A one-time editor must admit to nothing short of consternation when he views the child, full grown at twenty-five.

Bunyan... stands a great deal closer to us than many interpreters of Scripture who may be nearer in time by centuries.

The Covid-19 induced United Kingdom-wide lockdown in 2020 saw choirs face a unique situation of trying to continue without being able to meet in-person. Live networked simultaneous music-making for large groups of singers is not possible, so other “virtual choir” activities were explored. A cross sectional online survey of 3948 choir members and facilitators from across the United Kingdom was conducted, with qualitative analysis of open text questions, to investigate which virtual choir solutions have been employed, how choir members and (...) facilitators experience these in comparison to an “in-person” choir, and whether the limitations and opportunities of virtual choir solutions shed light on the value of the experience of group singing as a whole. Three virtual choir models were employed: Multi-track, whereby individuals record a solo which is mixed into a choral soundtrack; Live streamed, where individuals take part in sessions streamed live over social media; Live tele-conferencing, for spoken interaction and/or singing using tele-conferencing software. Six themes were identified in the open text responses: Participation Practicalities, encompassing reactions to logistics of virtual models; Choir Continuity, reflecting the responsibility felt to maintain choir activities somehow; Wellbeing, with lockdown highlighting to many the importance of in-person choirs to their sense of wellbeing; Social Aspects, reflecting a sense of community and social identity; Musical Elements, whereby the value of musical experience shifted with the virtual models; Co-creation through Singing, with an overwhelming sense of loss of the embodied experience of singing together in real-time, which is unattainable from existing virtual choir models. The experiences, activities and reflections of choir singers during lockdown present a unique perspective to understand what makes group singing a meaningful experience for many. Co-creation through Singing needs further investigation to understand the impact of its absence on virtual choirs being able re-create the benefits of in-person choirs. (shrink)

To achieve impact, academics need to create personal impact development plans, focused on what and on whom to have an impact and the necessary competencies to do so. Profession and university leaders play a critical role in the successful implementation of such plans.

Challenging the undesirability of disability is a shared responsibility that requires us to imagine disability differently. In order to imagine disability differently, we need to understand how the neoliberal hegemonic social imagination—key to processes that create good disabled and able-bodied neoliberal subjects—works to curtail who is perceived to have a desirable body. In order to desire disability differently, we must begin with marginal, heterotopic imaginations whereby disability is not something to overcome, but rather is part of a life worth living. (...) In this article, I build on Foucault’s concepts of heterotopia, milieu, and the government of things, and Karen Barad’s agential realism, as well as draw on the work of Mel Chen and Rod Michalko in order to argue that the heterotopic imagination reconfigures how we consider disability to emerge, with whom, and where. By mobilising the heterotopic imagination, we can come to recognise that disability does not emerge as an individualised human body, but rather is an intracorporeal, non-anthropocentric multiplicity. To desire disability differently through the heterotopic imagination is not simply to allow the current formulation of disability to become desirable, but rather to radically alter how we desire disability, in addition to altering what disability is, how it is practised, and what it can be. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay thinks through the relationship between dystopia and utopia, in particular, how the constellation of past and present in radical demands amid state and economic violence is that which creates “crisis”—an estrangement from the present, a reclaiming of past insurgency, and the possibilities for other worlds.

Postural instability in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by impaired postural responses to transient perturbations, increased postural sway in stance and difficulty transitioning between tasks. In addition, some studies suggest that loss of dopamine in the basal ganglia due to PD results in difficulty using proprioceptive information for motor control. Here, we quantify the ability of subjects with PD and age-matched control subjects to use and re-weight sensory information for postural control during steady-state conditions of continuous rotations of the stance (...) surface or visual surround. We measure the postural sway of subjects in response to a pseudorandom, surface-tilt stimulus with eyes closed, and in response to a pseudorandom, visual-tilt stimulus. We use a feedback control model of the postural control system to interpret our results, focusing on sensory weighting as a function of stimulus amplitude. We find that subjects with PD can re-weight their dependence upon sensory information in response to changes in surface- or visual-stimulus amplitude. Specifically, subjects with PD behaved like age-matched control subjects by decreasing proprioceptive contribution to stance control with increasing surface-tilt amplitude, and decreasing visual contribution with increasing visual-tilt amplitude. However, subjects with PD do not decrease their reliance on proprioception as much as age-matched controls for small increases in surface-stimulus amplitudes. Levodopa medication did not affect sensory re-weighting behaviors for postural control. The impairment in PD subject’s ability to respond differently to small changes in surface rotation amplitudes is consistent with an increased threshold for perceiving proprioceptive signals, which may result from decreased signal-to-noise in the dopaminergic pathways associated with sensory processing and/or sensory integration. (shrink)

In the dissertation I explore three central issues in Plotinus' philosophical psychology: The fall of the soul, the relationships of soul and body, and the concept of the ego. ;Chapter 1 introduces the issues. Chapter 2 argues for a dual-aspect theory about the soul's fall. Chapter 3 characterizes the relationships between soul and body. Much of the chapter is devoted to distancing Plotinus' dualism from Cartesian dualism. The chapter ends with a discussion of Plotinus on perception. Chapter 4 investigates the (...) concept of the ego, the function of the ego in union with the One, and the relationship between the ego and the other powers of the soul. (shrink)

This article claims that Asha Bhandary’s theory of justice in Freedom to Care: Liberalism, Dependency Care, and Culture is right to stress the interdependency of justice and care in addressing structural oppressions, but wrong in upholding liberalism’s capacity for doing so. Against her procedural mechanism of education for caregiving skills in particular, I point to the critical and generative methods of social reproduction feminism and Transformative Justice as models of radical praxis in the collective work of politically centering and radically (...) transforming cultures of care. (shrink)

We present a theoretical framework bearing on the evolution of written communication. We analyze writing as a special kind of graphic code. Like languages, graphic codes consist of stable, conventional mappings between symbols and meanings, but (unlike spoken or signed languages) their symbols consist of enduring images. This gives them the unique capacity to transmit information in one go across time and space. Yet this capacity usually remains quite unexploited, because most graphic codes are insufficiently informative. They may only be (...) used for mnemonic purposes or as props for oral communication in real-time encounters. Writing systems, unlike other graphic codes, work by encoding a natural language. This allows them to support asynchronous communication in a more powerful and versatile way than any other graphic code. Yet, writing systems will not automatically unlock the capacity to communicate asynchronously. We argue that this capacity is a rarity in non-literate societies, and not so frequent even in literate ones. Asynchronous communication is intrinsically inefficient because asynchrony constrains the amount of information that the interlocutors share and limits possibilities for repair. This would explain why synchronous, face-to-face communication always fosters the development of sophisticated codes (natural languages), but similar codes for asynchronous communication evolve with more difficulties. It also implies that writing cannot have evolved, at first, for supporting asynchronous communication. (shrink)

The past thirty years have seen a surge of empirical research into political decision making and the influence of framing effects — the phenomenon that occurs when different but equivalent presentations of a decision problem elicit different judgments or preferences. During the same period, political philosophers have become increasingly interested in democratic theory, particularly in deliberative theories of democracy. Unfortunately, the empirical and philosophical studies of democracy have largely proceeded in isolation from each other. As a result, philosophical treatments of (...) democracy have overlooked recent developments in psychology, while the empirical study of framing effects has ignored much contemporary work in political philosophy. In Framing Democracy, Jamie Terence Kelly bridges this divide by explaining the relevance of framing effects for normative theories of democracy. -/- Employing a behavioral approach, Kelly argues for rejecting the rational actor model of decision making and replacing it with an understanding of choice imported from psychology and social science. After surveying the wide array of theories that go under the name of democratic theory, he argues that a behavioral approach enables a focus on three important concerns: moral reasons for endorsing democracy, feasibility considerations governing particular theories, and implications for institutional design. Finally, Kelly assesses a number of methods for addressing framing effects, including proposals to increase the amount of political speech, mechanisms designed to insulate democratic outcomes from flawed decision making, and programs of public education. -/- The first book to develop a behavioral theory of democracy, Framing Democracy has important insights for democratic theory, the social scientific understanding of political decision making, economics, and legal theory. (shrink)

Synchronic norms of theory choice, a traditional concern in scientific methodology, restrict the theories one can choose in light of given information. Diachronic norms of theory change, as studied in belief revision, restrict how one should change one’s current beliefs in light of new information. Learning norms concern how best to arrive at true beliefs. In this paper, we undertake to forge some rigorous logical relations between the three topics. Concerning, we explicate inductive truth conduciveness in terms of optimally direct (...) convergence to the truth, where optimal directness is explicated in terms of reversals and cycles of opinion prior to convergence. Concerning, we explicate Ockham’s razor and related principles of choice in terms of the information topology of the empirical problem context and show that the principles are necessary for reversal or cycle optimal convergence to the truth. Concerning, we weaken the standard principles of agm belief revision theory in intuitive ways that are also necessary for reversal or cycle optimal convergence. Then we show that some of our weakened principles of change entail corresponding principles of choice, completing the triangle of relations between,, and. (shrink)

Assessing the impact of CSR initiatives can be a complex task for marketers given the variety of methods of communicating about CSR as well as the broad range of stakeholders that CSR initiatives might interest. Social media helps increase the visibility and credibility of CSR communication and provides new ways of reaching and involving stakeholders in CSR initiatives. Using data collected and coded from Facebook pages of the Top 100 Global Brands, the authors introduce a new measure of effectiveness for (...) CSR communication; CSR communication productivity (CCP). The findings indicate that CCP has a positive impact on firm performance (Tobin’s Q). The authors also investigate the impact of External Stakeholder Involvement in CSR initiatives. The results suggest that when external stakeholders are involved in an organization’s CSR initiatives, both CCP and firm performance (Tobin’s Q) improve. In addition, third-party evaluations of CSR performance positively moderate the impact of External Stakeholder Involvement on CCP. These findings offer contributions to CSR communication and social media marketing theories. They also have implications for marketing managers regarding how to measure and benchmark CCP, and how to maximize returns by involving external stakeholders in CSR efforts. (shrink)

If there is to be any progress in the debate about what sort of positive moral status Kant can give the emotions, we need a taxonomy of the terms Kant uses for these concepts. It used to be thought that Kant had little room for emotions in his ethics. In the past three decades, Marcia Baron, Paul Guyer, Barbara Herman, Nancy Sherman, Allen Wood and others have argued otherwise. Contrary to what a cursory reading of the Groundwork may indicate, Kant (...) thinks the emotions play an important role in the moral life. I want to extend the work of Baron, Guyer, Herman, Sherman and Wood in three ways. First, I will set out in a diagram Kant's taxonomy of feelings and emotions. Agreement on such a taxonomy should make it easier to evaluate debates about Kant and the emotions. Second, I will focus on a certain subclass of emotions – reason-caused affects – that have previously received little attention, even from these Kant scholars. Third, these scholars base much of their defence of Kant on his later works – especially the Metaphysics of Morals and the Anthropology – but Kant's fairly rich taxonomy of the emotions, including reason-caused affects, is clearly in place at least as early as the Critique of Judgment . I believe that the Critique of Judgment is an importantly ignored resource for understanding the moral role of the emotions for Kant. The third Critique makes positive, philosophically interesting claims about the emotions and morality. Kant emphasizes certain roles for emotions in this work that he develops to the same extent nowhere else. Nevertheless, the Critique of Judgment goes all but unmentioned by many who write on these issues. In what follows, I will defend as many of my claims as possible using the third Critique. (shrink)

Kevin T. Kelly and Clark Glymour. Inductive Inference from Theory-Laden Data.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 147-150.

Previous research on gender-based economic inequality has emphasized occupational segregation as the leading explanatory factor for the gender wage gap. Yet the globalization of the U.S. economy has affected gender inequality in fundamental ways and potentially diminished the influence of occupational gender segregation. We examine whether occupational gender segregation continues to be the main determinant of gender earnings inequality and to what extent globalization processes have emerged as important determinants of inequality between women’s and men’s earnings. We study factors contributing (...) to the gender earnings ratio as well as the median earnings of men and women for 271 U.S. metropolitan areas. The results indicate that occupational segregation is still the leading determinant of gender earnings inequality, that its effects are only slightly diminished by the presence of globalization, and that various aspects of the global economy independently influence the gender earnings gap. (shrink)

A step-by-step guide to Foucault's History of Sexuality Volume I, The Will to KnowledgeIn the first volume of his History of Sexuality, The Will to Knowledge, Foucault weaves together the most influential theoretical account of sexuality since Freud. Mark Kelly systematically unpacks the intricacies of Foucault's dense and sometimes confusing exposition, in a straightforward way, putting it in its historical and theoretical context.This is both a guide for the reader new to the text and one that offers new insights (...) to those already familiar with Foucault's work. (shrink)

:In this article, we present an educational intervention that embeds ethics education within research laboratories. This structure is designed to assist students in addressing ethical challenges in a more informed way, and to improve the overall ethical culture of research environments. The project seeks to identify factors that students and researchers consider relevant to ethical conduct in science, technology, engineering, and math and to promote the cultivation of an ethical culture in experimental laboratories by integrating research stakeholders in a bottom-up (...) approach to developing context-specific, ethics-based guidelines. An important assumption behind this approach is that direct involvement in the process of developing laboratory specific ethical guidelines will positively influence researchers’ understanding of ethical research and practice issues, their handling of these issues, and the promotion of an ethical culture in the respective laboratory. The active involvement may increase the sense of ownership and integration of further discussion on these important topics. Based on the project experiences, the project team seeks to develop a module involving the bottom-up building of codes-of-ethics-based guidelines that can be used by a broad range of institutions and that will be distributed widely. (shrink)

In India, domestic workers' movements advocated for their own and other workers’ rights both before and during the pandemic. Over the course of the pandemic, however, the political landscape and de...

Prior research suggests that most people perceive themselves to be more altruistic than the average population, an observation known as the better-than-average (BTA) effect. Understanding the BTA effect carries significant public health implications, as self-perceived altruism is closely related to altruistic behaviors, which plays a significant role in individual and societal well-being. However, little is known about whether subpopulations with specific sociodemographic profiles are more likely to hold BTA altruistic self-perceptions, making it difficult to design targeted programs based on multiple (...) sociodemographic characteristics to promote altruistic behaviors. This study addresses this gap by identifying the sociodemographic profiles of populations who are more likely to exhibit BTA effects on trait altruism. Data were derived from a representative sample of Hong Kong citizens (n= 1,185) in the 2017 Hong Kong Altruism Survey. A latent class analysis was performed using four domains of sociodemographic characteristics: sex, age, religion, and socioeconomic status. Multivariate multinomial logistic regressions were conducted to examine associations between class membership, BTA effect, and altruistic behaviors. The results yielded four classes of sociodemographic profiles. Middle-aged, Christian/Catholic, highly educated, and high-income individuals (Class 4, 17.8%) were most likely to exhibit BTA effects and behave altruistically; Class 3 (14.0%) were older, male, no/other religious belief, low education, and least likely to exhibit BTA effects and behave altruistically. Findings improve the understanding of the sociodemographic profiles of people showing BTA effects and facilitate targeted policy development to effectively promote altruism. (shrink)

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are central to any educational system. The term started with the National Science Foundation as “SMET” and was changed to STEM at a later date due to phonetic reasons. The term was not widely used until Virginia Tech University began offering a “STEM education” degree in 2005 (Friedman 2005). The term STEM covers a broad spectrum of different disciplines. While, in general, STEM is used as an umbrella term for the natural sciences, engineering, (...) mathematics, and technology-related fields, there are some variations in its usage. For example, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) characterizes STEM as including chemistry, computers and information technology, engineering, geoscience, life sciences, mathematical sciences, physics and astronomy, psychology, social sciences, educational research, and STEM education (Gonzalez and Kuezi 2012). Whereas this approach considers the social sciences to be of central importance to STEM and the STEM workforce (Spalter-Roth 2004), in the United Kingdom, STEM is seen to include fields such as medicine, dentistry, and architecture but exclude the social sciences and education (United Kingdom, House of Lords, Science, and Technology, Committee 2012). (shrink)

Neste artigo, meu objetivo é analisar de que maneira o cientista, no âmbito das Ciências Naturais, é educado para assimilar, aplicar e articular um determinado paradigma na solução dos problemas de ciência normal, sem colocá-lo (o paradigma) criticamente em questão, assim qualquer erro que venha a ocorrer na pesquisa é atribuído ao cientista e não ao paradigma. Pretendo também, mostrar que o caráter dogmático do paradigma não permite que o cientista desenvolva pesquisas visando novas descobertas que não se enquadrem nos (...) parâmetros ditados pelo mesmo, tal atitude exige total aceitação e comprometimento da comunidade científica para com o paradigma aceito, gerando assim, uma espécie de profissão de fé na capacidade do paradigma em resolver os quebra-cabeças que se apresentam na prática da ciência normal. (shrink)

Although theories that examine direct links between behavior and brain remain incomplete, it is known that brain expansion significantly correlates with caloric and oxygen demands. Therefore, one of the principles governing evolutionary cognitive neuroscience is that cognitive abilities that require significant brain function (and/or structural support) must be accompanied by significant fitness benefit to offset the increased metabolic demands. One such capacity is self-awareness (SA), which (1) is found only in the greater apes and (2) remains unclear in terms of (...) both cortical underpinning and possible fitness benefit. In the current experiment, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the prefrontal cortex during a spatial perspective-taking task involving self and other viewpoints. It was found that delivery of TMS to the right prefrontal region disrupted self-, but not other-, perspective. These data suggest that self-awareness may have evolved in concert with other right hemisphere cognitive abilities. (shrink)