This discussion shows that a new approach to an enlarged definition (or view or notion) will likely empower us to more effectively consider different notions of value across research or professional disciplines--economic, socio-cultural, or humanistic--under a more enabling theoretical paradigm. It is because now the key ingredients, i.e., information, quantum states, interactions, information entropy, and probabilistic assignments, will help build productive thinking apparatuses from basic granules. ~~~ Please cite it as: Vuong, Q. H., & Nguyen, M. H. (2024). Further on informational quanta, interactions, and entropy under the granular view of value formation. https://ssrn.com/abstract=4922461

In today’s era, with the climate crisis intensifying and planetary boundaries nearly breached, achieving any form of sustainability—whether economic or social—first demands environmental sustainability. Despite the substantial body of research underscoring its importance, a large segment of society remains apathetic and skeptical toward the value of nature.

The book examines the psycho-religious mechanism behind the violent extremism of suicide attacks in the post-9/11 world. It employs the mindsponge concept, an original dataset, and original research results obtained from the authors' statistical investigations using the Hamiltonian Markov chain Monte Carlo technique. It provides insights and implications for policymakers and strategists in their efforts to engage in peace talks and reduce violent conflicts worldwide.

The second edition of Rotenberg’s popular guide to college teaching includes additional material on teaching in a digital environment, universal design, and teaching diverse students. As in the first edition, the book provides a hands-on, quick-start guide to the complexities of the college classroom for instructors in their first five years of teaching independently. The chapters survey the existing literature on how to effectively teach young adults, offering specific solutions to the most commonly faced classroom dilemmas. The author, a former department chair and award-winning instructor, encourages the new teacher to support their students as individual learners who are engaged in a program of study beyond their individual class. A focus on the choices made during the design of the course helps the instructor coordinate their class with a department or college curriculum. An extensive discussion of the relationship between classroom design and class size, as well as tips of assessment and grading, enable the new instructor to better handle the challenges of contemporary college classrooms.

Group polarization—the tendency of groups to incline toward more extreme positions than initially held by their individual members—has been rigorously studied by social psychologists, though in a way that has overlooked important philosophical questions. This is the first book-length treatment of group polarization from a philosophical perspective. The phenomenon of group polarization raises several important metaphysical and epistemological questions. From a metaphysical point of view, can group polarization, understood as an epistemic feature of a group, be reduced to epistemic features of its individual members? Relatedly, from an epistemological point of view, is group polarization best understood as a kind of cognitive bias or rather in terms of intellectual vice? This book compares four models that combine potential answers to the metaphysical and epistemological questions. The models considered are: group polarization as (i) a collective bias; (ii) a summation of individual epistemic vices; (iii) a summation of individual biases; and (iv) a collective epistemic vice. Ultimately, the authors defend a collective vice model of group polarization over the competing alternatives. The Philosophy of Group Polarization will be of interest to students and researchers working in epistemology, particularly those working on social epistemology, collective epistemology, social ontology, virtue epistemology, and distributed cognition. It will also be of interest to those working on issues in political epistemology, applied epistemology, and on topics at the intersection of epistemology and ethics.

Long repressed following the collapse of empire, memories of the French colonial experience have recently gained unprecedented visibility. In popular culture, scholarly research, personal memoirs, public commemorations, and new ethnicities associated with the settlement of postcolonial immigrant minorities, the legacy of colonialism is now more apparent in France than at any time in the past. How is this upsurge of interest in the colonial past to be explained? Does the commemoration of empire necessarily imply glorification or condemnation? To what extent have previously marginalized voices succeeded in making themselves heard in new narratives of empire? While veils of secrecy have been lifted, what taboos still remain and why? These are among the questions addressed by an international team of leading researchers in this interdisciplinary volume, which will interest scholars in a wide range of disciplines including French studies, history, literature, cultural studies, and anthropology.