bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Expectedness
Authors: Kagan Jerome
Published: May 2018

This chapter analyzes how subject expectations affect all brain measures. An expectation of pain, a difficult task, an unpleasant picture, an air puff to the face, the sound of hands clapping, a metaphorical sentence, a caress, cocaine, an exemplar of a semantic category, or the benefit of a medicine each affects brain profiles as well as the speed and accuracy of perceptions. Meanwhile, unexpected events activate many brain sites, but especially the amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, ventral tegmental area, and locus ceruleus. The difference in the oscillation frequencies evoked by the event anticipated and the one that occurs may be a critical cause of these activations. The brain and psychological states generated by an unexpected event depend on its desirability and familiarity.
Sources of Evidence
Authors: Kagan Jerome
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the relations between patterns of causes and outcomes. The popular way to phrase Niels Bohr's principle that the validity of every conclusion depends on its source of evidence is to write that scientists assign a probability to the validity of each statement in accord with the evidence cited to support it. Statements that refer to exactly the same observation can have more than one validity if they are based on different evidence. It is useful to distinguish among the validity of a statement about nature that is based on certain observations, the truth of a conclusion that is based on the coherence of a logical or mathematical argument, and the rightness of a moral proposition based on a feeling.
Patterns
Authors: Kagan Jerome
Published: May 2018

This chapter evaluates the suggestion that the constrained validity of conclusions based on a single source of evidence—whether behavior, brain data, or verbal report—implies that patterns of observations might provide statements that have a less constrained validity. Neuroscientists find it helpful to conceive of the brain as a collection of hubs receiving large numbers of inputs from many diverse sites and selecting outputs as a function of the pattern of incoming signals. Different patterns of inputs arriving at different hubs can generate similar outcomes. Most of the outcomes people care about—suicide, homicide, grade point average, anxiety, depression, drug abuse, or well-being—require patterns of conditions that include a person's biology, social class, family, school experiences, and always the cultural setting.
Attributing Psychological Properties to Brain Profiles
Authors: Kagan Jerome
Published: May 2018

This chapter focuses on the constraints of attributing psychological properties to brain profiles. The constraint on the validity of inferences based on one source of evidence bears directly on the neuroscientist's habit of describing brain profiles with words whose meaning and validity originated in psychological data. This practice deserves careful scrutiny because animals or humans are the presumed agents in sentences containing terms describing the psychological processes of perception, memory, intention, feeling, emotion, reasoning, or action. These terms take on novel meanings in sentences in which neuronal activity is the noun. However, the practice of using psychological predicates—such as compute, regulate, or synthesize—to describe brain profiles remains popular because neuroscientists do not have a rich biological vocabulary for the diverse brain profiles that occur in response to incentives.
From Knowledge to Understanding
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

In order to accommodate science, epistemology should focus on understanding rather than knowledge. Understanding is holistic and nonfactive. It involves knowing how to reason with, and perhaps how to act on the information supplied by a tenable account. Felicitous falsehoods can figure in the understanding of a topic.
Intellectual Integrity
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

Legislating members of a realm of epistemic ends have obligations to one another that are simultaneously epistemic and moral. Respecting these obligations not only promotes the ends of the discipline, it is in part constitutive of those ends. Falsification, fabrication, suppression of results and plagiarism undermine the epistemic enterprise. They are betrayals of trust.
Irreconcilable Differences
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

Aesthetic judgments are procedurally objective but neither ensure nor aspire to consensus, even in the long run. Reasons are adduced in aesthetic debates not to defeat opposing interpretations but to highlight features of the works they bear on. Antithetical interpretations of works of art exemplify different features.
Borders and Crossings
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

Disciplinary understanding is answerable to normative and methodological demands. This raises the question whether a work in one discipline can also belong to another. Can works of art, functioning as such, satisfy the demands of history? If so, they provide a historical understanding of their subject.
Introduction
Authors: Agyeman Julian , Matthews Caitlin , Sobel Hannah
Published: May 2018

The urban food scape is changing rapidly. Food trucks, which are part of a wider phenomenon of street food vending, are an increasingly common sight in many cities throughout the United States and Canada. With this rise in the popularity of food trucks, the key issue of regulatory conflicts between the state, street food vending and food truck entrepreneurs, and the wider industry as a whole, has risen to the fore. Cities have responded in various ways to increased interest in mobile food vending – some have adopted encouraging and relaxed regulations, some have attempted to harness the momentum to craft a city brand, and some have rigidly regulated food trucks in response to protest by brick-and-mortar competitors. This Introduction frames the volume through its guiding questions and a variety of lenses - community economic development, social justice, postmodernism. The Introduction also outlines the sections of the volume (Democratic vs. Regulatory Practices and Spatial-Cultural Practices) and summarizes the chapters included in each section.
Decriminalize Street Vending: Reform and Social Justice
Authors: Dunn Kathleen
Published: May 2018

This chapter outlines how race- and class-based stratification and criminalization shape New York City’s street vending industry. The vast majority of New York’s street vendors are first generation immigrants of color who experience racial profiling for turning urban public space into their workplace. Since the Great Recession, a small but growing class of native-born and highly educated actors have been able to enter this profoundly criminalized industry with comparative ease largely due to class and race privileges, spurring gentrification through the city’s underground food permit rental market. The author argues that any meaningful reform of New York’s broken system of street vending oversight must directly engage these inequities and work to decriminalize poor and working class street vendors of color through a participatory and inclusive process rooted in principles of social justice.
Stuck in Park: New York City’s War on Food Trucks
Authors: Basinski Sean , Shapiro Matthew , Morales Alfonso
Published: May 2018

Our applied research/practice team of two attorneys and a social scientist produced this case study of an immigrant woman, who learned to be an entrepreneur. Our central narrative describes how New York City government’s response to mobile food vending prioritized powerful special interests at the expense of expanding economic opportunities in the service of the greater public good. This central narrative develops through our detailed description of an immigrant woman’s circuitous path to business and back to wage labor.
Learning from New Orleans: Will Revising or Relaxing Public Space Ordinances Create a Just Environment for Street Commerce?
Authors: Ehrenfeucht Renia , Croegaert Ana
Published: May 2018

During 2010s, in response to new food truck operators, the city of New Orleans loosened regulations for food truck vending. At the same time the city turned its regulatory eye towards other forms of street vending and introduced a new second line vending ordinance. Using the New Orleans case, we argue that relaxing rather than revising regulations—and subsequently planning for ways to make street vending compatible with other activities—would be more effective and just. The authors participated in and observed 32 second line parades (parades organized and sponsored by African-American historic benevolent societies) during one season to understand how second line vending played out and the potential impacts of the new ordinance. This analysis demonstrates that compliance with the second line ordinance would have restricted vending without resolving identified concerns. New Orleans is an instructive case because the intent was to allow rather than eliminate vending. We argue that increasing compatibility between vending and other street activities makes food and goods available in the spaces were urban residents can most easily access them, and thereby establishes a more effective and just public space.
Atlanta’s Food Truck Fervor: Policy Impediments and Entrepreneurial Efforts to Expand Mobile Cuisine
Authors: Wood Mackenzie , Clark Jennifer , French Emma
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the evolution of Atlanta’s local food truck movement, contextualizing the rise of this emerging industry within the changing local and state regulatory environment. Through a review of historical documents and a survey of social media outlets, the researchers find that food truck vendors in Atlanta, aided by third sector intermediaries, have thrived by working around, rather than within, the existing regulatory framework. Despite the ability of this new industry to cater to a specific middle and upper class market, food trucks in Atlanta have not increased entrepreneurial diversity or access to new and healthy foods for low-income neighborhoods as some advocates have argued. The Atlanta food truck case exemplifies the problems that restrictive policies can cause by demarcating public and private space in ways that privilege entrenched interests and restrict entrepreneurship and innovation.
Reflections
Authors: Agyeman Julian , Matthews Caitlin , Sobel Hannah
Published: May 2018

In this reflection on the chapters included in the volume, the editors draw out major threads of discussion and highlight opportunities for future research. Two main threads of conversation about power surfaced throughout the collection: power and cultural identity, and power and criminalization. This final chapter explores and summarizes the ways in which the chapters in the volume illustrate the emerging urban trend of food as a cultural commodity. Additionally, the chapter synthesizes depictions of the bifurcation of the food truck industry and the discriminatory implementation of regulations. Finally, the editors recommend further investigation into the direct connection between identity formation and social justice, as well as the impact of incubator organizations on food trucks and street food vending. Importantly, the editors call for research on the relationships between street food vending, food trucks, and gentrification.
The Conceptual Repertoire of Environmental Policy
Authors: Meadowcroft James , Fiorino Daniel J.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the evolution of concepts used in the environmental policy domain since the emergence of modern environmental governance. It includes a general discussion of environmental concepts including root terms which have generated 'families' of environment-related concepts: 'environment', 'sustainable', 'eco' or 'ecological' and 'green'. This is followed by a discussion of different types of concepts and an examination of concepts that play a particularly important role in structuring the policy realm. Examples here include meso-level analytic or management concepts such as the 'polluter pays principle', 'the precautionary principle', 'ecosystem services', resilience' , 'environmental security', and so on. Finally, the chapter explores the temporal evolution of the conceptual field tracing the evolution of the categories used to think about the environmental domain.
Biodiversity: Increasing the Political Clout of Nature Conservation
Authors: Haila Yrjö
Published: May 2018

The term biodiversity was introduced in the 1980s as a novel framing for the human dependence on the Earth's biosphere. 'Biodiversity loss' became the way to capture a major dimension of global environmental problems. The chapter describes stages of this process. The first phase of the spread of the term was its enthusiastic reception among environmentalists. Second, concern was integrated into international environmental policy at the Rio Conference in 1992 through the adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Efforts to implement the convention have created an environmental regime both internationally and within different countries. However, due to its broad coverage of processes of living nature and its huge ambition to regulate human modification of nature and exploitation of natural resources, there have been major difficulties with implementation. In particular, how to integrate specific issues manifested in local contexts, and the global concern, has proved problematic.
Environmental Security: Policy within a Violent Imaginary
Authors: Stripple Johannes
Published: May 2018

The environment is now well established as part of an imagery of a world that is becoming more violent, more conflict ridden and less secure for many people. Imaginations of a climate changed world feed into a horizon of the future that is increasingly understood as indeterminate and uncertain, thereby requiring new modes of preparedness and precaution. While writings on security and the environment existed before the 1990s, it was the end of the Cold War that unlocked and energized the nexus. Environmental security remains an ambiguous concept with many fault-lines among and within academia, think-tanks, environmental organizations and the military establishment. Much scholarship has been preoccupied with the question of how to best define environmental security, but security needs to be recognized as a mode of governing that does things, and that needs to be approached in terms of its effects. Hence, the question: what kind of new political practices become legitimized when climate change is increasingly governed as an emergency?
Sustainable Consumption: An Important but Ambiguous Concept
Authors: Vergragt Philip J.
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the origins of the concept of sustainable consumption in global policy circles in the 1990s and its subsequent evolution in academia, business, civil society, and policy. It describes how academic research increasingly critiqued the understanding of consumption as an individual act and instead conceptualized it as a systemic issue deeply embedded in the economy, culture, and infrastructure, and how it is structured by life-event decisions like buying a house. It describes how the ecologically-inspired critique of consumption merged with the much older social critique of consumerism going back to Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and the Frankfurt, School and discusses the emergence of alternatives and possible pathways to systemic change. The concept of sustainable consumption has influenced policies in the European Union, on the level of cities, and organizations like the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Since the Great Recession of 2008, the concept has acquired new meanings spurred by the economic crisis and, in the US, the demise of the “American Dream”. The chapter concludes by discussing the concept’s ambiguities and possible futures.
Conceptual Innovation and the Future of Environmental Policy
Authors: Meadowcroft James , Fiorino Daniel J.
Published: May 2018

This chapter provides a conclusion to the volume. It begins by synthesising some of the main findings of the eleven individual concept studies. It then considers the light these studies shed on processes of conceptual innovation in the environmental policy domain. Finally, it considers what these cases, and attention to concepts and conceptual innovation more generally, can tell us about the underlying structure and evolution of the environmental policy domain. In particular it discusses four cross-cutting themes which emerge from this enquiry: science and policy, environmental limits, economy and environment, and environmental equity.
Long-Run Development and the New Cultural Economics
Authors: Gershman Boris
Published: May 2018

This chapter talks about three major intertwined themes that emerge in the new cultural economics: causal effects of culture on economic outcomes and institutions, the origins of culture, and the issues of cultural transmission, persistence, and change. It emphasizes the studies related to the field of long-run economic growth and development which explores culture as one of the key “deep determinants” of economic performance. The chapter reviews some of the recent empirical studies attempting to identify the causal effects of culture, and examines the research on the origins of culture, its social benefits, and costs. It also considers the evidence on cultural persistence and discusses the mechanisms of cultural transmission and change.
Time Since What? (Re)interpreting the Neolithic Transition in a Malthusian Environment
Authors: Lagerlöf Nils-Petter
Published: May 2018

This chapter provides a reinterpretation of the positive correlation between the time since the Neolithic transition and per-capita income before the economic and demographic transitions. It shows that in a simple Malthusian model, the differences in development might be amplified by territorial competition between societies or an upper bound on the rate of population growth, suggesting that superstructures, such as empires, and behavioral norms might have played a decisive role during this phase of development. The chapter argues, however, that while a useful theoretical insight, this simple extension of the Malthusian model is not itself sufficient to account quantitatively for the observed variation in both per-capita incomes and population densities.
Conclusion and Outlook
Authors: Cervellati Matteo , Sunde Uwe
Published: May 2018

This concluding chapter discusses this book's origins in the argument that the demographic transition is a key turning point for long-run development, not only in terms of a change in the regime of population dynamics toward low fertility and mortality, but also in the process of long-run economic development. The observed similarities in the transition process across space and time suggest that a better understanding of the reasons for such occurrences as the delay in the development of some countries might provide insights that are relevant beyond academic interest. The chapter argues that more interdisciplinary work between economists, demographers, and historians are needed to address the many facets that are covered only in passing, or not at all.
Sex Robots and the Rights of the Disabled
Authors: Nucci Ezio Di
Published: May 2018

This chapter argues that the right to sexual satisfaction of severely physically and mentally disabled people, and elderly people who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases, can be fulfilled by deploying sex robots. This would enable us to satisfy the sexual needs of many who cannot provide for their own sexual satisfaction without at the same time violating anybody’s right to sexual self-determination. It does not offer a full-blown moral justification of deploying sex robots in such cases, as not all morally relevant concerns can be addressed here; rather, it puts forward a plausible way of fulfilling acute sexual needs without thereby violating anybody’s sexual rights.
Was It Good for You Too? The New Natural Law Theory and the Paradoxical Good of Sexbots
Authors: Goldstein Joshua D.
Published: May 2018

We normally think of the so-called new natural law theory (NNLT) for its as a relentlessly conservative sexual ethic, one which argues both for the rightness only of “reproductive-type” sex (and that only within a different-sex marriage) as well as the moral impossibility of masturbation, sex outside of marriage, and sex of a non-reproductive-type. On the face of it, the human intent behind the creation of sexbots, let alone with the act of having sex with them, would seem to be wrong on all these counts. However, this chapter argues that matters are not so simple. NNLT can reveal the intrinsic moral importance of sexbots. If sexbots and human each are beings capable of choosing and remaining committed to complete friendship, and of loving, then the embodied union that we do achieve will not be morally objectionable even according to NNLT properly understood.
Intimacy, Bonding, and Sex Robots: Examining Empirical Results and Exploring Ethical Ramifications
Authors: Scheutz Matthias , Arnold Thomas
Published: May 2018

Robots designed for sexual interaction present distinctive ethical challenges to received notions of physical intimacy, pleasure, social relationships, and social space. In this chapter, we build upon our recent survey on attitudes toward sex robots with the results from a second, expanded survey that broaches possible advantages and disadvantages of interacting with such robots, both individually and socially. We show that the first study’s results were replicated with respect to appropriate forms, contexts, and uses for sex robots; in addition, we find a systematic concern with how robots might risk harming human relationships.
We conclude that ethical reflection on sex robots must include a wider consider-ation of the impact of social robots as a whole, with finer-grained examination of how intimacy and companionship define human relationships.
Sexbot-Induced Social Change: An Economic Perspective
Authors: Adshade Marina
Published: May 2018

Sexbot-induced social change (SISC) is on the horizon. SISC will influence a broad spectrum of social structures. This chapter focuses on one significant area: the nature of marriage. It makes three predictions. Prediction One: The adoption of Sexbot technology will disentangle the association between sexual intimacy and marriage, leading to higher quality marriages. Prediction Two: The adoption of sexbot technology will lead to the normalization of non-exclusive relationships as the dominant relationship structure. Prediction Three: Legal marriage institutions will be reformed to allow individuals to determine the nature of their own marriages free from state interference.
Introduction
Authors: Ratcliffe Matthew
Published: May 2018

This chapter outlines the overall argument of the book, emphasizing its two principal theses. First of all, it sketches the position that thought insertion, and also a substantial proportion of auditory verbal hallucinations, consist of disturbances in the sense of being in one or another kind of intentional state, in the modal structure of intentionality (meaning our grasp of the various modalities of intentionality, such as believing, perceiving, remembering, and imagining, as distinct from one another). Second, it introduces the view that the integrity of human experience, including what we might term the most basic experience of self, depends on ways of relating to other people and to the social world as a whole. The chapter concludes with summaries of the seven chapters that follow.
Schizophrenia and Selfhood
Authors: Ratcliffe Matthew
Published: May 2018

This chapter introduces some of the central concepts, themes, and issues addressed in the book. First of all, it discusses the concept of ‘minimal self’ and its recent application to schizophrenia and auditory verbal hallucination (AVH). Then it raises the question of whether minimal self includes only the sense of having some kind of experience or, in addition, a more specific sense of the type of intentional state one is in. A refined account of minimal self is proposed, according to which it centrally involves the latter: a grasp of the modalities of intentionality. It is further argued that certain anomalous experiences centrally involve disturbances of modal structure. Following this, the chapter considers an alternative account of AVHs, according to which they are diagnostically non-specific, meaningful symptoms of interpersonal trauma. In so doing, it stresses the need to place more emphasis on the interpersonal aspects of psychiatric illness, and shows how minimal self, as conceived of here, could turn out to be both developmentally and constitutively dependent on ways of relating to other people.
Metaphilosophical Conclusion
Authors: Ratcliffe Matthew
Published: May 2018

This chapter draws the discussion to a close by summarizing and further exploring some philosophical implications of the book’s overall position. Among other things, it addresses the nature of ‘belief’, and argues that this term, even when it is used in a restrictive and technical way, most likely accommodates a range of subtly different kinds of conviction, different ways of taking something to be the case. This applies not only to psychiatric illness, but also more generally. Issues are therefore raised for the practice of philosophy itself. When one is said to believe a philosophical claim, it is not always clear what kind of conviction is involved or, for that matter, which kinds of conviction are appropriate to which kinds of philosophical position. More generally, the structure of intentionality encompasses a wide range of different intentional state types and does not respect clear-cut, categorical distinctions between them. These subtleties are masked by certain uses of language, in philosophy and elsewhere. Reliance on univocal notions of ‘belief’, ‘desire’, and the like is thus rendered problematic.
Basic Learning Mechanisms: Pavlovian Conditioning in Mental Disorders
Authors: Heinz Andreas
Published: May 2018

The second chapter focuses on basic learning mechanisms and specifically on Pavlovian conditioning and its relevance for mental disorder. Pavlovian conditioning has been implicated in addictive disorders, but may also play a role in affective and psychotic experiences. Influences of Pavlovian cues on instrumental behavior are explained with respect to their clinical consequences.
Executive Control and Model-Based Decision Making
Authors: Heinz Andreas
Published: May 2018

Within instrumental behavior, more complex goal-directed decision making can be distinguished from habitual responding. This is illustrated by comparing model-based vs. model-free decision making and by explaining its relevance in addictive disorders. Model-based decision making aims at constructing a map of the world, while habitual decisions prune a “decision tree” and thus facilitate rather automatic responding.
Serotonergic Neurotransmission and Its Role in Negative Affect
Authors: Heinz Andreas
Published: May 2018

While dopaminergic neurotransmission has largely been implicated in reinforcement learning and model-based versus model-free decision making, serotonergic neurotransmission has been implicated in encoding aversive outcomes. Accordingly, serotonin dysfunction has been observed in disorders characterized by negative affect including depression, anxiety and addiction. Serotonin dysfunction in these mental disorders is described and its association with negative affect is discussed.
Learning Mechanisms in Addictive Disorders
Authors: Heinz Andreas
Published: May 2018

Addictive disorders may best be described as attribution of salience to drug-associated cues and drug consumption at the expense of other reinforcers. Dopamine and serotonin dysfunction can contribute to these states due to drug-associated neuroadaptation and alterations in bottom-up and top-down information processing. Relevant findings are described with respect to their computational and behavioral implications.
How a Focus on Learning Mechanisms Can Change Our Understanding of Mental Disorders
Authors: Heinz Andreas
Published: May 2018

The last chapter summarizes the previous findings and suggests that focusing on learning mechanisms can help to appreciate the malleability and diversity of human behavior. It is suggested that dimensional and computational approaches can foster a new understanding of mental disorders and create classifications based on basic dimensions of human learning and decision making. This chapter emphasizes that a focus on learning mechanisms should help to reduce the stigma of mental disorders, as it emphasized human creativity and resilience when dealing with stressful situations.
Neural Foundations of Variability in Attachment
Authors: Bennett Allyson J. , Hopkins William D. , Feldman Ruth , Gazzola Valeria , Giedd Jay , Lamb Michael E. , Scheele Dirk , Sheridan Margaret A. , Suomi Stephen J. , Tomoda Akemi , Tottenham Nim
Published: May 2018

Neuroscience offers insight into processes that support the development of the social brain within the cultural contexts that permit attachment relationships to form. Both human and nonhuman animal studies are critical to inform theory development and hypothesis testing via descriptive and experimental studies. A scientifically valid evolutionary theory is necessary to account for the remarkable diversity of parenting systems across human and many nonhuman animals. This chapter examines the neural foundations of attachment and poses critical questions that relate to the initiation of this relationship: How does attachment interface with brain development? What is the interplay between attachment and brain development (including elements of bidirectionality)? Are there negative consequences associated with variation in attachment, and are they reversible? Rather than conceptualizing attachment in terms of a single type of relationship, or a rigid developmental channel, this chapter proposes that an expanded consideration of variation is necessary to understand the neural foundations of infant-caregiver relationships, and the role of those relationships in developing competence across the life span. This approach will permit identification of common neurobiological elements of attachment as well as the remarkable plasticity and diversity within and across individuals, cultures, and species.
How Attachment Gave Rise to Culture
Authors: Chisholm James S.
Published: May 2018

This chapter reviews advances in evolutionary theory since Bowlby and proposes that our capacity for culture emerged with the evolution of human attachment by means of selection for increased mother-infant cooperation in the resolution of parent-offspring conflict. It outlines the evolutionary-developmental logic of attachment, parent-offspring conflict, and the view of culture as “extended embodied minds.” It describes how the embodied mind and its attachments might have been extended beyond the mammalian mother-infant dyad to include expanding circles of cooperative individuals and groups. It argues that because attachment came before and gave rise to culture, no culture could long exist that did not accommodate the attachment needs of its infants. On this view, all the myriad cultural contexts of attachment foster secure-enough attachment—except when they cannot. Theory and evidence show that when mothers and others are unable to buffer their children against environmental risk and uncertainty, insecure attachment can be (or once was) evolutionarily rational. It concludes that an attachment theory fully informed by twenty-first century evolutionary theory is fully consilient with normative emic perspectives on the nature of the child and appropriate child care, in both favorable and unfavorable environments.
Real-World Applications of Attachment Theory
Authors: Rosabal-Coto Mariano , Quinn Naomi , Keller Heidi , Vicedo Marga , Chaudhary Nandita , Gottlieb Alma , Scheidecker Gabriel , Murray Marjorie , Takada Akira , Morelli Gilda A.
Published: May 2018

Attachment theory has its roots in an ethnocentric complex of ideas, longstanding in the United States, under the rubric of “intensive mothering.” Among these various approaches and programs, attachment theory has had an inordinate and wide-ranging influence on a wide range of professions concerned with children (family therapy, education, the legal system, and public policy, the medical profession, etc.) inside and outside the United States. This chapter looks critically at how attachment theory has been applied in a variety of contexts and discusses its influence on parenting. It examines the tension distortion that often results when research findings are translated into actual applications or programs, ignoring any particularities of cultural context. It describes how attachment theory has been used as the basis for child-rearing manuals and has influenced programs and policies more directly, to form legal decisions that affect families, as well as to develop public policy and programs. Specific attachment applications are reviewed and their validity questioned. Because child-rearing practices vary among cultures, the value systems that motivate these different practices must be recognized and accounted for when applications are developed and implemented. It concludes with a call for researchers to become proactive in rectifying misuses of attachment theory.
Language Functions in the Brain: From Auditory Input to Sentence Comprehension
Authors: Friederici Angela D. , Chomsky Noam
Published: May 2018

Chapter 1 presents the neurocognitive model of language comprehension with its functional processing components and processing steps from auditory input to comprehension. The different functional components in the model are described with respect to their brain location and their time course. Topics covered include the identification of language-relevant sounds in speech input; the role of the temporal gyri together with the medial temporal lobe and the hippocampus in access to the lexicon and information encoded in the lexical entry; the combinatorics of language elements; neuroscientific studies relevant for the initial phrase structure building as assumed by syntax-first models; syntactic computation and the processing of syntactically complex sentences; the network of brain regions that support semantic processes; thematic role assignment (i.e., “who is doing what to whom”); and linguistic prosody and the processing of pitch information. Finally, the chapter concludes with a coherent view and respective model of the brain basis of language comprehension, with respect to the neuroanatomy of the brain regions supporting syntactic, semantic, and syntactic processes as well as the temporal relation and interaction of these different functions as comprehension proceeds.
Evolution of Language
Authors: Friederici Angela D. , Chomsky Noam
Published: May 2018

The past and current views of language evolution all center around a crucial question: What led to the human faculty of language and can it be explained by continuity of phylogenesis from non-human to human primates? The view that is presented here holds that the difference between human and non-human primates lies in the structure of their brains, particularly in the way the relevant brain areas are connected by white matter fiber tracts. During the evolution of language two crucial abilities had to evolve: these are first, sensory-motor learning, and second, the ability to process hierarchical structures. Across-species comparisons between the human and non-human primate brain reveal cytoarchitectonic and connectivity differences. Although still under discussion, the available paleoanthropological findings suggest a reorganization of the brain during phylogeny, and a possible rewiring which, due to the prolonged ontogeny in humans, is shaped by environmental input.
The Neural Basis of Language
Authors: Friederici Angela D. , Chomsky Noam
Published: May 2018

The findings discussed in this book lead to a first integrative view on the neurobiology of language, which proposes that BA 44 and the arcuate fasciculus are those brain structures that have evolved to subserve the human capacity to process syntax, which is at the core of the human language faculty. The chapter concludes with a brief statement of why syntax is important for the human being.
Empirical Analyses and Creative Thinking
Authors: Gahl Megan , Chandler Vicki
Published: May 2018

Our world is facing unprecedented challenges that will require novel approaches and creative solutions. In our general education course on Empirical Analyses we introduce skills and concepts that cultivate a systematic and creative approach to evidence-based analyses and problem solving. The overarching goal is to instill in students a deep understanding of how evidence is used creatively to generate hypotheses, test hypotheses, draw conclusions, and recognize biases. We lead students to develop creative solutions and designs; we also stress the ability to critically evaluate empirical research. Effective thinkers must think both creatively and critically, generating ideas and options and evaluating them rigorously. Although we draw on examples and questions from the physical, life, and social sciences, the skills and concepts we introduce apply well beyond science to the problems, decisions and challenges of our daily lives.
Multifaceted Acculturation: An Immersive, Community-Based Multicultural Education
Authors: Caporale-Berkowitz Norian , Lyda James
Published: May 2018

Minerva’s education model expands the meaning of a multicultural education by bringing together a truly diverse group of students and immersing them in seven different cultural settings. Our current students come from 50 countries and a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, vary in age from 16 to 25, represent every major world religion, and have personal identities that span the spectrum of racial and ethnic groups, as well as gender and sexual affiliations. In this chapter, we describe the ways that we create a diverse, dynamic, and complex student culture, as reflected in the processes of admissions, orientation, residential life, community programs, extracurriculars, and the creation of student traditions and legacies. The unique model at Minerva provides many opportunities to create a new definition of multicultural education that may be described as "multifaceted acculturation."
Experiential Learning: The City as a Campus and Human Network
Authors: Wang Z. Mike , Goldberg Robin B.
Published: May 2018

At Minerva, we strive to develop global citizens—students who learn to understand and care for (1) themselves as individuals, (2) the collective (be it as a student body or team), (3) the broader society (city or country), and (4) the world. Within these four contexts, we strive to develop the “whole student” across intellect, character, and well-being. In this chapter we explore how Minerva facilitates the formation of global citizens through the student experience and experiential learning, integrating the curriculum through co-curriculars and extra-curriculars in our seven world cities.
Accreditation: Official Recognition of a New Vision of Higher Education
Authors: Cannon Teri
Published: May 2018

American accrediting agencies have been under increasing pressure from the government, employers, and other policy makers. These agencies are being asked to hold accredited educational institutions accountable for student learning outcomes, on-time retention and completion, and other key indicators of institutional and student success. At the same time, accreditors are often accused of stifling innovation in education with unnecessarily restrictive policies, bureaucratic and burdensome procedures, and a peer review process that is biased against new ideas and entrants into the sector. We faced these dynamics in seeking approval for Minerva to affiliate with the Keck Graduate Institute and to offer its programs in a delivery modality that had never been seen before. The process required us to build support for innovation while demonstrating the evidence-based foundation for our curriculum and teaching methods and to balance the new with generally accepted and traditional indicators of quality.
A Novel Business and Operating Model
Authors: Nelson Ben
Published: May 2018

Undergraduate education is rarely viewed from a business model perspective. University budgets are notorious for intermingling costs associated with graduate and undergraduate instruction, research, campus upkeep, administration, sports, and other endeavors. Tracking costs is made particularly difficult because the institution, for the sake of efficiency, wants to utilize its assets across several lines of business. For example, a lecture hall may be filled by undergraduates in the morning, graduate students in the afternoon and rented out to a student club for an event in the evening. Rather than trying to solve how to allocate those costs more effectively, Minerva is built around an operational philosophy of direct accountability. Three underlying principles allow us to succeed: First, where the market provides an efficient alternative, utilize that alternative rather than creating our own. Second, dollars paid by a constituent should not subsidize activities that are not in the service of that constituent. Third, natural incentives should be aligned only with successful delivery of the mission—incentives that encourage discriminatory behavior, reduction in quality of instruction, lowering of admission standards, or any other non-mission-aligned activity carry with them substantial inherent penalties that always outweigh any potential rewards.
Afterword: For the Sake of the World
Authors: Nelson Ben , Kosslyn Stephen M. , Katzman Jonathan , Goldberg Robin B. , Cannon Teri
Published: May 2018

We have a confession to make: this book is meant to recruit you.

Even if Minerva exists for a thousand years, graduates some of the most influential leaders, thinkers, innovators, and transformational figures of the future, and becomes the most desirable university program in the world, we can easily have failed in our mission. As we have mentioned repeatedly in this book, we exist to nurture critical wisdom for the sake of the world. This mission is simply impossible for us to accomplish alone....
Reform without Losers: An Interpretation of China’s Dual-Track Approach to Transition
Authors: Qian Yingyi
Published: May 2018

This paper develops a simple model to analyze the “dual-track” approach to market liberalization as a mechanism for implementing efficient Pareto-improving economic reform, that is, reform achieving efficiency without creating losers. The approach, based on the continued enforcement of the existing plan while simultaneously liberalizing the market, can be understood as a method for making implicit lump sum transfers to compensate potential losers of the reform. The model highlights the critical roles of enforcement of the plan for achieving Pareto improvement and full liberalization of the market track for achieving efficiency. We examine how the dual-track approach has worked in product and labor market liberalization in China.
Institutional Environment, Community Government, and Corporate Governance: Understanding China’s Township-Village Enterprises
Authors: Qian Yingyi
Published: May 2018

We study China’s township-village enterprises (TVEs) from an organizational perspective with a focus on governance. Unlike most previous studies, we interpret the firm boundaries of TVEs at the community level rather than the enterprise level. From this perspective, we analyze the central role that community governments play in TVE governance as an organizational response to the imperfect institutional environment of both state and market. Specifically, we show that the community government’s involvement in TVEs helps overcome the problems of state predation and under-financing of private enterprises. We also explain why TVE governance leads to harder budget constraints than state-owned enterprises.
Regional Decentralization and Fiscal Incentives: Federalism, Chinese Style
Authors: Qian Yingyi
Published: May 2018

Aligning the interests of local governments with market development is an important issue for developing and transition economies. Using a panel data set from China, we investigate the relationship between provincial government’s fiscal incentives and provincial market development. We report three empirical findings. First, we find that during the period of “fiscal contracting system” the discrepancy between ex ante contracts and ex post implementation was relatively small, suggesting that the fiscal contracts were credible. Second, we find a much higher correlation, about four times, between the provincial government’s budgetary revenue and its expenditure during 1980s and 1990s as compared to 1970s, demonstrating that provincial governments faced much stronger ex post fiscal incentives after reform. Third, we find that stronger ex ante fiscal incentives, measured by the contractual marginal retention rate of the provincial government in its budgetary revenue, are associated with faster development of the non-state sector as well as more reforms in the state sector in the provincial economy. This holds even when we control for the conventional measure of fiscal decentralization. Finally, we compare federalism, Chinese style, to federalism, Russian style.
Why China’s Economic Reforms Differ: The M-Form Hierarchy and Entry/Expansion of the Non-State Sector
Authors: Qian Yingyi
Published: May 2018

China’s thirteen years of economic reforms (1979-1991) have achieved an average GNP annual growth rate of 8.6%. What makes China’s reforms differ from those of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is the sustained entry and expansion of the non-state sector. We argue that the organization structure of the economy matters. Unlike their unitary hierarchical structure based on functional or specialization principles (the U-form), China’s hierarchical economy has been the multi-layer-multi-regional one mainly based on territorial principle (the deep M-form, or briefly, the M-form). Reforms have further decentralized the M-form economy along regional lines, which provided flexibility and opportunities for carrying out regional experiments, for the rise of non-state enterprises, and for the emergence of markets. This is why China’s non-state sector share of industrial output increased from 22% in 1978 to 47% in 1991 and its private sector’s share from zero to about 10%, both being achieved without mass privatization and changes in the political system.
Incentives, Information, and Organizational Form
Authors: Qian Yingyi
Published: May 2018

We model an organization as a hierarchy of managers erected on top of a technology (here consisting of a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to take steps to reduce the adverse consequences of shocks that affect the plants beneath him. We argue that different organizational forms give rise to different information about managers’ performance and therefore differ according to how effective incentives can be in encouraging a good performance. In particular, we show that, under certain assumptions, the M-form (multi-divisional form) is likely to provide better incentives than the U-form (unitary form) because it promotes yardstick competition (i.e., relative performance evaluation) more effectively. We conclude by presenting evidence that the assumptions on which this comparison rests are satisfied for Chinese data.