Task dynamics define the contextual emergence of human corralling behaviors

Social animals have the remarkable ability to organize into collectives to achieve goals unobtainable to individual members. Equally striking is the observation that despite differences in perceptual-motor capabilities, different animals often exhibit qualitatively similar collective states of organization and coordination. Such qualitative similarities can be seen in corralling behaviors involving the encirclement of prey that are observed, for example, during collaborative hunting amongst several apex predator species living in disparate environments. Similar encirclement behaviors are also displayed by human participants in a collaborative problem-solving task involving the herding and containment of evasive artificial agents. Inspired by the functional similarities in this behavior across humans and non-human systems, this paper investigated whether the containment strategies displayed by humans emerge as a function of the task’s underlying dynamics, which shape patterns of goal-directed corralling more generally. This hypothesis was tested by comparing the strategies naïve human dyads adopt during the containment of a set of evasive artificial agents across two disparate task contexts. Despite the different movement types (manual manipulation or locomotion) required in the different task contexts, the behaviors that humans display can be predicted as emergent properties of the same underlying task-dynamic model.

Identity and Foreign Policy (ORE Politics)

Identity has come to figure prominently in the study of foreign policy since the 1990s when it was first introduced by constructivist theorists in International Relations. Consensus on what identity is and what it does in relation to foreign policy does not exist and is unlikely to be ever forged. Some scholars investigate state identity—how it informs and shapes foreign policy processes while simultaneously being informed and shaped by international structures. Others use the concept of identification to examine what foreign policy means for the constitution of modern political subjectivities. Still others seek to bring together constructivist identity scholarship together with more established approaches in Foreign Policy Analysis. This article considers the contextual emergence and evolution of the “identity and foreign policy” scholarship in its many different and differing streams. The large volume of literature produced on this subject over the past two and a half decade defies an easy summary of its theoretical and empirical contributions, but an overview of the main controversies and debates should provide the reader with a solid foundation for further research.

Relational Blockworld and Quantum Mechanics

The main thread of chapter 4 introduces some of the major mysteries and interpretational issues of quantum mechanics (QM). These mysteries and issues include: quantum superposition, quantum nonlocality, Bell’s inequality, entanglement, delayed choice, the measurement problem, and the lack of counterfactual definiteness. All these mysteries and interpretational issues of QM result from dynamical explanation in the mechanical universe and are dispatched using the authors’ adynamical explanation in the block universe, called Relational Blockworld (RBW). A possible link between RBW and quantum information theory is provided. The metaphysical underpinnings of RBW, such as contextual emergence, spatiotemporal ontological contextuality, and adynamical global constraints, are provided in Philosophy of Physics for Chapter 4. That is also where RBW is situated with respect to retrocausal accounts and it is shown that RBW is a realist, psi-epistemic account of QM. All the relevant formalism for this chapter is provided in Foundational Physics for Chapter 4.

Identity and Foreign Policy

Identity has come to figure prominently in the study of foreign policy since the 1990s when it was first introduced by constructivist theorists in International Relations. Consensus on what identity is and what it does in relation to foreign policy does not exist and is unlikely to be ever forged. Some scholars investigate state identity—how it impacts foreign policy processes while simultaneously being impacted by international structures. Others use the concept of identification to examine what foreign policy means for the constitution of modern political subjectivities. Still others seek to bring together constructivist identity scholarship together with more established approaches in Foreign Policy Analysis. This article considers the contextual emergence and evolution of the “identity and foreign policy” scholarship in its many different and differing streams. The large volume of literature produced on this subject over the past two and a half decades defies an easy summary of its theoretical and empirical contributions, but an overview of the main controversies and debates should provide the reader with a solid foundation for further research.