bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Confirmation Bias, Cognitive Dissonance, and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Miller Monica K. , Cabell Jean J.
Published: December 2023

The psychological principle of confirmation bias suggests that people intentionally avoid information and sources that challenge their viewpoints while seeking information and sources that support their viewpoints. When they cannot escape disconfirming information, it causes cognitive dissonance: an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting thoughts, behaviors, or actions. This discomfort can be reduced in many ways. For instance, people who wanted to go out with friends during the COVID-19 pandemic despite stay-home orders might consciously or unconsciously avoid (or discount) sources that recommended against their preferences (e.g., expert medical sources) and seek out (and believe) sources that support their viewpoints (e.g., through selecting similar-minded friends). They might also forget or misremember that stay-home orders apply to private parties, not just public gatherings. They could also justify their behavior, for instance: “I feel healthy, and it is important to visit my grandma.” This chapter discusses how these psychology principles might affect pandemic-related behavior. Lessons learned and future research ideas are offered.
How Will Collective-Level Dynamics Influence the Spread of COVID-19?
Authors: Kitayama Shinobu
Published: December 2023

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has overwhelmed all of entire humanity. Even though a virus—a biological agent composed of DNA—causes the infectious disease, the virus’s behavior is nearly entirely contingent on human behavior. Hence, we must bring together the theories and evidence of social and behavioral sciences to understand how the virus spreads. This chapter analyzes three collective-level dynamics: (a) pluralistic ignorance (which induces complacency); (b) ego-centric motivations (which lead to depletion of collective-level resource); and (c) individualistic cultural ethos (which is related to both loose social norms and more frequent contacts with distant others). In combination, these three collective-level processes contribute powerfully to the spread of infectious diseases, including COVID-19. The chapter concludes with a discussion of evidence-based policy recommendations and a plea for basic research anchored in the urgent practical issues of society.
Trust in the Medical Profession
Authors: Emler A. Christine , Bornstein Brian H.
Published: December 2023

In this chapter, a practicing physician/hospital administrator and social scientist reflect on the phenomenon of trust in the medical profession through two intersecting lenses: the theoretical and empirical literature on trust in institutions and the unique circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter begins with an application of general principles of trust in institutions to the “normal” healthcare context. Then the chapter draws on the experiences of healthcare providers, healthcare administrators, and laypeople during the pandemic to discuss the ways in which the healthcare context during the pandemic has been distinctly abnormal. Lessons learned during the pandemic are reviewed, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of next steps—both practical (i.e., how to build and repair trust) and empirical (i.e., needed research).
The Collective Trauma and Chronic Stress of COVID-19
Authors: Rose Garfin Dana , Estes Kayley D.
Published: December 2023

Direct exposure (e.g., loss of life, personal illness); media-based exposure; secondary stressors (e.g., job loss, reduced wages); and mitigation efforts (e.g., social distancing) associated with COVID-19 have led to a public mental health crisis. A number of types of losses (e.g., self, purpose, experiences, and normalcy) have contributed to negative outcomes for many people. Common risk factors include younger age, type of exposure, gender, minority status, and pre-COVID-19 physical and mental health problems. Yet individual factors and emerging resources (e.g., telehealth online self-care apps) have the potential to increase resilience and recovery for individuals grappling with the psychological effects of COVID-19-related distress (collective resilience is discussed in Chapter 21 of this volume). Because long-term effects of COVID-19 are likely, longitudinal, rigorous, population-based research is necessary to understand responses over time. Lessons learned for health officials and future research ideas are offered.
The COVID-19 Pandemic as a Trauma Trigger
Authors: Jeftić Alma , Sasao Toshiaki
Published: December 2023

The connection between war trauma reminders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms has been widely discussed in psychological literature. Situated in postconflict areas, these studies explored how reminders of previous conflict (e.g., loud sounds, demolished buildings, electricity cut) influence experiences of survivors in their everyday activities. However, none of these studies explored the impact of trauma reminders on experiences of war survivors during crisis situations. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of recent study that aims to examine how government measures of curfew and lockdown influenced people who survived the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and to analyze if the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a trauma reminder for that population. As expected, societies affected by war are more vulnerable to a new crisis, and previously traumatized people can experience worsening PTSD symptoms and higher levels of perceived stress. This chapter discusses further how war trauma reminders and PTSD might affect experiences during the pandemic and what can be done in order to prevent retraumatization. Lessons learned and future research ideas are offered.
A Failure of Fear
Authors: Gelfand Michele J. , Pan Xinyue , Landry Alex
Published: December 2023

This chapter discusses cultural liabilities during COVID-19, with a specific focus on the strength of social norms, or tightness-looseness, and COVID-19 health outcomes. Cultures that are “tight” tend to have strict social norms and strict penalties for deviance (e.g., China, Japan) compared to “loose” (e.g., United States, Brazil) cultures with permissive behavior and weak social norms. Research in both modern societies and nonindustrial groups illustrated that, when groups experience a collective threat, they tend to develop stricter rules to coordinate to survive. But did all cultures tighten during COVID-19? The chapter reviews field data collected across 57 countries during 2020, along with computational models and other behavioral studies, that illustrate the liabilities of looseness during COVID-19, which can be referred to as a cultural evolutionary mismatch. Evolutionary mismatches occur when traits that are adaptive in one environment become a liability when the environment changes. We discuss how the “threat” signal that typically facilitates tightening during threat can be obstructed, particularly in loose cultures, and the implications of this for global variation in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Ways to prevent these global health disparities in future pandemics are discussed.
Can COVID-19 Help Save the World?
Authors: Wójcik Adrian D. , Cypryańska Marzena
Published: December 2023

This chapter focuses on the challenges and opportunities for climate change mitigation that arise from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Economic and business experts agree that the current crisis provides a unique opportunity for a large-scale green transformation. In order to restart the economy in a more progressive and green manner, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of group behavior and how social crises disrupt habitual (and often unsustainable) behaviors. How the present pandemic crisis influences individual lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs, and needs will play important roles in future green transformation. This chapter relies on principles from conservation psychology to explain (1) how social crises transform everyday behaviors, needs, and beliefs about the future; (2) how changes in everyday behaviors can be affected by social context (e.g., social norms); (3) the ways such social changes can be used to promote a more sustainable future; and (4) the mechanisms that contribute to sustaining individual behavioral changes (e.g., ecological identity, collective action). Future research ideas are offered.
From Threats to Defenses
Authors: Willardt Robin , Jutzi Chiara A. , Schmid Petra C. , Jonas Eva
Published: December 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a multidimensional and complex event. Hence, it can easily seem overwhelming to conduct empirical and theory-driven research on the psychological phenomena associated with the pandemic. Building on the general process model of threat and defense (GPMTD), we suggest that many of these phenomena can be explained through psychological threats such as a lack of control, uncertainty, and mortality salience unearthed by the pandemic. The GPMTD allows testing the general role of these threats implicated in COVID-19 as well their potential interplay and differences in causing psychological phenomena associated with the pandemic. Doing so requires researchers to test effects between a variety of threat-related, mediating, and dependent variables, which is why we recommend structural equation modeling (SEM) to serve as the statistical tool of choice. After explaining the suitability and application of SEM for investigating global and individual threat effects of COVID-19, the chapter closes with suggestions and recommendations for future research to map and disentangle COVID-19’s threats and the psychological phenomena they cause.
Moving Past the Pandemic
Authors: Miller Monica K.
Published: December 2023

This chapter discusses a variety of ways in which social science played a part in the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic had an undeniable effect on nearly every aspect of life, which resulted in social scientists studying relevant behaviors, beliefs, and events. Moreover, social psychological theories have provided a helpful foundation for such study and analysis. The chapter explores the themes of experiences of resilience and positivity, trust in authorities like health care providers and government leaders, and future directions for research and policy. It also details how the pandemic affected the physical well-being of those who contracted the virus, their families, societies, and economics.
Status and Social Media
Authors: Boy John D. , Uitermark Justus
Published: December 2023

This chapter rethinks social media through Instagram. Whereas many theorists have conceptualized social media as sites for exchanging opinions, we view social media as stages for status displays. Arguing that Norbert Elias’s classic analysis of the court society offers a more productive theoretical model than Jürgen Habermas’s influential notion of the public sphere, we conceive of social media as stratified systems of rank in which users put themselves on display and monitor others. As social media are woven into the fabric of everyday life, they generalize the status competition that Alice Marwick identified as a defining feature of social media.
Integration and Conformity
Authors: Boy John D. , Uitermark Justus
Published: December 2023

Do social media promote polarization and segregation? This chapter addresses this question through a computational analysis of more than seven hundred thousand Instagram posts from Amsterdam. We locate Instagram users in social media networks, and we also examine their position within the city. While we find some evidence that users form clusters, what stands out is that Instagram networks are tightly integrated. Supplementing our computational analysis with interviews and observations, we show that some places benefit from increased visibility and go to great lengths to invite it, while for others Instagram-powered integration can be an existential risk. There may be tendencies toward polarization, even on Instagram, but there are also powerful pressures toward conformity that render countercultures precarious.
Administrative Tools of Harm
Authors: Bonnes Stephanie
Published: December 2023

In this chapter the author examines the centrality of bureaucracy in servicewomen’s harassment experiences. This chapter explains how military policies addressing harassment and assault in themselves are not sufficient to combat the issue and shows how the femmephobic and hyper-masculine culture of the military seeps into the military’s administrative polices. “Bureaucratic harassment” is defined as the purposeful manipulation of legitimate administrative policies and procedures, perpetrated by individuals who hold institutional power over others, to undermine colleagues’ professional experiences and careers. The tactics used to accomplish bureaucratic harassment are explained, as well as how it is used to achieve sexual and racial harassment or to prevent reporting of sexual violence. This form of harassment can be used to limit individual women and women as groups and is enabled by military features such as discretion, power, and hierarchy interacting with gendered workplace assumptions. Bureaucratic harassment can also be used to continue the effects of banned policies like excluding women from combat. It also renders ineffective the policies designed to help victims of sexual harm. Finally, the policies themselves are used as tools of harassment and ostracization.
The Need for Cultural and Contextual Change
Authors: Bonnes Stephanie
Published: December 2023

This final chapter provides an overview of the arguments in the book and shows how the femmephobic and hyper-masculine military culture creates and sustains sexual violence vulnerability for servicewomen. The author argues that policies at the organizational level will not be effective at combating sexual violence because misogyny adapts to these policies. Changes that can be made to combat sexual violence vulnerability at the interactional level are discussed. According to the author, the military should infuse messages of sexual safety into its training, values, and goals, which will encourage servicemembers to protect one another from sexual harm in interaction. Pervasive sexual harassment and assault constitute a difficult, arduous environment for servicewomen.
Introduction
Authors: Glennon Michael J.
Published: December 2023

This chapter describes Oliver Wendell Holmes’s arrival in Concord in 1865 to visit Ralph Waldo Emerson, a family friend and prominent intellectual. Holmes had been badly wounded in the Civil War and had just been mustered out of the Union army. He had earlier been quite taken with Emerson’s philosophy of transcendentalism, a social-political movement which taught that truth is universal and absolute. Holmes came to doubt this, however, and to believe that absolute certainty leads to the sort of bloodletting he had just survived. His skepticism led later, as a justice of the Supreme Court, to his proposing the marketplace of ideas as a justification for protecting speech. The chapter then lays out more fully the three parts of the book to come. The first describes how Holmes moved from moral absolutism to a pragmatist respect for the free exchange of ideas. The second part describes how that concept is reflected in three distinctive realms of First Amendment law: advocacy of law violation, hate speech, and disinformation. And the third suggests that the Amendment’s accepted scope must be broadened to vindicate that vision.
Prophet and Disciple
Authors: Glennon Michael J.
Published: December 2023

This brief chapter describes the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalism on the young Oliver Wendell Holmes. It describes Emerson’s early career and fervid opposition to slavery and support for John Brown. It recounts how Holmes’s early writings as a Harvard student mirrored Emerson’s essays. Emerson’s influence appeared to impel Holmes to drop out of Harvard to enlist in the Union Army—carrying with him Emerson’s cherished autograph.
“Negro Spiritual”
Authors: Olwage Grant
Published: December 2023

Chapter 2 interrogates the dominant discursive formation of Robeson as Black subject in his singing of spirituals in the 1920s, tackling the much-debated musicological trope of authenticity, and showing how Robeson’s voice in its first public soundings was structured by race in different ways. Robeson’s singing is situated in a network of voices (including Black popular vocal practices) and the discussion rooted in sound: in Robeson’s practice, but also in that of Robeson’s model the tenor Roland Hayes and his accompanist Lawrence Brown. The chapter considers recital programming, singing voices, and the practices of written and performative arranging of Black folk song as concert music. What the varied fantasies about Robeson’s singing of spirituals show is that already in the early years of his concert career Robeson’s voice challenged racial identity, aesthetics, and song practices.
Natural Acts, or To Sing Simply
Authors: Olwage Grant
Published: December 2023

The third chapter considers the singer as subject of criticism, as reported in the pages of the contemporary popular press in the 1920s and 1930s, exploring how the idea of “nature” was deployed in Robeson’s reception. Nature is one of the most potent signs by which the racial subject has been constructed, but the chapter shows how Robeson’s natural singing was an aesthetic choice, a consciously worked-on style of singing, plurally fashioned through Robeson’s classical training and his remembrance and practice of Black folk and popular musics. The chapter “dissects” Robeson’s voice, presenting an anatomy of his singing through close listening and computational analysis of the sonic matter of his voice. In doing so it highlights the materiality of the voice and singing as an embodied act.
Glad We Met
Authors: Rogelberg Steven G.
Published: December 2023

There are an estimated 200–500 million 1:1 meetings held each day around the world. Glad we Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings brings new and strategic insight to help us maximize the potential of these crucial conversations. 1:1s are arguably one of the most critical meeting types for the success of team members, managers, coaches, teams, and organizations. The best managers recognize that 1:1s are not an add-on to their role as a manager, conducting 1:1s successfully ARE foundational to being a manager. At the same time, these meetings fundamentally influence a direct report’s experience at work, including how they engage and attach to their role, perceive the effectiveness of their manager, and envision their future at the organization. Topics covered include: Why effective 1:1s are critical to your success and the success of your team; Messaging and positioning 1:1s for maximum value; Finding the correct 1:1 cadence and meeting length to maximize positive impact without over-meeting; Managing the intricate balance of productivity-building, relationship-building, and employee development; Designing 1:1s with intentionality, from where to conduct the meeting to building agendas to optimize effectiveness; Acting as leader coach and leveraging key skills around facilitation, listening, and feedback-giving; How to personalize your 1:1 approach to fit you and your direct reports—one size does not fit all.
Won’t Team Members Be Fearful of 1:1s?
Authors: Rogelberg Steven G.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 2 highlights the importance of excellent communication and framing when implementing a new 1:1 initiative. Without adequate communication, team members will make assumptions that can lead to misinformation and unjustified anxiety, and angst. Since messages can get distorted when transmitted informally from person to person, communicating directly with team members is key before scheduling 1:1s to ensure the “whys” and “hows” are clear. The chapter also covers how to respond to common questions from team members, such as how optional a meeting is and the expectations regarding the meeting. It notes that managers must encourage their directs to ask questions.
How Should I Schedule 1:1s—Same Day, Clustered, or Spread Out?
Authors: Rogelberg Steven G.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 4 discusses how to schedule 1:1 meetings. It looks into research on flow state being associated with feelings of productivity, satisfaction, and happiness at work and high-quality work. Meanwhile, a lack of flow state experiences was often related to negative outcomes. Thus, meetings can be scheduled in a manner that works to maximize the chances of a flow state and also decrease interruptions. The chapter highlights the advantages and disadvantages of clustering or scattering meetings during a work day. It also considers how to cancel 1:1 meetings properly, citing that the meeting must be rescheduled near the original date as soon as possible.
Did the 1:1 Work?
Authors: Rogelberg Steven G.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 13 focuses on strategies for figuring out the effectiveness of your 1:1 meetings. First, it is important to recognize that our personal general impressions of the 1:1s we lead may be skewed to the overly positive side. Strategies are shared to garner a more accurate sense of 1:1 effectiveness. This includes focusing on specific behaviors done or not done. Most substantively, strategies for gaining feedback from directs are discussed. The chapter then highlights how various lagging indicators could help see the long-term success of 1:1 meetings and their effectiveness.
I Am Drowning in Meetings. What Do I Do?
Authors: Rogelberg Steven G.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 15 offers advice on streamlining and improving the time in meetings in general to ease any new burden associated with implementing 1:1 meetings with team members. The strategies shared start with what a leader can do in their team to create new norms around when to meet and not meet, who to invite and not invite, and how long the meetings should be. Next, a discussion of pre-meeting, during-the-meeting, and post-meeting tactics are shared designed to increase effectiveness. Finally, it considers a variety of tactics organizations use to reduce the overall number of meetings they have, such as including meeting metrics on engagement surveys. All the approaches together are designed to reduce wasted time, thus allowing for a reinvestment of time in 1:1s.
Final Thoughts—It’s About Values
Authors: Rogelberg Steven G.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 16 highlights how 1:1 meetings embody values. It then looks into how 1:1 meetings serve as a key mechanism for enacting aspirational values and organizational values. The meetings are a critical way to support people, demonstrate leadership abilities, and improve key outcomes for the team and organization. The chapter elaborates that 1:1 meetings are a critical investment in people as it promotes critical outcomes, such as engagement, performance, and retention. It also considers the value statements from well-known organizations to showcase the clear connections of 1:1s as a vehicle to express values.
Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence
Authors: Wilbourne Emily
Published: December 2023

Grounded in new archival research documenting a significant presence of foreign and racially marked individuals in Medici Florence, this book argues for the relevance of such individuals to the history of Western music and for the importance of sound—particularly musical and vocal sound—to systems of racial and ethnic difference. Many of the individuals discussed in these pages were subject to enslavement or conditions of unfree labor; some labored at tasks that were explicitly musical or theatrical, while all intersected with sound and with practices of listening that afforded full personhood only to particular categories of people. Integrating historical detail alongside contemporary performances and musical conventions, this book makes the forceful claim that operatic musical techniques were—from their very inception—imbricated with racialized differences. Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence offers both a macro and a micro approach to its content. The first half of the volume draws upon a wide range of archival, theatrical, and historical sources to articulate the theoretical interdependence of razza (“race”), voice, and music in early modern Italy; the second half focuses on the life and work of a specific, racially marked individual: the enslaved Black male soprano singer Giovannino Buonaccorsi (fl. 1651–1674). Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence reframes the place of racial difference in Western art music and provides a compelling prehistory to later racial formulations of the sonic.
Intermezzo Primo
Authors: Wilbourne Emily
Published: December 2023

This “intermezzo” section takes a moment away from the central thesis of the book, moving the focus from Florence but remaining in the seventeenth century. Taking the proceeding arguments and case studies from earlier chapters into consideration, the intermezzo reflects on the Venetian singer-composer-courtesan Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677). Her unusual education and career have never been entirely explained by feminist (or non-feminist) scholars of music. Here it is argued that her mother was likely an enslaved domestic servant from eastern Europe, and the extant primary sources are read in a new light. The process sheds light on the imbrication of gender with other social markers, such as race and class.
Buonaccorsi as a Black Gypsy
Authors: Wilbourne Emily
Published: December 2023

A close reading is provided of the role of Moretta, a Black gypsy character played by Giovannino Buonaccorsi in the 1659 opera Il pazzo per forza (libretto by Gio: Andrea Moniglia, music by Jacopo Melani). This rather stereotypical representation of a female gypsy character is contrasted with the gypsy character featured in Buonaccorsi’s surviving poem, “Il sogno di Giovannino Moro.” The stark differences in role, register, and linguistic competence are seen as a moment in which Buonaccorsi’s agency and authorial voice can perhaps be perceived, while the stereotypical aspects of the theatrical character consolidate an understanding of how Black skin was linked to recurring theatrical tropes.
Intermezzo Secondo
Authors: Wilbourne Emily
Published: December 2023

Based on the preceding six chapters about Giovannino Buonaccorsi, this “intermezzo” section reinterprets the painting Three Musicians of the Medici Court (ca. 1685) by Anton Domenico Gabbiani. Besides the figures of the three musicians, the portrait includes an unnamed Black child who is holding a parrot. Citing archival sources that link parrots to the practice of singing “Maggio” (a spring ritual), the section argues that the conflation of seasonal (almost pagan) celebrations, rustic (unpolished) music making, people of the lower classes, and the imitative natural noises of the exotic bird coheres with the ways in which Black musical sounds were understood within the Medici court.
Four Ways of Hearing Video Game Music
Authors: Kamp Michiel
Published: December 2023

Four Ways of Hearing Video Game Music offers a phenomenological approach to characterize music in video games, drawing on earlier phenomenologies of music as well as studies of music listening in a variety of disciplines such as aesthetics and ecological psychology. The central point of departure is the possibility of multiple ways of hearing the same piece of music: background, aesthetic, ludic, and semiotic hearing. As a background, music is not attended to at all, but can still be described in terms of moods, atmospheres, affordances, or equipment. Aesthetic hearing is a reflective attitude that invites hermeneutic interpretation; ludic hearing on the other hand invites ‘playing along’ to the music, either through embodied movement, or in response to the music’s cinematic or theatrical connotations. Finally, in semiotic hearing we hear music as transparent symbols or signals that that provide information about the state of a game. The four categories are illustrated and investigated through detailed case studies of video games from a variety of eras and genres, building on autoethnographic accounts and gameplay recordings.
Introduction
Authors: Kamp Michiel
Published: December 2023

The introduction to this book starts with a case study of the game Hades to illustrate the idiosyncrasies of hearing video game music. Listening to game music is then contrasted with composition and implementation in terms of Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s ‘poiesis’ and ‘aesthesis’ and Michel de Certeau’s ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics,’ before deriving four categories of hearing from the work of Milena Droumeva and theorists of ubiquitous listening. It presents the idea of significance as the central issue all four ways of hearing deal with. The second half of the introduction presents phenomenology as the book’s main approach. Returning at various points to the case study of Hades, it introduces the reader to the phenomenological method and its various incarnations and connections to the study of music.
Background Music
Authors: Kamp Michiel
Published: December 2023

The first chapter of the book considers the idea that video game music can often be in the background of players’ perceptions. Through a central case study of music in a match of StarCraft, it approaches background music phenomenologically in several ways: first as a ground in gestalt psychology, then as a mood or atmosphere, as an affordance in James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology, and finally in terms of Martin Heidegger’s idea of ‘equipment.’ Of central concern is the problem of the experience of music that goes ‘unheard’ and the friction between third-person psychological approaches to listening and first-person approaches like phenomenology.
Ludic Music
Authors: Kamp Michiel
Published: December 2023

The third chapter of the book contrasts a more dynamic, interactive ludic hearing with the more static, reflective aesthetic hearing. Building on the work of game music scholars Isabella van Elferen, William Cheng, Kiri Miller, and Julianne Grasso, on the one hand, and on Carolyn Abbate’s ‘drastic’ critique of musical hermeneutics on the other, it asks what it is like to experience oneself as playing along to video game music. The chapter proposes a number of case studies to consider the variety of phenomena that are involved in ludic hearing—Proteus and the question of entrainment, Journey and embodiment or ‘inward dancing,’ representations of synaesthesia and glee as an affect in rhythm games like Rez—before concluding with a consideration of ludic affects beyond glee.
Conclusion
Authors: Kamp Michiel
Published: December 2023

The book’s conclusion returns to the introduction’s case study of Hades, this time viewed through the lens of the four categories of hearing discussed in Chapters 1–4. After reviewing the context and possible relevance of these categories for contemporary video game music scholarship, the conclusion discusses the potential for other ways of hearing by way of three examples. First there is the case of hearing something as ‘bad music’, which is compared to earlier case studies in the book. Then there is the issue of hearing an ‘author’ behind a video game soundtrack in light of controversy. Finally, the idiosyncrasies of hearing ‘voice’ in video game music are discussed.
From Deep Learning to Rational Machines
Authors: Buckner Cameron J.
Published: December 2023

This book provides a framework for thinking about foundational philosophical questions surrounding machine learning as an approach to artificial intelligence. Specifically, it links recent breakthroughs in deep learning to classical empiricist philosophy of mind. In recent assessments of deep learning’s current capabilities and future potential, prominent scientists have cited historical figures from the perennial philosophical debate between nativism and empiricism, which primarily concerns the origins of abstract knowledge. These empiricists were generally faculty psychologists; that is, they argued that the active engagement of general psychological faculties—such as perception, memory, imagination, attention, and empathy—enables rational agents to extract abstract knowledge from sensory experience. This book explains a number of recent attempts to model roles attributed to these faculties in deep-neural-network–based artificial agents by appeal to the faculty psychology of philosophers such as Aristotle, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), John Locke, David Hume, William James, and Sophie de Grouchy. It illustrates the utility of this interdisciplinary connection by showing how it can provide benefits to both philosophy and computer science: computer scientists can continue to mine the history of philosophy for ideas and aspirational targets to find the way to create more robust rational artificial agents, and philosophers can see how some of the historical empiricists’ most ambitious speculations can be realized in specific computational systems.
Memory
Authors: Buckner Cameron J.
Published: December 2023

This chapter focuses on the views of the Ibn Sina (Avicenna) on memory. Like other empiricists since Aristotle, Ibn Sina held that memory plays a critical role in human abstraction. In particular, Ibn Sina emphasized the role of affect in allowing memory to influence rational decision-making, by allowing agents to recognize non-perceptible consequences of actions for instrumental choice. The chapter ties Ibn Sina’s ideas about memory to successful models in deep learning that make use of deep reinforcement learning, such as DeepMind’s Episodic Controller architecture, which can play Atari games at superhuman levels of performance. It also reviews classic ideas about the role of memory-simulating modules in neural network architectures, such as the need to overcome catastrophic interference.
Attention
Authors: Buckner Cameron J.
Published: December 2023

This chapter reviews William James’s theory of attention. It explores the diversity of roles and functions that have been ascribed to attention by cognitive psychology, and it argues that James’s theory has the best chance of explaining how a single faculty could play all of these roles. The chapter explains how James’s view fits particularly well with predictive approaches which are on the ascendancy in machine learning. It explains how a mechanism called “self-attention” operates in transformer architectures, which have demonstrated so much success on language processing tasks such as automated translation, document summary, and the creation of human-like essays and articles. It also makes a case that attention will need to play an important role in modeling cognitive control in order to regulate and coordinate the operations of the other faculties.
Sounds of Effort
Authors: Beaudoin Richard
Published: December 2023

Chapter 4 analyzes effortful vocalizations as music. Invoking Schusterman’s somaesthetics, the connection is made between sounded effort in music and sounds that can occur during sex. A classification of sounded effort is divided into climactic and intimate exertions. The first group is illustrated via Nézet-Séguin’s exultant holler at a formal apotheosis in music by Tchaikovsky, Casals’s tense moaning during a climactic cadence in music by Schumann, and Say’s “grunt lead” while recording music by Liszt. The category of subtle vocalizing is illustrated when Chase records Lim, Grimaud records Beethoven, and Kissin records Schubert. An extreme case of unwritten music is provided by Valdettaro’s thoroughgoing growl while recording music by Kodály. Solti’s moans define phrase boundaries in a recording of music by Mahler. Field’s “archive of absence” provokes an extended meditation on the role of grunts in the case of Joyce Hatto.
Form and Generation in Aristotle
Authors: Whiting Jennifer
Published: December 2023

The chapter argues against the common view that Aristotle recognizes for each infima species in the category of substance a single form, common to each and every member of the species, in favor of the view that each member of a biological species has its own numerically distinct form—namely, its soul. The main claim is that Aristotle goes this way because he thinks intrinsic unities of form and matter, neither of which can exist apart from the other, are required to account (in a way pre-Socratic theories could not) for the common-sense distinction between generation (and destruction) simpliciter and the accidental forms of change (in quality, quantity, and location) that existing substances undergo. If there is only species-form, then a species-form’s coming (or ceasing) to be in embodied in some matter is simply an alteration of that matter, not the generation (or destruction) of an individual substance.
Metasubstance
Authors: Whiting Jennifer
Published: December 2023

The chapter examines two works concerned with Aristotle’s conception of substance, especially in his Metaphysics. One is a new text of Metaphysics VII, prepared and presented with German translation and commentary by Michael Frede and Günther Patzig; the other, Substance, Form, and Psychê by Montgomery Furth, situates the Metaphysics’ conception of substance in a broader context, from pre-Socratic thinkers through Aristotle’s Categories to his biological works. The chapter endorses Frede-Patzig’s view (contra Furth) that Aristotle is committed to the existence of “individual” forms, each peculiar to the individual substance to which it belongs, but rejects Frede-Patzig’s “nominalist” reading of Metaphysics VII as dropping the Categories’ commitment to “secondary substances.” It floats the possibility that Aristotle combines a realist account of biological kinds (whose existence is mind-independent and determined by facts about reproduction) with a conceptualist account of universals (whose actual existence is mind-dependent: they are “in a way” in the soul).
Introduction
Authors: Zayas Luis H.
Published: December 2023

The Introduction sets the stage for the chapters that follow. Locking up immigrant families became the norm in 2014 under the Obama administration and continued, with more cruelty, during the Trump administration. The federal government had previously put mothers, fathers, and children in immigration prisons, or “baby jails” as many called them. But 2014 ushered in the most extensive and longest-running era of family detention. Official reports and news stories told of the abject suffering of so many asylum-seeking mothers and children. The book tells the stories of the thousands of immigrant families that came in search of safety, security, and a future for their children. The literary tradition of conveying the stories of detained, interned, and jailed people who committed no crimes is a long and important one. The words and stories of mothers and children casts light on the harsh treatment by a government bent on convincing immigrants to leave and deterring others from coming. The policies failed. Migrants kept coming.
Hiding Boys in Therapeutic Detention
Authors: Zayas Luis H.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 6 ends Part I of the book and reveals the little-known episode of how a Trump-appointed director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement changed its mission and operations by insisting that all decisions about the release of children from detention be made personally by him. The chapter details how an unlikely lawyer, known only for his anti-abortion crusade and shallow legal acumen, subverted standards for child welfare. The chapter is based on a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union to end practices that kept young boys in detention in a therapeutic facility in New York State for extraordinarily lengthy periods without any justification. Through an examination of numerous mental health records compiled on the boys, this chapter shows the impact on their preexisting mental health conditions and the behavioral changes created by detention. Several cases are highlighted demonstrating the negative impact of “therapeutic detention.”
Stages of Central American Immigration
Authors: Zayas Luis H.
Published: December 2023

Based onclinical experience, extant research, and study data, Chapter 8 advances a framework made up of four stages for understanding the migration process. The first stage is pre-migration, when families face forces that endanger them and their children and force them to flee their countries. The second stage, the mid-migration journey, mostly through Mexico, is fraught with hunger, violence, and pain and the toll that the trek exacts of their bodies and minds. The third stage is detention, which includes the cold rooms, cages, and jails; the cruel behavior of guards; and the deprivation and threats they face inside. The fourth stage, post-detention, is made up of the settlement into life in the United States and the psychological adjustment to a new life.
Stress, Trauma, and Children’s Development
Authors: Zayas Luis H.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 9 presents the social, emotional, behavioral, and neurobiological impacts of the stresses and traumas inherent in migration across treacherous conditions. The chapter demonstrates how the child’s brain is wired under conditions of extreme stress and trauma and the long-term outcomes known to occur to individuals who have faced extraordinary adversity in early life. The concept of sensitive developmental periods is introduced and discussed. The chapter is filled with illustrations of children’s odd behaviors, separation anxiety, nightmares and night terrors, fugue states, and other psychological reactions. The author includes a message to clinicians and researchers about the importance of distinguishing between stress and trauma because for diagnosis and treatments precision is essential.
I Need to Tell My Story, Too
Authors: Zayas Luis H.
Published: December 2023

The first of a series of chapters focused on case illustrations, Chapter 10 shows how important storytelling is in the process of healing. In some families, one member seemed to be the heroic figure—whether a child or a parent. In other families, each member played a role in survival. What would these experiences do to children’s and parents’ mental health? The chapter presents the story of Jorge, a 9-year-old boy, and his mother, Mariela, and what they experienced in their migration. Their story, like many others, illuminates the importance of a parent’s confidence in helping their child overcome the odds of migration.
Sleepless Under the Bridge in El Paso
Authors: Zayas Luis H.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 11 is the story of a mother and two sons who traversed Mexico without incident and suffered under the Paso del Norte Bridge in El Paso, Texas. Without adequate facilities, detainees were held during brutally hot days and freezing temperatures at night, verified by newspaper accounts and first-hand observation by a local journalist. Under the bridge, 3,500 people were psychologically and verbally abused by guards, starved, and denied basic sanitary products, all the while birds roosting overhead defecated on the desperate people. It reveals just one example of not just the unreadiness of US immigration enforcement to handle people but the intentional cruelty that it inflicts on them. An ordeal told through the eyes of a 34-year-old mother and her 13-year-old son, it demonstrates, through the son’s subsequent debilitating depression, how stresses and traumas may appear long after release from detention.
A Mother’s Doubt, a Child’s Hunger*
Authors: Zayas Luis H.
Published: December 2023

An 8-year-old girl in Chapter 12, Valeria, demonstrates her strengths in overcoming obstacles that paralyze her mother, María Fernanda, with fear and doubt while her father, Javier, ekes out survival in small towns in Mexico after leaving Honduras. Expecting safety and security in the hands of US immigration authorities, the family is detained and separated. The girl, always hungry, pulls her family along through detention and into a new life in Texas. Their mid-migration journey illustrates the family dynamics and the mother’s faltering mental health. The chapter demonstrates how migration and detention disrupt family systems, parent–child dynamics, and repair.
Sufrir, Sufrimiento, and Hallucinating the Invisible Killer Girl
Authors: Zayas Luis H.
Published: December 2023

As told through several vignettes, Chapter 13 illustrates the varied psychological effects of migration, detention, separation, threats, and physical suffering on both children and parents. Children, adolescents, and parents reported nightmares, night terrors, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, overeating or undereating, and cases of psychotic episodes (in one case, a boy had hallucinations of an invisible killer girl). Migrant children are varied and may bring intellectual and cognitive limitations and other disabilities that predated the migration but which are no less affected. The accumulation of stress and trauma can be damaging, but solid coping skills, grit, and resilience can offer a balance.
“Attacking” Big Data
Authors: Corn Gary P. , Talbot Jensen Eric
Published: December 2023

When it comes to U.S. national security, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) represents a threat to America’s technological predominance. The race to develop AI has become a central front in strategic competition, with China firmly committed to becoming the leading AI power by 2030. And by some estimations, it has the resources, talent, and ambition to achieve its goal in the next decade if current trends do not change. The United States strategy for winning this competition rightly emphasizes measures to foster innovation and enhance U.S. capability, capacity, and leadership—measures such as sustained investment in the research and development (R&D) of these technologies. But R&D alone may not be enough. The United States may need to take affirmative steps to impede China’s ability to develop AI for purposes that threaten U.S. national security. Such measures might include cyber-enabled sabotage to offset China’s competitive advantage of access to big datasets critical to developing AI. This chapter explores the international legal implications of conducting offensive counter-AI operations in and through cyberspace, such as data poisoning or other modes cyber sabotage. While sabotage is not prohibited or regulated as such in international law, there are several international laws and principles relevant to assessing the legality of engaging in preventive actions of cyber sabotage such as the prohibitions on the use of force and coercive intervention. However, depending on a number of variables, carefully crafted counter-AI cyber operations might not implicate these rules and would not otherwise be barred by international law.