The article will attempt a reading of Alan Spence’s play No Nothing. Special attention will be given to the issue of literal and metaphorical space, a peculiar, liminal setting of the play, and the ways it determines the flyting between the two characters, two iconic Glaswegians: Edwin Morgan and Jimmy Reid. It seems that in this theatrical space history, politics and poetry inter-are. We may notice how two completely different masters of speech exchange their views on life, how (...) they reflect upon the meaning of their achievements, and how they find a space of convergence in their affirmation of life. As their flyting is “about life, the Universe and everything—from Glasgow to Infinity and beyond,” the article will also address the space of dialogue between Spence’s and Morgan’s poetry. The metaphor of Indra’s net will serve as a useful tool in exploring spatial dimensions of the play and the issue of interconnectedness. (shrink)

Questions about the function of consciousness have long been central to discussions of consciousness in philosophy and psychology. Intuitively, consciousness has an important role to play in the control of many everyday behaviors. However, this view has recently come under attack. In particular, it is becoming increasingly common for scientists and philosophers to argue that a significant body of data emerging from cognitive science shows that conscious states are not involved in the control of behavior. According to these theorists, nonconscious (...) states control most everyday behaviors. Andy Clark does an admirable job of summarizing and defending the most important data thought to support this view. In this paper, I argue that the evidence available does not in fact threaten the view that conscious states play an important and intimate role in the control of much everyday behavior. I thereby defend a philosophically intuitive view about the functions of conscious states in action. (shrink)

Phrase re-ordering is a well-known obstacle to robust machine translation for language pairs with significantly different word orderings. For Arabic-English, two languages that usually differ in the ordering of subject and verb, the subject and its modifiers must be accurately moved to produce a grammatical translation. This operation requires more than base phrase chunking and often defies current phrase-based statistical decoders. We present a conditional random field sequence classi- fier that detects the full scope of Arabic noun phrase subjects in (...) verb-initial clauses at the Fβ=1 61.3% level, a 5.0% absolute improvement over a statistical parser baseline. We suggest methods for integrating the classifier output with a statistical decoder and present preliminary machine translation results. (shrink)

Professor J. B. Schneewind's recent excellent volume Mill's Ethical Writings has drawn attention to the necessity of studying Mill's notes to chapter XXIII of his father's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind for a clear understanding of his theory of the moral sentiments. There are notes, however, by J. S. Mill to other chapters of that work, which should not be forgotten, because they elucidate the associationist theory of motivation which is obscurely appealed to in chapter IV of (...) Utilitarianism. Critics of Mill from F. H. Bradley onwards have made erroneous statements about the psychology that underlies Mill's justification of the principle of utility. But if Mill was going to support his ethics with a psychological theory, he should have expressed that theory at length and unambiguously in his ethical treatise. In what follows, it is pointed out where critics have been unfair to Mill through their apparent ignorance of his notes to the Analysis and of his conception of sympathy; but it is also shown that there is a puzzling inconsistency between the notes and a key passage in Utilitarianism, chapter IV. Finally, the theory of habitual volition, which is expressed at the close of that chapter, is examined. Critics have paid little attention to this theory, but it entails a serious modification of psychological hedonism, and Mill obviously attributed great importance to it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to the CommentariesSean A. SpenceIn “Free Will in the Light of Neuropsychiatry,” I have attempted to present an argument from the perspective of materialist neuroscience, pushing the latter to its logical conclusion: that if the human nervous system is consistent in its properties, then the only place for “free will” is in the non-conscious processes which underpin conscious awareness. This argument I have based on two supports: the (...) “spatial” and the “temporal” (Spence, 1995).I have contended that the sense of freedom may be lost from certain actions, thereby implying that “freedom” is a sensory process distinct from action. This might be conceptualized as having a distinct functional distribution within the nervous system (a spatial distinction). I have also argued that conscious awareness of events occurs at a finite delay, the period of “neuronal adequacy,” after those events themselves. The point here is that neurochemical events giving rise to phenomenology are likely to require a period of time (no matter how short) for their genesis. The process is “on line” before we perceive it (a temporal distinction). Thus the “freedom to act,” a motor process, is necessarily non-conscious at the point of initiation.I am grateful to Frith, Libet and Stephens for their comments. In the most part our disagreements are likely to be those of emphasis, perhaps compounded by my uses of the term “free will.”I have no major disagreement with Frith’s comments. I would, however, emphasize that it is likely that the Bereitschaftspotential, or readiness potential, does tell us something regarding intended actions. It is, for example, absent prior to the involuntary movements seen in Tourette’s syndrome (Obeso et al. 1982), and reduced in akinetic patients with Parkinson’s disease (Dick et al. 1989) or medial frontal lobe lesions (Deecke et al. 1987). The latter groups have difficulty initiating intended, internally generated, actions.With regard to the suspicion of dualism in my diagrams, the point is well taken, but I am attempting to describe a functional distinction, the precise coordinates of which remain obscure. It may well be that “consciousness” occupies no fixed location but is an activity temporarily co-extant with that association cortex (or cortices) subserving the sensory modality (or modalities) experienced phenomenologically (see Bottini et al. 1995).I have based much of my “temporal” argument on Libet’s work, and I am grateful for his response. Nevertheless, I am still of the opinion that there is a central inconsistency with his argument that conscious control exerts a veto on acts which is somehow free of material constraints. [Indeed he states that he has “no quarrel with the view that even a fully voluntary act is initiated unconsciously (non-consciously)”.] Whereas I can [End Page 99] not prove that this power of veto does not evade neurochemical processes, or that it somehow acts instantaneously and independently, with no origin in unconscious processing, I can say that I have restricted myself to arguing within a materialist perspective, with the aim of “pushing it” to its extreme. The free will which Libet retains in consciousness is one which is unique, and unconstrained by materialism. It is dualism in disguise!Stephens implies that there is a non-argument regarding consciousness acting as an initiator of events. The suggestion is that no one would argue this. Yet this is Libet’s argument. It cannot be disproved, but it is clearly (internally) inconsistent with Libet’s own impressive body of work.As for the role of consciousness in action, I have, I think, invoked a position similar to that adopted by Stephens; that consciousness is more a sensory state, allowing awareness of actions, and their consequences, and perhaps thereby facilitating the function of non-conscious initiators. It is clearly necessary for the performance of the “higher” acts which we equate with human nature, but it is not sufficient. (Indeed many of the most creative insights have “emerged” into consciousness [see Boden, 1992].) The man with a paralyzed arm may wish for his arm to move but to no avail. Over time function may slowly reappear. But if his lesion is such that he is unaware of his impairment (anosognosia), then his prognosis may... (shrink)

The notion of consciousness, though central to contemporary philosophy of mind, is not well understood. This fact vitiates many recent attempts to develop a theory of consciousness. I aim to achieve a deeper understanding of consciousness by considering what it is that distinguishes conscious mental phenomena from non-conscious mental phenomena. I argue that, contrary to widespread opinion, consciousness is not a matter of a mental state's possessing phenomenality. Nor is it simply a matter of an organism's developing a mental representation, (...) first order or higher order. Rather, I argue, conscious mental phenomena are distinguished from non-conscious mental phenomena by their positioning within a cognitive system. In particular, the conscious mental phenomena are all and only those that are both immediately available to a cognitive mechanism with the function of controlling behavior in novel circumstances and capable of engaging controlled attention. Although my account invokes something like Michael Tye's notion of a mental state's being "poised" to affect certain cognitive mechanisms, it differs from Tye's theory on which mechanisms a state must be poised to affect in order to be conscious. My account is further distanced from Tye's and Dretske's first order representational theories in that it does not restrict the contents of conscious experiences to non-conceptual contents. Rather, I maintain that the contents of conscious experiences are quite diverse, including both conceptual and non-conceptual contents. My arguments, both positive and negative, draw upon a variety of considerations, including the rich body of theory and data emerging from recent work in cognitive science, phenomenological considerations, and more general philosophical considerations such as overall coherence, simplicity, and argumentative support. If correct, my views not only undermine recent arguments for or against the explicability or reducibility of consciousness in physicalist terms, they show that those arguments are not about consciousness at all. Rather, on the framework that emerges in the dissertation, these arguments are about either the contents of mental phenomena or their phenomenal character---neither of which is consciousness. (shrink)

People’s awareness of tactile stimuli has been investigated in far less detail than their awareness of stimuli in other sensory modalities. In an attempt to fill this gap, we provide an overview of studies that are pertinent to the topic of tactile consciousness. We discuss the results of research that has investigated phenomena such as “change blindness”, phantom limb sensations, and numerosity judgments in tactile perception, together with the results obtained from the study of patients affected by deficits that can (...) adversely affect tactile perception such as neglect, extinction, and numbsense. The similarities as well as some of the important differences that have emerged when visual and tactile conscious information processing have been compared using similar experimental procedures are highlighted. We suggest that conscious information processing in the tactile modality cannot be separated completely from the more general processing of spatial information in the brain. Finally, the importance of considering tactile consciousness within the larger framework of multisensory information processing is also discussed. (shrink)

This study explores gratitude as a multidimensional and work-specific construct. Utilizing a sample of 625 employees from a variety of positions in a medium-sized school district in the United States, we developed and evaluated a new measure, namely the Work Gratitude Scale, which encompasses recognized conative, cognitive, affective, and social aspects of gratitude. A systematic, six-phased approach through structural equation modeling was used to explore and confirm the factorial structure, internal consistency, measurement invariance, concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity of the (...) WGS. The results supported a 10-item measure with three dimensions: “grateful appraisals”, “gratitude toward others”, and “intentional attitude of gratitude”. Thereafter, first-order, second-order, and bifactor confirmatory models were estimated and compared. Work gratitude was found to be best described by a second-order construct with three underlying first-order dimensions. Measurement invariance was supported in relation to gender. Concurrent validity was supported in relation to two existing dispositional gratitude scales, namely the Gratitude Questionnaire and the Gratitude, Resentment, and Appreciation Scale. Convergent validity was supported in relation to the Core Self-Evaluations Scale and the Psychological Capital Questionnaire. Discriminant validity was supported in relation to various demographic factors such as age, gender, occupation, and tenure. The findings support the WGS as a multidimensional measure that can be used in practice to measure overall work-related gratitude and to track the effectiveness of gratitude-related workplace interventions. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Martin Buber is considered one of the 20th centuryes greatest thinkers and his contributions to philosophy, theology and education are testimony to this. His thought is founded on the idea that people are capable of two kinds of relations, namely I-Thou and I-It, emphasising the centrality of dialogue in all spheres of human life. For this reason, Buber is considered by many to be the philosopher of dialogue par excellence. After Buberes death the appreciation of his considerable legacy to the (...) various disciplines in which he had worked became rather muted, but was never completely forgotten. There is now a renewed and growing interest in Buberes thought, especially in his philosophy of education. This book brings together aspects of Buberes philosophy and educational practice, and explains their significance for peace dialogue and for conflict resolution, both between individuals and communities. Buber's philosophy of dialogue and views on education are pivotal in demonstrating the personal and social benefits of dialogical education as well as the dangers of non-dialogical education. The book will be valuable reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students interested in Martin Buber, education, peace dialogue and conflict resolution. (shrink)

In this article we take further the debate on the ethics of competitive intelligence gathering, which until now has been very limited. Drawing on empirical research from a mobile telephone company in the United Kingdom, we present the case that while mystery shopping is not the worst activity in which an organization might be involved, it is basically unethical. Mystery shopping involves deception and the obtaining of competitive information under false pretences. Common arguments are that ‘everyone is doing it’ and (...) that the information is in the public domain. Neither of these points convincingly justifies the requirement for an employer to ask an employee to lie and deceive others on behalf of the company. The use of students and those in low power positions in the organization is a further concern. (shrink)

To address the underrepresentation of women in philosophy effectively, we must understand the causes of the early loss of women. In this paper we challenge one of the few explanations that has focused on why women might leave philosophy at early stages. Wesley Buckwalter and Stephen Stich offer some evidence that women have different intuitions than men about philosophical thought experiments. We present some concerns about their evidence and we discuss our own study, in which we attempted to replicate their (...) results for 23 different responses to 14 scenarios . We also conducted a literature search to see if other philosophers or psychologists have tested for gender differences in philosophical intuitions. Based on our findings, we argue that that it is unlikely that gender differences in intuitions play a significant role in driving women from philosophy. (shrink)

Although recent research suggests that women are underrepresented in philosophy after initial philosophy courses, there have been relatively few empirical investigations into the factors that lead to this early drop-off in women’s representation. In this paper, we present the results of empirical investigations at a large American public university that explore various factors contributing to women’s underrepresentation in philosophy at the undergraduate level. We administered climate surveys to hundreds of students completing their Introduction to Philosophy course and examined differences in (...) women’s and men’s feelings of belonging, comfort, and confidence in the philosophy classroom. We present findings suggesting various factors that contribute to women’s lower willingness to continue in philosophy compared to men’s, including perceptions about intuition-based methods in philosophy, the usefulness of the philosophy major, philosophy as a male discipline, and philosophical abilities as innate talents. We conclude by providing some suggestions for improving undergraduate philosophy courses in ways that would increase women’s willingness to continue in philosophy and may improve the courses for all students. (shrink)

In this paper a new resolution to the gamer’s dilemma is presented. The first part of the paper is devoted to strictly formulating the dilemma, and the second to establishing its resolution. The proposed resolution, the grave resolution, aims to resolve not only the gamer’s dilemma, but also a wider set of analogous paradoxes – which together make up the paradox of treating wrongdoing lightly.

This essay explores the correspondence between cinema and money through an investigation of what I call the 'financialization of the image.' Drawing from the tradition of psychoanalytic film criticism and the cinematic ontology of Gilles Deleuze, it argues that the 'camera-eye' and the 'brain-screen' are distinct modes of organizing cinematic perception in capital. Furthermore, it argues that Gilles Deleuze's understanding of the brain-screen is the most adequate mode of thinking of the organization of subjective vision within control societies and the (...) financialization of life itself. (shrink)

Most people agree that murder is wrong. Yet, within computer games virtual murder scarcely raises an eyebrow. In one respect this is hardly surprising, as no one is actually murdered within a computer game. A virtual murder, some might argue, is no more unethical than taking a pawn in a game of chess. However, if no actual children are abused in acts of virtual paedophilia (life-like simulations of the actual practice), does that mean we should disregard these acts with the (...) same abandon we do virtual murder? In this paper I shall outline several arguments which attempt to permit virtual murder, whilst prohibiting virtual paedophilia. (shrink)

Perceptual similarity is one of the most fiercely debated topics in the philosophy and psychology of perception. The documented history of the issue spans all the way from Plato – who regarded similarity as a key factor for human perceptual experience and cognition – through to contemporary psychologists – who have tried to determine whether, and if so, how similarity relationships can be established between stimuli both within and across the senses. Recent research on cross-sensory associations, otherwise known as crossmodal (...) correspondences – that is, the existence of observable consensual associations, or mappings, between stimuli across different senses – represents an especially interesting field in which to study perceptual similarity. In fact, most accounts of crossmodal association that have been put forward in the literature to date evoke perceptual similarity as a key explanatory factor mediating the underlying association. At the same time, however, these various accounts raise several important theoretical questions concerning the very nature of similarity, with, for example, the sensory, affective, or cognitive underpinnings of similarity judgements remaining unclear. We attempt to shed light on these questions by examining the various accounts of crossmodal associations that have been put forward in the literature. Our suggestion is that perceptual similarity varies from being phenomenologically-based to conceptually-based. In particular, we propose that the nature of the associations underlying similarity judgements – whether these associations are phenomenologically-, structurally-, emotionally-, or conceptually-based – may be represented in a two-dimensional space with associative strength on one axis, and cognitive penetrability on the other. (shrink)

Involvement is an important element of good research and a route to impact. In line with early organizational analysis, we advocate involvement with research stakeholders and investing in the necessary communication and rhetorical skills.

Recently, researchers have begun to empirically investigate the gender gap in philosophy and provide potential explanations for the underrepresentation of women in philosophy relative to their representation in other disciplines. This empirical research as well as research on the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields has shed light on a priori, armchair explanations of the gender gap. For example, implicit bias and stereotype threat may contribute much less to the philosophy gender gap than previously thought. However, new (...) candidate contributing factors have emerged. Drawing on the theoretical resources concerning fixed mindsets in response to difficult tasks, a new theory suggests that practitioners in various fields, including philosophy, hold the belief that success in their fields requires natural brilliance. Further, the extent to which members of a field hold that belief predicts the diversity of the members of that field. Initial findings suggest that among the set of students who hold these beliefs, women are disproportionately disinterested in continuing in philosophy. Other hypotheses seem plausible, such as the idea that lay people hold gendered schemas about philosophy, but require more empirical support to be partial explanations. Future empirical research should focus on these plausible hypotheses, replications of previous findings, and investigating the effects of intersectionality within the gender gap. (shrink)

In this paper I will evaluate Ali’s dissolution of the gamer’s dilemma. To this end the dilemma will be summarized and Ali’s dissolution formulated. I conclude that Ali has not dissolved the dilemma (at least not fully).

Is consciousness multisensory? Obviously it is multisensory in certain ways. Human beings typically possess the capacity to have experiences in at least the five familiar sensory modalities, and quite possibly in a number of other less commonly recognised modalities as well. But there are other respects in which it is far from obvious that consciousness is multisensory. This chapter is concerned with one such respect. Οur concern here is with whether consciousness contains experiences associated with distinct modalities at the same (...) time. We will describe those who endorse a positive answer to this question as endorsing a multisensory view (MSV) of the structure of consciousness, and those who endorse a negative answer to this question as having a unisensory view (USV) of the structure of consciousness. (shrink)

Following on from ecological theories of perception, such as the one proposed by [Gibson, J. J. . The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin] this paper reviews the literature on the multisensory interactions underlying the perception of flavor in order to determine the extent to which it is really appropriate to consider flavor perception as a distinct perceptual system. We propose that the multisensory perception of flavor may be indicative of the fact that the taxonomy currently used to (...) define our senses is simply not appropriate. According to the view outlined here, the act of eating allows the different qualities of foodstuffs to be combined into unified percepts; and flavor can be used as a term to describe the combination of tastes, smells, trigeminal, and tactile sensations as well as the visual and auditory cues, that we perceive when tasting food. (shrink)

This editorial to the special issue addresses the often overlooked question of the ethical nature of social enterprises. The emerging social entrepreneurship literature has previously been dominated by enthusiasts who fail to critique the social enterprise, focusing instead on its distinction from economic entrepreneurship and potential in solving social problems. In this respect, we have found through the work presented herein that the relation between social entrepreneurship and ethics needs to be problematized. Further, we find that a range of conceptual (...) lenses and methodological approaches is valuable as the social entrepreneurship field matures. (shrink)

Originally published in 1966 On the Syllogism and Other Logical Writings assembles for the first time the five celebrated memoirs of Augustus De Morgan on the syllogism. These are collected together with the more condensed accounts of his researches given in his Syllabus of a Proposed System of Logic an article on Logic contributed to the English Cyclopaedia. De Morgan was among the most distinguished of nineteenth century British mathematicians but is chiefly remembered today as one of the (...) founders of modern mathematical logic. His writings on this subject have been little read, however since apart from his Formal Logic, they lie buried for the most part in inaccessible periodicals. De Morgan's own later amendments are inserted in the text and the editorial introduction gives a summary of the whole and traces in some detail the course of the once-famous feud with Sir William Hamilton of Edinburgh. (shrink)

Small businesses in developing countries, as part of global supply chains, are sometimes assumed to respond in a straightforward manner to institutional demands for improved working conditions. This article problematizes this perspective. Drawing upon extensive qualitative data from Tirupur’s knitwear export industry in India, we highlight owner-managers’ agency in avoiding or circumventing these demands. The small businesses here actively engage in irresponsible business practices and “evasion” institutional work to disrupt institutional demands in three ways: undermining assumptions and values, dissociating consequences, (...) and accumulating autonomy and political strength. This “evasion” work is supported by three conditions: void, distance, and contradictions. Through detailed empirical findings, the article contributes to research on both small business social responsibility and institutional work. (shrink)

Montefiore and Formosa (Ethics Inf Technol 24:31, 2022) provide a useful way of narrowing the Gamer’s Dilemma to cases where virtual murder seems morally permissible, but not virtual child molestation. They then resist the dilemma by theorising that the intuitions supporting it are not moral. In this paper, I consider this theory to determine whether the dilemma has been successfully resisted. I offer reason to think that, when considering certain variations of the dilemma, Montefiore and Formosa’s theory may not be (...) the most likely theory available to us. (shrink)

For more than a century now, researchers have acknowledged the existence of seemingly arbitrary crossmodal congruency effects between dimensions of sensory stimuli in the general population. Such phenomena, known by a variety of terms including 'crossmodal correspondences', involve individual stimulus properties, rely on a crossmodal mapping of unisensory features, and appear to be shared by the majority of individuals. In other words, members of the general population share underlying preferences for specific pairings across the senses. Crossmodal correspondences between complementary sensory (...) cues have often been referred to as synesthetic correspondences but, we would argue, differ from full-blown synesthetic experiences in a number of important ways, including the fact that there are no idiosyncratic concurrent sensations. Recent psychophysical evidence suggests that such crossmodal correspondences can modulate multisensory integration by helping to resolve the crossmodal binding problem. Here, we propose a model to account for the effects of crossmodal correspondences between complementary auditory and visual cues and critically review their relation to full-blown synesthesia. (shrink)