Indigenous disparity in lower court imprisonment decisions: a study of two Australian jurisdictions, 1998 to 2008

This paper reports findings from statistical analyses of Indigeneity and lower court sentencing in New South Wales and South Australia from 1998 to 2008. The aim was to explore the probability of Indigenous versus non-Indigenous defendants receiving a prison sentence over time, while controlling for other key sentencing determinates (ie sex, age, criminal history, seriousness of current offence, plea, bail status). Across the study period, results generally showed that Indigenous offenders were more likely to receive a prison term than similarly situated non-Indigenous offenders. However, the pattern of disparity over time differed by jurisdiction. In New South Wales, Indigenous offenders were more likely to receive a prison sentence throughout the entire period. By contrast, in the South Australian lower courts, disparity was found to have increased, with earlier years showing parity and leniency, before a trend towards a greater likelihood of a prison sentence for Indigenous offenders. Focal concerns theory is used to provide a possible explanation for the study’s finding of Indigenous lower court sentencing disparity

Dialect change and attitudes

Sociolinguistic research has shown that attitudes towards linguistic variants can distinguish different speech communities. The importance of attitudes for an explanation of linguistic change was examined and compared to traditional explanations by sociolinguistic and dialectologic variables. Therefore the dialect of Aarau was investigated, a small town situated between the two cities of Bern (80 km in the west) and Zürich (50 km in the east) in the German speaking part of Switzerland. Bern and Zürich both are centres of a larger dialect region, Aarau lies in the contact zone of these two dialects. Phonetic variables of the idiolect of 55 speakers were compared to historical data and related to their attitudes towards the neighbouring dialects. The findings so far show no significant correlation of attitudes and language change, but further research including morphology will refine the results. The inclusion of attitudes to explain linguistic change can complement the understanding of linguistic change, but it can not explain it

The Contribution of Society to the Construction of Individual Intelligence

It is argued that society is a crucial factor in the construction of individual intelligence. In other words that it is important that intelligence is socially situated in an analogous way to the physical situation of robots. Evidence that this may be the case is taken from developmental linguistics, the social intelligence hypothesis, the complexity of society, the need for self-reflection and autism. The consequences for the development of artificial social agents is briefly considered. Finally some challenges for research into socially situated intelligence are highlighted

Distal engagement: Intentions in perception

Non-representational approaches to cognition have struggled to provide accounts of long-term planning that forgo the use of representations. An explanation comes easier for cognitivist accounts, which hold that we concoct and use contentful mental representations as guides to coordinate a series of actions towards an end state. One non-representational approach, ecological-enactivism, has recently seen several proposals that account for “high-level” or “representation-hungry” capacities, including long-term planning and action coordination. In this paper, we demonstrate the explanatory gap in these accounts that stems from avoiding the incorporation of long-term intentions, as they play an important role both in action coordination and perception on the ecological account. Using recent enactive accounts of language, we argue for a non-representational conception of intentions, their formation, and their role in coordinating pre-reflective action. We provide an account for the coordination of our present actions towards a distant goal, a skill we call distal engagement. Rather than positing intentions as an actual cognitive entity in need of explanation, we argue that we take them up in this way as a practice due to linguistically scaffolded attitudes towards language use

The question concerning the environment: a Heideggerian approach to environmental philosophy : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Philosophy at Massey University

This thesis will engage with the thinking of Martin Heidegger in order to show that our environmental problems are the necessary consequences of our way of 'knowing' the world. Heidegger questions the abstract, theoretical approach that the Western tradition has to 'knowledge', locating 'knowledge' in the human 'subject', an interior self, disengaged from and standing over against the other-than-human world, as external 'object'. Such an approach denies a voice to the other-than-human in the construction of 'knowledge'. Heidegger maintains that we are not a disembodied intellect, but rather we are finite, self-interpreting beings, embodied in a physical, social and historical context, for whom things matter. In view of this, he discards traditional notions of 'knowledge', in favour of understanding and interpretation. Accordingly, he develops what can be called a dialectical ontology, whereby we come to understand and interpret ourselves and other beings in terms of our involved interactions. This involved understanding acknowledges the participation of other-than-human beings in constructing an interpretation of the world, giving them a voice. Following Heidegger's way of thinking, I suggest that by developing an ontological-ethic, a way of dwelling-in-the-world based on a responsive engagement with other-than- human entities, we can disclose a world that makes both the other-than- human and humanity possible

Ecologies of participation in school classrooms

The concept of legitimate peripheral participation was developed by considering informal learning contexts. However, its applicability to school classrooms is problematic. This is particularly so when teacher centred and decontextualised procedural practices predominate as they do in usual school mathematics classrooms. Different meanings of participation in community of practice theory are identified. The applicability of legitimate peripheral participation to school mathematics classrooms is critiqued by considering: the nature of social practice, learning relationships, power, agency, and identity. Different forms of participation in school mathematics are discussed and the concept of ecologies of participation is proposed as a means to understand the complexity and multidimensionality of participation in both formal and informal learning contexts

Two multifunctional locative and directional prepositions in Zande

In Pasch (2007: 174ff) I observed that the direction of self-induced or caused motion towards a location is usually expressed by the preposition ku ((1), (2)). Ku is frequently used to mark DIRECTION in a journey of which the starting point has been mentioned ((3), (4)). In this case the verb describing the motion away from the starting point is gapped. These observations are in agreement with Gore & Gore (1952: 78), who translate ku as ‘towards’ and add “that it always implies motion”. The situation of the speaker may optionally be indicated by the distal adverb yo ‘there’ (more frequent) or by the proximal adverb no (less frequent) ‘here’ in clause-final position

Dark mammoth trunks in the merging galaxy NGC 1316 and a mechanism of cosmic double helices

NGC 1316 is a giant, elliptical galaxy containing a complex network of dark, dust features. The morphology of these features has been examined in some detail using a Hubble Space Telescope, Advanced Camera for Surveys image. It is found that most of the features are constituted of long filaments. There also exist a great number of dark structures protruding inwards from the filaments. Many of these structures are strikingly similar to elephant trunks in H II regions in the Milky Way Galaxy, although much larger. The structures, termed mammoth trunks, generally are filamentary and often have shapes resembling the letters V or Y. In some of the mammoth trunks the stem of the Y can be resolved into two or more filaments, many of which showing signs of being intertwined. A model of the mammoth trunks, related to a recent theory of elephant trunks, is proposed. Based on magnetized filaments, the model is capable of giving an account of the various shapes of the mammoth trunks observed, including the twined structures.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Social Situatedness: Vygotsky and Beyond

The concept of ‘social situatedness’, i.e. the idea that the development of individual intelligence requires a social (and cultural) embedding, has recently received much attention in cognitive science and artificial intelligence research. The work of Lev Vygotsky who put forward this view already in the 1920s has influenced the discussion to some degree, but still remains far from well known. This paper therefore aims to give an overview of his cognitive development theory and discuss its relation to more recent work in primatology and socially situated artificial intelligence, in particular humanoid robotics