Descartes, corpuscles and reductionism : mechanism and systems in Descartes' physiology

I argue that Descartes explains physiology in terms of whole systems, and not in terms of the size, shape and motion of tiny corpuscles (corpuscular mechanics). It is a standard, entrenched view that Descartes’s proper means of explanation in the natural world is through strict reduction to corpuscular mechanics. This view is bolstered by a handful of corpuscular-mechanical explanations in Descartes’s physics, which have been taken to be representative of his treatment of all natural phenomena. However, Descartes’s explanations of the ‘principal parts’ of physiology do not follow the corpuscular–mechanical pattern. Des Chene (2001) has identified systems in Descartes’s account of physiology, but takes them ultimately to reduce down to the corpuscle level. I argue that they do not. Rather, Descartes maintains entire systems, with components selected from multiple levels of organisation, in order to construct more complete explanations than corpuscular mechanics alone would allow

The Panopticon under the Light of Politics and Technology

This paper focuses on Foucault's concept of the Panopticon. The Panopticon since time immemorial has been used as a concept in order to control society. Since this is being used as a tool to control society, this then is considered to be a form of technology of which is being used by individuals who hold power

Never Forgets: Traumatic Trace Within Public Space

This paper will interrogate the ways in which ephemera from events affects the human and non- human environment and how the absence, manipulation or presence of traumatic trace weaves itself into the atmosphere of the past, present and future. It will look at space and the ways that trace manifests itself in hierarchal spaces and Lebbeus Woods’ concept of heterarchial spaces, which are organic and/or horizontally organized. A thread throughout is the question that if trace from trauma can exist in the visual field, i.e. the physical or digital landscape, in a way that maintains a discourse without perpetuating oppression. Works and spaces discussed to under- stand the implications of erasure, manipulation or spontaneous subjectivity span are pieces of art, museums, memorials and even an augmented reality game. Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc will be framed using Michel Foucault’s theories of social control and space from Discipline and Punish. Tilted Arc was erased, permanently eradicated from Lower Manhattan’s Federal Plaza in the dead of night after a contentious court battle. Mark Hansen’s work surrounding the future fee- ding of information will support a critique of traces that are problematized through institutions or the state, specifically looking at the Killing Fields Memorial Museum and the Tuol Sleng Geno- cide Museum in Cambodia. This paper will culminate with an inquiry surrounding agentic trace and how that can create space for individual subjectivity, such as with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Pokemon Go’s memorial to Tamir Rice and Ghost Bikes, using Michael Foucault and Maurizio Lazaratto’s ideas of parrhesia, or spontaneous subjectivity. This is an investigation of loss, in terms of who has the privilege to be remembered and how we can find spaces to leave trace so we, she, he, they and I never forgets

Pisafah Tentang Metode

Kata kunci: Metode

Adaptive Gravitational Gossip in Monitoring the Joint Battlespace Infosphere

Future USAF operations will be heavily dependent on having the right information at the right time, and Joint Battlespace Infospheres (JBIs) are poised to fill that role. To do this, JBIs must be ubiquitous -- always accessible, secure and responsive. Of all the literature written regarding JBIs, the most important problem to solve in order to make JBIs work in mobile scenarios are scalability, reliability and adaptability to changing battlefield conditions. This paper explores the use of SBCast, a novel adaptive probabilistic protocol and a delivery mechanism for JBI updates and as a possible solution towards guaranteeing these qualities. It documents tests of SBCast within a simulation environment configured with parameters based on actual military field operations. From these tests, the paper examines SBCast as an enhancer to JBI\u27s ability for overcoming transient network failures while managing different classes of subscribers by available bandwidth and priorities. By using the feedback from SBCast as a middleware layer controller, JBIs would be able to dial up traffic for parts of the network and dial down traffic in others based on dynamic changes in network congestion or traffic demands

Counternarratives of Students with Dis/abilities in One Rural School District

This is an inquiry into the educational experience of students with dis/abilities who are excluded from the general education classroom in one rural Georgia school district. Theoretically my dissertation research builds on critical disability studies (Erevelles 2000, 2002, 2005, 2015; also Annamma 2018; Tremain 2005), critical geography (Harvey 2000; Helfenbein, Jr. 2004; Soja 1989, 2010), and curriculum studies (Maudlin 2008; Snowber 2016; Springgay & Freedman 2008; Swanson 2008). Methodologically building on counternarrative inquiry (Bell 1999; Delgado 1989; He & Ayers 2009; He & Ross 2015; He, Ross, & Seay 2015; Solórzano & Yosso 2002), art-based research (Barone & Eisner 2006; Coles 1992; also Bae-Dimitriadis 2020), and those conducting research with children with dis/abilities (Aslamazova, Yurina Kochendova & Krasnova 2016; Søndergaard & Reventlow 2019; Jenkin, Wilson, Murfitt, Clarke, Campain, & Stockman, 2015; Maxwell 2006), I explore the counternarratives of three students with significant dis/abilities, Kara, Alvin, and Derek, to counter master narratives, which devalue, dehumanize, and disenfranchise them. I propose an embodied curriculum within a beloved community (hooks, 1996) and infused with a pedagogy of heart (Freire, 1997) as a replacement to the current curriculum of exclusion and despair. Six findings have emerged from my dissertation research: (1) When conducting research with students with dis/abilities, researchers must create a safe and welcoming space in which their confidentiality is protected, and their stories are told through a comfortable medium. (2) Arts-based research transgresses traditional dissertation inquiries to tell the silenced narrative of students with dis/abilities and liberate their voice from the constraints of ableism. (3) Counternarratives empower children with dis/abilities to share valuable insights into their educational experience and speak against the master-narrative of ableism and privilege that often disenfranchises and dehumanizes them as deficient and inferior and failures. (4) Exclusion in education damages the sense of worth and belonging of students with dis/abilities, furthers their marginalization, and sabotages their potential in school and life. (5) There is a demand to engender an embodied curriculum within a beloved community and infused with a pedagogy of heart that disrupts the ableism inherent in dominant educational structures, practices, and policies for students with intellectual dis/abilities which prevent them from reaching graduation and thriving in life. (6) Instead of imprisoning the bodies and minds of students with dis/abilities, educators must work with other educational workers such as teachers, administrators, educational staff, parents, students, community workers, and policy makers to develop a culturally relevant pedagogy of caring and justice, cultivate a culturally inspiring school environment, and create hopes, dreams, and equal opportunities for students with dis/abilities and all others to reach their highest potential (Siddle-Walker, 1996)

Artificial intelligence's new frontier: artificial companions and the fourth revolution

‘The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com '. Copyright Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.In this paper I argue that recent technological transformations in the life-cycle of information have brought about a fourth revolution, in the long process of reassessing humanity’s fundamental nature and role in the universe. We are not immobile, at the centre of the universe (Copernicus); we are not unnaturally distinct and different from the rest of the animal world (Darwin); and we are far from being entirely transparent to ourselves (Freud). We are now slowly accepting the idea that we might be informational organisms among many agents (Turing), inforgs not so dramatically different from clever, engineered artefacts, but sharing with them a global environment that is ultimately made of information, the infosphere. This new conceptual revolution is humbling, but also exciting. For in view of this important evolution in our self-understanding, and given the sort of IT-mediated interactions that humans will increasingly enjoy with their environment and a variety of other agents, whether natural or synthetic, we have the unique opportunity of developing a new ecological approach to the whole of reality.Peer reviewe

The Immanent Contingency of Physical Laws in Leibniz’s Dynamics

This paper focuses on Leibniz’s conception of modality and its application to the issue of natural laws. The core of Leibniz’s investigation of the modality of natural laws lays in the distinction between necessary, geometrical laws on the one hand, and contingent, physical laws of nature on the other. For Leibniz, the contingency of physical laws entailed the assumption of the existence of an additional form of causality beyond mechanical or efficient ones. While geometrical truths, being necessary, do not require the use of the principle of sufficient reason, physical laws are not strictly determined by geometry and therefore are logically distinct from geometrical laws. As a consequence, the set of laws that regulate the physical laws could have been created otherwise by God. However, in addition to this, the contingency of natural laws does not consist only in the fact that God has chosen them over other possible ones. On the contrary, Leibniz understood the status of natural laws as arising from the action internal to physical substances. Hence the actuality of physical laws results from a causal power that is inherent to substances rather than being the mere consequence of the way God arranged the relations between physical objects. Focusing on three instances of Leibniz’s treatment of contingency in physics, this paper argues that, in order to account for the contingency of physical laws, Leibniz maintained that final causes, in addition to efficient and mechanical ones, must operate in physical processes and operations