The History, Landscapes, Metaphors and Ghosts Around the Concept of Specificity

The confusion between objects/processes and the language which describes them, leads to theories of doubtful verisimilitude about reality, inappropriate in time and even false, which distance us from the knowledge of perceived reality. In biology there are many examples of this kind of epistemological problem. Here we examine those related with specificity: a theoretical entity of enormous importance for biology and science in general. It sinks its roots beneath the evolutionary duality species-specificity, associated with the Linnean-Darwinist tradition that explains organized life in a discrete and hierarchical way. It conceptualizes the individual as an isolated agent fighting for survival as the foundation of a warrior vision of the immune system. Microorganisms are understood as inferior beings which should be eliminated in accordance with the self/not-self distinction. The use of these metaphors outside of historical context traces a map that guides the recognition of the Self and of the other according to the dialectic of Western biopolitics.

Old forensic Evidence, Contemporary Resources of forensic Science and the Police X-Files — Crime is Not an Abstract and theoretical Entity Out of Touch with Reality

The obligation to prosecute the perpetrator of any crime throughout the entire period of its punishability is one of the statutory tasks of the Police. The prominent forensic scientist — Hans Gross claimed that crime is not an abstract and theoretical entity out of touch with reality, but a real social phenomenon that can be investigated and recognised. Nevertheless, archive shelves contain records of undetected crimes from the past years that cast a shadow over police statistics and never give investigators any peace of mind. These undetected crimes from a few, a dozen or even several dozen years ago, are reinvestigated by officers from the Cold Case Units (colloquially referred to as the Police X-Files). Currently, such a unit operates in each regional police headquarters as well as in the National Police Headquarters. The methods and means that the X-Files investigators take advantage of depend on the specificity of an individual case, however, in the model of their conduct, it is forensic science that plays a significant role — alongside covert policing or criminal analysis. Physical evidence plays a huge role in determining the objective truth, and thanks to the research methods and tools currently available to crime scene investigators, the boundaries of learning about the reality are expanding. Despite the passage of time, the purpose of criminal proceedings is achieved, i.e. perpetrators of many crimes committed years ago are identified and brought to justice.

Epilogue – service innovation actor engagement: an integrative model

Purpose While (customer) engagement has been proposed as a volitional concept, our structuration theory/S-D logic-informed analyses of actors’ (e.g. employees’) engagement in service innovation reveal engagement as a boundedly volitional theoretical entity, which arises from actors’ structural and agency-based characteristics and constraints. In line with this observation, the purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of actor (i.e. customer, firm, employee) engagement with service innovation. Design/methodology/approach Based on the observed gap, the authors propose an integrative S-D logic/structuration theoretical model that outlines three particular service innovation actors’ (i.e. customers’, the firm’s and employees’) engagement, which comprises institution-driven (i.e. fixed) and agency-driven (i.e. variable) engagement facets. In addition, the authors integrate the key expected characteristics of positively (vs negatively) valenced service innovation engagement for each of these actor groups in the analyses. Findings The authors develop a 12-cell matrix (conceptual model) that outlines particular service innovation actors’ institution-driven and agency-driven engagement facets and outline their expected impact on actors’ ensuing positively and negatively valenced engagement. Research limitations/implications The authors discuss key theoretical implications arising from the analyses. Originality/value Outlining service innovation actors’ structure- and agency-driven engagement facets, the authors’ model can be used to explain or predict customers’, the firm’s or employees’ service innovation engagement-based activities.

Introduction

This book describes an agent-based model dubbed Agent_Zero, which was constructed using a significant volume of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. Agent_Zero is a new theoretical entity that exhibits observable behaviors generated by the interaction of affective, cognitive, and social components. Its affective component is based on the Rescorla–Wagner model of conditioning and extinction, while its cognitive (deliberative) component reflects biases and heuristics in probability estimation. The book presents Agent_Zero as a new, neurocognitively grounded, foundation for generative social science, a simple explicit model of individual behavior in groups that includes some representation of “the passions,” of (imperfect) reason, and of social influence. This introduction explains the motivations for constructing Agent_Zero, its components, and its basic mathematical scaffolding. It also provides an overview of the book's organization.

Advancing Agent_Zero

Agent_Zero is a mathematical and computational individual that can generate important, but insufficiently understood, social dynamics from the bottom up. First published by Epstein (2013), this new theoretical entity possesses emotional, deliberative, and social modules, each grounded in contemporary neuroscience. Agent_Zero’s observable behavior results from the interaction of these internal modules. When multiple Agent_Zeros interact with one another, a wide range of important, even disturbing, collective dynamics emerge. These dynamics are not straightforwardly generated using the canonical rational actor which has dominated mathematical social science since the 1940s. Following a concise exposition of the Agent_Zero model, this chapter offers a range of fertile research directions, including the use of realistic geographies and population levels, the exploration of new internal modules and new interactions among them, the development of formal axioms for modular agents, empirical testing, the replication of historical episodes, and practical applications. These may all serve to advance the Agent_Zero research program.

Agent_Zero Toward Neurocognitive Foundations for Generative Social Science

This book introduces a new theoretical entity: Agent_Zero. This software individual, or “agent,” is endowed with distinct emotional/affective, cognitive/deliberative, and social modules. Grounded in contemporary neuroscience, these internal components interact to generate observed, often far-from-rational, individual behavior. When multiple agents of this new type move and interact spatially, they collectively generate an astonishing range of dynamics spanning the fields of social conflict, psychology, public health, law, network science, and economics. The book weaves a computational tapestry with threads from Plato, David Hume, Charles Darwin, Ivan Pavlov, Adam Smith, Leo Tolstoy, Karl Marx, William James, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, among others. This transformative synthesis of social philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, and agent-based modeling will fascinate scholars and students of every stripe. Computer programs are provided in the book or available online. This book is a signal departure in what it includes (e.g., a new synthesis of neurally grounded internal modules), what it eschews (e.g., standard behavioral imitation), the phenomena it generates (from genocide to financial panic), and the modeling arsenal it offers the scientific community. For generative social science, this book presents a ground-breaking vision and the tools to realize it.

More Than Theory

A randomly drawn sample of 535 empirical articles representing 50% of the papers published between 1990 and 1994 and between 2000 and 2004 in Psychology and Aging and the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences were analyzed based on a newly developed coding scheme. This instrument allowed us to systematically evaluate types and contents of geropsychological theoretical entities used. We found that theoretical entity use significantly increased from 66.3% to 82.0%, which is much higher than only coding the material according to the explicit use of “theory,” as we have found in previous work (30% versus 44%, respectively; Drapaniotis, Neubauer, & Wahl, 2013 ). We also observed that even the most extensively cited entities, i.e., the mental-slowing hypothesis, the inhibitory-deficit hypothesis, and socioemotional selectivity theory, were cited in only a rather limited number of articles. We conclude that the field of geropsychology relies on a wide and quite heterogeneous array of theoretical entities.

Maurice Godelier and the Metamorphosis of Kinship, A Review Essay

Once it was thought that kinship was the preeminent subject of anthropology, one about which considerable progress was possible. “Kinship” itself was, for some, fairly unproblematic. Thus Radcliffe-Brown (1952: 46) asserted that, “if any society establishes a system of corporations on the basis of kinship … it must necessarily adopt a system of unilineal reckoning of succession,” and Fortes (1959: 209) announced that, “Kinship, being an irreducible factor in social structure has an axiomatic validity.” However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s one leading figure of anthropology after the other declared that there really was no such thing as kinship. “The process of making kinship into a single theoretical entity seems to me no better than the invention of ‘totemism’” (Terray 1969: 135–36; 1972: 140–41). “There is no such thing as kinship, and it follows that there can be no such thing as kinship theory” (Needham 1971: 5). “‘Kinship,’ like totemism, the matrilineal complex and matriarchy, is a non-subject since it does not exist in any culture known to man” (Schneider 1972: 59). “The whole notion of ‘a kinship system’ as an isolable structure of sentiments, norms, or categorical distinctions is misleading because it assumes, or seems to assume, that the ordering principles of a society are partitionable into natural kinds only adventitiously connected” (Geertz and Geertz 1975: 156). For various political and intellectual reasons, “kinship” appeared to many to have died out as an area of analytic interest within anthropology during the 1970s and 1980s, despite many indications to the contrary. Now Godelier has made a major effort to revive attention to matters usually bunched under the phrase “kinship,” and, at least as concerns French popular taste, seems largely to have succeeded. For him kinship has not died, but instead transformed itself both in fact and “theoretically.”

Thoughts on a Possible Rational Reconstruction of the Method of “Rational Reconstruction”

Rational reconstructions standardly operate so as to transform a given problematic philosophical scientific account-particularly of a terminological, methodological or theoretical entity-into a similar, but more precise, consistent interpretation. This method occupies a central position in the practice of analytic philosophy. Nevertheless, we encounter-even if only in a very few specific publications-a vague image of it. This is due on the one hand to the problem of the intentions of application, i.e., of the normativity of rational reconstruction (descriptive/prescriptive-ambivalence). It is also due on the other hand to the problem of the significance of the method in the field of history of philosophy (systematic/historical-dichotomy). The varied usage within analytic philosophy, as well as the increasingly inflationary and interfering usage outside, contribute to make rational reconstruction somehow appear a Proteus in contemporary philosophical methodology. This paper attempts to administer first aid and to close a bit of the theoretical gap and thus to reach a more exact image for the interests of analytic philosophy. Self-application of the method appears to be the right remedy. A graduating rational reconstruction of a standard concept of rational reconstruction will be suggested, differentiating the concept of rational reconstruction according to normativity, and explicating the method of rational reconstruction into two such variants.