This paper discusses the empirical, Application Programming Interface -based analysis of very large Facebook Pages. Looking in detail at the technical characteristics, conventions, and peculiarities of Facebook’s architecture and data interface, we argue that such technical fieldwork is essential to data-driven research, both as a crucial form of data critique and as a way to identify analytical opportunities. Using the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook Page, which hosted the activities of nearly 1.9 million users during the Egyptian Revolution and (...) beyond, as empirical example, we show how Facebook’s API raises important questions about data detail, completeness, consistency over time, and architectural complexity. We then outline an exploratory approach and a number of analytical techniques that take the API and its idiosyncrasies as a starting point for the concrete investigation of a large dataset. Our goal is to close the gap between Big Data research and research about Big Data by showing that the critical investigation of technicity is essential for empirical research and that attention to the particularities of empirical work can provide a deeper understanding of the various issues Big Data research is entangled with. (shrink)

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author note: Naomi Zack is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany. She herself is of mixed race: Jewish, African American, and Native American.

ABSTRACT:Determining the biological function of phenomenal consciousness appears necessary to explain its origin: evolution by natural selection operates on organisms’ traits based on the biological functions they fulfill. But identifying the function of phenomenal consciousness has proven difficult. Some have proposed that the function of phenomenal consciousness is to facilitate mental processes such as reasoning or learning. But mental processes such as reasoning and learning seem to be possible in the absence of phenomenal consciousness. It is difficult to pinpoint in (...) what way phenomenal consciousness enhances these processes or others like them. In this paper, we explore a possibility that has been neglected to date. Perhaps phenomenal consciousness has no function of its own because it is either a by-product of other traits or a (functionless) accident. If so, then phenomenal consciousness has an evolutionary explanation even though it fulfills no biological function. (shrink)

Many social situations require a mental model of the knowledge, beliefs, goals, and intentions of others: a Theory of Mind (ToM). If a person can reason about other people’s beliefs about his own beliefs or intentions, he is demonstrating second-order ToM reasoning. A standard task to test second-order ToM reasoning is the second-order false belief task. A different approach to investigating ToM reasoning is through its application in a strategic game. Another task that is believed to involve the application of (...) second-order ToM is the comprehension of sentences that the hearer can only understand by considering the speaker’s alternatives. In this study we tested 40 children between 8 and 10 years old and 27 adult controls on (adaptations of) the three tasks mentioned above: the false belief task, a strategic game, and a sentence comprehension task. The results show interesting differences between adults and children, between the three tasks, and between this study and previous research. (shrink)

Philosophers have little to lose in making practical proposals. If the proposals are enacted, the power of ideas to change the world is affirmed. If the proposals are rejected, there is new material for theoretical reflection. During the 1990s, I believed that broad public recognition of mixed race, particularly black and white mixed race, would contribute to an undoing of rigid and racist, socially constructed racial categories. I argued for such recognition in my first book, Race and Mixed Race ( (...) class='Hi'>Zack 1993), a follow-through anthology, American Mixed Race (Zack 1995), and numerous articles, especially the essay, ''Mixed Black and White Race and Public Policy," which appeared first in Hypatia in 1995. I aho delivered scores of public and academic lectures and presentations on this subject, all of which expressed the following in varied forms and formats: Race is an idea that lacks the biological foundation it is commonly assumed to have. There is need for broad education about this absence of foundation; mixed-race identities should be recognized, especially black-white identities. (shrink)

The study of complexity in chronic care is an emergent discipline that has not yet developed a consistent theoretical framework. Thinking in the field of complexity encompasses complexity science and complexity theories, which represent a convergence of different types of ideas and theories that focus on the interactions of individual parts that make up a complex system. In this context, an important distinction is to be made between "complex" and "complicated." If a system—despite the fact that it may consist of (...) a huge number of components— can be given a complete description in terms of its individual constituents, such a system is merely complicated. An example could be computers. In a complex system, on the .. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore some key notions in Bonnie Honig's A Feminist Theory of Refusal. Juxtaposing her speculative reading of Euripides' Bacchae to Ursula K Le Guin's essay on the 'Carrier Bag Theory of Storytelling,' I argue that the women in the tragedy can be considered neither as imitating masculine, violent hunter-heroes, nor as surreptiously embodying feminine, caring gatherer-mothers. Following their refusal to care and to think about tomorrow, I conclude by suggesting that a critical fabulation of the women's (...) acts of refusal should steer clear from expecting them to inspire us, as contemporary feminists. (shrink)

This essay is part of a dossier on Cristina Lafont's book Democracy without Shortcuts.

Much of our behavior is guided by our understanding of events. We perceive events when we observe the world unfolding around us, participate in events when we act on the world, simulate events that we hear or read about, and use our knowledge of events to solve problems. In this book, Gabriel A. Radvansky and Jeffrey M. Zacks provide the first integrated framework for event cognition and attempt to synthesize the available psychological and neuroscience data surrounding it. This synthesis leads (...) to new proposals about several traditional areas in psychology and neuroscience including perception, attention, language understanding, memory, and problem solving.Radvansky and Zacks have written this book with a diverse readership in mind. It is intended for a range of researchers working within cognitive science including psychology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, anthropology, and education. Readers curious about events more generally such as those working in literature, film theory, and history will also find it of interest. (shrink)

In der niederländischen Kultur werden komplexe moralische Probleme oftmals mit einem pragmatischen und prozeduralen Verfahren statt mit einem prinzipiellen Zugang angegangen. Die Debatte um Entscheidungen am Lebensende, die dem Sterbehilfegesetz von 2002 vorausging, ist ein Beispiel für diese Praxis. Auch die Befassung der Niederlande mit der „terminalen Sedierung“, die als neue Phase in der Diskussion um Entscheidungen am Lebensende betrachtet werden kann, folgt den Prinzipien des „Poldermodells“. Gesellschaftliche und politische Gruppierungen kooperieren, um eine gemeinsame Lösung zu finden angesichts der Tatsache, (...) dass terminale Sedierung unterschiedliche Praktiken und entsprechend unterschiedliche moralische Implikationen beinhaltet. (shrink)

There has been a push in recent years to provide better explanations for how AIs make their decisions. Most of this push has come from the ethical concerns that go hand in hand with AIs making decisions that affect humans. Outside of the strictly ethical concerns that have prompted the study of explainable AIs (XAIs), there has been research interest in the mere possibility of creating XAIs in various domains. In general, the more accurate we make our models the harder (...) they are to explain. Go playing AIs like AlphaGo and KataGo provide fantastic examples of this phenomenon. In this paper, I discuss a non-exhaustive list of the leading theories of explanation and what each of these theories would say about the explainability of AI-played moves of Go. Finally, I consider the possibility of ever explaining AI-played Go moves in a way that meets the four principles of XAI. I conclude, somewhat pessimistically, that Go is not as imminently explainable as other domains. As such, the probability of having an XAI for Go that meets the four principles is low. (shrink)

People tend to perceive ongoing continuous activity as series of discrete events. This partitioning of continuous activity may occur, in part, because events correspond to dynamic patterns that have recurred across different contexts. Recurring patterns may lead to reliable sequential dependencies in observers' experiences, which then can be used to guide perception. The current set of simulations investigated whether this statistical structure within events can be used 1) to develop stable internal representations that facilitate perception and 2) to learn when (...) to update such representations in a self-organizing manner. These simulations demonstrate that experience with recurring patterns enables a system to accurately predict upcoming stimuli within an event, to identify boundaries between such events based on transient increases in prediction error, and to use such boundaries to improve prediction about subsequent activities. (shrink)

Picture a young infant sitting in a room staring at two objects occluded by a screen. For the first few trials, the researcher manipulating the objects performs the same action: both sticks move in...

Eric Scerri and other authors have acknowledged that the reality of chemical orbitals is not compatible with quantum mechanics. Recently, however, Scerri and Sharon Crasnow have argued that if chemists cannot consider orbitals as real entities, then chemistry is in danger of being reduced to physics. I argue that the question of the existence of orbitals is best viewed as an issue of explanation, not metaphysics: In many chemically important cases orbitals do not make sufficiently accurate predictions, and must be (...) replaced. Chemists and physicists can acknowledge this fact while maintaining the utility of orbitals and the autonomy of chemistry. (shrink)

For Hannah Arendt, authority is the shape educational responsibility assumes. In our time, authority in Arendt’s sense is under pressure. The figure of Greta Thunberg shows the failure of adult generations, taken collectively, to take responsibility for the world and present and future generations of newcomers. However, in reflecting on Arendt’s use of authority, we argue that her account of authority also requires amendments. Arendt’s situating of educational authority in-between past and future adequately captures its temporal dimension. We make explicit (...) another, spatial, dimension: authority in-between world and earth. Arendt’s neglect of the material earth also has implications for the relational dimension of authority. Arendt’s authority depends on a dichotomy between the private and the public sphere. This is problematic. First, we agree with Arendt’s feminist critics that the personal can be made into the site of the political. Second, we point once more to Thunberg, the child, taking the public stage, thereby contesting the division between public and private. In response, we situate the relational dimension of authority in-between private and public. The three dimensions of educational authority taken together imply that it is situated in-between domains that cannot be reduced to each other or taken as absolutes: past and future, world and earth, and the private and public sphere. This brings us to our concept of ambiguous authority, which expresses the Arendtian nature of our reflections and the ways in which we seek to renew her original insights on educational authority. (shrink)

A scheme of analysis for separatism is proposed. Its purpose is twofold: to indicate the essential factors in a separatist process, and to explain the waves of active and « dead » separatist activity.The central idea is the distinction between three dimensions in the separatist process : conflict, mobilization and collective action. Both dimension on its own is determined by certain factors. Conflict depends on contradictions of identity and interest structure between people and nation. Mobilization is primarily a function of (...) the social, economic and political opportunities of the people as against the nation. Collective action is the result of the presence, strength and behaviour of the elite and social movement in people and nation.Evolution from one dimension to the next one depends upon the factors of the dimensions involved and on a) the policy of the nation and b) the societal changes caused by the modernization process.Finally one can explain inactive and active periods by verifying the presence or absence of these nine factors. It seems then that there are false and real « dead » periods, and that some separatist activity has a sound basis white other has not. (shrink)

Despite major institutional and political changes in the Belgian political system in the last 25 years, the electoral organization has been very stable.The adaptations of the electoral organization have even been less in the province of Brabant, although the politica! developments have caused there additional problems. Brabant's electoral constituencies contain a rather strange mixture of heterogeneous electorates : a constituency, which consists of the bilingual capital Brussels as welt as several Flemish communes, a unilingual Walloon constituency, a unilingual Flemish constituency. (...) The proposed solutions for Brabant's complex situation can be summarized into six alternative systems of electoral organization, concentrating either on the functioning of the system of provincial allotment, or on a radical redrawing of the boundaries of the electoral constituencies.The impact of the six alternatives on the seats distribution among the political parties is rather restricted. The shifts of seats inside the parties are more striking than between the parties. Alternatives IV and VI cause the largest reallocation of seats between the parties, whereas alternatives II, III and V result in only minor changes. (shrink)

This essay aims to correct the widely-held view that Arendt is hostile to the body due to its physical needs. By focusing on two modes of corporeality that are distinguished by the production of bodily substances—the digestive body and the crying body—I argue that Arendt (1) deployed various notions of corporeality that thematize, in different ways, the uncontrollability our bodies; and (2) argues for the affirmation of this unmasterablity because it corresponds to the conditioned nature of human existence. Firstly, Arendt (...) criticized the Greek, narcissistic aspiration toward physical beauty, exemplified in the figure of Achilles, for its attempt to subjugate the digestive body to a preconceived end—a criticism that equally applies to Connolly’s plea for strategically altering our affects. Secondly, Arendt’s appreciation of Homer’s description of a crying Odysseus shows that the acknowledgment of events constitutive of one’s life consists in a publicly visible somatic reaction. (shrink)

This essay aims to correct the widely-held view that Arendt is hostile to the body due to its physical needs. By focusing on two modes of corporeality that are distinguished by the production of bodily substances—the digestive body and the crying body—I argue that Arendt deployed various notions of corporeality that thematize, in different ways, the uncontrollability our bodies; and argues for the affirmation of this unmasterablity because it corresponds to the conditioned nature of human existence. Firstly, Arendt criticized the (...) Greek, narcissistic aspiration toward physical beauty, exemplified in the figure of Achilles, for its attempt to subjugate the digestive body to a preconceived end—a criticism that equally applies to Connolly’s plea for strategically altering our affects. Secondly, Arendt’s appreciation of Homer’s description of a crying Odysseus shows that the acknowledgment of events constitutive of one’s life consists in a publicly visible somatic reaction. (shrink)

Logical form is thought to be discovered by keeping fixed the logical constants and allowing the non-logical content in the sentence to vary. The problem of logical constants is the problem of defining what counts as a logical constant. In this paper, I will argue that the concept ’logical constant’ is vague. I demonstrate the vagueness of logical constancy by providing a sorites argument, thereby showing the sorites-susceptibility of the concept. Many prior papers in the literature on logical constants hint (...) at this vagueness, but do not explore how theories of vagueness apply to logical constants. In the second half of this paper, I do just this. I consider approaches to logical constants that resemble nihilism about vagueness and more recent theories that relativize truth to precisifications. Finally, I argue that approaches that accept the potential indeterminate status of putative logical constants are preferable to nihilism or relativism about logical constancy. (shrink)

Epistemological accounts that make use of a safety condition on knowledge, historically, face serious problems regarding beliefs that are necessarily true. This is because necessary truths are true in all possible worlds, so such beliefs can be safe even when the bases for the beliefs are epistemically problematic. The existence of such problematically safe beliefs would undermine a major motivation for the condition itself: the ability to evaluate how well a belief tracks the truth. In this paper, we’ll argue that (...) incorporating impossible worlds into the evaluation of beliefs solves this problem, but only if the relevant account of impossible worlds entails that many impossible worlds are incredibly similar to the actual world. Further, we’ll argue that, as a result of including impossible worlds, some philosophical beliefs are unsafe, and many more are potentially unsafe. But, we argue, even if this is the case, we can still make philosophical progress. (shrink)

In Western society bicycling is commonly perceived as either a sport, a form of leisure, an activity for children, or at best, a utilitarian transportation technology. In this paper, I contest these assumptions by discussing ways in which both bicycling and bicycle technologies are politicized as a response to the cultural, social and political norms of Western society. Through historical examples that include 19th century Socialists, 'first wave' feminists, and 1960's Dutch Anarchists, I provide a theoretical context in which one (...) can understand how present day activists appropriate the bicycle through a dialectic of action and communication. In short, I demonstrate how a seemingly neutral technology (the bicycle) and an everyday activity (bicycling can be utilized as tools for dissent, protest, and cultural critique. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: We're Not Blocking Traffic… Background and (Dis)organization Interpretations Influences and Impacts …We (Still) Are Traffic Notes.

In this dissertation, I argue that vagueness is a metaphysical phenomenon---that properties and objects can be vague---and propose a trivalent theory of vagueness meant to account for the vagueness in the world. In the first half, I argue against the theories that preserve classical logic. These theories include epistemicism, contextualism, and semantic nihilism. My objections to these theories are independent of considerations of the possibility that vagueness is a metaphysical phenomenon. However, I also argue that these theories are not capable (...) of accommodating metaphysical vagueness. As I move into my positive theory, I first argue for the possibility of metaphysical vagueness and respond to objections that charge that the world cannot be vague. One of these objections is Gareth Evans' much-disputed argument that vague identities are impossible. I then describe what I call the logic of states of affairs. The logic of states of affairs has as its atomic elements states of affairs that can obtain, unobtain, or be indeterminate. Finally, I argue that the logic of states of affairs is a better choice for a theory of vagueness than other logics that could accommodate metaphysical vagueness such as supervaluationism and degree theories. Preference should be given to the logic of states of affairs because it provides a better explanation of higher-order vagueness and does a better job of matching our ordinary understandings of logical operators than supervaluationism does and because it provides a more general account of indeterminacy than the account given by degree theories. Advisor: Reina Hayaki. (shrink)

Analyzes popular music's aesthetics, production, marketing, and consumption toward articulating a clearer understanding of how intimacy is constructed, mediated, and perceived in and through music.

This book examines from different perspectives the moral significance of non-human members of the biotic community and their omission from climate ethics literature. The complexity of life in an age of rapid climate change demands the development of moral frameworks that recognize and respect the dignity and agency of both human and non-human organisms. Despite decades of careful work in non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, recent anthologies on climate ethics have largely omitted non-anthropocentric approaches. This multidisciplinary volume of international scholars (...) tackles this lacuna by presenting novel work on non-anthropocentric approaches to climate ethics. Written in an accessible style, the text incorporates sentiocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric perspectives on climate change. With diverse perspectives from both leading and emerging scholars of environmental ethics, geography, religious studies, conservation ecology, and environmental studies, this book will offer a valuable reading for students and scholars of these fields. (shrink)

A complete reconstruction of Lehmer’s ENIAC set-up for computing the exponents of p modulo two is given. This program served as an early test program for the ENIAC (1946). The reconstruction illustrates the difficulties of early programmers to find a way between a man operated and a machine operated computation. These difficulties concern both the content level (the algorithm) and the formal level (the logic of sequencing operations).

Biesta distinguishes three functions of education: qualification, socialization and subjectification. We focus on subjectification. When first addressing this concept, Biesta referred to action as defined by Arendt, thereby stressing the importance of ‘the question of freedom’. More recently, the question of freedom is replaced by ‘the question of responsibility’. For Levinas responsibility is related to irreplaceability. While the concept of responsibility is valuable, we question the call upon irreplaceability in education. Actively taking responsibility where irreplaceability might not be either present (...) or felt should be central to education. Unlike the morally clear examples invoked by Biesta, complex societal issues like the climate and refugee crisis are not accessible as an immediate appeal to a specific subject. Therefore, we propose a return to Arendt and her concept of action. Action allows and requires students to create the world anew, to take a position without pretending that the outcome can be controlled. Biesta refers to this as the impossibility of education. However, rather than repeating the theme of impossibility, we focus on the possibilities of education: there are several ways to create the world anew. (shrink)

Filmmakers use continuity editing to engender a sense of situational continuity or discontinuity at editing boundaries. The goal of this study was to assess the impact of continuity editing on how people perceive the structure of events in a narrative film and to identify brain networks that are associated with the processing of different types of continuity editing boundaries. Participants viewed a commercially produced film and segmented it into meaningful events, while brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (...) (MRI). We identified three degrees of continuity that can occur at editing locations: edits that are continuous in space, time, and action; edits that are discontinuous in space or time but continuous in action; and edits that are discontinuous in action as well as space or time. Discontinuities in action had the biggest impact on behavioral event segmentation, and discontinuities in space and time had minor effects. Edits were associated with large transient increases in early visual areas. Spatial-temporal changes and action changes produced strikingly different patterns of transient change, and they provided evidence that specialized mechanisms in higher order perceptual processing regions are engaged to maintain continuity of action in the face of spatiotemporal discontinuities. These results suggest that commercial film editing is shaped to support the comprehension of meaningful events that bridge breaks in low-level visual continuity, and even breaks in continuity of spatial and temporal location. (shrink)

The “testing effect” refers to the finding that after an initial study opportunity, testing is more effective for long‐term retention than restudying. The testing effect seems robust and is a finding from the field of cognitive science that has important implications for education. However, it is unclear whether this effect also applies to the acquisition of problem‐solving skills, which is important to establish given the key role problem solving plays in, for instance, math and science education. Worked examples are an (...) effective and efficient way of acquiring problem‐solving skills. Forty students either only studied worked examples (SSSS) or engaged in testing after studying an example by solving an isomorphic problem (STST). Surprisingly, results showed equal performance in both conditions on an immediate retention test after 5 min, but the SSSS condition outperformed the STST condition on a delayed retention test after 1 week. These findings suggest the testing effect might not apply to acquiring problem‐solving skills from worked examples. (shrink)

Both love and politics name relations, according to Arendt, in which a subject is constituted as a unique person. Following up on this suggestion, I explore how love gives rise to a conception of personhood that temporarily suspends the public judgments and social prejudices that reduce the other to their actions or to their social identity. I do so by tracing a similar movement in the various tropes of Arendt’s phenomenology of love: the retreat away from the collective world into (...) the intimacy of love, followed by the necessary return to the world and the end of love. This exploration casts a new—and surprisingly positive—light on some key notions in Arendt’s thought, such as the body, the will, and life. However, Arendt disregards that love, as De Beauvoir argued, requires a constant effort in restraining our tendency to reduce the lover to their social identity. (shrink)

Approaching Simone de Beauvoir’s feminism and social commentary as a resource to understand our current crises, Beauvoir and Politics: A Toolkit brings together established and emerging scholars to apply her insights to gender studies, political philosophy, decolonisation, intellectual history, age theory, and critical phenomenology. The essays in this collection start from key concepts in Beauvoir’s oeuvre and relate them to contemporary debates, asking how her notion of ambiguity speaks to lived experiences that have been highly politicized in recent years, such (...) as pregnancy, old age, sexual violence, and the exposure of black and brown bodies to police violence; how myths inform our notions of collective, national identities, as well as notions of masculinity and femininity; and how she provides conceptual tools that help to theorize the various political strategies that are used to challenge gendered and racialized systems of oppression. These and other issues are central to this critical appraisal of Beauvoir’s legacy, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of her thought as it diagnoses the present and looks toward change for a better future. This book will be of great interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students looking to engage with the political content of Simone de Beauvoir’s work and the timely application of her ideas. (shrink)