Awe and Humility in the Face of Things: Somatic Practice in East-Asian Philosophies

Whereas the Platonic-Christian philosophical tradition in the West favours an ”ascent to theory’ and abstract reasoning, east-Asian philosophies tend to be rooted in somatic, or bodily, practice. In the philosophies of Confucius and Zhuangzi in China, and KÅ«kai and DÅgen in Japan, we can distinguish two different forms of somatic practice: developing physical skills, and what one might call ”realising relationships’. These practices improve our relations with others -- whether the ancestors or our contemporaries, the things with which we surround ourselves or the phenomena of nature -- by reducing egocentrism and increasing humility. Because they transform the practitioner’s experience, the major benefit of philosophies grounded in somatic practice is that they help close the gap between beliefs and behaviour, and between ideas and action

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994: The Face of Things to Come?

Many women view the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade2 as the culmination of a battle for women\u27s rights that began before the Civil Wa

"The face of things": the posthumanist imagination in eighteenth-century Britain

"The Face of Things: The Posthumanist Imagination in Eighteenth-Century Britain" examines how eighteenth-century British subjects negotiated their identities in response to the increased contact with nonhuman agents—plants, animals, diseases, and automata—facilitated by global networks of commerce and science. Throughout the project, I argue that such transactions that reckon the agency and vitality of "things"—the broadly construed nonhuman—led British writers like Defoe, Swift, and Barbauld to question anthropocentric and Eurocentric ideas and practices, by collapsing key conceptual distinctions between the human and the nonhuman, the British and their colonial others. Building on the new-materialist understanding that "things" exhibit an agency independent of human intent, this project reveals British subjectivity as anxious and unstable, thereby contradicting the image of enlightenment writers as asserting a confident, rational mastery over their environs. As this dissertation engages with recent turns toward posthumanism and environmental ethics in literary studies by highlighting both the autonomy of marginalized objects and animals and the interconnectedness of the human and nonhuman, the ultimate stakes of the project are political and ethical

Changing rules for regulation of Icelandic fisheries

From the 1950s to the mid-seventies, Iceland’s efforts in international diplomacy were largely devoted to convincing other nations that Icelanders should control and utilise the resources of the waters within 12, then 50 and finally 200 nautical miles around the island. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, Icelandic politicians have devoted considerable time and effort to the debate on how to organise the utilisation of these resources and in what way the revenues from this harvest should be distributed. This paper gives a short account of the development of regulatory reforms in four types of Icelandic fisheries. None of these reformatory processes can be said to be a replica of any of the other processes. It seems apparent on the face of things that each reformatory process is unique and distinct from the others, except in its final outcome, the rule of the ITQs. However, this conclusion may be too short sighted. From the earliest history of regulatory reforms, it is evident that the ITQ system which eventually came into being was not the intended outcome. There is a common pattern for all the fisheries, however. First of all, serious attempts to reform management practices start when the fishery has collapsed or is close to collapse. Secondly, the first thing that stakeholders do is close the club that has access to the given fishery. Thirdly, a variety of rules are implemented to allocate participation rights when the club of participants has been closed. Fourthly, prior to the invention of the ITQ system, prices were used to manage fisheries in Iceland. It may be that management of fisheries by ITQs rather than through some form of taxes or fees has historical rather than logical roots.Resource Rent Distribution, Fishery Management, Fishery regulation, Rules of Governance

On argumentation schemes and the natural classification of arguments

We develop conceptions of arguments and of argument types that will, by serving as the basis for developing a natural classification of arguments, benefit work in artificial intelligence. Focusing only on arguments construed as the semantic entities that are the outcome of processes of reasoning, we outline and clarify our view that an argument is a proposition that represents a fact as both conveying some other fact and as doing so wholly. Further, we outline our view that, with respect to arguments that are propositions, (roughly) two arguments are of the same type if and only if they represent the same relation of conveyance and do so in the same way. We then argue for our conceptions of arguments and argument types, and compare them to rival positions. We also illustrate the need for, and some of the strengths of, our approach to classifying arguments through an examination of aspects of two prominent and recent attempts to classify arguments using argumentation schemes, namely those of M. Kienpointner and D. Walton. Finally, we clarify how our conception of arguments and of argument types can assist in developing an exhaustive classification of arguments

The Art of the Game: Issues in Adapting Video Games

On the face of things, movies and video games are similar mediums. Both engage extensively in visuals and audio, both can indulge in speculative fiction, and there is a healthy amount of sharing of inspiration and content. However, this does not guarantee successful adaptations from one form to another. Movies adapted from video games are notorious for being simply terrible, but little academic attention has been paid as to why these adaptations in particular seem so unsuccessful in every way, from audience reception, critical response, and monetary returns. This issue is based on fundamental differences in the medium. Games are, at their core, based around rules and goals, and the inevitable predictability and reliability of those rules do not make for exciting adaptations. Games also place the player at the center of the meaning-making process, a position that feels almost privileged in comparison to the more voyeuristic position of the film audience. Movies must adapt with a greater consciousness of these fundamental differences in media, or else the video game movie curse will continue to claim new victims. Advisor: Tom Ganno

Towards an interoperable healthcare information infrastructure - working from the bottom up

Historically, the healthcare system has not made effective use of information technology. On the face of things, it would seem to provide a natural and richly varied domain in which to target benefit from IT solutions. But history shows that it is one of the most difficult domains in which to bring them to fruition. This paper provides an overview of the changing context and information requirements of healthcare that help to explain these characteristics.First and foremost, the disciplines and professions that healthcare encompasses have immense complexity and diversity to deal with, in structuring knowledge about what medicine and healthcare are, how they function, and what differentiates good practice and good performance. The need to maintain macro-economic stability of the health service, faced with this and many other uncertainties, means that management bottom lines predominate over choices and decisions that have to be made within everyday individual patient services. Individual practice and care, the bedrock of healthcare, is, for this and other reasons, more and more subject to professional and managerial control and regulation.One characteristic of organisations shown to be good at making effective use of IT is their capacity to devolve decisions within the organisation to where they can be best made, for the purpose of meeting their customers' needs. IT should, in this context, contribute as an enabler and not as an enforcer of good information services. The information infrastructure must work effectively, both top down and bottom up, to accommodate these countervailing pressures. This issue is explored in the context of infrastructure to support electronic health records.Because of the diverse and changing requirements of the huge healthcare sector, and the need to sustain health records over many decades, standardised systems must concentrate on doing the easier things well and as simply as possible, while accommodating immense diversity of requirements and practice. The manner in which the healthcare information infrastructure can be formulated and implemented to meet useful practical goals is explored, in the context of two case studies of research in CHIME at UCL and their user communities.Healthcare has severe problems both as a provider of information and as a purchaser of information systems. This has an impact on both its customer and its supplier relationships. Healthcare needs to become a better purchaser, more aware and realistic about what technology can and cannot do and where research is needed. Industry needs a greater awareness of the complexity of the healthcare domain, and the subtle ways in which information is part of the basic contract between healthcare professionals and patients, and the trust and understanding that must exist between them. It is an ideal domain for deeper collaboration between academic institutions and industry

"The Effects of Worker Participation, Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing on Economics Performance: A Partial Review"

For alternative sharing arrangements we review theory on the economic effects on employment, productivity, investment, income and wealth distribution, and life cycle and survival. We find that predictions are often ambiguous and that sometimes the nature and size of the specific effect is determined in part by the particular institutional arrangements. Next recent econometric work is studied. We review studies using aggregate and industry level time series data for Japan as well as studies that use enterprise and establishment level data for firms in North America and Western Europe. Worker participation, employee share ownership and profit sharing schemes are often found to affect that studies obtained conflicting results. However, available evidence is strongly suggestive that for employee ownership schemes to have a strong positive impact they need to be accompanied by provision for worker participation in decision making.