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Understanding the Impact of Machine Learning on Labor and Education: A Time-Dependent Turing Test (SpringerBriefs in Philosophy)
by Joseph GanemThis book provides a novel framework for understanding and revising labor markets and education policies in an era of machine learning. It posits that while learning and knowing both require thinking, learning is fundamentally different than knowing because it results in cognitive processes that change over time. Learning, in contrast to knowing, requires time and agency. Therefore, “learning algorithms”—that enable machines to modify their actions based on real-world experiences—are a fundamentally new form of artificial intelligence that have potential to be even more disruptive to labor markets than prior introductions of digital technology. To explore the difference between knowing and learning, Turing’s “Imitation Game,”—that he proposed as a test for machine thinking—is expanded to include time dependence. The arguments presented in the book introduce three novel concepts: (1) Comparative learning advantage: This is a concept analogous to comparative labor advantage but arises from the disparate times required to learn new knowledge bases/skillsets. It is argued that in the future, comparative learning advantages between humans and machines will determine their division of labor. (2) Two dimensions of job performance—expertise and interpersonal: Job tasks can be sorted into two broad categories. Tasks that require expertise have stable endpoints, which makes these tasks inherently repetitive and subject to automation. Tasks that are interpersonal are highly context-dependent and lack stable endpoints, which makes these tasks inherently non-routine. Humans compared to machines have a comparative learning advantage along the interpersonal dimension, which is increasing in value economically. (3) The Learning Game is a time-dependent version of Turing’s “Imitation Game.” It is more than a thought experiment. The “Learning Game” provides a mathematical framework with quantitative criteria for training and assessing comparative learning advantages. The book is highly interdisciplinary—presenting philosophical arguments in economics, artificial intelligence, and education. It also provides data, mathematical analysis, and testable criteria that researchers in these fields will find of practical use. The book calls for a rethinking of how labor markets operate and how the education system should prepare students for future jobs. It concludes with a list of counterintuitive recommendations for future education and labor policies that all stakeholders—employers, employees, educators, students, and political leaders—should heed.
Understanding the Infinite
by Shaughan LavineAn accessible history and philosophical commentary on our notion of infinity.How can the infinite, a subject so remote from our finite experience, be an everyday tool for the working mathematician? Blending history, philosophy, mathematics, and logic, Shaughan Lavine answers this question with exceptional clarity. Making use of the mathematical work of Jan Mycielski, he demonstrates that knowledge of the infinite is possible, even according to strict standards that require some intuitive basis for knowledge.Praise for Understanding the Infinite“Understanding the Infinite is a remarkable blend of mathematics, modern history, philosophy, and logic, laced with refreshing doses of common sense. It is a potted history of, and a philosophical commentary on, the modern notion of infinity as formalized in axiomatic set theory . . . An amazingly readable [book] given the difficult subject matter. Most of all, it is an eminently sensible book. Anyone who wants to explore the deep issues surrounding the concept of infinity . . . will get a great deal of pleasure from it.” —Ian Stewart, New Scientist“How, in a finite world, does one obtain any knowledge about the infinite? Lavine argues that intuitions about the infinite derive from facts about the finite mathematics of indefinitely large size . . . The issues are delicate, but the writing is crisp and exciting, the arguments original. This book should interest readers whether philosophically, historically, or mathematically inclined, and large parts are within the grasp of the general reader. Highly recommended.” —D. V. Feldman, Choice
Understanding the Many
by Byeong-uk YiFirst Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Understanding the Political Philosophers: From Ancient to Modern Times
by Alan HaworthUnderstanding the Political Philosophers is an absorbing and accessible introduction to the major philosophers and core texts of western political philosophy. Organised historically - beginning with Socrates and Plato, and concluding with post-Rawlsian theory - Alan Haworth presents the key ideas and developments with clarity and depth. Each chapter provides a concentrated study of a given thinker or group of thinkers and together they constitute a broad account of the main arguments in political philosophy. There are chapters on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, the Utilitarians, Marx, and Rawls’s early work. This revised second edition has been brought fully up-to-date, and includes expanded coverage of the period from the death of Aristotle to the sixteenth century, as well as a new chapter on Rawls’s later philosophy and the direction of post-Rawlsian philosophy. Including a chronology and suggestions for further reading, Understanding the Political Philosophers is an ideal introductory text for students taking courses in political philosophy or political theory.
Understanding the Qurʾanic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age (Signifying (on) Scriptures #3)
by Isra YaziciogluUnderstanding the Qurʾanic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age explores the ways in which meaningful implications have been drawn from stories of miracles in the Qurʾan. Isra Yazicioglu describes the fascinating medieval Muslim debate over miracles and connects its insights with early and late modern turning points in Western thought and with contemporary Qurʾanic interpretation. Building on an apparent tension within the Qurʾan and analyzing crucial cases of classical and modern Muslim engagement with these miracle stories, she illustrates how an apparent site of conflict between faith and reason, or revelation and science, can lead to fruitful exchange.A distinctive contribution to a new trend in Qurʾanic studies, this volume reveals the presence of insightful Qurʾanic interpretation outside of the traditional line-by-line commentary genre, engaging with the works of Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, and Said Nursi. Scholars of Islam, philosophy, and the intersection of science and religion will especially want to engage with Yazicioglu’s study.
Understanding the Qurʾanic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age (Signifying (on) Scriptures)
by Isra YaziciogluUnderstanding the Qurʾanic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age explores the ways in which meaningful implications have been drawn from stories of miracles in the Qurʾan. Isra Yazicioglu describes the fascinating medieval Muslim debate over miracles and connects its insights with early and late modern turning points in Western thought and with contemporary Qurʾanic interpretation. Building on an apparent tension within the Qurʾan and analyzing crucial cases of classical and modern Muslim engagement with these miracle stories, she illustrates how an apparent site of conflict between faith and reason, or revelation and science, can lead to fruitful exchange.A distinctive contribution to a new trend in Qurʾanic studies, this volume reveals the presence of insightful Qurʾanic interpretation outside of the traditional line-by-line commentary genre, engaging with the works of Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, and Said Nursi. Scholars of Islam, philosophy, and the intersection of science and religion will especially want to engage with Yazicioglu’s study.
Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God
by Franz RosenzweigFranz Rosenzweig, one of the century's great Jewish thinkers, wrote his gem of a book in 1921 as a more accessible precis of his famous Star of Redemption. An elegant introduction to Rosenzweig's "new thinking," Understanding the Sick and the Healthy was written for a lay audience and takes the form of an ironic narrative about convalescence. With superb simplicity and beauty, it puts forth an important critique of the nineteenth-century German Idealist philosophical tradition and expresses a powerful vision of Jewish religion. Harvard's Hilary Putnam provides a new introduction to this classic work for a contemporary audience.
Understanding the Tacit (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought #81)
by Stephen P. TurnerThis book outlines a new account of the tacit, meaning tacit knowledge, presuppositions, practices, traditions, and so forth. It includes essays on topics such as underdetermination and mutual understanding, and critical discussions of the major alternative approaches to the tacit, including Bourdieu’s habitus and various practice theories, Oakeshott’s account of tradition, Quentin Skinner’s theory of historical meaning, Harry Collins’s idea of collective tacit knowledge, as well as discussions of relevant cognitive science concepts, such as non-conceptual content, connectionism, and mirror neurons. The new account of tacit knowledge focuses on the fact that in making the tacit explicit, a person is not, as many past accounts have supposed, reading off the content of some sort of shared and fixed tacit scheme of presuppositions, but rather responding to the needs of the Other for understanding.
Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today's Competing Worldviews (Revised 2nd edition)
by David NoebelComparison of Christianity vs. Islam, Secular Humanism, Marxism, Cosmic Humanism, and Postmodernism in the areas of theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics, and history.
Understanding the geocivilizational aspect in the West: An historical look from a new approach (HISTORY / Europe / Philosophy #1)
by Ahmed SarireteThe international consensus built around the Western model and its civilizational approach, in recent decades, has not been long in showing signs of fragility in the face of structural crises induced by the push for unfair globalization. The doubts that are aroused by the not very reassuring management of this project of globalization and major global crises, such as the global Covid-19 pandemic, which has taken hold of all nations, nevertheless deserve a pause for deep reflection to better understand this unprecedented situation in human history! In this essay, I make my significant contribution in understanding the new process of human civilization, which has become a unique model for all contemporary nations, according to my "geocivilizational" approach, and offer a lucid and serene look at the historical causes of the leadership of Westerners.
Undertones of Insurrection: Music and Cultural Politics in the Modern German Narrative
by Marc WeinerA basic tenet of literary studies is that aesthetic structures are politically significant because they represent an artist's response to the political implications of cultural codes with which the recipient of the modern work is also acquainted. This tenet provides the basis for the ideological associations attending the appearance of music in the modern German narrative. With his understanding of the arts as involved in often unacknowledged ideological forces within a culture, Marc Weiner's Undertones of Insurrection bridges the gap between the "New Musicology's" rewarding infusion of modern cultural and literary theory into the study of music, politically insightful examinations of narrative structures in the modern novel, and the methodologically conservative area of musical-literary relations in Germanic Studies. In other words, the questions it raises are different from those pursued in most examinations of music and literature, because previous works of this kind concerning the literature of German-speaking Europe have often disregarded social concerns in general, and political issues in particular.Ranging from 1900 to Doctor Faustus (1947), Weiner study sets the stage by examining public debates that conflated such issues as national identity, racism, populism, the role of the sexes, and xenophobia with musical texts. In the literary analyses that follow, Weiner discusses both obvious connections between music and sociopolitical issues--Hesse's equation of jazz and insurrection in Steppenwolf--and covert ones, the suppression of music in Death in Venice and the use of politically charged musical subtexts in Werfel's Verdi and Schnitzler's Rhapsody. By uncovering the ideological agendas informing cultural practice in modernist Germany, Undertones of Insurrection calls for a reevaluation of the function of music in the modern German narrative.
Underworlds: Philosophies Of The Unconscious From Psychoanalysis To Metaphysics
by Jon MillsThe first book of its kind to provide a detailed analysis of the history of the unconscious from the underworlds of Greek and Egyptian mythology to psychoanalysis and metaphysics, Jon Mills presents here a unique study of differing philosophies of the unconscious. Mills examines how three major philosophical systems on the nature of the unconscious emerge after modern philosophy, finding their most celebrated elaborations in Freud, Lacan and Jung. These three psychoanalytic traditions, quite separate from one another in terms of their emphasis and philosophical presuppositions, are scrutinised alongside contemporaneous movements in existential phenomenology, semiotics, epistemology, transcendental psychology and Western metaphysics in the texts of Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre and Whitehead. Underworlds provides a scholarly exegesis and critique of the main philosophies of the unconscious to have transpired in the history of ideas. Exploring the unconscious from its philosophical beginnings in antiquity to its systematic articulation brought about by the rise of psychoanalysis, Underworlds is ideal for practicing psychoanalysts, academics of Freud, Jung and Lacan, and scholars of psychology, philosophy and the humanities.
Undisciplined: Reclaiming the Right to Imagine
by Melz OwusuUndisciplined is an odyssey into possibility. Challenging us to break free from limiting strictures and structures, it encourages readers to envision just futures and reflect on the inner transformation required to become the custodians of those worlds.In a profound and heartfelt offering, Melz Owusu delves into the stifling impact of the education system on imagination. They probe alternative, deeply spiritual connections to knowledge, and the pursuit of new ways of being as acts of remembrance of a common past. Seamlessly transitioning between intellectual discourse, personal reflections, and spiritual contemplations, Melz navigates the ‘undisciplining’ of mind and spirit, guiding readers towards the healing and liberatory potential of the heart and the imagination.Undisciplined is not a prescriptive manual but an invitation. Freedom takes many forms, and this book is intended as one route of exploration: a mind-opening and perspective-shifting appraisal of how we might imagine a more just and liberated world, and the path to accessing its beauty.
Undividing Digital Divide: Digital Literacy (SpringerBriefs in Education)
by Ömer Gökhan Ulum Dinçay Köksal Gülten GençThis book problematizes digital divide with critical lens by focusing on education in general and specifically second language education with an emphasis on the context of Turkey based on sound methodologies and robust theories of modernity, postmodernity, post-structuralism and post-method framework. In line with this conceptualization, critical thinking skills, social dialogue, collaboration, accessibility and digital literacy have been widely discussed empirically and prioritized in this book. In addition, social injustice, digital inequality, gender gap, economic disparity, demographic differences and knowledge divide have also been addressed. EFL teachers and pre-service teachers as cultural workers have been incorporated into the studies to critically reflect upon digital divide in Turkey. The views of teachers and learners at a socio-economic disadvantage emanating from socio-political issues have been addressed and foregrounded. The digital divide and inequalities that COVID-19 pandemic has produced have also been emphasized. The context of Turkey where digital divide has been prevalent during COVID-19 pandemic is believed to inspire researchers specializing in digitalization and digital education. The strategies, problems, effects and solutions have been presented. This book presents a reliable source to students, teachers and academics in education and second language education as well as social scientists and policy-makers across the globe.
Undoing Ethics
by Natasha WhitemanOver the past decade, researchers from different academic disciplines have paid increasing attention to the productivity of online environments. The ethical underpinnings of research in such settings, however, remain contested and often controversial. As traditional debates have been reignited by the need to respond to the particular characteristics of technologically-mediated environments, researchers have entered anew key debates regarding the moral, legal and regulative aspects of research ethics. A growing trend in this work has been towards the promotion of localized and contextualized research ethics - the suggestion that the decisions we make should be informed by the nature of the environments we study and the habits/expectations of participants within them. Despite such moves, the relationship between the empirical, theoretical and methodological aspects of Internet research ethics remains underexplored. Drawing from ongoing sociological research into the practices of media cultures online, this book provides a timely and distinctive response to this need. This book explores the relationship between the production of ethical stances in two different contexts: the ethical manoeuvring of participants within online media-fan communities and the ethical decision-making of the author as Internet researcher, manoeuvring, as it were, in the academic community. In doing so, the book outlines a reflexive framework for exploring research ethics at different levels of analysis; the empirical settings of research; the theoretical perspectives which inform the researcher's objectification of the research settings; and the methodological issues and practical decisions that constitute the activity as research. The analysis of these different levels develops a way of thinking about ethical practice in terms of stabilizing and destabilizing moves within and between research and researched communities. The analysis emphasizes the continuities and discontinuities between both research practice and online media-fan activity, and social activity in on and offline environments.
Undoing Whiteness in Disability Studies: The Special Education System and British South Asian Mothers
by Sana RizviThis book offers a nuanced way to conceptualise South Asian Muslim families’ experiences of disability within the UK. The book adopts an intersectional lens to engage with personal narratives on mothering disabled children, negotiating home-school relationships, and developing familiarity with the complex special education system. The author calls for a re-envisioning of special education and disability studies literature from its currently overwhelmingly White middle-class discourse, to one that espouses multi-ethnic and multi-faith perspectives. The book positions minoritised mothers at the forefront of the home-school relationship, who navigate the UK special education system amidst intersecting social inequalities. The author proposes that schools and both formal and informal institutions reformulate their roles in facilitating true inclusion for minoritised disabled families at an epistemic and systemic level.
Undoing the Demos, First Edition: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Zone / Near Futures Ser.)
by Wendy Brown<P>Wendy Brown explains how and why neoliberal reason undoes democracy - the political form and political imaginary it falsely promises to secure and reinvigorate. <P>Through meticulous analyses of neoliberalism law, political practices, governance, and education, she charts what has become the new common sense, arguing that for democracy to have a future, it must become an object of struggle and rethinking.
Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature As Feminist Space
by Stacy AlaimoFrom "Mother Earth" to "Mother Nature," women have for centuries been associated with nature. Feminists, troubled by the way in which such representations show women controlled by powerful natural forces and confined to domestic space, have sought to distance themselves from nature. In Undomesticated Ground, Stacy Alaimo issues a bold call to reclaim nature as a feminist space. Her analysis of a remarkable range of feminist writings-as well as of popular journalism, visual arts, television, and film-powerfully demonstrates that nature has been and continues to be an essential concept for feminist theory and practice. Alaimo urges feminist theorists to rethink the concept of nature by probing the vastly different meanings that it carries. She discusses its significance for Americans engaged in social and political struggles from, for example, the "Indian Wars" of the early nineteenth century, to the birth control movement in the 1920s, to contemporary battles against racism and heterosexism. Reading works by Catherine Sedgwick, Mary Austin, Emma Goldman, Nella Larson, Donna Haraway, Toni Morrison, and others, Alaimo finds that some of these writers strategically invoke nature for feminist purposes while others cast nature as a postmodern agent of resistance in the service of both environmentalism and the women's movement. By examining the importance of nature within literary and political texts, this book greatly expands the parameters of the nature writing genre and establishes nature as a crucial site for the cultural work of feminism.
Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi Jing (I Ching) and Related Texts (Translations from the Asian Classics)
by Edward L. ShaughnessyIn recent years, three ancient manuscripts relating to the Yi jing (I Ching), or Classic of Changes, have been discovered. The earliest—the Shanghai Museum Zhou Yi—dates to about 300 B.C.E. and shows evidence of the text's original circulation. The Guicang, or Returning to Be Stored, reflects another ancient Chinese divination tradition based on hexagrams similar to those of the Yi jing. In 1993, two manuscripts were found in a third-century B.C.E. tomb at Wangjiatai that contain almost exact parallels to the Guicang's early quotations, supplying new information on the performance of early Chinese divination. Finally, the Fuyang Zhou Yi was excavated from the tomb of Xia Hou Zao, lord of Ruyin, who died in 165 B.C.E. Each line of this classic is followed by one or more generic prognostications similar to phrases found in the Yi jing, indicating exciting new ways the text was produced and used in the interpretation of divinations. Unearthing the Changes details the discovery and significance of the Shanghai Museum Zhou Yi, the Wangjiatai Guicang, and the Fuyang Zhou Yi, including full translations of the texts and additional evidence constructing a new narrative of the Yi jing's writing and transmission in the first millennium B.C.E. An introduction situates the role of archaeology in the modern attempt to understand the Classic of Changes. By showing how the text emerged out of a popular tradition of divination, these newly unearthed manuscripts reveal an important religious dimension to its evolution.
Uneasy Allies: Sino-American Relations at the Grassroots, 1937–1949
by Judd C. Kinzley Zach FredmanThis timely collection of essays examines Sino-American relations during the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War and the opening of the Cold War. Drawing on new sources uncovered in China, Taiwan, the UK and the US, the authors demonstrate how 'grassroots' engagements - not just elite diplomacy - established the trans-Pacific networks that both shaped the postwar order in Asia, and continue to influence Sino-US relations today. In these crucial years, servicemen, scientists, students, businesspeople, activists, bureaucrats and many others travelled between the US and China. In every chapter, this innovative volume's approach uncovers their stories using both Chinese and English language sources. By examining interactions among various Chinese and American actors in the dynamic wartime environment, Uneasy Allies reveals a new perspective on the foundations of American power, the brittle nature of the Sino-American relationship, and the early formation of the institutions that shaped the Cold War Pacific.
Uneasy Ethics
by Simon LeeProfessor Simon Lee explores five acute moral dilemmas of the new millennium, each of which has caused un-ease among liberals and conservatives alike. His variation on the old adage that hard cases make bad law is to say that hard cases make for un-easy ethics. If you do not feel uneasy about your answer then you have not understood the questions posed by a series of dilemmas. First, he unravels the moral thinking behind opposing views of the case of the Siamese twins, which attracted worldwide attention in the summer and autumn of 2000, showing how the Archbishop of Westminster argued on ethical principles while the judges responded by using hypothetical 'hard cases'. Second, he explores sharply conflicting reactions to the release in the summer of 2001 of the 'child child killers' of the little boy James Bulger, asking how he find space for atonement. Third, he traces the moral dilemmas within the stop-start Northern Irish peace process which has seen so many twists and turns in the past couple of years. Fourth, he examines the ethics of business and government behaviour in the year of collapses from rural industry to Railtrack. Finally, he offers one of the first considered ethical analyses of contrasting responses to the terror attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001. Ranging across philosophy, law and theology, this analysis of hard cases and un-easy ethics culminates in a novel interpretation of politics' elusive Third Way.
Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State
by Paul TuckerHow central banks and independent regulators can support rather than challenge constitutional democracyUnelected Power lays out the principles needed to ensure that central bankers and other independent regulators act as stewards of the common good. Blending economics, political theory, and public law, this critically important book explores the necessary conditions for delegated but politically insulated power to be legitimate in the eyes of constitutional democracy and the rule of law. It explains why the solution must fit with how real-world government is structured, and why technocrats and their political overseers need incentives to make the system work as intended. Now with a new preface by Paul Tucker, Unelected Power explains how the regulatory state need not be a fourth branch of government free to steer by its own lights, and how central bankers can emulate the best of judicial self-restraint.
Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (Routledge Classics)
by Karl PopperAt the age of eight, Karl Popper was puzzling over the idea of infinity and by fifteen was beginning to take a keen interest in his father's well-stocked library of books. Unended Quest recounts these moments and many others in the life of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, providing an indispensable account of the ideas that influenced him most. As an introduction to Popper's philosophy, Unended Quest also shines. Popper lucidly explains the central ideas in his work, making this book ideal for anyone coming to Popper's life and work for the first time.
Unequal: The Maths of When Things Do and Don’t Add Up
by Eugenia ChengRead by the author.At first glance, the concept of equality in maths seems unambiguous. When we see the equality sign, we think of 'solving for x' or balancing two sides of an equation or maybe even the many famous equations that make use of this elegant, innocuous symbol.=But between those parallel lines lies a mathematical playground of choice and abstraction, leading to far greater insight than you could have dreamed. As it turns out, sameness and difference, equality and inequality, are not nearly as straightforward as they seem.=/=Unequal explores the rich and rewarding interplay between sameness and difference, from numbers to manifolds to category theory and beyond in a glorious celebration of mathematics that will change the way you look at maths - and the world around you - forever.This audiobook has been adapted for audio format. While all essential content is included and fully accessible through listening, a supplemental PDF is provided for additional reference. This material is not required to enjoy or understand the audiobook, but may offer helpful context or be of interest to listeners.
Unequivocal Justice (Political Philosophy for the Real World)
by Christopher FreimanUnequivocal Justice challenges the prevailing view within political philosophy that broadly free market regimes are inconsistent with the basic principles of liberal egalitarian justice. Freiman argues that the liberal egalitarian rejection of free market regimes rests on a crucial methodological mistake. Liberal egalitarians regularly assume an ideal "public interest" model of political behavior and a nonideal "private interest" model of behavior in the market and civil society. Freiman argues that this asymmetrical application of behavioral assumptions biases the analysis and undercuts ideal theoretical treatments of every major liberal egalitarian principle, including political liberty, economic sufficiency, fair opportunity, and social equality. This book reexamines the institutional implications of each of these principles in nonideal conditions, making novel philosophical use of political psychology and public choice economics along the way.