, will allow us to understand the reason they ‘unite and collaborate’, and thereby to speculate on thought’s apparent trajectory towards an independence from matter. While the latter position appears to be inscribed within the former, this continuity nonetheless resists reducing the ethical to a biological essentialism. This is ensured by the ‘virtual’ nature he ascribes to life’s movement, which shows that the ethical meaning of life is ultimately grounded in an ontology premised upon the irreducibly open and inventive rather than on the reductively closed and repetitive. In turn, this conception of life’s virtuality further illuminates what Bergson might mean, from an ethical perspective, as regards a progressive independence from matter, which I propose in terms of a withdrawal from the body and the present, with a view to a superior moral activity. (shrink)