Infants\u27 reasoning about agents\u27 identity: the case of sociomoral kinds

Recent studies in development psychology suggest that early on infants are able to distinguish characters who display a cooperative behavior from characters who display an antisocial behavior. The current research builds on these findings and aims at determining the extent to which infants possess the sociomoral distinction of “good” and “mean” agents. In particular, we propose that infants represent sociomoral behaviors through kind-based categories. This hypothesis was tested in the current research across 5 different experiments by investigating how infants represent the identity of agents in sociomoral situations. Experiment 1 used a looking-time paradigm to demonstrate 11-month-old infants’ bias to individuate distinct agents based upon their “mean” and “nice” behaviors in a spatiotemporal ambiguous situation. Experiment 2 and 3 ruled out alternative explanations of this effect by controlling for the number of actions presented and differences in motion, respectively. These findings suggest that infants expect agents to display coherent sociomoral behaviors over time in a particular context. Experiment 4 tested whether infants’ are biased to identify prosocial agents more by their internal than their external properties. Fourteen-month-olds showed a bias to identify the ‘helper’ character based on the color of its internal properties. Experiment 5 aimed to clarify whether infants have this biased because they attribute a causal role to the agents’ internal properties. In two different conditions the causal relevance of the agents’ internal or external property was manipulated. We hypothesized that when the causal relevance of the internal property was undermined infants would no longer be biased toward the agents’ internal properties when identifying it as the “helper” character. So far, the results do not show a clear support for this hypothesis. Overall, the results of all these experiments indicate that infants represent sociomoral behaviors in a relatively categorical fashion, and more strongly associated to the agents’ internal rather than external properties. These findings are discussed from both a strong version of kind-based representations in terms of intrinsic natural kinds, and a weaker version in terms of more graded and extrinsic sociomoral kinds

Security through societal resilience: Contemporary challenges in the Anthropocene

The concept of societal resilience has rapidly spread throughout the policy world, driven by the desire to use systems theories and process understandings to develop new security approaches for coping, bouncing-back, and adaptive improvement in the face of shocks and disturbances. However, this article argues that under the auspices of the Anthropocene, the assumptions and goals of societal resilience become problematic. This is because external interventions often ignore feedback effects, meaning that attempts to resolve problems through focusing upon enabling and capacity-building can be seen as counterproductive “fire-fighting” rather than tackling causation. Even more "alternative" or "community-based" approaches, relying upon interventions to enable so-called "natural" processes, either through an emphasis on local and traditional knowledge or new monitoring technologies, constitute problems for resilience advocacy: firstly, the problem of unrecognized exploitation; and secondly, the problem of continuing to sacrifice others to maintain unsustainable Western modes of consumption and production

The Integrated Metatheoretical Model of Addiction

In this chapter, I provide the conceptual building blocks or architectonic of a metatheory of addiction, referred to as the Integrated Metatheoretical Model of Addiction (IMMA). I do not present the IMMA as a conclusive metatheoretical framework, but rather as an exploratory attempt at providing the architectonic of an integrative and comprehensive metatheory of addiction, that may potentially provide the conceptual scaffolding in developing a general theory of addiction

Configuring Devices for Phenomena in-the-Making

STS scholars are engaging in collaborative research in order to study extended socio-technical phenomena. This article participates in discussions on methodography and inventive methods by reflecting on visualizations used both internally by a team of researchers and together with study participants. We describe how these devices for generating and transforming data were brought to our ethnographic inquiry into the formation of research infrastructures which we found to involve unwieldy and evolving phenomena. The visualizations are partial renderings of the object of inquiry, crafted and informed by 'configuration' as a method of assemblage that supports ethnographic study of contemporary socio-technical phenomena. We scrutinize our interdisciplinary bringing together of visualizing devices - timelines, collages, and sketches - and position them in the STS methods toolbox for inquiry and invention. These devices are key to investigating and engaging with the dynamics of configuring infrastructures intended to support scientific knowledge production. We conclude by observing how our three kinds of visualizing devices provide flexibility, comprehension and in(ter)ventive opportunities for study of and engagement with complex phenomena in-the-making.Peer reviewe

Difficult forms: critical practices of design and research

As a kind of 'criticism from within', conceptual and critical design inquire into what design is about – how the market operates, what is considered 'good design', and how the design and development of technology typically works. Tracing relations of conceptual and critical design to (post-)critical architecture and anti-design, we discuss a series of issues related to the operational and intellectual basis for 'critical practice', and how these might open up for a new kind of development of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of design. Rather than prescribing a practice on the basis of theoretical considerations, these critical practices seem to build an intellectual basis for design on the basis of its own modes of operation, a kind of theoretical development that happens through, and from within, design practice and not by means of external descriptions or analyses of its practices and products

The Integrated Metatheoretical Model of Addiction

In “The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction” Robert West highlights a pervasive challenge for more conceptual clarity and consensus within the field of addiction studies. In an attempt to address the challenge I provide the conceptual building blocks or architectonic of a metatheory of addiction, referred to as the Integrated Metatheoretical Model of Addiction (IMMA). The IMMA is not a general theory of addiction, but rather an exploratory attempt at providing the architectonic of an metaparadigmatic heuristic, that may potentially provide the conceptual scaffolding needed for developing a general theory of addiction

Radical foundations in Bloomsbury

A sea of change is upon us and radical new foundations need to be grown. The time has come for the fundamental need for radical thought with respect to the new paradigms of architecture as we are confronted with political, social and technological disruptions. At stake is nothing less than the opportunity of world-making in which the role of the architect is paramount. Bloomsbury will be one of our sites of exploration, where in 1692, Thomas Slaughter founded Slaughter’s Coffee House in St. Martin’s Lane, which became the explosively productive haunt and home of artists, architects, designers, players of games, makers and wasters. This was the first of the many radical schools of art to be born within the anarchic lands of Seven Dials and Bloomsbury. The other site will be in Deptford, where for hundreds of years dangerous, infectious, exciting and foreign ideas had landed along its shore, ebbing and flowing with the tide, transforming the City of London. This article will showcase a series of design projects proposed by students of architecture at the Architectural Association and University of Greenwich in relation to sites in Bloomsbury and Deptford in London, respectively. Each contributor has developed a complex set of spatial interrelationships that define their practice and consider art as a spatial language that dissects contemporary society, an architecture that is pre-reflexive, through a radical spatial notational strategy, so as to re-engage with the presence of the past

Predictive wall adjustment strategy for two-dimensional flexible walled adaptive wind tunnel: A detailed description of the first one-step method

Following the realization that a simple iterative strategy for bringing the flexible walls of two-dimensional test sections to streamline contours was too slow for practical use, Judd proposed, developed, and placed into service what was the first Predictive Strategy. The Predictive Strategy reduced by 75 percent or more the number of iterations of wall shapes, and therefore the tunnel run-time overhead attributable to the streamlining process, required to reach satisfactory streamlines. The procedures of the Strategy are embodied in the FORTRAN subroutine WAS (standing for Wall Adjustment Strategy) which is written in general form. The essentials of the test section hardware, followed by the underlying aerodynamic theory which forms the basis of the Strategy, are briefly described. The subroutine is then presented as the Appendix, broken down into segments with descriptions of the numerical operations underway in each, with definitions of variables

Theorising web 3.0 : ICTs in a changing society

Purpose: In this Editorial introduction the broad phases of web development – the read-only Web 1.0, the read-write Web 2.0, and the collaborative and Internet of Things Web 3.0 – are examined for the theoretical lenses through which they have been understood and critiqued. Design/Methodology/Approach: This is a conceptual piece, in the tradition of drawing on theorising from outside the Information Systems field, to shed light on developments in ICTs. Findings: Along with a summary of approaches to Webs 1.0 and 2.0, the Editors contend that a more complex and post-structuralist theoretical approach to the notion of, and the phenomenon of Web 3.0, offers a more interesting and appropriate theoretical grounding for understanding its particularities. Value: The discussion presages five further papers engaged with ICTs in a changing society, each of which similarly addresses novel theoretical understandings