bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Epilogue: Fantasies of Destruction
Authors: Broeckmann Andreas
Published: September 2017

The short epilogue of this book on machine art revisits some of the key themes of the book by introducing the accident as a notion that features not only in critical discourses on technology like that of French theoretician Paul Virilio, but also in a variety of artistic practices. Gustav Metzger’s concept of “auto-destructive art” marks a prominent example of the critical stance that artists have taken against the imagined, destructive and anti-human power of technology. The author reflects on the question why Metzger’s promise of a “machine art” that would articulate auto-destructive and auto-creative art, remained unfulfilled. By way of conclusion, it speculates whether the experimental machine artworks by Austrian artist Herwig Weiser provide this articulation by questioning the very logic of technics and by inventing alternative techno-logics for the materials and concepts of a contemporary technoculture.
Introduction
Authors: Abraham Tara H.
Published: September 2017

This chapter argues that the best way to understand McCulloch’s various identities is to understand them as performatively produced. Drawing on Judith Butler’s framework of performative identity, the chapter outlines the ways that McCulloch’s identities were neither straightforward products of his own agency nor solely shaped by his context. It also argues that in spite of McCulloch’s self-fashioning as a philosopher and his characterization of cybernetics as universal and unified, McCulloch’s identities varied and the cybernetic project was anything but unified. At the heart of McCulloch’s scientific practices were his ways of asking grand humanistic questions, his penchant for theoretical modelling, and his rhetorical strategies. Much of these practices were responses to his institutional and cultural milieux. When seen in this light, McCulloch’s brand of cybernetics was less focused on command and control and more on introducing new scientific practices to the life and human sciences.
The Neurophysiologist
Authors: Abraham Tara H.
Published: September 2017

This chapter examines McCulloch’s activities at Yale University during the 1930s, and the ways in which his work as a neurophysiologist was inseparable from his pursuits in scientific philosophy. Broadly speaking, it casts the growth of neurophysiology in the American interwar period as the result in part of efforts of the Rockefeller Foundation to rationalize scientific studies of the mind and bring the natural sciences to bear on the growing field of psychiatry. This period also witnessed increased fluidity between science and philosophy. McCulloch was transformed by both developments. His work in cerebral localization with Johannes Dusser de Barenne and his participation in Clark Hull’s seminars in on scientific foundations formed part of a unified project to generate a physiological theory of knowledge.
The Neuropsychiatrist
Authors: Abraham Tara H.
Published: September 2017

In this chapter, McCulloch’s identity as a neuropsychiatrist is situated in the context of an eclectic American psychiatry following the Second World War. It argues that McCulloch’s identity as a neuropsychiatrist captures not only his very diverse interests but also his continued preoccupation with theoretical foundations. McCulloch was drawn to biological psychiatry during this period, and, collaborating with Ladislas J. Meduna, studied treatments for conditions such as schizophrenia that were based on carbohydrate metabolism and insulin shock therapy. His work stood at the interface between psychiatric research and clinical problems, and between psychiatry and neurophysiology. In light of his increased seniority as a scientist and his introduction to members of the nascent cybernetics group, he began to focus more of his attention on theoretical modelling.
The Engineer
Authors: Abraham Tara H.
Published: September 2017

This chapter examines the ways that McCulloch’s new research culture at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics shaped the evolution of his scientific identity into that of an engineer. This was an open, fluid, multidisciplinary culture that allowed McCulloch to shift his focus more squarely onto understanding the brain from the perspective of theoretical modelling, and to promote the cybernetic vision to diverse audiences. McCulloch’s practices, performed with a new set of student-collaborators, involved modeling the neurophysiology of perception, understanding reliability in biological systems, and pursuing knowledge of the reticular formation of the brain. The chapter provides a nuanced account of the relations between McCulloch’s work and the emerging fields of artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences. It also highlights McCulloch’s identities as sage-collaborator and polymath, two roles that in part were the result of his students’ observations and in part products of his own self-fashioning.
Overview of Free Innovation
Authors: von Hippel Eric
Published: September 2017

This chapter introduces the concept of “free innovation,” which entails innovations developed and given away by consumers as a “free good,” with resulting improvements in social welfare. It illustrates how free innovation works within the broader scope of national economic development and how free innovation works vis-à-vis the traditional producer innovation paradigm. The chapter compares and contrasts free innovation and the producer innovation paradigm, in the process illustrating how the creation of a free innovation paradigm can both challenge and complement the traditional producer innovation paradigm. The free innovation paradigm here is meant to guide emerging research into free innovation practices and policies through the use of an underlying unified structure. The chapter then closes with a summary of the free innovation paradigm theory as well as some related concepts.
Viability Zones for Free Innovation
Authors: von Hippel Eric
Published: September 2017

This chapter explores the conditions under which innovation pays for both free innovators and producers. Drawing heavily upon previous research, the chapter defines and describes three basic innovation modes: free innovation by single individuals, collaborative free innovation by multiple individuals, and producer innovation. It then explores the conditions under which each of these modes is “viable”—that is, will provide a net benefit to innovators engaging in it. Building upon innovation mode viability calculations, the chapter reveals that continuing improvements to free innovators' design tools and communication capabilities are making free innovation viable for an increasing range of innovation opportunities. As a result, the chapter concludes that free innovation will steadily grow in importance relative to producer innovation.
The Broad Scope of Free Innovation
Authors: von Hippel Eric
Published: September 2017

This chapter shows that free innovation extends well beyond product innovation—the type of innovation focused upon by almost all studies of household sector innovation to date. It reviews field-specific empirical studies that find significant levels of free innovation present in services, processes, marketing methods, and new organizational methods. The chapter also discusses illustrative examples of the sources of innovation across five innovation categories used in official Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) government statistics. Thus, the chapter argues that the scope of free innovation in the household sector is indeed broad—and perhaps as broad as that of producer innovation with respect to products, services, and processes of interest to consumers.
The World Trade System Today
Authors: Bhagwati Jagdish N. , Krishna Pravin , Panagariya Arvind
Published: September 2017

This chapter discusses on going trends in the world trade system. The landscape of the international trade system has undergone substantial change in recent decades. While many multilateral successes were achieved under the GATT, the failure of the WTO member countries to successfully close the Doha round of trade negotiations has now engendered a mood of pessimism regarding the future of the multilateral system. Countries have turned to preferential (and thus discriminatory, albeit GATT-legal) trade agreements and many new deals are now under negotiation, including the “mega-regional” agreements – the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between the United States and Pacific-rim countries and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union. At the same time, developing countries having expanded their participation in international trade, challenge the international system to accommodate their interests and aspirations. Finally, worsening global economic conditions and a populist focus on the alleged links between the inequality of incomes within countries and globalization, have generated a protectionist backlash affecting political outcomes in many countries.
Trade, Poverty, and Inequality
Authors: Mitra Devashish
Published: September 2017

This chapter discusses how trade can affect poverty through a large number of channels, based on growth, efficiency and distribution. The redistributive channels also affect inequality. Case studies of China and India show that the country with the greater rise in inequality, namely China, has grown faster and seen bigger poverty reductions. Cross-country regressions also show the possibility of a poverty reducing impact of trade reforms. And, there exists considerable evidence for specifically the growth channel. Most of the intra-country studies, both direct, reduced-form ones, as well as those based on empirical general-equilibrium analysis, also provide strong support for the poverty-reducing effects of trade. Moving to inequality, many aspects, such as wage inequality, overall income inequality and labor shares, have been studied. The chapter shows that the evidence on the impact of trade on inequality has been quite mixed.
Transatlantic Free Trade: The Viewpoint of Germany
Authors: Felbermayr Gabriel , Aichele Rahel
Published: September 2017

Negotiations towards a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement between the EU and the US have proven extremely controversial in Germany. This is puzzling, because the US has been Germany’s largest export market for years, at least when measured in value added terms. However, realized trade flows substantially fall short from the friction-free benchmark. The simulation of a quantitative trade theory model, which assumes that a TTIP would be as effective as the average existing deep trade agreement, could lead to an increase in real per capita income by about 2.5% in both the US and Germany. Gains in Germany would be largely driven by higher value added in the automotive industry, while the agricultural and the chemicals sector would lose. However, resistance against TTIP has not been shaped by classical political economy motives along sectoral lines, but by wide-spread fears of a regulatory race-to-the-bottom.
Anonymity, Mineness, and Agent Specificity: Pragmatic Normativity and the Authentic Situation in Heidegger’s Being and Time
Authors: Blattner William
Published: September 2017

“California Heideggerianism,” as developed in the 1980‘s by Dreyfus, Haugeland, and Guignon, interprets Heidegger’s notion of the Anyone in Being and Time as a pattern of social normativity that establishes the contours of Dasein’s self-understanding and world. Specifically, the Anyone maintains a reservoir of “anonymous” or “generic” social roles, and individual cases of Dasein understand themselves by throwing themselves into one or several such social roles. Thus, the content of Dasein’s self-understanding is circumscribed by those possibilities of living on offer from Anyone. I argue that this reconstruction of the role of the Anyone is neither phenomenologically plausible nor exegetically required. To develop an alternative approach, I analyze the pragmatic normativity of those situations in which Dasein is called upon to deviate from everyday social norms. I draw upon Haugeland’s reconstruction of the phenomenon of conscience in Being and Time, which I argue can lead us to a conception of authentic self-understanding in which the content of self-understanding is neither some utterly novel and unprecedented form of originality nor provided by anonymous social norms. Rather, this owned content is the product of specifying impersonal possibilities of self-understanding that reside in the background culture in which one lives.
Competence over Being as Existing: The Indispensability of Haugeland’s Heidegger
Authors: Crowell Steven
Published: September 2017

The paper explains why Haugeland’s interpretation of Heidegger is indispensable for understanding Heidegger’s work; why his Heideggerian account of commitment is indispensible for understanding what it is to be a self; and why this account of selfhood is indispensible to philosophy generally. The first indispensability concerns Haugeland’s insight that Heidegger advances beyond traditional metaphysics by showing how not just “essence” (essentia) but also “existence” (existentia) is meaningful. The second indispensability lies in Haugeland’s grasp of the methodological connection between Division I and Division II of Being and Time, which shows that what it is to be “I myself” is a function neither of consciousness nor self-consciousness, but depends on my taking responsibility for the normative force of the norms that enable entities to show up as they in truth are. Finally, this insight is indispensible to philosophy generally. Drawing on Joseph Rouse’s charge that Haugeland’s concept of “objectivity” involves a residual scientism and voluntarism, I offer a defense that brings Haugeland’s his account of existential death together with Heiedegger’s claim, in Being and Time, that science tries to grasp the occurrent in its basic unintelligibility, and his claim, in “What is Metaphysics?,” that science aims to give entities “the first and last word.”
Love and Death
Authors: Rouse Joseph
Published: September 2017

This paper explicates and connects two of Haugeland’s most controversial philosophical claims: his puzzling claim that the characteristic form of intentionality and human understanding is love, and his revisionist interpretation of Heidegger’s account of “existential death” in Being and Time. The former claim responds to Haugeland’s implicit classification and telling criticisms of the predominant alternative conceptions of intentionality. Haugeland argues that these alternatives actually fit different phenomena (“ersatz” or “lapsed” intentionality) that fall short of even the most ordinary human comportments. The latter claim treats “death” as concerned not with human mortality, but with the objective accountability of entire domains of human activity and understanding. Heidegger thereby has a deeper, more adequate account of intentionality and understanding directly complementing Haugeland’s re-conception of intentionality as a form of love. This reading also brings Being and Time into closer critical engagement with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This juxtaposition further illuminates Heidegger’s Kantian emphasis upon the finitude of human understanding, and brings out the political significance of Being and Time in constructively revealing ways despite Heidegger’s own later disastrous political involvement.
Language Embodied and Embedded: Walking the Talk
Authors: Lance Mark
Published: September 2017

Linguistic practice, from a broadly Heideggerian perspective, begins in engaged competence. When we consider the role that simple verbalizations play in social practice, the only distinctive feature of the linguistic is that it is communicative. In this chapter, I raise the question of how a communicative performance functioning as part of a socially articulated practical comportment can come to exhibit a force/content distinction. If we understand linguistic performances as fully integrated into worldly practices, they seem to reside not in a space of reasons, but a space of practical utility. I claim that the force/content distinction, as well as the very idea of objective purport, arise only once we institute norms that allow performances in one context of social practice to be re-identified and thus have implications for the propriety of acts in another context. The distinction between such inter-contextual standards of re-identification and the immediate standards instituted by local practice is the pragmatic cash-value of a force/content distinction. And this, in turn, is a crucial necessary condition on any performance purporting to characterize things as they are. Framed in the Heideggerian terms that Haugeland was so fond of, we can say that the structure of Being-with is essentially federal.
Two Dogmas of Rationalism
Authors: Haugeland John
Published: September 2017

In this previously unpublished essay, Haugeland aims to “expose two covert ‘dogmas’—tendentious yet invisible assumptions—that underlie rationalist thought, both modern and contemporary.” The dogmas are “positivism,” the claim that the world is composed entirely of facts, and “cognitivism,” the claim that the mind is exhausted by the rational intellect. Haugeland argues that both of these dogmas force rationalism into a limited understanding of the mind and world. But the dogmas also prevent rationalism from recognizing the distinctively human capacities to disclose the truth in truly novel and unforeseen ways. Haugeland argues that the blinders of rationalism inevitably distort the profound importance of areas such as love, integrity, and commitment in the development of our social, romantic, and scientific practices. In addition to being a response to the work of the Pittsburgh School of Philosophy more broadly, it also offers a unique contribution to current debates concerning alethic modality.
Rationalism without Dogmas
Authors: McDowell John
Published: September 2017

In this 7,300 word essay, McDowell responds to Haugeland’s criticisms of rationalist tendencies in his (McDowell’s) own work, arguing that these criticisms “partly miss [their] target.” McDowell argues that the positivist claim that the world is exhausted by the facts should not be seen as a dogma so much as a truism. He develops this point through a careful reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, providing McDowell’s most explicit understanding of Kant to date. McDowell also uses Kant to counter charges of cognitivism. Using Kant’s notion of responsibility, McDowell shows how rationalist accounts can explain without distortion the features of commitment and integrity.
Social Construction of Technology
Authors: Tosoni Simone , Pinch Trevor
Published: September 2017

The chapter focuses on the Social Construction of Technology approach (SCOT) by Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker, introducing the reader to its initial formulation (1984), and to the subsequent extensions – and sometimes reformulations – elaborated in more than 30 year of empirical research. It first clarifies how the Empirical Programme of Relativism, elaborated by the Bath School to address the social construction of scientific facts, was adapted to technological artifacts. In particular the concepts of relevant social groups, interpretative flexibility, closure or stabilization are in-depth discussed. Regarding relevant social groups, the chapter dedicates a peculiar attention to users, sellers and testers, all understudied in the original formulation of SCOT. The chapter then clarifies SCOT’s take on materiality, and discusses its main differences with the idea of nonhuman agency proposed by Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Finally, it goes back to the Golem Trilogy to discuss with the author the specific take on politics implied by SCOT.
Prototyping a Real-World Problem
Authors: Perez-Breva Luis , Fuhrer Nick
Published: September 2017

You can give any hunch the structure of a problem and make that problem tangible. Innovations are not prescribed, but rather emerge from what you do in the process of trying to understand and tame a real-world problem—that is, prototyping a problem. Get ready to be wrong, because a good solution can emerge from being wrong a lot and you need only be approximately right once. This process of prototyping a problem as an approach to innovation has several advantages: progress is about how much you learn about the problem; there are multiple strategies for making your problem tangible and getting to specific questions; and there is a demonstration possible of any problem at a scale that matches your current resources.
Interacting with Parts
Authors: Perez-Breva Luis , Fuhrer Nick
Published: September 2017

You can get started innovating right away: just assemble some parts you already have or can get easily; learn as you go; and use those parts to make your problem tangible. Anything can be a part: in a corporate setting, that includes anything you currently do, assemble, or procure; and for everything else—from physical parts to services to resources for acquiring knowledge—there’s the Web. You bring parts together you’ve chosen so you can make any aspect of your problem tangible—even a solution—and you ask questions, reasoning about your problem with your minds and your hands. Parts will tell you what you need to assume at your current scale, what you aren’t seeing, what you are missing, and whether the next scale is even possible.
Interfacing with People
Authors: Perez-Breva Luis , Fuhrer Nick
Published: September 2017

You need other people to tell you that your idea is wrong, so you can learn. Help people do that by asking them what they’re up to (as a conversation starter); figuring out how to articulate your own uncertainties and unknowns, because your conversational counterparts might have the knowledge you need; and demonstrating a genuine interest in listening. Draw from the personal experiences of others and from the specific information they may provide to improve your hunch, refine your problem, and help you reconceive what you prototype for impact. You innovation prototype will accrue people through these conversations; eventually, they may become users, team members, or participate with you on your path forward in some other way.
A Kit to Drive Innovation, Anywhere
Authors: Perez-Breva Luis , Fuhrer Nick
Published: September 2017

You have a choice to set up a way for yourself or anyone else to start innovating right away. You just need something to empower exploration, and it ought to consist of things that already exist. If you accept that the trial and error reveals the innovations needed, and that you can at least simulate their impact using other parts, there is no point in trying to plan a “great innovation” or culling innovation ideas from the get-go. You can choose to focus on the problem and simply get started. So, create some tools of the trade and be a professional innovator. You can easily build an innovation prototyping kit, starting from anything—a product idea, a hunch about a problem, a development kit, a research paper, or a patent. Such a kit packages a hunch about a problem and helps you or others get started.
Epilogue: Academic Commentary
Authors: Perez-Breva Luis , Fuhrer Nick
Published: September 2017

Innovating is a discipline and practice in its own right that benefits from many healthy connections to several other disciplines, much as physics and engineering relate to each other and much as behavioral science relates to economics and management.

This book brings together ideas from several disciplines to explain innovating by its actions. In this commentary, you will find academic references and relevant literature across several disciplines. Some support key ideas discussed in the book or portray the opposing ideas; others help to situate the book’s content in a broader discussion....
Overcrowded
Authors: Verganti Roberto.
Published: September 2017

We live in a world awash with ideas. We have become more creative, and thanks to digital technologies, we have easy access to an unprecedented amount of novel opportunities. How to make sense of this overabundance of opportunities? How to envision the next big thing? How to avoid trying everything and fall into the paradox of ideas (the more ideas we create the less we innovate)? To succeed in an overcrowded world we need a meaningful direction. To focus our creativity and the creativity of others towards a new, shared purpose. This book shows how to take the first crucial step in any innovation journey: the design of a meaningful direction. It provides the mindset, the process, and the tools. Leveraging on the experiences of firms such as Apple, Yankee Candle, Nest Labs, Philips, Gucci, Deloitte, it shows how we can nurture a new purpose that is actionable, and that people love.
The Search for New Meaning
Authors: Verganti Roberto
Published: September 2017

This Chapter shows why finding a new direction and innovating the meaning of things is central in the life of people. Why innovation of meaning is important for customers? Why they fall in love with new meanings? The answer lies in two changes of the scenario. First, an overabundance of options, in a complicated world. People, today, are not lacking possible solutions. When one has to choose a product or a service, the possibilities are many; in this sea of opportunities, the challenge is to understand which option is meaningful for them as individuals. The focus of people’s attention has therefore moved from the “how” to the “why,” from “how can I solve this?” to “is this meaningful to me?,” from “I need this” to “do I need this?” In a context with low variety, the challenge is to build more solutions. In a context with more choice, the challenge is to find the right direction, the right “why.” Hence the relevance of meaning. Second, the speed of change: in the past meanings in society evolved slowly; an organization could simply wait and adapt. Nowadays the meaning of things changes at a dramatic pace.
The Interpreter’s Lab
Authors: Verganti Roberto
Published: September 2017

This chapter illustrates how to tap the power of interpreters in the creation of new meaning. Interpreters are experts from far-flung fields, who look at our same customer from different perspectives. The chapter shows how these outsiders can challenge our own perspective, therefore reframing it in a robust way. So that we create things that people would love. Innovation of meaning is an inside-out process. This chapter is about the “out”. We will show how to identify interpreters and interact with them through a meeting that we call “Interpreters Lab”.
The Wild and the Wicked
Authors: Hale Benjamin
Published: September 2017

Many ethicists and political advocates believe that the argument for environmentalism is simple: demonstrate that nature is valuable and obligations to protect the environment will follow. This approach to environmentalism often appears as a kind of consequentialism. This book, though sympathetic with environmentalism, argues against this consequentialist approach. It takes as its initiating presupposition the opposite stance: that nature can at times be quite disvaluable. In assuming this stance, it aims to carve a sharp distinction between events and actions, fundamentally splitting open the idea that actions are taken for reasons. In turn, the book argues that these reasons must be justified – assessed and ratified by the scrutiny of a wide deliberative body – and that an approach to environmentalism that prioritizes the Right over the Good is the correct approach. Environmentalism, then, cannot be entirely about identifying good states of affairs, but also must partly be about whether actions are and/or could be justified.
Return to the Paleocene
Authors: Hale Benjamin
Published: September 2017

This chapter introduces the reader to philosophical and ethical inquiry by forging a distinction between descriptive and normative claims, as well as explanatory and justificatory arguments. It utilizes cases of paleontological discovery and climate communication to argue that “catastrophe reasoning” about climate change is not only politically but also ethically problematic. In this respect, it relies on the current climate discussion to frame the general argument criticized in this book: that the mere demonstration of nature’s value is enough to generate obligations to protect nature.
Control Freak
Authors: Hale Benjamin
Published: September 2017

This chapter aims to explore actions more closely, specifically turning an eye to matters of intentional action. The chapter distinguishes instances of wanting from instances of willing, and drives a wedge between motivating and justificatory reasons that will be further explored in Chapter 7. It contrasts the case of the Appalachian Trail Murders with the Ives Bear Attack (from Chapter 2) to suggest that motivating reasons are primarily employed in explanatory arguments, but that justificatory reasons emerge as principles of the will.
The Voter’s Conundrum
Authors: Hale Benjamin
Published: September 2017

This chapter seeks to make sense of motivating and justificatory reasons as different sorts of answers to “why” questions. The chapter uses the related problems of overpopulation and the irrationality of voting to first, examine the tragedy of the commons; second, to explore a response to causal impotence objections; and third, to establish the right as the justified. It also distinguishes between justification as a status and justification as a process.
The Axes of Evildoers
Authors: Hale Benjamin
Published: September 2017

This chapter elaborates on earlier chapters by discussing various attitudes and orientations that interpreters of reasons may take with regard to actions and events. The chapter proposes that it is easy to think that actions should either be assessed from a third-person perspective or a first-person perspective – strategically – but it suggests instead that the second-person perspective may be a more appropriate stance from which to evaluate reasons for actions. It utilizes cases like the Two Elk fire, zombies, and the video game DOOM to distinguish between an orientation toward success and an orientation toward understanding.
The Convergence
Authors: Madary Michael
Published: September 2017

The eighth chapter considers methodological issues having to do with the main argument itself. It addresses questions about the scientific study of consciousness, recommends an approach to cognitive modelling known as symbolic dynamics, and discusses the question of representations in studying the mind.
Criticisms of Romanticism and of the End-of-the-Machine Vision
Authors: Coeckelbergh Mark
Published: September 2017

In chapter 6 objections to these material romanticisms and to the narrative about romanticism and technology are constructed. First, drawing on classic anti-romantics, the argument is constructed that romanticism leads to escapism or what I call cyber narcissism. Then a position is elaborated that criticizes the current material romanticism for not being romantic enough, for failing to reach the romantic aims. It is argued that our hyper-romanticism in the form of Web 2.0 and its social media risks to destroy its very aims. It is concluded that, seen from these perspectives, material romanticism’s promise of a synthesis of enlightenment and romanticism is not kept and there is no “end of the machine” in sight.
However, then it is argued that the criticisms discussed here may well be anti-romantic, but largely (but not completely and not always) remain within the “romantic order”. The chapter draws on Coyne’s reading of the phenomenological tradition in order to start exploring what a less dualistic and less romantic view would look like. The chapter ends with a summary of what we can nevertheless learn from the romantic tradition.
Beyond Romanticism and beyond Modernity: Toward the (Real) End of the Machine?
Authors: Coeckelbergh Mark
Published: September 2017

Chapter 7 continues the project of trying to think beyond romanticism. First the previous chapters are concluded by analysing the meaning of “end” in the “end of the machine” thesis. Then it is asked how we can move beyond the assumptions made by the mentioned criticisms, which are still trapped in the romantic dialectic and in Platonic dualism. It is argued that in any case we should become more aware of, and acknowledge, the romantic horizon. The chapter explores some ways in which we could begin to take some distance from romanticism such as the notion of skilled engagement.
The conclusion suggests that it is difficult to move beyond romanticism by means of language alone. Perhaps an exploration of a non-romantic and a non-romantic space also needs to involve exploring and experimenting with technologies. It is suggested that we try to invent and accompany the birth of the non-machine (for lack of a better word). The birth of non-machine thinking and non-machine culture would also require a different language, but such a different language can only come into being together with a different praxis and different technologies. Until then we remain romantic cyborgs.
Games-Based Culture
Authors: Miah Andy
Published: September 2017

This chapter considers the different cultures of sport, digital technology, and the Olympics. It examines why the idea of a global digital culture fails to capture the manner in which our lives are organized in digital space. It also discusses how sports cultures have begun to change and, in particular, become subservient to media change, and what this will mean for how various systems of governance develop their approach to culture. This leads to questioning what it is that makes sports experiences distinct and meaningful—in short, their social function and value—a theme that is taken up later in the book. This chapter also explores the societal justification for sports, so as to understand how digital technology challenges or responds to these interests. Finally, through analyzing Olympic culture, as the most prominent example of an ideology-driven sports-related organization, the chapter considers how the Olympic movement has become a central driver in shaping the values of sports culture and business and what it will need to do in the future to retain this place in the sports system.
Real-World Games
Authors: Miah Andy
Published: September 2017

This chapter identifies the book’s major themes, arguments, problems and possibilities, including reference to the major, pertinent philosophical notions of games and sport, integrating the seminal work of Bernard Suits and Brian Sutton-Smith. It outlines how a certain characterisation of the physical world arises within digital space, often through the design interface that mediates our experiences. Furthermore, it considers whether the design of perfect simulations in sports would make redundant off-line sport spaces. The chapter also discusses how examples of life online require us to reconsider what we acknowledge as real or meaningful in human experience and how this evaluation is contextualized within a set of ideological assumptions about the nature of virtual realities. It introduces the idea of second-wave convergence to explain how socio-technical changes within such practices as sports give rise to new evaluations of life online. Furthermore, it discusses how our nostalgia for analog lives is particularly apparent within practices like sports, which are constituted by a presumed notion of what embodied action and corporeality should entail. In pursuing this argument, it also considers how one defines embodiment and how wearable technology is challenging the view that digital identities are separable from our analog lives.
Media Change at the Olympic Games
Authors: Miah Andy
Published: September 2017

This chapter examines the history of media change at the Olympic Games. It shows how how the expansion of the mega-event media industries has led to greater exclusivism over reporting privileges. In turn, this has narrowed the lens through which reporting takes place—even if the coverage volume has increased. It also explores how the Olympic Games stimulate geo-political discussions about media change on a global scale and how this can influence wider socio-political change.
The New Olympic Media
Authors: Miah Andy
Published: September 2017

This chapter focuses on the emergence of new journalist communities at the Olympic Games, which articulate how its media community has grown. It argues that the expansion of the Olympic “fringe” journalist community results from the exclusive arrangements that surround sports reporting, but also the growing expansion of mega-events to become more like cultural festivals, which attract the interests of non-sports reporters. In so doing, the chapter charts the rise of the non-accredited media center and its strategic role for Olympic hosts, made possible by the extended means of reporting via digital technologies. While the chapter urges caution in claiming that this expansion reveals a trajectory toward greater media freedom at the Games, it does identify how media expansion is changing the way that traditional media organizations operate, provoking a democratization of media expertise and the re-professionalization of journalism.
Social Media and the Olympics
Authors: Miah Andy
Published: September 2017

This chapter focuses on how the rise of social media has transformed media events. First, it considers the characteristics of the Web 2.0 era before considerin how the Olympic industry has organized its response to this new communication architecture. Next, it explores the risks of social media to the financial base of the Games, considering how to monetize Olympic social-media content. Subsequent sections in this chapter consider the risks of open media, the expansion of the user experience by digital technology, and the parallels between open-source volunteers and the Olympic volunteer ethos. In so doing, the chapter articulates a vision for digital culture that is born out of the values of social media, as an ideological force that coheres with the Olympic vision and with a broad perspective on the potential contribution of sports in society.
The Effect of Social Media on the 2012 London Olympics
Authors: Miah Andy
Published: September 2017

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the social media activity surrounding the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games, widely discussed as the first social-media Olympics. It examines how social media platforms were instrumental in generating news content during these Games – not just distributors of the news of others - while also discussing how the organizing committee, stakeholders, and audiences contributed to generating the record breaking volume of social-media content that came out around these Games.
Citizen Journalism and Mobile Media
Authors: Miah Andy
Published: September 2017

This chapter focuses on how digital culture is re-making our understanding of citizenship by creating alternative channels of communication, activity, connection, and expression. In particular, it discusses instances of digital resistance around the Olympic Games, arguing that these antagonistic reactions are crucial components that justify the Olympic mission and a crucial means through which the Olympic idea can assert itself as a movement, rather than just a sports event. In this respect, it argues that the Olympic industries must seek to enable such expression, while also ensuring that it does not jeopardize the need for the Olympic Games to remain politically neutral.
Evidence-Based Medicine, Biological Psychiatry, and the Role of Science in Medicine
Authors: Bluhm Robyn
Published: September 2017

Both evidence-based medicine (EBM) and biological psychiatry aim to improve clinical practice by basing it more firmly on the results of scientific research. In this chapter, however, I show that the two approaches have very different views on what kinds of research will improve practice. This is because EBM is a form of medical empiricism – it focuses solely on whether treatments work, while biological psychiatry is a form of medical rationalism – it seeks to understand the causes that give rise to observed clinical outcomes. I argue that EBM’s empiricism is ultimately shortsighted and that it should integrate some of the rationalist concerns with pathophysiology. I then use this analysis to draw some lessons for research based on the NIMH’s new Research Domain Criteria.
RDoC’s Metaphysical Assumptions: Problems and Promises
Authors: Hoffman Ginger A. , Zachar Peter
Published: September 2017

Critics contend that the categories within the DSM are fueling the current crisis in psychiatry because they are not valid. As a remedy, NIMH has established RDoC, a framework of psychological and behavioral constructs that will — they believe — better guide the search for the biological mechanisms of psychopathology. Here, we assess the ability of RDoC to rescue psychiatry from its crisis, not only by 1) evaluating its promise of increased validity, but 2) recognizing that psychiatric diagnosis can have an impact on patients’ lives independent of its validity. To assess the former, we delineate possible interpretations of validity relevant to psychiatry, and argue that RDoC faces difficult challenges in achieving what is known as etiopathological validity. To assess the latter, we suggest how the very challenge RDoC faces with respect to validity may counterintuitively serve as a benefit to patients, by reducing the extent to which patients reductionistically re-shape their identities.
The Promise of Computational Psychiatry
Authors: Poland Jeffrey , Frank Michael
Published: September 2017

This chapter begins with the assumptions of the present volume that a crisis exists in psychiatric research and that research concerning mental illness has entered a period of “extraordinary science.” After clarifying certain key features of both the crisis and extraordinary science, we examine the reasons for the crisis so as to identify some major challenges facing mental illness research during this period. We identify four broad classes of challenge: ideological, methodological, clinical, and transitional. We then articulate a version of the innovative research program of computational psychiatry that introduces novel representational and methodological resources and holds promise for meeting some of the various challenges. Finally, we demonstrate this promise using some concrete examples of research in this area concerning Parkinson’s Disease and Schizophrenia.
Classification, Rating Scales, and Promoting User-Led Research
Authors: Cooper Rachel
Published: September 2017

Psychiatric research currently faces multiple crises; one is that trust in reported research findings has been eroded. Concerns that much research serves the interests of industry rather than the interests of patients have become mainstream. Such worries are not unique to psychiatry, but extend to many areas of science. One way in which such concerns can be ameliorated is via the development of more amateur/ citizen/ user-led research. I argue that promoting research conducted outside of traditional academic settings promises a range of benefits – both to the non-traditional researchers themselves and to others who want truths to be discovered. Having argued that it would be a good idea to have more user-produced research, I discuss how research by users might be facilitated or hindered by changes to the informational infrastructure of science. In particular, I discuss how different styles of classification, and rating scale, can facilitate the work of some research communities and set-back the work of others.
Six Myths about Schizophrenia: A Paradigm Well Beyond Its Use-By Date?
Authors: Bentall Richard P.
Published: September 2017

The target of this chapter is a set of six commonly held assumptions in the biomedical approach to schizophrenia, a highly regarded view in mainstream American psychiatry. A careful examination of the available research literature reveals that these widely accepted assumptions are, at best, questionable and, in many cases, refuted by empirical data. In this chapter I argue that the endurance of the biomedical schizophrenia concept in the face of mounting evidence of its inadequacy is a testament to the power that scientific paradigms hold over the minds of researchers, and of the failure of the normal process of empirical refutation that ensues.
Looking for the Self in Psychiatry: Perils and Promises of Phenomenology–Neuroscience Partnership in Schizophrenia Research
Authors: Tekin Şerife
Published: September 2017

Psychiatric research on schizophrenia is currently undergoing a period of extraordinary science, with many alternative research programs investigating the illness using different assumptions and methodologies. As the struggles the DSM-led research faces are now “more generally recognized as such by the profession,” trust in the dominant DSM-led research paradigm is shaken, and “numerous partial solutions to the problem” are made available (Kuhn 1962, 82-83). I use philosophical tools in this chapter to evaluate one of these alternative research approaches that I call “phenomenology-neuroscience partnership” (PNP). In part II, I lay out the phenomenological approach to schizophrenia that is critical of the DSM-led research. In part III, I focus on the phenomenology-neuroscience partnership (PNP) that takes this phenomenological approach as a starting point to investigate schizophrenia, and address its shortcomings. In part IV, I conclude by pointing out the strengths of the PNP and offer prescriptions for its improvement.
Methodological Lessons from Philosophical Ethics
Authors: Fedyk Mark
Published: September 2017

On the basis of the arguments in the proceeding chapters, this chapter derives three principles that should govern research in experimental moral psychology, if this research is to be both scientifically reliable and maintain its compatibility with philosophical ethics.
Inconsilience between ADJDM Moral Psychology and Philosophical Ethics
Authors: Fedyk Mark
Published: September 2017

This chapter presents events that contemporary research in moral psychology sometimes violates the principles adduced in Chapter 4. This evidence, in turn, means that the relevant research projects in moral psychology are at risk of becoming incompatible with philosophical ethics.
Hard-Question Social Theory
Authors: Fedyk Mark
Published: September 2017

An implication of the causal theory of ethics is that, sometimes, researchers in the social sciences and humanities will provide evidence that norms realized by the behaviour of certain groups of people will help to produce good outcomes for those people. This chapter provides several examples of this kind of research, which illustrates the diversity of the kinds of research that count as generating ethical insights according to the causal theory of ethics.
Conclusion
Authors: Fedyk Mark
Published: September 2017

This chapter rearticulates many of the major ideas and arguments in the proceeding chapters. But it also connects one of the primary conclusions of the book up with a debate in ethics over what the structure and form of ethical theories should look like. The proceeding chapters show that one possible form that an ethical theory can take is a loose confederacies of different models and frameworks that apply to different levels of social and psychological organization.
Why Give Away Your Wealth? An Analysis of the Billionaires’ View
Authors: Sadeh Jana , Tonin Mirco , Vlassopoulos Michael
Published: September 2017

We explore what motivates the philanthropic activity of extremely wealthy individuals and families. We focus on a recent large-scale philanthropic initiative by billionaires, the Giving Pledge, a commitment to donating half or more of one's wealth. We perform two pieces of analysis: first, we investigate what personal characteristics of billionaires are associated with becoming a pledger. Second, we undertake a textual analysis of the pledgers' letters describing their philanthropic outlook and classify their motivation into ten categories. We then correlate these motivational categories with various personal characteristics of the pledgers. The main insights obtained from our analysis is that pledgers are more likely to be self-made billionaires, and that their philanthropy is impact-driven.