Transport Infrastructure, Spatial General Equilibrium and Welfare

Large-scale investments in transport infrastructure have been traditionally evaluated assuming the equivalence between direct and indirect economic effects (Jara-Diaz,1986), which is only correct under -generally non-guaranteed- perfect competition assumptions. Despite this common practice there is still no consensus amongst economists as to how the benefits and costs of large infrastructure projects should be determined. The discussions regarding the desirability, for instance, of the Betuwe railway line, the fifth runway at Schiphol Airport, the North-South underground railway in Amsterdam etc. are illustrative of this. The focus has been, in particular, on the magnitude of ‘indirect’ and ‘strategic’ effects, that is effects on parties other than the direct users of the infrastructure (indirect effects) and those factors that have a favorable effect on the long-term development of the (regional) economy, such as effects relating to firm location and demographics (strategic effects). Focusing on general equilibrium, increasing returns and imperfect competition modeling approach this paper aims to throw light on this subject matter by examining how the social benefits in terms of efficiency resulting from improvements to the infrastructure can be determined in an imperfect regional economy.

Embodying addiction: a predictive processing account

In this paper we show how addiction can be thought of as the outcome of learning. We look to the increasingly influential predictive processing theory for an account of how learning can go wrong in addiction. Perhaps counter intuitively, it is a consequence of this predictive processing perspective on addiction that while the brain plays a deep and important role in leading a person into addiction, it cannot be the whole story. We’ll argue that predictive processing implies a view of addiction not as a brain disease, but rather as a breakdown in the dynamics of the wider agent-environment system. The environment becomes meaningfully organised around the agent’s drug-seeking and using behaviours. Our account of addiction offers a new perspective on what is harmful about addiction. Philosophers often characterise addiction as a mental illness because addicts irrationally shift in their judgement of how they should act based on cues that predict drug use. We argue that predictive processing leads to a different view of what can go wrong in addiction. We suggest that addiction can prove harmful to the person because as their addiction progressively takes hold, the addict comes to embody a predictive model of the environment that fails to adequately attune them to a volatile, dynamic environment. The use of an addictive substance produces illusory feedback of being well-attuned to the environment when the reality is the opposite. This can be comforting for a person inhabiting a hostile niche, but it can also prove to be harmful to the person as they become skilled at living the life of an addict, to the neglect of all other alternatives. The harm in addiction we’ll argue is not to be found in the brains of addicts, but in their way of life

The causal mind:An affordance-based account of causal engagement

Causal cognition is a core aspect of how we deal with the world; however, existing psychological theories tend not to target intuitive causal engagement that is done in daily life. To fill this gap, we propose an Ecological-Enactive (E-E) affordance-based account of situated causal engagement, that is, causal judgments and perceptions. We develop this account to improve our understanding of this way of dealing with the world, which includes making progress on the causal selection problem, and to extend the scope of embodied cognitive science to causal cognition. We characterize identifying causes as selectively attending to the relevant ecological information to engage with relevant affordances, where these affordances are dependent on individual abilities. Based on this we construe causal engagement as based on a learned skill. Moreover, we argue that to understand judgments of causation as we make them in our daily lives, we need to see them as situated in sociocultural practices. Practices are about doing, and so this view helps us understand why people make these judgments so ubiquitously: to get things done, to provide an effective path to intervening in the world. Ultimately this view on causal engagement allows us to account for individual differences in causal perceptions, judgments, and selections by appealing to differences in learned skills and sociocultural practices.</p

Editorial

Sustainable transport is the theme of the first issue of the European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research. The issue contains four articles. Eriksen gives an overview of external costs of transport in Norway and includes costs of emissions to air, noise, traffic accidents, wear of infrastructure and congestion. He uses Willingness To Pay (WTP) methods. Stead focuses on the concept of decoupling and applies it to the transport sector. Using international statistical sources for all European countries and detailed data for the UK, this article explores the extent to which transport demand is currently linked with economic indicators (such as Gross Domestic Product and Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) and examines whether this link has changed over time. Verhoef and Van Wee state that if the choice for a car type is influenced by status motives, as psychological literature indicates, current situation is not optimal: the optimum will be reached if a shift to more fuel efficient cars occurs. They also discuss related possible policy instruments. Annema and Van Wee describe the role of research in the process that led to the Dutch Kyoto related climate policy, and give suggestions for improvements in the role of research in such processes

Being free by losing control: What Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder can tell us about Free Will

According to the traditional Western concept of freedom, the ability to exercise free will depends on the availability of options and the possibility to consciously decide which one to choose. Since neuroscientific research increasingly shows the limits of what we in fact consciously control, it seems that our belief in free will and hence in personal autonomy is in trouble. A closer look at the phenomenology of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) gives us reason to doubt the traditional concept of freedom in terms of conscious control. Patients suffering from OCD experience themselves as unfree. The question is whether their lack of freedom is due to a lack of will power. Do they have too little conscious control over their thoughts and actions? Or could it be the opposite: are they exerting too much conscious control over their thoughts and actions? In this chapter, we will argue that OCD patients testify to the general condition that exercising an increased conscious control over actions can in fact diminish the sense of agency rather than increase the experience of freedom. The experiences of these patients show that the traditional conception of freedom in terms of ‘free will’ has major shortcomings. There is an alternative, however, to be found in the work of Hannah Arendt. She advocates a conception of freedom as freedom in action. Combined with phenomenological insights on action, Arendt’s account of freedom helps us to get a more adequate understanding of the role of deliberation in the experience of freedom. We argue that the experience of freedom depends on the right balance between deliberate control and unreflective actions

Effects of Deep Brain Stimulation on the lived experience of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder patients

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a relatively new, experimental treatment for patients suffering from treatment-refractory Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The effects of treatment are typically assessed with psychopathological scales that measure the amount of symptoms. However, clinical experience indicates that the effects of DBS are not limited to symptoms only: patients for instance report changes in perception, feeling stronger and more confident, and doing things unreflectively. Our aim is to get a better overview of the whole variety of changes that OCD patients experience during DBS treatment. For that purpose we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 18 OCD patients. In this paper, we present the results from this qualitative study.We list the changes grouped in four domains: with regard to (a) person, (b) (social) world, (c)characteristics of person-world interactions, and (d) existential stance. We subsequently provide an interpretation of these results. In particular, we suggest that many of these changes can be seen as different expressions of the same process; namely that the experience of anxiety and tension gives way to an increased basic trust and increased reliance on one’s abilities. We then discuss the clinical implications of our findings, especially with regard to properly informing patients of what they can expect from treatment, the usefulness of including CBT in treatment, and the limitations of current measures of treatment success. We end by making several concrete suggestions for further research

The Predictive Dynamics of Happiness and Well-Being

We offer an account of mental health and well-being using the Predictive Processing Framework (PPF). According to this framework, the difference between mental health and psychopathology can be located in the goodness of the predictive model as a regulator of action. What is crucial for avoiding the rigid patterns of thinking, feeling and acting associated with psychopathology is the regulation of action based on the valence of affective states. In PPF valence is modelled as error dynamics - the change in prediction errors over time. Our aim in this paper is to show how error dynamics can account for both momentary happiness and longer-term well-being. What will emerge is a new neurocomputational framework for making sense of human flourishing

Social affordances in context: What is it that we are bodily responsive to

We propose to understand social affordances in the broader context of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances in general. This perspective clarifies our everyday ability to unreflectively switch between social and other affordances. Moreover, based on our experience with Deep Brain Stimulation for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, we suggest that psychiatric disorders may affect skilled intentionality, including responsiveness to social affordance

GNSS measurements of artificial ionospheric irregularities

We present observations of GNSS amplitude and TEC fluctuations to characterize artificial ionospheric irregularities generated by high-power HF experiment. The experiments were designed so that a GNSS satellite signal intersected the disturbed ionospheric volume along the local magnetic field line direction according to the experiment setup described in [1]. Compared to the previous studies [2], the presented experiments allow us to compare high-rate GNSS (20-50 Hz) parameters with the electron density and temperature deviations from the background in the F-region that are measured by an incoherent scatter radar which is co-located with a GNSS receiver. The spectrum of GNSS amplitude and TEC shows enhanced signal fluctuations when the ionosphere is heated especially in the magnetic zenith direction. We investigate GNSS signal responses to artificial ionosphere irregularities in different geophysical conditions such as peak electron density and electron temperature. It is shown that Rate of TEC (ROT) values may be used as proxy to represent the strength of ionospheric density irregularities. The experiments presented here aim to study fundamental process of GNSS signal scattering due to ionosphere irregularities by a controlled manner. References [1] H. Sato, M. T. Rietveld, and N. Jakowski, “GLONASS Observation of Artificial Field-Aligned Plasma Irregularities Near Magnetic Zenith During EISCAT HF Experiment,” Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 48, no. 4, p. e2020GL091673, 2021, doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL091673. [2] G. Milikh, A. Gurevich, K. Zybin, and J. Secan, “Perturbations of GPS signals by the ionospheric irregularities generated due to HF-heating at triple of electron gyrofrequency,” Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 35, no. 22, p. L22102, Nov. 2008, doi: 10.1029/2008GL035527