Over the past decade, teaching and learning in virtual worlds has been at the forefront of many higher education institutions around the world. The DEHub Virtual Worlds Working Group (VWWG) consisting of Australian and New Zealand higher education academics was formed in 2009. These educators are investigating the role that virtual worlds play in the future of education and actively changing the direction of their own teaching practice and curricula. 47 academics reporting on 28 Australian higher education institutions present an (...) overview of how they have changed directions through the effective use of virtual worlds for diverse teaching and learning activities such as business scenarios and virtual excursions, role-play simulations, experimentation and language development. The case studies offer insights into the ways in which institutions are continuing to change directions in their teaching to meet changing demands for innovative teaching, learning and research in virtual worlds. This paper highlights the ways in which the authors are using virtual worlds to create opportunities for rich, immersive and authentic activities that would be difficult or not possible to achieve through more traditional approaches. (shrink)

This paper argues that Heidegger's phenomenology of boredom in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (1983) could be a promising addition to the ‘toolbox’ of scientists investigating conscious experience. We describe Heidegger's methodological principles and show how he applies these in describing three forms of boredom. Each form is shown to have two structural moments – being held in limbo and being left empty – as well as a characteristic relation to passing the time. In our conclusion, we (...) suggest specific ways in which Heidegger's phenomenological description can be used in scientific investigations of boredom. (shrink)

The 1991 Pulitzer for spot news photography went to freelancer Gregory Marinovich, who documented the murder of an accused Zulu spy by African National Congress sympathizers in Soweto, South Africa. Marinovich tried, and failed, to stop the violence. Of 57 Associated Press newspapers surveyed, 24 ran either a photo of the victim being burned alive or an equally disturbing stabbing. This analysis reports that most editors who played the photos aggressively were also careful to place them in a substantive (...) news context. Although reader reactions varied, the study also suggests that important, albeit violent, photos are more likely to be accepted by readers if they are presented thoughtfully and with con text. (shrink)

Theology and philosophy have traditionally assumed a radical split between human beings and the rest of creation. Philosophically, the split is usually justified in terms of a locus humanus, some one cognitive trait that human beings possess and nonhuman animals do not. Theologically, this trait is usually identified as that which makes us in the image of God. Research in animal cognition, however, suggests that we are not unique in as many respects as we think we are. This suggests that (...) we rethink the idea of the image of God. In light of this, I propose that we think of nature itself as being in the image of God, with humankind as part of the broader natural and theological process. (shrink)

In this article I reflect on meeting Professor Drucilla Cornell as a bachelor’s student at Rutgers University, working as her assistant, and the irreversible impact she had on my life. I argue that Cornell was a thinker of profound courage and that this virtue was crucial to her developing several ways beyond the philosophical anthropology of Euro-modern man. Cornell envisioned three main ways beyond what she called the “dead ends of man”: feminism, critical philosophy (including dialectics and Marxism), and African (...) humanism. These three traditions combine in an explosive, revolutionary way in Cornell’s writings; each are essential pillars of her thought. I also identify a dialectical or “productive” tension in her thinking between tendencies toward both idealist and materialist metaphysics. I conclude by recounting personal experiences with Cornell, exploring the consequences of her ethical philosophy, and posing questions that I think she could help us answer in the tumultuous times we are currently living through. (shrink)

In his enormously influentialThe Modularity of Mind, Jerry Fodor (1983) proposed that the mind was divided into input modules and central processes. Much subsequent research focused on the modules and whether processes like speech perception or spatial vision are truly modular. Much less attention has been given to Fodor's writing on the central processes, what would today be called higher‐level cognition. In “Fodor's First Law of the Nonexistence of Cognitive Science,” he argued that central processes are “bad candidates for scientific (...) study” and would resist attempts at empirical analysis. This essay evaluates his argument for this remarkable claim, concluding that although central processes may well be “messier” than input modules, this does not mean that they cannot be studied and understood. The article briefly reviews the scientific progress made in understanding central processes in the 35 years since the book was published, showing that Fodor's prediction is clearly falsified by massive advances in topics like decision making and analogy. The essay concludes that Fodor's Law was not based on a clear argument for why the complexities of central systems could not be studied but was likely based on intuitions and preferences that were common in psychology at the time. (shrink)

Recent contributions to the literature on the topic of futility have focused primarily on two areas: 1) definitions of the term and 2) the suggestion that cardiopulmonary resuscitation may be futile in certain patients. This suggestion is based on “scientific” measures and analyses of outcomes, describing the low probability of success of CPR in patients over age 70, those with cancer, those with multiorgan failure, etc. The research reported suggests that with such patients the physician need not get the patient's (...) consent to withhold resuscitation; the physician need only inform either the patient or the surrogate that CPR will not be Instituted in the event of an arrest. (shrink)

While every discipline in the humanities worries about its future, film studies is caught in the thrall of a particular anxiety, namely the possibility that it lacks a consistent object and a compelling reason. Behind the question of film studies looms the question of cinema itself, an aging techn? that seems to have hung around in the midst of new(er) media that lay claim to the image as their province. Why cinema? Against so many digital incursions, more traditionally minded critics (...) have defended film on the basis of its indexical powers, but this article envisions an entirely different reason to return to the cinema. Where both the return to the index and the recourse to the digital effect tend to regard the cinema as a matter of visibility, I suggest that we might reclaim our faith in the cinema by virtue of what remains unseen and off-screen. Hence, this essay undertakes a brief history of the out of frame in order to induce a conceptualization of the cinema (pace Deleuze) as the art of the ?Outside.? Turning to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the essay concludes by analyzing how an ostensibly older sense of images nevertheless augurs the critical and philosophical developments with which we can learn to believe in the cinema once more. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: * Introduction * Shrinking Gaps? * Strengthening Supernatural Arguments * Note * References * Further Reading.

In 1962, Donald Caspar and Aaron Klug published their classic theory of virus structure. They developed their theory with an explicit analogy between spherical viruses and Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. In this paper, I use the spherical virus-geodesic dome case to develop an account of analogy and deductive analogical inference based on the notion of an isomorphism. I also consider under what conditions there is a good reason to claim an experimentally untested analogy is plausible.

Technical hitches mar van Gelder's proposed map of the conceptual landscape, particularly with respect to descriptive levels and the trio of instantiation, realisation, and implementation. However, for all the formal quibbles, van Gelder is onto something important; the tension he notes between computationalism and a dynamical alternative threatens to transform the way we conduct cognitive science research.

This paper draws upon the history of scientific studies of inheritance in Mendel’s best-remembered model organism, the garden pea, as a source of two parables – one pessimistic, the other optimistic – on the challenges of data linkage in plants. The moral of the pessimistic parable, from the era of the biometrician-Mendelian controversy, is that the problem of theory-ladenness in data sets can be a major stumbling block to making new uses of old data. The moral of the optimistic parable, (...) from the long-run history of studies at the John Innes Centre of aberrant or “rogue” pea varieties, is that an excellent guarantor of the continued value of old data sets is the availability of the relevant physical materials – in the first instance, the plant seeds. (shrink)

In Maurice Blondel’s work, the problem of immortality is dealt with in terms of one’s resolution of the problem of human destiny articulated in the form of a self-determinative option. Although this option can take many determinate forms, it is ultimately one between egoism and selfishness or mortification and charity. In the course of this paper, I outline this opposition and indicate in particular how it bears on intellectual life and culture. For Blondel, the theoretical and the practical could not (...) be neatly separated; thinking and expression are forms of action, and action requires structuring for its intelligibility and fruition. One commits oneself and forms the elements of one’s ultimate judgment, not only by what one does, but also by what one says or thinks, what doctrines and institutions one commits oneself to. (shrink)

Elite U.S.-based global law firms concentrate in the costliest districts of superstar cities, especially two neighborhoods in Manhattan. This pattern has persisted despite both the dispersal of Biglaw clients across less-dense, lower-cost U.S. geographies and the development of telework capacity. It suggests a puzzle: law is among the occupations most conducive to remote work, yet Biglaw prior to the coronavirus pandemic required in-person work in the priciest places—meaning it paid a premium on both of its biggest expenses, wages and real (...) estate. How might this equilibrium be explained, and what might lead it to change? This Article contends that Biglaw clustering reflects a management preference for the exploitation of proven strategies over the exploration of novel and uncertain ones—but that the pandemic telework experience is eroding this dichotomy. This analysis has direct implications for private international law practice, where large-scale transactions and disputes are handled by Biglaw firms and involve significant international travel. This Article contributes to a growing literature on telework’s impacts on cities, labor markets, and industries, and is the first to extend that focus to Biglaw and PIL. A post-pandemic Biglaw embrace of dispersal via telework would destabilize standard accounts of collaboration in agglomeration economies. While the Article expresses skepticism about that outcome, it identifies a mechanism by which it might plausibly come about. Crucially, this mechanism—the replacement of an exploit vs. explore choice with two different exploit options—posits as the key driver not technology but management learning and innovation that quickened during the pandemic. (shrink)