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1
Aslak, Helles©ıy, and Carter Jacquelyn, eds. The cucumber book: Behaviour-driven development for testers and developers. Dallas: Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2012.
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2
Chelimsky, David. The RSpec book: Behaviour-driven development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends. Lewisville, Tex: Pragmatic, 2010.
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3
Roberts, Robert A. Application of behavior change theory to the development of an enhanced California negligent operator treatment and evaluation system. [Sacramento, CA]: California Dept. of Motor Vehicles, 2002.
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4
Novice drivers' risk- and self-evaluations: Use of questionnaires in traffic psychological research, method of development, general trends in four sample materials, and connections with behavior. Turku: Turun yliopisto, 1998.
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5
Hellesoy, Aslak, Matt Wynne, and Steve Tooke. Cucumber Book: Behaviour-Driven Development for Testers and Developers. Pragmatic Programmers, LLC, The, 2017.
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6
The RSpec Book: Behaviour-Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends. The Pragmatic Programmers, 2010.
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7
Hellesoy, Aslak, Matt Wynne, and Seb Rose. The Cucumber for Java Book: Behaviour-Driven Development for Testers and Developers. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2015.
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8
Amodeo, Enrique. Learning Behavior-driven Development with JavaScript. Packt Publishing - ebooks Account, 2015.
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9
Mishra, Abhishek. iOS Code Testing: Test-Driven Development and Behavior-Driven Development with Swift. Apress, 2017.
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10
Test-Driven Infrastructure with Chef: Bring Behavior-Driven Development to Infrastructure as Code. O'Reilly Media, 2013.
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11
Richard, Lawrence, and Paul Rayner. Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber: Better Collaboration for Better Software. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2019.
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12
Copeland, Jeffrey P., Arild Landa, Kimberly Heinemeyer, Keith B. Aubry, Jiska van Dijk, Roel May, Jens Persson, John Squires, and Richard Yates. Social ethology of the wolverine. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198759805.003.0018.
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Social behaviour in solitary carnivores has long been an active area of investigation but for many species remains largely founded in conjecture compared to our understanding of sociality in group-living species. The social organization of the wolverine has, until now, received little attention beyond its portrayal as a typical mustelid social system. In this chapter the authors compile observations of social interactions from multiple wolverine field studies, which are integrated into an ecological framework. An ethological model for the wolverine is proposed that reveals an intricate social organization, which is driven by variable resource availability within extremely large territories and supports social behaviour that underpins offspring development.
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BDD in Action: Behavior-driven development for the whole software lifecycle. Manning Publications, 2014.
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14
Harter, Susan. Developmental and Prosocial Dimensions of Hypo-egoic Phenomena. Edited by Kirk Warren Brown and Mark R. Leary. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328079.013.6.
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This chapter provides a developmental perspective on phenomena that involve a hypo-egoic perspective—such as perspective taking, prosocial behavior, empathy, true-self behavior, and self-coherence—with a focus on whether hypo-egoic processes that have been described in adult populations also exist in childhood and adolescence. The chapter examines the extent to which children and adolescents have the cognitive skills to engage in various hypo-egoic behaviors and explores the motives that might underlie hypo-egoic phenomena at different developmental levels. Along the way, the development of skills and motives that promote self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing tendencies, such as egocentrism and narcissism, are also discussed. The role of cognitive-developmental changes, socially driven developmental transitions, developmentally salient needs, and individual differences in parenting and socialization practices on hypo-egoic perspectives and behaviors are also examined.
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Taylor, Sylvester, Paul R. Yost, Cynthia D. McCauley, and D. Scott Derue. Experience-Driven Leader Development: Models, Tools, Best Practices, and Advice for on-The-Job Development. Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, John, 2013.
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Taylor, Sylvester, Paul R. Yost, Cynthia D. McCauley, and D. Scott Derue. Experience-Driven Leader Development: Models, Tools, Best Practices, and Advice for on-The-Job Development. Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, John, 2013.
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17
Wyatt, Tristram D. Animal Behaviour: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198712152.001.0001.
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How animals behave is crucial to their survival and reproduction. Animal Behaviour: A Very Short Introduction discusses how animal behaviour has evolved, how behaviours develop in each individual (considering the interplay of genes, epigenetics, and experience), how we can understand animal societies, and how we can explain collective behaviour such as swirling flocks of starlings. The application of new molecular tools, such as DNA fingerprinting and genomics, and developments in computing and image analysis are causing a revolution in the study of animal behaviour. Combining these methods with field studies, it looks at mammals, butterflies, honeybees, fish, and birds, analysing what drives behaviour, and exploring instinct, learning, and culture.
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Rao, Koneru Ramakrishna. Gandhi's Dharma. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199477548.001.0001.
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When asked about his message to the world, the Mahatma famously said, ‘My life is my message.’ In him there was no room for contradiction between thought and action. His life in its totality is a series of experiments to convert dharma, moral principles, into karma, practices in action. Gandhi believed that development is a dialectical process stemming from the antinomy of two aspects latent within every individual—the brute and the divine. While the former represents instinct-driven behaviour, the latter is one’s true self, which is altruistic. Gandhi described this process in different fields, most of which are relevant even today. Gandhi’s Dharma is an overview of Mahatma Gandhi—his person, philosophy, and practices. The author asserts that the basic principles governing Gandhi’s thoughts—satya, ahimsa, and sarvodaya—are not relics of the past. Nor are his thoughts an obsolete list of rules. Gandhi’s ideas are dynamic principles perpetually in the making, perfectly adaptable to contemporary life.
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Sugden, David A., and Helen C. Soucie. Motor development. Oxford University Press, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199232482.003.0014.
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This chapter examines motor development from a number of perspectives. The first two sections overview a description followed by possible explanations of motor development. These sections are predicated on the assumption that two major questions permeate motor development: the first question asks what happens during development, describing and analysing the changes that occur; the second, a more difficult question, examines the possible explanations as to what are the mechanisms that are driving these changes. A third section provides an overview of recent work in the area of infant and early childhood development utilizing concepts from dynamic systems theory and ecological psychology. A fourth part examines two relatively recent ideas from early childhood and motor development. The first one promotes the idea of embodied cognition where a child’s physical, social, and linguistic interaction with the environment may be the root of flexible intelligent behaviour. The second one looks at the way in which some development is atypical, through an examination of precursors in early infancy being possible predictors for later problems. Finally, an example of atypical development is illustrated through a description of the condition known as developmental coordination disorder.
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King, Roy D. A Comparison of British and American Policies for Managing Dangerous Prisoners. Edited by John Wooldredge and Paula Smith. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199948154.013.18.
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This essay traces the development of policies regarding difficult and dangerous prisoners in Britain and the United States from the 1960s to the present day. In essence policies about dangerous prisoners in the Unites States have been driven primarily by concerns about bad behaviors inside prisons control problems whereas in Britain the driving force has been fears about escapes security risks. Although control problems and security risks can and do sometimes overlap, it is argued that the two issues can be analyzed separately and have different solutions. Failure to distinguish clearly between security and control issues has bedeviled policies in both countries, sometimes seriously undermining the legitimacy of the system concerned, and led to misunderstandings on both sides of the Atlantic. The essay is organized in three chronological periods in the hope that moving the discussion between the two countries will better bring out the similarities and differences.
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Ellison, Nicole B., and Danah M. Boyd. Sociality Through Social Network Sites. Edited by William H. Dutton. Oxford University Press, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199589074.013.0008.
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This chapter reports authoritative insights into one of the most significant developments related to social interaction – social network sites – and offers an analytic framework for exploring these new sites, while underscoring the centrality of social interaction since the Internet's earliest days, such as through email. Social network sites (SNSs) presented several characteristics that made it possible for individuals to easily update their profiles. The implicit role of communication and information sharing has become the driving motivator for participation. The concept of ‘Web 2.0’ was an industry-driven phenomenon, hyped by the news media and by business analysts alike. Social network sites emerged out of the Web 2.0 and social media phenomena, mixing new technologies and older computer-mediated communication practices infused by tech industry ideals. Server-level data offer a unique opportunity to access elaborated behavioural data about what people are doing on SNSs.
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Schickler, Eric, and Ruth Bloch Rubin. Congress and American Political Development. Edited by Richard Valelly, Suzanne Mettler, and Robert Lieberman. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697915.013.27.
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While early works in American political development (APD) incorporated congressional actors in accounts of state-building, policymaking, and social reform, there is a growing body of historically oriented scholarship that places the institution of Congress front and center. We highlight three major streams of contemporary congressional research that engage with APD. The first analyzes the development of congressional institutions, often drawing upon concepts of path dependence and layering to understand the presence or absence of change in legislative operations. Second, several important studies of state-building and policy development highlight the role of congressional actors in driving—or blocking—critical political and social reforms. Finally, new datasets that track congressional elections and roll call voting over long time spans have given rise to a growing literature that uses historical evidence to test contemporary theories of legislative behavior. We close with a discussion of the contributions and pitfalls of using historical evidence in this way.
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Hanson, Clare. Genetics and the Literary Imagination. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198813286.001.0001.
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This book explores the impact of genetic and postgenomic science on British literary fiction over the last four decades, focusing on the challenge posed to novelists by gene-centric neo-Darwinism and examining the recent rapprochement between postgenomic perspectives and literary understandings of human nature. It assesses the rise to cultural prominence of neo-Darwinism in the form of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, thought styles which were predicated on scientific reductionism and genetic determinism. It explores the ways in which the fiction of Doris Lessing, A.S. Byatt, and Ian McEwan critiques neo-Darwinism but also registers the extent to which these writers are persuaded by the neo-Darwinian view of human behaviour as driven by genetic self-interest. It goes on to consider the ‘new biology’ that emerged around the turn of the millennium, as gene-centrism was displaced by a more dynamic and holistic view of the development and function of living organisms. It reads the work of Eva Hoffman, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Drabble, and Jackie Kay as converging with this shift in which the organism is reconfigured as agentic and self-organizing but caught up in complex co-dependencies with other organisms. The archetypal postgenomic science of epigenetics is crucial in facilitating this change, disclosing the ways in which the genome is constantly modified in response to environmental cues and sponsoring a view of identity in terms of plasticity and mutability, a view more congenial to many writers than the concept of genetic predetermination.
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Kronenberger, William G., and David B. Pisoni. Neurocognitive Functioning in Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190880545.003.0016.
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Cochlear implantation restores some attributes of hearing and spoken language to prelingually deaf children. However, reduced access to auditory and spoken-language experiences for children with cochlear implants can alter the development of downstream neurocognitive functions such as sequential processing and self-regulatory language skills, which are critical building blocks for executive functioning. Executive functioning is the active regulation of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional processes in the service of planned, organized, controlled, goal-driven behavior. This chapter presents findings from two primary lines of research on the development of executive functioning in prelingually deaf, early implanted children with cochlear implants. The first is identification of specific executive function domains that are at risk for delay in children with cochlear implants compared to hearing children. The second is reciprocal influences of executive function and spoken-language skills throughout development in children and adolescents with cochlear implants.
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Reuben, Julia, and Daniel S. Shaw. Parental Depression and the Development of Coercion in Early Childhood. Edited by Thomas J. Dishion and James Snyder. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199324552.013.7.
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One of the driving theories of the development of child antisocial behavior is Patterson’s model of parent-child coercion. Although Patterson hypothesized that coercive processes are established beginning in early childhood, few studies have sought to understand its developmental precursors in early childhood. Even fewer studies have attempted to examine factors that might compromise parenting quality and lead to coercive parent-child interactions during early childhood. One factor repeatedly shown to compromise parenting quality is parental depression. As such, this chapter focuses on how depression among mothers and alternative caregivers, including fathers, is associated with the early onset of coercive family dynamics. The results of the current study have implications for understanding the genesis of coercive processes and for the design of early prevention programs, affirming the importance of including maternal depression in our prevention models.
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Andersson, Jenny. The Future as Social Technology. Prediction and the Rise of Futurology. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198814337.003.0005.
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Chapter 5 examines the experiments at RAND with a new future science, a “general theory of the future” capable of explaining human behavior and developments in the world system. The chapter also proposes that futurology was ultimately a failure, as forms of prediction encountered criticism and led to a discussion within RAND about the epistemological limits of prediction. As RAND researchers came to the conclusion that prediction was logically and empirically impossible, they shifted their interest from predicting actual future developments, to prediction as a “social technology”—a means of actively intervening into the future and shape desirable developments. The chapter zeroes in on the so called Delphi technology, the purpose of which was to conduct an expert driven reflection on a possible wide array of social futures, produce judgments on desirable and undesirable futures, and choose the optimal future.
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Fagan, Abigail A., J. David Hawkins, David P. Farrington, and Richard F. Catalano. Communities that Care. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190299217.001.0001.
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Evidence-based, prevention-oriented, and community-driven approaches are advocated to improve public health and reduce youth behavior problems, but there are few effective models for doing so. This book advances knowledge about this topic by describing the conditions and actions necessary for effective community-based prevention. The chapters review the ways in which communities can promote readiness to engage in prevention among local stakeholders; build and maintain diverse, well-functioning prevention coalitions; conduct local needs and resource assessments; collectively decide on prevention priorities; select evidence-based interventions that are a good fit with prioritized community needs, resources, and context; and implement evidence-based interventions (EBIs) with fidelity and sustain them over time. The Communities That Care (CTC) prevention system is described in detail to illustrate effective community-based prevention. CTC is a coalition-based prevention system shown to promote healthy youth development and reduce youth behavior problems community wide. It does so by assisting communities to: (1) increase awareness of and support for EBIs; (2) encourage positive interactions between community residents and youth; (3) conduct local needs assessments and collectively decide on priorities to target with EBIs; (4) implement EBIs that are matched to prioritized needs; and (5) ensure that EBIs are coordinated across community organizations, implemented with fidelity, widely disseminated, and evaluated. The book describes the development and evaluation of the CTC system, including how its developers used community-based participatory research to ensure that CTC could be feasibly implemented and employed rigorous research methods to assess the degree to which use of the system reduced adolescent behavior problems.
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Hemmelgarn, Anthony L., and Charles Glisson. Improvement-directed versus Status Quo-directed Human Service Organizations. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190455286.003.0011.
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This chapter explains that members of improvement-directed organizations are never satisfied with the status quo and never stop looking for more effective ways to serve their clients. The principle addresses the conflicting priority represented by individuals in formal organizations resisting change and clinging to established protocols, regardless of whether the existing protocols promote improvements in the well-being of clients. The chapter describes improvement-directed organizations, including their application of continuous improvement processes, norms that support ongoing improvement, and behaviors that drive innovation and ongoing growth and development. The chapter presents research evidence and case studies to illustrate how systems and processes, decisions, actions, and behaviors, as well as assumptions and beliefs, need to be addressed to create improvement-directed organizations. Specific case examples illustrate ARC’s application to build improvement-directed organizations.
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Dowling, Michael, and Brian Lucey. The Future of Behavioral Finance. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190269999.003.0030.
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The future of behavioral finance necessitates that the research areas of behavioral corporate finance and investor psychology develop richer models of financial decision-making behavior. Behavioral corporate finance requires expanding the focus from chief executive officer characteristics to those of the entire top management team, and also involves greater understanding of organizational theory. A greater focus is needed on cross-cultural factors and how they interact with behavioral influences. Investor psychology needs a more comprehensive theory of the drivers of investor behavior and better data. This need is strong for investor sentiment research, which might offer the most potential to advance understanding of psychological influences on asset pricing. The chapter expands on these ideas and discusses an overall context of the future philosophical development of behavioral finance and the inevitable push for greater openness, replicability, and reliability in research.
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Callaghan, Brendan. Contributions from Psychology. Edited by Adrian Thatcher. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199664153.013.29.
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This chapter presents first a survey of some of the insights that have emerged from a number of theoretical approaches to psychological exploration, and situates them in their respective psychological traditions. This survey then serves as a resource for reflections on ‘what theologians need to know’ if theological work is to be grounded in a dialogue with what psychology has to offer.Key observations include: the pervasiveness of sexuality in human experience (with ‘sexuality’ understood in its widest scope); the fundamentally relational (rather than biological) nature of sexual drive and motivation; the essentially developmental nature of human sexuality; and the great variety of experience and behaviour. It is proposed that theology can benefit from the descriptive work available, even if some of the interpretative and explanatory approaches do not sit easily with classic Christian understandings.
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LeRoux, Kelly M. Local Bureaucracy. Edited by Donald P. Haider-Markel. Oxford University Press, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579679.013.020.
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Local bureaucracy is the administrative apparatus of local political jurisdictions that exists for the primary purposes of carrying out state and federal policy objectives and for planning and providing local public services. The goals of local bureaucratic actors, and thus the organizational behavior of local bureaucracies, are often driven by considerations of improving efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness in local service delivery. In principal, these goals are held to be equally important by professional public managers, yet the complex and diverse demands of the local electorate combined with the increasingly networked context of local bureaucracy dictate that public managers will confront tradeoffs in the pursuit of these objectives. This chapter examines evidence and debates related to the three key themes of efficiency, responsiveness, and effectiveness in the local bureaucracy literature. In summarizing the state of knowledge in local bureaucracy research related to these three themes, this chapter highlights a number of unanswered questions and promising theoretical developments that might serve to guide future research.
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Majumdar, Sumit K. India’s Growth Story. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199641994.003.0004.
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The chapter assesses economic structure and India’s detailed growth patterns. Economic growth is a three-stage process, with the agriculture sector, manufacturing sector, and the services sector following on in development. India has leapfrogged over sequences. India’s transition from agriculture to services, with industry’s share cursory, is a conundrum. In the first part of the 1950s, India grew well, based on the creation of a national industrial development system. In the 1960s and 1970s institutional mechanisms changed the environment negatively and led to growth decline. From the late 1970s, a pragmatic Bombay can-do spirit led to key policy initiatives and high growth in the 1980s. The early 1990s’ crisis motivated institutional disruption. A philosophy of discontinuity, driving crucial competition policy reforms, led to high growth till the late 2010s, when predatory and collusive behavior delegitimized institutional processes, leading to growth slowdown and the emergence of deindustrialization.
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Hemmelgarn, Anthony L., and Charles Glisson. Improving Organizational Social Contexts for Effective Human Services. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190455286.003.0001.
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Emphasizing five basic points, this chapter summarizes what the authors have learned in their development of evidence-based organizational strategies. First, human service organizations vary in their social contexts, and those differences affect the way services are provided. Second, the social contexts of human services can be changed with organizational strategies, and those changes can improve service quality and outcomes. Third, organizational social contexts are essential for innovation because they reflect the power of social systems to promote changes in individual behavior. Fourth, organizational research illustrates that social contexts affect the implementation of best practices to improve effectiveness. Fifth, strategies for improving an organization’s capacity for innovation build upon a century of work on improving organizational effectiveness that has direct implications for human services. This chapter introduces the ARC strategies that include: (1) key organizational principles, (2) organizational components that drive innovation, and (3) mental models to support improvement efforts.
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Miller, Bruce L. Frontotemporal Dementia. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780195380491.001.0001.
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Frontotemporal Dementia provides an in-depth look at the history, various types, genetics, neuropathology and psychosocial aspects of one of the most common but least understood causes of dementia, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, from one of the world's leading centers for the study of dementia. Aided by the latest research in diagnosis, mechanism and treatment, this resource captures the rich and quickly changing landscape of a devastating neurodegenerative disease, and offers up-to-date clinical advice for patient care. Frontotemporal dementia, in particular, raises psychological and philosophical questions about the nature of self, free will, emotion, art and behavior - important topics for practitioners and families to appreciate as they care for the sufferer. It includes case studies, photographs and figures from the leaders in the field and personal communication from the researchers driving these developments.
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Doolin, Bill. Implementing E-Health. Edited by Ewan Ferlie, Kathleen Montgomery, and Anne Reff Pedersen. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198705109.013.19.
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The application of information and communication technology to support health care organization, management, and delivery is high on the health policy agenda in many countries, and its implementation has become a significant issue. Despite optimistic expectations and increasing investment in e-health, the anticipated benefits are often elusive. This chapter reviews the factors driving the development of e-health before introducing a conceptualization of e-health focused on the management and use of health care information at the point of care, between health care providers and, ultimately, by health care consumers. The chapter then explores a range of issues that render e-health implementation problematic. In particular, implementing e-health is both a complex and emergent process that requires consideration of local health care contexts, and a socio-technical problem involving changes in work processes, interactions, and behaviors.
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Dubber, Markus D., Frank Pasquale, and Sunit Das, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190067397.001.0001.
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This book explores the intertwining domains of artificial intelligence (AI) and ethics—two highly divergent fields which at first seem to have nothing to do with one another. AI is a collection of computational methods for studying human knowledge, learning, and behavior, including by building agents able to know, learn, and behave. Ethics is a body of human knowledge—far from completely understood—that helps agents (humans today, but perhaps eventually robots and other AIs) decide how they and others should behave. Despite these differences, however, the rapid development in AI technology today has led to a growing number of ethical issues in a multitude of fields, ranging from disciplines as far-reaching as international human rights law to issues as intimate as personal identity and sexuality. In fact, the number and variety of topics in this volume illustrate the width, diversity of content, and at times exasperating vagueness of the boundaries of “AI Ethics” as a domain of inquiry. Within this discourse, the book points to the capacity of sociotechnical systems that utilize data-driven algorithms to classify, to make decisions, and to control complex systems. Given the wide-reaching and often intimate impact these AI systems have on daily human lives, this volume attempts to address the increasingly complicated relations between humanity and artificial intelligence. It considers not only how humanity must conduct themselves toward AI but also how AI must behave toward humanity.
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Lascurettes, Kyle M. Orders of Exclusion. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190068547.001.0001.
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When and why do powerful countries seek to enact major changes to international order, the broad set of rules that guide behavior in world politics? This question is particularly important today given the Trump administration’s clear disregard for the reigning liberal international order in the United States. Across the globe, there is also uncertainty over what China might seek to replace that order with as it continues to amass power and influence. Together, these developments mean that what motivates great powers to shape and change order will remain at the forefront of debates over the future of world politics. Prior studies have focused on how the origins of international orders have been consensus-driven and inclusive. By contrast, this book argues that the propelling motivation for great power order building at important historical junctures has typically been exclusionary, centered around combatting other actors rather than cooperatively engaging with them. Dominant powers pursue fundamental changes to order when they perceive a major new threat on the horizon. Moreover, they do so for the purpose of targeting this perceived threat, be it another powerful state or a foreboding ideological movement. The goal of foundational rule writing in international relations, then, is blocking that threatening entity from amassing further influence, a motive Lascurettes illustrates at work across more than three hundred years of history. Far from falling outside of the bounds of traditional statecraft, order building is the continuation of power politics by other means.
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Butz, Martin V., and Esther F. Kutter. How the Mind Comes into Being. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739692.001.0001.
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For more than 2000 years Greek philosophers have thought about the puzzling introspectively assessed dichotomy between our physical bodies and our seemingly non-physical minds. How is it that we can think highly abstract thoughts, seemingly fully detached from actual, physical reality? Despite the obvious interactions between mind and body (we get tired, we are hungry, we stay up late despite being tired, etc.), until today it remains puzzling how our mind controls our body, and vice versa, how our body shapes our mind. Despite a big movement towards embodied cognitive science over the last 20 years or so, introductory books with a functional and computational perspective on how human thought and language capabilities may actually have come about – and are coming about over and over again – are missing. This book fills that gap. Starting with a historical background on traditional cognitive science and resulting fundamental challenges that have not been resolved, embodied cognitive science is introduced and its implications for how human minds have come and continue to come into being are detailed. In particular, the book shows that evolution has produced biological bodies that provide “morphologically intelligent” structures, which foster the development of suitable behavioral and cognitive capabilities. While these capabilities can be modified and optimized given positive and negative reward as feedback, to reach abstract cognitive capabilities, evolution has furthermore produced particular anticipatory control-oriented mechanisms, which cause the development of particular types of predictive encodings, modularizations, and abstractions. Coupled with an embodied motivational system, versatile, goal-directed, self-motivated behavior, learning becomes possible. These lines of thought are introduced and detailed from interdisciplinary, evolutionary, ontogenetic, reinforcement learning, and anticipatory predictive encoding perspectives in the first part of the book. A short excursus then provides an introduction to neuroscience, including general knowledge about brain anatomy, and basic neural and brain functionality, as well as the main research methodologies. With reference to this knowledge, the subsequent chapters then focus on how the human brain manages to develop abstract thought and language. Sensory systems, motor systems, and their predictive, control-oriented interactions are detailed from a functional and computational perspective. Bayesian information processing is introduced along these lines as are generative models. Moreover, it is shown how particular modularizations can develop. When control and attention come into play, these structures develop also dependent on the available motor capabilities. Vice versa, the development of more versatile motor capabilities depends on structural development. Event-oriented abstractions enable conceptualizations and behavioral compositions, paving the path towards abstract thought and language. Also evolutionary drives towards social interactions play a crucial role. Based on the developing sensorimotor- and socially-grounded structures, the human mind becomes language ready. The development of language in each human child then further facilitates the self-motivated generation of abstract, compositional, highly flexible thought about the present, past, and future, as well as about others. In conclusion, the book gives an overview over how the human mind comes into being – sketching out a developmental pathway towards the mastery of abstract and reflective thought, while detailing the critical body and neural functionalities, and computational mechanisms, which enable this development.
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Felde, Andrea Kronstad, Tor Halvorsen, Anja Myrtveit, and Reidar Øygard. Democracy and the Discourse on Relevance Within the Academic Profession at Makerere University. African Minds, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.47622/9781928502272.
Full textAbstract:
Democracy and the Discourse of Relevanceis set against the backdrop of the spread of neoliberal ideas and reforms since the 1980s, accepting also that these ideas are rooted in a longer history. It focuses on how neoliberalism has worked to transform the university sector and the academic profession. In particular, it examines how understandings of, and control over, what constitutes relevant knowledge have changed. Taken as a whole, these changes have sought to reorient universities and academics towards economic development in various ways. This includes the installation of strategies for how institutions and academics achieve recognition and status within the academy, the privatisation of educational services and the downgrading of the value of public higher education, as well as a steady shift away from the public funding for universities. Research universities are increasingly adopting a user- and market-oriented model, with an emphasis on meeting corporate demands, the privileging of short-term research, and a strong tendency to view utility, and the potential to sell intellectual property for profit, as primary criteria for determining the relevance of academic knowledge. The privatisation of education services and the reorienting of universities towards the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’ have largely succeeded in transforming the discourse around the role of the academic profession in society, including in many African countries. Makerere University in Uganda has often been lauded as an example of successful transformation along neoliberal lines. However, our research into the working lives of academics at Makerere revealed a very different picture. Far from epitomising the allegedly positive outcomes of neoliberal reform, academics and postgraduate students interviewed at Makerere provide worrying insights into the undermining of a vibrant and independent academic culture. The stories of the ordinary academics on the ground, the empirical focus of the book, are in contrast to the claimed successes of the university; and the official stories of the university leadership and administration paint a picture of an academic profession in crisis. With diminishing influence on deciding what is relevant knowledge and thus on processes of democratization of their own institution and society, academic freedom is also losing its value. This perspective from the ground-level exposes the many problems that neoliberal reforms have created for academics at Makerere, leaving them feeling disempowered, often reducing them to the status of consultants. We also show how a range of local initiatives are steadily increasing resistance to the neoliberal model. We consider how academics and others can further mobilise to regain control over what knowledge is considered relevant, and thereby deepen democracy. In so doing, we aim to highlight some responses and actions that have proven effective so far. Democracy and the Discourse of Relevancewill hopefully help to change the systems that value knowledge in ways that are driving research institutions towards competitive and market-like behaviour. We also aim to contribute to contemporary debates about what knowledge is relevant.