Traditionally, the investigation of truth has been anchored in a priori reasoning. Cognitive science deviates from this tradition by adding empirical data on how people understand and use concepts. Building on psychophysics and machine learning methods, we introduce conceptual scaling, an approach to map people's understanding of abstract concepts. This approach, allows computing participant-specific conceptual maps from obtained ordinal comparison data, thereby quantifying perceived similarities among abstract concepts. Using this approach, we investigated individual's alignment with philosophical theories (...) on truth and the predictive capacity of conceptual maps. The obtained results indicated that, while people's understanding of truth is multifaceted and encapsulates notions of coherence and authenticity, alignment is best for the correspondence theory of truth. Furthermore, conceptual maps allowed predicting individual outcomes with an accuracy of roughly 70%. This research demonstrates that conceptual scaling offers accurate descriptions of individual's understanding of abstract concepts, behavioral predictions, and quantification of alignment with theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

While the predominant focus of the philosophical literature on scientific modeling has been on single-scale models, most systems in nature exhibit complex multiscale behavior, requiring new modeling methods. This challenge of modeling phenomena across a vast range of spatial and temporal scales has been called the tyranny of scales problem. Drawing on research in the geosciences, I synthesize and analyze a number of strategies for taming this tyranny in the context of conceptual, physical, and mathematical modeling. This includes several (...) strategies that can be deployed in physical modeling, even when strict dynamical scaling fails. In all cases, I argue that having an adequate conceptual model—given both the nature of the system and the particular purpose of the model—is essential. I draw a distinction between depiction and representation, and use this research in the geosciences to advance a number of debates in the philosophy of modeling. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the most prominent concepts in the literature and, in short, indicates the positive impacts of businesses on their stakeholders. Despite the growing body of literature on this concept, the measurement of CSR is still problematic. Although the literature provides several methods for measuring corporate social activities, almost all of them have some limitations. The purpose of this study is to provide an original, valid, and reliable measure of CSR reflecting the responsibilities of a (...) business to various stakeholders. Based on a proposed conceptual framework of CSR, a scale was developed through a systematic scale development process. In the study, exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the underlying factorial structure of the scale. Data was collected from 269 business professionals working in Turkey. The results of the analysis provided a four-dimensional structure of CSR, including CSR to social and nonsocial stakeholders, employees, customers, and government. (shrink)

This paper explores two related questions in late Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism. First, how can a philosopher contemplate the eternal Forms while engaging in practical agency in the world? Second, do Neoplatonists provide a consistent account of the philosopher’s progress through the ‘stages of virtue’ (βαθμοί τῶν ἀρετῶν), the conceptual structure that underpins late antique philosophical curricula and hagiography? These questions interact, I suggest, because later Platonists appeal to the stages of virtue and divine maniai (βαθμοί τῶν μανίων) to (...) explain the philosopher’s ability to alternate gracefully between contemplation and embodied agency, and even to engage in both activities at the same moment. I argue that apparently contradictory evidence for the highest stages of virtue can be reconciled satisfactorily, shedding light on two models of ethical and perceptual transformation that are consistent throughout later Neoplatonism. In the first, 'painterly' model, we alternate between a vision of the paradigmatic model and its expression in the media of place and time; in the second, 'dancerly' model, we contemplate in action all at once, like a dancer moving to the music. (shrink)

One determining characteristic of contemporary sociopolitical systems is their power over increasingly large and diverse populations. This raises questions about power relations between heterogeneous individuals and increasingly dominant and homogenizing system objectives. This article crosses epistemic boundaries by integrating computer engineering and a historicalphilosophical approach making the general organization of individuals within large-scale systems and corresponding individual homogenization intelligible. From a versatile archeological-genealogical perspective, an analysis of computer and social architectures is conducted that reinterprets Foucault’s disciplines and political anatomy to (...) establish the notion of politics for a purely technical system. This permits an understanding of system organization as modern technology with application to technical and social systems alike. Connecting to Heidegger’s notions of the enframing (Gestell) and a more primal truth (anfänglicheren Wahrheit), the recognition of politics in differently developing systems then challenges the immutability of contemporary organization. Following this critique of modernity and within the conceptualization of system organization, Derrida’s democracy to come (à venir) is then reformulated more abstractly as organizations to come. Through the integration of the discussed concepts, the framework of Large-Scale Systems Composed of Homogeneous Individuals (LSSCHI) is proposed, problematizing the relationships between individuals, structure, activity, and power within large-scale systems. The LSSCHI framework highlights the conflict of homogenizing system-level objectives and individual heterogeneity, and outlines power relations and mechanisms of control shared across different social and technical systems. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to some generalizations of explanatory potential of connectionist approaches to theoretical problems of the philosophy of mind. Are considered both strong, and weaknesses of neural network models. Connectionism has close methodological ties with modern neurosciences and neurophilosophy. And this fact strengthens its positions, in terms of empirical naturalistic approaches. However, at the same time this direction inherits weaknesses of computational approach, and in this case all system of anticomputational critical arguments becomes applicable to the connectionst models (...) of mind. The last developments in the field of deep learning gave rich empirical material for cognitive sciences. Multilayered networks, mathematical models of associative dynamics of learning, self-organizing neuronets and all that allow to explain the principles of human conceptual organizing and after this to emulate these processes in computer systems. At all engineering achievements of this technology there is a traditional criticism from representatives of cognitive psychology who cannot accept a thesis about learning ability of a neuronet on the basis of redistribution of scales. Process of learning of natural intelligence, according to cognitive models, happens due to attraction of knowledge broadcast in a symbolical form (mental representations, concepts) at the expense of the systems of output knowledge expressed in the propositional contents. Some philosophical aspects of «neural metaphor» in modern cognitive sciences create the problem field which demands comprehensive understanding, the first step towards which is taken in this work. (shrink)

This is a critical review of Herman Cappelen’s Fixing Language (2018), an excellent and thought-provoking introduction to a hot topic in metaphilosophy: conceptual engineering, which defines the process of evaluating and improving/revising our representational devices (popularly known as concepts). Here, I first present an overview of the book, summarizing his General Theory of conceptual engineering. Second, I point out some limits of the General Theory, in particular the putative consequence of his semantic externalism, the Lack of Control thesis. (...) According to it, the processes behind changes in meaning are too complex and amorphous for revisionary projects to be generally successful. However, I claim that a proper investigation of Lack of Control demands us to look at the sciences, especially the social sciences, something absent in Cappelen’s book. Furthermore, I remember that many conceptual engineers do not put forward large-scale revisions, but rather local ones – i.e., restricted to specific scientific and institutional contexts, and therefore more feasible and potentially relevant. (shrink)

This study examined school administrators’ counselling and conceptual skills for effective secondary school administration in Rivers State. Two (2) research questions and 2 hypotheses were answered and tested in the study, respectively. The population of the study was the 245 public secondary schools in Rivers State, with a teacher population of 8196, from which 414 (equivalent of 5% from the population) were selected as the sample, using the stratified random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was a validated (...) 11-item instrument titled ‘School Administrators’ Counselling and Conceptual Skills for Effective Secondary School Administration Scale’ (SACCSESSAS), with a reliability index of 0.87, designed by the researchers in the modified 4-point Likert scale model. Mean scores and standard deviations were used in answering the research questions while z.test statistics were performed and used in testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study show that school administrators’ counselling skills enhance effective secondary school administration through presenting opportunities for active listening to building rapport and empathy and that administrators conceptual skills enhance school effectiveness through presenting opportunities for school members to think creatively to understanding issues and solving problems. The study also found non-significant differences between the mean ratings of teachers with teaching and non-teaching qualifications on the ways school administrators’ counselling and conceptual skills enhance effective secondary school administration, respectively. It was therefore concluded that school administrators’ counselling and conceptual skills are indispensable in running effective school administration and that as ways forward adequate counselling skills should be employed by school administrators while also making sure that conceptual skills should be in regular use to achieve school effectiveness. (shrink)

This article analyses the general economy of Georges Bataille (1897–1962) in relation to political economy. In the first section I present a critical perspective on economy that is necessary in order to appreciate Bataille’s conception of general economy, which is presented in the second section. The general economy is first considered in a macro-perspective, which comprises the whole of the universe, second in a micro-perspective, where the subjective aspect of economy is maintained as non-objectified desire and inner experience. In the (...) third section I turn to the general economy as it was explicitly intended, namely as a political economy. First I argue that the suggestions that Bataille himself presents are apolitical in an ordinary sense of politics, and that this can be shown to be due to some conceptual slides between nature and society and between history and ontology. I then sketch some postmodern attempts to legitimize respectively capitalism and communism, which refer to the general economy, but argue finally that Bataille can escape both, since he maintains the important distinction between need and desire. Although Bataille’s conception of economy thus reminds us of aspects often overlooked by economy in an ordinary sense, it also contains some serious aporias, which means that it cannot constitute the theoretical basis of a new general political economy, as Bataille had hoped. (shrink)

This chapter sharpens the book’s criticism of exclusivist responsible to religious multiplicity, firstly through close critical attention to arguments which religious exclusivists provide, and secondly through the introduction of several new, formal arguments / dilemmas. Self-described ‘post-liberals’ like Paul Griffiths bid philosophers to accept exclusivist attitudes and beliefs as just one among other aspects of religious identity. They bid us to normalize the discourse Griffiths refers to as “polemical apologetics,” and to view its acceptance as the only viable form of (...) pluralism. This reasoning may seem initially plausible, but on closer examination his and other’s defence of the reasonableness of exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity fall apart. Informed by our study of luck-leaning theological explanations of religious difference and the counter-inductive thinking they exemplify, I argue that exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity are best explained by personal and group bias, and that a discourse between exclusivist authors or sects is beyond the pale of reasonable disagreement. Our study of descriptive (psychological) and prescriptive (religious) fideism in the first sections of Chapter Five suggests that we turn back to formal features of doxastic methods (i.e., of how people process), features that may be straightforwardly tested for in studies utilizing scales of religious orientation. These formal features allow us to better recognize not only the multiplicity of models of faith that religious adherents adhere to, but also that the relationship between forms of fideism is scalar: there is a spectrum of views running from rationalism to fideism, and at the fideistic end from moderate to strong forms of religious fideism. I further explain why developing tests and markers for a high degree of fideistic orientation is important to all those who study religion. The second half of the chapter turns to criticism or censure of exclusivist attitudes to religious multiplicity, in contrast to apologetic defenses of exclusivism. While we have examined the close connections between fideism and fundamentalism, and again between fundamentalism and exclusivism in earlier chapters, a sharper focus reveals an important but little-recognized distinction reflected in the literature: the distinction between religion-specific (or particularist) and mutualist exclusivism. The mutualist doesn’t talk just about the right of adherents of one specific religion to assert exclusivism, but the adherents of any and all “home” religions. I argue that some previously unrecognized problems for the reasonableness of exclusivist responses to religious multiplicity are brought to light when we make the distinction between the two basic ways to understand the claim that exclusivists are making. I put particularist (Barth, Lindbeck, Plantinga) and mutualist (Griffiths, Gellman, Margalit, D’Costa) defenses of exclusivism on the horns of a dilemma, and argue that despite the popularity it presently enjoys among post-liberal theologians, a close examination reveals that the very conceptual coherence of mutualist exclusivism is in serious doubt. (shrink)

This study sought to replicate and extend Hall and colleagues’ (2014) work on developing and validating scales from the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) to index the triarchic psychopathy constructs of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. This study also extended Hall et al.’s initial findings by including the PPI Revised (PPI–R). A community sample (n D 240) weighted toward subclinical psychopathy traits and a male prison sample (n D 160) were used for this study. Results indicated that PPI–Boldness, PPI–Meanness, and PPI–Disinhibition converged (...) with other psychopathy, personality, and behavioral criteria in ways conceptually expected from the perspective of the triarchic psychopathy model, including showing very strong convergent and discriminant validity with their Triarchic Psychopathy Measure counterparts. These findings further enhance the utility of the PPI and PPI–R in measuring these constructs. (shrink)

The conceptual model of United Nations reform - "UN 3.0" includes the General Program of Action on UN Reform, consisting of two stages. The first stage for 2020-2025 envisages the transformation of the main organs of the UN - the General Assembly and the Security Council with measures to improve the effectiveness of the management system, address the "veto problem", problem of financing, improve staff work and administrative and financial control, strengthen UN media, improvement of work with the global (...) civil society. The General Assembly is converted into the General All-Parliamentary Assembly of the UN. In the structure of the Assembly, the Council for Law is being established, which coordinates the activities of UN structures in the field of law. To coordinate the activities of the UN in the field of human rights and civil society, ethical issues, the General all-parliamentary Assembly creates the Council on ethics, human rights and civil society and transforms the Committee on information into the Council on public information and communication with civil society. The structure of the Council includes all UN media. The reform of the UN Security Council is carried out in three sub-stages. At the 1st sub-stage (2020-2021) the Security Council is transformed into the Council of Existential Security (CES). The membership of the CES is increased to 25 member countries, of which five countries have the right of the unconditional (absolute, eternal) veto: Great Britain, France, China, Russian Federation, USA. The General All-Parliamentary Assembly elects 15 new permanent members of the Council of Existential Security with the right of the conditional (limited) veto: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan , Turkey, Japan (if they fulfill the mandatory restrictive conditions). At this sub-stage, the CES elects also five non-permanent members with the right of a conditional (limited) veto when they meet the mandatory restrictive conditions, with a rotation period of 2 years from geographical regions (or regional unions): Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific Ocean (2 places), Eastern Europe. On the second sub-stage (2022-2023), subject to the effective activity of the CES of the enlarged composition and compliance with mandatory restrictive conditions, new permanent members of the "Existential Security Council" are elected with the right of a conditional (limited) veto: Iran, Spain, Poland, Saudi Arabia. Members of the CES may be regional unions, whose member countries are not represented in the CES, but still have one vote with the right of a conditional (limited) veto. -/- Two essential levels of the veto: 1. Unconditional (absolute, eternal) veto is the historical right of veto of the five permanent members of the Council of Existential Security - Great Britain, China, Russia, USA, France; 2. Сonditional (limited) veto is the veto of other permanent and non-permanent members of the Council of Existential Security. The right of veto is a unique international school for the achievement of consensus, a school of high democracy for Humanity, a reliable guarantee of the viability of the UN structure. The Council for Existential Security centralises the management of the UN subsidiary bodies with the expansion of their security functions: the Military Staff Committee, the Counter-Terrorism Committee, the Committee for the Prevention of the Spread of Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons, the Sanctions Committees and other committees. On the basis of the decision of the Council of Existential Security, the General All-Parliamentary Assembly creates permanent contingents of UN peacekeeping and counter-terrorism forces. In addition, two Centers are being created in the structure of the Council for Existential Security: the World Center for the Elimination of the Effects of Technogenic and Natural Disasters with branches on all continents and the World Center for the Analysis of Existential Risks and the Overall Security Strategy. The Center is developing the Programs of research and monitoring of global existential threats and risks. In order to increase the level of legitimacy and authority of the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Rules of procedure for elections to this post are changing. Each member country of the Council for Existential Security represents one of the most authoritative candidates for election to the post of Secretary General at the session of the General All-Parliamentary Assembly, with the possibility of nominating candidates from other countries, including those not members of the Council for Existential Security. Elections are held in two rounds during one day of the session of the Assembly. The Legal Committee of the UN General Assembly is developing a Program for the Reform of the Judicial System of the United Nations, which takes into account the proposals of the previous international discussion and determines the scope and terms of the reform of the courts. In accordance with the Program of Action on UN Reform for 2020-2025, reforms are under way in the structure of the Economic and Social Council. The central task of the reform is to strengthen the coordinating role of ECOSOC in the entire system of UN-related specialized agencies, funds and programs related to the Council. The key task of the UN reform is the solution of the financing problem. A unified "UN Open Budget "Solidarity XXI" is being created, including the financing of peacekeeping operations and other expenses. Each country, a member of the United Nations, lists in an established period, once a year, an Existential contribution - the Earth Tax. The Earth Tax for each UN member state is established on the basis of four scales of calculation: Scale I - for 5 permanent members of the Council of Existential Security, who have the right of absolute (absolute) veto; Scale II - for the permanent members of the SEB, who have the right to a conditional (limited) veto; Scale III - for non-permanent members of the SEB, who have the right to a conditional (limited) veto; Scale IV - for all other UN member countries. The program of action on UN reform includes a set of measures to ensure transparent work of the International Civil Service Commission with the involvement of the UN media. To strengthen control functions in the sphere of personnel policy, administrative and financial management, the General All-Parliamentary Assembly of the United Nations establishes the Permanent Commission on Ethics and Administrative and Financial Control. All members of the Commission, members of the Committees and auditors are independent in their activities from the leadership of the United Nations, its funds and programs. The General All-Parliamentary Assembly completes the first stage of the Program of Action on UN Reform in 2025 and, following an open discussion, introduces a single language of international communication - Esperanto and approves it as the official language of the United Nations. With a view to more effective work of the central UN governing bodies in the face of increasing existential threats and risks, reducing the current expenses for the maintenance of the central bodies of the UN, the Council for Existential Security and the General All-Parliamentary Assembly decide on the relocation of the UN headquarters to Iceland. The UN building complex in New York is transferred to preferential use of non-governmental organizations, which contribute to the implementation of the goals of the United Nations. At the second stage of the UN reform in the period 2026-2028, additional necessary transformations are being made in the UN system. At the end of the first stage of the reform, taking into account the reforms carried out by the main organs of the United Nations and the internal improvement of the work of all its structures, the United Nations Program of Action for the years 2026-2028 is being developed. (shrink)

This paper sets out the felicity conditions for metalinguistic proposals, a type of directive illocutionary act. It discusses the relevance of metalinguistic proposals and other metalinguistic directives for understanding both small- and large-scale linguistic engineering projects, essentially contested concepts, metalinguistic provocations, and the methodology of ordinary language philosophy. Metalinguistic proposals are compared with other types of linguistic interventions, including metalinguistic negotiation, conceptual engineering, lexical warfare, and ameliorative projects.

This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, (...) Open-mindedness adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model’s cross-cultural generalizability. (shrink)

We look into the ontology of quantum theory as distinct from that of the classical theory in the sciences. Theories carry with them their own ontology while the metaphysics may remain the same in the background. We follow a broadly Kantian tradition, distinguishing between the noumenal and phenomenal realities where the former is independent of our perception while the latter is assembled from the former by means of fragmentary bits of interpretation. Theories do not tell us how the noumenal world (...) is constituted but are conceptual constructs applying to models generated in the phenomenal world within limited contexts. -/- The ontology of quantum theory principally rests on the view that entities in the world are pervasively correlated with one another not by means of probabilities as in the case of the classical theory, but by means of probability amplitudes involving finely tuned phases characterising the oscillatory behaviour of quantum mechanical states. -/- The amplitude-dependent correlations (quantum entanglement) exist over and above the classical ones expressed in terms of probabilities. While the classical correlations are essentially local in nature, quantum correlations are shared globally in the process of environment-induced decoherence. The decoherence is an effectively random process that removes local correlations in the course of global sharing of entanglement—the removal being especially manifest in the case of systems that appear as classical ones. It is this aspect of the decoherence process that makes the so-called measurement postulate (one relating to wave function collapse) cohere with the rest of the principles of quantum theory where the latter implies a Schrodinger type time evolution of quantum mechanical systems. -/- The mathematical basis of the quantum correlations consists of the description of pure states of a system in terms of vectors in a linear vector space (a mixed state appears as an admixture of pure states with some probability distribution associated with it) and, in addition, the description of (pure) states of composite systems as vectors in the product space arising from the component sub-systems. -/- The crucial aspect of the decoherence process, of significance in the context of the apparent incompatibility of the measurement postulate with the unitary Schrodinger evolution, relates to the fact that it is almost instantaneous in the case of a classical object (one that is nevertheless amenable to a quantum description). Indeed, the decoherence time is, in all likelihood, of the order of the Planck scale, being driven by field fluctuations in the Planck regime. This points to factors of an unknown nature determining the finest details of the decoherence process since Planck scale physics remains an obscure terrain. -/- In other words, quantum theory is, to all intents and purposes, in the need of a radical revision, in keeping with the fact that all theories are defeasible and need revision as our domains of experience expand and get realigned in a complex manner. The context within which quantum theory (and quantum field theory too) is defined is set precisely by the Planck scale, across which a novel theoretical framework is likely to emerge. However, as in the case of theory revisions in general, that emerging theory will stand in an asymmetric relation of incommensurability with the present-day quantum theory, where the concepts of the latter will be comprehensible in terms of those of the former, but the converse will not hold. (shrink)

In this essay we collect and put together a number of ideas relevant to the under- standing of the phenomenon of creativity, confining our considerations mostly to the domain of cognitive psychology while we will, on a few occasions, hint at neuropsy- chological underpinnings as well. In this, we will mostly focus on creativity in science, since creativity in other domains of human endeavor have common links with scientific creativity while differing in numerous other specific respects. We begin by briefly (...) introducing a few basic notions relating to cognition, among which the notion of ‘concepts’ is of basic relevance. The myriads of concepts lodged in our mind constitute a ‘conceptual space’ of an enormously complex structure, where con- cepts are correlated by beliefs that are themselves made up of concepts and are as- sociated with emotions. The conceptual space, moreover, is perpetually in a state of dynamic evolution that is once again of a complex nature. A major component of the dynamic evolution is made up of incessant acts of inference, where an inference occurs essentially by means of a succession of correlations among concepts set up with beliefs and heuristics, the latter being beliefs of a special kind, namely, ones relatively free of emotional associations and possessed of a relatively greater degree of justification. Beliefs, along with heuristics, have been described as the ‘mind’s software’, and con- stitute important cognitive components of the self-linked psychological resources of an individual. The self is the psychological engine driving all our mental and physical activity, and is in a state of ceaseless dynamics resulting from one’s most intimate ex- periences of the world accumulating in the course of one’s journey through life. Many of our psychological resources are of a dual character, having both a self-linked and a shared character, the latter being held in common with larger groups of people and imbibed from cultural inputs. We focus on the privately held self-linked beliefs of an individual, since these are presumably of central relevance in making possible inductive inferences – ones in which there arises a fundamental need of adopting a choice or making a decision. Beliefs, decisions, and inferences, all have the common link to the self of an individual and, in this, are fundamentally analogous to free will, where all of these have an aspect of non-determinism inherent in them. Creativity involves a major restructuring of the conceptual space where a sustained inferential process eventually links remote conceptual domains, thereby opening up the possibility of a large number of new correlations between remote concepts by a cascading process. Since the process of inductive inference depends crucially on de- cisions at critical junctures of the inferential chain, it becomes necessary to examine the basic mechanism underlying the making of decisions. In the framework that we attempt to build up for the understanding of scientific creativity, this role of decision making in the inferential process assumes central relevance. With this background in place, we briefly sketch the affect theory of decisions. Affect is an innate system of response to perceptual inputs received either from the exter- nal world or from the internal physiological and psychological environment whereby a positive or negative valence gets associated with a perceptual input. Almost every sit- uation faced by an individual, even one experienced tacitly, i.e., without overt aware-ness, elicits an affective response from him, carrying a positive or negative valence that underlies all sorts of decision making, including ones carried out unconsciously in inferential processes. Referring to the process of inferential exploration of the conceptual space that gener- ates the possibility of correlations being established between remote conceptual do- mains, such exploration is guided and steered at every stage by the affect system, analogous to the way a complex computer program proceeds through junctures where the program ascertains whether specified conditions are met with by way of generating appropriate numerical values – for instance, the program takes different routes, depending on whether some particular numerical value turns out to be positive or negative. The valence generated by the affect system in the process of adoption of a choice plays a similar role which therefore is of crucial relevance in inferential processes, especially in the exploration of the conceptual space where remote domains need to be linked up – the affect system produces a response along a single value dimension, resembling a number with a sign and a magnitude. While the affect system plays a guiding role in the exploration of the conceptual space, the process of exploration itself consists of the establishment of correlations between concepts by means of beliefs and heuristics, the self-linked ones among the latter having a special role in making possible the inferential journey along alternative routes whenever the shared rules of inference become inadequate. A successful access to a remote conceptual domain, necessary for the creative solution of a standing problem or anomaly – one that could not be solved within the limited domain hitherto accessed – requires a phase of relatively slow cumulative search and then, at some stage, a rapid cascading process when a solution is in sight. Representing the conceptual space in the form of a complex network, the overall process can be likened to one of self-organized criticality commonly observed in the dynamical evolution of complex systems. In order that inferential access to remote domains may actually be possible, it is necessary that restrictions on the exploration process – necessary for setting the context in ordinary instances of inductive inference – be relaxed and a relatively free exploration in a larger conceptual terrain be made possible. This is achieved by the mind going into the default mode, where external constraints – ones imposed by shared beliefs and modes of exploration – are made inoperative. While explaining all these various aspects of the creative process, we underline the supremely important role that analogy plays in it. Broadly speaking, analogy is in the nature of a heuristic, establishing correlations between concepts. However, analo- gies are very special in that these are particularly effective in establishing correlations among remote concepts, since analogy works without regard to the contiguity of the concepts in the conceptual space. In establishing links between concepts, analogies have the power to light up entire terrains in the conceptual space when a rapid cas- cading of fresh correlations becomes possible. The creative process occurs within the mind of a single individual or of a few closely collaborating individuals, but is then continued by an entire epistemic community, eventually resulting in a conceptual revolution. Such conceptual revolutions make pos- sible the radical revision of scientific theories whereby the scope of an extant theory is broadened and a new theoretical framework makes its appearance. The emerging theory is characterized by a certain degree of incommensurability when compared with the earlier one – a feature that may appear strange at first sight. But incommen- surability does not mean incompatibility and the apparently contrary features of the relation between the successive theories may be traced to the multi-layered structureof the conceptual space where concepts are correlated not by means of single links but by multiple ones, thereby generating multiple layers of correlation, among which some are retained and some created afresh in a conceptual restructuring. We conclude with the observation that creativity occurs on all scales. Analogous to correlations being set up across domains in the conceptual space and new domains being generated, processes with similar features can occur within the confines of a domain where a new layer of inferential links may be generated, connecting up sub- domains. In this context, insight can be looked upon as an instance of creativity within the confines of a domain of a relatively limited extent. (shrink)

The article presents a conceptual framework for distinguishing different sorts of heterogeneous digital materials. The hypothesis is that a wide range of heterogeneous data resources can be characterized and classified due to their particular configurations of hypertext features such as scripts, links, interactive processes, and time scalings, and that the hypertext configuration is a major but not sole source of the messiness of big data. The notion of hypertext will be revalidated, placed at the center of the interpretation of (...) networked digital media, and used in the analysis of the fast-growing amounts of heterogeneous digital collections, assemblages, and corpora. The introduction summarizes the wider background of a fast-changing data landscape. (shrink)

Elimination controversies are ubiquitous in philosophy and the human sciences. For example, it has been suggested that human races, hysteria, intelligence, mental disorder, propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires, the self, and the super-ego should be eliminated from the list of respectable entities in the human sciences. I argue that eliminativist proposals are often presented in the framework of an oversimplified “phlogiston model” and suggest an alternative account that describes ontological elimination on a gradual scale between criticism of empirical (...) assumptions and conceptual choices. (shrink)

The notion of epistemic responsibility applied to memory has been in general examined in the framework of the responsibilities that a collective holds for past injustices, but it has never been the object of an analysis of its own. In this article, I propose to isolate and explore it in detail. For this purpose, I start by conceptualizing the epistemic responsibility applied to individual memories. I conclude that an epistemic responsible individual rememberer is a vigilant agent who knows when to (...) engage in different kinds of mental and non-mental actions in order to monitor and update her memories, and who develops and nurture different kinds of virtuous attitudes that guide those actions. These (epistemic) virtuous attitudes are oriented not only towards herself but also towards others. Whereas this conception of epistemic responsibility does not pose a problem to understand shared memories of family members and friends, it may seem suspicious when applied to large-scale collective memories. These memories, which I name historical memories, are memories of events that have a traumatic impact for the community, are permeated by unequal relations of power, keep a complex relationship with historical science, and present other characteristics that distinguish them from individual memories. But despite these differences, the analysis undertaken in this work shows that the general principles that govern the epistemic responsibility of individual and (large-scale) collective rememberers are similar, and are based on similar grounds: pragmatic considerations about the consequences of misremembering or forgetting and a feeling of care. The similarities at the individual and collective scale of the epistemic vigilant attitude that is and should be taken toward our significant past may partially justify the use of the same epithet—“memory”—to refer to these different kinds of representations. (shrink)

The institute of education in modern society is currently in the process of serious transformation associated with the large-scale introduction of high technologies, which is due to a similar process in post-industrial society as a whole. There is a growing understanding of the negative consequences of digitalization of society and education along with the understanding of the objective necessity of such transformation. The article contains an analysis of the negative consequences and problems arising in the course of the spread of (...) digitalization of higher education in Russia. Methodology and sources . The methodology of the research is based on the methods of comparative analysis and extrapolation of transformations of social environment and anthropological factors under the influence of technological progress in the field of higher education. The signs of “high technology poisoning” considered by J. Naisbitt in his book “High Tech – High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning” and the concept of extensive and intensive types of creativity formulated by A.I. Stoletov are a conceptual basis for analyzing the impact of high technology on education. Results and Discussion . Seven symptoms of technological poisoning in higher education, representing the main risks of the modern educational system, their manifestations in the educational process and prospects in case the existing trend persists, have been considered. One of the sources of manifestation of these symptoms is the extensive character of creativity inherent in scientific and technological activity of the society, which stakes on innovative development and mastering of material aspects of nature. The technogenic character of the emerging innovation process levels out the activities associated with the intensive type of creativity, aimed at the meaning-creating and existential aspects of human existence. Conclusion. Minimization of negative consequences presupposes the strengthening of the humanitarian component in education, allowing to form a culture of “pause of contemplation” (Grigory Pomerantz), in which technology will acquire, as it was suggested by J. Naisbitt himself, a fullness of meaning that goes beyond instrumental values into the realm of ethical and existential ones. (shrink)

The boundary problem is related to the binding problem, part of a family of puzzles and phenomenal experiences that theories of consciousness (ToC) must either explain or eliminate. By comparison with the phenomenal binding problem, the boundary problem has received very little scholarly attention since first framed in detail by Rosengard in 1998, despite discussion by Chalmers in his widely cited 2016 work on the combination problem. However, any ToC that addresses the binding problem must also address the boundary problem. (...) The binding problem asks how a unified first person perspective (1PP) can bind experiences across multiple physically distinct activities, whether billions of individual neurons firing or some other underlying phenomenon. To a first approximation, the boundary problem asks why we experience hard boundaries around those unified 1PPs and why the boundaries operate at their apparent spatiotemporal scale. We review recent discussion of the boundary problem, identifying several promising avenues but none that yet address all aspects of the problem. We set out five specific boundary problems to aid precision in future efforts. We also examine electromagnetic (EM) field theories in detail, given their previous success with the binding problem, and introduce a feature with the necessary characteristics to address the boundary problem at a conceptual level. Topological segmentation can, in principle, create exactly the hard boundaries desired, enclosing holistic, frame-invariant units capable of effecting downward causality. The conclusion outlines a programme for testing this concept, describing how it might also differentiate between competing EM ToCs. (shrink)

Alasia Nuti’s recent book Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress puts forward a compelling vision of contemporary duties to redress past wrongdoing, grounded in the idea of “historical-structural-injustice”, constituted by the “structural reproduction of an unjust history over time and through changes”. Such an approach promises to transcend the familiar scholarly divide between “backward-looking” and “forward-looking” models, and allow for a reparative approach that focuses specifically on those past wrongs that impact the present, while retaining (...) a significant focus on the historical. While Nuti’s work is perhaps the most sophisticated treatment of structural injustice to date, this paper argues that an exclusive concentration on historical-structural-injustices neglects some aspects and some acts of wrongdoing that call out for present-day redress. What is needed, therefore, is a pluralist theory that can accept the pressing force in the present of historical-structural-injustices, whilst also making room for past-regarding duties that either do not fit, or are not best conceptualized in terms of, this approach, without being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of historic injustice. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse the relation between the use of environmental data in contemporary health sciences and related conceptualisations and operationalisations of the notion of environment. We consider three case studies that exemplify a different selection of environmental data and mode of data integration in data-intensive epidemiology. We argue that the diversification of data sources, their increase in scale and scope, and the application of novel analytic tools have brought about three significant conceptual shifts. First, we discuss the (...) EXPOsOMICS project, an attempt to integrate genomic and environmental data which suggests a reframing of the boundaries between external and internal environments. Second, we explore the MEDMI platform, whose efforts to combine health, environmental and climate data instantiate a reframing and expansion of environmental exposure. Third, we illustrate how extracting epidemiological insights from extensive social data collected by the CIDACS institute yields innovative attributions of causal power to environmental factors. Identifying these shifts highlights the benefits and opportunities of new environmental data, as well as the challenges that such tools bring to understanding and fostering health. It also emphasises the constraints that data selection and accessibility pose to scientific imagination, including how researchers frame key concepts in health-related research. (shrink)

Climate change poses a significant risk threatening the livelihood of people, communities, and cities worldwide. The stakes cannot be reduced to zero, so there is a constant need to re-theorize the collective action to address the climate change challenges. Doing so requires planning to reduce vulnerability to climate change. One of the most crucial challenges facing scientists, academics, citizens, and policymakers today is whether the collaborative, inclusive, and resilient climate change action can be implemented, assessed, and achieved. To respond to (...) this question, this research aims to re-theorize, de-conceptualize, and analyze the collective effort to address the climate change challenges. First, the paper conceptualizes climate change resiliency as the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and respond effectively to climate-related risks, hazards, and threats. The existing challenges toward implementing resilient and inclusive climate change action have been analyzed. The paper theorizes the urban commons and collaborative governance to theorize collective efforts. This article concludes by identifying some critical determinants for the up‐scaling of collective action to address the climate change challenges. It can be supposed that any future inclusive and resilient collective action to address climate change is based on social learning to support decision-making, emphasizing inclusion and equity, which came in line with the United Nation’s 2030 SDGs. (shrink)

Who should be the author(s) of an academic paper? This question is becoming increasingly pressing, due to the increasing prevalence and scale of scientific collaboration, and the corresponding diversity of authorship practices in different disciplines and subdisciplines. This paper addresses the conceptual issues underlying authorship, with an eye to ameliorating authorship practices. The first part of the paper distinguishes five roles played by authorship attributions: allocating credit, constructing a speaker, enabling credibility judgements, supporting accountability, and creating an intellectual marketplace. (...) The second part of the paper argues that distinguishing these functions helps us see that at least some of the confusions around authorship are due to tensions between these functions. The final part of the paper suggests a way to resolve these conceptual confusions, which we will call the CSWG proposal. This proposal suggests replacing authorship with a bundle of roles tailored to the functions of authorship—contributor, spokesperson, writer, and guarantor—which can be distributed in a number of different ways. (shrink)

Despite the wide range of studies on how students’ past knowledge influences their understanding of scientific terminology, few studies were conducted to compare non-scientific language with scientific language, or rather everyday language with scientific language, from a cognitive linguistic perspective. The present paper aims to determine the cognitive mechanisms, i.e., image schemas, conceptual metaphor, and conceptual metonymy, which underpin the conceptualisation of the Arabic term سرعة (speed), using a conceptual metaphor theory framework. Thus, the research question guiding (...) this study is: What cognitive mechanisms underlie the concept of سرعة (speed) in Arabic? The findings of this study will shed light on how Arab speakers conceptualise this term, demonstrating their background knowledge of the term compared to its scientific meaning. The article adds to the growing body of cognitive linguistics research on the conceptual processes behind physics terms. The data was collected from the Arabic Web Corpus (arTenTen) using the Sketch Engine. The findings demonstrated that VERTICATLITY and SCALE schemas are the most dominant image schemas that anchor the conceptual meaning in Arab speakers’ perceptions of the term under investigation and the discourse in which it is employed, as well as offer the concrete basis for conceptual metaphors. The conceptual metaphor CHANGE IS MOTION (LOCATION) was also shown to be active in motivating the conception of SPEED in Arabic. (shrink)

As the planet’s largest ecosystem, oceans stabilise climate, produce oxygen, store CO2 and host unfathomable biodiversity at a deep time-scale. In recent decades, scientific assessments have indicated that the oceans are seriously degraded to the detriment of most near-future societies. Human-induced impacts range from climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, eutrophication and marine pollution to local degradation of marine and coastal environments. Such environmental violence takes form of both ‘spectacular’ events, like oil spills and ‘slow violence’, occurring gradually and (...) out of sight. The purpose of this paper is to show four cases of coastal and marine forms of slow violence and to provide counter-accounts of how to reinvent our consumer imaginary at such locations, as well as to develop what is here referred to as ‘low-trophic theory,’ a situated ethical stance that attends to entanglements of consumption, food, violence, environmental adaptability and more-than-human care from the co-existential perspective of multispecies ethics. We combine field-philosophical case studies with insights from marine science, environmental art and cultural practices in the Baltic and North Sea region and feminist posthumanities. The paper shows that the oceanic imaginary is not a unified place, but rather, a set of forces, which requires renewed ethical approaches, conceptual inventiveness and practical creativity. Based on the case studies and examples presented, the authors conclude that the consideration of more-than-human ethical perspectives, provided by environmental arts and humanities is crucial for both research on nature and space, and for the flourishing of local multispecies communities. This paper thus inaugurates thinking and practice along the proposed here ethical stance of low-trophic theory, developed it along the methodological lines of feminist environmental posthumanities. (shrink)

At first glance, Fichte and Nietzsche might strike us as intellectual contraries. This impression is reinforced by Nietzsche’s disparaging remarks about Fichte. The dearth of critical literature comparing the two thinkers also could easily lead us to believe that they are, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to one another. In this paper, however, I argue that their theories of subjectivity are in many respects remarkably similar and worthy of comparison. But I further explain how, despite this convergence, their normative (...) philosophies end up so conspicuously at odds with one another. After examining the resemblance between their denials of the substantial self, I respectively analyse Fichte’s and Nietzsche’s positive accounts of subjectivity, self-cultivation, and the political preconditions of self-cultivation. I locate the conceptual juncture at which their practical outlooks begin to part ways in their divergent drive psychologies and in their distinct conceptions of conscience. These apparently minor theoretical differences generate a large-scale disagreement regarding the political systems they believe best enable self-cultivation, with Fichte favouring a democratic regime, while Nietzsche opts for a markedly more aristocratic one. I close by sketching a possible way out of this dilemma. (shrink)

The geosciences include a wide spectrum of disciplines ranging from paleontology to climate science, and involve studies of a vast range of spatial and temporal scales, from the deep-time history of microbial life to the future of a system no less immense and complex than the entire Earth. Modeling is thus a central and indispensable tool across the geosciences. Here, we review both the history and current state of model-based inquiry in the geosciences. Research in these fields makes use of (...) a wide variety of models, such as conceptual, physical, and numerical models, and more specifically cellular automata, artificial neural networks, agent-based models, coupled models, and hierarchical models. We note the increasing demands to incorporate biological and social systems into geoscience modeling, challenging the traditional boundaries of these fields. Understanding and articulating the many different sources of scientific uncertainty – and finding tools and methods to address them – has been at the forefront of most research in geoscience modeling. We discuss not only structuralmodel uncertainties, parameter uncertainties, and solution uncertainties, but also the diverse sources of uncertainty arising from the complex nature of geoscience systems themselves. Without an examination of the geosciences, our philosophies of science and our understanding of the nature of model-based science are incomplete. (shrink)

Today’s technological-scientific prospect of posthumanity simultaneously evokes and defies historical understanding. On the one hand, it implies a historical claim of an epochal transformation concerning posthumanity as a new era. On the other, by postulating the birth of a novel, better-than-human subject for this new era, it eliminates the human subject of modern Western historical understanding. In this article, I attempt to understand posthumanity as measured against the story of humanity as the story of history itself. I examine the fate (...) of humanity as the central subject of history in three consecutive steps: first, by exploring how classical philosophies of history achieved the integrity of the greatest historical narrative of history itself through the very invention of humanity as its subject; second, by recounting how this central subject came under heavy criticism by postcolonial and gender studies in the last half-century, targeting the universalism of the story of humanity as the greatest historical narrative of history; and third, by conceptualizing the challenge of posthumanity against both the story of humanity and its criticism. Whereas criticism fragmented history but retained the possibility of smaller-scale narratives, posthumanity does not doubt the feasibility of the story of humanity. Instead, it necessarily invokes humanity, if only in order to be able to claim its supersession by a better-than-human subject. In that, it represents a fundamental challenge to the modern Western historical condition and the very possibility of historical narratives – small-scale or large-scale, fragmented or universal. (shrink)

Precision medicine and molecular systems medicine (MSM) are highly utilized and successful approaches to improve understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of many diseases from bench-to-bedside. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, molecular techniques and biotechnological innovation have proven to be of utmost importance for rapid developments in disease diagnostics and treatment, including DNA and RNA sequencing technology, treatment with drugs and natural products and vaccine development. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has also demonstrated the need for systemic thinking and transdisciplinarity and the limits (...) of MSM: the neglect of the bio-psycho-social systemic nature of humans and their context as the object of individual therapeutic and population-oriented interventions. COVID-19 illustrates how a medical problem requires a transdisciplinary approach in epidemiology, pathology, internal medicine, public health, environmental medicine, and socio-economic modeling. Regarding the need for conceptual integration of these different kinds of knowledge we suggest the application of general system theory (GST). This approach endorses an organism-centered view on health and disease, which according to Ludwig von Bertalanffy who was the founder of GST, we call Organismal Systems Medicine (OSM). We argue that systems science offers wider applications in the field of pathology and can contribute to an integrative systems medicine by (i) integration of evidence across functional and structural differentially scaled subsystems, (ii) conceptualization of complex multilevel systems, and (iii) suggesting mechanisms and non-linear relationships underlying the observed phenomena. We underline these points with a proposal on multi-level systems pathology including neurophysiology, endocrinology, immune system, genetics, and general metabolism. An integration of these areas is necessary to understand excess mortality rates and polypharmacological treatments. In the pandemic era this multi-level systems pathology is most important to assess potential vaccines, their effectiveness, short-, and long-time adverse effects. We further argue that these conceptual frameworks are not only valid in the COVID-19 era but also important to be integrated in a medicinal curriculum. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that (elementary) topology may be useful for dealing with problems of epistemology and metaphysics. More precisely, I want to show that the introduction of topological structures may elucidate the role of the spatial structures (in a broad sense) that underly logic and cognition. In some detail I’ll deal with “Cassirer’s problem” that may be characterized as an early forrunner of Goodman’s “grue-bleen” problem. On a larger scale, topology turns out to be useful (...) in elaborating the approach of conceptual spaces that in the last twenty years or so has found quite a few applications in cognitive science, psychology, and linguistics. In particular, topology may help distinguish “natural” from “not-so-natural” concepts. This classical problem that up to now has withstood all efforts to solve (or dissolve) it by purely logical methods. Finally, in order to show that a topological perspective may also offer a fresh look on classical metaphysical problems, it is shown that Leibniz’s famous principle of the identity of indiscernibles is closely related to some well-known topological separation axioms. More precisely, the topological perspective gives rise in a natural way to some novel variations of Leibniz’s principle. (shrink)

Cells are cognitive entities possessing great computational power. DNA serves as a multivalent information storage medium for these computations at various time scales. Information is stored in sequences, epigenetic modifications, and rapidly changing nucleoprotein complexes. Because DNA must operate through complexes formed with other molecules in the cell, genome functions are inherently interactive and involve two-way communication with various cellular compartments. Both coding sequences and repetitive sequences contribute to the hierarchical systemic organization of the genome. By virtue of nucleoprotein complexes, (...) epigenetic modifications, and natural genetic engineering activities, the genome can serve as a read-write storage system. An interactive informatic conceptualization of the genome allows us to understand the functional importance of DNA that does not code for protein or RNA structure, clarifies the essential multidirectional and systemic nature of genomic information transfer, and emphasizes the need to investigate how cellular computation operates in reproduction and evolution. (shrink)

How micro- and macroevolutionary evolutionary processes produce phenotypic change is without question one of the most intriguing and perplexing issues facing evolutionary biologists. We believe that roadblocks to progress lie A) in the underestimation of the role of the environment, and in particular, that of the interaction of genotypes with environmental factors, and B) in the continuing lack of incorporation of development into the evolutionary synthesis. We propose the integration of genetic, environmental and developmental perspectives on the evolution of the (...) phenotype in the form of the concept of the developmental reaction norm (DRN) The DRN represents the set of multivariate ontogenies that can be produced by a single genotype when it is exposed to environmental variation. It encompasses: 1) the processes that alter the phenotype throughout the ontogenetic trajectory, 2) the recognition that different aspects of the phenotype are (and must be) correlated and 3) the ability of a genotype to produce phenotypes in different environments. This perspective necessitates the explicit study of character expression during development, the evaluation of associations between pairs or groups of characters (e.g., multivariate allometries), and the exploration of reaction norms and phenotypic plasticity. We explicitly extend the concept of the DRN to encompass adjustments made in response to changes in the internal environment as well. Thus, ‘typical’ developmental sequences (e.g., cell fate determination) and plastic responses are simply manifestations of different scales of ‘environmental’ effects along a continuum. We present: (1) a brief conceptual review of three fundamental aspects of the generation and evolution of phenotypes: the changes in the trajectories describing growth and differentiation (ontogeny), the multivariate relationships among characters (allometry), and the effect of the environment (plasticity); (2) a discussion of how these components are merged in the concept of the developmental reaction norm; and (3) a reaction norm perspective of major determinants of phenotypes: epigenesis, selection and constraint. (shrink)

Since the human genome was decoded, great emphasis has been placed on the unique, personal nature of the genome, along with the benefits that personalized medicine can bring to individuals and the importance of safeguarding genetic privacy. As a result, an equally important aspect of the human genome – its common nature – has been underappreciated and underrepresented in the ethics literature and policy dialogue surrounding genetics and genomics. This article will argue that, just as the personal nature of the (...) genome has been used to reinforce individual rights and justify important privacy protections, so too the common nature of the genome can be employed to support protections of the genome at a population level and policies designed to promote the public's wellbeing. In order for public health officials to have the authority to develop genetics policies for the sake of the public good, the genome must have not only a common, but also a public, dimension. This article contends that DNA carries a public dimension through the use of two conceptual frameworks: the common heritage framework and the common resource framework. Both frameworks establish a public interest in the human genome, but the CH framework can be used to justify policies aimed at preserving and protecting the genome, while the CR framework can be employed to justify policies for utilizing the genome for the public benefit. A variety of possible policy implications are discussed, with special attention paid to the use of large-scale genomics databases for public health research. (shrink)

Considerable variation exists not only in the kinds of transposable elements (TEs) occurring within the genomes of different species, but also in their abundance and distribution. Noting a similarity to the assortment of organisms among ecosystems, some researchers have called for an ecological approach to the study of transposon dynamics. However, there are several ways to adopt such an approach, and it is sometimes unclear what an ecological perspective will add to the existing co-evolutionary framework for explaining transposon-host interactions. This (...) review aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of transposon ecology in order to evaluate its explanatory prospects. We begin by identifying three unanswered questions regarding the abundance and distribution of TEs that potentially call for an ecological explanation. We then offer an operational distinction between evolutionary and ecological approaches to these questions. By determining the amount of variance in transposon abundance and distribution that is explained by ecological and evolutionary factors, respectively, it is possible empirically to assess the prospects for each of these explanatory frameworks. To illustrate how this methodology applies to a concrete example, we analyzed whole-genome data for one set of distantly related mammals and another more closely related group of arthropods. Our expectation was that ecological factors are most informative for explaining differences among individual TE lineages, rather than TE families, and for explaining their distribution among closely related as opposed to distantly related host genomes. We found that, in these data sets, ecological factors do in fact explain most of the variation in TE abundance and distribution among TE lineages across less distantly related host organisms. Evolutionary factors were not significant at these levels. However, the explanatory roles of evolution and ecology become inverted at the level of TE families or among more distantly related genomes. Not only does this example demonstrate the utility of our distinction between ecological and evolutionary perspectives, it further suggests an appropriate explanatory domain for the burgeoning discipline of transposon ecology. The fact that ecological processes appear to be impacting TE lineages over relatively short time scales further raises the possibility that transposons might serve as useful model systems for testing more general hypotheses in ecology. (shrink)

Professor Morales’ Coss Dialogue Lecture demonstrates the utility of pragmatism for his work as a social scientist across three projects: 1) field research studying the acephalous and heterogenous social order of Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market; 2) nascent research how unseen religious orders animate the lives of im/migrants and their contributions to food systems; and 3) large-scale longitudinal research on farmers markets using the Metrics + Indicators for Impact (MIFI) toolkit. The first two sections of my paper applaud and build upon (...) Morales’ first two projects, and my extremely brief third section raises some questions about positivist specters that may haunt the MIFI project insofar as it is conceptualized, described, and deployed using the terms favored by mainstream social science. (shrink)

In Vayena’s article, ‘direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomics on the scales of autonomy’, she claims that there may be a strong autonomy-based argument for permitting DTC genomic services. In this response, I point out how the diminishment of one’s genetic privacy can cause a relevant autonomy-related harm which must be balanced against the autonomy-related gains DTC services provide. By drawing on conceptual connections between privacy and the Razian conception of autonomy, I show that DTC genetic testing may decrease the range of (...) valuable options individuals possess, which impacts the extent to which would-be consumers can exercise their autonomy. (shrink)

World peace was a common theoretical consideration among philosophers during Europe’s Enlightenment period. The first robust essay on peace was written by Charles Irénée Castel de Saint- Pierre, which sparked an intellectual debate among prominent philosophers like Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Jeremy Bentham, who offered their own treatises on the concept of peace. Perhaps the most influential of all such writings comes from Immanuel Kant, who argues that world peace is no “high- flown or exaggerated notion” but rather a natural (...) result of the rational progression of the human species. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the mastermind behind the formation of the League of Nations in 1920 that provided the scaffolding to today’s United Nations, read Kant’s philosophy while he was a student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). Some have argued that it is no coincidence that the per-son responsible for embarking upon the first serious political pursuit of world peace on a global scale was familiar with Kant. Indeed, William Galston claims that “Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points [for world peace] were a faithful transcription of both the letter and spirit of Kant’s Perpetual Peace.”3 Historical connections aside, the question remains as to whether Kant’s philosophy is a viable conception of peace in a contemporary context. Using the conceptual distinction of positive and negative peace provided by Johan Galtung, I argue that Kant’s philosophy does provide the scaffolding for a viable conception of peace. In particular, I provide particular examples as to what social rights must be included in a Kantian model of peace. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of smallholder supply chains on sustainable sourcing to answer the question how food and agribusiness multinationals can best include smallholders in their sourcing strategies and take social responsibility for large-scale sustainable and more equitable supply. A sustainable smallholder sourcing model with a list of critical success factors (CSFs) has been applied on two best-practise cases. In this model, business and corporate social responsibility perspectives are integrated. Design/methodology/approach – The (...) primary data of the value chain analyses of the two smallholder supply chains of a food and agribusiness multinational have been applied. Both cases were of a join research program commissioned by the multinational and a non-governmental organization using the same methods and research tools. Similarities, differences and interference between the cases have been determined and assessed in order to confirm, fine tune or adjust the CSFs. Findings – Both cases could be conceptualized through the smallholder sourcing model. Most CSFs could be found in both cases, but differences were also found, which led to fine tuning of some CSFs: building of a partnership and effective producers organization, providing farm financing and the use of cross-functional teams in smallholder supplier development programs. It was also concluded that the smallholder sourcing model is applicable in different geographical areas. Research limitations/implications – The findings of this study are based on just two cases. More best-practise cases are recommended in order to confirm or to adjust the developed sourcing model and the CSFs. Originality/value – This paper/research fills the need in sustainable supply chain management literature to study supply chains that comply with the triple bottom line concept, rather than supply chains that are just more “green.” Keywords Small- to medium-sized enterprises, Food products, Supply chain management, Developing countries, Business development, Food industry, Commodity markets Paper type Research pape. (shrink)

Topicality of the research topic. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an increase in the instability of the structure of ecosocial systems. Technological innovations have led to a sharp deterioration in natural social ecodynamics. The aim of the research is the conceptual modeling of the proliferation of biopolitics from the social sphere to the field of international relations with the subsequent transformation into a systemic factor of the global evolutionary process. Research methods and results. The model (...) is based on our previously proposed concept of a three-module stable evolutionary strategy of technogenic civilization. In relation to the triple spiral of anthropo-socio-technogenesis, i.e., the historical development of the cultural-ecological niche of Homo sapiens, constructed by him, this means the following. Periods of stable progressive growth of evolutionary and civilizational success are replaced by periods of various scales crisis, up to civilizational or even biological-evolutionary singularity. During the crisis, the importance of the political factor increases sharply, and over the past 50 years, this primarily relates to the field of biopolitics. The regional differentiation of the biopolitical sphere reconstruction during the fight against the pandemic will inevitably complicate international relations not only between regions that belong to different cultural and civilizational types. Probably less so, the same problems will affect the reconciliation of differences caused by geopolitical, interethnic, religious and even economic (competition) reasons. The first phase of the adaptive civilizational response is to reduce the degree of connection between the individual socio-cultural elements of modern civilization, i.e., slowing down the globalization process and intensifying interregional conflicts of various contents. In particular, such contradictions will be most acute in the post-Soviet geopolitical space, where the conditions of the civilizational rift are imposed on the conflicts of the transition period. Due to the specifics of modern high technologies, the process will enter the phase of global socio-techno-ecological self-developing systems reconstruction, which includes man as its element. And the obvious conclusion will be the transition of the development of biopolitical issues to a new, no longer international, but global-evolutionary level. In our understanding, transbiopolitics is a political issue related to the rationalization of the global evolutionary process. The latter will become a bearing element of the global process of evolution of the noosphere with the subsequent complication and increase of cohesion between separate sociocultural types which are a part of system of the modern globalizing civilization. (shrink)

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. -/- Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they (...) propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. -/- The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments. (shrink)

Our purpose in this article is to identify and suggest resolution for two core problematics of grounded theory. First, while grounded theory provides transparency to one part of the conceptualization process, where codes emerge directly from the data, it provides no such systematic or transparent way for gaining insight into the conceptual relationships between discovered codes. Producing a grounded theory depends not only on the definition of conceptual pieces, but the delineation of a relationship between at least two (...) of those pieces. Second, the conceptualization process of grounded theory is done in hierarchical fashion, where individual codes emerge from the data but then are used to generate insight into more general concepts and thematic statements. But various works on grounded theory have failed to provide any systematic way of using data specific levels of scale (the codes) to gain insight into more macro levels of scale (concepts and themes). We offer fractal concept analysis as a means of resolving both of these issues. By using a logic structure generator, fractal concept analysis delineates self-similar conceptual frameworks at various levels of abstraction, yielding a method for linking concepts together within and between levels of scale encountered in the grounded theory coding and categorization process. We conclude that this fractal analytic technique can bolster the aims of grounded theory as a formalized and systematic process for generating theory from empirical data. (shrink)

As a sort of intellectual provocation and as a lateral thinking strategy for creativity, this chapter seeks to determine what the study of the dynamics of biodiversity can offer linguists. In recent years, the analogical equation "language = biological species" has become more widespread as a metaphorical source for conceptual renovation, and, at the same time, as a justification for the defense of language diversity. Language diversity would be protected in a way similar to the mobilization that has taken (...) place to protect endangered species. Nevertheless, one must be careful when uncritically transferring conceptualizations and theoretical frameworks from one field to another, since obviously, these two phenomena are quite different in the real world. The dialogue with bioecologists starts by asking about the formation of diversity, i.e., about specialization. Here, one can observe the similarity between the processes of linguistic and genetic fragmentation, in the sense that both phenomena have a (socio)geographical basis for dispersion and consequently, for the loss of their original compact nature and their intercommunication. The self-organizing and creative properties of human beings favor the development of specific varieties for each subset, varieties that continue to evolve constantly, through the unceasing "languaging" of humanity. Regarding the continuity of species or languages, one can also observe the decisive role of intragroup relations. The staying power of linguistic varieties will increase in direct proportion to the intensity of the relationship among the components of the subset. On the other hand, if exotic elements are introduced, especially if these elements are aggressive in nature, the alteration of the ecological niche may turn out to be fatal for the continuity of the previously existing forms. This suggests to us the need to make an in-depth study of what the minimal contextual conditions would be so that a set linguistic group could be assured a sustainable continuity within a framework of linguistic contact. What type of minimum (socio-)ecological niche would a language have to have if we wished to ensure its habitual reproduction? A proposal is made here to explore the ideas of "exclusive functions" and "non-hierarchical functional distribution" for codes in situations where there is high contact and a danger of disuse. As regards change, this phenomenon is seen as an inherent element in the tendency of life to create new developments, which may or not be accompanied by an adaptation to changing environmental conditions. It is pointed out that, similar to what happens in biology, much of linguistic innovation stems from a systemically reorganized mixture of solutions from different codes. An important research question would be, however, to determine why some of these innovations disappear and others survive and extend throughout the community. The big question mark, as Mufwene points out, is, then how to manage to understand how "the evolution of language proceeds by naturally selecting from among the competing alternatives available through the idiolects of individual speakers". Extinction, whether it be of languages or of species, is caused in most cases "by a combination of demographic processes and environmental changes", as Brown points out. Thus, the environment plays a fundamental role in the direction of evolution, since the "the survival of the fittest is, in actuality, the survival of those who fit into the context (Allen and Hoekstra)". This allows us to see the great degree of importance of political-economic contexts in the case of languages. In the same way, migratory movements are also one of the major variables determining the extinction of biodiversity and language diversity. Species and habitat form the basic unit of existence, and this is the major point of departure for understanding the problem of the preservation and recovery of species or languages. Given the increase in the degree of linguistic contact, the continuity of language diversity depends on determining, as exactly as possible, as Prigogine, the physicist, would say, what precise conditions of imbalance may prove to be stable. The great challenge is not so much avoiding contact but managing it. And "restorative ecology" can also be of help to us here. Being able to reach sustainable solutions for language diversity implies a profound knowledge of the dynamics for determining the ways in which language is used in contact situations. The general conclusion is that linguistics is still terminologically and conceptually ill prepared to deal with the dynamic character of human languages. The world and our objects must be conceived of as elements in a state of flux, as changing systems in an unstable equilibrium. With respect to language policy, it would be necessary to make an effort to manage to establish some general principles regarding the linguistic organization of the human species that would make it possible for local linguistic diversity and communication on a planetary scale, which must necessarily take place, to be compatible with each other. To succeed, it will be necessary to continue promoting an autonomous socio-ecological perspective devoted to the comprehension of language phenomena. Such a perspective would be based on a paradigm of complexity, and would, at the same time, place human beings at the center of its theoretical underpinnings. (shrink)

Until the late 19th century scientists almost always assumed that the world could be described as a rule-based and hence deterministic system or as a set of such systems. The assumption is maintained in many 20th century theories although it has also been doubted because of the breakthrough of statistical theories in thermodynamics (Boltzmann and Gibbs) and other fields, unsolved questions in quantum mechanics as well as several theories forwarded within the social sciences. Until recently it has furthermore been assumed (...) that a rule-based and deterministic system was also predictable if only the rules were known, but this assumption has now been undermined by modern chaos-theory describing rule-based and deterministic, but unpredictable systems, while catastrophe-theory delivers a set of types describing various kinds of instability and conditions for the stability of a given system. Hence the main trait in the theoretical development in the 20th-century science can be described as a basic modification and limitation of some of the fundamental and strong assumptions forwarded in the previous epochs of modern science. Ironically, the very same process has been a process in which the human capacity to intervene in nature has expanded dramatically and mainly with the help of the very same theories, and not least because they allow nature to be described and made manipulable on a lower level and a more fine-grained scale. While the overall theoretical consistency between the various theories has gone, the reach of human intervention in nature has increased based on quite new dimensions whether in the area of physics (e.g.: energy technologies, chemical technologies, nanotechnologies etc.) or biology (ge¬netic manipulation) or in the area of psychology, sociology and culture (artificial simulations of mental processes, new means of communication, implying changes in the social infrastructure and cultural behaviour etc.). While some of these changes and new conditions can be reflected from within the conceptual framework of rule-based systems, albeit more complex than formerly recognized, others seem to give rise to the question of whether there are »systems« and relations between different systems in the world which are not rule-based? For instance, it seems to be obvious that the notion of instability represents a major conceptual break with former theories of rule-based systems, as the stability of the latter is an axiomatically given property implied in the very notion of rule-based systems, while instability can only be the result of external influence which should be explained as the result of another rule-based sy¬stem. While there are no difficulties implied concerning the stability of rule-based systems, the notion of unstable states of a system raises the question of how there can be a system at all if there are no invariant stabilising principles? This is the first question which I will address. And I shall do so by taking two examples of such systems as my point of departure. The first example will be the computer and the second will be ordinary language. In both cases I will argue that the stability of these systems (which are both defined by the existence/presence of human intentions) are provided by the help of - differently organised - redundancy functions which both allow the maintenance of systems in unstable macro-states, suspension of previous rules, underdetermination and overdetermination and generation/emergence/creation of new rules more or less independent of previous rules by the help of optional recursions to the permanently accessible underlying levels as for instance the level of binary representation in computers. Since the notion of redundancy is both controversial as such and often avoided, the concept is discussed (as defined in Claude Shannon's mathematical theory of information and in the semiotic framework of J. J. Greimas) and leading to a more general definition in which the redundancy functions serve to overcome noisy conditions, but at the cost of rule-based stability, determination, and predictability. A second question will be how the notion of rule-generating systems relates to the notion of anticipatory systems and it will be argued that rule-generating systems share some features with an¬ticipatory systems and that the former from a certain viewpoint can be seen as a subclass of the latter, although anticipative features are not necessarily a part of the definition of rule-generating systems. On the other hand, it will be discussed whether anticipatory systems which are not rule-generating systems can exist and it will be argued that the capacity to anticipate is strongly limited if it is not part of a rule-generating system. Therefore, it is concluded that the most powerful anticipatory systems need to be rule-generating systems. (shrink)

In this commentary upon the article “Mindfulness in Global Health: Critical Analysis and Agenda”, we articulate how scal-ing mindfulness technologies as multilevel public health interventions requires the framework of embodied cognition for a scientific articulation of the nuanced dynamics of mindfulness as a therapeutic technology. Embodied cognition contends that the body and bodily activity in the world are constitutive facets of mind. Mindfulness understood in terms of its embod-ied, enacted, extended, and embedded dimensions describes a broad set of contemplative practices (...) that utilize the circular structure of embodiment to intervene in the complex feedback structure of the mind–body system, influencing cycles of organismic self-regulation and enactments of self-world perception. We contend that to advance the discussion, initiated by Oman, about mindfulness in public health, attention must be given to reconceiving mind–body linkages, the nature of awareness, and the vital role of non-conceptual direct experience in mindfulness interventions. This provides grounds for reconceiving mindfulness as a skillful mode of embodied social cognition and for recognizing diverse cross-cultural contemplative technologies as useful for adapting mindfulness-based interventions to specific populations needs. We also arrive at a novel model of the decentering skills fostered through mindfulness via non-conceptual attention to the processes underlying cognition. It also models mindfulness-based exposure therapy, understood not behaviorally, but through insights generated via intentionally orienting towards internal representation in order to uncover habituated patterns by which we enact both self and world perception. In this way, we may better articulate the nature of mindfulness and thus its effective application to population-scale problems. (shrink)

Abstract (for the combined three Parts) This paper presents the simplest known theory of processes involved in a person’s unconscious and conscious achievements such as intending, perceiving, reacting and thinking. The basic principle is that an individual has mental states which possess quantitative causal powers and are susceptible to influences from other mental states. Mental performance discriminates the present level of a situational feature from its level in an individually acquired, multiple featured norm (exemplar, template, standard). The effect on output (...) of a moderate disparity between input and norm is scaled in a universal unit of discrimination (Weber’s fraction), with the norm’s level being zero. When one process converts separate sources of input into an output, their discriminative distances from norm are summated. Distinct processes converging on an output combine their discriminations from norm orthogonally. An output may be influenced by the constructs of other outputs as well as by inputs. Descriptive performance is the influence of one category of input on a verbal output. Reasoning is minimally the effect of one verbal process on another. In deeper mental processing, the influence on a response comes from a response construct modulating a description: this process gives the meaning to an emotion or a motive. Descriptive modulation of stimulation corresponds to a bodily sensation or other conceptualized percept. When an output is explained solely by sources of input, that response to the stimulation may be mediated unconsciously. Development of a person within physical and communal environments embodies such mental causation within material causation and acculturates that mind to social causation. (shrink)

The answer to some of the longstanding issues in the 20th century theoretical physics, such as those of the incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics, the broken symmetries of the electroweak force acting at the subatomic scale and the missing mass of Higgs particle, and also those of the cosmic singularity and the black matter and energy, appear to be closely related to the problem of the quantum texture of space-time and the fluctuations of its underlying geometry. Each region (...) of space landscape seem to be filled with spacetime weaved and knotted networks, for example, spacetime has immaterial curvature and structures, such as topological singularities, and obeys the laws of quantum physics. Thus, it is filled with potentialparticles, pairs of virtual matter and anti-matter units, and potential properties at the quantum scale. For example, quantum entities (like fields and particles) have both wave (i.e., continuous) and particle (i.e., discrete) properties and behaviors. At the quantum level (precisely, the Planck scale) of space-time such properties and behaviors could emerge from some underlying (dynamic) phase space related to some field theory. Accordingly, these properties and behaviors leave their signature on objects and phenomena in the real Universe. In this paper we consider some conceptual issues of this question. (shrink)

Issues of communication and the possibilities for the transformation of perspectives through an experimental dialogue resulting in a mutual, open, receptive, and non-judgmental consideration of the other are addressed in this paper from transdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual standpoints. The warrant for cultivating this type of communicative ability is based on arguments resulting from the assumption of widespread confusion and conflict in intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, and ecological relations across the globe. I argue that there are two distinct classes of “reasons” (...) for this proposed practice of dialogue. First is recognition of the need for human individuals to engage in a regular and systematic “social maintenance” of embodied consciousness to forestall the continuous colonization of the past/future on the living present that embodied consciousness entails. Second is the teaching of a skill to creatively and respectfully engage with others in a mutual transformation of perspectives. This paper addresses the general problem of perspectives and reflexivity at the root of the communication phenomenon and by extension – to its scale and to its pathologies in individuals and collectives. It is argued that suspension of judgment, assumption, and habit helps interlocutors to recognize the possibility of holding one's history in a tensional abeyance and to focus on the living present independent of habitualized and reified identities and the embodied manner in which we unconsciously carry ourselves as social or “universalized selves” in social situations. (shrink)

This quantitative study explores the acceptability of Online Learning Action Cell (LAC) practice as a school-based professional development strategy for Tagumpay National High School (TNHS) teachers. The research was motivated by the Department of Education (DepEd) Order No. 35 s. 2016 which prompts public schools to comply with the implementation of LAC sessions because it has a positive impact on teachers’ beliefs and practices resulting in education reforms for learners’ benefit. However, in compliance with DepEd’s policy on maximizing Time-On-Task (DepEd (...) Order No. 9 s. 2005) and the teacher’s conflict of schedule and other ancillary and coordination functions, absences or non-participation in classroom LAC was noted. The viability of offering Online LAC sessions using appropriate media and technologies to provide more options and flexibility for the study is suggested and tested utilizing a conceptual framework drawn from DepEd Order No. 35 s. 2016, Simonson’s Equivalency Theory and Anderson’s Community of Inquiry (COI). A descriptive survey method was used in this study with purposive sampling identifying ten Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE) teachers to pilot the Online LAC based on the memorandum issued by the school head. The subjects went through a week of experience in a LAC session using Facebook (FB) as Learning Management System (LMS) while a researcher-designed survey tool in the form of a Likert-type scale questionnaire was administered via Google forms before and after the online session to measure teacher’s acceptability of Online LAC Session practice. In the analysis, a descriptive statistic shows that pre-post survey results on Online LAC session planning is from ‘moderately acceptable’ to ‘very highly acceptable’; implementation is from ‘acceptable’ to ‘very highly acceptable’, and evaluation is from ‘moderately acceptable’ to ‘very highly acceptable’. TNHS teachers' acceptability of Online LAC session practice increases after their participation in a fully-online learning environment. Limitations, recommendations, future research directions, and conclusions are also included in the study. -/- . (shrink)