Following the financial crisis of 2008, the Treasury Committee of the UK House of Commons undertook an inquiry into the lessons that might be learned from the banking crisis. Paul Moore, head of group regulatory risk at Halifax Bank of Scotland during 2002–2005, provided evidence of his experience of questioning HBOS policies which resulted in his dismissal from HBOS. The problems that surfaced at HBOS during the financial crisis were so serious that it was forced to merge with Lloyds TSB, (...) another UK bank, to form the Lloyds Banking Group in which the government took a significant stake. Moore’s evidence to the Treasury Committee revealed that long before the financial crisis, he had raised major concerns with the management of HBOS and with the Financial Services Authority, the UK financial services regulator. Moore’s evidence led to the submission of further disclosures, replies and rejoinders as evidence to the Treasury Committee. Moore’s case is therefore of considerable interest to researchers of whistleblowing because it is a rare instance of high-level whistleblowing, the details of which subsequently entered the public domain. The information revealed in evidence to the Treasury Committee sheds light on the process of whistleblowing in the context of the governance and regulation of a major UK bank that subsequently had to be rescued by government intervention during the financial crisis. The paper makes a contribution to the wider literature on whistleblowing, and to a greater understanding of aspects of the financial crisis. (shrink)

In this paper I give conditions under which a matrix characterisation of validity is correct for first order logics where quantifications are restricted by statements from a theory. Unfortunately the usual definition of path closure in a matrix is unsuitable and a less pleasant definition must be used. I derive the matrix theorem from syntactic analysis of a suitable tableau system, but by choosing a tableau system for restricted quantification I generalise Wallen's earlier work on modal logics. The tableau system (...) is only correct if a new condition I call alphabetical monotonicity holds. I sketch how the result can be applied to a wide range of logics such as first order variants of many standard modal logics, including non-serial modal logics. (shrink)

In this paper, we challenge one of the criticisms against the idea of a universal basic income, namely, that people will waste the support on high-end consumption. We rely on the literature from various disciplines from which we developed high- and low-UBI scenarios for respondents to decide what they would do if the state were to provide an unconditional stipend. We analyzed the multiple-choice responses, using an ordered probit, and the written explanations of the respondents’ choices, using content analysis. The (...) results suggest that while a higher UBI would increase consumption, it would likely be done responsibly. People with low incomes showed restraint in all categories. The qualitative analysis captures some of the complexities of people’s socioeconomic circumstances that support the notion of responsible consumption. The policy implication is that a UBI could be introduced at a low level and gradually increased to a level that maximizes societal benefits. (shrink)

Exploring what theologians at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century understood about the boundary between humans and animals, this book demonstrates the great variety of ways in which they held similarity and difference in productive tension. Analysing key theological works, Ian P. Wei presents extended close readings of William of Auvergne, the Summa Halensis, Bonaventure, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. These scholars found it useful to consider animals and humans together, especially with regard to animal knowledge and (...) behaviour, when discussing issues including creation, the fall, divine providence, the heavens, angels and demons, virtues and passions. While they frequently stressed that animals had been created for use by humans, and sometimes treated them as tools employed by God to shape human behaviour, animals were also analytical tools for the theologians themselves. This study thus reveals how animals became a crucial resource for generating knowledge of God and the whole of creation. (shrink)

In the thirteenth century, the University of Paris emerged as a complex community with a distinctive role in society. This book explores the relationship between contexts of learning and the ways of knowing developed within them, focusing on twelfth-century schools and monasteries, as well as the university. By investigating their views on money, marriage and sex, Ian Wei reveals the complexity of what theologians had to say about the world around them. He analyses the theologians' sense of responsibility to the (...) rest of society and the means by which they tried to communicate and assert their authority. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, however, their claims to authority were challenged by learned and intellectually sophisticated women and men who were active outside as well as inside the university and who used the vernacular - an important phenomenon in the development of the intellectual culture of medieval Europe. (shrink)

Learned men of the twelfth century, especially the first half, frequently wrote about themselves and each other. Well-known examples of autobiographical writing include Guibert of Nogent's De vita sua or Monodiae, Rupert of Deutz's defense of his theological career in his Apologia attached to his commentary on the Benedictine rule, Peter Abelard's Historia calamitatum, and Gerald of Wales's De rebus a se gestis. Examples of biographical narrative are easily found: the life of St. Goswin included an account of Goswin defeating (...) Abelard in disputation; Baudri of Bourgueil wrote a poem about famous schools and scholars; the anonymous Metamorphosis Goliae provided characterizations of many masters; John of Salisbury's Metalogicon described the teaching methods of Bernard of Chartres and, in an autobiographical account of his own education, offered sketches of many of the leading masters in northern France, while Otto of Freising's Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris recounted parts of the academic careers of Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers. It is therefore possible to read about twelfth-century scholars in their own words: the way they taught, their personalities, their ambitions, their disappointments; in short, their lives, or representations of their lives. Moving toward the end of the twelfth century and into the thirteenth century, however, there is very little comparable material, perhaps even none. In the thirteenth century, scholars wrote a great deal about being a scholar, but they preferred always to stress their collective identity, so that narrative accounts of particular scholarly lives did not find a place within the emerging universities. Why was there a change in the way in which scholars chose to represent themselves and each other, a change that involved obscuring their lives, both from themselves and from us? Answering that question will reveal the long-term significance of conflict between Schoolmen and monks and the impact of monastic ideals upon universities. It will show how the need for support from parties outside the university and internal debates about the true nature and purpose of learning came together, how ideas developed within the world of learning mattered when conflict led to the grant of privileges, and how specific ways of thinking became politically significant when particular events generated a certain kind of document in which those ways of thinking were embedded. (shrink)

The standard definition of labour value assumes that capitalists abstain from consumption during the period of replacement. The nonstandard definition of labour value assumes that capitalists consume. Both the transformation problem and the problem of an invariable measure of value are necessary consequences of standard labour values. In contrast, nonstandard labour values resolve both classical contradictions.

This monograph examines the domain of classical political economy using the methodologies developed in recent years both by the new discipline of econo-physics and by computing science. This approach is used to re-examine the classical subdivisions of political economy: production, exchange, distribution and finance. The book begins by examining the most basic feature of economic life – production – and asks what it is about physical laws that allows production to take place. How is it that human labour is able (...) to modify the world? It looks at the role that information has played in the process of mass production and the extent to which human labour still remains a key resource. The Ricardian labour theory of value is re-examined in the light of econophysics, presenting agent based models in which the Ricardian theory of value appears as an emergent property. The authors present models giving rise to the class distribution of income, and the long term evolution of profit rates in market economies. Money is analysed using tools drawn both from computer science and the recent Chartalist school of financial theory. Covering a combination of techniques drawn from three areas, classical political economy, theoretical computer science and econophysics, to produce models that deepen our understanding of economic reality, this new title will be of interest to higher level doctoral and research students, as well as scientists working in the field of econophysics. (shrink)

This monograph examines the domain of classical political economy using the methodologies developed in recent years both by the new discipline of econo-physics and by computing science. This approach is used to re-examine the classical subdivisions of political economy: production, exchange, distribution and finance. The book begins by examining the most basic feature of economic life – production – and asks what it is about physical laws that allows production to take place. How is it that human labour is able (...) to modify the world? It looks at the role that information has played in the process of mass production and the extent to which human labour still remains a key resource. The Ricardian labour theory of value is re-examined in the light of econophysics, presenting agent based models in which the Ricardian theory of value appears as an emergent property. The authors present models giving rise to the class distribution of income, and the long term evolution of profit rates in market economies. Money is analysed using tools drawn both from computer science and the recent Chartalist school of financial theory. Covering a combination of techniques drawn from three areas, classical political economy, theoretical computer science and econophysics, to produce models that deepen our understanding of economic reality, this new title will be of interest to higher level doctoral and research students, as well as scientists working in the field of econophysics. (shrink)

Some argue the common practice of inferring multiple processes or systems from a dissociation is flawed. One proposed solution is state-trace analysis, which involves plotting, across two or more conditions of interest, performance measured by either two dependent variables, or two conditions of the same dependent measure. The resulting analysis is considered to provide evidence that either a single process underlies performance or there is evidence for more than one process. This article reports simulations using the simple recurrent network in (...) which changes to the learning rate produced state-trace plots with multiple functions. We also report simulations using a single-layer error-correcting network that generate plots with a single function. We argue that the presence of different functions on a state-trace plot does not necessarily support a dual-system account, at least as typically defined ; it can also indicate variation in a single parameter within theories generally considered to be single-system accounts. (shrink)

Memory conformity may occur when a person’s belief in another’s memory report outweighs their belief in their own. Witnesses might be less likely to believe and therefore take on false information from intoxicated co-witnesses, due to the common belief that alcohol impairs memory performance. This paper presents an online study in which participants watched a video of a mock crime taking place outside a pub that included a witness either visibly consuming wine or a soft drink. Participants then read a (...) statement from the witness that varied in the number of false details it contained before being asked to recall the crime. We found that the intoxicated witness was regarded as significantly less credible, but participants were not less likely to report misinformation from them. This suggests that intoxication status impacts one’s perception of how credible a source is, but not one’s ability to reject false suggestions from this source. Our findings reinforce the importance of minimizing co-witness discussion prior to interview, and not to assume that people automatically discount information provided by intoxicated co-witnesses. (shrink)

he design-based approach is a methodology for investigating mechanisms capable of generating mental phenomena, whether introspectively or externally observed, and whether they occur in humans, other animals or robots. The study of designs satisfying requirements for autonomous agency can provide new deep theoretical insights at the information processing level of description of mental mechanisms. Designs for working systems (whether on paper or implemented on computers) can systematically explicate old explanatory concepts and generate new concepts that allow new and richer interpretations (...) of human phenomena. To illustrate this, some aspects of human grief are analysed in terms of a particular information processing architecture being explored in our research group. We do not claim that this architecture is part of the causal structure of the human mind; rather, it represents an early stage in the iterative search for a deeper and more general architecture, capable of explaining more phenomena. However even the current early design provides an interpretative ground for some familiar phenomena, including characteristic features of certain emotional episodes, particularly the phenomenon of perturbance (a partial or total loss of control of attention). The paper attempts to expound and illustrate the design-based approach to cognitive science and philosophy, to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of the approach in generating interpretative possibilities, and to provide first steps towards an information processing account of `perturbant', emotional episodes. (shrink)

Threshold- and signal-detection-based models have dominated theorizing about recognition memory. Building upon these theoretical frameworks, we have argued for a dual-process model in which conscious recollection and familiarity contribute to memory performance. In the current paper we assessed several memory models by examining the effects of levels of processing and the number of presentations on recognition memory receiver operating characteristics . In general, when the ROCs were plotted in probability space they exhibited an inverted U shape; however, when they were (...) plotted inzspace they exhibited a U shape. An examination of the ROCs showed that the dual-process model could account for the observed ROCs, but that models based solely on either threshold or signal-detection processes failed to provide a sufficient account of the data. Furthermore, an examination of subjects' introspective reports using the remember/know procedure showed that subjects were aware of recollection and familiarity and were able to consistently report on their occurrence. The remember/know data were used to accurately predict the shapes of the ROCs, and estimates of recollection and familiarity derived from the ROC data mirrored the subjective reports of these processes. (shrink)

In the following paper I shall be developing a critical discussion of the contemporary interpretation of Hegel proposed by a Yugoslavian, and more specifically Slovenian, philosopher named Slavoj Zizek, whose principal theoretical allegiance is to the thought of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The very existence of this body of work raises many intriguing questions about the theoretical, cultural, and political context from which it has arisen. Why, for example, should the notoriously obscure and difficult thought of a Parisian psychoanalyst (...) be of such interest not just to Zizek, but indeed to a whole circle of Slovenian intellectuals? Furthermore, why should a Lacanian approach be considered the most promising way to unlock the ‘secret of Hegel’? And why should Zizek and his fellow thinkers insist on the convergence of the thought of Hegel and Lacan, even in defiance of many of Lacan's own pronouncements on the matter? In a sense, the answer to the first of these questions already provides the answers to the other two. It is necessary to bear in mind that, for the most part, Yugoslavian philosophical life since the Revolution has been dominated not by the creaking orthodoxies of Soviet-style dialectical materialism, but by the far more plausible and congenial positions of what has come to be known as the Praxis School. The Marxism of the Praxis School, whose tradition still lives on, in the form of the journal Praxis International, is much closer, indeed can be seen as part of the philosophical current known in the other half of Europe as ‘Western Marxism’. (shrink)