The Problem of Consciousness This chapter will introduce you to consciousness and its most important characteristics. We will look at definitions of consciousness, and examine what it means to say that consciousness is a private experience. We will look at the idea that it is like something to be you or me. The chapter mentions ideas and themes that will be covered in more detail in the rest of the book, and explains why the topic is an important one. Research (...) on consciousness is big on questions but shorter on answers. Nevertheless these questions are central to what it means to be human, or indeed at the heart of what it's like to be anything - what it's like to be conscious. Think of yourself just now. What does it feel like you to be you right at this moment? Think of a loved one. What do you think it is like to be them? Do they know exactly what they're feeling, and do you know just what they're feeling? We might have some idea, but the answer in both cases is no, and not only "no", we can't see how we ever could know for sure. It's my consciousness and your consciousness. (shrink)

I examine four core aspects of WEAVER ++. The necessity for lemmas is often overstated. A model can incorporate interaction between levels without feedback connections between them. There is some evidence supporting the absence of inhibition in the model. Connectionist modelling avoids the necessity of a nondecompositional semantics apparently required by the hypernym problem.

Constraints on the types of speech errors observed can be accounted for by a frame/content distinction, but connectionist modeling shows that they do not require this distinction. The constraints may arise instead from the statistical properties of our language, in particular, the sequential biases observed in the vocabulary. Nevertheless, there might still be a role for the frame/content distinction in syntactic planning.

We present one of the first quantitative studies on auditory verbal experiences and auditory verbal agency voices or characters”) in healthy participants across states of consciousness. Tools of quantitative linguistic analysis were used to measure participants’ implicit knowledge of auditory verbal experiences and auditory verbal agencies, displayed in mentation reports from four different states. Analysis was conducted on a total of 569 mentation reports from rapid eye movement sleep, non-REM sleep, sleep onset, and waking. Physiology was controlled with the nightcap (...) sleep–wake mentation monitoring system. Sleep-onset hallucinations, traditionally at the focus of scientific attention on auditory verbal hallucinations, showed the lowest degree of VE and VA, whereas REM sleep showed the highest degrees. Degrees of different linguistic-pragmatic aspects of VE and VA likewise depend on the physiological states. The quantity and pragmatics of VE and VA are a function of the physiologically distinct state of consciousness in which they are conceived. (shrink)

We present one of the first quantitative studies on auditory verbal experiences (“hearing voices”) and auditory verbal agency (inner speech, and specifically “talking to (imaginary) voices or characters”) in healthy participants across states of consciousness. Tools of quantitative linguistic analysis were used to measure participants’ implicit knowledge of auditory verbal experiences (VE) and auditory verbal agencies (VA), displayed in mentation reports from four different states. Analysis was conducted on a total of 569 mentation reports from rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, (...) non‐REM sleep, sleep onset, and waking. Physiology was controlled with the nightcap sleep–wake mentation monitoring system. Sleep‐onset hallucinations, traditionally at the focus of scientific attention on auditory verbal hallucinations, showed the lowest degree of VE and VA, whereas REM sleep showed the highest degrees. Degrees of different linguistic‐pragmatic aspects of VE and VA likewise depend on the physiological states. The quantity and pragmatics of VE and VA are a function of the physiologically distinct state of consciousness in which they are conceived. (shrink)

Self-regulated learning is critical for learning across tasks, domains, and contexts. Despite its importance, research shows that not all learners are equally skilled at accurately and dynamically monitoring and regulating their self-regulatory processes. Therefore, learning technologies, such as intelligent tutoring systems, have been designed to measure and foster SRL. This paper presents an overview of over 10 years of research on SRL with MetaTutor, a hypermedia-based ITS designed to scaffold college students’ SRL while they learn about the human circulatory system. (...) MetaTutor’s architecture and instructional features are designed based on models of SRL, empirical evidence on human and computerized tutoring principles of multimedia learning, Artificial Intelligence in educational systems for metacognition and SRL, and research on SRL from our team and that of other researchers. We present MetaTutor followed by a synthesis of key research findings on the effectiveness of various versions of the system on learning outcomes. First, we focus on findings from self-reports, learning outcomes, and multimodal data and their contributions to our understanding of SRL with an ITS. Second, we elaborate on the role of embedded pedagogical agents as external regulators designed to scaffold learners’ cognitive and metacognitive SRL strategy use. Third, we highlight and elaborate on the contributions of multimodal data in measuring and understanding the role of cognitive, affective, metacognitive, and motivational processes. Additionally, we unpack some of the challenges these data pose for designing real-time instructional interventions that scaffold SRL. Fourth, we present existing theoretical, methodological, and analytical challenges and briefly discuss lessons learned and open challenges. (shrink)

This paper considers the claim that imagination is implicated in our most apparently straightforward human transactions with the world, that our 'knowing' of the world (both in experience and our subsequent symbolic ordering of it) is in some sense imaginatively constructed from the outset. Second, drawing in particular on the work of Mark Johnson, it explores the senses in which such imaginative transactions are both experience constituted and experience constitutive (that, in Ricoeur's words, imagination 'invents in both senses of the (...) word'). Third, it attends to one apparent theological cost of ascribing to human imagination a 'creative' role in relation to the human world. Fourth, it focuses in particular on Charles Taylor's account of the imaginative construction of the self as a moral entity. And finally, it considers just one example of how the arts may be active in shaping moral identity, and thereby the human world in which we live and move and have our being. (shrink)

Recently, Quyn et al. demonstrated that cells within the stem cell zone of human and mouse intestinal crypts tend to align their mitotic spindles perpendicular to the basal membrane of the crypt. This is associated with asymmetric division, whereby particular proteins and individual chromatids are preferentially segregated to one daughter cell. In colonic mucosa containing a heterozygous adenomatous polyposis coli gene (APC) mutation the asymmetry is lost. Here, we discuss asymmetric stem cell division as an anti‐tumourigenic mechanism. We describe how (...) hierarchical tissue structures suppress somatic evolution, and discuss the relative merits of template strand retention to limit the accumulation of DNA replication errors. We suggest experiments to determine whether somatic mutations resulting in loss of spindle alignment confer an advantage within the stem cell niche. Finally, we discuss whether lack of spindle alignment constitutes an oncogenic event per se, with particular reference to studies in model organisms, and the timing of chromosomal instability in human cancers. (shrink)

2000 Years and Beyond brings together some of the most eminent thinkers of our time - specialists in philosophy, theology, anthropology and cultural theory. In a horizon-scanning work, they look backwards and forwards to explore what links us to the matrix of the Judaeo-Christian tradition from which Western cultural identity has evolved. Their plural reflections raise searching questions about how we move from past to future - and about who 'we' are. What do the catastrophes of the twentieth century signify (...) for hopes of progress? Can post - Enlightment humanism and its notion of human nature survive without faith? If the 'numinous magic global capitalism' is our own giant shadow cast abroad, does that shadow offer hope enough of a communal future? Has the modern, secularized West now outgrown its originating faith matrix? Often controversial and sometimes visionary, these seven new essays ask: how do we tell - and rewrite - the story of the Common Era? Introduced by Paul Gifford, and discussed in a lively dialogic conclusion, they add their distinctive voices to a debate of profound and urgent topicality. (shrink)

The Hadza foragers of Tanzania are currently experiencing a nutritional shift that includes the intensification of domesticated cultigens in the diet. Despite these changes, no study, to date, has examined the possible effects of this transition on the food collection behavior of young foragers. Here we present a cross-sectional study on foraging behavior taken from two time points, 2005 and 2017. We compare the number of days foraged and the type and amount of food collected for young foragers, aged 5–14 (...) years, in age- and season-matched samples. Compared with 2005, in 2017 fewer subadults left camp to forage, and overall, they targeted a smaller variety of wild foods, with the noticeable absence of wild honey, figs, and tubers. In addition, participants in 2017 were significantly more likely to have attended school. Despite the increased presence of domesticated plant foods in the diet and increased attendance at school, some young foragers continue to be highly productive in collecting wild, undomesticated foods. Despite the preliminary nature of our results, our findings suggest that the range of wild foods targeted by subadults is decreasing as the amount of domesticated cultigens in the diet increases. These data underscore the importance of studying diet composition and foraging decisions across temporal, nutritional, and ecological landscapes. (shrink)

Recent official publications have emphasised the need for differentiation to take place in classrooms in order to ensure that the needs of all pupils, including the more able, are met effectively. These publications list methods of differentiation which are ‘recommended’ for classroom use. This article researches the views of teachers about the value of these recommended methods of differentiation for able pupils in primary and secondary classrooms. It concludes that the teachers are more subtle in their use of the methods (...) than the official publications allow for and it suggests that no single method can be applied without understanding the context in which it is used. (shrink)

How should clinical ethicists be trained? Scholars have stated that clinical ethics fellowships create well-trained, competent ethicists. While this appears intuitive, few features of fellowship programs have been publicly discussed, let alone debated. In this paper, we examine how fellowships can foster effective mentoring relationships. These relationships provide the foundation for the fellow’s transition from novice to competent professional. In this essay, we begin by discussing our pedagogical commitments. Next, we describe the structures our program has created to assist our (...) fellows in becoming competent ethicists. We then outline the kinds of knowledge, skills, and professional attributes mentors should possess. Following this, we focus on the knowledge, skills, and professional attributes that fellows develop as they co-create effective mentoring relationships. We will not prescribe a single approach to fellowship training; instead, our perspective will, we hope, become a catalyst for further conversation on training and mentoring clinical ethics fellows. (shrink)

Happiness : an introduction to the good life -- Decisions : giving our life to the glory of God -- Gifts : ethics in an ancient Hebrew worldview -- Paradigms : learning how to be good -- Practices : working towards a goal -- Imagination : living into the new possibility with Christ -- Rules : formal ethics in Christianity -- Righteousness : filling our hunger.

One day, Matthew Eaton was walking through an impromptu animal shelter display at his local pet store when suddenly an eight-month-old kitten dug his claws into Eaton’s flesh. Eaton recognized that the “eyes of this cat and the curve of his claw” compelled a response analogous to those found in the writings of Buber, Levinas, and Derrida. And not just Eaton but a whole community of theologians have found themselves in an encounter with particular places and animals that demands rich (...) theological reflection. Eaton enlisted fellow editors Harvie and Bechtel to collect the essays in this volume, in which theologians listen to horses, rats, snakes, cats, dogs, and the earth itself, who become new theological voices demanding a response. In this volume, the voice of the more-than-human world is heard as making theology possible. These essays suggest that what we say theologically represents not simply ideas of our own making subsequently superimposed onto the natural world through our own discovery, but rather flow from an expressive Earth. With additional contributions from: Kimberly Carfore Lisa E. Dahill Celia Deane-Drummond Heather Eaton Nathan Kowalsky Abigail Lofte Jame Schaefer Cristina D. Vanin Mark Wallace Grace Y. Kao Chris Carter John Berkman Laura Hobgood. (shrink)

Every school has a mission statement based on values and ethical beliefs. Ethics for Teachers and Middle Leaders sets out a way of thinking through the key issues of ethics in teaching and shows how a school's ethical values can be translated by students and staff into action. It is designed to help rehearse certain ethical dilemmas and guide teacher leaders in helping others to think through and develop appropriate behaviours. Chapters consider the role of ethics in all aspects of (...) school life including teacher professionalism, teaching methods, lesson planning and assessment. This book not only examines everyday concerns such as class management and presenting curriculum ethically, but also touches upon emerging issues in e-learning, career building, leadership and school governance. Packed full of real examples from schools and opportunities to reflect, the book will help readers to understand how their behaviour, decisions and advice to others might be guided and to avoid some of the common pitfalls in school. This insightful book will instil confidence in teachers and middle leaders as they face such ethical dilemmas in their daily work. (shrink)

The consensus among spacetime substantivalists is to respond to Leibniz's classic shift arguments, and their contemporary incarnation in the form of the hole argument, by pruning the allegedly problematic metaphysical possibilities that generate these arguments. Some substantivalists do so by directly appealing to a modal doctrine akin to anti-haecceitism. Other substantivalists do so by appealing to an underlying hyperintensional doctrine that implies some such modal doctrine. My first aim in this paper is to pose a challenge for all extant forms (...) of this consensus position. My second aim is to show what form substantivalism must take in order to uphold the consensus while addressing this challenge. The result is a novel "plenitudinous" substantivalist view, which predicts that certain modal facts about spacetime are vague or indeterminate. I then argue against this view on independent grounds, concluding that substantivalists should reject the consensus position. The paper also discusses the way forward for substantivalists in light of this conclusion. (shrink)

This paper first argues that we can bring out a tension between the following three popular doctrines: (i) the canonical reduction of metaphysical modality to essence, due to Fine, (ii) contingentism, which says that possibly something could have failed to be something, and (iii) the doctrine that metaphysical modality obeys the modal logic S5. After presenting two such arguments (one from the theorems of S4 and another from the theorems of B), I turn to exploring various conclusions we might draw (...) in light of these results, and argue that none comes cost free. In the course of laying out possible responses to my arguments, we'll have a chance to evaluate various doctrines about the interplay between contingency and essence, as well as develop some alternative reductions of metaphysical modality to essence. I don't decisively come down in favor of one response over the others, though I say some things that point towards the conclusion that essence has no role to play in reducing metaphysical modality. (shrink)

In the business world, one of the key challenges is how to survive in ever changing business environments and outperforming the competitors, while keeping the operational cost at minimum and profits at maximum level. In other words, this can be described as the problem of improving operational efficiency and reducing cost. Over the past few years due to global financial challenges, it has become even more important to improve the operational efficiency and reduce costs to survive through these tough conditions. (...) Like other successful implementations of Lean philosophy, especially in automobile, aerospace, steel and healthcare, it can be applied in cable manufacturing to achieve competitive, sustainable and profitable processes. The main focus of Lean philosophy is to create value for the stakeholders and end customers by reducing the non-value added activities or waste, and laying a strong foundation towards sustainable growth, by focusing on continuous process improvement. The overall philosophy provides a focused approach for continuous process improvement and the targeting of a variety of tools and methods to bring improvements. This paper presents case studies for Lean scheduling of manufacturing processes and exemplify how Lean scheduling processes allow organisations to maintain the continuous improvement philosophy. This paper also addresses the key elements of rescheduling processes i.e. how to schedule and when to schedule. Further, the paper will exemplify key benefits of Lean scheduling and how the Cable industry could benefit from the proposed approach. (shrink)

Formal criteria of theoretical equivalence are mathematical mappings between specific sorts of mathematical objects, notably including those objects used in mathematical physics. Proponents of formal criteria claim that results involving these criteria have implications that extend beyond pure mathematics. For instance, they claim that formal criteria bear on the project of using our best mathematical physics as a guide to what the world is like, and also have deflationary implications for various debates in the metaphysics of physics. In this paper, (...) I investigate whether there is a defensible view according to which formal criteria have significant non-mathematical implications, of these sorts or any other, reaching a chiefly negative verdict. Along the way, I discuss various foundational issues concerning how we use mathematical objects to describe the world when doing physics, and how this practice should inform metaphysics. I diagnose the prominence of formal criteria as stemming from contentious views on these foundational issues, and endeavor to motivate some alternative views in their stead. (shrink)

When business organisations become involved in contributing to and resolving social issues, they enter areas traditionally seen as the purview of governments. In doing so, they begin to take on the expectations and responsibilities of government; they become politicised. This politicisation is a product of business’s success and power and appears largely unavoidable. Adopting Matten & Crane’s (2005a) extended view of corporate citizenship, business organisations’ responsibilities extend to the administration of citizens’ social, civil and political rights. We term these areas (...) where business organisations take over the administration of citizenship rights as the social governance gap. Drawing upon the agenda of Margolis and Walsh (2003), we seek to enhance the understanding of how business navigates its responsibilities within the social governance gap, including its function as a significant actor influencing societal development and wellbeing. We do this through an exploration of Rio Tinto’s involvement in the WA Future Fund. This paper forms part of an introductory scoping case study of the Rio Tinto WA Future fund and its function as one of Rio Tinto’s diverse responses to community development issues in Western Australia. (shrink)

We live in anagewhere"progressive" intellectualspresuppose that true democracy demands the affirmation of "global values" and the drive toward a world government, a"universal and homogenous state." Intellectuals, journalists, and educators bemoan the effects of "globalization" even as they uncritically endorse cosmopolitanism and dismissnational attachments as parochial and outdated. They confuse thoughtful patriotism - and commitment to the self-governing nation - with the narrowest form of nationalism. In a wonderfullylucid and learned essay, Trevor Shelley recovers a humane liberal tradition, from Montesquieu (...) to Manent, that takes the political seriously and does full justice to the legitimate claims of both universality and particularity. Whether discussing Tocqueville's critique of the pantheistic reveries of democratic man or Pierre Manent's erudite defense of the nation, the political form that provides the indispensable framework for democratic self-government, Shelley thoughtfully illumines the place and limits of globalization in a democratic age. --Daniel J. Mahoney, Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship, Assumption College. (shrink)

The hole argument purports to show that all spacetime theories of a certain form are indeterministic, including the General Theory of Relativity. The argument has given rise to an industry of searching for a metaphysics of spacetime that delivers the right modal implications to rescue determinism. In this paper, I first argue that certain prominent extant replies to the hole argument—namely, those that appeal to an essentialist doctrine about spacetime—fail to deliver the requisite modal implications. As part of my argument, (...) I show that threats to determinism of the sort brought out by the hole argument are more general than has heretofore been recognized. I then use these results to propose a novel essentialist doctrine about spacetime that successfully rescues determinism, what I call sufficiency metric essentialism. However, I go on to argue that once we realize what an essentialist doctrine about spacetime must look like in order to address the hole argument, we should reject all such doctrines, because they can't fulfill their ambition of improving on standard modal replies to the argument. I close by suggesting some lessons for future work on spacetime and the metaphysics of physics more broadly, and also drawing some general morals for contemporary metaphysics, in particular about (i) whether essence can be used to articulate a precise structuralist doctrine, and (ii) the relationship between essence and modality. (shrink)

This authoritative new book details the most recent advances in clinical neuroscience, from neurogenetics to the study of consciousness.

Examines the work of transcendental filmmakers such as Bela Tarr and Terence Malick using a metaphysical framework.

Are ecosystems morally considerable-that is, do we owe it to them to protect their “interests”? Many environmental ethicists, impressed by the way that individual nonsentient organisms such as plants tenaciously pursue their own biological goals, have concluded that we should extend moral considerability far enough to include such organisms. There is a pitfall in the ecosystem-to-organism analogy, however. We must distinguish a system’s genuine goals from the incidental effects, or byproducts, of the behavior of that system’s parts. Goals seem capable (...) of giving rise to interests; byproducts do not. It is hard to see how whole ecosystems can be genuinely goal-directed unless group selection occurs at the community level. Currently, mainstream ecological and evolutionary theory is individualistic. From such a theory it follows that the apparent goals of ecosystems are mere byproducts and, as such, cannot ground moral considerability. (shrink)

Games and simulations--from quantitative modeling to immersive, experiential scenarios--as methods for engagement within futures studies have a substantial history. In recent years, there has been a surge of projects using a wide array of tools. As practitioners and researchers have gravitated toward more playful approaches, there is a need to review and evaluate such approaches. This chapter provides an introduction to gaming and simulations as anticipatory processes. Offering a snapshot of contemporary projects from around the world, this chapter utilizes a (...) range of voices and perspectives on gaming and simulations to explore how such tools and methods use the future. (shrink)