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1 – 10 of 251Neuroscientists act as proxies for implied anthropomorphic signal-processing beings within the brain, Homunculi. The latter examine the arriving neuronal spike-trains to infer…
Abstract
Purpose
Neuroscientists act as proxies for implied anthropomorphic signal-processing beings within the brain, Homunculi. The latter examine the arriving neuronal spike-trains to infer internal and external states. But a Homunculus needs a brain of its own, to coordinate its capabilities – a brain that necessarily contains a Homunculus and so on indefinitely. Such infinity is impossible – and in well-cited papers, Attneave and later Dennett claim to eliminate it. How do their approaches differ and do they (in fact) obviate the Homunculi?
Design/methodology/approach
The Attneave and Dennett approaches are carefully scrutinized. To Attneave, Homunculi are effectively “decision-making” neurons that control behaviors. Attneave presumes that Homunculi, when successively nested, become successively “stupider”, limiting their numbers by diminishing their responsibilities. Dennett likewise postulates neuronal Homunculi that become “stupider” – but brain-wards, where greater sophistication might have been expected.
Findings
Attneave’s argument is Reductionist and it simply assumes-away the Homuncular infinity. Dennett’s scheme, which evidently derives from Attneave’s, ultimately involves the same mistakes. Attneave and Dennett fail, because they attempt to reduce intentionality to non-intentionality.
Research limitations/implications
Homunculus has been successively recognized over the centuries by philosophers, psychologists and (some) neuroscientists as a crucial conundrum of cognitive science. It still is.
Practical implications
Cognitive-science researchers need to recognize that Reductionist explanations of cognition may actually devolve to Homunculi, rather than eliminating them.
Originality/value
Two notable Reductionist arguments against the infinity of Homunculi are proven wrong. In their place, a non-Reductionist treatment of the mind, “Emergence”, is discussed as a means of rendering Homunculi irrelevant.
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Glenn W. Harrison and Don Ross
Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of…
Abstract
Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of behavior toward those choices might not be the ones we were all taught, and still teach, and that subjective risk perceptions might not accord with expert assessments of probabilities. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the need to jettison naive notions of revealed preferences, according to which every choice by a subject expresses her objective function, as behavioral evidence forces us to confront pervasive inconsistencies and noise in a typical individual’s choice data. A principled account of errant choice must be built into models used for identification and estimation. These challenges demand close attention to the methodological claims often used to justify policy interventions. They also require, we argue, closer attention by economists to relevant contributions from cognitive science. We propose that a quantitative application of the “intentional stance” of Dennett provides a coherent, attractive and general approach to behavioral welfare economics.
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The nature of interpretive consumer research is examined within the context of the contribution to the growth of knowledge played by the proliferation of tenaciously‐held rival…
Abstract
The nature of interpretive consumer research is examined within the context of the contribution to the growth of knowledge played by the proliferation of tenaciously‐held rival theories. Dennett’s intentional stance is contrasted with a contextual stance in which behaviour is controlled by a learning history composed of reinforcing and punishing consequences of similar behaviour previously enacted in similar circumstances. The benefits of this stance are the encouragement of counter hypotheses to intentionality, and the generation of novel data which would otherwise not be available.
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Still recently, one could read that social constructivism as a paradigm in sociology has yet generated no substantive theory of globalization (Risse, 2007). The argument was that…
Abstract
Still recently, one could read that social constructivism as a paradigm in sociology has yet generated no substantive theory of globalization (Risse, 2007). The argument was that even though social constructivism could certainly contribute to our understanding of globalization, notably by stressing the role of language and cultural norms in the organization of collective activities on a world scale, it could not satisfactorily account in its own terms for the entire phenomena under examination, due to the fact that globalization is not solely or even primarily about language and cultural norms. The exposition of such a position in the academic literature is worth mentioning, indeed even significant, if only for the reason that it occurred in a collection of essays edited by David Held and Anthony McGrew, who have done so much over the past decade to establish globalization studies as a solid research field, all at once theoretically sophisticated and empirically informed, with the publication of a long series of books on Global transformations (Held, McGrew, Golblatt, & Perraton, 1999; Held, 2004a, 2004b; Held & McGrew, 2002, 2003, 2007a, 2007b; Held & Kaya, 2007; Held & Koenig-Archibugi, 2003; see also McGrew & Lewis, 1992; Held, 1995). In spite of such credentials, the present article aims directly at challenging and overcoming this position by developing what would be the basis or the framework for a full-fledged social constructivist theory of globalization. Admittedly, this requires us to redefine globalization in a fundamental manner. Such a transformation is possible when one turns toward a new kind of social constructivism: Niklas Luhmann's radical constructivism as grounded in his systems theory (Luhmann, 2002; see also Luhmann, 1982a, 1989, 1990, 1995, 2000a, 2000b). I contend that globalization is neither a process of social change nor a historical set of forces of transformation having to do with the way human beings shape space through their collective activities; rather, globalization is one of contemporary society's self-descriptions.
While there is a huge literature devoted to information literacy (IL), much of which is devoted to course or content design and some sort of assessment. What is presented in this…
Abstract
Purpose
While there is a huge literature devoted to information literacy (IL), much of which is devoted to course or content design and some sort of assessment. What is presented in this paper is the proposition that the design of IL would benefit greatly by the infusion of the development of consciousness and conscious states. The understanding of consciousness and its place in the absorption of information, and ultimately, knowledge growth is presented.
Design/methodology/approach
Reviews of information literacy (brief) and consciousness (more extensive) are applied to the proposition that consciousness is an essential element of successful information literacy instruction. The reviews are of a critical nature.
Findings
Consciousness and its complexity are explicated to a considerable extent. While there are somewhat varied conceptions of consciousness, a relatively unified definition is suggested. The complexities of consciousness and its development render students more able to explicate the agreements and disagreements in the information landscape. In short, a developed consciousness among students makes for more critical approaches to difficult informational events. Then, the connections between IL and consciousness, which includes the awareness of informational states, conclude the paper.
Research limitations/implications
This paper offers a new mode for an inquiry into the content and structure of information literacy instruction.
Originality/value
The paper adds a heretofore unattended condition for success in information literacy for instructors and students.
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This paper aims to contribute to the formulation of a theory of consciousness based only on computational processes. In this manner, sound computational explanations of qualia and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to contribute to the formulation of a theory of consciousness based only on computational processes. In this manner, sound computational explanations of qualia and the “hard problem” of consciousness are provided in response to a lack of physical, chemical and psychological explanations.
Design/methodology/approach
The study analyses the little that can be objectively known about qualia, and proposes a process that imitates the same effects. Then it applies the process to a robot (using a thought experiment) to understand whether this would produce the same sensations as humans experience.
Findings
A computational explanation of qualia and the “hard problem” of consciousness is possible through computational processes.
Research limitations/implications
This is a proposal, subject to argumentation and proof. It is a falsifiable theory, meaning that it is possible to test or reject it, as its computational basis allows for a future implementation.
Practical implications
Subjective feeling emerges as an evolutionary by-product when there are no strong evolutionary pressures on the brain. Qualia do not involve magic. These aspects of consciousness in robots and in organisations are capable of being manufactured; one can choose whether to build robots and organisations with qualia and subjective experience.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, no other computational interpretation of these aspects of consciousness exists. However, it is compatible with the multiple draft model of Dennett (1991) and the attention schema theory of Webb and Graziano (2015).
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Looks at memetics, a new science of memes (a unit of cultural material propagated by an imitation process). Examines its origins and attempts to show its significance for the…
Abstract
Looks at memetics, a new science of memes (a unit of cultural material propagated by an imitation process). Examines its origins and attempts to show its significance for the business audience in relation to understanding customer behaviour. Concludes that memetics is still in its infancy and, because of this, it still has philosophical and methodological issues that need to be addressed before it can be considered to be a new paradigm for understanding customer behaviour.
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In this chapter, I analyze the notion of corporate responsibility from the person-centric perspective. I offer a four-dimensional exposition in terms of which I examine the…
Abstract
In this chapter, I analyze the notion of corporate responsibility from the person-centric perspective. I offer a four-dimensional exposition in terms of which I examine the corporate moral personhood view. These four dimensions are explained and critiqued to arrive at a definition of moral responsibility and status appropriate to corporations. I suggest that a corporation cannot be construed as a person in the sense in which individuals are persons. Since a corporation cannot be an independently existing entity, it cannot have an independent moral personality of its own as individual persons have. Therefore, I argue that a reasonable construal of corporate moral personhood has to exploit a different point of view altogether. With this difference of standpoint, I develop what is called the institutional personhood view. I argue that corporations do acquire a sort of collective institutional moral personality.
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In the Transcendental Aesthetic part of the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant stated the a priori necessity of the singularity of space that, “we can represent to ourselves…
Abstract
In the Transcendental Aesthetic part of the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant stated the a priori necessity of the singularity of space that, “we can represent to ourselves only one space; and if we speak of diverse spaces, we mean thereby only parts of one and the same space … these parts cannot precede the one all‐embracing space … they can be thought only as in it”. If correct, Kant places a tight bound around the universe we consciously inhabit. Established arguments against Kant’s claims are reviewed and criticised based on the notion of dream spaces, before outlining the novel hypothesis that the widespread use of cyberspace and large scale multi‐user virtual realities illustrate public spaces beyond physical reality, and as such provide an empirical refutation of the a priori necessity of the singularity of space.
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Like brands memes earn their own value (Csikszentmihályi, 1993), which we describe as meme value derived from brand equity theory (Aaker, 1996; Keller, 2003). This meme value is…
Abstract
Purpose
Like brands memes earn their own value (Csikszentmihályi, 1993), which we describe as meme value derived from brand equity theory (Aaker, 1996; Keller, 2003). This meme value is rather temporary that may quickly escalate and suddenly drop, therefore its circumstances of appearance and subsistence are to be further investigated. The purpose of this study is to uncover underlying factors of internet meme value. Internet meme value comprises of length of subsistence, number of contributions, number of variations, areas of applicability, ability to convey messages, quality of creativity.
Methodology/approach
We recorded 95 respondents’ narratives about 125 different memes, altogether 281 memes (2013 spring), and further 47 respondents’ narratives (2014 autumn). Recorded narratives reflect these dimensions.
Findings
Our exploratory research showed that internet memes would become successful – exist, spread and vary – if their central thought is clear and is applicable in a variety of contexts. Furthermore, meme value could be enriched by humorous content (Shifman & Thelwall, 2009) societal questions, emotionally involving situations, and potential for self-expression.
Originality/value
Based on our results we extend the internet meme value concept with a meteorite metaphor that explains the speed, scope, impact of internet memes. We use the notions of astronomy Meteoroid, Meteor (shooting star), Fireball, Meteorite, Comet and suggest a future classification of internet memes that could be: MEMEoroid, MEMEor, MEMEball, MEMEorite, CoMEMEt.
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