Because of the lack of interaction between seeking mode cats and tracking mode cats in cat swarm optimization, its convergence speed and convergence accuracy are affected. An information interaction strategy is designed between seeking mode cats and tracking mode cats to improve the convergence speed of the CSO. To increase the diversity of each cat, a top-N learning strategy is proposed during the tracking process of tracking mode cats to improve the convergence accuracy of the CSO. On ten standard test (...) functions, the average values, standard deviations, and optimal values of the proposed algorithm with different N values are compared with the original CSO algorithm and the adaptive cat swarm algorithm based on dynamic search. Experimental results show that the global search ability and the convergence speed of the proposed algorithm are significantly improved on all test functions. The proposed two strategies will improve the convergence accuracy and convergence speed of CSO greatly. (shrink)

Due to the arrival of positive psychology in the development of teaching, the construct of engagement has been thrived and got a notable function in the educational arena. Alternatively, numerous individual differences, containing ambiguity of tolerance, have been taken into consideration as a result of the key role they can play in the process of learning, and thus, on different facets of the learners’ engagement. Furthermore, resilience is recommended to be an alternate and effective way of engaging English as a (...) foreign language learners. Also, it is a significant feature of the human adaptation system in which students can efficaciously manage and tackle stressful involvements despite their troubles and disasters. Given the eminence of both ambiguity tolerance and resilience in educational settings and the fact that little attention has been given to these constructs in foreign language learning, the present review makes an effort to scrutinize the impact of ambiguity of tolerance and resilience on EFL learners’ engagement. Succinctly, the fundamental roles of ambiguity tolerance and resilience in learners’ engagement were confirmed, and consistent with the conclusions drawn from the present review, some suggestions are set forth concerning the implications of this paper. (shrink)

Consumers play an important role as one of the main actors in food safety social co-governance. To create a pattern of food safety social co-governance, the active and effective participation of consumers is critical. To encourage consumers to participate in food safety social co-governance voluntarily and positively, we attempted to develop and preliminarily validate a multidimensional questionnaire on consumer psychological capital that could be used to measure the degree of consumer participation in food safety social co-governance. The aim of the (...) initial sample and test sample 2 was to investigate the factor structure of a preliminary measure of consumer psychological capital. A 4-factor model with 23 items explained 61.05% of the total variance in item scores. The aim of test sample 3 was to measure the retest reliability. Test sample 4 was randomly allocated to the modeling sample and validation sample to verify questionnaire reliability and validity. Convergent validity, discriminant validity, and the internal inconsistency coefficients of the questionnaire were assessed in the modeling sample. While processing CFA, we deleted 9 items with small standardized factor loadings. The remaining 14 items in the final revised 4-factor model included self-efficacy, resilience, hope, and optimism. The fit indices of the revised four-factor model and second-order factor model in the modeling sample revealed an acceptable model fit. The convergent validity and discriminant validity of the revised model were good and acceptable, respectively. A cross-validation procedure confirmed the appropriateness of the revised four-factor model and second-order factor model in the validation sample. The cross-validation results confirmed that the fit indices of the revised four-factor model fitted the data well and the second-order factor model in the validation sample reached acceptable values. We concluded that the questionnaire developed in this study had good reliability and stable and acceptable construct validity. It could provide a theoretical basis for measuring psychological capital in food safety co-governance. (shrink)

A scientific paper’s citation represents its influence, which is the most intuitive indicator to access the quality of papers. This paper mainly adopts the social network analysis method, using the authors and the keywords of sports industry papers in China to constitute the networks of collaboration and knowledge, to explore effects of the degree centrality of authors and keywords and the structural hole of authors and keywords on the citation of papers in the collaboration and knowledge networks and draw the (...) following conclusions: as for collaboration networks, the degree centrality at the paper level is positively correlated with citations; in the collaboration network, the positive correlation between the structural hole at the paper level and citations does not exist; within knowledge networks, an inverted- U shape was found between degree centrality and paper’s citation; and within knowledge networks, a positive correlation is in existence between the structural hole of papers and their citation. This study synthesizes the already widely used collaboration network with the knowledge network constructed through keywords, distinguishes from the previous network features focusing at the author level, and explores research projects of Chinese Sports Industry from the paper level, providing a new perspective for the research of sports industry in China, complementing the methods and ideas of sports industry research, as well as providing a reference for the research in other disciplinary fields. (shrink)

Mass media play a significant role in shaping public opinion. News coverage of abortion reflects narratives about reproductive health, ethics, and women, and may potentially reinforce negative soci...

Drawing on social exchange theory, the present study seeks to understand how ethical leaders channel followers’ responses to positive treatment from the organization into a dutiful mindset, resulting in in-role and extra-role performance. Specifically, it examines the influence of perceived organizational support on both followers’ job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors, and the mediating effects of duty orientation on such relationships. In addition, it examines whether the mediated effects are contingent on the ethical leadership exhibited by the team leader. Based (...) on multi-source, multi-level data obtained from 233 employees in 60 teams from the Chinese public sector, we found that ethical leadership moderated the mediated relationship between perceived organizational support and follower work behaviors through duty orientation, such that this relationship was stronger in the presence of higher ethical leadership. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on the event-triggered H ∞ filter design for the discrete-time Markovian jump neural networks under random missing measurements and cyber attacks. Considering that the controlled system and the filtering can exchange information over a shared communication network which is vulnerable to the cyber attacks and has limited bandwidth, the event-triggered mechanism is proposed to relieve the communication burden of data transmission. A variable conforming to Bernoulli distribution is exploited to describe the stochastic phenomenon since the missing measurements (...) occur with random probability. Furthermore, seeing that the communication networks are vulnerable to external malicious attacks, the transferred information via the shared communication network may be changed by the injected false information from the attackers. Based on the above consideration, sufficient conditions for the filtering error system to maintain asymptotically stable are provided with predefined H ∞ performance. In the end, three numerical examples are given to verify the proposed theoretical results. (shrink)

In the middle of the last century, it was common to explain the notion of necessity in linguistic terms. A necessary truth, it was said, is a sentence whose truth is guaranteed by linguistic rules. Quine famously argued that, on this view, de re modal claims do not make sense. “Porcupettes are porcupines” is necessarily true, but it would be a mistake to say of a particular porcupette that it is necessarily a porcupine, or that it is possibly purple. Linguistic (...) theories of necessity fell out of favour with the publication of Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, and Quine’s arguments were put aside. In her recent book, Norms and Necessity, Amie Thomasson presents her modal normativism, which is an updated version of the mid-century theories just described. Quine’s arguments are thus relevant once again. We recapitulate Quine’s central argument, in the context of modal normativism. We then criticise Amie Thomasson’s discussion of de re modality. We finish by briefly presenting an alternative account of de re modal statements, which is compatible with modal normativism. (shrink)

Dispositionality is a modal notion of a certain sort. When an object is said to have a disposition, we typically understand this to mean that under certain circumstances, the object would behave in a certain way. For instance, a fragile object is disposed to break when dropped onto a concrete surface. It need not actually break - its being fragile has implications that, so to speak, point beyond the actual world. According to dispositionalism, all modal features of the world may (...) be accounted for in terms of its dispositional features. My aim in this paper is to assess the prospects for dispositionalism by examining the most promising theories. Sections 1 and 2 clarify the assumptions and desiderata of a successful dispositionalist theory of modality. Section 3 introduces the principles governing the dispositionalist theories that apparently meet the desiderata. Sections 4 through 6 show that dispositionalism nonetheless faces three problems: while dispositions help account for modal features of the world that are local, diachronic, or gradable, they cannot account for certain modal features of the world that are global, synchronic, or absolute. I end by discussing the costs of preserving dispositionalism. (shrink)

A fundamental entity is an entity that is ‘ontologically independent’; it does not depend on anything else for its existence or essence. It seems to follow that a fundamental entity is ‘modally free’ in some sense. This assumption, that fundamentality entails modal freedom (or ‘FEMF’ as I shall label the thesis), is used in the service of other arguments in metaphysics. But as I will argue, the road from fundamentality to modal freedom is not so straightforward. The defender of FEMF (...) should provide positive reasons for believing it, especially in light of recent views that are incompatible with it. I examine both direct and indirect routes to FEMF. (shrink)

There is a puzzle concerning the essences of fundamental entities that arises from considerations about essence, on one hand, and fundamentality, on the other. The Essence-Dependence Link (EDL) says that if x figures in the essence of y, then y is dependent upon x. EDL is prima facie plausible in many cases, especially those involving derivative entities. But consider the property negative charge. A negatively charged object exhibits certain behaviors that a positively charged object does not: it moves away from (...) other negatively charged objects, towards positively charged objects, etc. It is commonly thought that negative charge disposes its bearer to move away from other negatively charged objects, towards positively charged objects, etc. But if negative charge is fundamental, then no other entities—including the property positive charge—can figure in its essence. We thus have a prima facie puzzle: How can we say anything interesting about the essences of fundamental entities without running afoul of EDL? In this paper, I present and discuss the consequences of EDL for the debate between causal essentialists and quidditists about properties, and propose solutions to the puzzle. (shrink)

Properties seem to play an important role in causal relations. But philosophers disagree over whether or not properties play their causal or nomic roles essentially. Causal essentialists say that they do, while quidditists deny it. This article surveys these two views, as well as views that try to find a middle ground.

Many are reluctant to accept primitive modality into their fundamental picture of the world. The worry often traces to this thought: we shouldn't adopt any more primitive - that is, unexplained - notions than we need in order to explain all the features of the world, and primitive modal notions are not needed. I examine one prominent rival to modal primitivism, combinatorialism, and show that in order to account for all the modal features of the world the combinatorialist must adopt (...) two additional primitive notions. My own modal primitivist view takes as primitive the notion of incompatibility between properties or relations. I show how the non-modal notions that the combinatorialist must adopt as primitive may be analyzed using my notion. The upshot is that with respect to the number of primitive notions, my modal primitivist theory comes out ahead. (shrink)

As a traditional clothing symbol that is unique to the Chinese nation, the dragon symbol combines the distinctive features of the Chinese nation, reflecting the depth of mental changes and the historical context of Chinese culture. The image of the dragon has formed a kind of dragon pattern as a certain set of ideas about the culture that encoded all its changes. Therefore, in national clothing the dragon image has been one of the most favorite patterns for thousands of years. (...) With the interweaving of world cultures and the deepening of the concept of clothing design, the dragon pattern will incorporate fresh elements of Western culture while maintaining the essence of traditional Chinese culture, and show a new design image through the utilization of various innovative ideas and design methods. The following methods were used for the study: literature review, field research, analysis of design cases, analysis of fashion trends. Using these methods, the specifics of using dragon designs in the fashion industry in different seasons and years are analyzed, and the trend of their evolution in the field of high fashion is studied. In the article we analyzed modern trends of clothing design and gave their characteristics. The results of the study showed that even in modern youth fashion this national symbol is actively used, which indicates that the patterns and images of the dragon have real applicability and wide prospects of application in modern fashion design. Modern clothing design provides a rich cultural heritage for modern clothing to retain the characteristics of civilization on the basis of continuous innovation. The use of dragon motifs in modern clothing not only meets the aesthetic concepts of modern people, but also adds vitality to clothing design. (shrink)

Actualist counterpart theory replaces David Lewis’s concrete possible worlds and individuals with ersatz worlds and individuals, but retains counterpart theory about de re modality. While intuitively attractive, this view has been rejected for two main reasons: the problem of indiscernibles and the Humphrey objection. I argue that in insisting that ersatz individuals play the same role as Lewisian individuals, actualists commit the particularist fallacy. The actualist should not require stand-ins for every Lewisian individual. Ersatz individuals should instead be construed as (...) representations of actually existing qualitative ways for individuals to be, or qualitative properties individuals can instantiate. This necessitates changes elsewhere. Non-instrumental uses of Kripke semantics and standard counterpart semantics also require stand-ins for particular non-actual individuals. I argue that the actualist should instead adopt a non-standard counterpart semantics that more clearly illuminates the role that actual properties and relations play in explaining de re possibilities and necessities. The result is an intuitive and forceful reply to both the problem of indiscernibles and the Humphrey objection. (shrink)

Modal primitivists hold that some modal truths are primitively true. They thus seem to face a special epistemological problem: how can primitive modal truths be known? The epistemological objection has not been adequately developed in the literature. I undertake to develop the objection, and then to argue that the best formulation of the epistemological objection targets all realists about modality, rather than the primitivist alone. Furthermore, the moves available to reductionists in response to the objection are also available to primitivists. (...) I conclude by suggesting that extant theories of the epistemology of modality are not sensitive to the question of primitivism versus reductionism. (shrink)

The target article (Nelson et al. 2023) offers a valuable contribution to the “paradox of experience,” which was illustrated by using examples about access to unproven medical products and disabili...

Inspired by early Confucian texts such as the Analects, Mencius, and Xunzi, defenders of Confucian role ethics argue that persons are constituted by their social roles and relationships. However, this has the puzzling implication that persons cannot survive changes in social roles and relationships. This paper proposes ways to understand this claim by appealing to the notions of essence, material constitution, and four-dimensionalism. In particular, it will be suggested that role ethicists should distinguish biological humans from persons and should say (...) either that (i) persons are materially constituted by biological humans, or that (ii) persons are four-dimensional objects that merely overlap with biological humans. There has thus far not been much contact between early Chinese philosophy and contemporary metaphysics in this vein. A secondary goal of this paper is to demonstrate that views in early Chinese philosophy can be examined within frameworks from contemporary metaphysics, and furthermore, that the results include novel theses not yet recognized in contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper examines the situation of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers from Myanmar during the Covid-19 pandemic. It looks at the circumstances of the migrants prior to the global health emergency, before exploring possibilities for a post-pandemic future for this stratum of the working people by raising critical questions addressed to agrarian movements. It does this by focusing on the nature and dynamics of the nexus of land and labour in the context of production and social reproduction, a view that (...) in the context of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers necessarily requires interrelated perspectives on labour, agrarian, and food justice struggles. This requires a rethinking of the role of land, not as a factor in either production or social reproduction, but as a central component in both spheres simultaneously. The question is not ‘whether’ it is necessary and desirable to forge multi-class coalitions and struggles against external capital, while not losing sight of the exploitative relations within rural communities and the household; rather, the question is ‘how’ to achieve this. It will require a messy recursive process, going back and forth between theoretical exploration and practical politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Making Things Up, Bennett defends an impressive array of theses surrounding the notion of building. My focus is on Bennett’s use of modal recombination principles in her arguments, including in particular the principle that contingent fundamental entities are freely recombinable. I have argued that such principles are motivated by mere intuition, and that we have reasons to reject them. I discuss how worries about modal recombination principles affect three of her key arguments, which concern whether building is necessitating, (...) whether relative fundamentality is primitive, and whether building is fundamental. I argue that while Bennett’s appeal to modal recombination is unjustified, she has other resources available to her in each of the three cases. (shrink)

Modal primitivism is the view that there are modal features of the world which cannot be reduced to the non-modal. Theories which embrace primitive modality are often rejected for reasons of ideological simplicity: the fewer primitive notions a theory invokes, the better. Furthermore, modal primitivism is often associated with the view that all modal features of the world are irreducibly modal, which appears unsystematic and unexplanatory. As a result, many prefer modal reductionism. This work is an articulation and defense of (...) a modal primitivist theory of modality which requires minimal ideology and is systematic and explanatory. On this version of modal primitivism, only some modal features of the world are irreducibly modal—namely, incompatibilities between certain properties or relations. Other modal features of the world are reducible to a combination of primitive incompatibilities and the non-modal features of the world. In chapter 1, I introduce various issues in the metaphysics of modality, giving appropriate background for what follows. My modal primitivist theory of modality is introduced in chapters 2 and 3. In chapter 2, I argue that a well-known modal reductionist theory of modality is not as ideologically innocent as it’s thought to be: modal primitivism has the upper hand with respect to primitive notions. I then introduce the primitive notion of incompatibility and show how this notion can be used to account for de dicto modality, which concerns purely qualitative modal claims. In chapter 3, I present a theory of de re modality, that which concerns modal claims involving particular individuals. Since on this theory the de re is reducible to the de dicto, it requires no more primitive modality than that which appears at the level of the de dicto. I end in chapter 4 by arguing against a rival modal primitivist theory, showing that the primitive notion that it countenances, dispositionality, cannot account for all modal claims. (shrink)

For Marx, capitalism’s division of labour between mental and mate-rial labour is the condition of possibility for the creation of its alien, out of control, and contradictory effects. This paper will analyze the proletarian class, the capitalist class, and the world market qua ef-fects of the division of labour. The division of labour conceptualized fundamentally as a dynamic division between activity and passivity informs the analysis of these contradictory effects. This conceptual-ization of the division of labour provides the framework for (...) under-standing the striving toward activity and self-determination, de-scribed by Marx, of that which falls on the side of material labour. (shrink)

In this article, we focus on an extended model M ¯ of bounded rationality. Based on a rationality function with lower semicontinuity, we analyze the relationship between structural stability and robustness of Ω ¯. To further demonstrate the applicability of our theory, we introduce a model Ω ¯ 0 containing an abstract rationality function and generalize abstract fuzzy economies. We demonstrate the structural stability of the extended model Ω ¯ 0 at ξ ¯, ɛ. That is to say, Ω ¯ (...) 0 is robust to the ξ ¯, ɛ -equilibria. (shrink)

The inversion of directions is an important operation with directions which plays an important role in qualitative spatial reasoning and spatial queries. In this work, we address on the inversion operation of the basic cardinal direction relations in the model of Goyal. The direction relation matrix model proposed by Goyal is a projection-based model for spatial direction relations between regions. This model is simple in calculation and easy to carry out formal reasoning, which is considered as currently one of the (...) most excellent models for representation and qualitative reasoning with cardinal direction relations in two-dimensional space. This work aims to realize the automatic inference and calculation of the inverse of the basic cardinal direction relations in the model of Goyal and further to improve the ability of spatial reasoning and spatial analysis of spatial database. In order to avoid the complicated manual reasoning, an algorithm for automatically performing the inverse operation on this model is devised by means of the operations of direction relation matrix. Theorems are provided to prove formally that our algorithm is correct and complete, which is also verified by comparing the result of our algorithm with that of manual reasoning for each basic cardinal direction relation. This study realized the automatic inference and calculation of the inverse of the basic cardinal direction relations in the model of Goyal and further improved the ability of spatial reasoning and spatial analysis of spatial database. (shrink)

Anticipation is a crucial perceptual-cognitive skill in fast-ball sports, and the effect of high anxiety on performance has attracted more attention from sports psychologists. Related studies mainly focus on the effect of anxiety on influencing processing efficiency and attentional control during information processing in sport. Attentional Control Theory has been supported by several studies. However, these studies have been criticized by the low ecological validity of task design, such as neglecting the dynamic process of anticipation, and inadequate performance analysis, such (...) as analyzing response accuracy and time separately. Using temporal occlusion paradigm, we tested ACT in a dynamic anticipation process. Eighteen skilled and eighteen less-skilled table tennis players were required to anticipate the serves of opponents under dynamic task constraints and anxiety conditions. High cognitive state anxiety decreased processing efficiency for both groups whereas performance effectiveness did not differ. In addition, it negatively affected processing efficiency in early anticipation compared with late anticipation tasks, suggesting that high cognitive state anxiety may have a greater impact on top-down attentional control. Our findings provide support for ACT and show that anxiety impairs anticipation efficiency and performance, possibly due to an ineffectively attentional shift from external kinematic cues to internal long-term working memory. Findings also have implications for the adaptation of attentional strategies and anxiolytic training. (shrink)

Residency selection is a challenging process for medical students, one further complicated in the USA by the recentDobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization(Dobbs) decision over-ruling the federal right to abortion. We surveyed medical students to examine howDobbsis influencing the ideological, personal and professional factors they must reconcile when choosing where and how to complete residency.Between 6 August and 22 October 2022, third-year and fourth-year US medical students applying to US residency programmes were surveyed through social media and direct outreach to (...) medical schools. Analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from 494 responses was performed to assess downstream effects ofDobbson residency applicants’ family, health and career choices.Most respondents said changes in abortion access would likely or very likely influence their decision regarding location of considered residency programme (76.9%), where to start a family (72.2%) and contraceptive planning for them or their partner (57.9%). Cis-gender females were more influenced byDobbsregarding where (5 (4, 5) p<0.001) and when (3 (3, 5) p<0.001) to start a family. In qualitative responses, medical trainees highlighted the importance of abortion access for their patients, themselves and their loved ones.Medical trainees are incorporating state abortion access into their residency programme choices. Future physicians care about both the quality of care they will be able to provide and their own health. For personal and professional reasons, reproductive healthcare access is now a key factor in residency match decisions. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that experienced events are often mapped to too many episodic states, including those that are logically or experimentally incompatible with one another. For example, episodic over-distribution patterns show that the probability of accepting an item under different mutually exclusive conditions violates the disjunction rule. A related example, called subadditivity, occurs when the probability of accepting an item under mutually exclusive and exhaustive instruction conditions sums to a number >1. Both the over-distribution effect and subadditivity have been widely (...) observed in item and source-memory paradigms. These phenomena are difficult to explain using standard memory frameworks, such as signal-detection theory. A dual-trace model called the over-distribution model can explain the episodic over-distribution effect, but not subadditivity. Our goal is to develop a model that can explain both effects. In this paper, we propose the Generalized Quantum Episodic Memory model, which extends the Quantum Episodic Memory model developed by Brainerd, Wang, and Reyna. We test GQEM by comparing it to the OD model using data from a novel item-memory experiment and a previously published source-memory experiment examining the over-distribution effect. Using the best-fit parameters from the over-distribution experiments, we conclude by showing that the GQEM model can also account for subadditivity. Overall these results add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that quantum probability theory is a valuable tool in modeling recognition memory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface This issue invites us to consider examples of feminist cultural production that use music, graphic art, and film to resist sexual conventions. Andrea Wood turns our attention to lesbian sex and romance in comics, a genre that has long captivated lay readers and is gaining popularity in academic circles. Rachel Lumsden analyzes Ethel Smyth’s 1913 musical composition “Possession,” an ode to same-sex intimacy displaying a “sonic meld” of (...) passion, desire, and political commitment. Sharmila Lodhia’s account of Nina Paley’s film Sita Sings the Blues considers how a sexually charged anitmated representation of a traditional epic can spur battles over cultural authenticity. Ariane Cruz examines how sexual pleasure presses against racist histories in a study on black women and BDSM. Whether sexuality is policed, as Chloë Taylor explores in her article, or the policing of sexuality is shunned, as Lynn Comella addresses in her review essay, it is clear that the grip of sexual politics on women ’s sexual lives is strong. Wang Zheng’s News and Views piece recounts recent global feminist tactics used to release five young feminists jailed in China, an urgent reminder about how women’s bodies are policed in violent ways. We begin this issue with Chloë Taylor’s essay reflecting on how sexology and psychiatry function to represent female desire in narrow ways. Taylor explores how female sexual dysfunction is constructed in sexology and psychiatric practice and locates this as part of a longer history of rendering selected bodies and sexual practices as deviant. Her analysis is a valuable rejoinder to the ever-expanding grip of psychiatry on the ordering—and disordering—of women’s bodies and sexuality. The line between normal and abnormal is always shifting, but its constant is how it maneuvers and is maneuvered to control female sexual desire. Taylor’s argument moves toward a non-normalizing feminist sexology that can interrogate sexual practice and function without rendering any as “right” or “wrong.” 256Preface Andrea Wood also turns to female sexuality, specifically lesbian sex, love, and romance, in her article on comics as a literary genre. Lesbian romance comics, Wood argues, offer a different discursive lens for “making the invisible visible.” Using queer theory to interrogate romantic depictions of lesbian sex and sexuality, she explores how the visual narrative form of comics allows for a different and politically compelling depiction of lesbian identity and sexual activity. Although lesbian romance and same-sex desire has been an interest of many feminist scholars, few have examined the visual field of lesbian comics—a genre, Wood insists, that demonstrates resistance to what Adrienne Rich identified as “compulsory heterosexuality.” Rachel Lumsden draws our attention to composer Ethel Smyth’s understudied song “Possession.” The song is a rumination on what it means to possess something or someone, and what it means to be possessed ; it is also a song that Smyth dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst, her political comrade as well as her close friend and muse. Lumsden reads the song as a creative, strategically ambiguous “ode to an intimate female relationship,” a tribute to the respect, affection, and tenderness that Pankhurst and Smyth shared. Rather than reveal the “truth” of Smyth’s relationship with Pankhurst, Lumsden instead invites readers to consider the “sonic meld” of “Possession” as a space through which “themes of desire, activism, eroticism, solidarity, and sacrifice coalesce and congeal ” and as a site through which Smyth narrated her experiences, passions, desires, and political commitments. Sharmila Lodhia engages the controversy surrounding Nina Paley’s re-telling of the Ramayana in her film Sita Sings the Blues, which some critics have deemed “offensive,” “insulting,” and a “desecration of the Ramayana and the Hindu faith.” Lodhia treats Paley’s film—which positions Sita rather than Ram as the story’s protagonist, deploys animation and myriad narrator perspectives, fuses Paley’s own story with Sita’s story, and sets the story to a 1920s blues soundtrack—as a productive “body of critique about the epic’s central teachings on virtue, righteousness, and idealized gender roles.” By situating Paley’s retelling of the Ramayana in the context of numerous and varied Ramayana retellings, Lodhia reveals that Sita Sings the Blues is a “creative... (shrink)

Among philosophical questions about human agency, one can distinguish in a rough and ready way between those that arise in philosophy of mind and those that arise in ethics. In philosophy of mind, one central aim has been to account for the place of agents in a world whose operations are supposedly ‘physical’. In ethics, one central aim has been to account for the connexion between ethical species of normativity and the distinctive deliberative and practical capacities of human beings. Ethics (...) then is involved with questions of moral psychology whose answers admit a kind of richness in the life of human beings from which the philosophy of mind may ordinarily prescind. Philosophy of mind, insofar as it treats the phenomenon of agency as one facet of the phenomenon of mentality, has been more concerned with how there can be ‘mental causation’ than with any details of a story of human motivation or of the place of evaluative commitments within such a story. (shrink)

Introduction -- Elucidating complexity theories -- Complexity in the natural sciences -- Complexity in social theory -- Towards transdisciplinarity -- Complexity in philosophy: complexification and the limits to knowledge -- Complexity in ethics -- Earth in the anthropocene -- Complexity and climate change -- American dreams, ecological nightmares and new visions -- Complexity and sustainability: wicked problems, gordian knots and synergistic solutions -- Conclusion.