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Constructing for Understanding

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer

in Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech

This chapter shows that the artificial system constructed in this study demonstrates how speech codes, sharing important properties with those of humans, could be created in a population of agents in ... More

This chapter shows that the artificial system constructed in this study demonstrates how speech codes, sharing important properties with those of humans, could be created in a population of agents in which the codes and their properties had not been pre-programmed. It also proves that in the artificial system, speech is self-organized. It demonstrates that this artificial system can possibly explain the origin of each component independently of any linguistic communicative function. It discusses that the premises of the artificial system shown in this study are obviously speculative and are also plausible. The chapter concludes by explaining that the construction of the system filled out the existing functionalist theories and also, opened up new spaces for research and thinking by outlining an exaptationist theory.Less

The Rise of Hate Speech Codes

in Speak No Evil: The Triumph of Hate Speech Regulation

This chapter tests the critics' hypothesis for the rise of college hate speech codes, concluding that speech policies were largely an instrumental creation of top-level college administrators and not ... More

This chapter tests the critics' hypothesis for the rise of college hate speech codes, concluding that speech policies were largely an instrumental creation of top-level college administrators and not the result of legal or political mobilization as advanced by others. The chapter is empirically based, relying on both quantitative and qualitative research at one hundred colleges and universities. Of particular interest is the comparison between hate speech codes and their intellectual cousin, sexual harassment law and its hostile work environment (HWE) test. Where HWE was advanced directly and deliberately in the courts, hate speech codes arose circuitously as defensive measures.Less

The Human Speech Code

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer

in Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech

This chapter begins by discussing the parts and functions of the human instrument of speech — the vocal tract. It talks about how the auditory system perceives sounds. It then discusses articulatory ... More

This chapter begins by discussing the parts and functions of the human instrument of speech — the vocal tract. It talks about how the auditory system perceives sounds. It then discusses articulatory phonology and the organization of the speech code. The chapter introduces the way the speech code works, specifies the issues regarding its origins, and its diversity in human languages.Less

The Courts Act

in Speak No Evil: The Triumph of Hate Speech Regulation

This chapter evaluates the formal legal rules that faced colleges with speech codes, describing how the courts have dealt with hate speech regulation and contrasting these rulings with those of ... More

This chapter evaluates the formal legal rules that faced colleges with speech codes, describing how the courts have dealt with hate speech regulation and contrasting these rulings with those of sexual harassment law. It acknowledges that there were sound bases for the courts to have treated individual cases differently. Where hostile work environment (HWE) has had strong advocates, hate speech codes have had but tepid supporters and a powerful opposition. The two doctrines are framed differently, one as sexist action the other as thought control. Ultimately, the chapter rejects the notion that sexual harassment law is easily distinguished from hate speech codes or that the courts have done an adequate job of explaining their divergent decisions.Less

While They Slept

in Speak No Evil: The Triumph of Hate Speech Regulation

This chapter reexamines the prevalence of college speech codes in light of the courts' holdings. It finds colleges not only declined to follow the courts' decisions, but they also adopted new and ... More

This chapter reexamines the prevalence of college speech codes in light of the courts' holdings. It finds colleges not only declined to follow the courts' decisions, but they also adopted new and more extensive speech policies in the face of contrary precedent. This paradox—between court decisions and public behavior—illustrates the power of extra-judicial legal meaning-making, for the resistance of college administrators served to redefine the meaning of the underlying constitutional norm.Less

The Artificial System

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer

in Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech

This chapter formally describes the first version of the artificial system, and shows its dynamics, which involves the formation of a discrete speech code shared by a population of agents who ... More

This chapter formally describes the first version of the artificial system, and shows its dynamics, which involves the formation of a discrete speech code shared by a population of agents who initially only pronounce unstructured and holistic vocalizations, and do not follow any rules of coordinated interaction. In particular, it discusses the role that morphological constraints on the vocal and perceptual apparatus may or may not play in the formation of speech codes.Less

Tom Burns 1913–2001

Gianfranco Poggi

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 120, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, II

Tom Burns had possessed extraordinary professional gifts as an observer and analyst of social life ‘on the ground’. He preferred practising sociology rather than debating its nature or justifying its ... More

Tom Burns had possessed extraordinary professional gifts as an observer and analyst of social life ‘on the ground’. He preferred practising sociology rather than debating its nature or justifying its existence. One might say that, throughout his career, he preferred being a practitioner of sociology to being an apologist for it. Tom's overall intellectual stance expressed a deep commitment to the moral values and the political priorities associated with the British labour tradition. He always wrote to a high literary standard, which reflected on the one hand his thorough familiarity with British and European literature, and on the other his keen sense for the social and moral significance of the way people express themselves verbally in ‘real life’. His accounts of organisational life devote a great deal of attention to local speech codes — the expressive and ritual aspects of the way in which people address each other in a variety of contexts.Less

On Inviting Problematic Speakers to Campus

Jeremy Fantl

in The Limitations of the Open Mind

This chapter argues that it is often impermissible to invite problematic speakers to campus. Opponents of campus speech codes often argue that it is important to invite problematic speakers in order ... More

This chapter argues that it is often impermissible to invite problematic speakers to campus. Opponents of campus speech codes often argue that it is important to invite problematic speakers in order to teach students resilience. On the contrary, I argue, if you know that their past or future behavior is both wrong and reflects accurately on their current attitudes or dispositions, it is impermissible to invite them. To do so can require you to stand in solidarity with the problematic speaker and thereby stand against—to betray—those who have been or will be victimized by their speech or behavior. Inviting a speaker to campus comes with obligations to the speaker—obligations of politeness and respect. Because it is impermissible to satisfy those obligations to certain kinds of problematic speakers, it is impermissible to invite them in the first place.Less

Don’t Let Anyone Else Do Your Job

Stanley Fish

in Save the World on Your Own Time

Of course, there’s no shortage of people who will step in to do your job if you default on it. The corporate world looks to the university for its workforce. Parents ... More

Of course, there’s no shortage of people who will step in to do your job if you default on it. The corporate world looks to the university for its workforce. Parents want the university to pick up the baton they may have dropped. Students demand that the university support the political cause of the moment. Conservatives believe that the university should refurbish and preserve the traditions of the past. Liberals and progressives would like to see those same traditions dismantled and replaced by what they take to be better ones. Alumni wonder why the athletics teams aren’t winning more. Politicians and trustees wonder why the professors aren’t teaching more. Whether it is state legislators who want a say in hiring and course content, or donors who want to tell colleges how to spend the funds they provide, or parents who are disturbed when Dick and Jane bring home books about cross-dressing and gender change, or corporations that want new departments opened and others closed, or activist faculty who urge the administration to declare a position on the war in Iraq, there is no end of interests intent on deflecting the university from its search for truth and setting it on another path. Each of these lobbies has its point, but it is not the university’s point, which is, as I have said over and over again, to produce and disseminate (through teaching and publication) academic knowledge and to train those who will take up that task in the future. But can the university defend the autonomy it claims (or should claim) from public pressures? Is that claim even coherent? Mark Taylor would say no. In a key sentence in the final chapter of his book The Moment of Complexity (2001), Taylor declares that “the university is not autonomous but is a thoroughly parasitic institution, which continually depends on the generosity of the host so many academics claim to reject.” He continues: “The critical activities of the humanities, arts, and sciences are only possible if they are supported by the very economic interests their criticism so often calls into question.” Less