On the occasion of a first conference on Cognitive Science, it seems appropriate to review the basis of common understanding between the various disciplines. In my estimate, the most fundamental contribution so far of artificial intelligence and computer science to the joint enterprise of cognitive science has been the notion of a physical symbol system, i.e., the concept of a broad class of systems capable of having and manipulating symbols, yet realizable in the physical universe. The notion of symbol so (...) defined is internal to this concept, so it becomes a hypothesis that this notion of symbols includes the symbols that we humans use every day of our lives. In this paper we attempt systematically, but plainly, to lay out the nature of physical symbol systems. Such a review is in ways familiar, but not thereby useless. Restatement of fundamentals is an important exercise. (shrink)

The forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it is Jihadist terrorism, Putin's imperialism, or the ambitions of China's dictatorship, writes Waller R. Newell in this engaging exposé of a thousand dangers. We will see why tyranny is a permanent threat by following its strange career from Homeric Bronze Age warriors, through the empires of Alexander the Great and Rome, to the medieval struggle between the City of God and the City of (...) Man, leading to the state-building despots of the Modern Age including the Tudors and 'enlightened despots' such as Peter the Great. The book explores the psychology of tyranny from Nero to Gaddafi, and how it changes with the Jacobin Terror into millenarian revolution. Stimulating and enlightening, Tyrants: Power, Injustice, and Terror will appeal to anyone interested in the danger posed by tyranny and terror in today's world. (shrink)

In this book, Newell makes the case for unified theories by setting forth a candidate.

Brain-Computer Interface is a set of technologies that are of increasing interest to researchers. BCI has been proposed as assistive technology for individuals who are non-communicative or paralyzed, such as those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or spinal cord injury. The technology has also been suggested for enhancement and entertainment uses, and there are companies currently marketing BCI devices for those purposes as well as health-related purposes. The unprecedented direct connection created by BCI between human brains and computer hardware raises various (...) ethical, social, and legal challenges that merit further examination and discussion. To identify and characterize the key issues associated with BCI use, we performed a scoping review of biomedical ethics literature, analyzing the ethics concerns cited across multiple disciplines, including philosophy and medicine. Based on this investigation, we report that BCI research and its potential translation to therapeutic intervention generate significant ethical, legal, and social concerns, notably with regards to personhood, stigma, autonomy, privacy, research ethics, safety, responsibility, and justice. Our review of the literature determined, furthermore, that while these issues have been enumerated extensively, few concrete recommendations have been expressed. We conclude that future research should focus on remedying a lack of practical solutions to the ethical challenges of BCI, alongside the collection of empirical data on the perspectives of the public, BCI users, and BCI researchers. (shrink)

The epistemological challenges of the Anthropocene trouble distinctions of solid and fluid. In this contribution, the author proposes, after Gabrielle Hecht, that the nuclearity of the Anthropocene contributes significantly to destabilising these categories. Nuclear materials and ideas of nuclearity force (re)consideration of deep timescales and imperceptible processes, problematising fixed material ontologies. The article engages with nuclear matters and queries the logic of solids and fluids by developing the notion of elemental memory. An attention to elemental memory – an element’s capacity (...) to auto-affect over time – reveals the inadequacy of terms like solid and fluid, and highlights the expressiveness of solid fluid substances. Empirically, the author demonstrates, first, how elemental memory informs the solid-fluid processuality of radioactive glasses, especially trinitite. Second, engaging with the work of artists Mari Keto and Erich Berger, she addresses the slow auto-transformations of radioactive minerals. (shrink)

For a century the Bahá’í Faith has been classified, within the German academy, as a world religion. This article highlights the major historical milestones in this process of recognition. The process was initiated on the eve of the First World War by the two Jewish Germanophone orientalists Goldziher and Vambery. In the inter-war period, the categorization of this faith as a world religion – rather than a sect of Islam, as it had once been viewed – was further propelled by (...) academics outside the field of theology and religious studies, such as the natural scientist Auguste Forel. It was only after the catastrophic experience of World War II, a period when the German Bahá’í community evinced a spirit of resilience in the face of Nazi oppression, that scholars in the field of Christian theology and religious studies, such as Heiler, Mensching and Benz, who represented the school of Religionswissenschaft des Verstehens, began to adopt the classification of the Bahá’ís as new world religion. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSharing experiences with others, even without communication, can amplify those experiences. We investigated whether shared stressful experiences amplify. Participants completed the Cold Pre...

A close reading of the contexts of several Homeric passages reveals that Homer often uses εἰδώς with ironic force. This realization sheds light on several passages discussed herein, including: 1) Homer's description of the location of Ithaca, which is shown to be Odysseus’ strategic lie that directs the Phaeacians to the local stronghold (nearby Dulichium), and 2) the manuscript reading of Parmenides B1.3, which is shown to harbour no internal conflict even if its εἰδότα φῶτα (‘one who knows’) is in (...) a state of confusion (ἄτῃ), because εἰδότα can signal incomplete or confused knowledge, or even a lack of it. Other literary clues in Parmenides B1 are shown to support this reading. (shrink)

Third Line is an installation of video projections and selected artefacts presented at the 2014 International Žižek Studies Conference: Parallax Future in Art and Design, Ideology, and Philosophy, with the support of the Ontario Arts Council. Third Line represents a self-referential and speculative study of haiku structure, in conjunction with the idea of optical interference and parallax. The title refers to Žižek’s explanation of the haiku function: the third line of haiku stands for the momentary event where reality loses its (...) substantial mass. The objective was to create a visual experience that affiliates the haiku structure with an experiential system of visual perception. We designed a dual, parallax video projection system, with one facet of the screen revealing a sequence of haiku text – metaphrasms systematically extracted from Žižek’s books – as the other side showed a video of ambient, material dissolution. The installation also featured a tableau of collected objects, referencing the project’s material development and ideological framework. (shrink)

A structure has a (finite-string) automatic presentation if the elements of its domain can be named by finite strings in such a way that the coded domain and the coded atomic operations are recognised by synchronous multitape automata. Consequently, every structure with an automatic presentation has a decidable first-order theory. The problems surveyed here include the classification of classes of structures with automatic presentations, the complexity of the isomorphism problem, and the relationship between definability and recognisability.

Ruling Passion is the only book-length study of tyranny, statesmanship, and civic virtue in three major Platonic dialogues, the Georgias, the Symposium, and the Republic. It is also the first extended interpretation of eros as the key to Plato's understanding of both the depths of human vice and the heights of human aspirations for virtue and happiness. Through his detailed commentary and eloquent insights on the three dialogues, Waller Newell demonstrates how, for Plato, tyranny is a misguided longing for (...) erotic satisfaction that can be corrected by the education of eros toward the proper objects of its pleasure: civic virtue and philosophy. (shrink)

This article questions the notion of a disembodied theology which can provide ultimate answers about an absolute God. It places this questioning within the truly challenging arena of mental health. While issuing challenge to theology the author calls for a pastoral theology that is willing to cross boundaries, those that were perhaps not even previously imagined. This is a daring, moving and embodied challenge to the more constraining and controlling areas of theology and pastoral care.

Throughout the critical period Kant enigmatically insists that reason is a ‘unity’, thereby suggesting that both our theoretical and practical endeavors are grounded in one and the same rational capacity. How Kant's unity thesis ought to be interpreted and whether it can be substantiated remain sources of controversy in the literature. According to the strong reading of this claim, reason is a ‘unity’ because all our reasoning, including our theoretical reasoning, functions practically. Although several prominent commentators endorse this view, it (...) is widely thought to lack exegetical support. This paper seeks to strengthen the case for this reading by showing how theoretical reason's positive function, as Kant presents it in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, may be construed as fundamentally practical. I argue that reason's supreme regulative principle ought to be understood as a categorical practical imperative. This interpretation, I suggest, resolves the apparent inconsistencies that blight Kant's account of the principle in the Appendix, while bringing greater overall coherence to his account of theoretical reason's regulative function. (shrink)

Designing and developing a digital musical instrument (DMI) to a level of refinement that provides musically rich applications and nuanced interaction capabilities requires a long-term commitment to both technical and creative aspects. This process often leads to the acquisition of sensory, communicative, and intuitive knowledge—dimensions of instrument design that are typically overlooked in mainstream discussions. This paper explores this development journey through the lens of three instruments: the Resonant Object Interface (ROI), the Floors, and the Table Floor. These instruments have (...) undergone extensive development, with the latest instrument building upon the lessons learned from the previous two. We discuss the challenges encountered during the ongoing refinement of these devices and our evolving interaction with their physical complexities. A key focus is the tacit knowledge gained through hands-on engagement, which, though often taken for granted once established, requires significant time and effort to develop. Further, we reflect on our experiences sharing these instruments with other musicians, highlighting how tacit engagement plays a critical role in the creation of new processes, materials, sensing technologies, and sensory experiences in the realm of digital musical instrument design. (shrink)

Amid a global zeitgeist of impending catastrophe, this book explores the culture of fear so prevalent in today's politics, economic climate, and religious extremism.

We argue that: (1) disappointment in the effectiveness of i-frame interventions depends on realistic expectations about how they could work; (2) opportunities for system reform are rare, and i-frame interventions can lay important groundwork; (3) Chater & Loewenstein's evidence that i-frame interventions detract from s-frame approaches is limited; and (4) nonetheless, behavioural scientists should consider what more they can contribute to systemic reforms.

Levinas's project throughout Totality and Infinity and in his earlier works Existence and Existents and Time and the Other is to situate the primacy of the ethical as foundational first philosophy. For Levinas, myth is intimately connected to being, the being before reflection and thought. The entering into reflection and thought Levinas terms transcendence, the epoché, or first ethical gesture. In order to situate his ethics, Levinas turns to the Cartesian notion of infinity: the idea of infinity as an overflowing (...) presence, the container capable of containing more than it can draw from itself, from its own being.1 This idea of infinity is grounded in an experience of the Other as primal.2 The presence of a face... (shrink)

In this article I undertake an analysis of erotic sexual intercourse - commonly, and more accurately, designated as love-making - in the spirit of Durkheim's social analysis of religion. Thus, based on a phenomenological semiotic analysis of the peculiar things we do and feel in the course of making love, I propose, first, to uncover the implicit `logic' that generates and governs these distinctly sociable doings and sociable feelings. Second, I proceed to suggest that the sameself logic, albeit in an (...) attenuated version, also generates and governs the broad class of `social occasions proper', and that this homology calls for gathering erotic and social occasions under one and the same rubric, which I propose to call the `socio-erotic' (since the term `social' has been denatured through overuse). Third, I conclude with a discussion of how socio-erotic domains fit into a larger world structured and governed mainly by interest-driven and power-driven conflictual fields. (shrink)

The book presents the case that cognitive science should turn its attention to developing theories of human cognition that cover the full range of human perceptual, cognitive, and action phenomena. Cognitive science has now produced a massive number of high-quality regularities with many microtheories that reveal important mechanisms. The need for integration is pressing and will continue to increase. Equally important, cognitive science now has the theoretical concepts and tools to support serious attempts at unified theories. The argument is made (...) entirely by presenting an exemplar unified theory of cognition both to show what a real unified theory would be like and to provide convincing evidence that such theories are feasible. The exemplar is SOAR, a cognitive architecture, which is realized as a software system. After a detailed discussion of the architecture and its properties, with its relation to the constraints on cognition in the real world and to existing ideas in cognitive science, SOAR is used as theory for a wide range of cognitive phenomena: immediate responses ; discrete motor skills ; memory and learning ; problem solving ; language ; and development. The treatments vary in depth and adequacy, but they clearly reveal a single, highly specific, operational theory that works over the entire range of human cognition, SOAR is presented as an exemplar unified theory, not as the sole candidate. Cognitive science is not ready yet for a single theory – there must be multiple attempts. But cognitive science must begin to work toward such unified theories. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive exploration of ancient and modern tyranny in the history of political thought. Waller R. Newell argues that modern tyranny and statecraft differ fundamentally from the classical understanding. Newell demonstrates a historical shift in emphasis from the classical thinkers' stress on the virtuous character of rulers and the need for civic education to the modern emphasis on impersonal institutions and cold-blooded political method. By diagnosing the varieties of tyranny from erotic voluptuaries like Nero, the (...) steely determination of reforming conquerors like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar and modernizing despots such as Napoleon and Ataturk to the collectivist revolutions of the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Nazis and Khmer Rouge, Newell shows how tyranny is every bit as dangerous to free democratic societies today as it was in the past. (shrink)

Despite a growing effort in recent years to theorize epistemic justice as a species of distributive justice from within a Rawlsian framework, there is as yet no well-worked out capabilities-based account. In this paper, we set out to provide one. According to our sufficientarian conception, epistemic justice requires a distribution of capabilities that ensures to all individuals opportunities for minimal epistemic agency, publicly conceived. We argue that this conception has advantages over existing resourcist accounts of distributive epistemic justice inspired by (...) Rawls as well as over Miranda Fricker’s tentative capabilities-based alternative. We contend that epistemic justice concerns a plurality of capabilities for epistemic agency, where the scope and nature of these capabilities is ultimately left open to discernment through public reasoning, but where equal emphasis is placed on contributing as well as retrieving epistemic goods and resources from common pools and on exerting combined capabilities as well as developing internal ones in the first place. (shrink)

SummaryNarrative is reemerging as a teaching tool. Narrative ethics is being seen as a rich endeavour both for clinical practice and academic teaching and research. Narrative helps put ethics into context. However, the use of narrative increasingly raises issues in teaching and research: for instance, how do we do justice to the people and narratives we utilise, and what does our practice reveal about our ethics? In this article examples are drawn from clinical practice, teaching and case notes to draw (...) out some lessons to help further critical understanding. (shrink)

The dominance of the biomedically informed view of disability, genetics, and diagnosis is explored. An understanding of the social nature of disability and genetics, especially in terms of oppression, adds a richer dimension to an understanding of ethical issues pertaining to genetics. This is much wider than the limited question of whether or not such technology discriminates. Instead, it is proposed that such technology will perpetuate the oppression and control of people with disability, especially if the knowledge of people with (...) disability is not utilised in bioethical debates. (shrink)