Current Problems In The Psychology Of Understanding And The Creation Of "Understanding Systems"

In the Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee entitled "On the journal Kommunist," the creation of "artificial intelligence" is pinpointed as one of the most important sociophilosophical and methodological problems of scientific and technical progress ([Resolution…]. P. 5). The psychological aspects of "artificial intelligence" have been studied fruitfully for a long time in our domestic psychology (see, for example, [Artificial intelligence…]), but the steady refinement of computer technology imposes upon scientists the task of deeper study of the interaction between man and computers.     

Reflections provoked by Michael Banton's John Rex's main mistake

Banton's article provoked a number of reflections on working with John Rex in the 1960s. The idea of race has a long history both in human relations and sociological theory. But the possibility of there being a specific field of ‘race relations’ remains contested. Ideas of race and ethnicity are elided in public discourse, making the resolution of linguistic issues in the field especially difficult and as yet unresolved. These reflections touch upon the political environment in which John Rex's earlier writing on race was conducted and upon the breadth of influences upon a sociologist rooted in the classical tradition, especially the sociology of Max Weber.     

Affect,creativity, and community‐making in a Congolese song‐dance performance: or how to follow the movement of the social

In rural Punu society, song‐dance performances of rejoicing are deeply connected with forces of regeneration; they not only celebrate the sexual encounter but also, in their constituent dynamic, aim progressively to awaken a shared feeling of joy that leads to the intensification of the dancing and to the creation and diffusion of new songs. I seek to account for this regenerative potential by pursuing Turner's processual view of ritual performance, which acknowledges moments of structure and lack of structure. In this regard, I develop the dynamic of community‐making and creative flow in the performances with reference to Collins's reading of Durkheim's collective effervescence and Tarde's idea of imitation. As a whole, I argue that paying attention to rhythm and affect, inasmuch as they are a lived realization of structure and flow, is essential for understanding the revitalizing articulation between these terms and for following the ongoing movement of the social.     

Fleck and the social constitution of scientific objectivity

Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thought-styles has been hailed as a pioneer of constructivist science studies and sociology of scientific knowledge. But this consensus ignores an important feature of Fleck’s epistemology. At the core of his account is the ideal of ‘objective truth, clarity, and accuracy’. I begin with Fleck’s account of modern natural science, locating the ideal of scientific objectivity within his general social epistemology. I then draw on Fleck’s view of scientific objectivity to improve upon reflexive accounts of the origin and development of the theory of thought-styles, and reply to objections that Fleck’s epistemological stance is self-undermining or inconsistent. Explicating the role of scientific objectivity in Fleck’s epistemology reveals his view to be an internally consistent alternative to recent social accounts of scientific objectivity by Harding, Daston and Galison. I use these contrasts to indicate the strengths and weaknesses of Fleck’s innovative social epistemology, and propose modifications to address the latter. The result is a renewed version of Fleck’s social epistemology, which reconciles commitment to scientific objectivity with integrated sociology, history and philosophy of science.     

Efficient Physical Embedding of Topologically Complex Information Processing Networks in Brains and Computer Circuits

Nervous systems are information processing networks that evolved by natural selection, whereas very large scale integrated (VLSI) computer circuits have evolved by commercially driven technology development. Here we follow historic intuition that all physical information processing systems will share key organizational properties, such as modularity, that generally confer adaptivity of function. It has long been observed that modular VLSI circuits demonstrate an isometric scaling relationship between the number of processing elements and the number of connections, known as Rent''s rule, which is related to the dimensionality of the circuit''s interconnect topology and its logical capacity. We show that human brain structural networks, and the nervous system of the nematode C. elegans, also obey Rent''s rule, and exhibit some degree of hierarchical modularity. We further show that the estimated Rent exponent of human brain networks, derived from MRI data, can explain the allometric scaling relations between gray and white matter volumes across a wide range of mammalian species, again suggesting that these principles of nervous system design are highly conserved. For each of these fractal modular networks, the dimensionality of the interconnect topology was greater than the 2 or 3 Euclidean dimensions of the space in which it was embedded. This relatively high complexity entailed extra cost in physical wiring: although all networks were economically or cost-efficiently wired they did not strictly minimize wiring costs. Artificial and biological information processing systems both may evolve to optimize a trade-off between physical cost and topological complexity, resulting in the emergence of homologous principles of economical, fractal and modular design across many different kinds of nervous and computational networks.     

Modular genetic control of innate behaviors

Many complex behaviors are genetically hardwired. Based on previous findings on genetic control of mating and other behaviors in invertebrate and mammalian systems, I suggest that genetic control of complex behaviors is modular: first, dedicated genes specify different behavioral patterns; secondly, separable genetic networks govern distinct behavioral components. I speculate that modular genetic encoding of complex behaviors may in part reflect modularity in brain development and function. Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays From songs to synapses: Molecular mechanisms of birdsong memory Abstract     

Functional brain network modularity captures inter- and intra-individual variation in working memory capacity

Background

Cognitive abilities, such as working memory, differ among people; however, individuals also vary in their own day-to-day cognitive performance. One potential source of cognitive variability may be fluctuations in the functional organization of neural systems. The degree to which the organization of these functional networks is optimized may relate to the effective cognitive functioning of the individual. Here we specifically examine how changes in the organization of large-scale networks measured via resting state functional connectivity MRI and graph theory track changes in working memory capacity.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Twenty-two participants performed a test of working memory capacity and then underwent resting-state fMRI. Seventeen subjects repeated the protocol three weeks later. We applied graph theoretic techniques to measure network organization on 34 brain regions of interest (ROI). Network modularity, which measures the level of integration and segregation across sub-networks, and small-worldness, which measures global network connection efficiency, both predicted individual differences in memory capacity; however, only modularity predicted intra-individual variation across the two sessions. Partial correlations controlling for the component of working memory that was stable across sessions revealed that modularity was almost entirely associated with the variability of working memory at each session. Analyses of specific sub-networks and individual circuits were unable to consistently account for working memory capacity variability.

Conclusions/Significance

The results suggest that the intrinsic functional organization of an a priori defined cognitive control network measured at rest provides substantial information about actual cognitive performance. The association of network modularity to the variability in an individual''s working memory capacity suggests that the organization of this network into high connectivity within modules and sparse connections between modules may reflect effective signaling across brain regions, perhaps through the modulation of signal or the suppression of the propagation of noise.     

Biological computation: hearts and flytraps

The original computers were people using algorithms to get mathematical results such as rocket trajectories. After the invention of the digital computer, brains have been widely understood through analogies with computers and now artificial neural networks, which have strengths and drawbacks. We define and examine a new kind of computation better adapted to biological systems, called biological computation, a natural adaptation of mechanistic physical computation. Nervous systems are of course biological computers, and we focus on some edge cases of biological computing, hearts and flytraps. The heart has about the computing power of a slug, and much of its computing happens outside of its forty thousand neurons. The flytrap has about the computing power of a lobster ganglion. This account advances fundamental debates in neuroscience by illustrating ways that classical computability theory can miss complexities of biology. By this reframing of computation, we make way for resolving the disconnect between human and machine learning.

     

Cyberkids in Metropolitan America

Children have learning and problem-solving powers at least equal to those of adults. But children are in general disempowered and treated as inferior to adults. The availability of home computers from around 1980, and of internet and e-mail facilities from around 1990, created a window of freedom for those children who were allowed unmonitored access to computers, e-mail and the internet. Children who learned computer skills while they were still children became more proficient at these skills than adults who only began to acquire the same skills as adults. For a period of time, scientists well advanced in such fields as physics and aeronautics had to rely upon adolescents to fill their programming needs. In addition, during the early days of home-computing, around 1980, computer-territory was still relatively rough and virgin. The internet was unknown, computer games were unknown, and anyone who entered computer territory had to learn programming in order to derive any benefits from this territory. By the late 1990's, commercial interests had gained a strong foothold in computer territory, and any child or adult with zero skills could enter this territory as a consumer and derive information and entertainment from this territory, without acquiring the kinds of skills necessary to exercise any degree of control over the computer-based landscape. Still, computer science remains a new frontier, in that any person who has the skills to act on this frontier may achieve success, regardless of that person's age, social status, et cetera. The two greatest barriers to success are limitations on access to computers and the internet, and English-language knowledge. The latter barrier is falling. Inasmuch as ability to navigate and alter the landscape of computer territory is a source of great power, and inasmuch as children acquire such skills more quickly than adults, may we consider a new empowerment of children to be in the offing? Or will adults co-opt the instruments of power, and will children remain as pets and slaves of adults for the indefinite future?     

The impairment argument for the immorality of abortion revisited

Eric Vogelstein has defended Don Marquis' ‘future-like-ours' argument for the immorality of abortion against what is known as the Identity Objection, which contends that for a fetus to have a future like ours, it must be numerically identical to an entity like us that possesses valuable experiences some time in the future. On psychological accounts of personal identity, there is no identity relationship between the fetus and the entity with valuable experiences that it will become. Vogelstein maintains that a non-sentient fetus nonetheless has a future like ours because it is numerically identical with a future organism that has a mind that bears valuable experiences. Skott Brill, drawing on Jeff McMahan's embodied mind account, denies that human organisms directly have experiences, claiming that they only have experiences derivatively by virtue of their thinking part, and the loss of a future like ours is not transferred to the organism. I show that on McMahan's account, a strong case can be made for the organism having experiences directly, and the subject having these experiences derivatively. This negates Brill's reasoning, although it does imply that non-sentient fetuses do not have a future like ours in quite the same way as we do. I conclude that this is not problematic for Marquis' argument.     

Review of genes in development: re-reading the molecular paradigm

Genes in Development is a collection of 13 stimulating essays on "post genomic" approaches to the concept of the gene. At the risk of caricaturing some complex balances, the contributors tend to be skeptical about genetic determinism, the central dogma of molecular biology, reductionism, genes as programs and the concept of the gene as a DNA sequence. They tend to like emergent properties, complexity theory, the parity thesis for developmental resources, developmental systems theory, and membranes. But within this broad weltanschauung the essays in Genes in Development vary widely in their interests and emphases––from the history of twentieth century genetics to the social and ethical issues raised by contemporary genetics––which makes for an attractive and valuable collection.     

Re-embodying Sand Drawing and Re-evaluating the Status of the Camp: The Practice and Iconography of Women's Public Sand Drawing in Balgo,W.A.

The documentation of Aboriginal women's sand-drawing practice in Central Australia has to date been based largely on Munn's research amongst the Warlpiri at Yuendumu. Data from Kutjungka women from the Balgo area of Western Australia show that there are marked geographic differences in the styles of public sand drawing used by women from the two areas, as well as differences in gender coding between the two systems. The account of Balgo women's public sand drawing presented here uses methodologies grounded in recent developments in phenomenology, practice theory and embodiment theory, to examine layers of meaning encoded in this everyday practice. It suggests that women's public sand drawing in this area is linked to Kutjungka thought about the Dreaming, through webs of thought about the significance of penetrating the surface of the land, in some ways foreshadowing aspects of the women's ceremonial practices. This account suggests that the relationship between male and female ‘graphic’ systems may be more accurately described as dialogical than dichotomous.     

Surgery computer: a quiet revolution for general practice.

This paper shows how a well planned computer system can transform a practice''s programme of prevention and surveillance, for long the Cinderella subjects in our Health Service. It was not necessary to employ specially trained staff to operate the computer and our receptionists adapted quickly and successfully: in fact, a new and interesting job coordinating the new routines has evolved which will include the preparation and presentation of a wide range of practice statistics. After initial hostility the computer has been accepted by the staff and its ability to increase the efficiency of the practice at all levels is now well recognised. Attention to the manual records, including updating summary sheets, was a vital part of our transition, and satisfactory office routines for recording all information daily is as essential. Since the computer was introduced the accuracy of our filing has improved dramatically. Rates of uptake for all immunisations and cervical cytology examinations are much better and the surveillance of various groups, whether by health visitors, nurses, or doctors, is no longer haphazard. The costs are within the scope of any practice, but positive encouragement by government (probably financial) would make acceptance of computers more likely. This would certainly encourage practitioners to take the initiative in prevention and surveillance, thereby ensuring that general practice remains the focus of a patient''s overall care in the next decades.     

Intelligence can be detected but is not found attractive in videos and live interactions

Self-reported mate preferences suggest intelligence is valued across cultures, consistent with the idea that human intelligence evolved as a sexually selected trait. The validity of self-reports has been questioned though, so it remains unclear whether objectively assessed intelligence is indeed attractive. In Study 1, 88 target men had their intelligence measured and based on short video clips were rated on intelligence, funniness, physical attractiveness and mate appeal by 179 women. In Study 2 (N = 763), participants took part in 2 to 5 speed-dating sessions in which their intelligence was measured and they rated each other's intelligence, funniness, and mate appeal. Measured intelligence did not predict increased mate appeal in either study, whereas perceived intelligence and funniness did. More intelligent people were perceived as more intelligent, but not as funnier. Results suggest that intelligence is not important for initial attraction, which raises doubts concerning the sexual selection theory of intelligence.     

Cargo Cults and the Politics of Alterity: A Review Article

This review article is a critical evaluation of recent ethnographic contributions and theoretical debates concerning cargo cults. It examines how Foucault's genealogical and discursive methodologies can be used in a way that undercuts their valuable insights. The recent self‐reflexive turn, where anthropology focuses on the moral politics of its own discourses, can lead to a silencing of the moral political discourses of others. Moreover self‐reflexivity can become an authorising strategy for academics keen to downplay race and resistance in millenarian movements where these are important features.     

Online Community Detection for Large Complex Networks

Complex networks describe a wide range of systems in nature and society. To understand complex networks, it is crucial to investigate their community structure. In this paper, we develop an online community detection algorithm with linear time complexity for large complex networks. Our algorithm processes a network edge by edge in the order that the network is fed to the algorithm. If a new edge is added, it just updates the existing community structure in constant time, and does not need to re-compute the whole network. Therefore, it can efficiently process large networks in real time. Our algorithm optimizes expected modularity instead of modularity at each step to avoid poor performance. The experiments are carried out using 11 public data sets, and are measured by two criteria, modularity and NMI (Normalized Mutual Information). The results show that our algorithm''s running time is less than the commonly used Louvain algorithm while it gives competitive performance.     

Ins and Outs of Systems Biology vis-à-vis Molecular Biology: Continuation or Clear Cut?

The comprehension of living organisms in all their complexity poses a major challenge to the biological sciences. Recently, systems biology has been proposed as a new candidate in the development of such a comprehension. The main objective of this paper is to address what systems biology is and how it is practised. To this end, the basic tools of a systems biological approach are explored and illustrated. In addition, it is questioned whether systems biology ‘revolutionizes’ molecular biology and ‘transcends’ its assumed reductionism. The strength of this claim appears to depend on how molecular and systems biology are characterised and on how reductionism is interpreted. Doing credit to molecular biology and to methodological reductionism, it is argued that the distinction between molecular and systems biology is gradual rather than sharp. As such, the classical challenge in biology to manage, interpret and integrate biological data into functional wholes is further intensified by systems biology’s use of modelling and bioinformatics, and by its scale enlargement.     

A user-friendly biological workstation

Learning methods developed by artificial intelligence research teams are very efficient for biological sequences analysis but they need running on large computers accessed by terminals. These computers are interfaced with standard displays involving long and unpleasant alphanumerical data handling. The "biological work station" is a personal computer with a color graphic screen providing a user-friendly interface for the artificial intelligence learning programs running on large computers. It provides to biologist a graphical convenient tool for sequence analysis built with efficient man-machine communication methods such as multiwindows, icons and mouse selection. It allows the biologist to edit and display sequences in an efficient and natural way, showing off directly on color pictures the data and the results of learning programs.