Readings Round-Up #5

Philosophy

Language Log » Subjects
“The police use of subject is missing from the OED entry, suggesting that it’s either American or recent or both. Curiously, the use of subject in general reports of human research is also missing, except for this curious residue of late-19th-century cultural preoccupations [...]”

The Splintered Mind: What Is an Illusion, Exactly?
“Due to (what we now know as) the laws of the refraction of light, the oar typically, in some sense, “looks bent” as it angles into the water. But one might argue (does John Austin argue this?) that that bent appearance is not really an illusion: If one knows enough about the world, one should know that an oar partly submerged in water (seen from a particular viewing angle) should look bent just like that. If it looked straight, I suppose, a longtime oarsman or a person very familiar with the laws of refraction might think the oar looked strange, might even think that it looked like an oar that is actually bent (bent in such a way as to exactly compensate for the bend a straight oar would seem to have at that angle). Perhaps part of what it is for an oar to look straight is for it to also (in a different sense) “look bent” when it is partly submerged in water. (This formulation is indebted to Alva Noe’s “dual aspect” view of perspectival appearance.)”

A Sort Of Abyss « Je Est Un Autre
“George Bataille on that Continental/Analytic split.”

Review: Pauliina Remes, Plotinus on Self: The Philosophy of the ‘We’ - Bryn Mawr Classical Review: 2009.01.06
“During the last thirty years of scholarship considerable attention has been paid to Plotinus’ theory of the self. The first complete monograph derives from G. O. Daly’s influential study Plotinus’ Philosophy of the Self (published in 1973) and, so far, a considerable number of studies have been published on Plotinus’ conception of selfhood, with more recently the work of Richard Sorabji Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life and Death (Oxford, 2006). Remes’ book aims to offer a new, complete and multi-angled study on Plotinus’ philosophy of the self ‘not just for students and scholars of Neoplatonism but also for readers interested in self and/or ancient philosophy in general, but who may be unacquainted with the subtleties of the heavy metaphysics of Plotinus’ (p. 18).”

Badiou and Correlationism « Larval Subjects .
“I’m a bit behind the curve on this, but unbeknownst to me a number of recent posts have been written jumping in on the critiques of Badiou’s ontology by Graham and me. Over at Complete Lies, Michael develops a critique of Badiou on the grounds of onto-ontology. Stellar Cartographies weighs in making its own points. Reid over at Planomenology has two excellent posts developing a critique of Badiou’s account of the event.”

Possible Positions on the Passage of Time - Soul Physics
Clever, illustrated examples of different theories of time.

Leaving room « An und für sich
“One often hears complaints that someone doesn’t “leave room” for something — most often freedom or mystery. I would contend that one should not consciously “leave room” for either. If freedom is really free, it brings its own room with it, and if there really is some irreducible mystery, its mysteriousness can take care of itself. Indeed, pushing as far as possible in the realm of the necessary or intelligible — that is, not “leaving” some predetermined “room” for freedom or mystery — seems to me to be precisely the way to trace the contours of these elusive realities.”

‘Out of Our Heads,’ by Alva Noë
“Alva Noë, a philosopher at UC Berkeley, argues that consciousness remains a mystery because we’ve been looking in the wrong place. In his provocative and lucid new book, Noë writes that scientists have been so eager to locate the mind in the brain that they’ve neglected to consider the possibility that our mind might not be inside our head.”

Modern Materialism: Darwin was wrong?
“This past Wednesday witnessed a debate between Rutgers’ own Jerry Fodor and Philip Kitcher on the merits of the theory of evolution by natural selection. What was unusual about this debate, as compared to others on the same topic, was that neither participant was anti-science, anti-reason, or pro-God. However, Jerry holds the iconoclastic (for a materialist) view that “the theory of evolution by natural selection is either false or vacuous, depending on how you read it.” Them, as they say, is fightin’ words.”

The New Atlantis » Why Minds Are Not Like Computers
“People who believe that the mind can be replicated on a computer tend to explain the mind in terms of a computer. When theorizing about the mind, especially to outsiders but also to one another, defenders of artificial intelligence (AI) often rely on computational concepts. They regularly describe the mind and brain as the “software and hardware” of thinking, the mind as a “pattern” and the brain as a “substrate,” senses as “inputs” and behaviors as “outputs,” neurons as “processing units” and synapses as “circuitry,” to give just a few common examples.”

Biology and Philosophy - Synthesizing insight: artificial life as thought experimentation in biology
“Next, I review three well-known accounts of thought experiments, and then offer my own synthesized account, to make the argument that s-Alife functions as thought experimentation in biology.”

New Media

Next-Gen Sex Gets Its Jollies From Web 2.0
“That’s a lesson I learned a few months ago, after writing that porn is scrambling to catch up with Web 2.0, not driving it.”

Thoughts on the “New Media” (Updated) — Small Wars Journal Blog
“Andrew Exum’s post / review of Tom Ricks’ The Gamble several weeks ago at Abu Muqawama got me thinking (once again) about the impact of the “new media” on issues concerning national security, military doctrine and concept development, as well as lessons learned.”

Museum lovers’ social networking | BBC News
“A group of the UK’s most famous museums, including the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, is creating a collective website. As well as finding information about exhibits, museum lovers can use the website to create communities based on their historic and creative interests.”

Government ‘Twittercrat’ to be paid more than Lord Chancellor - Telegraph
“The Director of Digital Engagement role requires the successful candidate to develop strategies to communicate with people on popular internet sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter. The Senior Civil Service position has a starting salary of £120,000 plus 30 days annual holiday but could rise to £160,000 - more than the Chief Whip, Cabinet Minister and Lord Chancellor get before allowances.”

Researchers Want to Add Touch, Taste and Smell to Virtual Reality | Wired Science from Wired.com
“Now, a group of British researchers want to round out the experience with virtual touch, taste and smell. To simulate the real world, they argue, all five of your senses must be stimulated. Toward that end, they’ve mocked up a “Virtual Cocoon” with a separate glove that — at least in theory — could tickle your tongue as it, uh, nukes your nose.”

Dreaming Cyborg Dreams: Virtual Identity and Religious Experience | ReligionDispatches
“In this essay, I look at four types of immersive new media that address the issue of religious identity: Waco Resurrection, a religiously-inspired first-person shooter, Noah’s Ark, a religious online reality show; Roma Victor, a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, and religious experiences in the online world of Second Life.”

Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds - Carnegie Council
“Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Joshua S. Fouts and Rita J. King will present findings from their Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project. After a year of exploring digital Islamic communities, Fouts and King conclude that engaging with people in virtual worlds who self-identify as Muslim can be part of a broader public diplomacy strategy to foster inclusive perspectives on religion, society, and coexistence.”

Tim Knowles - Vehicle Motion Drawings | Serial Consign
“Last week Victor Brunetti posted some tantalizing imagery to his blog as part of a brief blurb on the Vehicle Motion Drawings of Tim Knowles. Knowles is an artist based in London with a penchant for creating generative systems to record motion and mark the passage of time. He’s worked with the postal service, balloons, insect flight paths and the movement of trees to create unique process pieces that sit slightly left of centre to what we might conventionally refer to as drawing machines.”

BPS Research Digest: Txtng associated wiv superior reading skills
“The growing use of mobile phones to send text messages, often with abbreviations and symbols (i.e. “textisms”), has been blamed by many for the alleged decline in correct English usage. But now Beverly Plester and colleagues have shown that young children who use more textisms also tend to be better readers.”

Virtual Ability | Metanomics - Business and Policy in the Metaverse
“When you can be any avatar, why wear a wheelchair? As Gentle Heron, Alice Krueger has quietly helped a community of people with disabilities to take flight in Second Life. Imagine what it means to be visually or hearing-impaired within a virtual world interface, the challenge of typing with your toes, or using voice recognition software to soar across the sims. Virtual Ability, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit, conducts individualized skills assessments, helps people use specialized hardware and software, and provides customized training and orientation to the growing number of people with disabilities exploring Second Life.”

Mind and Body

Mind Hacks: It was planted on me
“I have discovered that there is small but budding group of cognitive scientists who study the psychological impact of indoor plants.”

What Makes You Happier, Stuff or Experience? « N e u r o n a r r a t i v e
“According to a study conducted at San Francisco State Univeristy, the things you own can’t make you as happy as the things you do.”

How persistent are intuitive (erroneous) beliefs? — Cognition and Culture
“However, an ingenious experimental procedure by Kohhenikov and Hegarty (2001), Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8 ) shows that even expert physicists are guided by the intuitive impetus physics under some conditions. In their study, expert physicists had to remember the location of objects ‘frozen’ after moving along a trajectory. Afterwards, the objects vanished, and they had to recall their position. Typically, they remembered the object somewhat further along its trajectory, along a path best described by impetus physics, not Newtonian physics. So the question this raises for me is: are we ever able to truly internalize scientific and other forms of formal knowledge, or are we somehow always guided by our intuitive beliefs?”

Mind Hacks: On believing you died during the operation
“Despite our repeated explanations that she had suffered a local anesthetic-induced complication, the patient remained convinced that she had died and come back to life. This patient had been a non-practicing Christian who believed in an afterlife. She had not had any previous experience of this kind or know of others who had had. She had had no fear of death in the preoperative period.”

Neuroskeptic: How To Read Minds
“In the last couple of weeks we’ve seen not one but two reports about “reading minds” through brain imaging. First, two Canadian scientists claimed to be able to tell which flavor of drink you prefer (Decoding subjective preference from single-trial near-infrared spectroscopy signals). Then a pair of Nashville neuroimagers said that they could tell which of two pictures you were thinking about through fMRI (Decoding reveals the contents of visual working memory in early visual areas); you can read more about this one here. Can it be true? And if so, how does it work?”

10 Classics from Cognitive Science
“The editorial board of Cognitive Science has identified several classic articles that appeared in our journal over the last couple of decades. With the permission of the Cognitive Science Society, the full text for these articles is available here.”

Law

Do the Octuplets Have a Dad? « Related Topics
“All this time the octuplets mother has been described as a single mother. Indeed, I’ve discussed this before. But now here is a new angle on it. A man, identified as Denis Beaudoin, has come forward asserting that he is the sperm donor whose sperm was used to create all fourteen of the children.”

ChessBase forced to cease Internet broadcasting of the Topalov-Kamsky match
“The German chess site ChessBаse was forced to cease the live broadcasting of the games of the match between World Cup candidates Veselin Topalov and Gata Kamsky. Without permission from the Bulgarian Chess Federation (BCF) the Germans broadcast the first four games on the global network in spite of the warning published to that effect by the organizers on the official site of the match wccc2009.com.”

SEC disclaimers in the age of Twitter | IR Web Report
“SPARE a thought for eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) corporate blogger Richard Brewer-Hay. He is the only person on the microblogging service Twitter who live-tweets his company’s quarterly earnings conference calls. That’s partly why I’ve previously called him one of the best corporate bloggers. However, he has been doing these live-tweeting sessions for the past three quarters without the company’s legal team knowing. But they found out, and recently called him in to discuss.”

Location, Location, Location - Concurring Opinions
“Several recent legal news stories illustrate the intuition that entities’ (or individuals’) physical proximity to each other, without more, sends powerful messages. For example, the Associated Press reports that Justice Stevens refuses to attend any swearings-in of justices at the White House because he views the ceremony’s mere physical location at a supposedly co-equal branch of government as signalling a lack of judicial independence.”

Imagine there’s no copyright/It’s easy if you’re the Supreme Court — Concurring Opinions
“One can only guess how the Lennons feel about Justice Alito reproducing the entire lyrics to Imagine in footnote 2 of his opinion for the Court today in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum. If the Supreme Court were not a slow adapter, Alito might have attached an audio file.”

Legal History Blog: Balogh on the State in Nineteenth-Century America
“Yesterday afternoon, at the American Political History Seminar sponsored by the History Department at Boston University, Brian Balogh of the University of Virginia presented a portion of his soon-to-be-published book, A Government out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America. Balogh asks “what if our understanding of the nineteenth century allowed for the possibility that the United States governed differently from other industrialized contemporaries, but did not necessarily govern less?” Exploring land distribution policies, the postal system, and legal structures facilitating corporate expansion, Balogh argues that while the state institutions that nineteenth-century Americans referred to as the “General Government” might not always have been visible, they represented a powerful force of governance. Of the laissez-faire Gilded Age, Balogh argues that “no period in America’s history was less representative of America’s past.”"

Design

Design leads us where exactly?: Apprenticeships: an economic history
“Contemporary art and design practices - even if now taught in art and design departments in modern universities - bear some relation to the institutions of apprenticeships that developed over hundreds of years in several European countries. A seminar at Said last week raised some interesting questions about what we think we know, and what we actually know, about such apprenticeships. Tim Leunig of LSE, an economic historian, gave a wonderful seminar for the Centre for Corporate Reputation drawing on his work into apprentices in London in the pre-modern period.”

41% of museums don’t know how dogs actually walk - collision detection
“Museums screwed things up a stunning 41% of the time. Taxidermy catalogues got it wrong 43% of the time, toys 50% of the time, and animal-anatomy catalogues were the worst, with 63.6% errors.”

Subtopia: Prisons & Urban Theory « Prison Photography
“The analysis of Bryan Finoki at Subtopia consistently join the dots between geopolitics & biopolitics; movement & paralysis; spatial theory and spatial reality. Unsurprisingly, for a writer in the 21st century, his interest in the production of structures & networks, often leads him to theories of militarised space.”

brilli.am/writes »The Stunning Art & Design of the Atari 2600
“I’m probably not the only one, but I am ready to throw up. The current generation box-art is computer-assisted, committee-designed, samey samey samey crap. The only exception is the oft-referenced Japanese box for Ico, but other than that, even the “good” stuff isn’t inspiring.”

Grand Text Auto » Atari Teenage TIA
“Karen Collins, author of Game Sound, did an amazing study in which she traces how the peculiarities of the TIA (Television Interface Adapter) may have influenced the tonal sensibilities of Western youth and may be linked to the later use of flat seconds in rave, heavy metal, and industrial music. The article is “Fine Tuning the Terrible Twos: The Musical Aesthetic of the Atari VCS” (PDF version, deprecated HTML).”

Is Flower the first game about global warming? - collision detection
“This week, I wrote about Flower, an insanely beautiful game released two weeks ago for the Playstation 3 by Jenova Chen. In the game, you control a gust of wind that blows a flower petal along, and you do … well, lots of things. You touch other flowers, opening them up and releasing their petals; if you do a lot of this you start to bring dead, dry land back to life. Sometimes you also cause huge rocks to shift and groan and open up like petals themselves. Other times dead trees explode with color and leaves, or winds start blowing that power wind turbines. The final “boss fight” — such as it is — consists of a crazy, massive “awakening” of an entire grey, dead, “fallen” city.”

Data & Visualization

Irregular Time Series? No. Oversampling. | Jorge Camoes’ Charts
“If you are a market researcher, and you want to make sure that you get more reliable results for a subgroup in a survey, what do you do? You must increase the overall sample size (and spend a lot of money), right? Actually, you don’t. You can oversample that group only, and then weight it down to its known proportion in the population. For example, you may want to increase the number of managers and decrease the number of housewives (because the former are usually more heterogeneous than the latter). Oversampling is a common research method, and a very cost-effective way to get precise estimates for a subgroup.”

Visualizing information flow in science - well-formed.eigenfactor.org
“Interactive visualizations based on the Eigenfactor™ Metrics and hierarchical clustering to explore emerging patterns in citation networks.”

The first sketches of history » Nieman Journalism Lab
Round-up of news visualization sites, software, applications.

Visualization of pharmaceutical industry activity - Biomedicine on Display
“Here’s a promising approach: mktlgcs has created this visualization of FDA pharma application approvals 2000-2008 — an excellent way to get an overview of the activities of the global pharmaceutical industry (all major manufacturers want an FDA approval to operate on the US market)”