For many years there has been a debate about the role of the parietal lobe in the generation of behavior. Does it generate movement plans (intention) or choose objects in the environment for further processing? To answer this, we focus on the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), an area that has been shown to play independent roles in target selection for saccades and the generation of visual attention. Based on results from a variety of tasks, we propose that LIP acts as (...) a priority map in which objects are represented by activity proportional to their behavioral priority. We present evidence to show that the priority map combines bottom-up inputs like a rapid visual response with an array of top-down signals like a saccade plan. The spatial location representing the peak of the map is used by the oculomotor system to target saccades and by the visual system to guide visual attention. (shrink)

Provides an account of how necessary subjective syntactic investments on the part of speakers affect the semantic contents of their words and the possibilities for their thought-contents.

Ontology is one strategy for promoting interoperability of heterogeneous data through consistent tagging. An ontology is a controlled structured vocabulary consisting of general terms (such as “cell” or “image” or “tissue” or “microscope”) that form the basis for such tagging. These terms are designed to represent the types of entities in the domain of reality that the ontology has been devised to capture; the terms are provided with logical defi nitions thereby also supporting reasoning over the tagged data. Aim: This (...) paper provides a survey of the biomedical imaging ontologies that have been developed thus far. It outlines the challenges, particularly faced by ontologies in the fields of histopathological imaging and image analysis, and suggests a strategy for addressing these challenges in the example domain of quantitative histopathology imaging. The ultimate goal is to support the multiscale understanding of disease that comes from using interoperable ontologies to integrate imaging data with clinical and genomics data. (shrink)

In this eleventh book of scilogs – called in-turns and out-turns –, one may find new and old questions and solutions, referring mostly to topics on Neutrosophy, but also Multispace, with miscellaneous addition of topics on Physics, Mathematics, or Sociology – email messages to research colleagues, or replies, notes about authors, articles, or books, spontaneous ideas, and so on. -/- Exchanging ideas with Prem Kumar Singh, Feng Liu, Nicolae Bălașa, Jimmy Quellet, Minodora Rușchița, Frank Gelli, A. R. Vătuiu, Victor Christianto, (...) Vladimir I. Rogozhin, Robert Neil Boyd, Akira Kanda, Stefan Spaarmann, Oliver Consa, Yabin Shao, Junle Zhuo, Nivetha Martin, Said Broumi, Jean Dezert, Erick González, Tomasz Witczak, B. De Baets, I. Couso, D. Dubois, L. Good, Mihaela Colhon, Atiqe Ur Rahman, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Ihsan, Edeline Nancy, Shawkat Alkhazaleh, Shazia Rana, Vasantha Kandasamy, Santanu Acharjee, Mohamed Al-Shmrani, Parimala Manie, Mehmet Unver, Murat Olgun, Adel Aleidhri, Akira Kanda, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, Mircea Zărnescu, R. Tayebi Khorami, Arsham Borumand Saeid, Maisam Jdid, M. Abobala, Riad Hamido, Rafael Rojas, Esmaeil Zarei, Faisal Khan, Rouzbeh Abbassi, Adel Al-Odhari, Henry Garrett, Ackbar Rezaei, Saeid Jafari, Karthika Muthusamy, Harish Garg, Huda E. Khalid, Gonca D. Güngör, Muslim A. Noah Zainal, Fakhry Asad Agusfrianto, Madeleine Al-Tahan, Mariam Hariri, Yudi Mahatma, Masoud Ghods, Marco Brigliadori, Luis Enrique Aponte Pérez, Amr Mohammed, M. Aslam (in order of reference in the book). (shrink)

A parcialidade epistêmica na amizade (PE) é a tese segundo a qual ser um bom amigo de alguém envolve tratar essa pessoa de forma diferente, em um sentido epistêmico. Sarah Stroud (2006) e Simon Keller (2004) defenderam essa tese e argumentaram que ela está em tensão direta com demandas de racionalidade epistêmica. A posição deles é que quando nossos amigos estão envolvidos em algum assunto ao qual temos que dar nossa avaliação (sobre os fatos, suas ações ou seu caráter), tendemos (...) a dar à questão um tratamento epistêmico diferencial, não reservado a não-amigos. Neste artigo, quero tratar de duas possíveis formas de responder à PE. Primeiro, quero discutir a rejeição de Sandy Goldberg (2018, 2020) a essa tese e à tensão que ela supostamente cria com as exigências da racionalidade epistêmica. Em sua proposta, Goldberg defende o comportamento epistêmico diferencial que a PE pressupõe, mas também argumenta que tal comportamento não configura um tipo de PE, e que tampouco está em tensão com as exigências da racionalidade epistêmica. Irei sugerir que a posição de Goldberg não capta uma distinção importante entre nossas atitudes epistêmicas diante do testemunho de um amigo e diante de relatos de terceiros sobre um amigo. Particularmente, o que eu argumentarei é que o caminho que leva da valorização da amizade às razões epistêmicas em apoio aos resultados doxásticos diferenciais quando nossos amigos estão envolvidos é, na melhor das hipóteses, frágil, já que envolve o que eu vejo como um movimento não autorizado de nosso desejo de preservar uma amizade para uma reação doxástica diferencial quando alguém testemunha negativamente sobre nossos amigos. Em segundo lugar, defenderei também que não devemos aceitar a prescrição da PE tão rapidamente. Argumentarei que, ao avaliar injustamente as credenciais epistêmicas de nossos amigos – algo que parece estar acontecendo em alguns casos de parcialidade epistêmica, podemos estar contribuindo para degradar as condições de trocas epistêmicas justas em uma comunidade. Se esse for o caso, teremos uma razão pragmática para rejeitar a PE. Na primeira seção do artigo, apresentarei a tese da parcialidade epistêmica na amizade, focalizando principalmente na forma como Stroud a articula. Depois disso, na seção II, tratarei da rejeição da PE por Goldberg e apresentarei uma crítica à sua posição. Na terceira e última seção, defenderei o que vejo como uma preocupação importante se aceitarmos a PE e oferecerei uma razão pragmática para questioná-la. (shrink)

Some students who possess the same cognitive skill set as their counterparts but who neither speak nor write English fluently have to contend with an unnecessary barrier to academic success. While an administrative top-down approach has been in progress for many years to address this issue, enhancement of student performance begins in the classroom. Thus, we argue that instructors ought to implement a more organic bottom-up approach. If it is possible for instructors to make class content available in other languages, (...) such as Spanish, without thereby compromising something of comparable pedagogical value, then they ought to do so. In fact, we provide here Anselm’s Ontological Argument rendered in Spanish to show how, when translated, it provides native Spanish speakers with greater accessibility to difficult material. Then, we consider the possible beneficial implications of doing so for university students. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates Plato’s prohibition on suicide at Phaedo 62b2-c9. I first lift two descriptions of death early in the text. At Phaedo 64c, Plato offers a description of physical death. A person dies physically when their body falls away from their soul. Plato goes on to offer a description of psychological death at 67c-d. A person dies psychologically when their soul has unencumbered itself from the body as much as is possible. Generally, I conclude, death is the separation of (...) the soul and body from one another. Having determined what death is for Plato, I turn to the central topic of the dissertation, Plato’s prohibition on suicide. I suggest that the suicide prohibition consists of two parts. The Enclosure Argument indicates the body is an enclosure from which we should not seek freedom so as not to defy the gods. The Guardian Argument indicates that we humans should not kill ourselves because we are enslaved to the gods. In all, the two arguments cohere insofar as they both tell against abandoning right rule. (shrink)

I believe that the sort of disagreements we encounter in philosophy—disagreements that often take the form that I have elsewhere called system- atic peer disagreements—make it unreasonable to think that there is any knowledge, or even justified belief, when the disagreements themselves are systematic. I readily acknowledge that this skeptical view is quite controversial; I suspect many are unconvinced. However, I will not be defending it here. Rather, I will be exploring a worry, or set of worries, that arise on (...) the assumption that this view is correct. For if it is unreasonable to think that there is justified belief in contexts of systematic philosophical disagreements, by what right do we continue to advance philosophical claims in such contexts? Indeed, by what right do we believe the philosophical claims we advance? And if we don’t believe them, why do we advance them in the first place? An inability to respond to these worries would leave us with the dis- tinct impression that the practice or activity of philosophy is quite suspect: what sort of practice or activity would have us believe unreasonably, assert unwarrantedly, and perhaps exhibit insincerity to boot? (shrink)

Current approaches to formal representation in biomedicine are characterized by their focus on either the static or the dynamic aspects of biological reality. We here outline a theory that combines both perspectives and at the same time tackles the by no means trivial issue of their coherent integration. Our position is that a good ontology must be capable of accounting for reality both synchronically (as it exists at a time) and diachronically (as it unfolds through time), but that these are (...) two quite different tasks, whose simultaneous realization is by no means trivial. The paper is structured as follows. We begin by laying out the methodological and philosophical background of our approach. We then summarize the structure and elements of the Basic Formal Ontology on which it rests, in particular the SNAP ontology of objects and the SPAN ontology of processes. Finally, we apply the general framework to the specific domain of biomedicine. (shrink)

We performed a qualitative analysis of the Thesaurus in order to assess its conformity with principles of good practice in terminology and ontology design. We used both the on-line browsable version of the Thesaurus and its OWL-representation (version 04.08b, released on August 2, 2004), measuring each in light of the requirements put forward in relevant ISO terminology standards and in light of ontological principles advanced in the recent literature. Version 04.08b of the NCI Thesaurus suffers from the same broad range (...) of problems that have been observed in other biomedical terminologies. For its further development, we recommend the use of a more principled approach that allows the Thesaurus to be tested not just for internal consistency but also for its degree of correspondence to that part of reality which it is designed to represent. (shrink)

We present an ontology of pain and of other pain-related phenomena, building on the definition of pain provided by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). Our strategy is to identify an evolutionarily basic canonical pain phenomenon, involving unpleasant sensory and emotional experience based causally in localized tissue damage that is concordant with that experience. We then show how different variant cases of this canonical pain phenomenon can be distinguished, including pain that is elevated relative to peripheral trauma, (...) pain that is caused neuropathically (thus with no necessary peripheral stimulus), and pain reports arising through deception either of self or of others. We describe how our approach can answer some of the objections raised against the IASP definition, and sketch how it can be used to support more sophisticated discrimination of different types of pain resulting in improved data analysis that can help in advancing pain research. (shrink)

This is a work in Kantian conceptual geography. It explores issues in analytic epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics by appealing to theses drawn from Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

What would happen if lightning struck a tree in a swamp and transformed it into The Swampman, or if saving billions of lives required sacrificing millions first? The first is a philosophical thought experiment devised by Donald Davidson, the second a theme from a comic written by Alan Moore. I argue that that comics can be read as containing thought experiments and that such philosophical devises should be shared with students of all ages.

In this paper we address the interrelated questions of why and how certain features of an organism’s environment become meaningful to it. We make the case that knowing the biology is essential to understanding the foundation of meaning-making in organisms. We employ Miguel Nicolelis et al’s seminal research on the mammalian somatosensory system to enrich our own concept of brain-objects as the neurobiological intermediary between the environment and the consequent organismic behavior. In the final section, we explain how brain-objects advance (...) the ongoing discussion of what constitutes a biosemiotic system. In general, this paper acknowledges Marcello Barbieri’s call for biology to make room for meaning, and makes a contribution to that end. (shrink)

It is argued that, given certain reasonable premises, an infinite number of qualitatively identical but numerically distinct minds exist per functioning brain. The three main premises are (1) mental properties supervene on brain properties; (2) the universe is composed of particles with nonzero extension; and (3) each particle is composed of continuum-many point-sized bits of particle-stuff, and these points of particle-stuff persist through time.

Abstract A unique aspect of human communication is the utilization of sets of well- delineated entities, the morphology of which is used to encode the letters of the alphabet. In this paper, we focus on Braille as an exemplar of this phenomenon. We take a Braille cell to be a physical artifact of the human environment, into the structure of which is encoded a representation of a letter of the alphabet. The specific issue we address in this paper concerns an (...) examination of how the code that is embedded in the structure of a Braille cell is transferred with fidelity from the environment through the body and into the Braille reader’s brain. We describe four distinct encoding steps that enable this transfer to occur. (shrink)

This book addresses how our revisionary practices account for relations between texts and how they are read. It offers an overarching philosophy of revision concerning works of fiction, fact, and faith, revealing unexpected insights about the philosophy of language, the metaphysics of fact and fiction, and the history and philosophy of science and religion. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of literature, literary theory and criticism, (...) and history and philosophy of science and religion. (shrink)

Happy accidents happen even in philosophy. Sometimes our arguments yield insights despite missing their target, though when they do others can often spot it more easily. Consider the work of Donald Davidson. Few did more to explore connections among mind, language, and world. Now that we have critical distance from his views, however, we can see that Davidson’s accomplishments are not quite what they seem. First, while Davidson attacked the dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content, he in fact illustrated (...) a way to hold it. Second, while Davidson used the principle of charity to argue against the dualism, his argument in effect treats the principle as constitutive of a conceptual scheme. And third, while Davidson asserted that he cannot define what truth ultimately is—and while I do not disagree—his work nonetheless allows us to saymore about truth than Davidson himself does. -/- I aim to establish these three claims. Doing so enriches our understanding of issues central to the history of philosophy concerning how, if at all, to divvy up the mental or linguistic contribution, and the worldly contribution, to knowledge. As we see below, Davidson was right in taking his work to be one stage of a dialectic begun by Immanuel Kant.1 He was just wrong about what that stage is. Reconsidering Davidson’s views also moves the current debate forward, as they reveal a previously unrecognized yet intuitive notion of truth—even if Davidson himself remained largely unaware of it. We begin however with scheme/content dualism and Davidson’s argument against it. (shrink)

Letter commenting on the paper Barry Smith, Louis J. Goldberg, Alan Ruttenberg & Michael Glick, "Ontology and the Future of Dental Research Informatics", Journal of the American Dental Association 141 2010;(10):1173-75 with responses by the authors of the paper.

Plato extends a bold, confident, and surprising empirical challenge. It is implicitly a claim about the psychological — more specifically motivational — economies of human beings, asserting that within each such economy there is a desire to live well. Call this claim ‘psychological eudaimonism’ (‘PE’). Further, the context makes clear that Plato thinks that this desire dominates in those who have it. In other words, the desire to live well can reliably be counted on (when accompanied with correct beliefs about (...) the role of morality or virtue in living well) to move people be virtuous. As we will argue, this general claim appears in not only Plato but Aristotle and the Stoics as well. But it is one we might wonder about, in three ways. First, we might wonder about its warrant. After all, the claim is universal in scope; yet it is about a highly contingent fact about the motivational propensities of individual human organisms, and there is abundant variability in the individual forms human nature takes. What grounds could the ancients have for their confidence that there are no outliers (assuming, as we do, that they do not merely misspeak in framing general claims as universal ones)? Second, we might wonder about its truth. For were it true, it would entail something remarkable about the nature of rationality that we (post-)moderns would be wise to heed. And third, we might wonder about its relationship with normative eudaimonism. By ‘normative eudaimonism’ (‘NE’) we mean the claim that we have conclusive reason to act in ways that conduce to our own eudaimonia. As we will show, the key to these three questions is the first. If we consider what justification the ancients have for their claim, we can see why that claim must be true. Moreover, as we will also show, it must be true because of the nature of practical rationality as the ancients understood it — that is, in terms of normative eudaimonism. We will show this by marshalling unexpected resources: Donald Davidson’s work in understanding how we interpret others and in so doing make sense of them as rational beings. If we couple Davidson’s account of interpretation with the eudaimonist structure of practical rationality essential to these ancient ethical theories, psychological eudaimonism is a consequence. The paper proceeds as follows. In Section I, we lay out the textual basis for ascribing PE to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In Section II, we introduce Davidson’s account of interpretation. This allows us to appropriate that account in Section III to the particular purposes of normative eudaimonism, to support the claim that we must ascribe the desire to live well to those whom we would see as rational. Finally, in Section IV we consider challenges to this strategy. (shrink)

Aims and objectives. Participant narratives from a feminist and queer phe- nomenological study aim to broaden current understandings of trauma. Examin- ing structural marginalisation within perinatal care relationships provides insights into the impact of dominant models of care on queer birthing women. More specifically, validation of queer experience as a key finding from the study offers trauma-informed strategies that reconstruct formerly disempowering perinatal relationships. Background. Heteronormativity governs birthing spaces and presents considerable challenges for queer birthing women who may also have (...) an increased risk of trauma due to structurally marginalising processes that create and maintain socially constructed differences. Design. Analysis of the qualitative data was guided by feminist and queer phe- nomenology. This was well suited to understanding queer women’s storied narra- tives of trauma, including disempowering processes of structural marginalisation. Methods. Semistructured and conversational interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of thirteen queer-identified women who had experiences of birthing in rural Nova Scotia, Canada. Results. Validation was identified as meaningful for queer women in the context of perinatal care in rural Nova Scotia. Offering new perspectives on traditional models of assessment provide strategies to create a context of care that recon- structs the birthing space insofar as women at risk do not have to come out as queer in opposition to the expectation of heterosexuality. Conclusions. Normative practices were found to further the effects of structural marginalisation suggesting that perinatal care providers, including nurses, can challenge dominant models of care and reconstruct the relationality between queer women and formerly disempowering expectations of heteronormativity that govern birthing spaces. Relevance to clinical practice. New trauma-informed assessment strategies recon- struct the relationality within historically disempowering perinatal relationships through potentiating difference which avoids retraumatising women with re- experiencing the process of coming out as queer in opposition to the expectation of heterosexuality. (shrink)

How do we find what is clinically significant in the swarms of data being generated by today’s diagnostic technologies? As electronic records become ever more prevalent – and digital imaging and genomic, proteomic, salivaomics, metabalomics, pharmacogenomics, phenomics and transcriptomics techniques become commonplace – fdifferent clinical and biological disciplines are facing up to the need to put their data houses in order to avoid the consequences of an uncontrolled explosion of different ways of describing information. We describe a new strategy to (...) advance the consistency of data in the dental research community. The strategy is based on the idea that existing systems for data collection in dental research will continue to be used, but proposes a methodology in which past, present and future data will be described using a consensus-based controlled structured vocabulary called the Ontology for Dental Research (ODR). (shrink)

Works of science fiction tend to describe hypothetical futures, or counterfactual pasts or presents, to entertain their readers. Philosophical thought experiments tend to describe counterfactual situations to test their readers’ philosophical intuitions. Indeed, works of science fiction can sometimes be read as containing thought experiments. I compare one especially famous thought experiment from Plato’s Republic with what I read as two thought experiments from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. All three thought experiments concern myths used in political contexts, and comparing them (...) permits me to analyze the morality of political mythologizing. (shrink)

SNODENT is a dental diagnostic vocabulary incompletely integrated in SNOMED-CT. Nevertheless, SNODENT could become the de facto standard for dental diagnostic coding. SNODENT's manageable size, the fact that it is administratively self-contained, and relates to a well-understood domain provides valuable opportunities to formulate and test, in controlled experiments, a series of hypothesis concerning diagnostic systems. Of particular interest are questions related to establishing appropriate quality assurance methods for its optimal level of detail in content, its ontological structure, its construction and (...) maintenance. This paper builds on previous–software-based methodologies designed to assess the quality of SNOMED-CT. When applied to SNODENT several deficiencies were uncovered. 9.52% of SNODENT terms point to concepts in SNOMED-CT that have some problem. 18.53% of SNODENT terms point to SNOMED-CT concepts do not have, in SNOMED, the term used by SNODENT. Other findings include the absence of a clear specification of the exact relationship between a term and a termcode in SNODENT and the improper assignment of the same termcode to terms with significantly different meanings. An analysis of the way in which SNODENT is structurally integrated into SNOMED resulted in the generation of 1081 new termcodes reflecting entities not present in the SNOMED tables but required by SNOMED's own description logic based classification principles. Our results show that SNODENT requires considerable enhancements in content, quality of coding, quality of ontological structure and the manner in which it is integrated and aligned with SNOMED. We believe that methods for the analysis of the quality of diagnostic coding systems must be developed and employed if such systems are to be used effectively in both clinical practice and clinical research. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I explore the work of Donald Davidson, reveal an inconsistency in it, and resolve that inconsistency in a way that complements a debate in philosophy of science. In Part One, I explicate Davidson's extensional account of meaning; though not defending Davidson from all objections, I nonetheless present his seemingly disparate views as a coherent whole. In Part Two, I explicate Davidson's views on the dualism between conceptual schemes and empirical content, isolating four seemingly different arguments that Davidson (...) makes against the dualism; I demonstrate that, though the arguments fail, each is ultimately meant to rely on his account of meaning. ;In Part Three, I show that Davidson's extensional account of meaning gives rise to the analytic-synthetic distinction, while simultaneously needing to reject it. I then propose a resolution to Davidson's dilemma. Rather than treating interpretation of meaning as continuous with the holistic enterprise of science, as Quine treats translation, one should treat it as conceptually prior to science, as Kant treats epistemology. Nonetheless I recognize four reasons why Davidson himself would reject doing so. I therefore propose a view called 'transcendental semantics', based on Davidson's, that accepts my resolution. Further, transcendental semantics, like Kant's own transcendental idealism, posits a single conceptual scheme; nonetheless Kant's is concerned with Newtonian physics, transcendental semantics' with interpretation. ;Finally, in Part Four, I show how positing such a scheme allows transcendental semantics to complement a promising neo-Carnapian account of theory confirmation in science proposed by Michael Friedman. Scientists are first and foremost interpreters, a fact that allows transcendental semantics to help Friedman establish the possibility of rational continuity through scientific revolutions. In fact, transcendental semantics, by complementing Friedman's project, reunites two of Carnap's own concerns, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. I conclude that philosophy of language without philosophy of science is empty , while philosophy of science without philosophy of language is blind. (shrink)

Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue that researchers in the field of precision medicine need to address the performative dimension (...) of collecting data. We propose the fun-house mirror as a metaphor for the use of personal health data; each health data source yields a particular type of image that can be regarded as a ‘data mirror’ that is by definition specific and skewed. This requires competence on the part of individuals to adequately interpret the images thus provided. (shrink)

Conceptualism is the view that at least some perceptual representation is conceptual. This paper considers a prominent recent argument against Conceptualism due to Ned Block. Block’s argument appeals to patterns of color representation in infants, alleging that infants exhibit categorical perception of color while failing to deploy concepts of color categories. Accordingly, the perceptual representation of color categories in infancy must be non-conceptual. This argument is distinctive insofar as it threatens not only the view that all perception is conceptual, but (...) also views that restrict the Conceptualist thesis to perceptual categorization. However, I contend that it fails at two stages. Block’s arguments for the perceptual representation of color categories in infancy, and against color concept deployment in infancy, are unpersuasive. Thus, Block has not vanquished Conceptualism. I draw out implications for debates about the perception-cognition border and for the question of whether explicit categorization occurs in perception. (shrink)

The scientific community, we hold, often provides society with knowledge—that the HIV virus causes AIDS, that anthropogenic climate change is underway, that the MMR vaccine is safe. Some deny that we have this knowledge, however, and work to undermine it in others. It has been common to refer to such agents as “denialists”. At first glance, then, denialism appears to be a form of skepticism. But while we know that various denialist strategies for suppressing belief are generally effective, little is (...) known about which strategies are most effective. We see this as an important first step toward their remediation. This paper leverages the approximate comparison to various forms of philosophical skepticism to design an experimental test of the efficacy of four broad strategies of denial at suppressing belief in specific scientific claims. Our results suggest that assertive strategies are more effective at suppressing belief than questioning strategies. (shrink)

This article proposes a political/economic philosophy for the new millennium to replace the traditional conservative/liberal labels. It is based on the concepts of enlightened capitalism, government partnership, and informed democracy (ECGPID). The article explains these concepts and offers new ideas to move the country towards a better way of solving difficult problems and public policymaking. Article posted July 2010.

A pecuária brasileira tem destaque acentuado quanto a sua participação no produto interno Bruto nacional (PIB), entretanto, dentro da cadeia produtiva das proteínas de origem animal, a ovinocultura ainda se apresenta como uma atividade com pouca expressividade e tecnificação frente a outras espécies animais domésticas, desta forma seu fomento e próspero desenvolvimento é dependente de inúmeros fatores, sendo que destes o correto manejo reprodutivo de espécies , a escolha de raças autóctones ou do exterior com boa adaptabilidade para serem criadas (...) em regiões de clima tropical e subtropical encontrados no Brasil e a correta seleção quanto a características reprodutivas de matrizes e principalmente de jovens carneiros cujos quais se deseja utilizar como reprodutores em rebanhos que buscam a constante evolução produtiva se faz muito importante. Tal cenário traz à tona a importância da realização de estudos referentes a suplementação de elementos como vitaminas e microminerais, que embora não sejam os maiores constituintes das dietas ofertadas aos animais de interesse zootécnico, exercem grande influência não só no crescimento e desenvolvimento do tecido muscular como também podem estar positivamente correlacionados quanto aos aspectos reprodutivos . O presente trabalho objetivou a avaliação da qualidade seminal e morfometria testicular de carneiros púberes submetidos a suplementação injetável de minerais e vitaminas, sendo utilizados 30 reprodutores divididos em três grupos de dez animais cada, com delineamento dos grupos inteiramente casualizado. Ao primeiro grupo foi administrada suplementação vitamínica e mineral (Grupo VM), no segundo grupo houve apenas suplementação vitamínica (Grupo VIT) e no terceiro grupo a suplementação mineral (Grupo MIN). No presente trabalho buscou-se avaliar os efeitos da aplicação de complexo vitamínico e mineral sobre a qualidade do sêmen ovino, medidas morfométricas testiculares e alteração nas concentrações dos hormônios cortisol e testosterona. Palavras chave: elementos-traço, hormônios, nutracêutico, ovinos, sêmen -/- Brazilian livestock has a strong emphasis in terms of its participation in the Gross National Product (GDP), however, within the production chain of animal proteins, sheep farming still presents itself as an activity with little expressiveness and technology compared to other domestic animal species. in this way its promotion and development depends on the correct methods, which are the reproductive of sheep species, the choice of indigenous or foreign breeds with good adaptability to be created in tropical and subtropical regions found in Brazil and the correct selection of selected animals and selection of products that are very important for the demand for products of constant breeding. This scenario leads to the development of important studies for the supplementation of such vitamins and trace minerals, which, although not the largest components of diets, exert a great influence not only on the growth of muscle tissues but can also be positively correlated with their reproductive aspects. The present evaluation of seminal quality and testicular morphometric of pubertal animals includes an injectable supplement of vitamins and minerals, using 30 sires distributed in three groups of animals each, with a completely random design of the products. The first supplementary group was given the mineral supplement (VM Group) in the second group only vitamin supplementation (VM Group) and the mineral supplementation group (MIN Group). Key words: nutraceutical, semen, sheep, testosterone, trace elements. (shrink)

In this paper two systems of AGM-like Paraconsistent Belief Revision are overviewed, both defined over Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs) due to the possibility of defining a formal consistency operator within these logics. The AGM° system is strongly based on this operator and internalize the notion of formal consistency in the explicit constructions and postulates. Alternatively, the AGMp system uses the AGM-compliance of LFIs and thus assumes a wider notion of paraconsistency - not necessarily related to the notion of formal (...) consistency. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s concepts shed light on the phenomenon of schizophrenia in at least three different ways: with a view to empathy, scientific explanation, or philosophical clarification. I consider two different “positive” wittgensteinian accounts―Campbell’s idea that delusions involve a mechanism of which different framework propositions are parts, Sass’ proposal that the schizophrenic patient can be described as a solipsist, and a Rhodes’ and Gipp’s account, where epistemic aspects of schizophrenia are explained as failures in the ordinary background of certainties. I argue that (...) none of them amounts to empathic-phenomenological understanding, but they provide examples of how philosophical concepts can contribute to scientific explanation, and to philosophical clarification respectively. (shrink)

Metaphors for describing the introduction, impacts, and management of non-native species are numerous and often quite outspoken. Policy-makers have adopted increasingly disputed metaphorical terms from scientific discourse. We performed a critical analysis of the use of strong metaphors in reporting scientific findings to policy-makers. Our analysis shows that perceptions of harm, invasiveness or nativeness are dynamic and inevitably display multiple narratives in science, policy or management. Improving our awareness of multiple expert and stakeholder narratives that exist in the context of (...) non-native species management, as well as metaphorical alternatives, is critical. (shrink)

Recently, the concept of "gender identity" has enjoyed a great deal of attention in gender metaphysics. This seems to be motivated by the goal of creating trans-inclusive theory, by explaining trans people's genders. In this paper, we aim to unmotivate this project. Notions of "gender identity" serve important pragmatic purposes for trans people, such as satisfying the curiosity of non-trans people, and, relatedly, securing our access to important goods like legal rights and medical care. However, we argue that this does (...) not mean that "gender identity" is a metaphysically substantial thing that deserves extensive theoretical attention. There are reasons to be skeptical of such a concept. We trace the history of "gender identity," primarily to identify its roots in trans-antagonistic medical theory and its connections to the problematic "wrong-body" model--a legacy that has pathologized and flattened trans experience. Moreover, we argue that trans people primarily use "gender identity" to explain ourselves to non-trans people, rather than to discuss ourselves among ourselves. Thus, we urge theorists to resist the urge to substantiate gender identity. Instead, we encourage the development of new and better concepts, ones that attend to the lived realities of trans community and the flourishing gender terms and practices that are constructed there. If these lived realities are taken seriously, there is no need to “explain” trans people’s genders; we can simply see them as they are. (shrink)

The thought that empathy plays an important role in moral motivation is almost a platitude of contemporary folk psychology. Parallel themes were mooted in German moral philosophy and aesthetics in the 1700s, and versions of the empathy construct remained prominent in continental accounts of moral motivation through the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. This chapter elucidates the Empathic Motivation Hypothesis (EMH) and sets out some of the conceptual and empirical challenges it faces. It distinguishes empathic concern from other dimensions (...) of empathy (e.g., resonance, attunement, distress, and non-empathic concern) and examines the merits of EMH as a developmental thesis, focusing on evidence from psychopathology and attachment theory. (shrink)

It is widely thought that there are limits to how things can perceptually appear to us. For instance, nothing can appear both square and circular, or both pure red and pure blue. Adam Pautz has dubbed such constraints “laws of appearance.” But if the laws of appearance obtain, then what explains them? Here I examine the prospects for an empirical explanation of the laws of appearance. First, I challenge extant empirical explanations that appeal purely to the format of perceptual representation. (...) I then develop a hybrid approach, on which the laws are explained not merely by format, but by two further factors: ecological constraints imposed by our environments, and computational constraints embodied by our perceptual systems. While the hybrid approach implies that the laws of appearance are contingent, I argue that this implication is empirically defensible, since even some of the most intuitively compelling laws have real-world counterexamples. (shrink)

Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are “wicked problems,” such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science in domains (...) where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uexküll and Peirce. (shrink)

Molyneux’s question asks whether a person born blind who has learned to identify shapes by touch could, if suddenly granted sight, immediately identify shapes visually. This question has often been used to structure discussions of whether there is a “rational connection” between sight and touch—whether it is possible to rationally doubt whether the same shape properties are both seen and felt. I distinguish two questions under this general heading. The first concerns, roughly, whether the visual and haptic perception of shape (...) is rationally connected in normally sighted perceivers. The second concerns, roughly, whether the visual and haptic perception of shape is rationally connected in all possible perceivers. I argue that real-world implementations of Molyneux’s question are irrelevant to the first question, but potentially relevant to the second. However, I also argue that the second question does not have the philosophical significance it is sometimes claimed to have. In particular, it cannot be used to adjudicate debates about whether the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is primarily determined “externally” by the worldly properties we perceive, or “internally” by physiological or functional properties of our brains. (shrink)

Sustainability assessments bring together different perspectives that pertain to sustainability in order to produce overall assessments and a wealth of approaches and tools have been developed in the past decades. But two major problematics remain. The problem of integration concerns the surplus of possibilities for integration; different tools produce different assessments. The problem of implementation concerns the barrier between assessment and transformation; assessments do not lead to the expected changes in practice. This paper aims to analyze issues of complementarity in (...) sustainability assessment and transformation as a key to better handling the problems of integration and implementation. Based on a generalization of Niels Bohr’s complementarity from quantum mechanics, we have identified two forms of complementarity in sustainability assessment, observer stance complementarity and value complementarity. Unlike many other problems of sustainability assessment, complementarity is of a fundamental character connected to the very conditions for observation. Therefore complementarity cannot be overcome methodologically; only handled better or worse. Science is essential to the societal goal of sustainability, but these issues of complementarity impede the constructive role of science in the transition to more sustainable structures and practices in food systems. The agencies of sustainability assessment and transformation need to be acutely aware of the importance of different perspectives and values and the complementarities that may be connected to these differences. An improved understanding of complementarity can help to better recognize and handle issues of complementarity. These deliberations have relevance not only for sustainability assessment, but more generally for transdisciplinary research on wicked problems. (shrink)

There are many different meanings of sustainability and precaution and no evident connection between the new normative concepts and the traditional moral theories. We seek an ethical basis for sustainability and precaution—a common framework that can serve as a means of resolving the conceptual ambiguities of the new normative concepts and the conflicts between new and traditional moral concepts and theories. We employ a systemic approach to analyze the past and possible future extension of ethics and establish an inclusive framework (...) of ethical extension. This framework forms the basis for what we call a systemic ethic. (shrink)

As national and state health care policy -making becomes contentious and complex, there is a need for a forum to debate and explore public concerns and values in health care, give voice to local citizens, to facilitate consensus among various stakeholders, and provide feedback and direction to health care institutions and policy makers. This paper explores the role that regional health care ethics committees can play and provides two contrasting examples of Networks involved in facilitation of public input into and (...) the development of health care policies and adoption of state-wide practices. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s conception of literature has been criticised more than acclaimed. While Rorty certainly has impacted literary studies, a comprehensive account of his understanding of literature is still lacking. Moreover, while literature is seen as significant to his later work, the philosophical role this plays in Rortyan thought is underexamined and underappreciated. This paper aims to provide an account of the role of literature and the “literary” in Rorty’s philosophy and the functions he assigns to literature and poetry – in (...) a broad and narrow sense – in democratic cultures. Beginning with an account of Rorty’s conceptions of metaphor and “unfamiliar” language, it draws on this to explain Rorty’s parallel view of literature in the “narrower sense” as playing the same role in culture as metaphors do in language. “Stimulating” literature unsettles settled selves and beliefs and expands human imagination. Using Rorty’s readings of Lolita and 1984 as examples, it shows that to him, literature not only plays a part in increasing empathy and solidarity but has a distinct therapeutic epistemological task: it helps individuals and societies adopt a more pluralist, ironist, post-metaphysical outlook. Both are important democratic functions. For these reasons, Rorty recommends that we work to realise a “literary” culture that rejects any ontologically inflected distinctions between kinds of texts, where philosophy becomes comparative “literary” criticism, and we see literature in the “narrower sense” as equally necessary material for making selves, communities and just institutions as any philosophical or political treatise. (shrink)

Die bahnbrechenden wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse der letzten Jahre erzwingen eine neue philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit den Grundkategorien der Biologie und der benachbarten Disziplinen. Insbesondere die Anwendung neuer informationstechnischer Mittel in der biomedizinischen Forschung und die damit verbundene, kontinuierlich zunehmende Datenflut sowie die Notwendigkeit, ihrer Herr zu werden, erfordern ein konsequentes Nachdenken darüber, wie biologische Daten systematisiert und klassifiziert werden können. Dafür wiederum bedarf es robuster Theorien von Grundbegriffen wie Art, Spezies, Teil, Ganzes, Funktion, Prozess, Fragment, Sequenz, Expression, Grenze, Locus, Umwelt, System usw. (...) Solche Begriffe gehören zum impliziten Wissen jedes Biologen. Sie spiegeln einerseits eine Dimension der biologischen Wirklichkeit wider, die auch vor dem Hintergrund der biologischen Evolution unverändert bleibt. Andererseits verlangt deren theoretische Behandlung nach zeitgemäßen Analoga der in der traditionellen aristotelischen Metaphysik entwickelten Methoden. Zugleich können so die explizit formulierten Theorien und Definitionen bereitgestellt werden, die für computergestützte Informationssysteme unabdingbar sind. Das Entwickeln derartiger Theorien und Definitionen ist eine Aufgabe der Philosophie, die in diesem Sinne herausgefordert ist, zwischen Biologie und Informatik zu vermitteln. (shrink)

Rob Withagen has rendered the distinction between affordances and invitations more radical in two aspects: (i) affordances do not explain behavior anymore, invitations do; (ii) invitations do not boil down to affectively charged affordances, they also encompass affectively charged misperceptions. I argue that Withagen went too far. If we understand affordances as a relation between the abilities of an individual organism and its environment, then we already have sufficient resources to incorporate affectivity in the ecological approach. Affective states constitute perceptual (...) abilities and modulate their exercise, in that every perception of affordance is affectively charged. Affective states are crucial for guiding our attention to the possibilities of action relevant to the activities in which we are engaged and for providing a sense of the quality of our relationship with the environment. (shrink)