Fleeting Mental States

2000 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Cane
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
The Social ◽  
Time Gap ◽  
Physical Elements ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Tools And Techniques

The philosophical concept of acting intentionally does not entail a perceptible time gap between intention and action. We may say of a person who acts on the spur of the moment that their action was intended or intentional; but in such circumstances, intention and action may seem to merge in a way that makes it difficult to disentangle the mental and physical elements of the person's conduct. The author argues that in this context the tools and techniques used by philosophers of mind and action may not provide us with the best understanding of the social practices of blaming found in the criminal law.

The Social Structure of Transnational Criminal Justice: A Cluster of Spaces beyond National Borders

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 87-118
Author(s):  
Mikkel Jarle Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
The Social

Abstract This article analyses elements of the social structure of transnational criminal justice. The main goal of the analysis is to investigate if the terminology crafted around transnational criminal law as a distinct legal system corresponds to the social structuration of this space as it can be observed in the justice practices that drive it. To enable such an analysis, the article contributes both a theoretical discussion of how best to conceptualise the social spaces of transnational criminal justice as well as, more cautiously, an empirical investigation into the workings of these spaces, focusing the fight against drugs, terrorism, corruption and ecological crimes. Building conceptually on Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, the analytical focal point of the article is the practices of transnational criminal justice and the professionals who are active in this space. This raises crucial questions of how the social practices of transnational criminal justice structures usages and developments of the law. Based on the identification and analysis of four separate but interrelated spaces of practice, the article argues that our theoretical understanding of transnational criminal justice and law needs to be recalibrated to take into account the different ways in which it is mobilised to create either security or good governance.

Narrative as active inference

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nabil Bouizegarene ◽  
maxwell ramstead ◽  
Axel Constant ◽  
Karl Friston ◽  
Laurence Kirmayer
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Human Adaptation ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Future Projection ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Parsimonious Model ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Theory Research

The ubiquity and importance of narratives in human adaptation has been recognized by many scholars. Research has identified several functions of narratives that are conducive to individuals’ well-being and adaptation as well as to coordinated social practices and enculturation. In this paper, we characterize the social and cognitive functions of narratives in terms of the framework of active inference. Active inference depicts the fundamental tendency of living organisms to adapt by creating, updating, and maintaining inferences about their environment. We review the literature on the functions of narratives in identity, event segmentation, episodic memory, future projection, storytelling practices, and enculturation. We then re-cast these functions of narratives in terms of active inference, outlining a parsimonious model that can guide future developments in narrative theory, research, and clinical applications.

Does context matter? Effects of robot appearance and reliability on social attention differs based on lifelikeness of gaze task

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulaziz Abubshait ◽  
Patrick P. Weis ◽  
Eva Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Social Attention ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Mind Perception ◽  
The Social ◽  
Behavioral Features

Social signals, such as changes in gaze direction, are essential cues to predict others’ mental states and behaviors (i.e., mentalizing). Studies show that humans can mentalize with non-human agents when they perceive a mind in them (i.e., mind perception). Robots that physically and/or behaviorally resemble humans likely trigger mind perception, which enhances the relevance of social cues and improves social-cognitive performance. The current ex-periments examine whether the effect of physical and behavioral influencers of mind perception on social-cognitive processing is modulated by the lifelikeness of a social interaction. Participants interacted with robots of varying degrees of physical (humanlike vs. robot-like) and behavioral (reliable vs. random) human-likeness while the lifelikeness of a social attention task was manipulated across five experiments. The first four experiments manipulated lifelikeness via the physical realism of the robot images (Study 1 and 2), the biological plausibility of the social signals (Study 3), and the plausibility of the social con-text (Study 4). They showed that humanlike behavior affected social attention whereas appearance affected mind perception ratings. However, when the lifelikeness of the interaction was increased by using videos of a human and a robot sending the social cues in a realistic environment (Study 5), social attention mechanisms were affected both by physical appearance and behavioral features, while mind perception ratings were mainly affected by physical appearance. This indicates that in order to understand the effect of physical and behavioral features on social cognition, paradigms should be used that adequately simulate the lifelikeness of social interactions.

Mental state dynamics explain the origin of mental state concepts

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Allen Thornton ◽  
Milena Rmus ◽  
Diana Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Artificial Neural Network ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Artificial Neural ◽  
Ebb And Flow

People’s thoughts and feelings ebb and flow in predictable ways: surprise arises quickly, anticipation ramps up slowly, regret follows anger, love begets happiness, and so forth. Predicting these transitions between mental states can help people successfully navigate the social world. We hypothesize that the goal of predicting state dynamics shapes people’ mental state concepts. Across seven studies, when people observed more frequent transitions between a pair of novel mental states, they judged those states to be more conceptually similar to each other. In an eighth study, an artificial neural network trained to predict real human mental state dynamics spontaneously learned the same conceptual dimensions that people use to understand these states: the 3d Mind Model. Together these results suggest that mental state dynamics explain the origins of mental state concepts.

People represent their own mental states more distinctly than others’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Allen Thornton ◽  
Miriam E. Weaverdyck ◽  
Judith Mildner ◽  
Diana Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Social Distance ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
External Cues

One can never know the internal workings of another person – one can only infer others’ mental states based on external cues. In contrast, each person has direct access to the contents of their own mind. Here we test the hypothesis that this privileged access shapes the way people represent internal mental experiences, such that they represent their own mental states more distinctly than the states of others. Across four studies, participants considered their own and others’ mental states; analyses measured the distinctiveness of mental state representations. Two neuroimaging studies used representational similarity analyses to demonstrate that the social brain manifests more distinct activity patterns when thinking about one’s own states versus others’. Two behavioral studies support these findings. Further, they demonstrate that people differentiate between states less as social distance increases. Together these results suggest that we represent our own mind with greater granularity than the minds of others.

Ideological Inversion and the (De)legitimation of Neoliberalism in Chile

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismael Puga
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Social Study ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
Window Of Opportunity ◽  
Panel Surveys ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Strategic Adaptation ◽  
The Social

Using a mixed-methods approach based on discussion focus groups and panel surveys of the Longitudinal Social Study of Chile, this chapter demonstrates that Chilean’s neoliberal economic order is not legitimized by the vast majority of the population. Instead, the author argues that social norms are in serious conflict with the prevailing socioeconomic order. Within Chilean society, both citizens and social analysts are prone to agree with the existence of a “neoliberal consensus” due to the strategic adaptation of social practices that take place within a socioeconomic order that most individuals accept as a given. As a consequence, a “fantasy consensus” emerges in Chilean society in order to stabilize the social economic order, thus avoiding collective mobilization and social change. In this scenario, the protest waves that Chilean society has faced since 2011 offer additional proof that the “fantasy consensus” has experienced serious fissures, thus opening a window of opportunity to delegitimize Chile’s neoliberal order in the country.

scholarly journals The data archive as factory: Alienation and resistance of data processors

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395172110075
Author(s):  
Jean-Christophe Plantin
Keyword(s):  
Data Processing ◽  
Assembly Line ◽  
Synthetic Approach ◽  
Data Archive ◽  
Factory Workers ◽  
Meaningful Involvement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fast Pace ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
The Moment

Archival data processing consists of cleaning and formatting data between the moment a dataset is deposited and its publication on the archive’s website. In this article, I approach data processing by combining scholarship on invisible labor in knowledge infrastructures with a Marxian framework and show the relevance of considering data processing as factory labor. Using this perspective to analyze ethnographic data collected during a six-month participatory observation at a U.S. data archive, I generate a taxonomy of the forms of alienation that data processing generates, but also the types of resistance that processors develop, across four categories: routine, speed, skill, and meaning. This synthetic approach demonstrates, first, that data processing reproduces typical forms of factory worker’s alienation: processors are asked to work along a strict standardized pipeline, at a fast pace, without acquiring substantive skills or having a meaningful involvement in their work. It reveals, second, how data processors resist the alienating nature of this workflow by developing multiple tactics along the same four categories. Seen through this dual lens, data processors are therefore not only invisible workers, but also factory workers who follow and subvert a workflow organized as an assembly line. I conclude by proposing a four-step framework to better value the social contribution of data workers beyond the archive.

Instituting Europe: Germany, the Union, and the Legacy of the Short Century

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Michael Werz
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Crucial Question ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Federal Structure

Recent debates about the future of the European Union have focusedin large part on institutional reforms, the deficit of democratic legitimacy,and the problem of economic and agrarian policies. As importantas these issues may be, the most crucial question at the momentis not whether Europe will prevail as a union of nations or as a thoroughlyintegrated federal structure. What is of much greater concernis the fact that political structures and their corresponding politicaldiscourses have lagged far behind the social changes occurring inEuropean societies. The pivotal transformation of 1989 has not beengrasped intellectually or politically, even though its results areincreasingly visible in both the east and west.

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