The Religious Naturalism of William James: A New Interpretation Through the Lens of Liberal Naturalism

This thesis argues that recent developments in philosophical naturalism mandate a new naturalistic reading of James. To that end, it presents the first comprehensive reading of James through the lens of liberal rather than scientific naturalism. Chapter 1 offers an extensive survey of the varieties of philosophical naturalism that provides the conceptual tools required for the rest the thesis, and allows us to provisionally locate James within the field. Crucially, it establishes the coherence and validity of a radical form of liberal naturalism that rejects 'the causal closure of the physical', and endorses doctrines of strong emergentism and macro-causation. The thesis will argue that it was to this form of naturalism that James was ultimately committed. Chapter 2 provides a detailed chronological treatment of James's key published works, seeking to understand the development of certain core naturalistic themes over the course of his career. It unearths a nascent doctrine of emergentism in The Principles, a critique of scientificism in The Will to Believe, a psycho-biological account of religious experience in The Varieties, a doctrine of panpsychist identism in Essays in Radical Empiricism, an evolutionary theory of cognition in Pragmatism, and a doctrine of finite theism in A Pluralistic Universe. The underlying aim of chapter 2 is to demonstrate the superficiality of James's endorsement of piecemeal supernaturalism in The Varieties. It shows that he had originally planned to defend a doctrine of 'theistic naturalism' in his second course of Gifford Lectures, and that he only defined himself as a supernaturalist in contradistinction to a particularly austere doctrine of 'mechanical naturalism' that endorses 'the causal closure of the physical'. James, whilst he rejected 'the causal closure of the physical', continued to endorse 'the causal closure of nature'. Through the schema developed in chapter 1, the thesis demonstrates how James can be classified as a radical religious naturalist. Finally, in chapter 3, the thesis enters a more consciously constructive phase. Building on James's suggestion that his philosophy was "too much like an arch built only on one side", it embarks upon a detailed reconstruction of 'the arch of James's naturalism'. It argues that reconstructed versions of James's doctrines of panpsychism and emergentism, in addition to being coherent and fertile in their own right, serve as the basis for a restoration of his theistic naturalism; the missing keystone of his mature philosophy

The Future of Humanoid Robots

This book provides state of the art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the field of humanoid robotics and its applications. It is expected that humanoids will change the way we interact with machines, and will have the ability to blend perfectly into an environment already designed for humans. The book contains chapters that aim to discover the future abilities of humanoid robots by presenting a variety of integrated research in various scientific and engineering fields, such as locomotion, perception, adaptive behavior, human-robot interaction, neuroscience and machine learning. The book is designed to be accessible and practical, with an emphasis on useful information to those working in the fields of robotics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computational methods and other fields of science directly or indirectly related to the development and usage of future humanoid robots. The editor of the book has extensive R&D experience, patents, and publications in the area of humanoid robotics, and his experience is reflected in editing the content of the book

Emotion based Facial Animation using Four Contextual Control Modes

An Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) is an intelligent agent that interacts with users through verbal and nonverbal expressions. When used as the interface of software applications, the presence of these agents creates a positive impact on user experience. Due to their potential in providing online assistance in areas such as E-Commerce, there is an increasing need to make ECAs more believable for the user, which has been achieved mainly by using realistic facial animation and emotions. This thesis presents a new approach of ECA modeling that empowers intelligent agents with synthesized emotions. This approach applies the Contextual Control Model for the construction of an emotion generator that uses information obtained from dialogue to select one of the four modes for the emotion, i.e., Scrambled, Opportunistic, Tactical, and Strategic mode. The emotions are produced in format of the Ortony Clore &Collins (OCC) model for emotion expressions

Affective Computing

This book provides an overview of state of the art research in Affective Computing. It presents new ideas, original results and practical experiences in this increasingly important research field. The book consists of 23 chapters categorized into four sections. Since one of the most important means of human communication is facial expression, the first section of this book (Chapters 1 to 7) presents a research on synthesis and recognition of facial expressions. Given that we not only use the face but also body movements to express ourselves, in the second section (Chapters 8 to 11) we present a research on perception and generation of emotional expressions by using full-body motions. The third section of the book (Chapters 12 to 16) presents computational models on emotion, as well as findings from neuroscience research. In the last section of the book (Chapters 17 to 22) we present applications related to affective computing

Designing and Testing an Experimental Framework of Affective Intelligent Agents in Healthcare Training Simulations

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThe purpose of this study is to investigate how emotionally enabled virtual agents (VAs) in healthcare provision training simulations allow for a more effective level of understanding on how an emotionally enhanced scenario can affect different aspects of learning. This is achieved by developing virtual agents that respond to the user’s emotions and personality. The developed system also provides visual and auditory representations of the virtual agents’ state of mind. To enable the fulfilment of this purpose an experimental framework for incorporating emotional enhancements (concentrating on negative emotions such as stress, fear, and anxiety) into virtual agents in virtual training applications for healthcare provision is designed and implemented. The framework for incorporating emotional enhancements is designed based on previous research, on psychological theories (with input by experienced psychologists) and from input of experts in the area of healthcare provision. For testing the framework and answering the research question of this thesis the researcher conducted nine case studies. The participants were nursing students in the area of healthcare provision, and more specifically in the area of mental health, specialising in caring for patients with dementia. The results of the study showed that the framework and its implementation succeeded in providing a realistic learning experience, stimulated a better set of responses from the user, improved their level of understanding on how an emotionally enhanced scenario can affect the learning experience and helped them become more empathetic towards the person they cared for

A Framework for Digital Emotions

As new media become more ubiquitous, our emotional experiences in digital space are increasing exponentially as well. While there is much talk of “affective” computing and “affective” new media art, a disconnect exists between networked emotions and the popular media that they inhabit. This research presents a theoretical framework for assessing “digital emotions”—a term that describes the feedback process between digital technologies and the body with respect to short, networked inscriptions of emotion and the (re)experience of those inscriptions within the body and through digital space. Digital emotions display five basic characteristics that can be applied to a variety of media environments: (1) They describe a process of feedback that link short, emotive inscriptions in digital environments to users and their (re)experiences of those inscriptions; (2) This feedback process includes, but is not limited to, the inscriber, the medium, and the receiver and the emotive experience fuels the initial connectivity and any further connectivity; (3) The emotional value varies depending on the media, the community of users, and the aesthetic experience of the digital emotion; (4) Digital emotions influence our emotional repertoire by normalizing our paradigm scenarios; and (5) They are highly malleable based on changes in technologies and their ability to both expand and contract emotional experiences in real time. The core characteristics of digital emotions are applied to three broad and overlapping categories: technology, community, and aesthetic experience. Each of these aspects of digital emotions work together, yet they exist along the massive spectrum of our online, emotional experiences—from our casual click of the “like” button to digital community artworks. Applied to digital spaces along this spectrum, digital emotions illuminate the feedback process that occurs between the media, the network, and the environment. The framework ultimately suggests that the process of digital emotions explicates emotions experiences that could only occur in digital space and are therefore unique to digital culture

An analysis of hinneh as a discourse marker in Genesis - 2 Kings

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Faith and Habit: Emersonian Themes in the Ethics of James and Dewey

Most contemporary commentaries on the ethical thought of William James and John Dewey attempt to fit them into the framework of contemporary ethics. On such readings, many of James and Dewey’s most distinctive ethical concerns fade away so that they seem interested, above all, in meta-ethical questions about the nature of moral judgment and in normative questions about moral deliberation. Foregrounding the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on both these thinkers, this dissertation attempts to provide fresh interpretations of the ethical thought of James and Dewey. The locus of James’ most important ethical thought, I argue, comes in his religious writings, where he attempts to find ethical resources in religious belief that help us respond to the problems of suffering and uncertainty: the problem of how to acknowledge the suffering of others, and the problem of how to act with ethical conviction in the absence of social approval for one’s actions. Dewey’s most important work in ethics, I argue, is located in his rich and sophisticated theory of habit, where he reworks the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics to emphasize the contingency of our habitual systems and the importance of the ideal of growth