Adapting the Environment instead of Oneself

This paper examines some of the methods animals and humans have of adapting their environment. Because there are limits on how many different tasks a creature can be designed to do well in, creatures with the capacity to redesign their environments have an adaptive advantage over those who can only passively adapt to existing environmental structures. To clarify environmental redesign I rely on the formal notion of a task environment as a directed graph where the nodes are states and the links are actions. One natural form of redesign is to change the topology of this graph structure so as to increase the likelihood of task success or to reduce its expected cost, measured in physical terms. This may be done by eliminating initial states hence eliminating choice points; by changing the action repertoire; by changing the consequence function; and lastly, by adding choice points. Another major method for adapting the environment is to change its cognitive congeniality. Such changes leave the state space formally intact but reduce the number and cost of mental operations needed for task success; they reliably increase the speed, accuracy or robustness of performance. The last section of the paper describes several of these epistemic or complementary actions found in human performance

ENHANCING DESIGN INNOVATION: EMBRACING THE 'OUT OF THE BOX' RESEARCH APPROACH IN PRODUCT DESIGN

The concept of "out of the box" research in the context of product design refers to a research approach that spans across different fields and sectors unrelated to the specific area of interest. Instead of limiting oneself to conventions and traditional approaches, the designer seeks to incorporate concepts and ideas from different disciplines or fields into their project. Metaphorically, the designer conducts research 'outside the box,' identifying design solutions to unrelated technical problems and 'bringing them inside the box,' adapting them to their own project. The benefits are evident: by exploring and importing ideas from diverse sectors, the possibility of developing innovative solutions that may not have been considered within the specific field of work opens up. It also stimulates the creativity and lateral thinking ability of designers. By encouraging open-mindedness and the exploration of new territories, a space for innovation and the generation of original ideas is created. This can lead to a more dynamic and stimulating design environment. This article presents how this approach was applied in a first-year design studio of a product design bachelor's degree and showcases a selection of the results

Cross-Cultural Communication within American and Chinese Colleagues in Multinational Organizations

Globalization is a mantra nowadays that has been employed to describe the highly active exchange activities between countries and regions across the globe. It takes a multidimensional form, connecting people and things regardless of spatial and temporal confines, and permeating into all walks of life. Along with changes brought by this dynamic international interaction, a myriad of organizations, no longer isolated and static, are beginning to ride on this gravy train by expanding tentacles into every cranny and nook of the globe. One of the challenges that is facing the multinational organizations is the increasing diversity of the workforce and similarly complex prospective customers with disparate cultural backgrounds. After all, language barriers, cultural nuances, and value divergence can easily cause unintended misunderstanding and low efficiency in internal communication in a multinational environment. It leads to conflict among employees and profit loss in organizational productivity. Therefore, in international organization, cross-cultural communication, also known as intercultural and trans-cultural communication, serves as a lubricant, which mitigates frictions, resolves conflicts, and improves overall work efficiency; likewise, it serves as coagulant, which integrates the collective wisdom and strength, enhances the collaboration of team work, and unites multiple cultures together between race and ethnicity, which leads to desirable virtuous circle of synergy effect. This paper identifies three aspects of culture that constitute people’s understanding between each other in professional settings, namely, language and non-language code; cultural values and beliefs; as well as cultural stereotypes and preconceptions

Kindness in memorable university teachers

The article presents some insights derived from research on ‘good teaching practices’ in the context of the School of Humanities, Mar del Plata State University, Argentina. He professor in charge of the ‘Introduction to Philosophy’ course has been signaled as ‘memorable’ by her advanced students, and thus become part of the investigation. In her classes, the relationship with the students entails peculiar ethical dimensions, and hospitality is one of the categories involved in her didactic proposal. Much data has been gathered through ethnographic reports of classwork, interviews, surveys and analysis of reference materials, which aims at throwing light into good teaching at university, as part of the investigation conducted by the Research Team on Education and Cultural Studies (GIEEC) in this University.Fil: Porta Vazquez, Luis Gabriel. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Flores, Graciela Nelida. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata; Argentin

Two Paradigmatic Strategies for Reading Zhuang Zi\u27s Happy Fish Vignette as Philosophy: Guo Xiang\u27s and Wang Fuzhi\u27s Approaches

One of the most beloved passages in the Zhuang-Zi text is a dialogue between Hui Zi and Zhuang Zi at the end of the “Qiu-shui” chapter. While this is one of many vignettes involving Hui Zi and Zhuang Zi in the text, this particular vignette has recently drawn attention in Chinese and comparative philosophy circles. The most basic question concerning these studies is whether or not the passage represents a substantial philosophical dispute, or instead idle chitchat between two friends. This vignette has not only received much attention as of late, but commentators from at least Guo Xiang onward have taken the conversation as substantial rather than merely charming. Of the traditional readings that take the passage as substantial, there are two main strategies for taking Zhuang Zi as “winning” a substantial dispute: (1) One that argues Zhuang Zi is undermining Hui Zi’s position without offering a positive position, and (2) another that argues that Zhuang Zi is undermining Hui Zi’s position by offering a positive position. Guo Xiang’s “official commentary” is paradigmatic of the first “negative” strategy, while Wang Fuzhi’s reading is paradigmatic of the second “positive” strategy. The goal in the present article is to present these two strategies for reading the passage by translating and analyzing Guo’s and Wang’s annotations, thereby showing how the passage might be and has been taken as more than frivolous chitchat

Environmental education: creative place-making in Papua New Guinea

This paper addresses how experience of environment may be an important stimulant in the creative process through which appropriate architectural place may be made. We will argue that with a better understanding of their own reactions in and to environments architectural students may be more sensitive to the effects of their architectural gestures on others. Accepting that such depth experiences are mirrored in archetypal forms and patterns in indigenous architectures, we will use as a case study the education of architects and the creation of architecture in Papua New Guinea [PNG]. We argue that an appropriate architecture, responsive to the locale of PNG, offers the antithesis of the often inappropriate internationalised architecture

The sport coach

Chapter Objectives After completing this chapter you should be able to: 1. Understand some of the core differences between coaching requirements in participation and performance domains. 2. Discuss diverse models of sports coaching and how these differ in terms of their emphasis, strengths, and limitations. 3. Describe a range of key factors which impact on the coaching process and how these can be integrated through a focus on professional judgment and decision making. 4. Describe some crucial skills that can help coaches to understand and manage the complex and dynamic environments in which they work and best lead performers

Care, Social Practices and Normativity. Inner Struggle versus Panglossian Rule-Following

Contrary to the popular assumption that linguistically mediated social practices constitute the normativity of action (Kiverstein and Rietveld, 2015; Rietveld, 2008a,b; Rietveld and Kiverstein, 2014), I argue that it is affective care for oneself and others that primarily constitutes this kind of normativity. I argue for my claim in two steps. First, using the method of cases I demonstrate that care accounts for the normativity of action, whereas social practices do not. Second, I show that a social practice account of the normativity of action has unwillingly authoritarian consequences in the sense that humans act only normatively if they follow social rules. I suggest that these authoritarian consequences are the result of an uncritical phenomenology of action and the fuzzy use of “normative”. Accounting for the normativity of action with care entails a realistic picture of the struggle between what one cares for and often repressive social rules