1,721,012 research outputs found
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Social Construction and the Possibility of Emancipation
No full textIn this dissertation, I attempt to accomplish two main objectives. First, I attempt to clarify what social construction amounts to in contemporary analytic philosophy. Research on the social construction of social categories has done some work to delineate and clarify varieties of social constructionist projects, as well as varieties of social phenomena. However, little research has been done to examine the meanings and tractability of the notions that social constructionists employ. As a second objective, I therefore take on the task of making clearer the meanings and implications of non-inevitability and amelioration. Both objectives involve attending to the programs of various social constructionists and attempting to merge their programs into a single coherent account. In so doing, I put forth my own construal of what social construction amounts to, as well as what it means to say that something is a social construction in both the institutional and non-institutional contexts.
I provide tractable and plausible, if coarse-grained, accounts of what social constructionists might have in mind when they cite the notion of non-inevitability in their projects. I also explore the plausibility of social constructionisms ameliorative or emancipatory potential, asking whether or how modifying our social categories and concepts can have ethical and political implications and asking what those implications might be. I defend social constructionist programs, especially those of the ameliorative variety, from the possibly vitiating forces of the status quo, as well as from relativism concerning what or who counts or should count as some social kind X and the issue of what determines or what should determine Xs extension. Related to these issues, I explore the nature of the difficulties involved in changing aspects of the social world. Difficulties related to the possibility of change and amelioration include the complexity of multiple coexisting ideologies, the problem of how to isolate ideologies and their source(s), and the non-volitional character of beliefs
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
The Functional Contributions of Consciousness
Full text linkMost existing research programs are occupied with the difficult question of what consciousness is, overlooking what the more interesting and fruitful research question: what does consciousness do? My dissertation develops a philosophical method for identifying the functional capacities that conscious experience contributes to information processing systems.
My strategy involves systematically consolidating and interpreting a range of psychological and neuroscientific research in order to compare conscious and unconscious processing in different psychological domains, namely, vision, emotion, and social cognition. I also defend the principle of functional pluralism: given that conscious experiences presumably form a relatively diverse class in the natural world, we should expect them to facilitate a diverse range of functions in different psychological domains. My pluralist account implies that we will be able to amass a collection of functional markers that can guide future ascriptions of experience to all sorts of natural and artificial systems. Understanding consciousness’ functional profile should also ultimately help us answer the general but elusive question of what consciousness is as a feature of psychological systems.
After laying out the general framework and critically evaluating prominent theories of consciousness in the first chapter, I begin the process of identifying FCCs in particular psychological domains. In my second chapter, I identify some candidate functional markers of consciousness in the functionally-complex domain of visual perception, including the processing of semantic information inherent in more informationally-complex visual stimuli, increased spatiotemporal precision, and representational integration over larger spatiotemporal intervals. My third chapter discusses the domain of emotional processing, where I argue that experience facilitates the inhibition of, the conceptualization of, and flexible response to emotionally valenced representational content. In my fourth chapter, I review a range of bias-intervention strategies that explicitly draw on the functional resources of conscious experience. In my final chapter, I draw some conclusions about the nature of consciousness based on my functional analysis. I introduce what I call a Local Workspace Theory, argue that consciousness is at least in part characterized by a high degree of representational complexity afforded by the structural mechanisms that realize it and reflected in the psychological functions that it facilitates
How Many Minds Do We Need? Toward A One-System Account of Human Reasoning
Full text linkTo explain data from the reasoning and decision-making literature, dual-process theorists claim that human reasoning is divided: Type-1 processes are fast, automatic, associative, and evolutionarily old, while Type-2 processes are slow, effortful, rule-based, and evolutionarily new. Philosophers have used this distinction to their own philosophic ends in moral reasoning, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. I criticize dual-process theory on conceptual and empirical grounds and propose an alternative cognitive architecture for human reasoning.
In chapter 1, I identify and clarify the key elements of dual-process and dual-system theory. Then, in chapter 2, I undercut an inference to the best explanation for dual-process theory by offering a one-system alternative. I argue that a single reasoning system can accomplish the explanatory work done by positing two distinct processes or systems. In chapter 3, I argue that a one-system account of human reasoning is empirically testable—it is incompatible with there being contradictory beliefs that are produced by simultaneously occurring reasoning processes. I further argue, contra Sloman (1996), that we do not have evidence for such beliefs. Next, in chapter 4, I argue that the properties used to distinguish Type-1 from Type-2 processes cross-cut each other (e.g. there are evolutionarily new processes that are effortless). The upshot is that even if human reasoning were divided, it would not parse neatly into two tidy categories: ‘Type-1’ and ‘Type-2.’ Finally, in chapter 5, I fill in the details of my own one-system alternative. I argue that there is one reasoning system that can operate in many modes: consciously or unconsciously, automatically or controlled, and inductively or deductively. In contrast to the dual-process theorists, these properties do not cluster. For each property pair (e.g. automatic/controlled), and for a single instance of a task, the reasoning system will operate in a definitive mode. The reasoning system is like a mixing board: it has several switches and slides, one for each property pair. As subjects work through problems, they can alter the switches and slides—they can, perhaps unconsciously, change the process they use to complete the problem
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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