This essay probes tensions between our professional practices and the quality of our professional output in the field of international studies. We organize ourselves into academic ‘‘sects’’ that engage in selfaffirming research and then wage theological debates between academic religions. This occurs at both the level of theory and epistemology. Unfortunately, this academic sectarianism produce...

This paper claims that architecture is a contingent discipline, despite the fact that its contingency has long been denied through a retreat to Vitruvian writing. It is evident that contingency is rejected not only by architecture but also by modernity as a whole. Vitruvius attempted to cover the entire field of architecture in a systematic form in order to bring the whole body of this great di...

As robots become more sophisticated and pervasive, they will be forced to operate in more dynamic and social environments. In order to develop a theory of mind to account for the intents, beliefs, and motivations of other individuals, a robot needs to be able to distinguish between another entity and itself. One proposed method of learning the difference between self and other is to use conting...

We introduce an agent-based model of interaction, drawing on the contingency approach from Luhmann's theory of social systems. The agent interactions are defined by the exchange of distinct messages. Message selection is based on the history of the interaction and developed within the confines of the problem of double contingency. We examine interaction strategies in the light of the message-ex...

Decision-making in the real world presents the challenge of requiring flexible yet prompt behavior, a balance that has been characterized in terms of a trade-off between a slower, prospective goal-directed model-based (MB) strategy and a fast, retrospective habitual model-free (MF) strategy. Theory predicts that flexibility to changes in both reward values and transition contingencies can deter...

In the field of evaluative conditioning (EC), two opposing theories-propositional single-process theory versus dual-process theory-are currently being discussed in the literature. The present set of experiments test a crucial prediction to adjudicate between these two theories: Dual-process theory postulates that evaluative conditioning can occur without awareness of the contingency between con...