41,824 research outputs found
How to Knit Your Own Markov Blanket
Hohwy (Hohwy 2016, Hohwy 2017) argues there is a tension between the free energy principle and leading depictions of mind as embodied, enactive, and extended (so-called âEEE1 cognitionâ). The tension is traced to the importance, in free energy formulations, of a conception of mind and agency that depends upon the presence of a âMarkov blanketâ demarcating the agent from the surrounding world. In what follows I show that the Markov blanket considerations do not, in fact, lead to the kinds of tension that Hohwy depicts. On the contrary, they actively favour the EEE story. This is because the Markov property, as exemplified in biological agents, picks out neither a unique nor a stationary boundary. It is this multiplicity and mutabilityâ rather than the absence of agent-environment boundaries as such - that EEE cognition celebrates
Principles of protein structure: An established Internetâbased course in structural biology
The Department of Crystallography at Birkbeck College, London, UK, has been running a oneâyear, partâtime accredited graduate course, âPrinciples of Protein Structureâ, entirely over the Internet since 1996. Students on this course learn the basic principles of the increasingly important subject of structural biology using software programs such as Rasmol and Chime to visualize and manipulate molecular structures in three dimensions. They interact with their tutors, based at Birkbeck, using email and textâbased teleconferencing, and can test their knowledge with multiple choice quizzes on the Web. Over 200 students from thirty countries registered for this course in the last four years. Forty, from central and eastern Europe, were supported by bursaries from the Open Society Institute. The course has been well received by students and its success led us to introduce a similar course in protein crystallography
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The impact of professional learning on the teaching identities of higher education lecturers
Higher Education is currently undergoing some of the most profound changes in its history. Against a backdrop of increasing marketization, rising levels of student debt and far greater fully online offerings, the higher education lecturer is grappling with new ways of working and high expectations of teaching quality. This 3 year qualitative study based in The Open University UK investigates the ways in which HE distance learning lecturers are approaching professional development and learning, identifying what type of learning may be most effective in creating and sustaining an online teaching identity. The study also examines ways in which resistance discourse is shaping these identities and practices revealing emerging re- conceptualisations of what it means to be an effective and well-motivated distance learning lecturer. The investigation uses a framework for identity analysis which analyses professional identity via the expression of hegemonies, phenomenological, narrative articulations of identity, and a post-modern, constructivist view of identity which is shaped by social interactions and communities of practice. It highlights the importance of personal agency in identity formation. The results revealed a number of insights into the ways in which a combination of resistance discourse, professional learning and reflections from student interactions are shaping new understandings of professional knowledge in this context
Becoming-Bertha: virtual difference and repetition in postcolonial 'writing back', a Deleuzian reading of Jean Rhysâs Wide Sargasso Sea
Critical responses to Wide Sargasso Sea have seized upon Rhysâs novel as an exemplary model of writing back. Looking beyond the actual repetitions which recall BrontĂ«âs text, I explore Rhysâs novel as an expression of virtual difference and becomings that exemplify Deleuzeâs three syntheses of time. Elaborating the processes of becoming that Deleuzeâs third synthesis depicts, Antoinetteâs fate emerges not as a violence against an original identity. Rather, what the reader witnesses is a series of becomings or masks, some of which are validated, some of which are not, and it is in the rejection of certain masks, forcing Antoinette to become-Bertha, that the greatest violence lies
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