The temporally-integrated causality landscape: A theoretical framework for consciousness and meaning

Theoretical approaches to understanding consciousness have begun to converge upon areas of general agreement, yet substantive differences remain. Here, I introduce a new theoretical framework for the emergence of consciousness from the functional integration of the thalamocortical system: the Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape (TICL). TICL presents a novel perspective which addresses important phenomenological characteristics of consciousness that other frameworks, such as IIT, do not. First, the TICL is based upon the observation that conscious experiences are temporally continuous, not discrete. Secondly, the TICL establishes a thalamocortical basis for the point-of-view. According to TICL, consciousness is composed of contents that arise from neuronal subsystems that have meaning from the point-of-view of the larger, integrated system in which they are nested. Meaningful contents emerge from the subsystems because they exhibit a level of temporally-integrated causality (TIC) that is distinguishable from that of the larger system.     

Governing religious diversity in cities: critical perspectives

ABSTRACT

This collection addresses the question of how cities govern and regulate religious diversity. Its main goals are: 1) to take stock of current research regarding the municipal governance of religious diversity; 2) to put forward new concepts and empirical analyses to enhance this field of study; and 3) to identify potential lines for future enquiry that help move the field forward. The contributions cover a wide variety of topics, such as the roles of laws, state contracts, and urbanism in governing religious diversity, comparisons of diverging governance trajectories in various cities within one country, and the controversies surrounding the celebration of religious events in urban spaces. The contributions also identify factors that influence governance processes at the urban level and their consequences for the practice of religion. The collection covers studies of cities in various European countries as well as in Canada.     

Thinking outside of the box: Transfer of shape-based reorientation across the boundary of an arena

The way in which human and non-human animals represent the shape of their environments remains a contentious issue. According to local theories of shape learning, organisms encode the local geometric features of the environment that signal a goal location. In contrast, global theories of shape learning suggest that organisms encode the overall shape of the environment. There is, however, a surprising lack of evidence to support this latter claim, despite the fact that common behaviours seem to require encoding of the global-shape of an environment. We tested one such behaviour in 5 experiments, in which human participants were trained to navigate to a hidden goal on one side of a virtual arena (e.g. the inside) before being required to find the same point on the alternative side (e.g. the outside). Participants navigated to the appropriate goal location, both when inside and outside the virtual arena, but only when the shape of the arena remained the same between training and test (Experiments 1a and 1b). When the arena shape was transformed between these stages, participants were lost (Experiments 2a and 2b). When training and testing was conducted on the outside of two different-shaped arenas that shared local geometric cues participants once again explored the appropriate goal location (Experiment 3). These results provide core evidence that humans encode a global representation of the overall shape of the environments in, or around, which they navigate.     

The affective spaces of global civil society and why they matter

Many early-career researchers aim at making research socially engaged. In the initial stages of my research on international volunteering for development I learnt very quickly that any push towards social justice has been blunted by the damaging mechanisms of neoliberal power. The temptation is therefore to make research socially engaged by exposing such malign presences of power in volunteering organisations. This paper grows out of this interest and builds an argument of how researchers can engage power and write into being a better future. This brings into contrast the capitalocentric orientation of fieldwork preparation against the micro-processes of meeting and being with other bodies come together to constitute work in the field. Through work with an NGO in New Delhi the case is put that such meetings of bodies are affective and this is central to making research socially engaged. Affective moments give rise to love, solidarity and hope. Making research sensitive to such intersubjective moments writes into being the possibilities of a better and more just future. The paper makes an attempt to put this approach to research into practice.     

And justice for all: Revisiting the Global Belief in a Just World Scale

The Global Belief in a Just World Scale (GBJWS) has been widely used in measuring the Belief in a Just World (BJW) personality trait. Despite its widespread application across the social sciences, the validity of this scale has not been sufficiently tested in the literature. In this research, the authors examine the internal and external validity of the GBJWS using both standard correlational analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM). Specifically, the authors test the concurrent validity, internal consistency, unidimensional structure, convergent validity, and both measurement and latent mean invariance of the scale across gender and culture. The results of a pilot study suggest strong concurrent validity of the GBJWS with other BJW scales, and the findings of the two main studies support the internal and external validity of GBJWS across gender and culture. The authors’ results further show an overall greater level of BJW of Chinese individuals compared to Americans. The present research provides a much needed investigation of the validity of the GBJWS, and answers calls for research examining the scale’s utility across different populations.     

Culture variation in the average identity extraction: The role of global vs. local processing orientation

ABSTRACT

Research has shown that observers often spontaneously extract a mean representation from multiple faces/objects in a scene even when this is not required by the task. This phenomenon, now known as ensemble coding, has so far mainly been based on data from Western populations. This study compared East Asian and Western participants in an implicit ensemble-coding task, where the explicit task was to judge whether a test face was present in a briefly exposed set of faces. Although both groups showed a tendency to mistake an average of the presented faces as target, thus confirming the universality of ensemble coding, East Asian participants displayed a higher averaging tendency relative to the Westerners. To further examine how a cultural default can be adapted to global or local processing demand, our second experiment tested the effects of priming global or local processing orientation on ensemble coding via a Navon task procedure. Results revealed a reduced tendency for ensemble coding following the priming of local processing orientation. Together, these results suggest that culture can influence the proneness to ensemble coding, and the default cultural mode is malleable to a temporary processing demand.     

Science,Social Scientisation and Hybridisation of Knowledges

ABSTRACT

The contestation between mainstream science and counter-science is a longstanding phenomenon. The current issue of Science as Culture addresses the need for scientists to consciously engage in a broad-spectrum science that simultaneously focuses its lens on the social and natural dimensions of the universe. The question of how this objective can be achieved by Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars is, therefore, the main thrust of this special issue.     

Water use scenarios assessment using multicriteria analysis

Water management is a fertile terrain for research, and can be investigated using several methodological instruments and approaches. Multipurpose water resources, which allow for the contemporary presence of in‐stream (fishing, swimming, etc.) and off‐stream uses (agriculture, household, etc.), are particularly difficult to management due to increasing water demand and the conflict between consumptive and not consumptive uses. New scenarios in agricultural policy (Reform of the European Common Agricultural Policy) and new requests from local stakeholders (recreational activities, rising household water demand, etc.) involve use of decision support methods to find a balance between multiple potential uses. This study describes the application of multicriteria decision aid for choosing the best project for water management and local development among a set of alternatives, using the regime method. The regime method can integrate quantitative data with quality judgement and preference index. The study aims to verify if the regime approach is understandable for the decision maker and if it is suitable for use in ambiguous situations where no quantitative information is available. It is not always possible to get the ‘best alternative’ in multicriteria evaluation: in this study we found two top‐rank alternatives, with minor differences, to submit to the decision maker. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's conceptions of physical events: Explicit and tacit understanding of horizontal motion

The conceptual understanding that children display when predicting physical events has been shown to be inferior to the understanding they display when recognizing whether events proceed naturally. This has often been attributed to differences between the explicit engagement with conceptual knowledge required for prediction and the tacit engagement that suffices for recognition, and contrasting theories have been formulated to characterize the differences. Focusing on a theory that emphasizes omission at the explicit level of conceptual elements that are tacitly understood, the paper reports two studies that attempt clarification. The studies are concerned with 6‐ to 10‐year‐old children's understanding of, respectively, the direction (141 children) and speed (132 children) of motion in a horizontal direction. Using computer‐presented billiards scenarios, the children predicted how balls would move (prediction task) and judged whether or not simulated motion was correct (recognition task). Results indicate that the conceptions underpinning prediction are sometimes interpretable as partial versions of the conceptions underpinning recognition, as the omission hypothesis would imply. However, there are also qualitative differences, which suggest partial dissociation between explicit and tacit understanding. It is suggested that a theoretical perspective that acknowledges this dissociation would provide the optimal framework for future research.