This book presents an overview of these studies and attempts to clarify apparently disparate results by placing them in a coherent theoretical framework.
Implicit learning is said to occur when a person learns about a complex stimulus without necessarily intending to do so, and in such a way that the resulting knowledge is difficult to express. Over the last 30 years, a number of studies have claimed to show evidence of implicit learning. In more recent years, however, considerable debate has arisen over the extent to which cognitive tasks can in fact be learned implicitly. Much of the debate has centred on the questions (...) of how unconscious, and how abstract, is implicitly acquired knowledge? The aim of this book is to provide students and researchers with a self-contained and balanced summary of the various theoretical and empirical positions that are currently shaping this exciting area of research. (shrink)
This paper investigates an important aspect of mathematical practice: that proof is required for a finished piece of mathematics. If follows that non-deductive arguments — however convincing — are never sufficient. I explore four aspects of mathematical research that have facilitated the impressive success of the discipline. These I call the Practical Virtues: Permanence, Reliability, Autonomy, and Consensus. I then argue that permitting results to become established on the basis of non-deductive evidence alone would lead to their deterioration. This furnishes (...) us with a partial rational justification for mathematicians strict insistence on proof. (shrink)
In an adaptive clinical trial , key trial characteristics may be altered during the course of the trial according to predefined rules in response to information that accumulates within the trial itself. In addition to having distinguishing scientific features, adaptive trials also may involve ethical considerations that differ from more traditional randomized trials. Better understanding of clinical trial experts’ views about the ethical aspects of adaptive designs could assist those planning ACTs. Our aim was to elucidate the opinions of clinical (...) trial experts regarding their beliefs about ethical aspects of ACTs. (shrink)
In this wide-ranging conversation, Berry and Galloway explore the implications of undertaking media theoretical work for critiquing the digital in a time when networks proliferate and, as Galloway claims, we need to ‘forget Deleuze’. Through the lens of Galloway’s new book, Laruelle: Against the Digital, the potential of a ‘non-philosophy’ for media is probed. From the import of the allegorical method from excommunication to the question of networks, they discuss Galloway’s recent work and reflect on the implications of computation for (...) media theory, thinking about media objects, and critical theory. (shrink)
This is an elegant book. By skillfully blending meticulous scholarship with points of genuine human interest, Donald Berry gives fresh insight into Martin Buber's vision of mutuality.
This paper explores the specific questions raised for social epistemology encountered in code and software. It does so because these technologies increasingly make up an important part of our urban environment, and stretch across all aspects of our lives. The paper introduces and explores the way in which code and software become the conditions of possibility for human knowledge, crucially becoming computational epistemes, which we share with non-human but crucially knowledge-producing actors. As such, we need to take account of this (...) new computational world and think about how we live today in a highly mediated code-based world. Nonetheless, here I want to understand software epistemes as a broad concept related to the knowledge generated by both human and non-human actors. The aim is to explore changes that are made possible by the installation of code/software via computational devices, streams, clouds or networks. This is what Mitcham calls a ?new ecology of artifice?. By exploring two case studies, the paper attempts to materialise the practice of software epistemologies through a detailed analysis. This analysis is then drawn together with a notion of compactants to explore how studying tracking software and streams is a useful means of uncovering the agency of software and code for producing these new knowledges. (shrink)
"Journalism, Ethics and Society provides a comprehensive overview and critical analysis of debates within media ethics in relation to the purpose of news and ...
In the early twentieth century, Wilhelm Johannsen proposed his pure line theory and the genotype/phenotype distinction, work that is prized as one of the most important founding contributions to genetics and Mendelian plant breeding. Most historians have already concluded that pure line theory did not change breeding practices directly. Instead, breeding became more orderly as a consequence of pure line theory, which structured breeding programmes and eliminated external heritable influences. This incremental change then explains how and why the large multi-national (...) seed companies that we know today were created; pure lines invited standardisation and economies of scale that the latter were designed to exploit. Rather than focus on breeding practice, this paper examines the plant varietal market itself. It focusses upon work conducted by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany during the interwar years, and in doing so demonstrates that, on the contrary, the pure line was actually only partially accepted by the industry. Moreover, claims that contradicted the logic of the pure line were not merely tolerated by the agricultural geneticists affiliated with NIAB, but were acknowledged and legitimised by them. The history of how and why the plant breeding industry was transformed remains to be written. (shrink)
Motivated by a desire to narrate and contextualize the deluge of "French theory," After the Deluege showcases recent work by today's brightest scholars of French intellectual history that historicizes key debates, figures, and turning points in the postwar era of French thought.
The Erfurtensis , now lat. 2°.252 in the Staatsbibliothek Preuβischer Kulturbesitz at Berlin , was assembled by Wibald of Corvey in the mid twelfth century, and is the most comprehensive medieval manuscript of Cicero, containing nearly half of what was eventually to survive. The manuscript as it exists today has lost one or more folios at several different points, but in some of these places readings were recorded by sixteenth and seventeenth-century scholars before the mutilations occurred. There is, however, only (...) one lacuna where early collations survive and where, also, E is a manuscript of primary importance for the reconstruction of the text. The omission in question, caused by the removal of folios at some unknown date between the beginning of the seventeenth century and the early nineteenth century, comprises the end of pro Caecina and virtually all pro Sulla . No readings are known to have been taken from the end of pro Caecina, but from the bulk of pro Sulla, before the manuscript as we have it resumes, a sizeable number of readings has fortunately been preserved. The tradition of pro Sulla takes the form of two branches, one consisting of Munich, Bayer. Staatsbibliothek, Clm 18787, olim Tegernseensis, and all the deteriores , the other consisting of just two manuscripts, E and its twin, Vatican, Pal. lat. 1525 . V comes to a halt at §43; the early collations of E are therefore of the highest importance for pro Sulla until §81, especially from §43 onwards where they comprise our only record for one of the tradition's two branches. (shrink)
The emphasis on individual differences in evolutionary theories is important and has not received adequate attention. Strategic Pluralism makes a major contribution by addressing these issues, but like other evolutionary models (e.g., game theory) does not articulate the specific mechanisms underlying strategy selection. Specification of such mechanisms is an essential next step in the development of these models.
In this paper we articulate how time and temporalities are involved in the making of living things. For these purposes, we draw on an instructive episode concerning Norfolk Horn sheep. We attend to historical debates over the nature of the breed, whether it is extinct or not, and whether presently living exemplars are faithful copies of those that came before. We argue that there are features to these debates that are important to understanding contemporary configurations of life, time, and the (...) organism, especially as these are articulated within the field of synthetic biology. In particular, we highlight how organisms are configured within different material and semiotic assemblages that are always structured temporally. While we identify three distinct structures, namely the historical, phyletic, and molecular registers, we do not regard the list as exhaustive. We also highlight how these structures are related to the care and value invested in the organisms at issue. Finally, because we are interested ultimately in ways of producing time, our subject matter requires us to think about historiographical practice reflexively. This draws us into dialogue with other scholars interested in time, not just historians, but also philosophers and sociologists, and into conversations with them about time as always multiple and never an inert background. (shrink)
At Aen. 6.562–627 the Sibyl gives Aeneas a description of the criminals in Tartarus and the punishments to which they are condemned. The criminals are presented to us in several groups. The first consists of mythical figures, the Titans , the sons of Aloeus , Salmoneus , Tityos and Ixion and Pirithous . Next Virgil turns away from mythical figures to particular categories of criminal. He mentions those who hated their brothers, who assaulted a parent, who cheated a cliens, who (...) gloated over wealth they had acquired without setting aside a part for their family, who were put to death for adultery, and those who, breaking their masters' trust, made war on their country . The reference to the contemporary scene is unmistakable. The mention of a cliens indicates that we have moved from Greece to Rome. Moreover, ‘quique ob adulterium caesi’ brings to mind Augustus' concern over moral standards, the subject of legislation in 28 B.c., 18 B.c. and A.d. 9; the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis gave to fathers of adulteresses the right to put to death both guilty parties. Thirdly, ‘arma...impia’ is an obvious reference to civil war , which as Servius argues is more narrowly defined by ‘nee veriti dominorum fallere dextras’ so as to exclude Caesar and Octavian: undoubtedly the allusion is to the war against Sextus Pompeius, which Augustan propaganda chose to represent as a war against runaway slaves. Virgil continues by sketching the penalties paid in Tartarus by such men . While doing so, however, he retreats once again into the realm of mythology: the punishments he describes are those more normally associated with Sisyphus and Ixion . This reversion is completed at 617–20 where, confusingly, Virgil denies that he has been alluding to events of contemporary significance by naming two mythical personages, Theseus and Phlegyas . Virgil therefore implies, but then denies, contemporary relevance. It is this kind of protean elusiveness which makes the contemporary allusions in Virgil so difficult to pin down. (shrink)