Research agendas and academic evaluation are inevitably linked. By means of economic incentives, promotion, research funding, and reputation academic evaluation is a powerful influence on the production of knowledge; moreover, it is often conceived as a universal instrument without consideration of the context in which it is applied. Evaluation systems are social constructions in dispute, being the current focus of international debates regarding criteria, indicators, and their associated methods. A universalist type of productivity indicators is gaining centrality in academic evaluation (...) with profound effects on the content of research that is conducted everywhere. Specifically, evaluation systems based on this type of indicators are sending negative signals to scientists willing to conduct research on contextualized agendas, particularly those negotiated with non scientists. On the basis of theoretical and empirical studies documented on the specialized literature and extensive personal engagement with university research policy in Uruguay, we argue that the consolidation of evaluation practices of alleged universal validity deteriorates and discourages a type of research which is undeniably important in developing contexts. (shrink)

The traditional enemies of Philosophy are religious dogmatism, political demagogy, poetic-literary relativism, theoretical syncretism and scientific reductionism. The tension between Philosophy and other forms of knowledge —real or pretended— is not new, but Philosophy today faces new "endogenous" threats. Contemporary philosophy has the task of thinking about the issues that deeply concern the men and women of our time: what should we do about climate change? How should we deal with the technological mechanisms of social control? What conception of humanity (...) should we have in a world where cloning and genetic editing exist? How should we deal with the global weakening of the notion of Truth, both in the political world and in the mass media? This conference characterizes both the external challenges facing Philosophy and the internal vices that corrode it from within. (shrink)

Cellular Automata, which is a method for analyzing phenomena of complex systems, allows us to construct many kinds of simulators such as road traffic simulators. When we design a CA model, we need a CA simulator for verification of its result. However, at the present, we need to develop a software simulator since CA dedicated computers have not been generalized yet. We need to use a trial and error method with the simulator for design of local rules, which is the (...) main process of making CA models. We have developed an interpreter that makes this process easily. Giving the system a local rule described in a CA dedicated language, the user can instantly confirm the result. When the user change the rules, the system reflects his changes immediately. Our system does not regulate to design the local rules belonging to the CA category because the system is a general purpose CA simulator that adopts the method by description in the special language for definitions of local rules. We can modify a rule dramatically since the system interprets a rule description language in runtime. Furthermore, we can change variable parameters using GUI interfaces. Whereby they iterate to change a rule, a conflictive conditional statement sometimes occurs in a description of local rules. This conflict is far from seeking generally. Our system detects such a conflict automatically and notifies it to users as an error. (shrink)