Instrumental View Research Articles

Free-energy pragmatics: Markov blankets don't prescribe objective ontology, and that's okay.

We target the ontological and epistemological ramifications of the proposed distinction between Friston and Pearl blankets. We emphasize the need for empirical testing next to computational modeling. A peculiar aspect of the free energy principle (FEP) is its purported support of radically opposed ontologies of the mind. In our view, the objective ontological aspiration itself should be rejected for a pragmatic instrumentalist view.

Fragmented Pragmatism: On Sungmoon Kim’s Pragmatic Confucian Democracy

Fragmented Pragmatism: On Sungmoon Kim’s Pragmatic Confucian Democracy

A brake or an accelerator? The role of law in sustainability transitions

The role of law is arguably of key importance in rapid sustainability transition. However, neither past nor current transition research explicitly engages with law in relation to transition, and when it engages with law at all, it adopts an instrumental view of it rather than a complex-systemic one. Similarly, there is a lack of broad-ranging legal scholarship on the role of law in transition. We argue that there is a need to bridge the gap between legal and transition research to support the achievement of sustainability goals, and propose a conceptual framework to initiate such a dialogue. The various accelerating, braking and steering roles that the law plays in transition forms the core of our framework in tandem with an argument to the effect that law is a complex system containing legal forces that both support and hinder sustainability transition.

Between Food and Respect for Nature: On the Moral Ambiguity of Norwegian Stakeholder Opinions on Fish and Their Welfare in Technological Innovations in Fisheries

Innovation in fisheries is a global development that focuses on a broad range of aims. One example is a project that aims to develop technology for key phases of the demersal fishery operation to improve product quality and safeguard fish welfare. As this step to include welfare is novel, it raises questions associated with stakeholder acceptance in a wider aim for responsible innovation. How do stakeholders (a) value fish and their welfare and (b) consider the relation between welfare and other relevant values? To address these questions, an approach combining desk research with an empirical study was used. The desk study analysed the ethical and biological arguments for whether fish welfare should be accounted for in this context. The empirical study explored how fish and their welfare are perceived by Norwegian professionals in this industry, by conducting semi-structured interviews and subsequently analysing the results based on a labelling method we developed. The desk study showed a consensus that welfare should be considered in its own right, while at face value the interviews presented a rather instrumental view on this theme. However, analysis of the interview results leads to a more nuanced picture, where fish and their welfare are viewed from the perspective of respect for nature. Despite the apparent divergence between stakeholder opinions and the literature on the importance of welfare, we present three steps that enables professionals to be responsive to both the (moral) views of stakeholders and accounting for welfare in the innovation process fisheries.

Didactic sensitivity to children and place: a contribution to outdoor education cultures

ABSTRACT There is a tendency in European education policy to emphasise more and better deliberate learning outcomes. The tendency is criticised for taking an instrumental view of education [Biesta, G. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy. Routledge,; van Manen, M. (2008). Pedagogical sensitivity and teachers practical knowing-in-action. Peking University Education Review, 6(1), 2–20. http://www.maxvanmanen.com/files/2011/04/2008-Pedagogical-Sensitivity-Teachers-Practical-Knowing-in-Action.pdf] and threatening children’s self-governed play opportunities [Pettersvold, M., & Østrem, S. (2019). Problembarna: Metoder og manualer i barnehage, skole og barnevern. Cappelen Damm akademisk]. However, self-governed play outdoors is perceived as educationally important, notably within Nordic early childhood education. This paper aims to contribute to the international debate on what constitutes good education by investigating an outdoor education culture framed within the context of Nordic early childhood education. We investigate the research question of what characterises teachers’ outdoor didactics in self-governed play and growth as these appear in a Norwegian nature kindergarten? The theoretical framework builds on (1) perspectives on Bildung as playful self-formation [Løvlie, L. (2002). The promise of bildung. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(3), 467–486. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00288; Steinsholt, K. (2010). Vi må miste oss selv for å finne oss selv igjen. Lek, erfaring og danning hos Hans-Georg Gadamer. In K. Steinsholt, & K. P. Gurholt (Eds.), Aktive liv (pp. 101–119). Tapir Akademiske Forlag] and (2) a relational perspective on children’s self-governed outdoor play as a way of integrated dwelling and growth through intimate correspondence with environments [Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge, (2018). Anthropology and/as education: Anthropology, art, architecture and design. Routledge]. Data were generated through ethnographic fieldwork in a public Norwegian nature kindergarten that emphasises children’s outdoor play as educationally important. Nineteen children aged 4–6 participated. The fieldwork drew on participant observation, including playing with the children and on-site conversations. Using the theoretical framework as a lens, the educational culture is conceptualised as didactic sensitivity, which entails the teachers’ delicate sensitivity and responsiveness towards children and place. The teachers act professionally by creating unique, thoughtful, responsive, and situated conditions for children’s autonomous growth in natural environments.

When Bodies Speak Differently: Putting Judith Butler in Conversation with Mahatma Gandhi on Nonviolent Resistance

This article puts political philosopher Judith Butler in conversation with Gandhi, on the topic of nonviolent resistance. More particularly, we compare them on a systematic philosophical level. Although we focus on Gandhi’s more activist side, by delving into the ontological presuppositions that Butler and Gandhi share, we can do some justice to how his activism is firmly rooted in a faith-based understanding of the world. We discuss four themes in each of which they complement each other: namely, the ontological roots of the nonviolent imperative; their rejection of an instrumental view of violence; nonviolent resistance seen as communicative action; and nonviolence viewed as a way of life. This discussion shows that while they have very different starting points and vocabularies, and while some tensions remain, there is much scope for cooperation, solidarity and alliance between religious and nonreligious practitioners of nonviolent resistance.

The Non-Instrumental Aspect of Social Networks: Integrating the Intra-and Inter-personal Processes

Because social network is seen as a form of capital, social network, and social capital research is often closely related. As a result, social network research has largely focused on the instrumental aspect of social networks, such as how it is related to access to information, promotion, and innovation. The purpose of this symposium is to go beyond this instrumental view and show-case four papers that investigate the non-instrumental implication of social networks. Specifically, the symposium discusses how network composition influences unethical behavior, how the nature of ties impacts cognitive capability (e.g. face memory), how psychological experiences of power and status lead to different brokerage strategies, and how homophily has different reputation implications for men and women. In addition, the symposium integrates both the intrapersonal (e.g., norm perception, face memory, the psychological experiences of power and status) and interpersonal processes (e.g., reputation) associated with social networks, whereas the previous literature has largely focused on the interpersonal processes (e.g., access to information and resources, trust, interpersonal perception). Multicultural Network Increases Unethical Behavior By Enhancing Norm Looseness and Moral Relativism Presenter: Jiyin Cao; Stony Brook U.-State U. of New York Presenter: Siyu Yu; New York U. Face Memory and Networks Presenter: Daniel Z. Levin; Rutgers U. To Bridge or not to Bridge? How Power and Status Affect Brokerage Processes Presenter: Alessandro Iorio; Carnegie Mellon U. - Tepper School of Business Presenter: Catherine Shea; Carnegie Mellon U. - Tepper School of Business Gender and Rank Homophily in Friendship Networks and the Reputation for Leadership Presenter: Diane Kang; U. of Kentucky Presenter: Ajay Mehra; U. of Kentucky Presenter: Mohamed Hédi Charki; EDHEC Business School Presenter: Nabila Boukef; U. côte d'Azur, Skema, France Presenter: Theresa M. Floyd; U. of Montana Presenter: Stephen P. Borgatti; U. of Kentucky

Improved Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Noise Direction Finding System

The work is devoted to the development of the acoustic direction of creation of means of detection of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The work of these tools is based on the principles of noise direction finding with the use of such variable characteristics of the acoustic field as: sound intensity, frequency spectrum and spatial spectrum. The architecture of UAV detection devices on the acoustic field corresponds to the algorithms of reproduction in separate paths of the device of ideology of registration and control of dynamics of change of characteristic of an acoustic field which defines the specified change as the fact of detection. The technical implementation of the above detection devices is to create a path of parallel octave, ½ octave and ⅓ octave filters, a path of narrowband filtering and a path of detection by power (intensity). 
 The ideology of construction of detection devices is based on variability and physical manifestations of changes in such characteristics of acoustic noise as: sound intensity in the space - time interval of observation, broadband filtering, narrowband filtering, correlation characteristics.
 To ensure the detection of acoustic power (or intensity) with subsequent measurement of the level, the counter-inclusion (by switching or using operational amplifiers) of the elements of the cross-shaped group is used. An important and new feature is that one of the linear discrete acoustic antennas with an enlarged base additionally has two more pressure receivers symmetrically relative to the phase center.
 For broadband filtration, a comb of ⅓ octave band and semi-octave filters is used. In turn, the path of the narrowband spectrum is an octave band filter and a unit for calculating the fast Fourier transform.
 The path of the correlation direction-finding method implements the determination of changes in the autocorrelation coefficient and the corresponding electrical parameter (say the current through the display circuit) in the processing path in situations of fixing the direction to the target.
 Therefore, the proposed system for detecting useful noise signals should contain four paths, the physical implementation of detection in which is performed by software implementation of detection algorithms and, threshold processing and indication of results
 In order to improve and increase the reliability of detection, the direction finder is supplemented by the path of detection on the mutual spectrum and the path of the correlation method of direction finding.
 The processing of input acoustic information of the type of specific noise-like signal is carried out by using the instrumental laboratory software package Lab View and Math Lab. We will add that the article contains theoretical and practical results of measurements of noise loading and range of action of a noise direction finder. Experimental studies in terms of detection and measurement of the main characteristics of the device were conducted in laboratory and field conditions.
 At the same time, the present demonstrates the rapid development of the UAV fleet, which determines the urgency of the work and the development of the device as a means of counteracting small aircraft of various recognitions is its goal.

Assisting translations in border crossing

Abstract This contribution explores the position of translation policy and its connection to translation flows in translation studies research. Power relationships (among languages, cultures, etc.) are essential when assessing and interpreting translation flows. Despite the hyper-centrality of English, other countries and language areas develop cultural policies to export their own literature through translation. The case study furnished here deals with the state agents responsible for the literary translation policy of Estonia, viz., the Estonian Literature Centre and the Traducta translation grants of the Estonian Cultural Endowment (Eesti Kultuurkapital). The statutes of the Traducta program, including the selection criteria, express an instrumental view on translation that is partly in conflict with the findings of modern translation studies. The data on the awards of the Traducta program not only confirm that the publishing of a translation often depends on the additional financial support for the program, but also highlight the significant differences between different target language areas, in a complex interplay of economic factors with elements of cultural image-building and geographical proximity.

여대생의 결혼관 및 결혼의향에 영향을 미치는 요인 : 경기지역 일부 여대생을 중심으로

Objectives: The objective of this study is to understand the factors having effects on the view of marriage of female university students, and also to present the reference data for establishing the measures for having the positive view of marriage of female university students. Methods: An online survey was conducted targeting total 254 female university students of two universities in Gyeonggi region, from October 1st to November 13th 2020. The results of this study are as follows. Results: First, to the question related to the intent to marry, total 70% of them responded that they had intent to marry. In the time of marriage, they said they would marry when getting financially stable. The 30% of subjects said that they would choose non-marriage because they wanted to continuously enjoy free life and they did not want to bear burden related to childbirth and child-rearing. Second, in the results of analyzing differences in the view of marriage according to the general characteristics, the students with intent to marry showed the higher romantic view of marriage, instrumental view of marriage, and exclusive view of marriage than the students without intent to marry, which showed significant differences. Third, the view of marriage were the factors having the greatest effects on the intent to marry of female university students. Conclusion: Based on such results of this study, it would be necessary to focus on the policies that could positively change the view of marriage of female university students. It would be needed to establish the socialㆍinstitutional support measures for work-life balance by reducing women’s burden of childbirth and child-rearing. To the question about the time of marriage, the most subjects responded that they would do so when the economic ability and stable job were equipped. Thus, there should be the systematic youth employment support system that could help the students to quickly and stably enter society and to become financially independent after graduation. Also, for the formation of positive family relation, it would be necessary to developㆍoperate the educational programs for forming positive family relation and desirable communication methods for each subject(spouse, parents, children, siblings, and etc.).

Overcoming Penal Boundaries: Exploring The Evolution of Retributive Time Through Parole Decision-Making

AbstractThe relations between sentencing and post-sentencing stages (e.g., the implementation of prison, parole or community-based sanctions) are often perceived through temporal, spatial and normative binaries. The static time of retributive calibration—as fully known at sentencing time—stands at the heart of this separation. Through qualitative findings drawn from parole-board chairpersons in Israel, the paper argues that retributive punishment may evolve with time. As the findings suggest, parole decision-makers often go beyond risk and rehabilitation and reframe, reinterpret and renegotiate the dimensions of the deserved punishment. Three temporally dynamic themes of retributive discourses were described: (1) unexpected suffering review; (2) moral character revaluation; and (3) diminished censure reassessment. The findings challenge both the static conceptualization of retributive time and the instrumental view of parole decision-making. More generally, the findings question the assumed strict boundaries between sentencing and post-sentencing stages and call for future scholarly engagement with the evolution of punishment over time.

Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

The Regional Migration-Development Nexus in Australia: What Migration? Whose Development?

Both regional resettlement of refugees, and the attraction of different kinds of migrant labor to regional areas, have been significant trends in Australia’s recent migration policies. Using the concept of the migration-development nexus, we address important questions about the nature and scope of development these different policies aim to promote, and achieve. We examine the intersection of policies and initiatives implemented to encourage and support refugee settlement and regional migration in Australia with the perspectives of regionally settled migrants and refugees on their regional migration outcomes. We argue that recent government policies, and multi-stakeholder initiatives aimed at regional migration and/or settlement, cast migrants as differential contributors to regional development, useful either in terms of their skills (skilled migrants) or their labor (backpackers, seasonal workers, refugees). The co-presence of different groups of migrants in regional locations is also shaped by the fluctuating employer demands for mobile labor in combination with visa regulations. We draw on data from three projects on regional settlement, multiculturalism and mobilities to analyze three important elements of regional migration that are central to a critical analysis of the nexus between rural migration and development in regional Australia: the complex roles of employers; the embedding of regional migration in migrants’ life courses; and the tension between long-term migration outcomes and quick fixes. By focusing on development as it is experienced by migrants themselves and interpreted by different stakeholders in regional migration, we draw attention to the limitations of a purely instrumental view of migrants as agents of regional development. We argue that the sustainability of regional migration policies will depend on recognizing the important role of migrants’ hopes, needs and aspirations as well as their rights, and the unintended human costs and consequences of exclusively economically driven migration policy design.

Molotov Cocktails to Mass Marches: Strategic Nonviolence, Symbolic Violence, and the Mobilizing Effect of Riots

What effects do violent protests have on social movement mobilizations? In recent decades, the field of nonviolence studies has popularized a strategic nonviolence framework to understand activist tactics. This framework is problematic in two ways. First, dominant theories argue that violent protest actions demobilize nonviolent protest. However, there is less empirical support for this claim than often assumed. Current quantitative findings on the demobilizing effects of violent protest rely on a false dichotomy between violence and nonviolence that obscures the effects of low-level violent actions. Through statistical analysis of protest trends in the US over 72 years, I show that riots have an overall mobilizing impact on nonviolent protests. Second, the strategic nonviolence framing encourages an instrumental view of tactics that is prone to miss the symbolic and emotional aspects of different types of actions. Through qualitative interviews with participants in the black bloc tactic, I explore the experiential effects of the riot, and find that rioting can have deeply empowering emotional impacts on participants, with lasting effects that sustain activists’ political engagement. In combination, these results demonstrate that low-level violent actions interact with movements in more dynamic ways than dominant theories have understood. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2021 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]

Just Sitting and Just Saying: The Hermeneutics of Dōgen’s Realization-Based View of Language

This paper explicates the complex relationship between contemplative practice and enlightened activity conducted both on and off the meditative cushion as demonstrated in the approach of the Sōtō Zen Buddhist founder Dōgen (1200–1253). I examine Dōgen’s intricate views regarding how language, or what I refer to as just saying, can and should be used in creative yet often puzzling and perplexing ways to express the experience of self-realization by reflecting the state of non-thinking that is attained through unremitting seated meditation or just sitting (shikan taza). In light of the sometimes-forbidding obscurity of his writing, as well as his occasional admonitions against a preoccupation with literary pursuits, I show based on a close reading of primary sources that Dōgen’s basic hermeneutic standpoint seeks to overcome conventional sets of binary oppositions involving uses of language. These polarities typically separate the respective roles of teacher and learner by distinguishing sharply between delusion and insight, truth and untruth, right and wrong, or speech and silence, and thereby reinforce a hierarchical, instrumental, and finite view of discourse. Instead, Dōgen inventively develops expressions that emphasize the non-hierarchical, realization–based, and eminently flexible functions of self-extricating rhetoric such that, according to his paradoxical teaching, “entangled vines are disentangled by using nothing other than entwined creepers,” or as a deceptively straightforward example, “the eyes are horizontal, and the nose is vertical.”

“I expect boredom”: Students' experiences and expectations of multiliteracies learning

Multiliteracies has been incorporated in the curriculum of many education systems around the world. Beyond the broadening of focus in literacy to include multimodal meaning‐making, multiliteracies pedagogies are also associated with certain pedagogical shifts, such as a focus on bridging the students' out‐of‐school literacy practices with what and how they are learning in school. This often involves appropriating social media as well as introducing popular culture topics in the classroom. This article discusses the students' perspectives of these ideas to inform the teacher's design of multiliteracies learning. Drawing on data collected through surveys and focus group discussions from a multi‐phased research project on multiliteracies in Singapore, we reflect on the students' expressions of their experiences and expectations on multiliteracies learning. In particular, we surface an instrumental view of learning where concerns over examinations and future career prospects cloud the students' learning. We also identify a desire among the students to keep their worlds of home and schools separate. While the discussion of the students' perspectives is anchored in the context of Singapore, the implications contribute to the global discourse among curriculum planners, educational researchers and teacher practitioners who are interested in improving the design of multiliteracies learning in their contexts.

Theoretical virtues and theorizing in physics: against the instrumentalist view of simplicity

I argue that if (a) simplicity is a theoretical virtue and (b) some theoretical virtues are the constituents of the aims of theorizing in physics—i.e., theory choice and theory development in physics—and (c) scientific rationality is instrumental rationality, then simplicity cannot be a mere means to achieve the aims. I do this by showing that considering simplicity as a mere means brings about counterintuitive ramifications concerning scientific rationality. These counterintuitive ramifications can be avoided if we consider simplicity a constituent of the aims of theorizing in physics.

Why We Should Stop Fethishing Democracy

Democracy is in trouble, and it is democracy’s own fault—that is Robert Talisse’s intriguing contention is his recent book, Overdoing Democracy: Why We Must Put Politics in its Place (2019). What gets democracy into trouble, according to Talisse, is the idea that a democratic form of government is intrinsically valuable, which in turn entails a deliberative conception of democracy that, in combination with the social-psychological fact of social sorting, leads to rampant polarization. According to Talisse, we therefore need to put democracy in its place by resisting the expansive view of the scope of democracy and making room for non-political spaces of interaction, in which we can form civic friendships. However, in what follows, I argue that what Talisse has actually provided is an excellent reason for rejecting rather than merely mitigating the detrimental effects of the idea that democracy is intrinsically valuable. Specifically, we ought to stop fetishizing democracy and instead embrace an instrumentalist view of democracy as a social practice that is instituted and maintained for purposes external to itself. Once we do this, democracy no longer needs saving from itself.

Synching the martial body: poetic encounters with Finnish cadets

ABSTRACT In this paper, I engage poetically with embodied experiences of Finnish cadets in physical training, bringing the study of body technique, social emotions and militarism together. I focus on the cadets’ experiences in collective movement, in particular when synchronizing and attuning with each other. I identify three bodies – minded, machine and combat – as descriptions of being part of the synching collective. I propose that the interviewed Finnish cadets associate synchrony in their training with 1) the capacity and need to think with their bodies, 2) suffering as their social glue in an instrumentalist view of the body 3) techniques for surviving combat. I approach the material I collected in fieldwork through a poetics that echoes the cadets’ articulations through my own body, as well as writing speaking directly to cadets in the second person.

The greening of the revolution: Changing state views on nature and development in Cuba’s transforming socialism

In the early 1990s, in the midst of the deepest economic crisis in its recent history, President Fidel Castro proclaimed sustainable development as the new guiding principle for Cuba. This would prove to be a wise move in the context of crisis management.This article explores the shift in Cuba’s state visions of nature and development, which occurred in the wake of the deep crisis unfolding after the breakdown of the Eastern Bloc, on which Cuba heavily depended. This vital threat to the country’s socialist system necessitated far-reaching economic and social policy adjustments, resulting in painful consequences for its citizens. The measures taken in the so-called Special Period demanded a new development vision for their legitimation. The Castro government developed a reformed socialist development model, shifting away from the ideal of Soviet model catch-up modernisation and its instrumental view on nature, towards the paradigm of sustainable development. Based on the analysis of 55 speeches made by Fidel Castro between 1959 and 1996, this radical change in views on nature and development is analysed. This paradigm shift served several political purposes and helped the Cuban leadership navigate through the crisis of the 1990s.