I argue for three conclusions. First, responsibility skeptics are committed to the position that the criminal justice system should adopt a universal nonresponsibility excuse. Second, a universal nonresponsibility excuse would diminish some of our most deeply held values, further dehumanize criminals, exacerbate mass incarceration, and cause an even greater number of innocent people (nonwrongdoers) to be punished. Third, while Saul Smilansky's ‘illusionist’ response to responsibility skeptics – that even if responsibility skepticism is correct, society should maintain a responsibility‐realist/retributivist criminal justice (...) system – is generally compelling, it would not work if a majority of society were to convert, theoretically and psychologically, to responsibility skepticism. In this (highly improbable) scenario, and only in this (highly improbable) scenario, the criminal justice system would need to be reformed in such a way that it aligned with the majority's responsibility‐skeptical beliefs and attitudes. (shrink)

Empirical philosophers of science aim to base their philosophical theories on observations of scientific practice. But since there is far too much science to observe it all, how can we form and test hypotheses about science that are sufficiently rigorous and broad in scope, while avoiding the pitfalls of bias and subjectivity in our methods? Part of the answer, we claim, lies in the computational tools of the digital humanities, which allow us to analyze large volumes of scientific literature. Here (...) we advocate for the use of these methods by addressing a number of large-scale, justificatory concerns—specifically, about the epistemic value of journal articles as evidence for what happens elsewhere in science, and about the ability of DH tools to extract this evidence. Far from ignoring the gap between scientific literature and the rest of scientific practice, effective use of DH tools requires critical reflection about these relationships. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell’s _Principles of Mathematics_ (1903) gives rise to several interpretational challenges, especially concerning the theory of denoting concepts. Only relatively recently, for instance, has it been properly realised that Russell accepted denoting concepts that do not denote anything. Such empty denoting concepts are sometimes thought to enable Russell, whether he was aware of it or not, to avoid commitment to some of the problematic non-existent entities he seems to accept, such as the Homeric gods and chimeras. In this paper, (...) I argue first that the theory of denoting concepts in _Principles of __Mathematics_ has been generally misunderstood. According to the interpretation I defend, if a denoting concept shifts what a proposition is about, then the aggregate of the denoted terms will also be a constituent of the proposition. I then show that Russell therefore could not have avoided commitment to the Homeric gods and chimeras by appealing to empty denoting concepts. Finally, I develop what I think is the best understanding of the ontology of _Principles of __Mathematics_ by interpreting some difficult passages. (shrink)

Endocrinologists apply the idea of feedback loops to explain how hormones regulate certain bodily functions such as glucose metabolism. In particular, feedback loops focus on the maintenance of the plasma concentrations of glucose within a narrow range. Here, we put forward a different, organicist perspective on the endocrine regulation of glycaemia, by relying on the pivotal concept of closure of constraints. From this perspective, biological systems are understood as organized ones, which means that they are constituted of a set of (...) mutually dependent functional structures acting as constraints, whose maintenance depends on their reciprocal interactions. Closure refers specifically to the mutual dependence among functional constraints in an organism. We show that, when compared to feedback loops, organizational closure can generate much richer descriptions of the processes and constraints at play in the metabolism and regulation of glycaemia, by making explicit the different hierarchical orders involved. We expect that the proposed theoretical framework will open the way to the construction of original mathematical models, which would provide a better understanding of endocrine regulation from an organicist perspective. (shrink)

Many scholars of organizations see social enterprise as a promising approach to advancing social justice but neglect to scrutinize the normative foundations and limitations of this optimism. This article draws on Rawlsian political philosophy to investigate whether and how social enterprises can support social justice. We propose that this perspective assigns organizations a duty to foster institutional capacity, a concept we define and elaborate. We investigate how this duty might apply specifically to social enterprises, given their characteristic features. We theorize (...) six different mechanisms through which social enterprises might successfully discharge this duty. These results affirm the value of conversation between organizational studies and political philosophy and shed new light on debates regarding social enterprise, institutional theory, and several other topics. (shrink)

This paper generalizes the (epistemic) preface paradox beyond the principle of belief aggregation and constructs a similar paradox for deontic reasoning. The analysis of the deontic case yields a solution strategy---restricting belief/obligation aggregation rather than giving it up altogether---that can be transferred to the epistemic case. Our proposal amounts to a reasonable compromise between two goals: (i) sticking to bridge principles between evidence and belief, such as the Lockean Thesis, and (ii) obtaining a sufficiently strong logic of doxastic and deontic (...) reasoning. (shrink)

Important advances in biomedical and behavioral research ethics have occurred over the past few decades, many of them centered on identifying and eliminating significant harms to human subjects of research. Comprehensive attention has not been paid to the totality of harms experienced by animal subjects, although scientific and moral progress require explicit appraisal of these harms. Science is a public good and the prioritizing within, conduct of, generation of, and application of research must soundly address questions about which research is (...) morally defensible and valuable enough to support through funding, publication, tenure, and promotion. Likewise, educational pathways of re-imagined science are critical. (shrink)

In July 2020, more than 1000 companies that advertise on social media platforms withdrew their business, citing failures of the platforms (especially Facebook) to address the proliferation of harmful content. The #StopHateForProfit movement invites reflection on an understudied topic: the ethics of boycotting by corporations. Under what conditions is corporate boycotting permissible, required, supererogatory, or forbidden? Although value-driven consumerism has generated significant recent discussion in applied ethics, that discussion has focused almost exclusively on the consumption choices of individuals. As this (...) article underscores, value-driven consumerism by business corporations complicates these issues and invites further examination. We propose principles for the ethics of boycotting by corporations, indicate how these principles relate to different CSR paradigms, and show how these insights can help assess recent instances of corporate boycotting. (shrink)

I argue that the three strongest arguments against metaphysical libertarianism—the randomness objection, the constitutive luck objection, and the physicalist objection—are actually unsuccessful and therefore that metaphysical libertarianism is more plausible than the common philosophical wisdom allows. My more positive thesis, what I will refer to as “Agent Exceptionalism,” is that, when making decisions and performing actions, human beings can indeed satisfy the four conditions of metaphysical libertarianism: the control condition, the rationality condition, the ultimacy condition, and the physicalism condition.

Objective: There are benefits and risks of giving patients more granular control of their personal health information in electronic health record (EHR) systems. When designing EHR systems and policies, informaticists and system developers must balance these benefits and risks. Ethical considerations should be an explicit part of this balancing. Our objective was to develop a structured ethics framework to accomplish this. -/- Methods: We reviewed existing literature on the ethical and policy issues, developed an ethics framework called a “Points to (...) Consider” (P2C) document, and convened a national expert panel to review and critique the P2C. -/- Results: We developed the P2C to aid informaticists designing an advanced query tool for an electronic health record (EHR) system in Indianapolis. The P2C consists of six questions (“Points”) that frame important ethical issues, apply accepted principles of bioethics and Fair Information Practices, comment on how questions might be answered, and address implications for patient care. -/- Discussion: The P2C is intended to clarify whatis at stake when designers try to accommodate potentially competing ethical commitments and logistical realities. The P2C was developed to guide informaticists who were designing a query tool in an existing EHR that would permit patient granular control. While consideration of ethical issues is coming to the forefront of medical informatics design and development practices, more reflection is needed to facilitate optimal collaboration between designers and ethicists. This report contributes to that discussion. (shrink)

Global challenges such as climate change, food security, or public health have become dominant concerns in research and innovation policy. This article examines how responses to these challenges are addressed by governance actors. We argue that appeals to global challenges can give rise to a ‘solution strategy' that presents responses of dominant actors as solutions and a ‘negotiation strategy' that highlights the availability of heterogeneous and often conflicting responses. On the basis of interviews and document analyses, the study identifies both (...) strategies across local, national, and European levels. While our results demonstrate the co-existence of both strategies, we find that global challenges are most commonly highlighted together with the solutions offered by dominant actors. Global challenges are ‘wicked problems' that often become misframed as ‘tame problems’ in governance practice and thereby legitimise dominant responses. (shrink)

I argue that we should solve the Lottery Paradox by denying that rational belief is closed under classical logic. To reach this conclusion, I build on my previous result that (a slight variant of) McGee’s election scenario is a lottery scenario (see Lissia 2019). Indeed, this result implies that the sensible ways to deal with McGee’s scenario are the same as the sensible ways to deal with the lottery scenario: we should either reject the Lockean Thesis or Belief Closure. After (...) recalling my argument to this conclusion, I demonstrate that a McGee-like example (which is just, in fact, Carroll’s barbershop paradox) can be provided in which the Lockean Thesis plays no role: this proves that denying Belief Closure is the right way to deal with both McGee’s scenario and the Lottery Paradox. A straightforward consequence of my approach is that Carroll’s puzzle is solved, too. (shrink)

Inspired by the early Wittgenstein’s concept of nonsense (meaning that which lies beyond the limits of language), we define two different, yet complementary, types of nonsense: formal nonsense and pragmatic nonsense. The simpler notion of formal nonsense is initially defined within Tarski’s semantic theory of truth; the notion of pragmatic nonsense, by its turn, is formulated within the context of the theory of pragmatic truth, also known as quasi-truth, as formalized by da Costa and his collaborators. While an expression will (...) be considered formally nonsensical if the formal criteria required for the assignment of any truth-value (whether true, false, pragmatically true, or pragmatically false) to such sentence are not met, a (well-formed) formula will be considered pragmatically nonsensical if the pragmatic criteria (inscribed within the context of scientific practice) required for the assignment of any truth-value to such sentence are not met. Thus, in the context of the theory of pragmatic truth, any (well-formed) formula of a formal language interpreted on a simple pragmatic structure will be considered pragmatically nonsensical if the set of primary sentences of such structure is not well-built, that is, if it does not include the relevant observational data and/or theoretical results, or if it does include sentences that are inconsistent with such data. (shrink)

I critically discuss two kinds of argument in favour of ontological pluralism and argue that they fail to show that ways of being are explanatorily fruitful.

In this open peer commentary, we categorize the possible “neuroscience in national security” definitions of misuse of science and identify which, if any, are uniquely presented by advances in neuroscience. To define misuse, we first define what we would consider appropriate use: the application of reasonably safe and effective technology, based on valid and reliable scientific research, to serve a legitimate end. This definition presents distinct opportunities for assessing misuse: misuse is the application of invalid or unreliable science, or is (...) the use of reliable scientific methods to serve illegitimate ends. Ultimately, we conclude that while national security is often a politicized issue, assessing the state of scientific progress should not be. (shrink)

The article presents the interdisciplinary approach of Edwin Hutchins, analyzing his conception of distributed cognition as probably the most important and lasting contribution of anthropology to the repertoire of theoretical tools in cognitive science. At the same time, this conception resulted in one of the most interesting relationships between cognitive science and social sciences. These relationships are made possible by the assumptions of Hutchins’ conception, which directly contribute to interdisciplinary collaboration. His account of distributed cognition has enormous potential, allowing the (...) integration of research into cognitive and social processes. This is also because it breaks with methodological individualism. (shrink)

This invited entry offers a brief overview of criminal responsibility. -/- The first part starts with a question: is Clyde criminally responsible for killing his girlfriend Bonnie? The answer: it depends. Particular circumstances determine whether Clyde is guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter, not guilty because he has a good excuse, or not guilty because he has a good justification. -/- The second part addresses the complicated relationship between criminal responsibility and moral responsibility. Until recently, both concepts were considered to (...) be more or less interchangeable. But there is a growing movement, which I refer to as "responsibility skepticism," which maintains that moral responsibility is either physically or metaphysically impossible. If the responsibility skeptics are right (that moral responsibility is impossible), then what are the implications for criminal responsibility and just criminal punishment? Should we abandon these as well? Or can they survive without moral responsibility? I try to answer these questions. -/- The third part addresses social causation. The criminal justice system tends to be "dispositionalist"; it tends, that is, to assume that criminal responsibility resides entirely within the defendant. Dispositionalism, however, overlooks the fact that who we are and what we do are significantly determined by environmental influences. I then try to show that this "situationist" alternative to dispositionalism should not radically alter our approach to criminal punishment. -/- The final part briefly discusses the difficulty in evaluating criminal responsibility when the defendant is both an offender and a victim - especially when the defendant is an offender *because* of his victimization. (shrink)

Most people do not know there are different kinds of medical studies; some are conducted on people who already have a disease or medical condition, and others are performed on healthy volunteers who want to help science find answers. No matter what sort of research you are invited to participate in, or whether you are a patient when you are asked, it’s entirely up to you whether or not to do it. This decision is important and may have many implications (...) for your health and well-being, as well as those of other patients now and in the future. Making a good decision – the right one for you – requires you to become educated about topics you may not have thought about before, some of which may be quite complicated. This chapter explains the key issues to help you make a good decision. (shrink)

This reply affirms Temkin’s critical perspective on effective altruism but seeks to draw out its constructive implications. It first encourages Temkin to defend the practical urgency of global poverty in the face of doubts about aid effectiveness. It then argues for a more holistic conception of effectiveness to mitigate these doubts. It considers some alternative aid strategies that respond to this broader conception. Finally, it exhorts effective altruists to think more seriously about the reform of global institutions.

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Vol. 10, number 2, 1996, pp. 127-140. R.M. Nugayev. Why did the new physics force out the old ? Abstract. The aim of my paper is to demonstrate that special relativity and the early quantum theory were created within the same programme of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and Maxwellian electrodynamics reconciliation. I’ll try to explain why classical mechanics and classical electrodynamics were “refuted” almost simultaneously or, in other words, why the quantum revolution and the (...) relativistic one both took place at the beginning of the 20th century. I’ll argue that the quantum and relativistic revolutions were simultaneous since they had a common origin – the clash beyween the mature theories of the second half of the 19th century that constituted the “body” of classical physics. The revolution’s most dramatic point was Einstein’s 1905 photon paper that laid the foundations of both special relativity and the old quantum theory. Hence the dialectic of the old theories is crucial for theory change. Later, classical physics was forced out by the joint development of quantum and relativistic subprogrammes. The title of my paper can be reformulated in Bruno Latour’s terms: The Einstein Revolution or Drawing Models Together. -/- . (shrink)

What's wrong with Copenhagen, GRW, Superdeterminism, QBism, Many-worlds, Bohmianism, and Retrocausality, and how theses differ from Presentist Fragmentalism.

This paper continues and extensive exploration of the QG and TOE resulting from the PF interpretation of QM. Some highlights are an exploration of symmetries of the Standard Model, outlines of testable predictions of implications for QG, that this theory can simultaneously give an account of dark matter and dark energy, probabilities and statevector collapse vs. gravity, applications of the causal interaction tensor Cαβγδ(Fi, Fj). Note the first section mentions qualia but this is not a psychological theory this is an (...) ontic theory. (shrink)

Scott Shapiro’s theory that law is a social plan is helpful in seeing law essentially as a tool of human creation and as such is sympathetic to understanding law in terms of the social functions it performs, a method I argue for elsewhere. I focus here on two problems with the theory as presented. The planning theory does not adequately explain the persistence of law beyond the utility of those who implement it. Generally, plans can cease to exist as soon (...) as those engaged in them have no more use for them. Laws however, must usually be declared invalid or otherwise nullified for them to have no further effect. Shapiro’s use of self-certification to explain how law is differentiated from other forms of social planning is ad hoc and threatens circularity when he admits it to be a matter of degree. Both of these issues can be better solved by seeing law as an institutionalised abstract artefact, with a greater emphasis upon the nature of institutions doing much of the work done by the idea of planning. (shrink)

Abstract: To improve the countries’ pharmaceutical situation and to monitor the progress, the World Health Organization (WHO) and member states developed a system of indicators to measure the respective important aspects as a prerequisite step. Level I indicators to assess the country’s pharmaceutical situation include the national drug policy; legislation and regulations; drug accessibility and affordability; essential drug list; quality control; pharmacovigilance; storage and distribution; information and rational use. This study is aimed to document the professional opinion of 20 pharmacy (...) practice professionals on Libya’s current pharmaceutical situation, utilizing WHO indicator-based approach. The core indicators measure the most important information needed to understand the pharmaceutical situation in a country. A closed-end questionnaire was distributed to ten practicing pharmacists and ten pharmacy teaching staff members who practice pharmacy. The questionnaires were handed over personally and collected on the same day. The responses were analyzed using simple statistics. The results were argued in the light of the first author’s observation and view, being expert in this field, with reference to the other experts’ views, relevant publications’ findings and WHO reports’ conclusions on these indicators. Suggestions and recommendations for a proper situation assessment, planning and action taking are presented. Primarily, government’s commitment towards appropriate restructuring, management and monitoring of the pharmaceutical sector is crucial. That is to enhance the country’s pharmaceutical situation, to provide and sustain efficient pharmaceutical services and to improve the overall health care system’s performance. (shrink)

Hylomorphists claim that sensation is a bodily act. In this essay, I attempt to make sense of this notion but conclude that sensation is not a bodily act, but a mental one occurring in an intentional field of awareness.

In this paper, a follow-up to my "Seeing Other Minds," I encourage philosophers to explore the notion of cardiognosis - "knowledge of hearts" - as a unique, irreducible form of knowledge, and suggest some applications for this notion.

We consider the varieties and directions of influence that the source and target domains involved in a conceptual metaphor can have on each other during the course of understanding metaphorical utterances based on the metaphor. Previous studies have been restricted both as to direction of influence and as to type of influence. They have been largely confined to the “forward” (source to target) direction of influence, and they have concentrated on the transfer of features or propositions and (to some extent) (...) the highlighting of aspects of a domain. By contrast, this article stresses the importance both of other varieties of influence (e.g., transfer of queries and uncertainty effects) and of “reverse” influence (target to source). We seek to curb the natural tendency to think that, because metaphor involves an overall move from source to target, therefore all inter-domain influences in the course of understanding go in that direction. The bulk of the article explores the theoretical issues involved. These issues have arisen out of a reasoning-based approach to metaphor, seeking to make best use of information from metaphorical utterance, context, source and target domains, and known metaphorical mappings, by applying a complex overall reasoning process. The article briefly explains the thorough implementation of reverse influence in a computer program for metaphorical reasoning called ATT-Meta, although the theoretical considerations are relevant to all disciplines concerned with metaphor. We make some suggestions for further computational and psychological research on metaphor. (shrink)

CONVERGENT REALISM AND ITS RIVALS (joining the realism-antirealism debates in modern Western philosophy of science). Rinat M. Nugayev, Kazan branch of Russian University of Cooperation. Abstract. Arguments pro and contra convergent realism are considered. It is argued that to meet the antirealist challenges convergent realism meta-programme hard core should be modified significantly . However well-known rivals of structural realism – entity realism (N. Cartwright and I. Hacking) and structural realism (John Worrall) – are mere revisionist versions of convergent realism based (...) on ad hoc modifications of the solutions first obtained within antirealist programme. (shrink)

Understanding recreational experiences is a longstanding research tradition and key to effective management. Given the complexities of human experience, many approaches have been applied to study recreational experience. Two such approaches are the experiential approach (based in a positivistic paradigm) and emergent experience (based in an interpretive paradigm). While viewed as being complementary, researchers have not offered guidance for incorporating the approaches into a common model of recreational experience. This study utilized longitudinal, qualitative data to examine aspects of recreational experience (...) posited by these two approaches. Results provided a framework for synthesizing across the two approaches. Respondents had clear pre-activity expectations, and most respondents realized their expected outcomes. This supports the experiential approach. Of the 48 activity narratives, 27 experienced something unexpected, and 45 described process-oriented, intrinsic motivation, suggesting evidence of emergent and unique characteristics specific to an individual’s realization of recreational experience. This supports the application of the emergent experience approach to understand how individuals create meaning from recreational engagements. The paper proposes a model for integrating results of the two approaches. While not advocating for any specific approach, the findings can serve as an example of building a holistic model of the outdoor recreation experience. The purpose of the model is to allow for a more complete understanding of how individuals create recreation experiences, more complete documentation of the benefits of outdoor recreation for both researchers and managers, and better synthesis across studies. (shrink)

In Bencivenga’s “Consequences in Kantian Ethics,” he offers a version of Kant’s ethics according to which the most rational approach to living one’s life is “to always imagine what might follow from one’s moves and to choose moves accordingly” (284), but according to which agents always nevertheless must be modest in their judgments about what they ought to do because the actual consequences of their actions might not turn out as they imagined. In this way, he tries to foreground the (...) role of consequences in Kant's ethics. In this paper, I argue against Bencivenga and, in particular, against the idea that according to Kant, to determine whether an agent’s action is good we must wait for its consequences to unfold in time. (shrink)

Criteria of the growth of knowledge proposed in modern philosophy of science are considered. It is argued that the model of growth that fits the peculiarities of social sciences&humanities is provided by the methodology of scientific research programmes. Yet one has to correct some drawbacks. The author concludes that the real growth of knowledge consists in the growth of causal explanations and in the corresponding growth of empirical content of the theories from superseeding scientific research programmes. -/- Key words: R.Rorty, (...) M.Weber,N.Cartwright -/- . (shrink)

While the nature of the past and the future have received a lot of attention from recent analytic philosophers, the present has been somewhat neglected. I think the notion of the present is somewhat misunderstood and hope to rectify some of those misunderstandings in this essay. It is high time that this was done. Let's do it now!

I agree with about 95% of what Paul Moser has written in his book The Elusive God. However, I have three main points of disagreement with Moser, two of which I ventilate in this paper. The third I discuss in my paper "What's Love Got to Do with It?" also on this website.

Research has shown that the construction of visual representations may have a positive effect on cognitive skills, including argumentation. In this paper we present a study on learning argumentation through computer-supported argument diagramming. We specifically focus on whether students, when provided with an argument-diagramming tool, create better diagrams, are more motivated, and learn more when working with other students or on their own. We use learning analytics to evaluate a variety of student activities: pre and post questionnaires to explore motivational (...) changes; the argument diagrams created by students to evaluate richness, complexity and completion; and pre and post knowledge tests to evaluate learning gains. (shrink)

Coronary arteries were studied on 110 postmortem human hearts during January 2000 to December 2001 in the department of Anatomy and Microbiology, Bangladesh Medical College to observed. The pattern of coronary dominance and its relation with atherosclerosis was observed. Atherosclerosis was found in 49(44.5%) samples, among which 37(56.%) were from male and 12(26.7%) from female hearts. This difference was significant (P<0.01). Right dominance was observed in 72 (65.5%) cases while 17 (15.5%) had left dominance and 21 (19.1%) had balanced type (...) of circulation. Balanced type of circulation was observed more among females (14; 66.7%) while left dominance was more frequent among males (13; 76.5 %). This deference on the basis of sex was significant (P<0.05). Significant (P<0.001) relationship was also observed between atherosclerosis and dominance of coronary artery. It may be concluded that atherosclerosis was present in almost half of the studied subjects and was found more among males. Left dominance was more frequently present among males it was associated with atherosclerosis. (shrink)

In his book “Reconstruction of Scientific Change” R.M. Nugayev proposes a new model of theory change by analyzing the reasons for theory change in science. Nugayev’s theoretical concept is based on a realist’s philosophical attitude. The most important notions of Nugayev’ s conception of theory change are “theories’ cross” and “crossbred objects”, which he takes from the terminology of other Russian philosophers of science (Bransky, Podgoretzky, Smorodinsky). His investigations often refer to several famous Western philosophers. Yet his study is not (...) free of some drawbacks. Nevertheless, Nugayev’s book is worth reading and discussing within the current debate about the structure of scientific revolution and theory changes. (shrink)

Press release. -/- The ebook entitled, Einstein’s Revolution: A Study of Theory-Unification, gives students of physics and philosophy, and general readers, an epistemological insight into the genesis of Einstein’s special relativity and its further unification with other theories, that ended well by the construction of general relativity. The book was developed by Rinat Nugayev who graduated from Kazan State University relativity department and got his M.Sci at Moscow State University department of philosophy of science and Ph.D at Moscow Institute of (...) Philosophy, Russian Academy of Science. He has forty years of philosophy of science and relativistic astrophysics teaching and research experience evincing in more than 200 papers in the scientific journals of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, USA, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Poland, Romania, France, Greece, Japan and some other countries, and 8 monographs. Revolutions in physics all embody theoretical unification. Hence the overall aim of the present book is to unfold Einstein’s unificationist modus operandi, the hallmarks of actual Einstein’s methodology of unification that engendered his 1905 special relativity, as well as his 1915 general relativity. To achieve the object, a lucid epistemic model is exposed aimed at an analysis of the reasons for mature theory change in science (chapter1). According to the model, scientific revolutions were not due to fanciful creation of new ideas ‘ex nihilo’, but rather to the long-term processes of the reconciliation, interpenetration and intertwinement of ‘old’ research traditions preceding such breaks .Accordingly, origins of scientific revolutions lie not in a clash of fundamental theories with facts, but of “old” mature research traditions with each other, leading to contradictions that can only be attenuated in a more general theoretical approach. In chapter 2 it is contended that Einstein’s ingenious approach to special relativity creation, substantially distinguishing him from Lorentz’s and Poincaré’s invaluable impacts, turns to be a milestone of maxwellian electrodynamics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics reconciliation design. Special relativity turns out to be grounded on Einstein’s breakthrough 1905 light quantum hypothesis. Eventually the author amends the received view on the general relativity genesis by stressing that the main reason for Einstein’s victory over the rival programmes of Abraham and Nordström was a unificationist character of Einstein’s research programme (chapter 3). Rinat M. Nugayev, Ph.D, professor of Volga Region Academy, Kazan, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Russian Federation. (shrink)

Two hundred and sixty-three subjects each gave examples for one of five geographic categories: geographic features, geographic objects, geographic concepts, something geographic, and something that could be portrayed on a map. The frequencies of various responses were significantly different, indicating that the basic ontological terms feature, object, etc., are not interchangeable but carry different meanings when combined with adjectives indicating geographic or mappable. For all of the test phrases involving geographic, responses were predominantly natural features such as mountain, river, lake, (...) ocean, hill. Artificial geographic features such as town and city were listed hardly at all for geographic categories, an outcome that contrasts sharply with the disciplinary self-understanding of academic geography. However, geographic artifacts and fiat objects, such as roads, cities, boundaries, countries, and states, were frequently listed by the subjects responding to the phrase something that could be portrayed on a map. In this paper, we present the results of these experiments in visual form, and provide interpretations and implications for further research. (shrink)

Many so-called “cognitivist” theories of the emotions account for the meaningfulness of emotions in terms of beliefs or judgments that are associated or identified with these emotions. In recent years, a number of analytic philosophers have argued against these theories by pointing out that the objects of emotions are sometimes meaningfully experienced before one can take a reflective stance toward them. Peter Goldie defends this point of view in his book The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration. Goldie argues that emotions are (...) meaningful in a way that is different from the meaningfulness of beliefs. He describes this meaningfulness in terms of “feeling towards,” which he identifies as a unique type of intentionality characteristic of emotions. The independence of feeling-towards from acts like believing is most clearly brought out by cases in which there is not enough time to form a belief but in which a person experiencing feelings towards an object responds emotionally in a way that is meaningful to them. Employing a similar type of argument, the phenomenologist Max Scheler argues that certain types of acts of feeling are phenomenologically prior to presentative acts of perception, representation, or imagination. Scheler supports his claim about the phenomenological priority of such acts of feeling by referring to cases in which the presented contents of an object are hidden or obscured but where the object of feeling, value, remains adequately given. I endeavor to show how Scheler draws support for his position from these cases and the great significance of his interpretation of these cases for his philosophical outlook as a whole. I close by considering some questions about his interpretation and use of these cases. (shrink)

According to the literature review, there is much room for improvement of college student retention. The aim of this research is to evaluate the possibility of using deep and machine learning algorithms to predict whether students continue to attend college or will stop attending college. In this research a feature assessment is done on the dataset available from Kaggle depository. The performance of 20 learning supervised machine learning algorithms and one deep learning algorithm is evaluated. The algorithms are trained using (...) 11 features from 1000 records of previous student registrations that have been enrolled in college. The best performing classifier after tuning the parameters was NuSVC. It achieved Accuracy (91.00%), Precision (91.00%), Recall (91.00%), F1-score (91.00%), and time required for training and testing (0.04 second). Additionally, the proposed DL algorithm scored: Accuracy (93.00%), Precision (93.00%), Recall (93.00%), F1-score (93.00%), time required for training and testing (0.66 second) for predicting whether student will continue to attend college or not. (shrink)

A methodological model of origin and settlement of theory-choice situations (previously tried on the theories of Einstein and Lorentz in electrodynamics) is applied to modern Theory of Gravity. The process of origin and growth of empirically-equivalent relativistic theories of gravitation is theoretically reproduced. It is argued that all of them are proposed within the two rival research programmes – (1) metric (A. Einstein et al.) and (2) nonmetric (H. Poincare et al.). Each programme aims at elimination of the cross-contradiction between (...) the special theory of relativity and Newton’s theory of gravitation. New arguments in favor of Einstein’s programme are given. Nevertheless, this does not imply the necessity to rule out all the nonmetric theories, since Einstein’s and Poincare’s programmes are alternative only as different tools of the cross-contradiction elimination. In the other respects these programmes are complementary: description, explanation and prediction of gravitational experimental data entails the usage of the languages of nonmetric theories as well as of metric ones. The part of the present investigation elucidating the necessity of nonmetric theories is an implementation of the ideas of A.Z. Petrov, the founder of Kazan University Relativity Department. Late Alexei Zinovievich had frequently punctuated that the notion of Riemann space-time continuum common for all metric theories obfuscates all the gravitational notions considerably and hampers the analogies with other physical theories at hand. Since the ambiguity is a hallmark of all the general relativism notions, approach to their definitions “should be determined not by analogies and contingent facts, but by general considerations linked the physical measurements theory… No matter how far the events lie out of the frames of classical physical explanations, all the experimental data should be described by classical notions” (Petrov, 1965,pp. 59,66). Key words: Kip S. Thorne, A.P. Lightman, Stepin, theory of gravity . (shrink)

In this study, screening positive for probable depression was common among undergraduate students at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and associated with sociodemographic and selected behavioral factors. These findings call for strengthening the awareness and use of counselling services among undergraduate students.

Zum Coronavirus grassier(t)en allerlei obskure Theorien und Mythen. Viele halten es für harmlos. Manche argumentier(t)en bei der Sterblichkeit gar mit einer Zyklischen Welle: Es träfe vor allem jene, die in einem halben Jahr sowieso (an was auch immer) gestorben wären. Im Falle von Coronamaßnahmen würde deren Tod im Folgejahr lediglich nachgeholt. Das ist natürlich mehr als zynisch: Wer will das einem Menschen im Pflegeheim beibringen? Wer maßt sich die Entscheidung darüber an, ob es sich für einen Anderen lohnt, noch ein (...) paar zusätzliche Monate zu leben? -/- Leider erntete man in der Pandemie, was man jahrzehntelang gesät hatte: Beliebiges Nebeneinander von Forschung und Aberglaube, Wissenschaft und Esoterik, musste in der Bevölkerung den Eindruck einer Gleichberechtigung von Aussagen erwecken. Ganz so, als wäre Vernunft oder Unsinn eben eine Frage des persönlichen Geschmacks, einer alternativen Weltanschauung. Doch zwischen Tatsachen und Blödsinn gibt es keinen Kompromiss. Es existiert kein Recht auf Aberglaube. CoViD-19 wird nicht von 5G-Handymasten ausgelöst. Auch nicht vielleicht! In der Folge stagnieren nun die Impfquoten. Die lassen sich jetzt, nach Jahrzehnten boomender Esoterik, auch durch mehr „Kommunikation mit dem Volk“ nicht wesentlich steigern. (shrink)

Objective: This study aimed to determine the diagnostic value of median nerve cross-sectional area (MNCSA; mm2), which can be measured using ultrasonography (US), compared with electrophysiological parameters in patients with mild and moderate carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). Methods: The study included 72 wrists of 25 patients with CTS diagnosis and 23 healthy controls. Median and ulnar sensory and motor nerve conduction study results and MNCSA values determined by US, of all subjects were recorded. Electrophysiological and US data of the patient (...) and control groups were compared, and a correlation between MNCSA and velocity and latency of sensory and motor conduction of median nerves was investigated. Moreover, Receiver operating characteristic ROC curve analysis was performed to determine the cut-off value for diagnosing CTS with MNCSA. Differences between the mean MNCSA values, median nerve sensory conduction velocity (SCV), and motor distal latency (MDL) were statistically significant between the groups. Results: Differences between the mean MNCSA values of grade 1 CTS patients with very mild CTS and those of the healthy controls were statistically significant. There was a moderate and significant negative correlation between MNCSA and SCV values and a low and significant positive correlation between MNCSA and MDL values. In addition, there was a moderate and significant positive correlation between MNCSA values and grades. A cut-off value of 10.25 mm2, which was obtained by the ROC analysis, enabled the differentiation of patients and controls with a sensitivity of 80% and specificity of 76%. Conclusion: We suggest that MNCSA, which is calculated using US, has high sensitivity and specificity values and is used as a firstline diagnostic tool with electromyography. (shrink)

In this study, we conceptualized a framework capturing recurring troublesome elements of mental states such as depression and general anxiety, assessing them by applying standard clinical inventory. The study explores the extent to which danger control and fear control under the Extended Parallel Processing Model (EPPM) threat impact job insecurity, with uncertainty phenomenon causing afflicting effect on the experiential nature of depression heightened by anxiety. With the aim to explore the job insecurity relationship with anxiety and depression, and measure the (...) impact of EPPM threat, an empirical study was conducted in the United States on a sample of 347 white collar employees. Demographic data, EPPM threat, job insecurity, anxiety, and depression data were collected via a standardized questionnaire during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The findings of the study suggest that job insecurity has a significant impact on depression and anxiety, whereas the threat of COVID-19 has a significant impact on depression. Mediating effects of job insecurity and EPPM threat impact on anxiety were not established in the study. The study contributes to the apprehension of the repercussions of major environmental disruptions on normal human functioning, and it investigates the effects of self-reported protective behaviors on risk perception. The study also explains the underlying mechanisms of coping behavior as possible antecedents to mental disorders. When subjected to stressful events, heightened psychological arousal causes physical and psychological challenges of affected employees to manifest as behavioral issues. (shrink)