Theories of cognition and theories of social practices and institutions have often each separately acknowledged the relevance of the other; but seldom have there been consistent and sustained attempts to synthesize these two areas within one explanatory framework. This is precisely what my dissertation aims to remedy. I propose that certain recent developments and themes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, when understood in the right way, can explain the emergence and dynamics of social practices and institutions. Likewise, the (...) view I construct explains how social practices and institutions shape the character of cognition of their constituent agents. Moreover, I explain both cognitive and social agency under the single explanatory framework provided by Dynamic Systems Theory. Drawing upon the phenomenological tradition, "embodied, "extended", "embedded", "enactive", and "ecological" approaches to cognition, as well as the conceptual resources of Dynamic Systems Theory, I construct a theory of agency that sees cognitive and social agents as far-from-equilibrium, open, recursively self-maintenant dynamic systems. Depending on the specifics of concrete circumstances, such systems, which I call "Dynamic Embodied Agents", may develop and possess emergent capacities for error-detection, flexible learning, normative behavior, representation, self-reflection, various modes of pattern-recognition, a temporal sense of self, and even moral responsibility. Some such systems are also sensitive to perceived social influences ; while reciprocally constituting and causally affecting them. (shrink)

There is traditionally a division of labor between economics and economic history, the task of economic history being that of studying the evolving constraints of economic mechanisms. Recent theorizing on endogenous structural change challenges this view: if structural change is endogenous to economic mechanisms, any strict division of labor between causal analysis and structural analysis breaks down. Rather such views call for an integration of causal and structural analysis. This paper looks for such a methodology, noting especially the contributions made (...) by two Swedish economists, Johan Åkerman (1896-1982) and Erik Dahmén (1916-2005). With evolutionary, Marxian, Hayekian and critical realist contributions, the paper examines notions of endogenous structural change with the aim of expounding how the notion can be thought in terms of underlying mechanisms to aid such structural analysis. The findings of endogenous mechanisms underlying structural change are crystallized into a mathematical model and a simple methodological framework. (shrink)

Determinism has long been a core assumption in many forms of behaviorism, including radical behaviorism. However, this assumption has been a stumbling block for many—both within and outside the field of radical behaviorism—resulting in misunderstanding and misrepresentation. The following paper provides a descriptive taxonomy of four kinds of determinism assumed or asserted in the radical behavioral literature. This taxonomy is intended to organize these deterministic positions, provide working definitions, and explore their implications. Through this work, it is hoped that behaviorists (...) and nonbehaviorists alike will possess a clearer understanding of determinism in behavioral analysis. (shrink)

This overview of philosophy of biology lays out what implications biology and recent philosophy of biology have for general philosophy of science. The following topics are addressed in five sections: natural kinds, conceptual change, discovery and confirmation, explanation and reduction, and naturalism.

In the literature on scientific practices, one finds sustained analyses of the contextualist elements of inquiry. However, the ways in which local and disciplinary contexts of practice function as common goods remain largely unexplored. In this paper I argue that a contextualist analysis of scientific practices as common goods can shed light on the challenges of scientific communication and interdisciplinary collaboration, albeit without invoking Kuhn's problematic notion of incommensurability.

Due to the variation, contingency and complexity of living systems, biology is often taken to be a science without fundamental theories, laws or general principles. I revisit this question in light of the quest for design principles in systems biology and show that different views can be reconciled if we distinguish between different types of generality. The philosophical literature has primarily focused on generality of specific models or explanations, or on the heuristic role of abstraction. This paper takes a different (...) approach in emphasizing a theory-constituting role of general principles. Design principles signify general dependencyrelations between structures and functions, given a set of formally defined constraints. I contend that design principles increase our understanding of living systems by relating specific models to general types. The categorization of types is based on a delineation of the scope of biological possibilities, which serves to identify and define the generic features of classes of systems. To characterize the basis for general principles through generic abstraction and reasoning about possibility spaces, I coin the term constraint-based generality. I show that constraintbased generality is distinct from other types of generality in biology, and argue that general principles play a unifying role that does not entail theory reduction. (shrink)

This is a review of those key thought experiments in physics from the late 19th century onward that seem to have played a particular role in the process of the discovery or advancement of theory. Among others the paper discusses Maxwell's demon, several of Einstein's thought experiments in relativity, Heisenberg's microscope, the Einstein-Schrödinger cat, and the EPR thought experiment.

A number of areas of biology raise questions about what is of value in the natural environment and how we ought to behave towards it: conservation biology, environmental science, and ecology, to name a few. Based on my experience teaching students from these and similar majors, I argue that the field of environmental ethics has much to teach these students. They come to me with pent-up questions and a feeling that more is needed to fully engage in their subjects, and (...) I believe some exposure to environmental ethics can help focus their interests and goals. I identify three primary areas in which environmental ethics can con- tribute to their education. The first is an examination of who (or what) should be considered to be part of our moral community (i.e., the community to whom we owe direct duties). Is it humans only? Or does it include all sentient life? Or all life? Or ecosystems considered holistically? Often, readings implicitly assume one or more of these answers; the goal is to make the student more sensitive to these implicit claims and to get them to think about the different reasons that support them. The second area, related to the first, is the application of the different answers concerning the extent of the ethical community to real environmental issues and problems. Students need to be aware of how the different answers concerning the moral community can imply conflicting answers for how we should act in certain cases and to think about ways to move toward conflict resolution. The third area in which environmental ethics can contribute is a more conceptual one, focusing on central concepts such as biodiversity, sustainability, species, and ecosystems. Exploring and evaluating various meanings of these terms will make students more reflective and thoughtful citizens and biologists, sensitive to the implications that different conceptual choices make. (shrink)

This paper presents an attempt to describe Józef Tischner’s philosophy of drama from the point of view of Larry Laudan’s philosophy of science. That is achieved with the help of the concept of Philosophical Research Traditions developed in the paper. A~certain conceptual problem of Tischner’s philosophy, and some future research topics are also presented.

‘Post-truth’ is a failed concept, both epistemically and politically because its simplification of the relationship between truth and politics cripples our understanding and encourages authoritarianism. This makes the diagnosis of our ‘post-truth era’ as dangerous to democratic politics as relativism with its premature disregard for truth. In order to take the step beyond relativism and ‘post-truth’, we must conceptualise the relationship between truth and politics differently by starting from a ‘non-sovereign’ understanding of truth.

Contemporary bioethics is a complex and multidisciplinary combination of medicine, philosophy and law, made more difficult because few,if any, bioethicists are masters of all three disciplines. To further complicate matters, each discipline contains specialised subdisciplines and internal debates. Philosophy is used to illustrate this point. Given constraints of expertise on practising bioethicists in South Africa, a few modest proposals are suggested to make bioethics as a discipline more rigorous in its use of medicine, philosophy and law.

Unlike almost all other philosophers of science, Karl Popper sought to contribute to natural philosophy or cosmology – a synthesis of science and philosophy. I consider his contributions to the philosophy of science and quantum theory in this light. There is, however, a paradox. Popper’s most famous contribution – his principle of demarcation – in driving a wedge between science and metaphysics, serves to undermine the very thing he professes to love: natural philosophy. I argue that Popper’s philosophy of science (...) is, in this respect, defective. Science cannot proceed without making highly problematic metaphysical assumptions concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe. Precisely because these assumptions are problematic, rigour requires that they be subjected to sustained critical scrutiny, as an integral part of science itself. Popper’s principle of demarcation must be rejected. Metaphysics and philosophy of science become a vital part of science. Natural philosophy is reborn. A solution to the problem of what it means to say a theory is unified is proposed, a problem Popper failed to solve. In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Popper made important contributions to the interpretation of quantum theory, especially in connection with Heisenberg's uncertainty relations. Popper's advocacy of natural philosophy has important implications for education. (shrink)

Numerous approaches to a quantum theory of gravity posit fundamental ontologies that exclude spacetime, either partially or wholly. This situation raises deep questions about how such theories could relate to the empirical realm, since arguably only entities localized in spacetime can ever be observed. Are such entities even possible in a theory without fundamental spacetime? How might they be derived, formally speaking? Moreover, since the fundamental entities can't be smaller than the derived by assumption and so can't 'compose' them in (...) any ordinary sense, would a formal derivation actually show the physical reality of localized entities? We address these questions via a survey of a range of theories of quantum gravity, and generally sketch how they may be answered positively. (shrink)

A main goal of the neuroscience of consciousness is: find the neural correlate to conscious experiences (NCC). When have we achieved this goal? The answer depends on our operationalization of “NCC.” Chalmers (2000) shaped the widely accepted operationalization according to which an NCC is a neural system with a state which is minimally sufficient (but not necessary) for an experience. A deeper look at this operationalization reveals why it might be unsatisfactory: (i) it is not an operationalization of a correlate (...) for occurring experiences, but of the capacity to experience; (ii) it is unhelpful for certain cases which are used to motivate a search for neural correlates of consciousness; (iii) it does not mirror the usage of “NCC” by scientists who seek for unique correlates; (iv) it hardly allows for a form of comparative testing of hypotheses, namely experimenta crucis. Because of these problems (i–iv), we ought to amend or improve on Chalmers's operationalization. Here, I present an alternative which avoids these problems. This “NCC2.0” also retains some benefits of Chalmers's operationalization, namely being compatible with contributions from extended, embedded, enacted, or embodied accounts (4E-accounts) and allowing for the possibility of non-biological or artificial experiencers. (shrink)

We compare the neo-Galtonian and nomothetic approaches of psychological research. While the former focuses on summarized statistics that depict average subjects, the latter focuses on general facts of form 'if conditions then restricted outcomes'. The nomothetic approach does not require quantification as a convenient way of statistical modeling. The nice feature of a general fact is its falsifiability by the observation of a single case. Hence, as a clear sense of scientific error is re-introduced in the research paradigm, we detail (...) two kinds of puzzle-solving: repairing general facts by contraction or by expansion of the initial conditions. This style of research does not require that researchers depend on highly skilled engineers in data analysis, as the very structure of a general fact can be established by scrutinizing a contingency table. (shrink)

The article discusses the formal classification of natural sciences, which is based on several propositions: (a) natural sciences can be separated onto independent and dependent sciences based on the gnosiologic criterion and irreducibility criteria (principal and technical); (b) there are four independent sciences which form a hierarchy: physics ← chemistry ← terrestrial biology ← human psychology; (c) every independent science except for physics has already developed or will develop in the future a set of final paradigms formulated in the terms (...) of the science one step above it in the hierarchy; (d) some paradigms in physics will never become final; (e) each independent natural science has dependent sciences with paradigms already expressed in the terms of the respective independent sciences. Existing paradigms of independent natural sciences are listed and discussed with respect to the degree of their approach to the final state. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

The author holds that the old theory according to which philosophy is the matrix of argumentation studies must be entirely reviewed currently. He argues that argumentation theory, as an interdisciplinary domain, may start playing, in new terms, the role which ― in the Cartesian tree ― was that of philosophy as the trunk of the different branches of human knowledge, as long as a set of requirements, which he lists, were met.

Defenders of the Knowledge Argument contend that physicalism is false because knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient to know all the truths about the world. In particular, proponents of the Knowledge Argument claim that physicalism is false because the truths about the character of conscious experience are not knowable from the complete set of physical truths. This dissertation is a defense of the Knowledge Argument. Chapter one characterizes what physicalism is and provides support for the claim that if (...) knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient to know all the truths about the world, then physicalism is false. In chapter two, I defend the claim that knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. In addition to mounting a prima facie case for the knowledge intuition, I present and defend an epistemology grounded in direct acquaintance to provide a more substantive argument to accept it. Chapters three through five address the physicalist objections to the Knowledge Argument. The first set of objections advocates that knowing all the physical truths is, in fact, sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. The next set of objections admits that there is some sense in which knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. However, these objections maintain that the kind of knowledge that is absent from the complete set of physical truths is know-how or knowledge by acquaintance, and not factual or propositional knowledge. The final set of objections maintain that the kind of propositional knowledge that is left out of the complete set of physical truths is compatible with physicalism. My response to these objections is part of advancing my prima facie case for the Knowledge Argument. The final chapter addresses a structural question that pertains to the Knowledge Argument. Some philosophers have maintained that the structure of the Knowledge Argument invites a kind of self-refutation of any systematic account of reality. The concern is that the Knowledge Argument proves too much, and that the dualist who uses the argument to refute physicalism risks the argument defeating his own position. I will argue that the Knowledge Argument does not refute dualism. (shrink)

This paper will argue that some notion of coherence and/or explanatory coherence is essential to understanding epistemic justification and to clarifying the rational support that our beliefs or commitments lend to each other, and that the requisite notion of coherence cannot be fully explicated on the basis of logic and/or epistemology. Two candidates for explicating coherence will be examined: narrative coherence and the sort of coherence that obtains when gestalt closure is achieved. The paper will attempt to determine under what (...) conditions acceptance that is determined or guided by these sorts of coherence can be construed as rational acceptance. (shrink)

Critical thinking is considered an essential educational goal. As a result, many philosophers dreamed their departments would offer multiple sections of CT, hence justifying hiring additional staff. Unfortunately, this dream did not materialize. So, similar to a current theory about teaching writing, “critical thinking across the curriculum” has become a popular idea. While the idea has appeal and unquestionable merit, I will argue that the likelihood the skills necessary for effective CT will actually be taught is minimal.

When we begin to investigate the persistence of objects through time, we find immediately that the sort of concerns embodied in Leibniz's Law cause philosophers to divide themselves into the two major camps of Purdurantists and Endurantists. What is required according to each for a given object at a given time to be identified with a given object at another time is held to be dramatically different, even while both often look to the same general sort of indicators for their (...) answers to identity questions: identity or similarity of physical properties, including relational properties like spatial location. I believe, however, that logically prior to the problem of the persistence of objects through time will be questions regarding the composition of objects--we must have coherent notions of what an object is, what it means for parts to compose an object, and what is required for an object to be considered to exist at a single time before we can discuss the continued existence of objects at other times. I believe that posing the problem of temporal gaps for both the Perdurantist and Endurantist to solve can help us uncover reasonable answers to these more basic questions, and thereby help us judge the comparative coherence of the parent theories. Towards this goal, we investigate here some of the assumptions of persistence theories--that Perdurantists are four-dimensionalists and Endurantists are Presentists, for example--before moving on to find reasonable explanations of the composition of objects from within each theory. Important at this stage is clarifying such concepts as parthood and the present. When we at length turn our attention to the problem of gaps, it becomes useful to distinguish two sorts of gaps, each with their own difficulties: a 'gap' as a length of time during which the proper parts of an object are scattered through space, and a 'gap' as a length of time during which the proper parts of an object do not exist in space at all. My contention here is that Perdurantism, paired with four-dimensional spacetime, provides the most coherent answers to the challenges presented throughout. (shrink)

In his consideration of thought development, Auguste Comte proposed a three-stage model, in which the mechanism of development may lead to new types of thought. So the process that led to a philosophy of science may be repeated to create a new type of thought. The thought development is attributed to a process of accumulation of challenged but unanswered questions, followed by a decline of interest in that type of thinking.

Two radically different families of theory currently compete for acceptance among theorists of human consciousness. The majority of theorists believe that the human brain somehow causes consciousness, but a significant minority holds that how the brain would cause this property is not only currently incomprehensible, but unlikely to become comprehensible despite continuing advances in brain science. Some of these latter theorists hold an alternate view that consciousness may well be one of the fundamentals in nature, and that the extremely complex (...) functional systems of the human brain inform this basic property, giving rise to our specifically human variety thereof. If these contesting families of theory are to be useful to neuroscientists, testable notions flowing from these theories need to be developed. (shrink)

This work focused on the investigation of the question how the concept of relevance in Information Retrieval can be validated. The work is motivated by the consistent difficulties of defining the meaning of the concept, and by advances in the field of cognitive science. Analytical and empirical investigations are carried out with the aim of devising a principled approach to the validation of the concept. The foundation for this work was set by interpreting relevance as a phenomenon occurring within the (...) context of two systems: An IR system and the cognitive processing system of the user. In light of the cognitive interpretation of relevance, an analysis of the learnt lessons in cognitive science with regard to the validation of cognitive phenomena was conducted. It identified that construct validity constitutes the dominant approach to the validation of constructs in cognitive science. Construct validity constitutes a proposal for the conduction of validation in scenarios, where no direct observation of a phenomenon is possible. With regard to the limitations on direct observation of a construct (i.e. a postulated theoretic concept), it bases validation on the evaluation of its relations to other constructs. Based on the interpretation of relevance as a product of cognitive processing it was concluded, that the limitations with regard to direct observation apply to its investigation. The evaluation of its applicability to an IR context, focused on the exploration of the nomological network methodology. A nomological network constitutes an analytically constructed set of constructs and their relations. The construction of such a network forms the basis for establishing construct validity through investigation of the relations between constructs. An analysis focused on contemporary insights to the nomological network methodology identified two important aspects with regard to its application in IR. The first aspect is given by a choice of context and the identification of a pool of candidate constructs for the inclusion in the network. The second consists of identifying criteria for the selection of a set of constructs from the candidate pool. The identification of the pertinent constructs for the network was based on a review of the principles of cognitive exploration, and an analysis of the state of the art in text based discourse processing and reasoning. On that basis, a listing of known sub-processes contributing to the pertinent cognitive processing was presented. Based on the identification of a large number of potential candidates, the next step consisted of the inference of criteria for the selection of an initial set of constructs for the network. The investigation of these criteria focused on the consideration of pragmatic and meta-theoretical aspects. Based on a survey of experimental means in cognitive science and IR, five pragmatic criteria for the selection of constructs were presented. Consideration of meta-theoretically motivated criteria required to investigate what the specific challenges with regard to the validation of highly abstract constructs are. This question was explored based on the underlying considerations of the Information Processing paradigm and Newell’s (1994) cognitive bands. This led to the identification of a set of three meta-theoretical criteria for the selection of constructs. Based on the criteria and the demarcated candidate pool, an IR focused nomological network was defined. The network consists of the constructs of relevance and type and grade of word relatedness. A necessary prerequisite for making inferences based on a nomological network consists of the availability of validated measurement instruments for the constructs. To that cause, two validation studies targeting the measurement of the type and grade of relations between words were conducted. The clarification of the question of the validity of the measurement instruments enabled the application of the nomological network. A first step of the application consisted of testing if the constructs in the network are related to each other. Based on the alignment of measurements of relevance and the word related constructs it was concluded to be true. The relation between the constructs was characterized by varying the word related constructs over a large parameter space and observing the effect of this variation on relevance. Three hypotheses relating to different aspects of the relations between the word related constructs and relevance. It was concluded, that the conclusive confirmation of the hypotheses requires an extension of the experimental means underlying the study. Based on converging observations from the empirical investigation of the three hypotheses it was concluded, that semantic and associative relations distinctly differ with regard to their impact on relevance estimation. (shrink)

In understanding economics and the organisation of economics, the questions are what constituteeconomics and the thinking behind economics today? In short what is the field of economics? And in what ways can we connect to and understand this field of study? Of course, the answer to this depends upon the perspective chosen, in which one sees and thinks of economics from a particular philosophical and even political position and perspective. If one takes the perspective on economics from a qualitative paradigm (...) that draws upon the tradition from Kant, Husserl, Simmel, Mead, Schutz, Blumer, then it can be stated that economics cannot only be understood as something that appears in nature. On the contrary, economics must be understood as “something” which results from human behaviour, interaction and groups in human activities and the thinking involved and embedded in those activities. Therefore in analyzing economics it is significant to note that economics belongs to and is being constructed by people due to their everyday lives. What appears as central in those statements, from a qualitative perspective, is that the essences of economics have to be discussed in relation to the mind and thinking related to an understanding of individual and group societal activities. Economics is to be understood as constructed and maintained through everyday human interactions and exchanges, whereby people are creating the meanings of situations with objectives of what are believed as important in the understanding of economics activities, actions and results. Those meanings and definitions of economics are being produced and exchanged in order to become a new comprehensive framework that influences, co-produces, limits and creates contradictions in everyday economic life. This additional qualitative focus [1] outlines the importance of understanding how human cognitions produce meaning of objects, definitions, activities and actions which provides the framework for the field of economics. The epistemological perspective for this is that the objects are not only within themselves.No, instead the objects are as they presents themselves to people, and thereby the meanings we are constructing and attaching to them. The paper will therefore discuss some of the scientific complexities in three areas: mind and thinking; understanding economics as a social activity and construction, and the interplay between economic activities and economic theoretical work. (shrink)

Mental health crisis has been reported as the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Grief at the loss of loved ones, shock at the loss of jobs, isolation of restrictions of movements, difficult family dynamics, and uncertainty and fear of the future are just few of the psychological sufferings pointed out by the World Health Organization. To ensure that people are mentally healthy, the government takes mental health services as essential part of the responses to the pandemic. Private organizations and (...) academic institutions also take part in this movement to safeguard the mental well-being of people in the community. Despite the efforts to prevent and remediate mental health crisis, limited number of people seek professional help. While we can assume that they might have been adjusting well to the anxieties brought about by Covid-19 pandemic, we also acknowledge the fact that a number of cases of depression and suicide had been reported in the locality for the past five months. This paper aims to provide expositions of the possible variables for young Filipino College Students’ underutilization of mental health services as well as their other possible sources of inner strength and resiliency during the Covid-19 pandemic. Help seeking behaviors of the Young Filipino students in Cor Jesu College will be explored using the lens of uncertainty and anticipation model of anxiety of Grupe and Nitschke, and resilience as a cultural variable among Filipinos. (shrink)

The given article goes for the demarcation idea of social and intrascientific values. It is noted that the important component of social development is the world of things, which is created by the human in the process of writing and included into the social existence context. At the same time, as the world is humanized, a human as a social being is usually included in the object of social cognition. As a result, the knower and the object of social cognition (...) exist one inside the other. (shrink)

In this article, we ask to what extent the specific characteristics of epigenetics may affect the type of questions one can ask about human society. We pay particular attention to the way epigenetic research stirs debate about normative and moral issues. Are these issues implied by scientific evidence as an outcome of research? Or do moral and normative issues also shape how research is done and which problems it addresses? We briefly explore these questions through examples and discussions in scientific (...) literature. In the final section, we propose an additional dimension and a refocusing of attention from issues of scientific evidence alone to a broader picture on epigenetics as a mode of attention that encourages relational and process-oriented thinking with entities, values and scales that may not yet fit within conventional problem-frames that inform research funding and policy-making. We argue that the task of ELSI approaches is to take inspiration from the ecological complexity of epigenetics in order to bring more relations, relief and gradient in our ethical and political questions. (shrink)

It is argued that rather than a well defined F-Twist, Milton Friedman’s “Methodology of positive economics” offers an F-Mix: a pool of ambiguous and inconsistent ingredients that can be used for putting together a number of different methodological positions. This concerns issues such as the very concept of being unrealistic, the goal of predictive tests, the as-if formulation of theories, explanatory unification, social construction, and more. Both friends and foes of Friedman’s essay have ignored its open-ended unclarities. Their removal may (...) help create new common ground for more focused debate in economics. Here I show how F53 can be reread/rewritten as a socially constructivist fallibilist, and realist statement – in contrast to the received instrumentalist interpretation. (shrink)

This paper deals with eww20140918dxn certain psychic automatisms that appear suddenly in the consciousness of the subject in a passive or automatic way and that usually are diagnosed as psychiatric symptoms or manifestations of an epileptic partial seizure. These mental automatisms are described in many writings by mystics, philosophers, literates, composers, and many different great artists and creators from human history, but they did not confer any pathological value on these experiences. The analysis of the epileptogenic activity gives us arguments (...) to propose that these automatic experiences are due to neuronal circuits physiologically adapted to fire in a hypersynchronous way. With these data we enunciate an innovative hypothesis: these psychic experiences are manifestations of an adaptive neuronal network for which we propose the term psychic hypersynchrony. Finally, we discuss the consequences of this hypothesis, especially in the epileptic, psychiatric, and neuropsychopharmacologic fields. (shrink)

The paper examines some of the significant new developments in the epistemological framing of systems theory, and their application within the information and management sciences. Specifically, the article argues that Information Systems – at its heart a systems-science – requires an ongoing discourse into how the metaphors of ‘living systems’, ‘complex systems’, and ‘complexity’ apply to the theoretical foundations of the IS discipline at large. Pragmatically, the implications of developing a complex and living systems framework to investigate IS phenomena has (...) the capacity to synthesise the very way information systems researchers consider their discipline, and the scientific inquiry of it. The “information system” becomes a decentralised, complex and evolving entity, where notions of chaos theory; system self-organisation; autopoietic and dissipative networks; emergence; entropy; and nonlinear dynamics; provide a rich and novel way to investigate system behaviours, human cognitive behaviours, and the management and business contexts in which those behaviours occur. (shrink)

This article does three things. First, it asks a new question about transformative education, namely ‘what is the role of power and trust in the decision of whether to transform one’s meaning scheme in the face of new information or whether to simply reject the new information?’ Secondly, it develops a five-stage model which elaborates on the role of this decision in transformative learning. Finally, it uses grounded-theory and the five-stage model to argue that power and trust play an important (...) role in facilitating transformative learning. (shrink)

This dissertation is an investigation into how scientific values may influence the kinds of theories which are investigated, and in turn which theories become ‘mainstream’. I have focussed on psychedelic therapy as a family of theories, and I identified three main reasons as to why psychedelic therapy is somewhat incompatible with the current psychiatric paradigm: (1) the inability to conduct double-blind trials, (2) The inability to isolate one explanatory variable, and (3) The mystical and spiritual dimensions of the mechanisms of (...) action of psychedelic drugs. Because double-blind randomised controlled trials, isolating one explanatory variable, and neurobiological- style explanations of mechanisms of action are seen as an integral part of good psychiatric research, this means that psychedelic therapy is inherently disadvantaged as a research avenue in the current paradigm. These three things also arguably embody scientific values proposed by Kuhn (1977), such as accuracy, simplicity, and consistency. Helen Longino (1995) argues that Kuhn’s values do not simply increase the likelihood of a theory being true, but in some instances serve to perpetuate discriminatory ideologies. She proposes her own list of values as a route to a more equitable science, and by extension, a more equitable society. Interestingly, psychedelic therapy as a theory embodies many, if not all of the values proposed by Longino. This led me to my conclusion that if the psychiatric paradigm were more feminist according to Longino’s criteria, then psychedelic therapy would be considered a “better” theory. It would therefore be easier to conduct research in this area, and psychedelic therapy would have a better chance at becoming a mainstream treatment. (shrink)

¿La ciencia otorga conocimiento de la realidad? En este artículo ofrezco una respuesta positiva a esta pregunta. Rechazo la pretensión anti-realista según la cual somos incapaces de adquirir conocimiento de la realidad; al contrario, apoyo la visión realista que afirma que la ciencia produce conocimiento del mundo externo. Pero: ¿cuál mundo es ese? Algunos sostienen que la ciencia conduce a la superación de nuestra visión del mundo dada por el sentido común. El sentido común es la “metafísica de la edad (...) de piedra” que debe rechazarse como la teoría falsa de nuestros primitivos ancestros. Contra tales eliminativistas acerca del sentido común, planteo que la ciencia conserva y explica la experiencia del mundo dada por el sentido común. Aunque la ciencia puede llevar a la superación de creencias profundamente arraigadas, el sentido común refleja un nivel de experiencia más básico y duradero. Las creencias del sentido común son creencias bien confirmadas que se justifican por su papel en la acción práctica exitosa de la vida diaria. El sentido común otorga una base sólida sobre la cual establecer el enfoque realista a la ciencia. -/- . (shrink)

We discuss the early career of John H. Van Vleck, one of the earliest American quantum theorists who shared the 1977 Nobel prize with his student Philip W. Anderson and Sir Nevill Mott. In particular, we follow Van Vleck's trajectory from his 1926 Bulletin for the National Research Council on the old quantum theory to his 1932 book, The Theory of Electric and Magnetic Susceptibilities. We highlight the continuity of formalism and technique in the transition from dealing with spectra in (...) the old quantum theory to dealing with susceptibilities in the new quantum mechanics. Our main focus is on the checkered history of a numerical factor in the so-called Langevin-Debye formula for the electric susceptibility of gases. Classical theory predicts, under very general conditions, that this factor is equal to 1/3. The old quantum theory predicted values up to 14 times higher. Van Vleck showed that quantum mechanics does away with this "wonderful nonsense" and restores the classical value 1/3 under equally general conditions. The Langevin-Debye formula thus provides an instructive example of a Kuhn loss in one paradigm shift that was regained in the next. In accordance with the expectation of Thomas S. Kuhn that textbooks tend to sweep Kuhn losses under the rug, Van Vleck did not mention this particular Kuhn loss anywhere in his 1926 NRC Bulletin. Contrary to Kuhn's expectations, however, he put the regained Kuhn loss in susceptibility theory to good pedagogical use in his 1932 book. Kuhn claimed that textbooks must suppress, truncate, and/or distort the prehistory of their subject matter if they are to inculcate the exemplars of the new paradigm in their readers. This claim is not borne out in this case. We argue that it is ultimately because of the continuity of formalism and technique that we draw attention to that Van Vleck could achieve his pedagogical objectives in his 1932 book even though he devoted about a third of it to the treatment of susceptibilities in classical theory and the old quantum theory in a way that matches the historical record reasonably well. (shrink)

The unpredictability of the development and results of a research program is often invoked in favor of a free, desinterested science that would be led mainly by scientific curiosity, in contrast with a use-inspired science led by definite practical expectations. This paper will challenge a crucial but underexamined assumption in this line of defense of scientific freedom, namely that a free science is the best system of science to generate unexpected results. We will propose conditions favoring the occurrence of unexpected (...) facts in the course of a scientific investigation and then establish that use-inspired science actually scores better in this area. (shrink)

In this research, the political relationality in-between life and expression is viewed on through Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic anti-methodology. In the first part, the methodological context is elaborated and brought into relation with Arendt and Agamben's work. After Part I Dispositioning a Milieu in which I dispose the conceptual and paradigmatic frameworks of thinking within politics of flight; in Part II Exposition of Milieus the diversity of practices within the politics of flight are mapped out. This provides a politico-philosophical diagnosis (...) in which the relationships between bodies and expression are always carried out in the same way in each chapter: from form of content to form of expression to matter of expression to matter of content. Form of content is the territorial setting in which bodies are assembled in a certain way; these assemblies are strengthened by form of expression. Yet, forms break and degrade, they never fully touch the unthinkable reality. They do not always give room to the voices, gestures and images that defy the absoluteness of these forms. Yet, I end each chapter with the matter of content; which simply indicates life itself in all its varieties and in all its possible connections to a discourse. Each chapter ‘concludes’ with matter of content, due to the fact that, as I argue, life is the most neglected phenomenon in politics. The ending is however not for the sake of finality; but for the sake of a process. As a feedback loop this ‘recapitulation’ bends back toward the start; toward enforced forms of content and forms of expression, in order to create another form of politics. How do we express endlessness? How do we approach a limbo as a topos of in-between that escapes our discursive vocabulary of here versus there? (shrink)

: Despite the ubiquity of models in science education, there are several different conceptions about their nature in the scientific community. We sought to investigate understandings about them conveyed in the recent research in science education. To this end, we have reviewed papers published on models and modelling between 2010 and 2019. Our analysis revealed that these different notions on the concept of model could be represented in three main trends: Concrete, Construct and Mathematical. In addition, we found that these (...) studies: are predominantly empirical in nature; involve frameworks arising mainly from science education research itself, but with a considerable influence from Philosophy of Science and cognitive sciences; encompass Physics, Biology and Chemistry domains in relatively similar frequencies, but decreasing in this order. Another outcome of this study was the emergence of different scenarios regarding the journals consulted, revealing the existence of different thought styles in science education research community. (shrink)