This paper attempts to answer whether the property of “efficacy” can be attributed to constitutive rules. In particular, according to Di Lucia, I will point out some problems that the “semantic conception of efficacy” has concerning constitutive and regulative rules. Then, the main goal of the paper will be to reflect on the possibility of the efficacy of constitutive rules by means of a complex case that the semantic conception seems to disregard: The case of the cheater. Does the action (...) of the cheater show the inefficacy of constitutive rules? Does she play the game while breaking the rule? Can the semantic conception of efficacy explain this situation, or do we need a more flexible concept of efficacy that takes nomotropism into account? These are some of the questions I will try to answer. (shrink)

Quality education needs quality teachers to achieve success. Thus, this study determined the factors related to the teachers’ performance in delivering the K to 12 Curriculum in the Narra del Sur district, Palawan, Philippines. A descriptive-correlational research design was employed, with a sample of 132 randomly selected public elementary teachers. The study used frequency counts and percentages, arithmetic mean and standard deviation, and Spearman’s rho to analyze and draw conclusions from the data. The findings revealed a correlation between the respondents’ (...) age and their utilization of teaching materials and ICT. The number of pupils taught was correlated with teachers’ commitment, while number of pupils taught, position, highest educational attainment, and length of service were related to the respondents’ performance. The main problem encountered by the respondents was excessive workloads, paperwork, and reports. To solve the problem teachers encountered in delivering the K to 12 Curriculum, the respondents preferred preparing a work plan and allocating time to daily and weekly tasks to avoid excessive workloads. These results may aid policymakers and curriculum developers in the Department of Education to make relevant enhancements to the factors that affect teachers’ performance in curriculum delivery. (shrink)

Emotions are an integral part of human cognition and they guide not only our understanding of the world but also our actions within it. As such, whether we soothe or flame an emotion is not inconsequential. Recent work in conversational AI has focused on responding empathetically to users, validating and soothing their emotions without a real basis. This AI-aided emotional regulation can have negative consequences for users and society, tending towards a one-noted happiness defined as only the absence of "negative" (...) emotions. We argue that we must carefully consider whether and how to respond to users' emotions. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which Cordwainer Smith’s short story “Under Old Earth” problematizes emotions, who/what has them, and who/what is granted moral status. Most importantly, however, “Under Old Earth” questions the primacy of happiness in human society, especially where happiness is understood as the absence of other (negative) emotions. As such, “Under Old Earth” challenges the notion, widely held in contemporary ethics, that our moral obligation to one another is mediated through the goal of the attainment of happiness. (...) Through this challenge, Smith’s short story speaks directly to the current understanding of emotion in the field of AI, and complicates what the goal of affective computing should be. (shrink)

In this paper we study the connection between the use of evaluative language and the building of both personal and social identities, from the perspective of Dynamical System Theory . We primarily discuss two issues: 1) The use of evaluation (in the sense given to the term by Alba-Juez and Thompson (forthcoming)) as a means to the construction of both individual and group identities, thus exploring how the connection between linguistic choices and social identities is shaped by interactional needs (...) for stancetaking. In order to illustrate this connection, we examine examples of the use of evaluative language in a web social network, and we analyze some of the discourse elements showing ways of positioning that act as catalysts for the emergence of a multifactorial dynamic system of identities. 2) The consideration of Dynamical System Theory (DST) as a theoretical framework for the modeling of language and identity. Although originally a mathematical theory, DST has been adopted by cognitive science as a valid framework for the study of cognitive phenomena, on the grounds that natural cognition is a dynamical phenomenon. Within the realm of (socio) linguistics and pragmatics, this study is to a certain degree in line with some recent studies such as Gibbs (2010), Geeraerts, Kristiansen and Peirsman (2010), or Moreno Fernández (2012). Thus, we herein focus on how linguistic evaluation intervenes in the intricate dynamical system of identity, and even though we do not engage in complex mathematical disquisition, we argue that the idea and philosophical foundation underlying DST can lead us towards the ‘integration’ of the complex equation of identity construction, and that consequently the field has great potential for further research. (shrink)

Linguistics of Saying is to be analyzed in the speech act conceived as an act of knowing. The speaking, saying and knowing subject, based on contexts and the principles of congruency and trust in the speech of other speakers, will create meanings and interpret the sense of utterances supplying the deficiencies of language by means of the intellective operations mentally executed in the act of speech. In the intellective operations you can see three steps or processes: first the starting point, (...) intuition or aísthesis; second, the process of abstraction; and third, the inverse: the process of determination or fixing the construct created. (shrink)

Linguistics of saying studies language in its birth. Language is the mental activity executed by speaking subjects. Linguistics of saying consists in analyzing speech acts as the result of an act of knowing. Speaking subjects speak because they have something to say. Tthey say because they define themselves before the circumstance they are in. And this is possible because they are able to know. Speaking, then, is speaking, saying and knowing. In this sense there is a progressive determination. Knowing makes (...) possible saying, and saying determines speaking, or, in other words: speaking involves saying and knowing, and saying involves knowing. The problem thus is to determine the meaningful intentional purpose of the individual speaker to say something in every speech act. (shrink)

Internal coherence is of great importance for how we think about appreciating objects of aesthetic worth. A disagreement between what we judge to be worthy and what we affectively favor can prevent us from properly grasping its value. However, it is also assumed in the aesthetic domain that our taste changes over time, jeopardising such coherence constraint. These changes can lead to a mismatch between new aesthetic judgments and old aesthetic preferences. This chapter explores a number of issues that emerge (...) from this tension. Using Taylor Swift’s re-recording as a case study, I will explore the relation between fan loyalty and personal authenticity, as well as the role of biographical taste in the reception of these newly recorded albums among Swift’s long-time fanbase. (shrink)

În prezent, în România, ca și în toate celelalte state euro-atlantice și în cadrul organizațiilor internaționale din care facem parte (NATO de exemplu), există o cerere puternică de analiști de informații „bine pregătiți”. Pentru a funcționa într-un mod eficient, structurile de informații au nevoie de analiști de informații eficienți, sau cu alte cuvinte, de analiști de informații bine pregătiți. Acesta este cazul comunității noastre naționale de informații, precum și al componentelor și structurilor sale. Necesitatea și importanța proiectului este în consecință (...) înrădăcinată în nevoia de analiști bine pregătiți și în misiunea lor centrală în domeniul informațiilor, și anume crearea de produse (informații de securitate) care să poată prezenta o înțelegere corectă și exactă a diferitelor procese, evenimente. și fenomene pentru factorii de decizie. Selecția celor vizați pentru a fi pregătiți necesită alcătuirea inițială a profilului unui analist de informații, selecția însăși necesitând orientarea către un profil psihologic compatibil cu misiunea pe care acesta va trebui să o îndeplinească și care posedă un nivel minim de analitică. abilitățile necesare, celelalte aspecte referitoare la instruirea analistului vor fi implementate într-un program numit pentru educația și formarea analiștilor de informații. (shrink)

Language is nothing but human subjects in as much as they speak, say and know. Language is something coming from the inside of the speaking subject manifest in the intentional meaningful purpose of the individual speaker. A language, on the contrary, is something coming from the outside, from the speech community, something offered to the speaking subject from the tradition in the technique of speaking. The speech act is the performance of an intuition by the subject, both individual and social.

En el marco del V Congreso Internacional «La actualidad de Michel Foucault» celebrado en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid entre el 6 y el 8 de marzo de 2018, sostuvimos una interesante conversación con Daniel Lorenzini, investigador del pensamiento ético y político de Michel Foucault y editor de varios de sus cursos y conferencias publicadas en los últimos años en Francia. Discutimos sobre el estado actual de los archivos de Foucault adquiridos por la Biblioteca Nacional de Francia (BnF), algunos de (...) los diversos proyectos editoriales que se derivan del trabajo de archivo y análisis de los manuscritos del filósofo, la reciente e inesperada publicación de Les aveux de la chair y su relación con el proyecto de la Historia de la sexualidad tal como fue planteado en 1976, la relación de Foucault con Nietzsche respecto a sus lecturas de la subjetivación y el vínculo, no siempre evidente, entre ética y política a la luz de sus investigaciones sobre el filósofo francés. (shrink)

(This is one of the essays to be included in a book examining the causes of day-to-day strife in the populations of modern democracies vying to live and assert the freedoms promised to them by systems of governance supposed and expected to represent them.) -/- The emigrant / immigrant / migrant makes a conscious, relatively difficult decision to exchange what s/he knows for what is not known at all but in promise. The choice is often stark and carries with it (...) the imposition of restrictions on what will be possible in terms of existing customs, culture, and direct involvement with friends and family, and signifies a leap of faith into what appears to be a better, more prosperous, happier future. -/- At times, such choice is unavoidable, others it turns out to be a gamble of sorts, but, no matter what the cause, reason, or desire underlying an act of migration away from what the emigrant has known, it never turns out to be what was expected and no amount of preparation allows the emigrant to anticipate what will in fact occur. Migration is the founding of a new life in all the aspects of the emigrant’s existence. (shrink)

El autor del artículo edita y estudia una inscripción funeraria inédita de época helenística encontrada en Aptera (Creta) por la arqueóloga griega V. Ninioú-Kindelí. El texto de la inscripción dice así: A) Σώσανδρος | Βίτωνος. B) Ἀμφιμήδης | Σωσάνδρω.

(This is the prologue to a book examining the causes of day-to-day strife in the populations of modern democracies vying to live and assert the freedoms promised to them by systems of governance supposed and expected to represent them.) -/- Voters, the population at large, no longer want representation but participation. But how is that achieved? The technological means are certainly there for each one of us to express opinion, bring forth ideas, mobilise groups with common purpose. -/- The growth (...) of the social, political, and professional consciousness has gone beyond the stage of conformism and acceptance. The time is ripe for mechanisms that create profound bottlenecks to be superseded by better means, less procedure, less posturing, full involvement at grass roots. (shrink)

The renewed interest in concepts and their role in psychological theorizing is partially motivated by Machery’s claim that concepts are so heterogeneous that they have no explanatory role. Against this, pluralism argues that there is multiplicity of different concepts for any given category, while hybridism argues that a concept is constituted by a rich common representation. This article aims to advance the understanding of the hybrid view of concepts. First, we examine the main arguments against hybrid concepts and conclude that, (...) even if not successful, they challenge hybridism to find a robust criterion for concept individuation and to show an explanatory advantage for hybrid concepts. Then we propose such a criterion of individuation, which we will call ‘functional stable coactivation’. Finally, we examine the prospects of hybridism to understand what is involved in recent approaches to categorization and meaning extraction. 1 The Heterogeneity of Conceptual Representations2 Two Challenges for Hybrid Concepts: Individuation and Explanation2.1 The coordination criterion2.2 Concepts as constituents of thoughts3 Individuating Hybrids: Functional Stable Coactivation4 The Explanatory Power of Hybrid Concepts4.1 Categorization4.2 Meaning extraction4.2.1 Linguistic comprehension and rich lexical entries4.2.2 Polysemy and hybrid concepts5 Conclusion. (shrink)

A partir de los postulados de una concepción semántica de norma y su clasificación en reglas y principios, Robert Alexy ha enunciado una tesis fuerte de la separación, al concebir que entre ambos tipos de normas no solo existe una diferencia gradual, sino también cualitativa. En este contexto, los principios son descritos como mandatos de optimización, caracterizados por un cumplimiento gradual en atención a las posibilidades reales y jurídicas, y a través de la denominada técnica de la ponderación. A pesar (...) de las objeciones recibidas, la vigencia de esta tesis resulta incuestionable, sirviendo todavía de inspiración a las nuevas generaciones de juristas interesados en la Teoría del Derecho. En el presente capítulo se pretende exponer de manera sucinta pero precisa los postulados del principialismo alexyano, las críticas más recurrentes y sus posibles respuestas, para terminar con algunas notas interpretativas que persiguen contribuir a la continuación del camino trazado por el insigne profesor alemán. (shrink)

Using the method of Descriptive Experience Sampling, some subjects report experiences of thinking that do not involve words or any other symbols [Hurlburt, R. T., and C. L. Heavey. 2006. Exploring Inner Experience. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Hurlburt, R. T., and S. A. Akhter. 2008. “Unsymbolized Thinking.” Consciousness and Cognition 17 : 1364–1374]. Even though the possibility of this unsymbolized thinking has consequences for the debate on the phenomenological status of cognitive states, the phenomenon is still insufficiently examined. This paper analyzes (...) the main properties of unsymbolized thinking and advances an explanation of its origin. According to our analysis, unsymbolized thoughts appear as propositional states, that is, they are experienced as compositional conceptual phenomena, with semantic and syntactic features analogous to those of the contents of utterances. Based on this characterization, we hypothesize that UT is continuous with the activity of inner speech, in particular, it i... (shrink)

We have ignored for a century that the incompleteness of Quantum Theory (QT) is inseparable from the incompleteness of Special Relativity (RT). In this article, I claim that the latter has been gravely incomplete vis à vis the former from 1927 until today. But completing RT in the light of QT is not as simple as merely postulating nonlocality and stochasticity as “elements of reality” (which is de facto done by most physicists and pragmatic philosophers); otherwise, RT would not still (...) be in a “peaceful” conflict with QT after a century. Vice versa, I contend that QT is incomplete vis à vis RT, though not for the reasons claimed in the iconic EPR paper. We then show how to complete the Ontology, Foundation, and Structure of both RT and QT and merge them into an internally consistent embracive theory I call QR/TOPI. This theory offers a more cogent and simpler avenue to integrate RT with QT than positing exotic causal structures like ‘retrocausality’, ‘future-input dependence’, ‘superdeterminism’ – not to mention the extravagant ‘Many-Worlds’, ‘Many-Minds’, ‘Parallel-Lives’, and other interpretations of QT like Many-Histories, QBism, etc. -/- QR/TOPI provides the “radical conceptual renewal” wished by John Bell so as to integrate probability and nonlocality into an upgraded RT and, reciprocally, to integrate Frame-Invariance into QT while at the same time, as demanded by 2022 Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger, providing basic physical meaning to the resulting encompassing theory. The old outcast notion of absolute simultaneity is resurrected without any conflict with Einstein’s relative simultaneity, while Frame-Invariance is preserved via our Quantumlike Transformation (QLT), which is an extension of the Lorentz Transformation (LT): QLT includes what LT excludes: nonlocality. -/- Section 1 examines the philosophical foundations of Space and Time, focusing on RT, its plethora of empirical validations, and the tenets which make it incompatible with QT. Section 2 incorporates stochasticity into RT. Sections 3 through 5 gradually introduce QR/TOPI for mono-, bi-, and tri-quanton systems, with full consideration of Bell Theorem, nonlocality, teleportation, and their implications. Section 6 attempts to review the current status quo. Section 7 makes the case for the incompleteness of RT and QT. Section 8 explains how to complete and integrate both theories so as to formally develop QR/TOPI. Finally, in Section 9, via multiple experimental setups, I zero in on Zeilinger’s basic question: “what does this really mean in a basic way?”. (shrink)

While scientific inquiry crucially relies on the extraction of patterns from data, we still have a far from perfect understanding of the metaphysics of patterns—and, in particular, of what makes a pattern real. In this paper we derive a criterion of real-patternhood from the notion of conditional Kolmogorov complexity. The resulting account belongs to the philosophical tradition, initiated by Dennett :27–51, 1991), that links real-patternhood to data compressibility, but is simpler and formally more perspicuous than other proposals previously defended in (...) the literature. It also successfully enforces a non-redundancy principle, suggested by Ladyman and Ross, that aims to exclude from real-patternhood those patterns that can be ignored without loss of information about the target dataset, and which their own account fails to enforce. (shrink)

For philosophy to criticize the concept of reality requires self-criticism. Throughout history many thinkers that have systematized a critique of both reality and philosophy. In this article we will analyze the Kantian and Hegelian systems by showing the failure in their respective critique to exercise sufficient self-criticism, resulting in unfinished critiques. Going a step further, Tanabe’s proposal was to plunge philosophy into a kind of «absolute disruption» that would drive thought beyond itself by means of an absolute critique in which (...) being and nothingness are seen to interpenetrate each other, thus opening up the possibility of positing absolute nothingness as «a foundation that is not a foundation.». (shrink)

We very often discover ourselves engaged in inner speech. It seems that this kind of silent, private, speech fulfils some role in our cognition, most probably related to conscious thinking. Yet, the study of inner speech has been neglected by philosophy and psychology alike for many years. However, things seem to have changed in the last two decades. Here we review some of the most influential accounts about the phenomenology and the functions of inner speech, as well as the methodological (...) problems that affect its study. (shrink)

(ESP) Éste artículo tiene como objeto hacer una re-exposición de la teoría política de Baruch Espinosa (1632-1677) a la luz de su ontología –entendida ésta como una ontología materialista. Por lo tanto, se hará una interpretación materialista de la teoría política éste filósofo, desde un acercamiento al «Materialismo Filosófico» de Gustavo Bueno –específicamente, desde su filosofía política, como «materialismo político». Para esto, exploraremos brevemente ciertas ideas de su Tratado Político –teniendo en cuenta, desde luego, la Ética y el Tratado Teológico-Político. (...) Lidiaremos con ideas como «derecho natural», «Estado» o «Libertad», u otras ideas que irán saliendo a través de estas y que junto a la construcción de unas, dialécticamente criticará y destruirá otras –como «Pueblo», «Voluntad», «monarquía absoluta» etc. (ENG)("The Political Ontology of Spinoza") The aim of this article is the reexposition of Baruch Spinoza's (1632-1677) political theory, in the light of his ontology –understood as a materialist ontology. Therefore, we will make a materialist interpretation of the political theory of this philosopher, from an approach to Gustavo Bueno's «Philosophical Materialism» –specifically, from his political philosophy, as a «political materialism». For that goal, we will briefly explore certain ideas from his Political Treatise –of course, with the help of other works, like the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the Ethics. We will deal with ideas like «natural law», «State», «Freedom», and other ideas that may arise from those and in which construction, they dialectically criticize and destroy others –v.g., «People», «Will», «absolute monarchy» and so on. (shrink)

La lengua española nació cuando los hablantes del latín de la península Ibérica cambiaron de modo de pensar. Desde el pensar absoluto latino, asimilaron el pensar substantivo de los griegos a través del pensar cristiano. Haciendo una síntesis de estos tres pensares absolutos, crearon el pensar individual, el pensar abstracto y el pensar real. De este modo crearon lo que se puede designar como una ontología lingüística, la manifestación directa del pensar español. Los modos de pensar tienen que ver con (...) los modos de concebir lo que nos rodea. Ambos a dos preceden y determinan el pensamiento y la manifestación de las actividades libres del hombre, tanto si este es considerado individualmente, como si es considerado socialmente dentro del conjunto de hablantes que participan y contribuyen dentro de una comunidad lingüística. (shrink)

El lenguaje o la actividad cognoscitiva del ser humano que se debate en su lucha contra la circunstancia en la que le ha tocado vivir es hablar, decir y conocer. El hombre habla porque tiene algo que decir, dice porque se define a sí mismo ante la circunstancia en la que vive en cada momento, y esto es posible porque conoce de forma creativa. En este sentido el decir determina el hablar, por arriba, y el conocer por abajo. El conocer (...) humano empieza en una sensación sensible, la aísthesis, la cual es transformada en un universal, extracto o concepto, logos, el cual es el fruto de una serie de operaciones intelectivas realizadas por el propio sujeto en u solo acto, el acto único de hablar, decir y conocer. (shrink)

Mi concepción sobre el lenguaje parte de tres realidades ciertas: el hablar (Coseriu), el decir (Ortega y Gasset), y el conocer (Descartes, Kant, Ortega y Gasset), tres realidades tan ciertas como que yo vivo porque estoy haciendo algo ahora mismo. Y este hacer algo constituye mi vida (Ortega y Gasset). Yo soy porque vivo y porque tengo la necesidad de hablar con otros seres humanos, quienes constituyen mi circunstancia, para definirme a mí mismo (decir) sobre aquello de lo que hablo (...) para conseguir un fin, aunque este sólo sea pasajero y volátil. La aparición del hablar, decir y conocer en el acto lingüístico nos revela el pensamiento y lo que llamamos el lenguaje y la lengua. Además, estas realidades radican en mí, en el ser humano, y manifiestan la condición de ser del ser humano, quien es capaz de conocer creativamente, definirse ante la situación que analiza antes de hablar (=decir), y de hablar utilizando palabras que no son suyas sino de la comunidad lingüística (=la lengua, Coseriu) en la que vive (Ortega y Gasset). Así, pues, considero el lenguaje como realidad que subyace en la conciencia del ser humano individual que habla, dice y conoce. (shrink)

Most of us are either philosophically naïve scientists or scientifically naïve philosophers, so we misjudged Schrödinger’s “very burlesque” portrait of Quantum Theory (QT) as a profound conundrum. The clear signs of a strawman argument were ignored. The Ontic Probability Interpretation (TOPI) is a metatheory: a theory about the meaning of QT. Ironically, equating Reality with Actuality cannot explain actual data, justifying the century-long philosophical struggle. The actual is real but not everything real is actual. The ontic character of the Probable (...) has been elusive for so long because it cannot be grasped directly from experiment; it can only be inferred from physical setups that do not morph it into the Actual. In this Part III, Born’s Rule and the quantum formalism for the microworld are intuitively surmised from instances in our macroworld. The posited reality of the quanton’s probable states and properties is probed and proved. After almost a century, TOPI aims at setting the record straight: the so-called ‘Basis’ and ‘Measurement’ problems are ill-advised. About the first, all bases are legitimate regardless of state and milieu. As for the second, its premise is false: there is no need for a physical ‘collapse’ process that would convert many states into a single state. Under TOPI, a more sensible variant of the ‘measurement problem’ can be reformulated in non-anthropic terms as a real problem. Yet, as such, it is not part of QT per se and will be tackled in future papers. As for the mythical cat, the ontic state of a radioactive nucleus is not pure, so its evolution is not governed by Schrödinger’s equation – let alone the rest of his “hellish machine”. Einstein was right: “The Lord is subtle but not malicious”. However, ‘The Lord’ turned out to be much subtler than what Einstein and Schrödinger could have ever accepted. Part IV introduces QR/TOPI: a new theory that solves the century-old problem of integrating Special Relativity with Quantum Theory [1]. (shrink)

Ignited by Einstein and Bohr a century ago, the philosophical struggle about Reality is yet unfinished, with no signs of a swift resolution. Despite vast technological progress fueled by the iconic Einstein/Podolsky/Rosen paper (EPR) [1] [2] [3], the intricate link between ontic and epistemic aspects of Quantum Theory (QT) has greatly hindered our grip on Reality and further progress in physical theory. Fallacies concealed by tortuous logical negations made EPR comprehension much harder than it could have been had Einstein written (...) it himself in German. EPR is plagued with preconceptions about what a physical property is, the 'Uncertainty Principle', and the Principle of Locality. Numerous interpretations of QT vis à vis Reality exist and are keenly disputed [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]. This is the first of a series of articles arguing for a novel physical interpretation I call ‘The Ontic Probability Interpretation’ (TOPI). A gradual explanation of TOPI is given intertwined with a meticulous logico-philosophical scrutiny of EPR, with Part I focusing on the meaning of Einstein’s ‘incompleteness’ claim for QT: a conceptual confusion, a preconception about Reality, and a flawed dichotomy are shown to be severe obstacles for the EPR argument to succeed. Part II completes the analysis, proving EPR claim of ‘incompleteness’ for QT is fallacious [12]. Part III further develops TOPI, while scrutinizing the mythical ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’, as well as the ‘Basis’ and ‘Measurement’ pseudo-problems [13]. Part IV introduces QR/TOPI: a new theory that solves the century-old problem of integrating Special Relativity with Quantum Theory [14]. (shrink)

After identifying in Part I [1] a conceptual confusion (TCC), a Reality preconception (TRP1), and a fallacious dichotomy (TFD), the famous EPR/EPRB [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] argument for correlated ‘particles’ is now studied in the light of the Ontic Probability Interpretation of Quantum Theory (QT/TOPI). Another Reality preconception (TRP2) is found, showing that EPR used and ignored QT predictions in a single paralogism. Employing TFD and TRP2, EPR unveiled a contradiction veiled in its premises. By removing nonlocality from QT’s (...) Ontology [1] by fiat, EPR preordained its incompleteness. The Petitio Principii fallacy was at work from the outset. Einstein surmised the proper solution to his incompleteness/nonlocality dilemma in 1949 [7], but never abandoned his philosophical stance [8]. It is concluded that there are no definitions of Reality: we have to accept that Reality may not conform to our prejudices and, if an otherwise successful theory predicts what we do not believe in, no gedankenexperiment will help because our biases may slither through. Only actual experiments could assist in solving Einstein’s dilemma, as has been proven in the last 50 years. Notwithstanding, EPR is one of the most influential papers in history and has immensely sparked both conceptual and technological progress. Part III of this series further develops QT/TOPI, while scrutinizing the mythical ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’, as well as the ‘Basis’ and ‘Measurement’ pseudo-problems [9]. Part IV introduces QR/TOPI: a new theory that solves the century-old problem of integrating Special Relativity with Quantum Theory [10]. (shrink)

A widespread Western conception about the sanctity of the human body and its parts prevents from any morally acceptable disposition of these objects. However, this entails nothing but a dualistic conception of the human being as a composite of detachable parts — namely, body and mind. Understood as the antechamber of legal rights, moral rights perform an important — yet frequently overlooked — justifying function that permeates the political discourse. Although the connection among moral, political and legal discourses should be (...) properly acknowledged, certain boundaries are to mediate among each scope for the sake of certainty and accuracy. Intermediate realities, as the so-called human rights, serve to connect the moral and legal domains, still they also blur the lines along which the discourse is deployed. Moral entities are essentially inalienable, to the extent that they demarcate the moral status of the subject. By contrast, legal rights are essentially negotiable and, thus, alienable. The controversial instance of bodily rights will serve to test the assertions above. (shrink)

According to many philosophers, rationality is, at least in part, a matter of one’s attitudes cohering with one another. Theorists who endorse this idea have devoted much attention to formulating various coherence requirements. Surprisingly, they have said very little about what it takes for a set of attitudes to be coherent in general. We articulate and defend a general account on which a set of attitudes is coherent just in case and because it is logically possible for the attitudes to (...) be jointly satisfied in the sense of jointly fitting the world. In addition, we show how the account can help adjudicate debates about how to formulate various rational requirements. (shrink)

Dysmenorrhea, or menstrual pain, is regularly suffered by 45 to 95% of menstruating women. Despite its prevalence, and despite the philosophical importance of pain as a general phenomenon, dysmenorrhea has been all but completely overlooked in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. This paper aims at rectifying this situation. We single out three properties of what is often considered the paradigmatic case of painful experience, what we call injury-centered pains, and argue that dysmenorrhea does not have any of them, and hence (...) that it does not neatly conform to the injury-centered model of pain. This calls into question the centrality of the injury-centered model, and suggests novel research avenues within theoretical debates on affectivity. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship between language and thought, focusing on the question of whether language can be a vehicle of thought, as, for example, Peter Carruthers has claimed. We develop and examine a powerful argument—the "argument from explicitness"—against this cognitive role of language. The premises of the argument are just two: (1) the vehicle of thought has to be explicit, and (2) natural languages are not explicit. We explain what these simple premises mean and why we should believe (...) they are true. Finally, we argue that even though the argument from explicitness shows that natural language cannot be a vehicle of thought, there is a cognitive function for language. (shrink)

"...All the while, consumer responsibility has decreased gradually but steadily to the point where s/he can be said to own the purchasing accountability of a 2-year-old..." -/- The paper is divided into 2 parts: Part 1 - Sustainable Development Goals – Are our actions at odds with our goals? includes sections on: Slash and burn, the recurrent method Space Age Poverty – a chronic history of neglect The economics – some questions and answers Part 2 - Environmental, Social and Governance (...) factors (ESG) includes sections on: Governance Choice Product returns The environment – not just about global warming. (shrink)

Globalisation has brought immense changes to the national and international economic structure. The digital revolution and ICT expansion positively impacted the sharing economy development. In this regard, the most avant-garde countries in sharing economy seem to be the advanced countries. However, transitory countries such as Albania are making satisfactory progress as well. While being part of some global cases of sharing economy, Albania is also experiencing domestic incentives related with. The sectors involved in sharing economy are affiliated to different domains, (...) including agriculture, tourism, healthcare, transportation, etc. Albania strongly embraced technology because of its relatively young population and the flexible education system adopting to the market needs. The Albanian government is doing well on the promotion and usage of public platforms, which are supportive of the sharing concept. Although not specifically for the sharing economy, the government of Albania has released some useful strategic plans to embed the necessary instruments and infrastructure to digitalisation. However, there is more to do for sharing economy in specific terms. The collaboration of three actors, businesses-academia-government, would bring to the Albanian market new capacities and additional added values. (shrink)

There is a dimension of rationality, known as structural rationality, according to which a paradigmatic example of what it means to be rational is not to be akratic. Although some philosophers claim that aesthetics falls within the scope of rationality, a non-akrasia constraint prohibiting certain combinations of attitudes is yet to be developed in this domain. This essay is concerned with the question of whether such a requirement is plausible and, if so, whether it is an actual requirement of aesthetic (...) rationality. Ultimately, this paper defends the view that aesthetics is no different from other domains in that it requires coherence between a subject’s mental states (in the aesthetic case, between what is judged and what is aesthetically liked). (shrink)

The debate on the notion of function has been historically dominated by dispositional and etiological accounts, but recently a third contender has gained prominence: the organizational account. This original theory of function is intended to offer an alternative account based on the notion of self-maintaining system. However, there is a set of cases where organizational accounts seem to generate counterintuitive results. These cases involve cross-generational traits, that is, traits that do not contribute in any relevant way to the self-maintenance of (...) the organism carrying them, but instead have very important effects on organisms that belong to the next generation. We argue that any plausible solution to the problem of cross-generational traits shows that the organizational account just is a version of the etiological theory and, furthermore, that it does not provide any substantive advantage over standard etiological theories of function. (shrink)

Imperativism is the view that the phenomenal character of the affective component of pains, orgasms, and pleasant or unpleasant sensory experience depends on their imperative intentional content. In this paper I canvass an imperativist treatment of pains as reason-conferring states.

Intentionalism is the view that perceptual phenomenology depends on perceptual content. The aim of this paper is to make explicit an ambiguity in usual formulations of intentionalism, and to argue in favor of one way to disambiguate it. It concerns whether perceptual phenomenology depends on the content of one and only one representation (often construed as being identical to a certain perceptual experience), or instead depends on a collection of many different representations throughout the perceptual system. We argue in favor (...) of the latter option. Intentionalism so conceived can make better sense of contemporary neuroscience of perception, and is better equipped to confront several influential objections to traditional intentionalism. (shrink)

A typical claim in anti-representationalist approaches to cognition such as ecological psychology or radical embodied cognitive science is that ecological information is sufficient for guiding behavior. According to this view, affordances are immediately perceptually available to the agent (in the so-called “ambient energy array”), so sensory data does not require much further inner processing. As a consequence, mental representations are explanatorily idle: perception is immediate and direct. Here we offer one way to formalize this direct-perception claim and identify some important (...) limits to it. We argue that the claim should be read as saying that successful behavior just implies picking out affordance-related information from the ambient energy array. By relying on the Partial Information Decomposition framework, and more concretely on its development of the notion of synergy, we show that in multimodal perception, where various energy arrays carry affordance-related information, the “just pick out affordance-related information” approach is very inefficient, as it is bound to miss all synergistic components. Efficient multimodal information combination requires transmitting sensory-specific (and not affordance-specific) information to wherever it is that the various information streams are combined. The upshot is that some amount of computation is necessary for efficient affordance reconstruction. (shrink)

Recent work on signaling has mostly focused on communication between organisms. The Lewis–Skyrms framework should be equally applicable to intra-organismic signaling. We present a Lewis–Skyrms signaling-game model of painful signaling, and use it to argue that the content of pain is predominantly imperative. We address several objections to the account, concluding that our model gives a productive framework within which to consider internal signaling.

We explore the contribution made by oscillatory, synchronous neural activity to representation in the brain. We closely examine six prominent examples of brain function in which neural oscillations play a central role, and identify two levels of involvement that these oscillations take in the emergence of representations: enabling (when oscillations help to establish a communication channel between sender and receiver, or are causally involved in triggering a representation) and properly representational (when oscillations are a constitutive part of the representation). We (...) show that even an idealized informational sender–receiver account of representation makes the representational status of oscillations a non-trivial matter, which depends on rather minute empirical details. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, I present a framework for the description and evaluation of teleosemantic theories of intentionality, and use it to argue that several different objections to these theories (the various indeterminacy and adequacy problems) are, in a certain precise sense, manifestations of the same underlying issue. I then use the framework to show that Millikan's biosemantics, her own recent declarations to the contrary notwithtanding, presents indeterminacy. In the second part, I develop a novel teleosemantic proposal (...) which makes progress in the treatment of this family of problems. I describe a procedure to derive a (unique) homeostatic property cluster [HPC] from facts having to do with the properties that a certain indicator relied on, in the events leading to its fixation in a certain population. This HPC is the one that should figure in the content attribution to the indicator in question. (shrink)

Abstract: Introspection reveals that one is frequently conscious of some form of inner speech, which may appear either in a condensed or expanded form. It has been claimed that this speech reflects the way in which language is involved in conscious thought, fulfilling a number of cognitive functions. We criticize three theories that address this issue: Bermúdez’s view of language as a generator of second-order thoughts, Prinz’s development of Jackendoff’s intermediate-level theory of consciousness, and Carruthers’s theory of inner speech as (...) a rehearsal of action-schemata. We contend they have problems to account for those cases in which inner speech is fragmentary, and for the difference with those instances in which it appears as more sentence-like. In addition, we present verbal overshadowing as a phenomenon that neither of them can easily explain. Finally, we propose an account in which inner speech is fundamentally silent outer speech and argue that it is more explanatory than the alternatives. (shrink)

We present a dynamic model of the evolution of communication in a Lewis signaling game while systematically varying the degree of common interest between sender and receiver. We show that the level of common interest between sender and receiver is strongly predictive of the amount of information transferred between them. We also discuss a set of rare but interesting cases in which common interest is almost entirely absent, yet substantial information transfer persists in a *cheap talk* regime, and offer a (...) diagnosis of how this may arise. -/- . (shrink)