Our synthetic review of the relevant and related literatures on the ethics and effects of using AI in education reveals five qualitatively distinct and interrelated divides associated with access, representation, algorithms, interpretations, and citizenship. We open our analysis by probing the ethical effects of algorithms and how teams of humans can plan for and mitigate bias when using AI tools and techniques to model and inform instructional decisions and predict learning outcomes. We then analyze the upstream divides that feed into (...) and fuel the algorithmic divide, first investigating access and then representation. After that, we analyze the divides that are downstream of the algorithmic divide associated with interpretation and citizenship. At present, lacking ongoing reflection and action by learners, educators, educational leaders, designers, scholars, and policymakers, the five divides collectively create a vicious cycle and perpetuate structural biases in teaching and learning. However, increasing human responsibility and control over these divides can create a virtuous cycle that improves diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. We conclude the article by looking forward and discussing ways to increase educational opportunity and effectiveness for all by mitigating bias through a cycle of progressive improvement. (shrink)

This paper offers a new perspective on historical understandings of the relationship between alcohol, climate and the body, by studying the way that British explorers of tropical Africa drank alcohol and wrote about drink between c.1850 and c.1910. We demonstrate that alcohol was simultaneously classified as a medicinal, a preventative and a pleasurable drink, shaped by competing medical theories, but that distinctions between these different roles were highly blurred. We also show how many explorers thought certain drinks helped to protect (...) white bodies from the effects of tropical diseases. While popular amongst travellers, these views came under growing scrutiny in the latter part of the nineteenth century, reflecting both changing scientific views about the relationship between alcohol, climate and the body and the development of a much larger European presence in tropical Africa. However, even those who opposed tropical drinking often supported the use of other stimulants and viewed the tropics as uniquely dangerous. As such, the paper challenges the idea that the late nineteenth century marked a paradigm shift in scientific attitudes towards tropical environments, as much previous scholarship has suggested. At the same time, our examinations of explorers’ descriptions of drinking by African people demonstrates how ideas about racial difference played an important role within medical understandings of alcohol. Overall, this paper examines the heterogeny of attitudes to alcohol to be found within tropical medicine and documents the continuities in approach shown between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

Business scholars pay increasing attention to the expanded influence of stakeholders on firm strategies, legitimacy, and competitiveness. At the same time, analysts have noted that the transformed regulatory and legislative environments of recent decades have encouraged firms to become much more politically active. Surprisingly, relatively little research has tied together these two trends. The present study integrates perspectives on stakeholder management with research on corporate political activity to develop an understanding of the structural sources of stakeholder mobilization in professional grassroots (...) lobbying campaigns. This study employs a unique, original data source to consider how the adoption of grassroots lobbying by a firm relates to its industry, degree of inside lobbying, partisan PAC contributions, and more. This research shows that corporate grassroots lobbying is shaped most significantly by a firm’s degree of inside lobbying, as highly active firms take a diversified strategy for gaining influence. Firms in industries with a heavy public presence as well as those concerned with taxation, government appropriations, and economic development also adopt these strategies readily. PAC contributions to Republican, but not Democratic, candidates also heighten firms’ propensity to lobby the public. (shrink)

We show that there are infinitely many pairwise non-equivalent formulae in one propositional variable p in the pure implication fragment of the logic T of “ticket entailment” proposed by Anderson and Belnap. This answers a question posed by R. K. Meyer.

Mark Noll, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln Brooks Holifield, American Theology: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War Intellectual history, after a generation of neglect, is suddenly getting attention again in the United States. Giving impetus to this renewal of energy are two major works on American religious thought before the Civil War: Mark Noll's America's God and Brooks Holifield's American Theology. Both are big books, over 600 pages each, and they address (...) a big topic stretching across time and space: the grand tradition of American theology, now a lost art. They treat a time when Christian theology as an intellectual activity enjoyed considerably more prestige and cultural influence than it does today, and surely it has seldom been so innovative and diverse as in the period they treat. Both books have been written by highly respected scholars, deeply learned in the relevant primary and secondary sources. The danger in reviewing such large undertakings is that reviewers will not treat them as a whole but simply grumble that their own specialty doesn't get enough attention: the historian of gender wants more about women, the historian of science more about his subject, etc. These books deserve to be evaluated in toto. Having been conceived and written independently, even though more or less simultaneously, they demonstrate contrasting visions of how to deal with their subject. The two books typify the “external” and “internal” approaches to intellectual history respectively, illustrating for the reader strengths and limitations of the two approaches as well as their complementarity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru and Andrei TerianLaura Elena Savu WalkerMatei, Alexandru, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, editors. Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Bloomsbury, 2021. 376pp.Far from “mourning” the demise of theory, this timely and thoughtfully curated essay collection testifies to its “renewed vitality,” its compelling presence “across (...) fields, domains of life, and geocultural boundaries,” and its power to build an ever-expanding world community of practioners who are forming what has come to be known as a “theory commons” (ix). As the collection’s editors point out, theory’s new lease on life hinges on ensuring both the democratic workings of this “world discourse formation” (1) and on the responsible theorizing of the very notion of community in “a world threatened by all kinds of anti-communal actions and reactions, from runaway globalization to exacerbated tribalism and tunnel-vision politics” (x). Working on the margins, specifically, out of a Romanian “lab” called The Critical Theory Institute (CTI), which opened its doors in early 2000, the contributors seek to revise the “standard history of theory,” one whose “Western origins, authority, and cultural compass ” strike them as “exceedingly reductive” (3). This project of geotheoretical repositioning and recalibration aims to recast theory as a “quintessentially cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, trans- and intercontinental undertaking” (4). As such, it carries on the project, launched in a previous volume, Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), of fashioning an alternative to the nation-state paradigm that has long shaped literary and intellectual histories. In both of these works, Romanian critics and theorists have tuned into a wide range of voices, and tapped into a shared conceptual and methodological apparatus—itself the product of “an ethno-linguistic medley of traditions” (8). This approach informs what editors see as the “epoch-making” (17) discursive paradigm that has taken shape in globally networked post-Cold War societies (17), a viral model of cultural influence that fosters an ontology of “contact, contagion, of infection, dissemination, and horizontal accumulation” (15).To give us a sense of theory’s complex genealogy and evolution, the editors reference the Bulgarian critic Galin Tihanov, who has attributed [End Page 122] important developments in contemporary theory to the achievements of theorists (Nikolai Trubetskoi, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, and Georg Lukács) and schools of thought (Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle). In “Traveling Theory” (1983) and “Traveling Theory Reconsidered” (2000), Edward Said called attention to the migratory nature of contributions made, for instance, by Georg Lukács, whose theories moved across different European locales in this period. Since then, contemporary theory has branched out to integrate the travels and travails of scholars affiliated with theory labs located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and last, but not least, Romania (10).Theory in the “Post” Era highlights five characteristics that distinguish theory in the “post” era from earlier forms: 1) It has a “reluctantly epoch-alist” thrust (19; original italics), which assumes that the “post” lexicon entails “rupture, discontinuity, and opposition” (19), radical departures, tentative claims, provisional conclusions, and ex-centric perspectives; 2) it adopts a “self-reflexive and experimental” (20; original italics) stance in which theorists invoke inherited approaches or invent new ones; 3) it introduces a “transdisciplinary” (21; original italics) scope that allows authors to interrogate the foundations, aims, and methods of theoretical discourse and practice across several knowledge domains, from which they “borrow whole vocabularies and toolkits” (21); 4) it is “nationally, transnationally, and ecologically affiliative” (20) in ways that allow theorists to “think with others at a distance” (21) about global issues; and 5) it is programmatic, placing critical and theoretical concerns in the service of “the ethical, the political, and the communal” (22). Organized around three main themes (“Aesthetics,” “Temporalities,” and “Critical Modes”), the essays juxtapose discussions of pivotal historical events and cultural phenomena with literary analyses of Romantic era “classics,” modernist experiments, and postmodern works of the post-Communist era, a corpus that includes, but is not limited to, landmark works of national culture that are now part of a fast-expanding planetary... (shrink)

The issues that Foucault raises about reception and reading are certainly part of the contemporary discussion of literature. However, they are not the only issues with which we, as today’s readers, are concerned. Discussions about the role of the author persist and so we continue to have recourse to the notion of authorship.For instance, in her recent book Sexual / Textual Politics , the feminist critic Toril Moi feels called on to return to these twenty-year-old issues in French theory to (...) tell us what it has meant to speak of the author, when she says: “For the patriarchal critic, the author is the source, origin and meaning of the text. If we are to undo this patriarchal practice of authority, we must take one further step and proclaim with Roland Barthes the death of the author.”3In the course of this essay I wish to reopen the question of whether it is advisable to speak of the author, or of what Foucault calls “the author function,” when querying a text, and I wish to reopen it precisely at the site where feminist criticism and post-structuralism are presently engaged in dialogue. Here in particular we might expect that reasons for rejecting author erasure would appear. However, theoretically informed feminist critics have recently found themselves tempted to agree with Barthes, Foucault, and the Edward Said of Beginnings that the authorial presence is best set aside in order to liberate the text for multiple uses.4 4. See Edward W. Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method , p. 162. Cheryl Walker is professor of English and humanities at Scripps College. She is the author of The Nightingale’s Burden: Women Poets and American Culture before 1900 and Masks Outrageous and Austere: Culture, Psyche, and Persona in Modern Women Poets . She is currently editing an anthology of nineteenth-century women poets and a book of essays about feminist criticism in the wake of post-structuralism. (shrink)

We summarize several experiments indicating that the saccadic system is capable of simultaneously programming two movements toward different goals. This concurrent processing of saccades can lead to the execution of two saccades separated by an extremely short intersaccadic interval. This supports the idea of target competition proposed in Findlay & Walker's article, but suggests a greater degree of parallel processing. We provide evidence that concurrent processing of two saccades is not limited to higher-level planning subsystems; rather, it also involves (...) both regions close enough to the motor output that it can systematically affect saccade trajectory. (shrink)

“The world of life which is comprised of the lithosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere”: this definition of the biosphere is not complete since it does not express the determining influence of living organisms on its composition, on its structure and on the processes of its continuing evolution. The part of living matter in the biosphere is relatively small (about 0.25%), but this part has a considerable influence on its structure.The biosphere should be considered as the universal source of all (...) food products without exception. Mankind's ability to feed itself depends on the productivity of this biosphere in the first place. Moreover, its condition determines not only the quantity but also the quality of nourishment. The problem is a critical one today because of the increasing pollution of the biosphere by products poured into it by various human activities. (shrink)

A basic model of hierarchical structure, expressed by simple, linear differential equations, shows that the pattern of population growth is essentially determined by conditions of redundancy in the sub-structure of individuals. There does not exist any possible combination between growth rate and accident rate that could balance population numbers and/or the level of redundancy within the population; all possible combinations either lead to extinction or to positive population growth with a decline of the fraction of individuals with redundant substructure. Declining (...) populations, however, can be held fluctuating between certain limits by periodic phases of sub-unit repair. These results are particularly pertinent to the population dynamics of diploid (polyploid) organisms. (shrink)

This short article responds to, and interprets, two epistemic claims made by Mark Wynn concerning truth and Christian ethics. The first claim concerns how the body knows something prior to an operation of reason. The second claim concerns the relationship between narrative and metaphysics, particularly when considering the eucharist. The article interprets these claims by drawing upon Wynn's previous work in religious epistemology, and it points to its moral and doctrinal relevance for Christian ethicists today.

A key concern of global ethics is the equitable distribution of benefits and burdens amongst persons belonging to different populations. Until recently, the philosophical literature on global distribution was dominated by the question of how benefits and burdens should be divided amongst contemporaries. Recent years, however, have seen an increase in research on the scope and content of our duties to future generations. This has led to a number of innovative attempts to extend principles of distribution across time while retaining (...) a focus on the entitlements of the existing poor. In this article, I examine a key aspect of intergenerational justice, namely, the appropriate 'pattern' of well-being that should be obtained across generations. With the aid of research into the impacts of global climate change, I evaluate a number of rival accounts of the pattern of justice and go on to explore the merits of a 'global sufficientarian' ethic, which holds that as many persons as possible should enjoy a satisfactory level of well-being regardless of when or where they live. (shrink)

Schelling is best known in the Anglo-American philosophical community for work he did in his twenties, between 1797 and 1803. During this time, he appropriated Fichte’s standpoint of transcendental idealism and developed some of its implications for the philosophies of nature, history, and art. Schelling did not claim at this stage to be formulating an original standpoint of his own, but simply to be extending the Fichtean principles in new directions. In this endeavor he was quite successful, and for a (...) brief period he was lionized as philosophy’s youngest and brightest hope. He has been recognized since then as an important pioneer in the post-Kantian German idealist movement. (shrink)

The purpose of cognitive models is to make predictive simulations of human behaviour, but this is often done at the aggregate level. Cranford, Gonzalez, Aggarwal, Cooney, Tambe, and Lebiere show that they can automatically customize a model to a particular individual on‐the‐fly, and use it to make specific predictions about their next actions, in the context of a particular cybersecurity game.

Biological dysfunction is regarded, in many accounts, as necessary and perhaps sufficient for disease. But although disease is conceptualized as all-or-nothing, biological functions often differ by degree. A tension is created by attempting to use a continuous variable as the basis for a categorical definition, raising questions about how we are to pinpoint the boundary between health and disease. This is the line-drawing problem. In this paper, we show how the line-drawing problem arises within “dysfunction-requiring” accounts of disease, such as (...) those of Christopher Boorse and Jerome Wakefield. We then provide several detailed examples to establish that biological dysfunction cannot provide a boundary. We examine potential ways of resolving the line-drawing problem, either by dropping one of the claims that generates it, or by appealing to additional criteria. We argue that two of these options are plausible, and that each of these can be applied with regard to different diseases. (shrink)