_The Multicultural Imagination_ is a challenging inquiry into the complex interrelationship between our ideas about race and color and the unconscious. Michael Vannoy Adams takes a fresh look at the contributions of psychoanalysis to a question which affects every individual who tries to establish an effective personal identity in the context of their received 'racial' identity. Adams argues that 'race' is just as important as sex or any other content of the unconcscious, drawing on clinical case (...) materal from contemporary patients for whom 'race' or color is a vitally significant social and political concern that impacts on them personally. He does not assume that racism or 'colorism' will simply vanish if we psychoanalyse them, but shows how a non-defensive ego and a self-image that is receptive to other-images can move us towards a more productive discourse of cultural differences. Wide-ranging in its references and scope, this is a book that provokes the reader - analyst or not - to confront personally those unconscious attitudes which stand in the way of authentic multicultural relationships. (shrink)

"I have entitled this book _For Love of the Imagination_. Long ago, I fell in love with the imagination. It was love at first sight. I have had a lifelong love affair with the imagination. I would love for others, through this book, to fall in love, as I once did, with the imagination." _Michael Vannoy Adams_,_ _from the Preface. ___For Love of the Imagination__ _is a book about the imagination – about what and how images mean. Jungian psychoanalysis (...) is an imaginal psychology – or what Michael Vannoy Adams calls "imaginology," the study of the imagination. What is so distinctive – and so valuable – about Jungian psychoanalysis is that it emphasizes images. For Love of the Imagination is also a book about interdisciplinary applications of Jungian psychoanalysis. What enables these applications is that all disciplines include images of which they are more or less unconscious. Jungian psychoanalysis is in an enviable position to render these images conscious, to specify what and how they mean. On the contemporary scene, as a result of the digital revolution, there is no trendier word than "applications" – except, perhaps, the abbreviation "apps." In psychoanalysis, there is a "Freudian app" and a "Jungian app." The "Jungian app" is a technology of the imagination. This book applies Jungian psychoanalysis to images in a variety of disciplines. _For Love of the Imagination_ also includes the 2011 Moscow lectures on Jungian psychoanalysis. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, students, and those with an interest in Jung. (shrink)

The Multicultural Imagination is a challenging inquiry into the complex interrelationship between our ideas about race, color and the unconscious. Drawing on clinical case material, Michael Vannoy Adams argues that race is just as important as sex or any other content of the unconscious. He does not assume that racism will simply vanish if we psychoanalyze a patient, but shows how a non-defensive ego and a self-image that is receptive to other-images can move us towards a more (...) productive discourse of cultural differences. The Multicultural Imagination provokes the reader--analyst or not--to confront personally those unconscious attitudes which stand in the way of authentic multicultural relationships. (shrink)

Preface to the second edition -- Preface to the first edition -- Psycho-mythology : meschugge? -- Dreams and fantasies : manifestations 0f the mythological unconscious -- African-American dreaming and the "lion in the path" : racism and the cultural unconscious -- "Hapless" the Centaur : an archetypal image, amplification, and active imagination -- Pegasus and visionary experience : from the white winged horse to the "flying red horse" -- The bull, the labyrinth, and the Minotaur : from archaeology to "archetypology" (...) (with an apology to Ariadne) -- Griffins, gold, and dinosaurs : mythology and "fantastic paleontology" -- Dreaming of a unicorn : a comparison of Lacanian and Jungian interpretation -- "Destiny" and the call to heroism : a dream of vocation and individuation -- List of publications by Michael Vannoy Adams. (shrink)

The first season of Westworld the has recurring image of a piano which is capable of playing its own keys and pedals. Robert Ford's error demonstrates how our common‐sense view of consciousness has been incorporated into the way we think and even speak about the ourselves and others. When we look at ourselves and those around us, we use rather common‐sense concepts to explain or understand human behavior and action. Dennett believes that what we conceive as consciousness, from our common (...) sense, is an illusion that represents the deeper, more complex functions within the human brain. The eliminativism of Robert Ford, Paul Churchland and Daniel Dennett, rejects what our common sense tells us about consciousness and what Descartes himself had tried to defend. What we seem to intuitively conceive as human consciousness is just as much a fiction as are the narrative loops and backstories of Westworld's hosts. (shrink)

. Sponsorship, Academic Independence and Critical Engagement: a Forum on Shell, the Ogoni Dispute and the Royal Geographical Society Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 219-257.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

The usage, derivation, and psychological, ethical, and legal aspects of slang terminology in medicine are discussed. The colloquial vocabulary is further described and a comprehensive glossary of common UK terms provided in the appendix. This forms the first list of slang terms currently in use throughout the British medical establishment.

The emotion of anger, when chronic, is especially problematic. Frequent and intense experiences of anger predict quite a few adverse health outcomes and are especially implicated in cardiovascular...

Despite the ubiquity of knowledge attribution in human social cognition, its associated neural and cognitive mechanisms are poorly documented. A wealth of converging evidence in cognitive neuroscience has identified independent perspective-taking and inhibitory processes for belief attribution, but the extent to which these processes are shared by knowledge attribution isn't presently understood. Here, we present the findings of an EEG study designed to directly address this shortcoming. These findings suggest that belief attribution is not a component process in knowledge attribution, (...) contra a standard attitude taken by philosophers. Instead, observed differences in P3b amplitude indicate that knowledge attribution doesn't recruit the strong self-perspective inhibition characteristic of belief attribution. However, both belief and knowledge attribution were observed to display a late slow wave widely associated with mental state attribution, indicating that knowledge attribution also shares in more general processing of others' mental states. These results provide a new perspective both on how we think about knowledge attribution, as well as Theory of Mind processes generally. (shrink)

It is widely held in philosophy that knowing is not a state of mind. On this view, rather than knowledge itself constituting a mental state, when we know, we occupy a belief state that exhibits some additional non-mental characteristics. Fascinatingly, however, new empirical findings from cognitive neuroscience and experimental philosophy now offer direct, converging evidence that the brain can—and often does—treat knowledge as if it is a mental state in its own right. While some might be tempted to keep the (...) metaphysics of epistemic states separate from the neurocognitive mechanics of our judgements about them, here I will argue that these empirical findings give us sufficient reason to conclude that knowledge is at least sometimes a mental state. The basis of this argument is the epistemological principle of neurocognitive parity—roughly, if the contents of a given judgement reflect the structure of knowledge, so do the neurocognitive mechanics that produced them. This principle, which I defend here, straightforwardly supports the inference from the empirical observation that the brain sometimes treats knowledge like a mental state to the epistemological conclusion that knowledge is at least sometimes a mental state. All told, the composite, belief-centric metaphysics of knowledge widely assumed in epistemology is almost certainly mistaken. (shrink)

Quite likely the most sacrosanct principle in epistemology, it is near-universally accepted that knowledge is factive: knowing that p entails p. Recently, however, Bricker, Buckwalter, and Turri have all argued that we can and often do know approximations that are strictly speaking false. My goal with this paper is to advance this nascent non-factive project in two key ways. First, I provide a critical review of these recent arguments against the factivity of knowledge, allowing us to observe that elements of (...) these arguments mutually reinforce respective weaknesses, thereby offering the non-factive project a much stronger foundation than when these arguments were isolated. Next, I argue tentatively in favor of Bricker’s truthlikeness framework over the representational adequacy account favored by Buckwalter and Turri. Taken together, while none of this constitutes a knock-down argument against factivity, it does allow us to quiet some of the more immediate worries surrounding the non-factive project. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

On the standard conception of risk, the degree to which an event is risky is the function of the probability of that event. Recently, Duncan Pritchard has challenged this view, proposing instead a modal account on which risk is conceived of in terms of modal ordering (2015). On this account, the degree of risk for any given event is a function of its modal distance from the actual world, not its likelihood. Pritchard's main motivation for this is that the probabilistic (...) account cannot always explain our judgements about risk. In certain cases, equally probable events are not judged to be equally risky. Here I will argue that Pritchard's account succumbs to a similar problem. Put simply, there are cases in which judgements about risk decouple from both probability and modal ordering. Thus, if we want a theory of risk that can explain our judgements about risk, neither the probabilistic nor modal account is successful. (shrink)

There is a widespread attitude in epistemology that, if you know on the basis of perception, then you couldn't have been wrong as a matter of chance. Despite the apparent intuitive plausibility of this attitude, which I'll refer to here as “stochastic infallibilism”, it fundamentally misunderstands the way that human perceptual systems actually work. Perhaps the most important lesson of signal detection theory (SDT) is that our percepts are inherently subject to random error, and here I'll highlight some key empirical (...) research that underscores this point. In doing so, it becomes clear that we are in fact quite willing to attribute knowledge to S that p even when S's perceptual belief that p could have been randomly false. In short, perceptual processes can randomly fail, and perceptual knowledge is stochastically fallible. The narrow implication here is that any epistemological account that entails stochastic infallibilism, like safety, is simply untenable. More broadly, this myth of stochastic infallibilism provides a valuable illustration of the importance of integrating empirical findings into epistemological thinking. (shrink)

Here I explore a new line of evidence for belief–credence dualism, the thesis that beliefs and credences are distinct and equally fundamental types of mental states. Despite considerable recent disagreement over this thesis, little attention has been paid in philosophy to differences in how our mindreading systems represent the beliefs and credences of others. Fascinatingly, the systems we rely on to accurately and efficiently track others’ mental states appear to function like belief–credence dualists: Credence is tracked like an emotional state, (...) composed of both representational and affective content, whereas belief is tracked like a bare representational state with no affective component. I argue on a preliminary basis that, in this particular case, the mechanics of mentalizing likely pick out a genuine affective dimension to credence that is absent for belief, further strengthening the converging case for belief–credence dualism. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

As the functional capabilities of high-tech medical products converge, supplying organizations seek new opportunities to differentiate their offerings. Embracing product sustainability-related differentiators provides just such an opportunity. This study examines the challenge organizations face when attempting to understand how customers perceive environmental and social dimensions of sustainability by exploring and defining both dimensions on the basis of a review of extant literature and focus group research with a leading supplier of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning equipment. The study encompasses seven (...) hospitals and one private imaging center in the Netherlands and identifies five social aspects that cover 11 indicators. The authors conduct 22 customer perception interviews with key decision-making stakeholders involved in purchasing MRI scanning equipment. Respondents find environmental and social sustainability dimensions personally relevant but professionally secondary to cost, performance, and ability to use the equipment in their organizations' physical infrastructure. Finally, incorporating a product's environmental and social credentials within the marketing of MRI scanning equipment enhances the perception of the product offering in decisionmaking stakeholders' minds and provides a means of differentiation. (shrink)

A convergence of four genealogies reveals drone power. Environmentality describes the contradictory uses of drones in conservation. Humanitarianism articulates how control is enacted and challenged in human crises. Securitization examines drones in surveillance and counter-surveillance. Militarization, the use of drones in war, explains domination from above and resistance from below. While theories of governmentality dominate, an emergent materialism within drone studies emphasizes the diffusion of power and agency. A synthesis of drone governmentality and drone materialism exposes four flightways or elemental (...) trajectories. The drone is an existential technology – a tool for enlivenment and senescence. As such, drone power migrates between biopolitics and resistance. In doing so, drone performativity generates assemblages of human and nonhuman actants entangled at material-discursive and onto-epistemological levels. Entrapment designates the consequences of increasing dependency on technologies in sociotechnical systems of life and death. (shrink)

One of the most widely recognised intuitions about knowledge is that knowing precludes believing truly as a matter of luck. On Pritchard’s highly influential modal account of epistemic luck, luckily true beliefs are, roughly, those for which there are many close possible worlds in which the same belief formed in the same way is false. My aim is to introduce a new challenge to this account. Starting from the observation—as documented by a number of recent EEG studies—that our capacity to (...) detect visual stimuli fluctuates with the phase of our neural oscillations, I argue that there can be very close possible worlds in which an actual-world detectable stimulus is undetectable. However, this doesn’t diminish our willingness to attribute knowledge in the case that the stimulus is detectable, even when undetectability would result in the same belief formed in the same way being false. As I will argue at length, the modal account appears unable to accommodate this result. (shrink)

It is all but universally accepted in epistemology that knowledge is factive: S knows that p only if p. The purpose of this thesis is to present an argument against the factivity of knowledge and in doing so develop a non-factive approach to the analysis of knowledge. The argument against factivity presented here rests largely on empirical evidence, especially extant research into visuomotor noise, which suggests that the beliefs that guide everyday motor action are not strictly true. However, as we (...) still want to attribute knowledge on the basis of successful motor action, I argue that the best option is to replace factivity with a weaker constraint on knowledge, one on which certain false beliefs might still be known. In defence of this point, I develop the non-factive analysis of knowledge, which demonstrates that a non-factive constraint might do the same theoretical work as factivity. (shrink)

The thesis that knowledge is a factive mental state plays a central role in knowledge-first epistemology, but accepting this thesis requires also accepting an unusually severe version of externalism about the mind. On this strong attitude externalism, whether S is in the mental state of knowledge can and often will rapidly change in virtue of changes in external states of reality with which S has no causal contact. It is commonly thought that this externalism requirement originates in the factivity of (...) knowledge. However, despite a number of recent defenses of non-factive accounts of knowledge, epistemology has yet to consider whether a non-factive approach might produce a version of the mental state thesis that can avoid strong externalism. Here I do just that, exploring how three different proposals for weakening factivity might be adapted to theories of knowledge as a non-factive mental state. Contrary to what we might expect, however, none of these proposals are compatible with anything close to attitude internalism about knowledge—or even a substantially weaker externalism. All told, the widespread view that wraps up the severe externalism required for knowledge to be a mental state in factivity is mistaken. Knowledge’s external-world connection runs far deeper than the factivity constraint. (shrink)

This paper outlines the case for a future research program that uses the tools of experimental cognitive science to investigate questions that traditionally fall under the remit of the philosophy of historiography. The central idea is this – the epistemic profile of historians’ representations of the past is largely an empirical matter, determined in no small part by the cognitive processes that produce these representations. However, as the philosophy of historiography is not presently equipped to investigate such cognitive questions, legitimate (...) concerns about evidential quality go largely overlooked. The case of mental state representation provides an excellent illustration of this. Representations of past mental states – the thoughts and fears and knowledge and desires of past agents – play much the same evidential role in historiography as in everyday life, serving in the causal explanation of agents’ behaviors and supporting normative evaluation of those behaviors. However, we have good reason to suspect that the theory of mind processes that support these representations may be more susceptible to error when deployed in the context of historiography than under everyday conditions. This raises worries about the quality of evidence that theory of mind can provide historiography, worries which require experimental cognitive science to properly address. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

There are brains in vats (BIVs) in the actual world. These “cerebral organoids” are roughly comparable to the brains of three-month-old foetuses, and conscious cerebral organoids seem only a matter of time. Philosophical interest in conscious cerebral organoids has thus far been limited to bioethics, and the purpose of this paper is to discuss cerebral organoids in an epistemological context. In doing so, I will argue that it is now clear that there are close possible worlds in which we are (...) BIVs. Not only does this solidify our intuitive judgement that we cannot know that we are not BIVs, but it poses a fundamental problem for both the neo-Moorean (i.e. safety-based) antisceptical strategy, which purports to allow us to know that we aren’t BIVs, and the safety condition on knowledge itself. Accordingly, this case is especially instructive in illustrating just how epistemologically relevant empirical developments can be. (shrink)

The problem of historiographical evaluation is simply this: By what evaluative criteria might we say that certain works of historiography are better than others? One recently proposed solution to this problem comes by way of Kuukkanen’s postnarrativist philosophy of historiography.1 Kuukkanen argues that because many historiographically interesting statements lack truth-values, we cannot evaluate historiographical claims on a truth-functional basis. In the place of truth, Kuukkanen suggests that we evaluate historiographical claims in terms of justification. The problem with this proposal, as (...) I will argue here, is that it isn’t at all clear what it means for a neither-true-nor-false claim to be justified. Moreover, this proposal also runs into trouble with the factivity of knowledge. The solution I propose here might be called “two-valued” postnarrativism, which retains Kuukkanen’s framework, except with a stricter ontology devoid of neither-true-nor-false historiographical statements. In arguing for this approach to historiographical evaluation, this paper will be structured in the following way: First, I’ll describe Kuukkanen’s postnarrativism in more detail, focusing especially on his account of historiographical evaluation. Next, I’ll introduce two problems that accompany this account, one originating from the factivity of knowledge and the other from trying to divorce justification from the concept of truth. Finally, I argue that not only might these problems be solved by simply committing to all historiographical claims being either true or false, but that Kuukkanen’s account is especially amenable to this. (shrink)

This paper proposes an in-depth on the legal and educational linguistic policy of the state that affect the everyday practice school French students. The allied French academic culture to the school culture are articulated to serve the construction of republican citizenship. This ideological construction, political and cultural affects students entering the use of French particularities of its cultural, social status or family origin. From a historical and legislative perspective the authors address the orientation of the teaching of French in the (...) educational system as an obstacle to the integration of groups of students who do not fit the narrow linguistic-political patterns that the system imposes. And finally, from an applied perspective, explores the factors that can lead to the breakdown of monolingual system, moreover, is articulated as a cultural system of segregation and exclusion of class.Este artículo propone una reflexión en profundidad sobre las consecuencias jurídicas y pedagógicas de la política lingüística del estado que afectan en la práctica cotidiana escolar al alumnado francés. La cultura académica francesa aliada con la cultura escolar se articulan al servicio de la construcción de la ciudadanía republicana. Esta construcción ideológica, política y cultural afecta a los estudiantes que incorporan al uso de la lengua francesa particularidades propias de su entorno cultural, social o de su origen familiar. Desde una perspectiva histórica y legislativa los autores abordan la orientación de la enseñanza de la lengua francesa en el sistema educativo como un obstáculo para la integración de los grupos de alumnado que no se ajustan a los estrechos patrones linguístico-políticos que el sistema impone. Y por último, desde una perspectiva aplicada, exploran los factores que pueden desembocar en la ruptura del sistema monolingüe que, además, se articula como un sistema de segregación cultural y de exclusión clasista. (shrink)

The knowledge-centric Theory of Mind research program suggested by Phillips et al. stands to gain significant value by embracing a neurocognitive approach that takes full advantage of techniques like fMRI and EEG. This neurocognitive approach has already begun providing important insights into the mechanisms of knowledge attribution, insights which support the claim that it is more basic than belief attribution.

The distinction between true belief and knowledge is one of the most fundamental in philosophy, and a remarkable effort has been dedicated to formulating the conditions on which true belief constitutes knowledge. For decades, much of this epistemological undertaking has been dominated by a single strategy, referred to here as the modal approach. Shared by many of the most widely influential constraints on knowledge, including the sensitivity, safety, and anti-luck/risk conditions, this approach rests on a key underlying assumption — the (...) modal profiles available to known and unknown beliefs are in some way asymmetrical. The first aim of this paper is to deconstruct this assumption, identifying its plausibility with the way in which epistemologists frequently conceptualize human perceptual systems as excluding certain varieties of close error under conditions conducive to knowledge acquisition. The second aim of this paper is to then argue that a neural phase phenomenon indicates that this conceptualization is quite likely mistaken. This argument builds on the previous introduction of this neural phase to the context of epistemology, expanding the use of neural phase cases beyond relatively narrow questions about epistemic luck to a much more expansive critique of the modal approach as a whole. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThere is surprisingly little empirical evidence supporting theoretical and anecdotal claims regarding the spontaneous production of prototypic facial expressions used in numerous emotion re...

Wilderness Search and Rescue is the process of finding and assisting persons who are lost in remote wilderness areas. Because such areas are often rugged or relatively inaccessible, searching for missing persons can take huge amounts of time and resources. Camera-equipped mini-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have the potential for speeding up the search process by enabling searchers to view aerial video of an area of interest while closely coordinating with nearby ground searchers. In this paper, we report on lessons learned by (...) trying to use UAVs to support WiSAR. Our research methodology has relied heavily on field trials involving searches conducted under the direction of practicing search and rescue personnel but using simulated missing persons. Lessons from these field trials include the immediate importance of seeing things well in the video, the field need for defining and supporting various roles in the search team, role-specific needs like supporting systematic search by providing a visualization tool to represent the quality of the search, and the on-going need to better support interactions between ground and video searchers. Surprisingly to us, sophisticated autonomous search patterns were less critical than we anticipated, though advances in video enhancement and visualizing search progress, as well as ongoing work to model the likely location of a missing person, open up the possibility of closing the loop between UAV path-planning, search quality, and the likely location of a moving missing person. Keywords: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Wilderness Search and Rescue, Human–Robot Interaction, Human Factors, Field Robotics, Graphical User Interfaces. (shrink)

We applaud the goals and execution of the target article, but note that individual differences do not receive much attention. This is a shortcoming because individual differences can play a vital role in theory testing. In our commentary, we describe programs of research of this type and also apply similar thinking to the mechanisms proposed in the target article.

Multiple epistemological programs make use of intuitive judgments pertaining to an individual’s ability to gain knowledge from exclusively probabilistic/statistical information. This paper argues that these judgments likely form without deference to such information, instead being a function of the degree to which having knowledge is representative of an agent. Thus, these judgments fit the pattern of formation via a representativeness heuristic, like that famously described by Kahneman and Tversky to explain similar probabilistic judgments. Given this broad insensitivity to probabilistic/statistical information, (...) it directly follows that these epistemic judgments are insensitive to a given agent’s epistemic status. From this, the paper concludes that, breaking with common epistemological practice, we cannot assume that such judgments are reliable. (shrink)

In the human quest for meaning, work occupies a central position. Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which often serves as a primary source of purpose, belongingness, and identity. In light of these benefits to employees and their organizations, organizational scholars are increasingly interested in understanding the factors that contribute to meaningful work, such as the design of jobs, interpersonal relationships, and organizational missions and cultures. In a separate line of inquiry, scholars of business ethics (...) have examined meaningful work as a moral issue concerning the management of others and ourselves, exploring whether there are definable characteristics of meaningful work to which we have moral rights, and whether there are moral duties to ourselves and others to fulfill those rights. In this article, we examine contemporary developments in both disciplines about the nature, causes, and consequences of meaningful work; we explore linkages between these disciplines; and we offer conclusions and research opportunities regarding the interface of ethical and organizational perspectives on performing and providing meaningful work. (shrink)

When engaging with a textbook, students are inclined to highlight key content. Although students believe that highlighting and subsequent review of the highlights will further their educational goals, the psychological literature provides little evidence of benefits. Nonetheless, a student’s choice of text for highlighting may serve as a window into her mental state—her level of comprehension, grasp of the key ideas, reading goals, and so on. We explore this hypothesis via an experiment in which 400 participants read three sections from (...) a college‐level biology text, briefly reviewed the text, and then took a quiz on the material. During initial reading, participants were able to highlight words, phrases, and sentences, and these highlights were displayed along with the complete text during the subsequent review. Consistent with past research, the amount of highlighted material is unrelated to quiz performance. Nonetheless, highlighting patterns may allow us to infer reader comprehension and interests. Using multiple representations of the highlighting patterns, we built probabilistic models to predict quiz performance and matrix factorization models to predict what content would be highlighted in one passage from highlights in other passages. We find that quiz score prediction accuracy reliably improves with the inclusion of highlighting data (by about 1%–2%), both for held‐out students and for held‐out student questions (i.e., questions selected randomly for each student), but not for held‐out questions. Furthermore, an individual’s highlighting pattern is informative of what she highlights elsewhere. Our long‐term goal is to design digital textbooks that serve not only as conduits of information into the reader’s mind but also allow us to draw inferences about the reader at a point where interventions may increase the effectiveness of the material. (shrink)