Three prominent economists born early in the twentieth century—James Buchanan, Jack Hirshleifer, and Simon Rottenberg—switched from a belief in socialism in their twenties or thirties to strong support for free markets. Interviews show that for all three, and especially for Buchanan and Rottenberg, what changed them is what they learned in their economics classes. For Hirshleifer, another major influence was the pact between Hitler and Stalin, which caused him to be more skeptical about leftist ideas and made him more open (...) to intellectual criticisms of socialism. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

A key philosophical feature of Peter Jackson’s film interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is its use of fantasy to inspire a “recovery” of the actual or, in other words, a reawakening to the beauty of nature and the many possible ways of living in healthier ecological relation to the world. Though none of these ways is perfectly achieved, this pluralistic view is demonstrated in the various lifeways of Hobbits, Elves, Men, and Ents. All of the positive (...) relationships embodied in the films—to trees, mountains, horses, and vegetable gardens—involve loving care and attention, receiving nourishment and livelihood without instrumentalization, or reducing nature to mere resource. The films also vividly display a variety of ugly and destructive ways of using the land to accrue power and wealth. These noxious ways, specifically because they actively destroy the lands that they use, always need more. They will thus eventually annihilate the beautiful ways of being if they are not actively resisted. Some of those who would rather be tending their own trees, gardens, or horses or even wandering in the wild forests must therefore turn their attention to struggle and resistance instead. This is a struggle full of grief, and at times even verging on despair, but it is marked by the refusal to give up hope. Indeed, what Jackson and Tolkien have to say about hope is as important in responding to the ecological crisis as anything they have to say about nature, inasmuch as they help to remind us that even in our own times, “there is still hope.”. (shrink)

If you trained someone to emit a particular sound at the sight of something red, another at the sight of something yellow, and so on for other colors, still he would not yet be describing objects by their colors. Though he might be a help to us in giving a description. A description is a representation of a distribution in a space (in that of time, for instance).

The typical kind of color realism is reductive: the color properties are identified with properties specified in other terms (as ways of altering light, for instance). If no reductive analysis is available — if the colors are primitive sui generis properties — this is often taken to be a convincing argument for eliminativism. That is, realist primitivism is usually thought to be untenable. The realist preference for reductive theories of color over the last few decades is particularly striking in light (...) of the generally anti-reductionist mood of recent philosophy of mind. The parallels between the mind—body problem and the case of color are substantial enough that the difference in trajectory is surprising. While dualism and non-reductive physicalism are staples, realist primitivism is by and large a recent addition to the color literature. And it remains a minority position, although one that is perhaps gaining support. In this paper, we investigate whether it should be accepted, and conclude it should not be. (shrink)

This book puts forward a radical, unorthodox thesis with respect to the Anthropocene, the philosophy of Deleuze/Guattari and education. This book analyses the Anthropocene for its unconscious drives and develops a parallel mode of education and social change.

In this paper, we examine the logics of essence and accident and attempt to ascertain the extent to which those logics are genuinely formalizing the concepts in which we are interested. We suggest that they are not completely successful as they stand. We diagnose some of the problems and make a suggestion for improvement. We also discuss some issues concerning definability in the formal language.

Written by some of the world's leading academics and professionals in the field, this collection of essays brings together two complementary views on child development - the role of society and the role of cognitive growth.

Multiple cue probability learning studies have typically focused on stationary environments. We present three experiments investigating learning in changing environments. A fine-grained analysis of the learning dynamics shows that participants were responsive to both abrupt and gradual changes in cue-outcome relations. We found no evidence that participants adapted to these types of change in qualitatively different ways. Also, in contrast to earlier claims that these tasks are learned implicitly, participants showed good insight into what they learned. By fitting formal learning (...) models, we investigated whether participants learned global functional relationships or made localized predictions from similar experienced exemplars. Both a local (the Associative Learning Model) and a global learning model (the novel Bayesian Linear Filter) fitted the data of the first two experiments. However, the results of Experiment 3, which was specifically designed to discriminate between local and global learning models, provided more support for global learning models. Finally, we present a novel model to account for the cue competition effects found in previous research and displayed by some of our participants. (shrink)

This is the best overview of Foucault's work to date. A principal architect of poststructuralism, Michel Foucault reshaped the varied disciplines of history, philosophy, literary theory, and social science. David Shumway has provided, for the nonspecialist, a systematic analysis of the works of Foucault that is both thorough and accessible. Shumway connects Foucault's various conceptual and linguistic techniques to the basic critical strategies and purpose of his philosophy.

Were Russell alive and still with us, one could apologize to him for the degree of travesty and oversimplification which the present task has involved. But his inspiration is no longer a living one and it is still a live question in the philosophy of logic whether or not it makes sense to apologize to the shades of the departed. Perhaps the author in such a predicament can take some comfort from the possibility that what he has written may interest (...) some reader in that sort of question. (shrink)

Offers a thorough, multidisciplinary picture of the informational challenges of our media ecosystem, as well as collaborative strategies for addressing them.

Previous research suggests that early performance of amnesic individuals in a probabilistic category learning task is relatively unimpaired. When combined with impaired declarative knowledge, this is taken as evidence for the existence of separate implicit and explicit memory systems. The present study contains a more fine-grained analysis of learning than earlier studies. Using a dynamic lens model approach with plausible learning models, we found that the learning process is indeed indistinguishable between an amnesic and control group. However, in contrast to (...) earlier findings, we found that explicit knowledge of the task structure is also good in both the amnesic and the control group. This is inconsistent with a crucial prediction from the multiple-systems account. The results can be explained from a single system account and previously found differences in later categorization performance can be accounted for by a difference in learning rate. (shrink)

A small proportion of clinical strains of Candida albicans undergo white–opaque switching. Until recently it was not clear why, since most strains carry the genes differentially expressed in the unique opaque phase. The answer to this enigma lies in the mating process. The majority of C. albicans strains are heterozygous for the mating type locus MTL (a/α) and cannot undergo white–opaque switching. However, when these cells undergo homozygosis at the mating type locus (i.e., become a/a or α/α), they can switch, (...) and they must switch in order to mate. Even though the newly identified stages of mating mimic those of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the process differs in its dependency on switching, and the effects switching has on gene regulation. This unique feature of C. albicans mating appears to be intimately intertwined with its pathogenesis. The unique, newly discovered dependencies of switching on homozygosis at the MTL locus and of mating on switching are, therefore, reviewed within the context of pathogenesis. BioEssays 26:10–20, 2004. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this profound book, based on a popular audio program, Dr. David Hawkins gives a primer on his world-famous map of consciousness that will help the reader embark on their own journey to an advanced state of consciousness. David Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D, conducted a 29-year study that demonstrated that the human body becomes stronger or weaker depending on a person's mental state. He created a scale from 1 to 1,000 that mapped human consciousness. Furthermore, he demonstrated that this (...) map can be used as a blueprint to reach higher states of consciousness that can be identified simply by applying a small amount of pressure on an outstretched arm! Not only that, but this simple method has also been demonstrated to be an effective tool for instantly calibrating human consciousness. Dr. Hawkins created a scale of consciousness based on current discoveries in advanced theoretical physics and the nonlinear dynamics of chaos theory. And this “map of consciousness” now makes it possible for anyone to advance toward higher levels of enlightenment faster than ever imagined! (shrink)

The role of power and its relation to values has become a topic of growing interest in business ethics as well as in the literature of management and the sociology of organizations. Though there is more interest in the role and potential for abuse of power in corporations, the concept of power drawn from classical political theory and initial behavioral studies of power in organizations is inadequate for understanding the place, complexity and ethics of power in the corporation. Analyses of (...) power drawn from recent political theory can provide a more fine-grained and illuminating understanding of power than has been available from classical political theory and social science literature. I distinguish three approaches: the behavioral model commonly employed, the ideological model which comes out of the political theory of certain neo-Marxists, and what I call the disciplinary model drawn form Michel Foucault's analysis of modern forms of power. I suggest areas of working life and ethical issues about the relation between power and values that can be illuminated by these alternate analyses. (shrink)

Generalizations strengthen in traditional sciences, but in psychology (and social and behavioral sciences, more generally) they decay. This is usually viewed as a problem requiring solution. It could be viewed instead as a law-like phenomenon. Generalization decay cannot be squelched because human behavior is metastable and all behavioral data collected thus far have resulted from a thin sliver of human time.

Following the landmark corporate scandals of the early 21st century, there appeared to be a tremendous increase in the U.S. business media's emphasis on issues of ethics in corporate leadership. The purpose of this research was to examine whether that apparent increase was reflected in an actual change in that media's portrayals of successful leaders. We content analyzed the text of a total of 180 articles in Business Week, Fortune, and Forbes magazine, 90 from the five years preceding the landmark (...) scandals and 90 from the five years following the scandals. We found no evidence that the landmark scandals had any impact on the media's incorporation of ethics in their portrayals of leaders. We attribute this substantially to the persistence of a world-view in the U.S. business press that emphasizes leader traits and actions that have a direct impact on corporate profits. Additionally, we found some interesting consistencies and differences in media portrayals across the two time periods, likely related to the rise and fall of dot-com businesses. We discuss the implications of these findings for researchers and corporate leaders. (shrink)

L’emploi est au cœur du bien-être d’un individu. Les attentes liées au travail des personnes ayant une déficience intellectuelle ont été comparées à celles des coordonnateurs de services. Les variables comprenaient le type de travail attendu, le nombre d’heures de travail prévu, les préoccupations liées à l’emploi, les mesures de soutien souhaitées sur le lieu de travail et l’influence de la gravité de la déficience intellectuelle et de l’expérience de travail du coordonnateur de services sur les attentes en matière de (...) travail. Les données ont été recueillies auprès de 46 personnes ayant une déficience intellectuelle par le biais d’entretiens et de 46 coordonnateurs au moyen d’un sondage en ligne. Les résultats indiquaient des attentes professionnelles positives globales. Le travail le plus courant attendu était le service et le commerce. L’emploi concurrentiel était attendu plus fréquemment que les ateliers protégés. Alors que les attentes des coordonnateurs de services et des personnes ayant une déficience intellectuelle légère étaient étroitement alignées, il existait une distinction plus grande entre les attentes des coordonnateurs et celles ayant une déficience intellectuelle modérée ou grave. Ces résultats ont des implications importantes pour faciliter le placement des adultes ayant une déficience intellectuelle. (shrink)

Colour has often been supposed to be a subjective property, a property to be analysed orretly in terms of the phenomenological aspects of human expereince. In contrast with subjectivism, an objectivist analysis of color takes color to be a property objects possess in themselves, independently of the character of human perceptual expereince. David Hilbert defends a form of objectivism that identifies color with a physical property of surfaces - their spectral reflectance. This analysis of color is shown to provide (...) a more adequate account of the features of human color vision than its subjectivist rivals. The author's account of colro also recognises that the human perceptual system provides a limited and idiosyncratic picture of the world. These limitations are shown to be consistent with a realist account of colour and to provide the necessary tools for giving an analysis of common sense knowledge of color phenomena. (shrink)

There are serious reasons for accepting each of these propositions individually but there are apparently insurmountable difficulties with accepting all three of them simultaneously if we assume that color is a single property. 1) and 2) together seem to imply that there is some property which all organisms with color vision can see and 3) seems to imply that there can be no such property. If these implications really are valid then one or more of these propositions will have to (...) be rejected in spite of whatever reasons can be given for their apparent acceptability. Before going on to discuss possible resolutions of this apparent contradiction it is worth pointing out there our three propositions are not all of a kind. Proposition 1) is a metaphysical thesis about the ontological status of color and proposition 3) is an empirical thesis about what properties organisms with color vision are capable of detecting. If you accept 1) then 2) will appear to verge on the trivial, but if 1) is denied then the status of 2) will appear more problematic. In what follows I will have more to say about why we either should or should not accept all three of these propositions. (shrink)

Although the importance of literacy is widely acknowledged in society and remains at the top of the political agenda, writing has been slow to establish a place in the cognitive sciences. Olson argues that to understand the cognitive implications of literacy, it is necessary to see reading and writing as providing access to and consciousness of aspects of language, such as phonemes, words and sentences, that are implicit and unconscious in speech. Reading and writing create a system of metarepresentational concepts (...) that bring those features of language into consciousness as a subject of discourse. This consciousness of language is essential not only to acquiring literacy but also to the formation of systematic thought and rationality. The Mind on Paper is a compelling exploration of what literacy does for our speech and hence for our thought, and will be of interest to readers in developmental psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and education. (shrink)

This article reviews recent work aimed at developing a new framework, based on signal detection theory, for understanding the relationship between explicit (e.g., recognition) and implicit (e.g., priming) memory. Within this framework, different assumptions about sources of memorial evidence can be framed. Application to experimental results provides robust evidence for a single-system model in preference to multiple-systems models. This evidence comes from several sources including studies of the effects of amnesia and ageing on explicit and implicit memory. The framework allows (...) a range of concepts in current memory research, such as familiarity, recollection, fluency, and source memory, to be linked to implicit memory. More generally, this work emphasizes the value of modern computational modelling techniques in the study of learning and memory. (shrink)

One central question of climate justice is how to fairly allocate the global emissions budget. Some commentators hold that the concept of fairness is hopelessly equivocal on this point. Others claim that we need a complete theory of distributive justice to answer the question. This paper argues to the contrary that, given only weak assumptions about fairness, we can show that fairness requires an allocation that is at least as prioritarian as the equal per capita view. Since even the equal (...) per capita view is more prioritarian than is politically feasible, fairness is univocal enough for all practical purposes. (shrink)

An experiment was conducted to test the effectiveness of brief instruction in information structuring (i.e., representing and integrating information) for improving the coherence of probability judgments and binary choices among intelligence analysts. Forty-three analysts were presented with comparable sets of Bayesian judgment problems before and immediately after instruction. After instruction, analysts’ probability judgments were more coherent (i.e., more additive and compliant with Bayes theorem). Instruction also improved the coherence of binary choices regarding category membership: after instruction, subjects were more likely (...) to invariably choose the category to which they assigned the higher probability of a target’s membership. The research provides a rare example of evidence-based validation of effectiveness in instruction to improve the statistical assessment skills of intelligence analysts. Such instruction could also be used to improve the assessment quality of other types of experts who are required to integrate statistical information or make probabilistic assessments. (shrink)

David Law's new book deals with Kierkegaard's `apophaticism' - or those elements of Kierkegaard's thought which emphasize the incapacity of human reason and the hiddenness of God.