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Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior
by Thomas Parr Karl J. Friston Giovanni PezzuloThe first comprehensive treatment of active inference, an integrative perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior used across multiple disciplines. Active inference is a way of understanding sentient behavior—a theory that characterizes perception, planning, and action in terms of probabilistic inference. Developed by theoretical neuroscientist Karl Friston over years of groundbreaking research, active inference provides an integrated perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior that is increasingly used across multiple disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. Active inference puts the action into perception. This book offers the first comprehensive treatment of active inference, covering theory, applications, and cognitive domains. Active inference is a &“first principles&” approach to understanding behavior and the brain, framed in terms of a single imperative to minimize free energy. The book emphasizes the implications of the free energy principle for understanding how the brain works. It first introduces active inference both conceptually and formally, contextualizing it within current theories of cognition. It then provides specific examples of computational models that use active inference to explain such cognitive phenomena as perception, attention, memory, and planning.
Active Perception in the History of Philosophy: From Plato to Modern Philosophy (Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind #14)
by José Filipe Silva Mikko YrjönsuuriThe aim of the present work is to show the roots of the conception of perception as an active process, tracing the history of its development from Plato to modern philosophy. The contributors inquire into what activity is taken to mean in different theories, challenging traditional historical accounts of perception that stress the passivity of percipients in coming to know the external world. Special attention is paid to the psychological and physiological mechanisms of perception, rational and non-rational perception and the role of awareness in the perceptual process. Perception has often been conceived as a process in which the passive aspects - such as the reception of sensory stimuli - were stressed and the active ones overlooked. However, during recent decades research in cognitive science and philosophy of mind has emphasized the activity of the subject in the process of sense perception, often associating this activity to the notions of attention and intentionality. Although it is recognized that there are ancient roots to the view that perception is fundamentally active, the history remains largely unexplored. The book is directed to all those interested in contemporary debates in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology who would like to become acquainted with the historical background of active perception, but for historical reliability the aim is to make no compromises.
Active Social Capital: Tracing the Roots of Development and Democracy
by Anirudh KrishnaThe idea of social capital allows scholars to assess the quality of relationships among people within a particular community and show how that quality affects the ability to achieve shared goals. With evidence collected from sixty-nine villages in India, Krishna investigates what social capital is, how it operates in practice, and what results it can be expected to produce. Does social capital provide a viable means for advancing economic development, promoting ethnic peace, and strengthening democratic governance? The world is richer than ever before, but more than a fifth of its people are poor and miserable. Civil wars and ethnic strife continue to mar prospects for peace. Democracy is in place in most countries, but large numbers of citizens do not benefit from it. How can development, peace and democracy become more fruitful for the ordinary citizen? This book shows how social capital is a crucial dimension of any solution to these problems.
Active Support
by Jim Mansell Julie Beadle-BrownActive Support is a proven model of care that enables and empowers people with intellectual disabilities to participate fully in all aspects of their lives. This evidence-based approach is particularly effective for working with people with more severe disabilities, and is of growing interest to those responsible for providing support and services. The authors provide a comprehensive overview of Active Support and how it can be used in practice, based on the theory and research underpinning the methods involved. They describe how to engage people with intellectual disabilities in meaningful activity as active participants, and look at the communication style needed to foster positive relationships between carers and the people they are supporting. Highlighting the main issues for those trying to put Active Support into practice, they explain what is needed on a day-to-day basis to support the implementation, improvement and maintenance of the approach, along with possible solutions for the difficulties they may encounter. Finally, they look at how to integrate Active Support with other person-centred approaches, drawing on examples from various organisations and individual case studies. The definitive text on Active Support, this book will be essential reading for anyone professionally concerned with the quality of life of people with intellectual disabilities, including psychologists, behaviour specialists, social workers, care managers, occupational therapists and inspectors and regulators of services, as well as families.
Active and Passive Citizens: A Defense of Majoritarian Democracy (The University Center for Human Values Series #56)
by Richard TuckA powerful case for why majority rule—not representation—is the defining feature of democratic politicsThe idea that democratic governance rests on active self-rule by citizens plays surprisingly little part in current theories of democracy, which instead stress the importance of representation by elected, appointed, or randomly selected bodies such as legislatures, courts, and juries. This would have astonished eighteenth-century theorists of democracy, who viewed universal suffrage and majoritarian voting as the sole criteria for democratic politics. Active and Passive Citizens defends the view of these earlier thinkers, asserting that individual agency is the very essence of democracy.In this provocative and lucidly argued book, Richard Tuck draws on the distinction made by the Abbé Sieyès, a leading political theorist of the French Revolution, between &“active&” citizens (the electorate) and &“passive&” ones (those who are represented by the institutions of the state). Tuck traces our current representative view of democracy to Sieyès and contrasts him with Rousseau, a theorist of active self-rule by the people. Tuck argues that modern theories of democracy have effectively turned us into passive citizens and calls for a renewal of a majoritarian democracy that realizes the full potential of active citizenship.Based on the prestigious Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University&’s Center for Human Values, Active and Passive Citizens is edited and introduced by Stephen Macedo and includes commentary by political theorists Simone Chambers, Joshua Cohen, John Ferejohn, and Melissa Schwartzberg.
Activist Citizenship Education: A Framework for Creating Justice Citizens
by Keith HeggartThis book explores alternative models of civics and citizenship education. Specifically, it uses Justice Citizens, a participatory research and film-making project, as a tool to examine young people’s ideas about active citizenship and participation in public spaces. It introduces a framework that seeks to explore the diverse and apparently contradictory nature of young people’s active citizenship. The framework draws on complexity theory combined with critical pedagogy and democratic education to formulate an approach to developing active citizenship among young people. This approach extends theories of both critical pedagogy and education for citizenship, and by doing so seeks to explain the variegated nature of young people’s engagement with civil society. This book contains a valuable repository of ideas and resources for application for teachers to use in schools and classrooms. Academics engaged in initial teacher education, at both primary and secondary levels, will find the framework of use when describing the importance and new approaches to civics and citizenship education within the current school and policy environments.
Activity Theory in Practice: Promoting Learning Across Boundaries and Agencies
by Anne Edwards Harry Daniels Yrjö Engeström Tony Gallagher Sten R. LudvigsenThis ground-breaking book brings together cutting-edge researchers who study the transformation of practice through the enhancement and transformation of expertise. This is an important moment for such a contribution because expertise is in transition - moving toward collaboration in inter-organizational fields and continuous shaping of transformations. To understand and master this transition, powerful new conceptual tools are needed and are provided here. The theoretical framework which has shaped these studies is Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). CHAT analyses how people and organisations learn to do something new, and how both individuals and organisations change. The theoretical and methodological tools used have their origins in the work of Lev Vygotsky and A.N. Leont’ev. In recent years this body of work has aroused significant interest across the social sciences, management and communication studies. Working as part of an integrated international team, the authors identify specific findings which are of direct interest to the academic community, such as: the analysis of vertical learning between operational and strategic levels within complex organizations; the refinement of notions of identity and subject position within CHAT; the introduction of the concept of ‘labour power’ into CHAT; the development of a method of analysing discourse which theoretically coheres with CHAT and the design of projects. Activity Theory in Practice will be highly useful to practitioners, researchers, students and policy-makers who are interested in conceptual and empirical issues in all aspects of ‘activity-based’ research.
Actor-Network Theory at the Movies: Reassembling the Contemporary American Teen Film With Latour
by Björn Sonnenberg-SchrankThis book is one of the first to apply the theoretical tools proposed by French philosopher Bruno Latour to film studies. Through the example of the Hollywood Teen Film and with a particular focus on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the book delineates how Teen Film has established itself as one of Hollywood’s most consistent and dynamic genres. While many productions may recycle formulaic patterns, there is also a proliferation of cinematic coming-of-age narratives that are aesthetically and politically progressive, experimental, and complex. The case studies develop a Latourian film semiotics as a flexible analytical approach which raises new questions, not only about the history, types and tropes of teen films, but also about their aesthetics, mediality, and composition. Through an exploration of a wide and diverse range of examples from the past decade, including films by female and African-American directors, urban and rural perspectives, and non-heteronormative sexualities, Actor-Network Theory at the Movies demonstrates how the classic Teen Film canon has been regurgitated, expanded, and renewed.
Acts of Consciousness
by Guy SaundersDrawing on compelling material from research interviews with former hostages and political prisoners, Guy Saunders reworks three classic thought experiment stories: Parfit's 'Teleporter', Nagel's 'What is it like to be a bat?' and Jackson's 'Mary the colour scientist' to form a fresh look at the study of consciousness. By examining consciousness from a social psychology perspective, Saunders develops a 'cubist psychology of consciousness' through which he challenges the accepted wisdom of mainstream approaches by arguing that people can act freely. What makes 'cubist psychology' is both the many examples taken from different viewpoints and the multiple ways of looking at the key issues of person, mind and world. This is a unique and engaging book that will appeal to students and academics in the field of consciousness studies and other readers with an interest in consciousness.
Acts of Literature
by Jacques DerridaFirst published in 1992. "Acts of Literature", compiled in close association with Derrida, brings together for the first time a number of Derrida's writings on literary texts on the question of literature. The essays discuss literary figures such as Rousseau, Mallarme, Joyce, Shakespeare and Kafka. Comprising pieces spanning Derrida's career, the collection includes a substantial new interview with him on questions of literature, deconstruction, politics, feminism and history. Derek Attridge provides an introductory essay on deconstruction and the question of literature, and offers suggestions for further reading. These essays examine the place and function of literature in Western culture. They highlight Derrida's interest in literature as a significant cultural institution and as a peculiarly challenging form of writing, with inescapable consequences for our thinking about philosophy, politics and ethics. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and academics in the field of literary theory and criticism and continental philosophy.
Acts, Intentions, and Moral Evaluation (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory)
by Craig M. WhiteThis book argues that the moral quality of an act comes from the agent’s inner states. By arguing for the indispensable relevance of intention in the moral evaluation of acts, the book moves against a mainstream, "objective" approach in normative ethics. It is commonly held that the intentions, knowledge, and volition of agents are irrelevant to the moral permissibility of their acts. This book stresses that the capacities of agency, rather than simply the label "agent," must be engaged during an act if its moral evaluation is to be coherent. The author begins with an ontological argument that an act is a motion or a causing of change in something else. He argues that the source of an act’s moral meaning is in the agent: specifically, what the agent, if aware of relevant facts around her, aims to accomplish. He then moves to a series of critical chapters that consider arguments for mainstream approaches to act evaluation, including Thomson’s dismissal of the agent knowledge and volition requirements, Scanlon’s arguments for a derivative relevance of intentions to permissibility, Frowe’s "causal roles" of agents in the moral evaluation of acts, and Bennett’s explicit defense of the objective approach. The book concludes by offering the author’s preferred replacement for the objective approach, an Aristotelian-Thomist view of acts. Acts, Intentions, and Moral Evaluation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, just war theory, the ethics of self-defense, and philosophy of action.
Acute Melancholia and Other Essays: Mysticism, History, and the Study of Religion (Gender, Theory, and Religion)
by Amy HollywoodAcute Melancholia and Other Essays deploys spirited and progressive approaches to the study of Christian mysticism and the philosophy of religion. Ideal for novices and experienced scholars alike, the volume makes a forceful case for thinking about religion as both belief and practice, in which traditions marked by change are passed down through generations, laying the groundwork for their own critique. Through a provocative integration of medieval sources and texts by Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Talal Asad, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, this book redefines what it means to engage critically with history and those embedded within it.
Adages: Ii1 to Iv100
by Desiderius Erasmus Margaret Mann Phillips R.A.B. MynorsErasmus' Adagia has been called 'one of the world's biggest bedside books,' and certainly the more than 4000 proverbs and maxims gathered and commented on by Erasmus, sometimes in a few lines and sometimes in full-scale essays, have great appeal for both scholar and educated layman. The aim of the Adages was to recapture, in this handy portmanteau form, the outlook and way of life of the classical world through its customs, legends, and social institutions, and to put within reach of a modern public the accumulated wisdom of the past. Each adage is traced in the works of as many authors as Erasmus had to hand; always an authority is given (usually several) and often a close reference providing chapter and verse. The commentaries in the Adages give a forthright and often eloquent expression of Erasmus' opinions on the world of his day, dovetailing with his satirical works on the one hand and his popular evangelical writings on the other. Many, if not most, of the proverbs cited by Erasmus are still in our common stock of speech today. The Collected Works of Erasmus is providing the first complete translation of Erasmus' Adagia. This volume contains the initial 300 adages with notes that identify the classical sources and indicate how Erasmus' reading and thinking developed over the quarter-century spanned by the eight revisions of the original work. Volume 31 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.
Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment
by Iain McdanielAlthough overshadowed by his contemporaries Adam Smith and David Hume, the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson strongly influenced eighteenth-century currents of political thought. A major reassessment of this neglected figure, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe’s Future sheds new light on Ferguson as a serious critic, rather than an advocate, of the Enlightenment belief in liberal progress. Unlike the philosophes who looked upon Europe’s growing prosperity and saw confirmation of a utopian future, Ferguson saw something else: a reminder of Rome’s lesson that egalitarian democracy could become a self-undermining path to dictatorship. Ferguson viewed the intrinsic power struggle between civil and military authorities as the central dilemma of modern constitutional governments. He believed that the key to understanding the forces that propel nations toward tyranny lay in analysis of ancient Roman history. It was the alliance between popular and militaristic factions within the Roman republic, Ferguson believed, which ultimately precipitated its downfall. Democratic forces, intended as a means of liberation from tyranny, could all too easily become the engine of political oppression-a fear that proved prescient when the French Revolution spawned the expansionist wars of Napoleon. As Iain McDaniel makes clear, Ferguson’s skepticism about the ability of constitutional states to weather pervasive conditions of warfare and emergency has particular relevance for twenty-first-century geopolitics. This revelatory study will resonate with debates over the troubling tendency of powerful democracies to curtail civil liberties and pursue imperial ambitions.
Adam Ferguson: An Essay On The History Of Civil Society
by Fania Oz-Salzberger Adam FergusonAdam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society (first published in 1767) is a classic of the Scottish - and European - Enlightenment. Drawing on such diverse sources as classical authors and contemporary travel literature, Ferguson offers a complex model of historical advance which challenges both Hume's and Smith's embrace of modernity and the primitivism of Rousseau. Ferguson combines a subtle analysis of the emergence of modern commercial society with a critique of its abandonment of civic and communal virtues. Central to Ferguson's theory of citizenship are the themes of conflict, play, political participation and military valour. The Essay is a bold and novel attempt to reclaim the tradition of active, virtuous citizenship and apply it to the modern state.
Adam Ferguson: His Social and Political Thought
by David KettlerThe thought of Adam Ferguson generated great excitement among many of his philosophic contemporaries in the late eighteenth century, and it continues to inspire the modern reader. This major study by David Kettler is an ideal introduction to Ferguson's life and thought. The new introduction to this first paperback edition discusses Ferguson's work in relation to his better-known contemporaries David Hume and Adam Smith, while the afterword offers an in-depth reconsideration of Ferguson's most renowned work, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, with emphasis on present-day disputes about the concept of civil society. Ferguson welcomed the advent of critical and analytical philosophy as an ally against superstitious credulity and confused obscurantism, but he was afraid that it might also dissolve into incomprehensible technical complexity and ethical relativism. He was attracted by the manifest practical accomplishments of modern science, as well as by its masterful ordering of natural phenomena into a unified theoretical structure, but he feared that its adherents would debase the notion of man to that of a machine at the mercy of mechanical forces. Ferguson thought well of ambition, but he also believed that a frenzy of ambition and frustration might tear at man's self-respect and peace of mind. The decisive phenomenon manifested by Ferguson's writing is the emergence of an intellectual's point of view toward the conditions of modern society. Many of the questions that he posed have been restated in more profound ways, some of the questions and most of the answers have been eliminated or transformed beyond recognition; and all of the issues he raises are now expressed by others in harsh, new words. But, however formulated, Ferguson's concerns clearly foreshadow the problems of over-rationalization, dehumanization, atomization, alienation, and bureaucratization that have been repeatedly canvassed by intellectuals in our time.
Adam Ferguson: Philosophy, Politics And Society (The Enlightenment World #8)
by Eugene HeathUnique among the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Ferguson saw two eighteenth-century revolutions, the American and the French. This monograph contains a set of essays that analyse Ferguson's philosophical, political and sociological writings and the discourse which they prompted between Ferguson and other important figures.
Adam Smith
by Ryan Patrick HanleyAdam Smith (1723-90) is perhaps best known as one of the first champions of the free market and is widely regarded as the founding father of capitalism. From his ideas about the promise and pitfalls of globalization to his steadfast belief in the preservation of human dignity, his work is as relevant today as it was in the eighteenth century. Here, Ryan Hanley brings together some of the world's finest scholars from across a variety of disciplines to offer new perspectives on Smith's life, thought, and enduring legacy.Contributors provide succinct and accessible discussions of Smith's landmark works and the historical context in which he wrote them, the core concepts of Smith's social vision, and the lasting impact of Smith's ideas in both academia and the broader world. They reveal other sides of Smith beyond the familiar portrayal of him as the author of the invisible hand, emphasizing his deep interests in such fields as rhetoric, ethics, and jurisprudence. Smith emerges not just as a champion of free markets but also as a thinker whose unique perspective encompasses broader commitments to virtue, justice, equality, and freedom.An essential introduction to Adam Smith's life and work, this incisive and thought-provoking book features contributions from leading figures such as Nicholas Phillipson, Amartya Sen, and John C. Bogle. It demonstrates how Smith's timeless insights speak to contemporary concerns such as growth in the developing world and the future of free trade, and how his influence extends to fields ranging from literature and philosophy to religion and law.
Adam Smith And The Character Of Virtue
by Ryan Patrick HanleyRecent years have witnessed a renewed debate over the costs at which the benefits of free markets have been bought. This book revisits the moral and political philosophy of Adam Smith, capitalism's founding father, to recover his understanding of the morals of the market age. In so doing it illuminates a crucial albeit overlooked side of Smith's project: his diagnosis of the ethical ills of commercial societies and the remedy he advanced to cure them. Focusing on Smith's analysis of the psychological and social ills endemic to commercial society - anxiety and restlessness, inauthenticity and mediocrity, alienation and individualism - it argues that Smith sought to combat corruption by cultivating the virtues of prudence, magnanimity, and beneficence. The result constitutes a new morality for modernity, at once a synthesis of commercial, classical, and Christian virtues and a normative response to one of the most pressing political problems of Smith's day and ours. Ryan Patrick Hanley is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. His research in the history of political philosophy has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Review of Politics, History of Political Thought, the European Journal of Political Theory, and other academic journals and edited volumes. He is also the editor of the forthcoming Penguin Classics edition of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, featuring an introduction by Amartya Sen, and a co-editor, with Darrin McMahon, of The Enlightenment: Critical Concepts in History.
Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics
by Paul SagarA radical reinterpretation of Adam Smith that challenges economists, moral philosophers, political theorists, and intellectual historians to rethink him—and why he mattersAdam Smith has long been recognized as the father of modern economics. More recently, scholars have emphasized his standing as a moral philosopher—one who was prepared to critique markets as well as to praise them. But Smith&’s contributions to political theory are still underappreciated and relatively neglected. In this bold, revisionary book, Paul Sagar argues that not only have the fundamentals of Smith&’s political thought been widely misunderstood, but that once we understand them correctly, our estimations of Smith as economist and as moral philosopher must radically change.Rather than seeing Smith either as the prophet of the free market, or as a moralist who thought the dangers of commerce lay primarily in the corrupting effects of trade, Sagar shows why Smith is more thoroughly a political thinker who made major contributions to the history of political thought. Smith, Sagar argues, saw war, not commerce, as the engine of political change and he was centrally concerned with the political, not moral, dimensions of—and threats to—commercial societies. In this light, the true contours and power of Smith&’s foundational contributions to western political thought emerge as never before.Offering major reinterpretations of Smith&’s political, moral, and economic ideas, Adam Smith Reconsidered seeks to revolutionize how he is understood. In doing so, it recovers Smith&’s original way of doing political theory, one rooted in the importance of history and the necessity of maintaining a realist sensibility, and from which we still have much to learn.
Adam Smith and Modernity: 1723–2023 (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy)
by Alberto BurgioThis volume features 19 original essays on Adam Smith’s conception of modernity. The contributions demonstrate the relevance of Smith as the great interpreter of modernity 250 years after the publication of The Wealth of Nations. The chapters in Part 1 focus on structural aspects of Smith’s work. They cover topics such as Smith as theorist of spontaneous order, the systematic dimension of Smith’s theoretical construction, and Smith’s role as a historian of economic thought. Part 2 addresses Smith’s conception of modern subjectivity between Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations. Here the contributors consider the figure of the Smithian "merchant" and the importance of ridicule and satire for understanding modern civility, and comment on the role of sympathy, imagination and moral judgement in developing a sense of self, the condition of the modern man in society, and the virtue of self-command. Part 3 focuses on the crucial question of the relationship between ethics and economics discussing the link between efficiency, equity and justice, the nature of Smith's theory of value, and the ethical connotation of Smith's critique. Part 4 deals with topics inherent to the functional dynamics and development process of the Smithian "commercial society". These topics include law and authority, the relationship between work and freedom, the parable of the "poor man’s son", and the economic and political consequences of the new secular orthodoxy. Finally, the chapters in Part 5 explore themes related to history and the Smithian idea of progress. They focus on the link between trade and progress of civilization, Smith’s modern sociological vision of mass commercial societies, Smith's judgment on “savage” and premodern societies, and the controversial question of the immanentistic or providentialist perspective from which Smith considers both the social dynamics and the historical process. Adam Smith and Modernity will appeal to scholars and advanced students on 18th-century philosophy, the history of economic thought, and the history of social and political philosophy.
Adam Smith and Yan Fu: Western Economics in Chinese Perspective
by Cheng-chung LaiThis book examines at a static level how Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776) was introduced into China at the turn of the twentieth century. In a dynamic socio-economic context, Yan Fu (1854-1921) had The Wealth of Nations in mind as a prescription for China's "Wealth and Power". This book aims answer the question of whether The Wealth of Nations, a book which advocates laissez-faire, free trade, and minimum governance helpful for China with very different economic conditions and modes of thought to the West and goes on to reexamine Yan Fu's economic ideas through a modern economics perspective.
Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory
by Fonna Forman-BarzilaiA broad-ranging study of Smith's views on moral judgement, humanitarian care, commerce, justice and international law.
Adam Smith on the Ancients and the Moderns (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics)
by Gloria VivenzaThe classics heavily influenced many aspects of European modern culture, yet it is not easy to trace their intellectual power on any author. In this volume, Gloria Vivenza takes on the impressive task of examining how philosophy, history, literature, politics, and ethics all played a part in shaping Adam Smith’s thought as a scholar, philosopher, and economist.This book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in the history of economic thought, the history of philosophy, moral philosophy, political theory, and the Enlightenment.
Adam Smith's Pluralism
by Jack Russell WeinsteinIn this thought-provoking study, Jack Russell Weinstein suggests the foundations of liberalism can be found in the writings of Adam Smith (1723#150;1790), a pioneer of modern economic theory and a major figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. While offering an interpretive methodology for approaching Smith's two major works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, Weinstein argues against the libertarian interpretation of Smith, emphasizing his philosophies of education and rationality. Weinstein also demonstrates that Smith should be recognized for a prescient theory of pluralism that prefigures current theories of cultural diversity.