Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value (...) have in our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

Attentional capture by schematic emotional faces was investigated in two experiments using the flanker task devised by Eriksen and Eriksen (1974). In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a central target (a schematic face that was either positive or negative) flanked by two identical distractors, one on either side (schematic faces that were positive, negative, or neutral). The objective was to identify the central target as quickly as possible. The impact of the flankers depended on their emotional expression. Consistent (...) with a threat advantage hypothesis (negative faces are processed faster and attract more processing resources), responses to positive faces were slower when these were flanked by (response incompatible) negative faces as compared with positive or neutral faces, whereas responses to negative faces were unaffected by the identity of the flankers. Experiment 2 was a standard flanker task with letter stimuli except that the task-neutral flankers were schematic faces that were either positive, negative, or emotionally neutral. In this case, in which faces and emotional expressions were to be ignored, performance seemed entirely unaffected by the faces. This result suggests that attentional capture by emotional faces is contingent on attentional control settings. (shrink)

Attentional character is a way of thinking about what is relevant in a human life, what is meaningful and how it becomes so. This paper introduces the concept of attentional character through a redefinition of attentional capture as achievement. It looks freshly at the attentional capture debate in the current cognitive sciences literature through the lens of Aron Gurwitsch’s gestalt-phenomenology. Attentional character is defined as an initially limited capacity for attending in a given environment and is located within (...) the sphere of attention, primarily as an irrelevant centering in attending. (shrink)

(2014). Capturing the relationship between conditionals and conditional probability with a trivalent semantics. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics: Vol. 24, Three-Valued Logics and their Applications, pp. 144-152. doi: 10.1080/11663081.2014.911535.

This paper aims to analyse the relationship that exists between state capture, party patronage, and the conduct of electoral processes in the settings of post-communist countries, of which Albania is one. A characteristic of the political developments of the transition period in many post-communist countries has been the phenomenon of state capture, which has occurred mainly through the endemic party patronage and politicization of state institutions. The phenomenon of state capture by the ruling political parties has had (...) a negative conditional impact on the conduct of competitive, free and fair elections in these countries, leading to distrust regarding the credibility and integrity of the process. This study argues that phenomena such as state capture and extensive party patronage as informal practices/mechanisms in the hands of the ruling political parties affect the creation of a skewed playing field and the production of hyper-incumbency advantages in holding electoral contests between political parties, making the possibility of political power rotations difficult. Albania, in the case of its last parliamentary elections, held on 25th April 2021, constitutes the case study (Section IV) to which the theoretical framework of the paper is applied, by identifying the informal practices and methods through state capture that the ruling political party used to provide structural, institutional, and financial advantages in its favour regarding elections. (shrink)

[Newspaper opinion] To give carbon storage sites the greatest chance of success, it makes sense to develop them in places where the geology has been thoroughly explored and where there is lots of relevant expertise. This would imply pumping carbon into underground storage sites in northern Europe, the Middle East and the US, where companies have spent centuries looking for and extracting fossil fuels. On the other hand, it might be important to develop storage sites in economies where the current (...) and future demand for carbon capture and storage is greatest. The regions with the best prospects are not often those with the greatest expected need. [Open access]. (shrink)

This chapter examines two premises of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) - that emotions are caused by beliefs and that those beliefs are represented in the mind as words or images. Being a philosophical examination, the chapter also seeks to demonstrate that these two premises essentially are philosophical premises. The chapter begins with a brief methodological suggestion of how to properly evaluate the theory of CBT. From there it works it way from examining the therapeutic practice of capturing the mental representations that (...) supposedly elicit emotional reactions to examining the assumption that emotions are caused by beliefs. The chapter ends by briefly pointing to some consequences of what has been said to the practice of CBT. (shrink)

Complex environmental problems require well-researched policies that integrate knowledge from both the natural and social sciences. Epistemic differences can impede interdisciplinary collaboration, as shown by debates between conservation biologists and anthropologists who are working to preserve biological diversity and support economic development in central Africa. Disciplinary differences with regard to 1) facts, 2) rigor, 3) causal explanation, and 4) research goals reinforce each other, such that early decisions about how to define concepts or which methods to adopt may tilt research (...) design and data interpretation toward one discipline’s epistemological framework. If one of the contributing fields imposes a solution to an epistemic problem, this sets the stage for what I call disciplinary capture. Avoiding disciplinary capture requires clear communication between collaborators, but beyond this it also requires that collaborators craft research questions and innovate research designs which are different from the inherited epistemological frameworks of contributing disciplines. (shrink)

Some incredibly far-fetched conspiracy theories circulate online these days. For most of us, clear evidence would be required before we’d believe these extraordinary theories. Yet, conspiracists often cite evidence that seems transparently very weak. This is puzzling, since conspiracists often aren’t irrational people who are incapable of rationally processing evidence. I argue that existing accounts of conspiracist belief formation don’t fully address this puzzle. Then, drawing on both philosophical and empirical considerations, I propose a new explanation that appeals to the (...) role of the imagination in conspiracist belief formation. I argue that conspiracists first become imaginatively absorbed in conspiracist narratives, where this helps to explain how they process their evidence. From there, we can better understand why they find this evidence so compelling, as well as the psychological role it plays in their belief forming processes. This account also has practical implications for combatting the spread of online conspiracy theories. (shrink)

Motion pose capture technology can effectively solve the problem of difficulty in defining character motion in the process of 3D animation production and greatly reduce the workload of character motion control, thereby improving the efficiency of animation development and the fidelity of character motion. Motion gesture capture technology is widely used in virtual reality systems, virtual training grounds, and real-time tracking of the motion trajectories of general objects. This paper proposes an attitude estimation algorithm adapted to be embedded. (...) The previous centralized Kalman filter is divided into two-step Kalman filtering. According to the different characteristics of the sensors, they are processed separately to isolate the cross-influence between sensors. An adaptive adjustment method based on fuzzy logic is proposed. The acceleration, angular velocity, and geomagnetic field strength of the environment are used as the input of fuzzy logic to judge the motion state of the carrier and then adjust the covariance matrix of the filter. The adaptive adjustment of the sensor is converted to the recognition of the motion state. For the study of human motion posture capture, this paper designs a verification experiment based on the existing robotic arm in the laboratory. The experiment shows that the studied motion posture capture method has better performance. The human body motion gesture is designed for capturing experiments, and the capture results show that the obtained pose angle information can better restore the human body motion. A visual model of human motion posture capture was established, and after comparing and analyzing with the real situation, it was found that the simulation approach reproduced the motion process of human motion well. For the research of human motion recognition, this paper designs a two-classification model and human daily behaviors for experiments. Experiments show that the accuracy of the two-category human motion gesture capture and recognition has achieved good results. The experimental effect of SVC on the recognition of two classifications is excellent. In the case of using all optimization algorithms, the accuracy rate is higher than 90%, and the final recognition accuracy rate is also higher than 90%. In terms of recognition time, the time required for human motion gesture capture and recognition is less than 2 s. (shrink)

According to the High Court in England and Wales, the primary purpose of legal interventions into the lives of vulnerable adults with mental capacity should be to allow the individuals concerned to regain their autonomy of decision making. However, recent cases of clinical decision making involving capacitous vulnerable adults have shown that, when it comes to medical law, medical ethics and clinical practice, vulnerability is typically conceived as opposed to autonomy. The first aim of this paper is to detail the (...) problems that arise when the courts and health care practitioners respond to the vulnerability of capacitous adults on the basis of such an opposition. It will be shown that not only does the common law approach to vulnerability fail to adequately capture the autonomy of capacitous vulnerable adults, the conception of vulnerability and autonomy in oppositional terms leads to objectionably paternalistic health care responses that undermine the autonomy of vulnerable patients as well as clinical and legal interventions that violate their autonomy. In response, the second aim of this paper is to show that the concepts of autonomy and vulnerability are necessarily entwined and, on that basis, the focus should be on promoting the autonomy of capacitous vulnerable adults where possible. In order to make this case, the paper explains the limitations of standard approaches to the autonomy of vulnerable adults and, in their place, offers a conception of legitimate, self-authorised autonomy that is fundamentally dependent on intersubjective practices of recognition. (shrink)

Finn analyzes the development of police photography in the 19th century to foreground a critique of three identification practices that are fundamental to current police work.

Whilst Kolbe and de Melo-Martin (2023) appropriately identify a range of concerns about the validity of existing instruments to measure moral distress, one additional limitation that the authors di...

One important concern regarding implantable Brain Computer Interfaces is the fear that the intervention will negatively change a patient’s sense of identity or agency. In particular, there is concern that the user will be psychologically worse-off following treatment despite postoperative functional improvements. Clinical observations from similar implantable brain technologies, such as deep brain stimulation, show a small but significant proportion of patients report feelings of strangeness or difficulty adjusting to a new concept of themselves characterized by a maladaptive je ne (...) sais quoi despite clear motor improvement. Despite the growing number of cases in the DBS literature, there is currently no accepted or standardized tool in neuroethics specifically designed to capture the phenomenological postoperative experience of patients implanted with DBS or BCI devices. Given potential risks of postoperative maladaptation, it is important for the field of neuroethics to develop a qualitative instrument that can serve as a shared method for capturing postoperative variations in patient experience of identity and agency. The goal of this article is to introduce an instrument we have developed for this purpose and call for further neuroethical efforts to assess the phenomenology of implantable brain device use. (shrink)

Systems change requires complex interventions. Cross-sector partnerships face the daunting task of addressing complex societal problems by aligning different backgrounds, values, ideas and resources. A major challenge for CSPs is how to link the type of partnership to the intervention needed to drive change. Intervention strategies are thereby increasingly based on Theories of Change. Applying ToCs is often a donor requirement, but it also reflects the ambition of a partnership to enhance its transformative potential. The current use of ToCs in (...) partnering efforts varies greatly. There is a tendency for a linear and relatively simple use of ToCs that does limited justice to the complexity of the problems partnerships aim to address. Since partnership dynamics are already complex and challenging themselves, confusion and disagreement over the appropriate application of ToCs is likely to hamper rather than enhance the transformative potential of partnerships. We develop a complexity alignment framework and a diagnostic tool that enables partnerships to better appreciate the complexity of the context in which they operate, allowing them to adjust their learning strategy. This paper applies recent insights into how to deal with complexity from both the evaluation and theory of change fields to studies investigating the transformative capacity of partnerships. This can serve as a check to define the challenges of partnering projects and can help delineate the societal sources and layers of complexity that cross-sector partnerships deal with such as failure, insufficient responsibility taking and collective action problems at four phases of partnering. (shrink)

Rejecting the Cut rule has been proposed as a strategy to avoid both the usual semantic paradoxes and the so-called v-Curry paradox. In this paper we consider if a Cut-free theory is capable of accurately representing its own notion of validity. We claim that the standard rules governing the validity predicate are too weak for this purpose and we show that although it is possible to strengthen these rules, the most obvious way of doing so brings with it a serious (...) problem: an internalized version of Cut can be proved for a Curry-like sentence. We also evaluate a number of possible ways of escaping this difficulty. (shrink)

Systems change requires complex interventions. Cross-sector partnerships face the daunting task of addressing complex societal problems by aligning different backgrounds, values, ideas and resources. A major challenge for CSPs is how to link the type of partnership to the intervention needed to drive change. Intervention strategies are thereby increasingly based on Theories of Change. Applying ToCs is often a donor requirement, but it also reflects the ambition of a partnership to enhance its transformative potential. The current use of ToCs in (...) partnering efforts varies greatly. There is a tendency for a linear and relatively simple use of ToCs that does limited justice to the complexity of the problems partnerships aim to address. Since partnership dynamics are already complex and challenging themselves, confusion and disagreement over the appropriate application of ToCs is likely to hamper rather than enhance the transformative potential of partnerships. We develop a complexity alignment framework and a diagnostic tool that enables partnerships to better appreciate the complexity of the context in which they operate, allowing them to adjust their learning strategy. This paper applies recent insights into how to deal with complexity from both the evaluation and theory of change fields to studies investigating the transformative capacity of partnerships. This can serve as a check to define the challenges of partnering projects and can help delineate the societal sources and layers of complexity that cross-sector partnerships deal with such as failure, insufficient responsibility taking and collective action problems at four phases of partnering. (shrink)

Systems change requires complex interventions. Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) face the daunting task of addressing complex societal problems by aligning different backgrounds, values, ideas and resources. A major challenge for CSPs is how to link the type of partnership to the intervention needed to drive change. Intervention strategies are thereby increasingly based on Theories of Change (ToCs). Applying ToCs is often a donor requirement, but it also reflects the ambition of a partnership to enhance its transformative potential. The current use of (...) ToCs in partnering efforts varies greatly. There is a tendency for a linear and relatively simple use of ToCs that does limited justice to the complexity of the problems partnerships aim to address. Since partnership dynamics are already complex and challenging themselves, confusion and disagreement over the appropriate application of ToCs is likely to hamper rather than enhance the transformative potential of partnerships. We develop a complexity alignment framework and a diagnostic tool that enables partnerships to better appreciate the complexity of the context in which they operate, allowing them to adjust their learning strategy. This paper applies recent insights into how to deal with complexity from both the evaluation and theory of change fields to studies investigating the transformative capacity of partnerships. This can (1) serve as a check to define the challenges of partnering projects and (2) can help delineate the societal sources and layers of complexity that cross-sector partnerships deal with such as failure, insufficient responsibility taking and collective action problems at four phases of partnering. (shrink)

The parameters governing our behavior are in constant flux, and capturing these dynamics in cognitive models remains a challenge. We demonstrate how a mapping between ACT‐R's model of declarative memory and the linear ballistic accumulator enables efficient estimation of memory parameters from data. The resulting estimates provide a cognitively meaningful explanation for observed differences in behavior over time and between individuals.

The parameters governing our behavior are in constant flux. Accurately capturing these dynamics in cognitive models poses a challenge to modelers. Here, we demonstrate a mapping of ACT-R's declarative memory onto the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA), a mathematical model describing a competition between evidence accumulation processes. We show that this mapping provides a method for inferring individual ACT-R parameters without requiring the modeler to build and fit an entire ACT-R model. Existing parameter estimation methods for the LBA can be used, (...) instead of the computationally expensive parameter sweeps that are traditionally done. We conduct a parameter recovery study to confirm that the LBA can recover ACT-R parameters from simulated data. Then, as a proof of concept, we use the LBA to estimate ACT-R parameters from an empirical dataset. The resulting parameter estimates provide a cognitively meaningful explanation for observed differences in behavior over time and between individuals. In addition, we find that the mapping between ACT-R and LBA lends a more concrete interpretation to ACT-R's latency factor parameter, namely as a measure of response caution. This work contributes to a growing movement towards integrating formal modeling approaches in cognitive science. (shrink)

This article explores the management and organisational context for capturing and retaining knowledge transferred through the design process. It is widely acknowledged that our ability to successfully organise and transfer design knowledge is dependant upon the context in which it is situated. However the knowledge generated through the creative process is often viewed from the perspective of the artefact rather the process itself. An understanding of the socially complex knowledge-based resources operating within design groups could enhance competitiveness and organisational development. (...) Yet, a systematic literature review of leading design and educational management journals found limited empirical evidence that shed light on the influence of knowledge management on design group performance. The article addresses this gap in the literature. Based on two in-depth case studies with interior design companies implementing new digital asset management systems over a 2-year period, the paper explores the findings in relation to design practice and policy, alongside implications for the contribution of the creative industries to the knowledge economy. (shrink)

This paper argues that social and political problems currently addressed by local governments through new forms of digital participation can be considered wicked problems, because they cannot be tackled through factual information alone. Addressing such problems means connecting diverse citizens’ values to empirically based and logically based arguments. The paper addresses the question of which role citizens’ personal narratives and emotions play in digital participation and how narratives and emotions articulate personal and social values. This line of inquiry is illustrated (...) by two examples of digital participation on the local and regional level of democracy. The examples show that citizens’ narratives and emotional expressions articulate diverse values and value conflicts. Finally, the paper develops some preliminary ideas about how online argument mapping tools could be combined with value mapping. (shrink)

First-order formalisations are often preferred to propositional ones because they are thought to underwrite the validity of more arguments. We compare and contrast the ability of some well-known logics—these two in particular—to formally capture valid and invalid arguments. We show that there is a precise and important sense in which first-order logic does not improve on propositional logic in this respect. We also prove some generalisations and related results of philosophical interest. The rest of the article investigates the results’ (...) philosophical significance. A first moral is that the correct way to state the oft-cited superiority of first-order logic vis-`a-vis propositional logic is more nuanced than often thought. The second moral concerns semantic theory; the third logic’s use as a tool for discovery. A fourth and final moral is that second-order logic’s transcendence of first-order logic is greater than first-order logic’s transcendence of propositional logic. (shrink)

In this paper we deal with the logical description of complexity classes arising in the real number model of computation introduced by Blum, Shub, and Smale [4]. We adapt the approach of descriptive complexity theory for this model developped in [14] and extend it to capture some further complexity classes over the reals by logical means. Among the latter we find NC R , PAR R , EXP R and some others more.

Installation art is one of the most important and provocative developments in the visual arts during the last half century and has become a key focus of artists and of contemporary museums. It is also seen as particularly challenging or even disliked by many viewers, and-due to its unique in situ, immersive setting-is equally regarded as difficult or even beyond the grasp of present methods in empirical aesthetic psychology. In this paper, we introduce an exploratory study with installation art, utilizing (...) a collection of techniques to capture the eclectic, the embodied, and often the emotionally-charged viewing experience. We present results from an investigation of two pieces, both part of Olafur Eliasson's exhibition "Baroque, Baroque" held at the Belvedere museum in Vienna. These were assessed by administered pre- and post-viewing questionnaires focusing on emotion, meaning-making, and appraisals, in tandem with mobile eye tracking to consider viewers' attention to both installed artworks and/or the museum environment. The data showed differences in participants' emotional states, appraisals, and visual exploration, which together paint a picture of the aesthetic reactions to the works. These differences also showed how viewers' appraisal strategies, meaning making, and physical actions facilitated relatively more or less deep engagement with, and enjoyment of, the art pieces. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for museum studies, art education, and theory in empirical aesthetics. (shrink)

How should the artist manage his time and work? Art practice is a complex, diverse and multifaceted enterprise. The premium on innovation and creativity is unusually high, the return on investment is almost impossible to calculate and the value, when it is truly successful, is priceless. Yet like any form of organized, analyzable work which produces material output, art practice is governed by specific task-orientated, rule-bound skills pertaining to technique, craft and presentation which are culture-specific and a tradition unto themselves. (...) The contemporary artist has almost all of the methods, approaches and philosophies of the history of art to pick from. What place and significance might pragmatism have in this selection? (shrink)

Although expressions of facial emotion hold a special status in attention relative to other complex objects, whether they summon our attention automatically and against our intentions remains a debated issue. Studies supporting the strong view that attentional capture by facial expressions of emotion is entirely automatic reported that a unique emotional face distractor interfered with search for a target that was also unique on a different dimension. Participants could therefore search for the odd-one out face to locate the target (...) and attentional capture by irrelevant emotional faces might be contingent on the adoption of an implicit set for singletons. Here, confirming this hypothesis, an irrelevant emotional face captured attention when the target was the unique face with a discrepant orientation, both when this orientation was unpredictable and when it remained constant. By contrast, no such capture was observed when the target could not be found by monitoring displays for a discrepant face and participants had to search for a face with a specific orientation. Our findings show that attentional capture by emotional faces is not purely stimulus driven and thereby resolve the apparent inconsistency that prevails in the literature on the automaticity of attentional capture by emotional faces. (shrink)

Michael Fotiadis (1994) and Barbara Little (1994) both question the oppositions that structure current debate about the "objectivity" of archaeological science; they raise concerns about my own proposal for a "mitigated objectivism" where it reaffirms these oppositions. I welcome their discussion and offer three responses to clarify and situate my own position. Most valuable, they identify several lines of inquiry that should be pursued beyond the philosophical analyses I have developed, in this instance of gender research.

This article provides a thematic overview of the work of contemporary French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou. It suggests that the notion of violent capture serves as a guiding theme linking Chamayou's work, linking it to his early study of experimental medicine, his genealogy of manhunting and predatory power, as well as his recent study of contemporary predatory or "cynegetic" warfare use of drones.