Böcker i The MIT Press-serien

An introduction to natural language semantics that offers an overview of the empirical domain and an explanation of the mathematical concepts that underpin the discipline.This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of those approaches to natural language semantics that use the insights of logic. Many other texts on the subject focus on presenting a particular theory of natural language semantics. This text instead offers an overview of the empirical domain (drawn largely from standard descriptive grammars of English) as well as the mathematical tools that are applied to it. Readers are shown where the concepts of logic apply, where they fail to apply, and where they might apply, if suitably adjusted. The presentation of logic is completely self-contained, with concepts of logic used in the book presented in all the necessary detail. This includes propositional logic, first order predicate logic, generalized quantifier theory, and the Lambek and Lambda calculi. The chapters on logic are paired with chapters on English grammar. For example, the chapter on propositional logic is paired with a chapter on the grammar of coordination and subordination of English clauses; the chapter on predicate logic is paired with a chapter on the grammar of simple, independent English clauses; and so on.The book includes more than five hundred exercises, not only for the mathematical concepts introduced, but also for their application to the analysis of natural language. The latter exercises include some aimed at helping the reader to understand how to formulate and test hypotheses.

An examination of how artists have combined performance and moving image for decades, anticipating our changing relation to images in the internet era.In Performing Image, Isobel Harbison examines how artists have combined performance and moving image in their work since the 1960s, and how this work anticipates our changing relations to images since the advent of smart phones and the spread of online prosumerism. Over this period, artists have used a variety of DIY modes of self-imaging and circulation—from home video to social media—suggesting how and why Western subjects might seek alternative platforms for self-expression and self-representation. In the course of her argument, Harbison offers close analyses of works by such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Yvonne Rainer, Mark Leckey, Wu Tsang, and Martine Syms.Harbison argues that while we produce images, images also produce us—those that we take and share, those that we see and assimilate through mass media and social media, those that we encounter in museums and galleries. Although all the artists she examines express their relation to images uniquely, they also offer a vantage point on today's productive-consumptive image circuits in which billions of us are caught. This unregulated, all-encompassing image performativity, Harbison writes, puts us to work, for free, in the service of global corporate expansion. Harbison offers a three-part interpretive framework for understanding this new proximity to images as it is negotiated by these artworks, a detailed outline of a set of connected practices—and a declaration of the value of art in an economy of attention and a crisis of representation.

A new approach to Hume's problem of induction that justifies the optimality of induction at the level of meta-induction.Hume's problem of justifying induction has been among epistemology's greatest challenges for centuries. In this book, Gerhard Schurz proposes a new approach to Hume's problem. Acknowledging the force of Hume's arguments against the possibility of a noncircular justification of the reliability of induction, Schurz demonstrates instead the possibility of a noncircular justification of the optimality of induction, or, more precisely, of meta-induction (the application of induction to competing prediction models). Drawing on discoveries in computational learning theory, Schurz demonstrates that a regret-based learning strategy, attractivity-weighted meta-induction, is predictively optimal in all possible worlds among all prediction methods accessible to the epistemic agent. Moreover, the a priori justification of meta-induction generates a noncircular a posteriori justification of object induction. Taken together, these two results provide a noncircular solution to Hume's problem.Schurz discusses the philosophical debate on the problem of induction, addressing all major attempts at a solution to Hume's problem and describing their shortcomings; presents a series of theorems, accompanied by a description of computer simulations illustrating the content of these theorems (with proofs presented in a mathematical appendix); and defends, refines, and applies core insights regarding the optimality of meta-induction, explaining applications in neighboring disciplines including forecasting sciences, cognitive science, social epistemology, and generalized evolution theory. Finally, Schurz generalizes the method of optimality-based justification to a new strategy of justification in epistemology, arguing that optimality justifications can avoid the problems of justificatory circularity and regress.

Leading economists discuss post-financial crisis policy dilemmas, including the dangers of complacency in a period of relative stability.The Great Depression led to the Keynesian revolution and dramatic shifts in macroeconomic theory and macroeconomic policy. Similarly, the stagflation of the 1970s led to the adoption of the natural rate hypothesis and to a major reassessment of the role of macroeconomic policy. Should the financial crisis and the Great Recession lead to yet another major reassessment, to another intellectual revolution? Will it? If so, what form should it, or will it, take? These are the questions taken up in this book, in a series of contributions by policymakers and academics. The contributors discuss the complex role of the financial sector, the relative roles of monetary and fiscal policy, the limits of monetary policy to address financial stability, the need for fiscal policy to play a more active role in stabilization, and the relative roles of financial regulation and macroprudential tools. The general message is a warning against going back to precrisis ways—to narrow inflation targeting, little use of fiscal policy for stabilization, and insufficient financial regulation.ContributorsDavid Aikman, Alan J. Auerbach, Ben S. Bernanke, Olivier Blanchard, Lael Brainard, Markus K. Brunnermeier, Marco Buti, Benoît Coeuré, Mario Draghi, Barry Eichengreen, Jason Furman, Gita Gopinath, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Andrew G. Haldane, Philipp Hildebrand, Marc Hinterschweiger, Sujit Kapadia, Nellie Liang, Adam S. Posen, Raghuram Rajan, Valerie Ramey, Carmen Reinhart, Dani Rodrik, Robert E. Rubin, Jay C. Shambaugh, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Jeremy C. Stein, Lawrence H. Summers

An exploration of the scientific mindset—such character virtues as curiosity, veracity, attentiveness, and humility to evidence—and its importance for science, democracy, and human flourishing.Exemplary scientists have a characteristic way of viewing the world and their work: their mindset and methods all aim at discovering truths about nature. In An Instinct for Truth, Robert Pennock explores this scientific mindset and argues that what Charles Darwin called "an instinct for truth, knowledge, and discovery” has a tacit moral structure—that it is important not only for scientific excellence and integrity but also for democracy and human flourishing. In an era of "post-truth,” the scientific drive to discover empirical truths has a special value.Taking a virtue-theoretic perspective, Pennock explores curiosity, veracity, skepticism, humility to evidence, and other scientific virtues and vices. He explains that curiosity is the most distinctive element of the scientific character, by which other norms are shaped; discusses the passionate nature of scientific attentiveness; and calls for science education not only to teach scientific findings and methods but also to nurture the scientific mindset and its core values.Drawing on historical sources as well as a sociological study of more than a thousand scientists, Pennock's philosophical account is grounded in values that scientists themselves recognize they should aspire to. Pennock argues that epistemic and ethical values are normatively interconnected, and that for science and society to flourish, we need not just a philosophy of science, but a philosophy of the scientist.

An introduction to the new area of ignorance studies that examines how science produces ignorance—both actively and passively, intentionally and unintentionally.We may think of science as our foremost producer of knowledge, but for the past decade, science has also been studied as an important source of ignorance. The historian of science Robert Proctor has coined the term agnotology to refer to the study of ignorance, and much of the ignorance studied in this new area is produced by science. Whether an active or passive construct, intended or unintended, this ignorance is, in Proctor's words, "made, maintained, and manipulated” by science. This volume examines forms of scientific ignorance and their consequences.A dialogue between Proctor and Peter Galison offers historical context, presenting the concerns and motivations of pioneers in the field. Essays by leading historians and philosophers of science examine the active construction of ignorance by biased design and interpretation of experiments and empirical studies, as seen in the "false advertising” by climate change deniers; the "virtuous” construction of ignorance—for example, by curtailing research on race- and gender-related cognitive differences; and ignorance as the unintended by-product of choices made in the research process, when rules, incentives, and methods encourage an emphasis on the beneficial and commercial effects of industrial chemicals, and when certain concepts and even certain groups' interests are inaccessible in a given conceptual framework.ContributorsMartin Carrier, Carl F. Cranor, Peter Galison, Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Philip Kitcher, Janet Kourany, Hugh Lacey, Robert Proctor, Londa Schiebinger, Miriam Solomon, Torsten Wilholt

Practitioners and scholars explore ethical, social, and conceptual issues arising in relation to such devices as fitness monitors, neural implants, and a toe-controlled computer mouse.Body-centered computing now goes beyond the “wearable” to encompass implants, bionic technology, and ingestible sensors—technologies that point to hybrid bodies and blurred boundaries between human, computer, and artificial intelligence platforms. Such technologies promise to reconfigure the relationship between bodies and their environment, enabling new kinds of physiological interfacing, embodiment, and productivity. Using the term embodied computing to describe these devices, this book offers essays by practitioners and scholars from a variety of disciplines that explore the accompanying ethical, social, and conceptual issues. The contributors examine technologies that range from fitness monitors to neural implants to a toe-controlled mouse. They discuss topics that include the policy implications of ingestibles; the invasive potential of body area networks, which transmit data from bodily devices to the internet; cyborg experiments, linking a human brain directly to a computer; the evolution of the ankle monitor and other intrusive electronic monitoring devices; fashiontech, which offers users an aura of “cool” in exchange for their data; and the “final frontier” of technosupremacism: technologies that seek to read our minds. Taken together, the essays show the importance of considering embodied technologies in their social and political contexts rather than in isolated subjectivity or in purely quantitative terms.ContributorsRoba Abbas, Andrew Iliadis, Gary Genosko, Suneel Jethani, Deborah Lupton, Katina Michael, M. G. Michael, Marcel O''Gorman, Maggie Orth, Isabel Pedersen, Christine Perakslis, Kevin Warwick, Elizabeth Wissinger

The present volume offers eloquent testimony that many of the master builders of this century have held passionate convictions regarding the philosophic and social basis of their art. Nearly every important development in the modern architectural movement began with the proclamation of these convictions in the form of a program or manifesto. The most influential of these are collected here in chronological order from 1903 to 1963. Taken together, they constitute a subjective history of modern architecture; compared with one another, their great diversity of style reveals in many cases the basic differences of attitude and temperament that produced a corresponding divergence in architectural style. In point of view, the book covers the aesthetic spectrum from right to left; from programs that rigidly generate designs down to the smallest detail to revolutionary manifestoes that call for anarchy in building form and town plan. The documents, placed in context by the editor, are also international in their range: among them are the seminal and prophetic statements of Henry van de Velde, Adolf Loos, and Bruno Taut from the early years of the century; Frank Lloyd Wright's 1910 annunciation of Organic Architecture; Gropius's original program for the Bauhaus, founded in Weimar in 1919; "Towards a New Architecture, Guiding Principles" by Le Corbusier; the formulation by Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner of the basic principles of Constructivism; and articles by R. Buckminster Fuller on universal architecture and the architect as world planner. Other pronouncements, some in flamboyant style, including those of Erich Mendelsohn, Hannes Meyer, Theo van Doesburg, Oskar Schlemmer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, El Lissitzky, and Louis I. Kahn. There are also a number of collective or group statements, issued in the name of movements such as CIAM, De Stijl, ABC, the Situationists, and GEAM.Since the dramatic effectiveness of the manifesto form is usually heightened by brevity and conciseness, it has been possible to reproduce most of the documents in their entirety; only a few have been excerpted.

New essays by leading philosophers and cognitive scientists that present recent findings and theoretical developments in the study of concepts. The study of concepts has advanced dramatically in recent years, with exciting new findings and theoretical developments. Core concepts have been investigated in greater depth and new lines of inquiry have blossomed, with researchers from an ever broader range of disciplines making important contributions. In this volume, leading philosophers and cognitive scientists offer original essays that present the state-of-the-art in the study of concepts. These essays, all commissioned for this book, do not merely present the usual surveys and overviews; rather, they offer the latest work on concepts by a diverse group of theorists as well as discussions of the ideas that should guide research over the next decade. The book is an essential companion volume to the earlier Concepts: Core Readings, the definitive source for classic texts on the nature of concepts.The essays cover concepts as they relate to animal cognition, the brain, evolution, perception, and language, concepts across cultures, concept acquisition and conceptual change, concepts and normativity, concepts in context, and conceptual individuation. The contributors include such prominent scholars as Susan Carey, Nicola Clayton, Jerry Fodor, Douglas Medin, Joshua Tenenbaum, and Anna Wierzbicka.ContributorsAurore Avarguès-Weber, Eef Ameel, Megan Bang, H. Clark Barrett, Pascal Boyer, Elisabeth Camp, Susan Carey, Daniel Casasanto, Nicola S. Clayton, Dorothy L. Cheney, Vyvyan Evans, Jerry A. Fodor, Silvia Gennari, Tobias Gerstenberg, Martin Giurfa, Noah D. Goodman, J. Kiley Hamlin, James A. Hampton, Mutsumi Imai, Charles W. Kalish, Frank Keil, Jonathan Kominsky, Stephen Laurence, Gary Lupyan, Edouard Machery, Bradford Z. Mahon, Asifa Majid, Barbara C. Malt, Eric Margolis, Douglas Medin, Nancy J. Nersessian, bethany ojalehto, Anna Papafragou, Joshua M. Plotnik, Noburo Saji, Robert M. Seyfarth, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Sandra Waxman, Daniel A. Weiskopf, Anna Wierzbicka

An investigation into why so few African American and Latino high school students are studying computer science reveals the dynamics of inequality in American schools.

Memoir, clinical writings, and ethnography inform new perspectives on the experience of technology; personal stories illuminate how technology enters the inner life.

A visionary report on the revitalization of the liberal arts tradition in the electronically inflected, design-driven, multimedia language of the twenty-first century.

Market Volatility proposes an innovative theory, backed by substantial statistical evidence, on the causes of price fluctuations in speculative markets.

An examination of the pervasive anxiety about and fixation with time seen in 1960s art.In the 1960s art fell out of time; both artists and critics lost their temporal bearings in response to what E. M. Cioran called "not being entitled to time." This anxiety and uneasiness about time, which Pamela Lee calls "chronophobia," cut across movements, media, and genres, and was figured in works ranging from kinetic sculptures to Andy Warhol films. Despite its pervasiveness, the subject of time and 1960s art has gone largely unexamined in historical accounts of the period. Chronophobia is the first critical attempt to define this obsession and analyze it in relation to art and technology.Lee discusses the chronophobia of art relative to the emergence of the Information Age in postwar culture. The accompanying rapid technological transformations, including the advent of computers and automation processes, produced for many an acute sense of historical unknowing; the seemingly accelerated pace of life began to outstrip any attempts to make sense of the present. Lee sees the attitude of 1960s art to time as a historical prelude to our current fixation on time and speed within digital culture. Reflecting upon the 1960s cultural anxiety about temporality, she argues, helps us historicize our current relation to technology and time.After an introductory framing of terms, Lee discusses such topics as "presentness" with repect to the interest in systems theory in 1960s art; kinetic sculpture and new forms of global media; the temporality of the body and the spatialization of the visual image in the paintings of Bridget Riley and the performance art of Carolee Schneemann; Robert Smithson's interest in seriality and futurity, considered in light of his reading of George Kubler's important work The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things and Norbert Wiener's discussion of cybernetics; and the endless belaboring of the present in sixties art, as seen in Warhol's Empire and the work of On Kawara.

The generously illustrated, lavishly documented story of NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst), the eastern European art collective present at the last revolution of the twentieth century.This book is the generously illustrated, lavishly documented, critically narrated story of one of the most significant art collectives of the late twentieth century.In 1984, three groups of artists in post-Tito Yugoslavia—the music and multimedia group Laibach, the visual arts group Irwin, and the theater group Scipion Nasice Sisters Theater—came together to form the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) art collective.Adopting the symbols, codes, appearances, and discourses of fascism, nationalism, state power, socialist-realist, and avant-garde art, and pushing the strategies of overidentification and subversive affirmation to their limits, NSK exposed the common foundations of various regimes, systems, and ideologies, while affirming that "art and totalitarianism are not mutually exclusive.”Employing music, video, film, exhibitions, writing, graphic design, architecture, theater, and public relations to probe the aesthetic possibilities of declining socialism and proliferating capitalism, NSK introduced an idiosyncratic version of postmodernism (the Retro-Avant-Garde) into the globalizing cultural sphere.Combining primary documents, period artifacts, critical essays, and contextual notes, NSK from Kapital to Capital documents NSK's collective practice during the final decade of Yugoslavia—from the first (and banned) Laibach concert (1980) in a small proletarian mining town in Slovenia to the series of projects launched by individual NSK groups entitled Kapital (1991-92). This illuminating chronicle of NSK's work and its reception is produced in conjunction with the first major museum exhibition devoted to NSK. Designed by Novi Kolektivizem (New Collectivism), the graphic design section of NSK, the cover of each individual copy of the book is printed with a custom detail; no two covers exactly are the same.Copublished with Moderna Galerija / Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia.ContributorsEda Cufer, Goran Dordevic, Slavoj Zizek, Marina Grzinic, Rastko Mocnik, Marina Grzinic, Lev Kreft, Tomaz Mastnak, Mladen Dolar, Chrissie Iles, Boris Groys, Inke Arns, Alexei Monroe, Catherine Wood, Daniel Ricardo Quiles, Anthony Gardner, Barbara Borcic, Alexei Yurchak, Dejan Krsic, and othersExhibitionModerna galerija, Ljubljana: 12 May-17 August 2015 Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven: March-August, 2016Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow: Fall 2016

An art-historical perspective on interactive media art that provides theoretical and methodological tools for understanding and analyzing digital art.

Why Keynes is relevant to today's global economic crisis, and how Keynesian ideas can point the way to renewed economic growth.

Innovative artists in 1960s Japan who made art in the "wilderness"-away from Tokyo, outside traditional norms, and with little institutional support-with global resonances.

Twentieth-century architect Frederick Kiesler's innovative multidisciplinary practice responded to the ever-changing needs of the body in motion, anticipating the research-oriented practices of contemporary art and architecture.

An expert explores the riddle of subjective time, from why time speeds up as we grow older to the connection between time and consciousness.We have widely varying perceptions of time. Children have trouble waiting for anything. ("Are we there yet?”) Boredom is often connected to our sense of time passing (or not passing). As people grow older, time seems to speed up, the years flitting by without a pause. How does our sense of time come about? In Felt Time, Marc Wittmann explores the riddle of subjective time, explaining our perception of time—whether moment by moment, or in terms of life as a whole. Drawing on the latest insights from psychology and neuroscience, Wittmann offers a new answer to the question of how we experience time.Wittmann explains, among other things, how we choose between savoring the moment and deferring gratification; why impulsive people are bored easily, and why their boredom is often a matter of time; whether each person possesses a personal speed, a particular brain rhythm distinguishing quick people from slow people; and why the feeling of duration can serve as an "error signal,” letting us know when it is taking too long for dinner to be ready or for the bus to come. He considers the practice of mindfulness, and whether it can reduce the speed of life and help us gain more time, and he describes how, as we grow older, subjective time accelerates as routine increases; a fulfilled and varied life is a long life. Evidence shows that bodily processes—especially the heartbeat—underlie our feeling of time and act as an internal clock for our sense of time. And Wittmann points to recent research that connects time to consciousness; ongoing studies of time consciousness, he tells us, will help us to understand the conscious self.

An introduction to advanced topics in microeconomics that emphasizes the intuition behind assumptions and results, providing examples that show how to apply theory to practice.This textbook offers an introduction to advanced microeconomic theory that emphasizes the intuition behind mathematical assumptions, providing step-by-step examples that show how to apply theoretical models. It covers standard topics such as preference relations, demand theory and applications, producer theory, choice under uncertainty, partial and general equilibrium, monopoly, game theory and imperfect competition, externalities and public goods, and contract theory; but its intuitive and application-oriented approach provides students with a bridge to more technical topics. The book can be used by advanced undergraduates as well as Masters students in economics, finance, and public policy, and by PhD students in programs with an applied focus.The text connects each topic with recent findings in behavioral and experimental economics, and discusses these results in context, within the appropriate chapter. Step-by-step examples appear immediately after the main theoretical findings, and end-of chapter exercises help students understand how to approach similar exercises on their own. An appendix reviews basic mathematical concepts. A separate workbook, Practice Exercises for Advanced Microeconomic Theory, offers solutions to selected problems with detailed explanations. The textbook and workbook together help students improve both their theoretical and practical preparation in advanced microeconomics.

An introduction to a popular programming language for neuroscience research, taking the reader from beginning to intermediate and advanced levels of MATLAB programming.MATLAB is one of the most popular programming languages for neuroscience and psychology research. Its balance of usability, visualization, and widespread use makes it one of the most powerful tools in a scientist's toolbox. In this book, Mike Cohen teaches brain scientists how to program in MATLAB, with a focus on applications most commonly used in neuroscience and psychology. Although most MATLAB tutorials will abandon users at the beginner's level, leaving them to sink or swim, MATLAB for Brain and Cognitive Scientists takes readers from beginning to intermediate and advanced levels of MATLAB programming, helping them gain real expertise in applications that they will use in their work.The book offers a mix of instructive text and rigorous explanations of MATLAB code along with programming tips and tricks. The goal is to teach the reader how to program data analyses in neuroscience and psychology. Readers will learn not only how to but also how not to program, with examples of bad code that they are invited to correct or improve. Chapters end with exercises that test and develop the skills taught in each chapter. Interviews with neuroscientists and cognitive scientists who have made significant contributions their field using MATLAB appear throughout the book. MATLAB for Brain and Cognitive Scientists is an essential resource for both students and instructors, in the classroom or for independent study.

Students explore the idea that thinking is a form of computation by learning to write simple computer programs for tasks that require thought.

A comprehensive account of the neurobiological basis of language, arguing that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language.Language makes us human. It is an intrinsic part of us, although we seldom think about it. Language is also an extremely complex entity with subcomponents responsible for its phonological, syntactic, and semantic aspects. In this landmark work, Angela Friederici offers a comprehensive account of these subcomponents and how they are integrated. Tracing the neurobiological basis of language across brain regions in humans and other primate species, she argues that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language.Friederici shows which brain regions support the different language processes and, more important, how these brain regions are connected structurally and functionally to make language processes that take place in milliseconds possible. She finds that one particular brain structure (a white matter dorsal tract), connecting syntax-relevant brain regions, is present only in the mature human brain and only weakly present in other primate brains. Is this the "missing link” that explains humans' capacity for language?Friederici describes the basic language functions and their brain basis; the language networks connecting different language-related brain regions; the brain basis of language acquisition during early childhood and when learning a second language, proposing a neurocognitive model of the ontogeny of language; and the evolution of language and underlying neural constraints. She finds that it is the information exchange between the relevant brain regions, supported by the white matter tract, that is the crucial factor in both language development and evolution.

Part memento mori for architecture, and part invocation to reimagine the design values that lay at the heart of its creative purpose.

An account of the significant though gradual, uneven, disconnected, ad hoc, and pragmatic innovations in global financial governance and developmental finance induced by the global financial crisis.