The minimax theorem of matrix game theory is examined from a constructive point of view. It is then shown that the existence of solutions for matrix games cannot be proved constructively, but that a 2-by-2 game with at most one solution has a constructible solution.

Husserl’s commitment to reality is marked by the urgency to return, or rather to a repeated return each time the objective is achieved . He explains this explicitly in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, taking his cue from Descartes’ Meditations . Reduction, which is the exact name for re- turn, means change of attitude, abandonment of the natural position as naive . Jan Patočka notes in this regard, that today people who have experienced modern sci- ence no (...) longer simply live in the naive natural world . The naive natural world is in- terpreted under species of the mathematical model . So, the gap between meaning as an expectation of experience and meaning within the framework of the model is increasingly evident . If intentionality, according to Husserl and disciples, includ- ing Heidegger, cannot be other than the idea itself, then it is just a something for something . It’s like giving voice to one thing and not another . Commitment to life (Husserl’s Lebenswelt) requires a return to corporeality, as Patočka adds, following Maine de Biran’s accurate insight, that is, of something immediately given, prior to any perceptual experience . The term “matrix” in the title brings to mind the eponymous 1999 film based on the philosophical metaphor of Plato’s cave in the fashion of the digital age . The protagonist, Neo, finds himself living for a long time in the lack of support of reality, precisely because of distrust: something is wrong, and this can only be felt . However, how can the hacker mentality help you under- stand that perhaps it is but a game? (shrink)

Studies of mythology and the philosophy of religions ascribe violence an important role in understanding traditional societies. Whether perceived as sacred and capable of renewing the world, or as oppressive and destructive, violence acquires a twofold valence, whose constituents are interpreted in a complementary relation of interdependence and entail a world outlook with profound implications. Retrieving this ambiguous dimension of religious violence, Kenzaburō Ōe’s novel imagines, against the historical background of post-war Japanese society, a game that enacts the eternal (...) rivalry between two brothers. Lest the history of this seemingly lost present should fall prey to political abuse, the Japanese writer proposes a return to myth, without, however, idealising it; instead, myth is revalorised and tradition is re-conceived from the vantage point of rationalism, with full and alert awareness of the dangers inherent in an ideology that is imposed by force and aggression. Kenzaburō Ōe’s novel is a lucid meditation on Japan’s modern and contemporary history. (shrink)

Theory-of-mind (ToM) involves modeling an individual’s mental states to plan one’s action and to anticipate others’ actions through recursive reasoning that may be myopic (with limited recursion) or predictive (with full recursion). ToM recursion was examined using a series of two-player, sequential-move matrix games with a maximum of three steps. Participants were assigned the role of Player I, controlling the initial and the last step, or of Player II, controlling the second step. Appropriate for the assigned role, participants either (...) anticipated or planned Player II’s strategy at the second step, and then determined Player I’s optimal strategy at the first step. Participants more readily used predictive reasoning as Player II (i.e., planning one’s own move) than as Player I (i.e., anticipating an opponent’s move), although they did not differ when translating reasoning outcome about the second step to optimal action in the first step. Perspective-taking influenced likelihood of predictive reasoning, but it did not affect the rate at which participants acquired it during the experimental block. We conclude that the depth of ToM recursion (related to perspective-taking mechanisms) and rational application of belief–desire to action (instrumental rationality) constitute separate cognitive processes in ToM reasoning. (shrink)

We study a class of two-player normal-form games with cyclical payoff structures. A game is called circulant if both players’ payoff matrices fulfill a rotational symmetry condition. The class of circulant games contains well-known examples such as Matching Pennies, Rock-Paper-Scissors, as well as subclasses of coordination and common interest games. The best response correspondences in circulant games induce a partition on each player’s set of pure strategies into equivalence classes. In any Nash Equilibrium, all strategies within one class are (...) either played with strictly positive or with zero probability. We further show that, strikingly, a single parameter fully determines the exact number and the structure of all Nash equilibria in these games. The parameter itself only depends on the position of the largest payoff in the first row of one of the player’s payoff matrix. (shrink)

Talk of ‘robustness’ remains vague, despite the fact that it is clearly an important parameter in evaluating models in general and game-theoretic results in particular. Here we want to make it a bit less vague by offering a graphic measure for a particular kind of robustness— ‘matrix robustness’— using a three dimensional display of the universe of 2 x 2 game theory. In a display of this form, familiar games such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, Chicken (...) and Deadlock appear as volumes, making comparison easy regarding the extent of different game-theoretic effects. We illustrate such a comparison in robustness between the triumph of Tit for Tat in a spatialized environment (Grim 1995, Grim, Mar, and St. Denis 1998) and a spatialized modeling of the Contact Hypothesis regarding prejudice reduction (Grim, et. al 2005a, 2005b). The geometrical representation of relative robustness also offers a possibility for links between geometrical theorems and results regarding robustness in game theory. (shrink)

The present chapter discusses the implications of virtual reality for the theory and practice of embodied cognitive science. The chapter discusses how recent technological innovations are poised to reshape our understanding of the materially-embodied and environmentally-situated mind, providing us with a new means of studying the mechanisms responsible for intelligent behavior. The chapter also discusses how a synthetically-oriented shift in our approach to embodied intelligence alters our view of familiar problems, most notably the distinction between embedded and extended cognition. The (...) chapter concludes by challenging the idea that virtual worlds ought to be seen as nothing more than a scientific ‘sandpit’ for the study of the embodied mind. Some forms of embodied intelligence can, I suggest, exist solely in virtual reality. In this sense, the ‘Matrix’ is not just a means of testing ideas about the forms of embodied intelligence that inhabit our own physical reality; it is also a means of creating entirely new forms of embodied intelligence. It is by building virtual worlds that we open the door to a new reality—one that is home to a potentially infinite variety of embodied, embedded, and perhaps even extended beings. (shrink)

Thomas Schelling, who wrote the foreword for this book, won the Nobel Prize in economics for "having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis." This came after he had taught a course in game theory and rational choice to advanced students and government officials for 45 years. In this book, Robert Dodge provides in language for a broad audience, the concepts that Schelling taught. Armed with Schelling's understanding of game theory methods and his approaches (...) to problems, the general reader can improve daily decision making. Mathematics often make game theory challenging but was not a major part of Schelling's course and is even less of a factor in this book. Along with a summary of the material Schelling presented, included are problems from the course and similar less challenging questions. While considerable analysis is done with the basic game theory tool--the two-by-two matrix--much of the book is descriptive and rational decision-making is explained with stories. Chapter supplements are added to illuminate points presented by Schelling, including writings by Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, Steven Levitt, and others. (shrink)

Human behavior can be analyzed using game theory models. Complex games may involve different rules for different players and may allow players to change identity (and therefore, rules) according to complex contingencies. From this perspective, mating behaviors can be viewed as strategic “plays” in a complex “mating game,” with players varying tactics in response to changes in the game's payoff matrix.

To a practitioner in the social sciences, game theory primarily helps to identify situations in which interdependent decisions are somehow problematic; solutions often require venturing into the social sciences. Game theory is usually about anticipating each other's choices; it can also cope with influencing other's choices. To a social scientist the great contribution of game theory is probably the payoff matrix, an accounting device comparable to the equals sign in algebra.

Robustness has long been recognized as an important parameter for evaluating game-theoretic results, but talk of ‘robustness’ generally remains vague. What we offer here is a graphic measure for a particular kind of robustness (‘matrix robustness’), using a three-dimensional display of the universe of 2 × 2 game theory. In such a measure specific games appear as specific volumes (Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, etc.), allowing a graphic image of the extent of particular game-theoretic effects in terms (...) of those games. The measure also allows for an easy comparison between different effects in terms of matrix robustness. Here we use the measure to compare the robustness of Tit for Tat’s well-known success in spatialized games (Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation . New York: Basic Books; Grim, P. et al. (1998). The philosophical computer: Exploratory essays in philosophical computer modeling . Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press) with the robustness of a recent game-theoretic model of the contact hypothesis regarding prejudice reduction (Grim et al. 2005. Public Affairs Quarterly, 19 , 95–125). (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a detailed review of previous classifications of 2 × 2 games and suggest a mathematically simple way to classify the symmetric 2 × 2 games based on a decomposition of the payoff matrix into a cooperative and a zero-sum part. We argue that differences in the interaction between the parts is what makes games interesting in different ways. Our claim is supported by evolutionary computer experiments and findings in previous literature. In addition, we provide (...) a method for using a stereographic projection to create a compact 2-d representation of the game space. (shrink)

This dissertation is an effort to describe the effects of Postmodern thought in a variety of narrative forms, including novels, film, and computer games. Using Brian McHale's description of the focal point of Modernist narratives as being epistemological and Postmodernist narratives as being concerned primarily with ontological issues, I trace the possible meaning of the changing understanding of these concepts in the twentieth century. In addition, I interrogate the ramifications of the Postmodern resolution to the crisis of epistemology presented through (...) the work of Modernist writers to test whether or not the Postmodern idea of "claiming worlds" is, indeed, a reasonable or viable resolution to this crisis. ;It is my contention that a changing sense of the relationship between the definitions of epistemology and ontology in traditional literary narrative has been affected by and has affected the narratives of less traditionally "literary" media. In order to show that this change has occurred, I use a number of texts to serve as examples, first, of the conception of epistemology as presented in Modernist works like James Joyce's "The Dead" and Edith Wharton's A Son At the Front and then of the conception of ontology as presented in Postmodernist work like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. I then examine more popular narrative forms to examine how Postmodernism's focus on what I term an "epistemologically derived ontology" has crept into the general culture. My specific examples in these cases are Norman Spinrad's cyberpunk novel Little Heroes , the film The Matrix, and a number of video games, particularly online games. ;My final conclusions are exemplified by the film Memento, which contains many of the Postmodern tenets I propose are typical of mainstream Postmodern works and which also serves as a basis for revealing some of my ethical concerns about the ramifications of this shift in understanding of the aforementioned philosophical categories. (shrink)

Organisations that design and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly commit themselves to high-level, ethical principles. However, there still exists a gap between principles and practices in AI ethics. One major obstacle organisations face when attempting to operationalise AI Ethics is the lack of a well-defined material scope. Put differently, the question to which systems and processes AI ethics principles ought to apply remains unanswered. Of course, there exists no universally accepted definition of AI, and different systems pose different ethical (...) challenges. Nevertheless, pragmatic problem-solving demands that things should be sorted so that their grouping will promote successful actions for some specific end. In this article, we review and compare previous attempts to classify AI systems for the purpose of implementing AI governance in practice. We find that attempts to classify AI systems proposed in previous literature use one of three mental models: _the Switch_, i.e., a binary approach according to which systems either are or are not considered AI systems depending on their characteristics; _the Ladder_, i.e., a risk-based approach that classifies systems according to the ethical risks they pose; and _the Matrix_, i.e., a multi-dimensional classification of systems that take various aspects into account, such as context, input data, and decision-model. Each of these models for classifying AI systems comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. By conceptualising different ways of classifying AI systems into simple mental models, we hope to provide organisations that design, deploy, or regulate AI systems with the vocabulary needed to demarcate the material scope of their AI governance frameworks. (shrink)

Specific to the NCSs where sensor signals can be processed centrally, a collaborative design scheme of dynamic game scheduling and advanced control theory was proposed in the present study. Firstly, by using the Jordan standard state space equation of the research object, the three elements of state noncooperative game were built, and the existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibrium solution were verified. In addition, the iterative equation of the scheduling matrix was derived by complying with the designed (...) utility function. Secondly, refer to the number of restricted states the order of sliding mode was determined. And based on it, the corresponding sliding surface was designed. Subsequently, the quadratic optimization theory was adopted to regulate the control value following the implementation of the scheduling strategy to ensure that the control quality was further enhanced in the limited network service. Lastly, a TrueTime simulation example is established to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. (shrink)

In the process of cultural dissemination, the dissemination of false information will have a negative impact on the entire environment. In this case, it is an effective method to regulate the behavior of cultural dissemination participants. Based on the community network structure and the improved classic network communication model, this paper constructs the susceptible-infected-recovered model for the grassroots communication of engineering safety culture and discusses the law of grassroots transmission of engineering safety culture. The communication process is simulated, and it (...) is concluded that a good engineering safety culture will be the first to be covered by low-level engineering safety culture in the process of dissemination. With a modularity coefficient of 0.5 as the boundary, it will affect the scale of good safety culture in different directions; the dissemination infection rate of low-level engineering safety culture changes in the same direction with the speed and scale of transmission; the maximum transmission scale of low-level engineering safety culture does not decrease with the increase of the initial value of the susceptible state. When the initial value of the immune state is 15%, the low-level safety culture scale is the lowest value of 0.135, which is the low initial value of employees with low-level engineering safety culture and is more conducive to control its maximum spread. It also puts forward management recommendations for the subjects and objects of the grassroots dissemination of engineering safety culture. This paper transforms cultural communication into an evolutionary game model, uses a game tree to describe it, and analyzes that the model has a Nash equilibrium point by adding a penalty function to the income matrix. This model can encourage cultural communication participants to take honest behaviors, effectively restrain the transmission of false information, and promote a virtuous circle of cultural communication. (shrink)

This paper proposes a revised Theory of Moves (TOM) to analyze matrix games between two players when payoffs are given as ordinals. The games are analyzed when a given player i must make the first move, when there is a finite limit n on the total number of moves, and when the game starts at a given initial state S. Games end when either both players pass in succession or else a total of n moves have been made. (...) Studies are made of the influence of i, n, and S on the outcomes. It is proved that these outcomes ultimately become periodic in n and therefore exhibit long-term predictable behavior. Efficient algorithms are given to calculate these ultimate outcomes by computer. Frequently the ultimate outcomes are independent of i, S, and n when n is sufficiently large; in this situation this common ultimate outcome is proved to be Pareto-optimal. The use of ultimate outcomes gives rise to a concept of stable points, which are analogous to Nash equilibria but consider long-term effects. If the initial state is a stable point, then no player has an incentive to move from that state, under the assumption that any initial move could be followed by a long series of moves and countermoves. The concept may be broadened to that of a stable set. It is proved that every game has a minimal stable set, and any two distinct minimal stable sets are disjoint. Comparisons are made with the results of standard TOM. (shrink)

In classical game theory the idea that players randomize between their actions according to a particular optimal probability distribution has always been viewed as puzzling. In this paper, we establish a fundamental connection between n-person normal form games and quantum mechanics, which eliminates the conceptual problems of these random strategies. While the two theories have been regarded as distinct, our main theorem proves that if we do not give any other piece of information to a player in a (...) class='Hi'>game, than the payoff matrix—the axiom of “no-supplementary data” holds—then the state of mind of a rational player is algebraically isomorphic to a pure quantum state. The “no supplementary data” axiom is captured in a Lukasiewicz’s three-valued Kripke semantics wherein statements about whether a strategy or a belief of a player is rational are initially indeterminate i.e. neither true, nor false. As a corollary, we show that in a mixed Nash equilibrium, the knowledge structure of a player implies that probabilities must verify the standard “Born rule” postulate of QM. The puzzling “indifference condition” wherein each player must be rationally indifferent between all the pure actions of the support of his equilibrium strategy is resolved by his state of mind being described by a “quantum superposition” prior a player is asked to make a definite choice in a “measurement”. Finally, these results demonstrate that there is an intrinsic limitation to the predictions of game theory, on a par with the “irreducible randomness” of quantum physics. (shrink)

The prisoner 's dilemma game has acquired large literatures in several disciplines. It is surprising, therefore, that a good definition of the game is hard to find. Typically an author relates a story about captured criminals or military rivals, provides a particular payoff matrix and asserts that the PD is characterized, or illustrated, by that matrix. In the few cases in which characterizing conditions are given, the conditions, and the motivations for them, do not always agree (...) with each other or with the paradigm examples elsewhere. In this paper we describe several varieties of PD's. In particular, we suggest there are two distinctions among PD's with philosophical significance, the pure/impure and the utilitarian/nonutilitarian distinctions. In the first section, we explain and characterize the two distinctions. In the second, we discuss an issue of moral philosophy that illustrates the significance of the former. (shrink)

Experience machines, popularized in print by Robert Nozick and on the screen by the Wachowskis’ film The Matrix, provide highly or perfectly realistic experiences that are more pleasant and less painful than those generated in real life.1 The recent surge in virtual reality and neuro-prosthetic technologies is making the creation of real-world experience machines seem inevitable and perhaps imminent.2 Given the likelihood of the near-future availability of such machines, it behooves ethicists to consider the moral status of their potential (...) uses. In this chapter, we investigate the use of experience machines in palliative and end-of-life care situations. We pair up various kinds of experience machines with patients in a range of conditions, to illuminate the moral problems and benefits of using experience machines in this way. We argue that the use of Nozickian experience machines to treat patients in most conditions would be morally problematic, most notably for the negative effects on patients’ characters and real-world relationships. Informed by this initial moral analysis, we describe an experience machine that is more closely related to a virtual reality game, and argue that it can avoid the moral problems encountered by Nozickian experience machines. In fact, we argue that this new kind of experience machine could improve some patients’ characters and relationships with real-world people. We conclude that some kinds of experience machines could benefit many patients, especially those in extreme pain and those not in the position to meaningfully interact with their loved ones in reality. We also note that certain kinds of experience machines could be useful for religious people, for whom the range of palliative and end-of-life care options is often thought to be relatively narrow. (shrink)

The ontological incompleteness revealed by quantum physics and the ontological stability imposed by the “augmented reality” of games such as _Pokémon Go_ have become increasingly important references in Žižek’s materialist assessment of the contemporary Other. This paper analyzes a current online phenomenon, known as “the Backrooms,” that converges with these recent concerns in ways that are perhaps more interesting and provocative than films such as _The Matrix _and _The Truman Show _that, Žižek contends, lead one to a conceptual dead-end. (...) That is, we might conclude that there is an authentic reality beyond the simulation or that there is no ‘real’ reality, just a variety of semblances – either way, we foreclose the real that, according to Žižek, inheres as incompleteness and inconsistency. “The Backrooms,” which began life as a cryptic and disquieting post on the forum _4chan _before inspiring subreddits, video games and _YouTube _videos – content that is predominantly created and shared by the ‘gen x’ demographic – ex-sists in a reality that is unstable and, so goes its lore, can be accessed through glitches and ‘quantum tunnelling.’ With this one example, we shall see how culture is responding to the same political and scientific developments that Žižek’s materialism is also working through. (shrink)

I present an experiment on learning about a game in an initially unknown environment. Subjects play repeatedly simple 2 × 2 normal-form coordination games. I compare behavioral learning algorithms for different feedback information. Minimal feedback only informs about own payoffs, while additional feedback informs about own payoffs and the opponent’s choice. Results show that minimal feedback information leads to a myopic learning algorithm, while additional feedback induces non-myopic learning and increases the impulse with which players respond to payoff differences. (...) Finally, there is evidence for a strategy transfer across games which differ only according to the relabel of actions, but not according to permutation in the payoff matrix. (shrink)

Recent analyses of food sharing in small-scale societies indicate that reciprocal altruism maintains interhousehold food transfers, even among close kin. In this study, matrix-based regression methods are used to test the explanatory power of reciprocal altruism, kin selection, and tolerated scrounging. In a network of 35 households in Nicaragua’s Bosawas Reserve, the significant predictors of food sharing include kinship, interhousehold distance, and reciprocity. In particular, resources tend to flow from households with relatively more meat to closely related households with (...) little, as predicted by kin selection. This generalization is especially true of household dyads with mother-offspring relationships, which suggests that studies of food sharing may benefit from distinctions between lineal and collateral kin. Overall, this analysis suggests that exchanges among kin are primarily associated with differences in need, not reciprocity. Finally, although large game is distributed widely, qualitative observations indicate that hunters typically do not relinquish control of the distribution in ways predicted by costly signaling theory. (shrink)

De Dreu and Gross argue that only asymmetric games allow the motives underlying defense and attack to be disentangled. However, the Prisoner's Dilemma Game Alt matrix, a modified symmetric PDG, also allows these motives to be disentangled. Studies using the PDG-Alt matrix produced findings contradicting a central claim of De Dreu and Gross.

This up-to-date introduction to decision theory offers comprehensive and accessible discussions of decision-making under ignorance and risk, the foundations of utility theory, the debate over subjective and objective probability, Bayesianism, causal decision theory, game theory, and social choice theory. No mathematical skills are assumed, and all concepts and results are explained in non-technical and intuitive as well as more formal ways. There are over 100 exercises with solutions, and a glossary of key terms and concepts. An emphasis on foundational (...) aspects of normative decision theory (rather than descriptive decision theory) makes the book particularly useful for philosophy students, but it will appeal to readers in a range of disciplines including economics, psychology, political science and computer science. • Has over 100 end of chapter review questions and exercises with solutions • Includes a chapter on how to draw a decision matrix • Explains the link between individual decision making, game theory and social choice theory Contents Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. The decision matrix; 3. Decisions under ignorance; 4. Decisions under risk; 5. Utility; 6. The mathematics of probability; 7. The philosophy of probability; 8. Why should we accept the preference axioms; 9. Causal vs. evidential decision theory; 10. Bayesian vs. non-Bayesian decision theory; 11. Game theory I: basic concepts and zero sum games; 12. Game theory II: nonzero sum and co-operative games; 13. Social choice theory; 14. Overview of descriptive decision theory; Appendix A. Glossary; Appendix B. Proof of the von Neumann-Morgenstern theorem; Further reading; Index. (shrink)

This Ph.D. thesis is, in large part, a deepening of my M. A. dissertation, entitled: "Différance Beyond Phenomenological Reduction (Epoché)?" - an edited version of which was published in The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 1989. The M. A. dissertation explores the development of the various phases of the movement of epoché in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and its relevance for Jacques Derrida's project of deconstruction. The analyses not only attend to the need for an effective propaedeutic to (...) an understanding of phenomenology as method, they also serve to demystify the logics of Derridean non-teleological strategy by explaining the sense of such a manoeuvre - as a kind of maieutic response to the Husserlian project - which operates within the horizon of a radical epoché. According to this orientation, Derrida's deconstruction of phenomenology is permitted to open itself up to a phenomenology of deconstruction. This doctoral thesis develops these analyses and utilizes a form of critique that points the way to the possibility of a phenomenological-deconstruction of the limits of Derrida's project of deconstruction through the themes of epoché, play, dialogue, spacing, and temporalization. In order to trace the resources from which he draws throughout the early development of deconstruction, this study confines itself to a discussion on the texts published between 1962 and 1968. This subjection of deconstruction to a historical de-sedimentation of its motivational, methodological, theoretical, and strategic moments, involves a certain kind of transformational return to the spacing between phenomenology and deconstruction that urgently puts into question the alleged supercession of phenomenology by deconstruction. The expression of such a 'beyond' is already deeply sedimented in contemporary deconstructive writing to the point at which it is now rarely even noticed, let alone thematized and brought into question. This conviction (regarding the transgression of phenomenology by deconstruction) traces itself out in the form of an attitude to reading which is, in fact and in principle, counter to D6rrida's own call for care. The meaning and limits of the very terms, transgression, beyond, supercession, etc., must be continually subjected to deconstruction. The notions of play, dissemination and supplementarity - with the concomitant sense of transformational repetition that defines them - do not function as a mere excuse for lack of scholarly rigour. Deconstruction is a movement of critical return, which must insert itself (with a sense of irony) within the margins and intersections of that which gives itself up to this practice of textual unbuilding. The strategy of play encourages the structural matrix of that with which it is engaged to turn in upon itself, exposing its limits and fissures in a kind of textual analogue to a psychoanalysis. To be sure, this does involve a certain kind of violence -a violation of the ( system's' own sense of propriety (what is proper [propre] and closest to itself) -but in no sense is this an anarchical celebration of pure destruction. We speak rather of irony, parody, satire, metaphor, double-reading and other tactical devices, which permit a reorganization of the deconstructed's (textual analysand's) self-relation and the possibility of playful speculation. Such play demands care and vigilance in regard to the appropriation of the logics of the system with which it is in a relation of negotiation. In order to play well, one must learn the game-rules. (shrink)

Bovens (2010) points out that there is a structural analogy between the Judy Benjamin problem (JB) and the Sleeping Beauty problem (SB). On grounds of this structural analogy, he argues that both should receive the same solution, viz. the posterior probability of the eastern region of the matrix in Table 1 should equal 1/3. Hence, P*(Red) = 1/3 in the JB and P*(Heads) = 1/3 in the SB. Bovens’s argument rests on a standard error in implementing Bayesian updating, which (...) is spelled out in Shafer 1985. When we are informed of some proposition, we do not only learn the proposition in question, but also that we have learned the proposition as one of the many propositions that we might have learned. The information is generated by a protocol, which determines the various propositions that we might learn. We should then update not on the proposition in question, but rather on the fact that we learned this proposition as one of the many propositions that we might have learned. A well-known application of this insight is the Monty Hall problem (MH) as Speed (1985: 276) points out in a discussion of Shafer 1985. As an illustration, let us apply Shafer’s insight to the MH. In the MH, the contestant in a game show learns that there is a goat behind two of three doors X, Y and Z and a car behind one door. She is asked to pick one of the three doors. The contestant picks door X. Monty will then open one of the remaining doors, which he knows to have a goat behind it. Suppose Monty opens door Y. The contestant is then asked whether she wants to …. (shrink)

Being formalized inside the S-matrix scheme, the zigzagging causility model of EPR correlations has full Lorentz and CPT invariance. EPR correlations, proper or reversed, and Wheeler's smoky dragon metaphor are respectively pictured in spacetime or in the momentum-energy space, as V-shaped, A-shaped, or C-shaped ABC zigzags, with a summation at B over virtual states |B〉 〈B|. An exact “correspondence” exists between the Born-Jordan-Dirac “wavelike” algebra of transition amplitudes and the 1774 Laplace algebra of conditional probabilities, where the intermediate summations (...) |B) (B| were over “real hidden states.” While the latter used conditional (or transition) probabilities (A|C) = (C|A), the former uses transition (or conditional) amplitudes 〈A|C〉 = 〈C|A〉*. The formal parrallelism breaks down at the level of interpretation because (A|C) = |〈A|C〉|2. CPT invariance implies the Fock and Watanabe principle that, in quantum mechanics, retarded (advanced) waves are used for prediction (retrodiction), an expression of which is 〈Ψ| U |Φ〉 = 〈Ψ| UΦ〉 = 〈ΦU|Φ〉, with |Φ〉 denoting a preparation, |Ψ〉 a measurement, and U the evolution operator. The transformation |Ψ〉 = |UΦ〉 or |Φ〉 = |U−1Ψ〉 exchanges the “preparation representation” and the “measurement representation” of a system and is ancillary in the formalization of the quantum chance game by the “wavelike algebra” of conditional amplitude. In 1935 EPR overlooked that a conditional amplitude 〈A|C〉 = Σ 〈A|B〉〈B|C〉 between the two distant measurements is at stake, and that only measurements actually performed do make sense. The reversibility 〈A|C〉 = 〈C|A〉* implies that causality is CPT-invariant, or arrowless, at the microlevel. Arrowed causality is a macroscopic emergence, corollary to wave retardation and probability increase. Factlike irreversibility states repression, not suppression, of “blind statistical retrodiction”—that is, of “final cause.”. (shrink)

Located in Kleinbasel close to the Rhine, the Kaskadenkondensator is a place of mediation and experimental, research-and process-based art production with a focus on performance and performative expression. The gallery, founded in 1994, and located on the third floor of the former Sudhaus Warteck Brewery (hence cascade condenser), seeks to develop interactions between artists, theorists and audiences. Eight, maybe, nine or ten 40 litre bags of potting compost lie strewn about the floor of a high-ceilinged white washed hall. Dumped, split (...) open, the soil mixed with iridescent specks of green, blue and red glitter. On the walls hang large black and white photographic images—negative and positive prints barely clean, hardly sharp, scavenged from the world and presented half processed. On a third wall, hangs a framed golden and charcoal surface. Finally, a huge stain of black dye runs down a wall that descends into a sunken quarter of the Kaskadenkondensator gallery space. The results of a collaboration between Oliver Minder and Walter Derungs reflect on themes addressed in the recent Aesthetics in the 21st Century conference held by the department of English, University of Basel. In particular, the joint show questions how an aesthetic experience may be other than a human-world interaction, hinting at the withdrawal and veiling that objects perform, while demanding that different works engage with each other and play out this game under the non-supervisory eyes of a human audience. Things here are becoming—sometimes it’s a movement towards a more complete ontic whole in a projection of finality, other times it’s a dispersal, an atrophy to rather disarrayed entities. Yet, in the moment and place in which the objects are, we take them as here and now. Let’s get to the material of the stuff that Minder and Derungs have assembled. Oliver Minder employs organic materials—potting earth, cuttlefish ink secretion, rice, and insects; yet his works hardly seem natural in the sense of a harmonic relation between material and the form they are constrained into, the objects they are compelled to occupy. For the substrates on, through, or within which these natural materials are mediated are harshly inorganic substances—Plexiglas, safety glass, acrylic resin, boat varnish, spray paint. Minder, thus, generates a conflict within the materiality of his work between two polar opposites—from the human perspective—in the contiguity of materials engaging with each other in a thrown together formation that nonetheless appears to keep the materials and the objects they make in happy accidental relation to each other. Let me expand a little: on the one hand, the things Minder makes query our belief in substance as belonging in a particular domain, an environment suited to precisely that stuff. We are focused on thinking categorically where things belong, both in terms of natural place and natural relations they might extend to each other. Hence, we are driven to think of environment and order. On the other hand, while extracting things from their conventional place and arranging them within awkward constellations that we as observers feel isn’t quite right, Minder manages to persuade the viewer that the materials are nonetheless “doing alright.” So, simultaneous to our awareness of the appropriateness of the world according to our global notions of accord and uniformity, we are forced to accept the local discrepancies of disassociation, inappropriateness and misplacement. The tension between these two vectors generates a vacillation that intensifies Minder’s work. In the Kaskadenkondensator works, then, it is vital to first consider the material of Minder’s works: potting compost—what is it doing here in the first place?—seems to enjoy being “polluted” by sparkly glitter. Glitter has a long history, used in cosmetics by the Egyptians, and in cave paintings, too, earlier made of beetle shells and mica, nowadays glitter is made of plastic cut to minute sizes down to 50 microns. So what’s the point here? Well shiny bits of dust-like material are actually generated from ultra-thin plastic sheets and are normally cut into shapes that fit contiguously on a two-dimensional surface: squares, triangles, hexagons etc. What then appears to be totally random, chaotic decoration, is actually an array of extremely regular identifiable objects. 1 Of course scale has a role to play here. The minuteness of the dimensions means the regularity is beyond our recognition—all we see are the twinkling surfaces of the multi-coloured grains of plastic. In contrast, potting compost, which appears to be unary in its dull unresponsive lumpen disposition, is in fact an amalgam of a variety of organic and inorganic materials: peat, bark, mushroom compost, and sand and perlite, and should perhaps be more proactively exciting to the viewer because of this complexity. Yes; we can (if we care to) identify different textures, different sizes in the mixture of the medium, but I claim that we tend to treat this organic/inorganic assemblage as just a simple substance. Further and crucially important to our consideration here is that the medium is partially contained, but also partially spilling from the split plastic bags in which it is sold in garden centres. That the compost spills out gives it a movement suggesting life; that the bags are cast here and there in a random fashion by Oliver Minder, lying like discarded carcasses, hacked torsos, dismembered bodies, suggests a horrific murder scene, a Tatort. 2 The glitter flourishes in the medium, lies happy and decorative; that is simply what it does, how it is—always already broken, made-for-scattering, designed to be incomplete; the taken-to-be-natural compost, in contrast, cannot rest content but is forced to speak to us metaphorically in its abject overflowing of violence and rupture. While Oliver Minder’s elements in the installation direct our attention to material, Walter Derungs’ works raise questions around seeing and making in photography. There is a simultaneous flicker between the materials and their use in the production of a sense making representation, on the one hand, and on the other the very notion of what is worthy of picturing, framing, representing on the other. Derungs' images are of non-places. Ranging from archaic decaying monster buildings, buildings that have gone far beyond the ravages of a time that we can safely associate with the genteel preservation of a Bernd and Hill Belcher post-industrial decline, to the background “noise” of an urban world that is falling apart, and to which we most of the time seem to pay little attention, and habitually just pass by. In this respect, their non-ness differs somewhat from the conventional association of the term with Marc Augé 3 , where emphasis is on the specifics (if we do care to examine them for their non-placedness) of the spatial or place containment in which movement between multimodal coordinates occurs in supermodern late capitalist post-urban spaces. In other words, we might be in an Augéian non-place and (not) experience—be impervious to—that environment, or we might in Derungs’ manner look out from such a position at the “scenery” around us. I claim scenery, as this is what Derungs seems to do with his partial photography—construct a very purposefully articulated, symmetric, flat world of image. Mostly depopulated, his images construct a space in which the direction of time is uncertain: are these partial structures falling apart, or perhaps terminated in a never-to-be-completed state, or are they a few steps from final completion? Temporal and spatial dimensions figure large in Derungs’ image-making: his world, and perhaps this is in fact the only way for it to be registered photographically, is already image before it is photographed. A key combination of images in this show is a matrix of six black and white negative prints measuring 300 x 215 cm that form the image of a semi-derelict (or is it yet incomplete) church, and adjacent on a perpendicular wall, a single black and white positive print 150 x 250 cm of two bricked-up windows of a late-Victorian industrial building. What are we led to believe that we see here? In the negative print, the conditions of perception 4 are sufficiently reproduced for us to recognise the structure of the building, to distinguish ground and form, to relate some partial elements of narrative, and to recognize symbols such as the alter cross and figure of Christ, a looming crane, a traffic cone, and banks of tiered seating. We piece the image together both from the individual forms which we recognize despite the tonal reversal, and we piece the six prints together as a whole, the matrix of lines between them emphasizing our purview onto the world. While we recognise the forms at work in the image and might possibly relate the negative reversals to other figurations such as Vera Lutter’s camera obscura exposures, we cannot but avoid seeing the partialness of the image in the sponge marks of the developer that was spread by hand across the prints. 5 Derungs’ thus intervenes with our usual conception of photography as the mimetic realist vehicle sine qua non , by exposing the viewer to tonal reversal and incomplete or over developed areas of the print. We thus confront both the idiom of such image making and its raw (chemical) materiality at once in the simultaneity of the recognition of what the image pictures and the recognition that it is in the act of picturing. The church image, taken from the series “BW Negativs 2011,” thus orients us towards how we see things in the world via photographs. The single image of the bricked-up wall presents us with a completely different visuality that relates to a faciality 6 which we cannot easily escape from. We look, or rather try to look with no success, through the face of the windows, through the classic Albertian screen 7 which has already been given to us in the church matrix beside. Yet although we should be able to make more of these concealed windows because they are a positive print, because they are complete, because they approach us on a more realistic scale, reproduced at life size, we cannot. The objects pictured here withdraw from us; furthermore, they merely mock our blindness at not seeing how we look. Blocked up with quite a hint of paned glass behind, one window is blanked out with a white blind, the other simply blankly dark. The apertures look like eyes with teeth in them, or a Dogon mask, or even Man Ray’s Noire et Blanche (1926) if we want to get really perverse. The height of elegant modernist chauvinist beauty thrown against the vacuity of post-industrial decline. Derungs thus catapults us consciously into a world enfolded with and through images, but in such a way that the images themselves become objects that stand resistant to us, impervious to our gaze, indifferent. We—and indeed they—do not attempt to reach out to a real that is beyond, rather the images play in a world that is just theirs, and we can only enter that world if we too submit to their regime: tonal reversal, segmented, partial, inadequate, still, wrenched out of time. In contemplation, in the flood of the image “falling” off the wall, we too become image-object. Perhaps enough has now been said about the works, yet enough can never really be said, we know the image will always exceed the word—let’s accelerate the critique: Derungs’ work continues in a second space partially partitioned from this first room. Opposing three more “BW Negativs” which figure yet more quotidian aspects of the world is Minder’s gold spray paint and cuttlefish secretion mix: things that just shouldn’t work together do in the dialogue between stuff that Derungs and Minder have constructed. Minder makes things; Derungs makes images; together they make objects which inhabit their own world which we can approach and sensually engage with and come to grips with only on those objects’ own terms. This is best summarised by a final work made by Oliver Minder which on a third wall faces these two semi-partitioned spaces. A deep black stain about 100 X 200 cm with streak marks running down a further 2 metres hovers positioned to observe the whole work, and also to be part of this installation, too. This liminal flat suzerain lies in/out of the whole work. The stain of cuttlefish secretion resonates with Derungs’ sponge strokes on the church image; it mirrors the iris of an all-seeing eye; it combines material in situ with the situation itself. Where Minder’s other works have material and medium or substrate upon which the material is exercised, this single black hole is image which sucks everything up into itself. It draws the viewer, who must otherwise look away attentively at the floor work, and imagine horror, or smile at the ironic play of glitter. Look away at the image constructions that suggest how it is we too look to our world. See the play of thing and image in a third area. Or, finally return to the base of the pyramid that triangulates, to realise the stuff-image that unlocks it all for us. Black on white, organic on inorganic, material to substrate, that which in the falling out of one on the other, in its running down the wall simply gives form to both content and expression in one direction, and content and expression to form in another. NOTES In fact, glitter is used as associative forensic evidence: the 20,000 or so varieties are all uniquely identifiable. Joel Sternfeld, Tatorte: Bilder gegen das Vergessen (München: Schirmer/Mosel, 1996). Marc Augé, Non­places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity trans. John Howe (London: Verso, 2006). An echo of the uneven paint strokes of light­sensitive chemicals in the paper preparations made by Henry Talbot some 170 years ago in the first sun drawings that also often pictured architectural forms. It was Talbot’s surprising discovery that where a weaker chemical solution was more thinly spread, greater light sensitivity was actualized, yet this virtual image had then to be chemically developed in a second step. Thus, Derungs unevenly finished spongings suggestively trace back to this originary technology (although his sweeps are the stains of uneven development and not those of the initial preparation of light–sensitive material). Umberto Eco, “Critique of the Image” in “Articulations of Cinematic Code” Cinematics 1, 1970. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Geoffrey Batchen, Burning With Desire: the Conception of Photography (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999). (shrink)

This paper critically examines several game theoretic interpretations of Hobbes' state of nature, including Prisoner's Dilemma and Assurance Game, and argues instead that the best matrix is that of a combination of the two, an Assurance Dilemma. This move is motivated by the fact that Hobbes explicitly notes two distinct personality types, with different preference structures, in the state of nature: dominators and moderates. The former play as if in a Prisoner's Dilemma, the latter play as if (...) in an Assurance Game. But when meeting one another, the Assurance Dilemma represents their differing strategies, and can explain various other features of Hobbes' state of nature, as well as a key informational role played the Sovereign. (shrink)

Academic mothers perform intersected roles. They carry out their profession in workplaces, while they take the “second shift” of motherhood back to their families. The contested expectations in family and career built by the heterosexual matrix cause tension to academic mothers. We qualitatively investigate the interview data of six Chinese women academics on how they perform to negotiate their motherhood and academic work in the context of Chinese higher education, driven by the Butlerian theoretical concept of the heterosexual (...) class='Hi'>matrix. The findings suggest that Chinese academic mothers play a zero-sum game between being mothers and being academics, deriving from their ontological responsibilities of motherhood. We conclude that in the masculine academia, these women academics help maintain the heterosexual matrix by satisfying the gender normativity when they negotiate their performances in their family and career; meanwhile, most have developed some strategies to achieve their career advancement. (shrink)

Two studies examined gender differences in lying when the truth-telling bias prevailed and when inspiring lying and disbelief. The first study used 156 community participants in pairs. First, participants completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the Lie- and Truth Ability Assessment Scale, and the Rational-Experiential Inventory. Then, they participated in a deception game where they performed as senders and receivers of true and false communications. Their goal was to retain as many points as possible according to a payoff matrix (...) that specified the reward they would gain for any possible outcome. Results indicated that men lied more and were more successful lie-tellers than women. In addition, men believed the sender less than women but were not more successful detectors of lies and truths. Higher perceived lie-telling ability, narcissistic features, and experiential thinking style explained men’s performance. The second study used 100 volunteers who underwent the same procedure. However, the payoff matrix encouraged lying and disbelieving. Results showed again that men lied more than women. As to performance, men were more successful lie detectors than women, but there was no truth detection difference. Women did not differ in their success in telling and detecting lies and truths. The inconsistent gender differences in production and detection lies and truths dictate caution in interpreting them. (shrink)

How do rational agents coordinate in a single-stage, noncooperative game? Common knowledge of the payoff matrix and of each player's utility maximization among his strategies does not suffice. This paper argues that utility maximization among intentions and then acts generates coordination yielding a payoff-dominant Nash equilibrium. ‡I thank the audience at my paper's presentation at the 2006 PSA meeting for many insightful points. †To contact the author, please write to: Philosophy Department, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211; e-mail: (...) [email protected]. (shrink)

_Riassunto_: Diversi studi hanno posto in risalto le affinità tra la filosofia critica di Wittgenstein e la psicoanalisi di Lacan. Questo lavoro passa in rassegna alcuni aspetti comuni ai due autori, delineando una prospettiva d’incontro teoretica e concettuale. Un punto d’incontro tra questi due pensatori comprende la fondamentale attenzione per il linguaggio e un atteggiamento critico verso la concettualizzazione classica della soggettività. Questo saggio tenta di sviluppare teoreticamente questi punti di contatto introducendo il concetto di soggettività senza interiorità, un soggetto (...) senza psicologia. In effetti, l’affidamento di Wittgenstein sulla grammatica e il ricorso di Lacan al significante portano allo stesso risultato: considerare il linguaggio in sé come matrice della soggettività. Da questa prospettiva la fondazione della soggettività non risiede più in una certa supposta sostanza metafisica bensì in una esteriorità radicale, nei giochi linguistici. _Parole chiave_: Wittgenstein; Lacan; Inconscio; Linguaggio; Grammatica _A subjectivity without interiority: Wittgenstein with Lacan_ _Abstract_: Several studies highlight affinities between Wittgenstein’s critical philosophy and Lacan’s psychoanalysis. The following article revisits certain points of both authors, proposing a theoretical and conceptual encounter between them. Indeed, the common ground between these two thinkers includes a fundamental focus on language and a critical approach to classic conceptualisation of subjectivity. This contribution attempts to theoretically developing this encounter by introducing the concept of subjectivity without interiority, a subject without psychology. In fact, Wittgenstein’s reliance on grammar and Lacan’s use of the signifier yield the same result: pointing to language itself as the matrix of subjectivity. From this perspective, the foundation of subjectivity no longer resides in some supposed metaphysical substance, but rather in a radical exteriority, in linguistic games. _Keywords_: Wittgenstein; Lacan; Unconscious; Language; Grammar. (shrink)

Introduction -- Media and representation. On the one medium / Eric Gans -- The scapegoat mechanism and the media: beyond the folk devil paradigm / John O'Carroll -- The apocalypse will not be televised / Chris Fleming -- Film. Mirrors of nature: artificial agents in real life and virtual worlds / Paul Dumouchel -- Superheroes, scapegoats, and saviors: the problem of evil and the need for redemption / Joel Hodge -- Sanctified victimage on page and screen: The hunger games as (...) prophetic media / Debra E. Macdonald -- The mimetic e-motion: from The matrix to Avatar / Nidesh Lawtoo -- Apocalypse of the therapeutic: The cabin in the woods and the death of mimetic desire / Peter Y. Paik -- Eyes wide shut: mimesis and historical memory in Stanley Kubrick's The shining / David Humbert -- Against romantic love: mimeticism and satire in Woody Allen's Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona; you will meet a tall dark stranger; and To Rome with love / Scott Cowdell -- A beautiful crisis: Ang Lee's film adaptation of The ice storm / Carly Osborn -- Cowboy metaphysics, the virtuous-enough cowboy, and mimetic desire in Stephen Fears' The hi-lo country / Thomas Ryba -- Television. The self in crisis: watching Mad men and Homeland with Girard and Hegel / Paolo Diego Bubbio -- Media, murder, and memoir: Girardian baroque in Robert Drewe's The shark net / Rosamund Dalziell -- Conversion in Dexter / Matthew John Paul Tan and Joel Hodge. (shrink)

This paper shows the brain correlates of Cloninger’s personality model during the presentation of social scenarios under positive or negative valence situations. Social scenarios were constructed when participants played the Dictator game with two confederates that had two opposites roles as the cooperator and non-cooperator. Later the same day during a fMRI scanning session, participants read negative and positive situations that happened to confederates in the past. Participants were asked to think “how do you think those people felt during (...) that situation?” A dissimilarity matrix between stimuli were obtained from fMRI results. Results shown that Harm Avoidance trait people make use of right middle frontal gyrus and left superior frontal gyrus to discriminate between Coop and NoCoop. Cooperation as a trait makes use of the right superior temporal gyrus and the right precuneus to discriminate between Coop and NoCoop in positive social scenarios. Finally, Self-directedness trait people make use of the right inferior parietal lobe to discriminate between Coop and NoCoop in negative social scenarios and the right precuneus to discriminate between Coop and Strangers. An intuitive link between discrimination findings and behavioral patterns of those personality traits is proposed. (shrink)

This study aims to examine the relationship between public financial management and indicators of well-being among 29 Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries using a balanced panel dataset over the period between 2005 and 2019. This study used a matrix of seven proxy measures of public financial management, which works as an integrated financial system to improve the objective quality of well-being measured by employment, education level, productivity, and wages. Using the generalised method of moments, the estimator's results, indicate (...) that higher government revenues, expenses (% of GDP) lead to lower well-being while the higher net lending /net borrowing, cost of business start-up procedures, and adjusted gross savings (% of GNI) lead to increase well-being measured by spending on education. The higher government revenues, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, and higher net lending /net borrowing lead to improved well-being, while the higher cost of business start-up procedures (% of GNI per capita) leads to lower well-being measured by wages. The higher government revenues, government effectiveness, and higher net lending/net borrowing lead to increased well-being. In contrast, the higher expense (% of GDP) leads to lower well-being measured by productivity labor. The higher government revenues, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, net lending /net borrowing and adjusted gross savings lead to lower well-being, while the higher cost of business start-up procedures leads to increased well-being measured by employment rates. The OECD countries should prepare fiscal policies to ensure the sustainability of public finances in the long run and identify emergency response mechanisms to overcome the challenges of improving the objective quality of well-being. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 (2011): 22-25. The Author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento do Ensino Superior), Brazil. From the multifarious subdivisions of semiotics, be they naturalistic or culturalistic, the realm of semiotics of value is a ?eld that is getting more and more attention these days. Our entire political and economic systems are based upon structures of symbolic representation that many times seem not only to embody monetary value but also to determine it. The connection between monetary (...) and linguistic exchanges is self-evident: the former requires the latter and develops in direct relation to it. Creative experimentation and design of digital systems of value exchange are blossoming on the web. Dr. Gilson Schwartz, an economist turned media theorist and professor at the University of São Paulo, adopted the concept of Iconomics, originally created by Michael Kaplan, an author concerned with the linguistics of economic value. Empowering local communities and unlocking new levels of value creation and representation via digital technologies are the main goals of Dr. Schwartz’s projects, aiming at the re-designing of our relationship to the economic value of imagination and the social control of property. Schwartz is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo, a former Chief Economist at BankBoston, Brazil and Advisor to the President of the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). FURTHER READING: Kaplan, Michael. “Iconomics: The Rhetoric of Speculation.” Public Culture . 15.3 (2003): 477-493. Renata Lemos-Morais: You have recently produced and directed a short documentary about Creative Currencies in Latin America. Could you tell us a bit about its process and its findings? Gilson Schwartz: The “Creative Currencies” project is a work-in-progress platform which unfolds as an action research agenda connected both to the production of audiovisual content and the development of social currency software. The initiative dates back to 2003 when I led an experimental project supported by the Presidency of Brazil. At that time, we issued paper currency in a small, touristic village in the Northeast Region which stimulated local cultural projects. But it was only in 2009 that the Central Bank of Brazil acknowledged “social currencies” as a legitimate economic agenda, calling for more debate at the I Financial Inclusion Forum. This year, the monetary authorities organized a second forum that also opened the room to discussions on mobile payment systems and new perspectives on poverty alleviation via State subsidies. The Ministry of Culture funded the “Creative Currencies” project in 2009-2010 and our next stage in this discovery process is to be supported by the National Social and Economic Development Bank (BNDES). In short, there is genuine interest among public officials in different areas and public funding for social currencies is on the rise in Brazil. However, after all these years we are still at a very early stage of research and practice. Some of the most successful initiatives (such as Banco Palmas) actually evolved out of local monetary creation to become correspondent banking operations for commercial banks and other financial groups. After eight years of price stability and social inclusion, Brazil stands out as a major opportunity for social experimentation, even the Grameen Bank is now entering the Brazilian market and many NGOs are geared towards different forms of entrepreneurialism in the base of the pyramid, riding solidarity economic models, microfinance and microcredit for local development. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these developments are just one more stage of “bankarization”, that is to say, an extension of regular banking services or actually a new form of social and symbolic self-determination at the local level. So far, the Central Bank of Brazil is open to new forms of credit and local finance as long as they are strictly territorial and very close to barter among the poor. In other words, whether the process of monetary creation could be made to fit an open source paradigm is yet to be seen. Community banking and social currencies might as well end up as just another channel for access to and use of banking services. The “Creative Currencies” project aims at promoting the discussion of more fundamental issues, such as the limits of central banking, the prospects for local financial development and the possibility of creating and managing financial icons as cultural assets. The purpose of this project is to produce short documentaries that will bear testimony to this evolving regulatory framework while inducing more discussion about the fundamental iconomic issues concealed in the process of money and wealth creation. RLM: What new potential is there in applying digital technologies to currency creation? GS: Globalization is a result of the virtualization of money, that is, the overcoming of illusions such as the “gold standard”. Money is an icon created by institutions, not on supposedly natural or material foundations but out of political and financial interests. The “dollar standard” is an outstanding evidence of this phenomenon and Kaplan´s paper, the first to use the expression “iconomics”, insists on the rhetoric and semiotic effects associated to a supposedly scientific model of money creation and management. This is a fundamental change that was perceived and discussed much before the digitalization of the world by unorthodox economists such as John Maynard Keynes since the early 20th century. The digitalization of global financial flows accelerated this immateriality and the creation of the Euro was yet another evidence of the political foundations of currencies. The banking establishment, however, is keen on the idea that scientific formulae hold the key to sound money creation. Keynesianism has been repeatedly associated to “inflationism” while the supposedly sound monetary policies of the Orthodoxy serve well the political and financial interests of a technocratic elite. Corporate media also serve this fictitious depiction of the monetary process despite the cyclical bust of monetary rules and financial regulations. The internet, however, has created numerous opportunities for the disintermediation in industries such as film, music and commodities. There is no reason to doubt that the financial industry can also be transformed by Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructures. Money is media as well. Credit is but confidence. Once people realize that the distributed computing power of networks can also be the platform to weave new monetary and credit operations, there is room for grassroots emancipation out of the established owners of monetary institutions. So far, however, there has been a privatization of monetary management and there is not a clear path or model for the emergent (P2P) property democratization that is inherent to the internet. Digital assets, however, clearly have an inherent potential to escape central control and proprietary regulatory frameworks. RLM: How are social networks transforming the ways in which we exchange value? Do you believe that online influence and reputation might be translated into a new kind of currency? GS: The foundation for social currencies as envisaged by solidarity economics is the territory. Authorities are willing to concede local monetary creation as long as it is restricted to poor neighborhoods, as a proxy to barter. In this relevant but limited context, reputation, personal knowledge and informal ties form the matrix of local or “proximity” finance which are expected to keep credit and leverage to a sustainable level. Anything beyond that should and would lead to an integration of local finance into the established banking system. However, inasmuch as the internet promotes virtual territories and reputation is now subject to all sorts of digital manipulation and stardom becomes an everyday cultural process among teenagers and elders alike, the territorial “foundation” is substituted for more complex patterns of solidarity, cooperation and exchange that reach beyond the physical territory and even the “human.” Digital assets embody knowledge, technology, cultural and educational values that are exchanged at a global scale beyond the control of democratic States (Chinese-like intervention is the exception, not the rule). Hacktivism is unstoppable and so is monetary hacktivism. Especially in the Third World, mobile communications fast became conveyors of money transfers and other appropriation strategies. Banking and telecom sectors already battle for the control of these emerging markets and, as a matter of fact, have so far contributed to the containment of these processes. Governments serve these moguls and have usually adopted a wait-and-see attitude. If open source hardware and grassroots social movements combine to challenge these proprietary battles, then social networks may evolve into new forms of social capital and thus form the ground on which to design and implement social currencies. The global financial crisis, as well as the dollar demise, are an event of such a proportion that social networks may open the path for emancipator subjects to seize the opportunity. RLM: What are some of the social experiments that you think are revolutionizing the way in which value is exchanged? GS: There is a broad evolution of economic systems towards the valuation of intangible assets such as knowledge, reputation and sustainability. There are many examples of local as well as global events that call the traditional systems of exchange into question, from carbon credits to educational bonuses, digital barter frameworks and locally based solidarity and fair trade networks. These emerging examples, no matter how different in nature or scale, represent a challenge to the traditional value creation schemes and theories which are based on use and exchange value, supply and demand. This is not to say that utility and labour or scarcity are to be totally dismissed, but there is now an emerging perception that value is also a function of behavioral codes, symbolic patterns and the energy of institutional frameworks. The plasticity of digital platforms is relevant insofar as intellectual property becomes the central source of value creation. But when you discuss the property rights of public goods such as the environment or basic social rights (of minorities or localities), then a new paradigm seems to emerge. RLM: Are gaming and online storytelling digital practices that might have an impact on the way new currencies are created and developed? GS: “Play money” has been one of the early and most intriguing phenomena associated to the diffusion of virtual worlds. These virtual currencies have also been prone to “boom and bust” dynamics, speculation and pure theft (Second Life scams were common and led to “intervention” by the owners of the game). Storytelling is a major source of value, that is, the value of attention and the markets for audience. There are plenty of private monies created and managed by corporate entertainment groups, telecom operators (via mobile virtual network operators) and marketing frameworks. The casino economy, as already depicted by Keynes and other unorthodox economists, is always storytelling about future states of the world, confidence building and leverage of animal spirits. The novelty of current events is not the fictitious nature of any form of capital, but the potential for digital democratization of controls over the imaginary nature of value creation. But this is just a potential, a possibility, a figment that more often than not is appropriated by centralized and opaque private powers. The game industry is a testbed for new connections between storytelling and money creation. RLM: Monetary value was originally connected to the scarcity of precious metals, such as gold. Our entire monetary system seems therefore to function according to a logic of scarcity. Do you believe it is possible to reverse this logic into a logic of abundance? GS: The gold standard was a fiction itself, the “scarcity” is always produced by institutions that regulate confidence and access to credit. The key issue is not to fabricate abundance, but to question the institutions which produce scarcity out of any standard, gold or whatever. Central banks are at the service of private banks in the creation and management of scarcity. RLM: The promise that nanotechnology holds for our future is one of radical abundance (or so say transhumanists). The possibility of creating any kind of material substance through nanoengineering seems each day more feasible. What would this possibility entail in terms of systems of value exchange? GS: Nanotechnology, environmental concerns and grassroots appropriation of distributed knowledge are the frontiers of a new horizon of energy creation and management. Social groups in charge of managing scarcity for the sake of wealth and power concentration must be held accountable for the destruction of our future. Once this key political conundrum is accounted for, new systems of value exchange and even a non-mercantile society will come into existence. Revolutionary theorists such as Marx envisaged transformation via the extreme clash of contradictions between capital and labour. This approach has never led to a change in the systemic logic of scarcity for the sake of social control. We are once again facing the threshold of large scale societal change, but the outcome of the current crisis should come from our imagination, not from yet another paradox of abundance and scarcity. As long as we remain attached to the materiality of value, the illusion of freedom will but reinforce the massive manipulation of necessity. RLM: What do you think is the role of crowdfunding in this context? GS: Crowdsourcing as well as crowdfunding are examples of the peer to peer opportunities that come along with distributed computer power. However, the power structure behind wealth and scarcity creation may or may not be changed by crowd management. But it should not be taken at face value, so to speak. The stock market of course is an early form of crowdfunding without calling into question the proprietary framework of the companies offering their investment projects to the market. Any market is a form of crowdsourcing, that is to say, of distributed forms of supply and demand matchmaking. The wealth of networks, however, depends on the contractual ecosystem, the institutional framework, the channeling of social imagination, not on the purely quantitative distribution of bids and offers. I see economics as supply, demand and code. Once you have access to the code, once openness becomes part of the game, then there is a chance of crowd behavior becoming collective intelligence and sustainable imagination. RLM: Is the development of digital currencies headed towards a pluralistic ecology in which many micro currency systems co-exist, or is it penetrating the mainstream monetary system? If it is affecting the mainstream financial system, what would be its effect in the long-term? GS: The same issue is at stake both at local and global levels. The global system is, as a matter of fact, an unstable ecosystem of “micro currencies” whereas the dollar has so far exerted an overwhelming influence. Local currencies and private monies coexist with national currencies only to the extent that the Central Bank admits, for instance, that grassroots monetary emissions remain territorial and strictly connected to poverty. However, the question of how new developments in digital technologies and nanotechnologies might alter not only our current monetary systems but also our understanding of value in itself, is still an open question. (shrink)

Through a phenomenological study of horse-human relations, this article explores the ways in which, as embodied beings, we live relationally, rather than as separate human identities. Conceptually this challenges oppositional logic and humanist assumptions, but where poststructuralist treatments of these issues tend to remain abstract, this article is concerned with an embodied demonstration of the ways in which we experience a relational or in-between logic in our everyday lives.

We argue that pedagogic authority relies on love, which is misunderstood if seen as a matter of actions and subjects. Love is based not on finite subjects and objects existing in Euclidean space and linear time, but, rather, on the non-finite ontology, space and time of relations. Loving authority is a matter of calling and vocation, arising from the spontaneous and simultaneous call-and-response of a lively relation. We make this argument through a reading of Buber’s I–You relation and Murdoch’ s (...) account of the responsiveness of ascetic discipline. In presenting this analysis, we draw upon a case study from a research project on Australian teachers and students. (shrink)

This study examined the link between employees’ adult attachment orientations and perceptions of line managers’ interpersonal justice behaviors, and the moderating effect of national culture. Participants from countries categorized as low collectivistic and high collectivistic completed an online survey. Attachment anxiety and avoidance were negatively related to interpersonal justice perceptions. Cultural differences did not moderate the effects of avoidance. However, the relationship between attachment anxiety and interpersonal justice was non-significant in the Southern Asia cultural cluster. Our findings indicate the importance (...) of ‘fit’ between cultural relational values and individual attachment orientations in shaping interpersonal justice perceptions, and highlight the need for more non-western organizational justice research. (shrink)

Prior research suggests brokers do not always act in the best interests of clients, although morally obligated to do so. We empirically investigated this issue focusing on trades executed at best execution price, before and after the introduction of electronic limit-order trading, on the London Stock Exchange. As a result of limit-order trading, the proportion of trades executed at the best execution price for the customer significantly increased. We attribute this to a sustained increase in the liquidity of stocks as (...) a result of limit-order trading, regardless of market capitalisation. We discuss the ethical implications of our findings and conclude that market structures that enhance market competitiveness may help reconcile broker and client interests. (shrink)