Recent studies of school-age children and adolescents have used social network analyses to characterize selection and socialization aspects of peer groups. Fewer network studies have been reported for preschool classrooms and many of those have focused on structural descriptions of peer networks, and/or, on selection processes rather than on social functions of subgroup membership. In this study we started by identifying and describing different types of affiliative subgroups (HMP- high mutual proximity, LMP- low mutual proximity, and ungrouped children) in a (...) sample of 240 Portuguese preschool children using nearest neighbor observations. Next, we used additional behavioral observations and sociometric data to show that HMP and LMP subgroups are functionally distinct: HMP subgroups appear to reflect friendship relations, whereas LMP subgroups appear to reflect common social goals, but without strong, within-subgroup dyadic ties. Finally, we examined the longitudinal implications of subgroup membership and show that children classified as HMP in consecutive years had more reciprocated friendships than did children whose subgroup classification changed from LMP or ungrouped to HMP. These results extend previous findings reported for North American peer groups. (shrink)

La historia de África contemporánea no puede entenderse sin el sufismo. Una espiritualidad vibrante llena de historias increíbles de santos y santas quienes han configurado la identidad de los países del Sahel enlazándola con el resto del mundo islámico. Y es que el sufismo africano no es un fenómeno del pasado ni un proyecto concluido. Al contrario, sigue con mucha fuerza, agrupando a musulmanes y siendo una organización transnacional de primera línea para comprender todo esos procesos políticos y sociales (...) de África. -/- Este libro, una etnografía vital, surge de la experiencia de haber vivido y aprendido entre ellos. Es la experiencia de un extraño que, a fuerza de escuchar, se hizo familia de ellos. Una obra para comprender la diversidad y la importancia de los símbolos en un momento en el que la globalización intenta homogeneizarlos. Hoy más que nunca la protección del mito, del símbolo o la identidad es importante para evitar el radicalismo y el fanatismo que asolan el mundo. (shrink)

Atas do III Colóquio Internacional de Metafísica. [ISBN 978-85-7273-730-2]. Sumário: 1. Prazer, desejo e amor-paixão no texto de Lucrécio, por Antonio Júlio Garcia Freire; 2. Anaximandro: física, metafísica e direito, por Celso Martins Azar Filho; 3. Carta a Guimarães Rosa, por Cícero Cunha Bezerra; 4. Ante ens, non ens: La primacía de La negación em El neoplatonismo medievel, por Claudia D’Amico; 5. Metafísica e neoplatonismo, por David G. Santos; 6. Movimento e tempo no pensamento de Epicuro, por Everton (...) da Silva Rocha; 7. Críticas e elogios de Nietzche a Sócrates, por Fernanda Bulhões; 8. Sobre a Metafísica ou a respeito do jejum, por Gilvan Fogel; 9. A origem estética da ontologia hermenêutica de Luigi Pareyson, por Íris Fátima da Silva; 10. A Natureza da filosofia de Hume, por Jaimir Conte; 11. Logique ET métaphysique, por Jean-Baptiste Jainet; 12. Blaise Pascal: da recusa da metafísica da raison à metafísica do « estudo do homem », por João Emiliano Fotaleza de Aquino; 13. O niilismo no prólogo de Assim Falou Zaratustra. Por José Elielton de Sousa; 14. Presencia;Ausência: de Plotino a Procolo, por José Maria Zamora; 15. A natureza do Eros platônico, por Jovelina Maria Ramos de Souza; 16. Breve comentário acerca da origem da Gelassenheit de Heidegger a partir da mística de mestre Eckkart, por Luiz Fernando Fontes-Teixeira; 17. Humanismo e domesticação em Regras para o parque humano, por Luiz Roberto Alves dos Santos; 18. Contra a teoria de dois mundos na filosofia de Platão (República V 476e-478e), por Marcelo Pimenta Marques; 19. Sensações, impressões, projeções: as afecções do pensamento, por Markus Figueira da Silva; 20. Contribuições à história de uma metáfora: Heidegger e Nicolau de Cusa, por Oscar Federico Bauchwitz; 21. Uma impossibilidade ontológica em Schopenhauer, por Paulo César Oliveira Vasconcelos; 22. Ser e fenômeno: a Fenomenologia como teoria estética da ciência, por Pedro Paulo Coroa; 23. Para que serve a Metafísica de Aristóteles? O exemplo do movimento animal, por Pierre-marie Morel; 24. Contribuições para uma ontologia digital, por Rafael Capurro; 25. O que é o fim da metafísica, por Rodrigo Ribeiro Alves Neto; 26. A Physis na conformação do logos: linguagem e pensamento no corpus epicúreo, por Rodrigo Vidal do Nascimento; 27. O acontecimento de mundo na era da informação, por Soraya Guimarães da Silva; 28. Apofaticismo e abstração em Mark Rothko, por Vanessa Alves de Lacerda Santos. -/- . (shrink)

Unlike Heidegger who reflects on the relationship between being and time, we are interested in studying the relationship between doing and time. We begin by discovering that the basis of people's doing is the starting point for any reflection on society and culture, and therefore we believe that our conclusions can be important especially for sociologists, ethnologists, political scientists, economists and psychologists. A fundamental difference between "doing" and "acting" could be that only people, not things, "do". We say "Antonio (...) made his house out of bricks to prevent the wind from blowing it down". We never refer to the "action of the wind" as a "doing". Acting, especially in "action," is erroneously associated with causation; we think, "the action of the wind on the house, is the cause of the collapse of the house." But in reality, causation is only a variant of doing. For example, in "Susanna writes a letter to Paul", Susanna is the cause of the text of the letter, but not of the reading of the letter. This is a paradigmatic example, the one that gave rise to our study. We say that the text "attracts its reader", as the poles of a magnet attract each other. From which we concluded that it is impossible to keep secrets. The importance of the study of doing in general becomes very relevant when we understand that "producing" and "consuming" are variants of doing. In Marx's work, the doing that generates social value is productive doing. But our research shows that all variants of doing generate order and all "order" generates organizational value. Note that the order of an act can be measured in "bits", which frees us from subjective measurements of the value of what we do in "money". We anticipate here that, in the following pages, we arrive at the conclusion that doing can be divided into 6 types of acts and their subgroups: the vectorial independent and hodern acts and the pendular complementary, parallel, curative and causa-dor acts. In addition, we discovered the existence of inter-acts, i.e. the "organizational resonance of the poles of a pendular act" and which includes the self-referent, bipolar, tripolar and multipole variants. This book could not have been written, without the background of the works already published and elaborated jointly, with Professor Luis de Marcos Ortega between 2018 and 2021. We refer to The Informational Foundation of the Human Act and Whispers and Shouts. The Informational Measurement of the Human Act both published by the University of Alcalá (Madrid). The texts of this book were published in weekly installments between May 2020 and December 2021, in the GaZeta portal of Guatemala. We have respected the chronological order of publication, as well as the contents of the articles. (shrink)

Sumário: 1. O conceito de revolução, Amélia de Jesus Oliveira; 2. Mudanças de concepção de mundo, Artur Bezzi Günther; 3. Habilidade e causalidade: uma proposta confiabilista para casos típicos de conhecimento, Breno Ricardo Guimarães Santos; 4. El realismo interno de Putnam y sus implicaciones en la filosofía de la ciencia y para el realismo científico, Marcos Antonio da Silva; 5.O papel da observação na atividade científica segundo Peirce, Max Rogério Vicentini; 6.Fact and Value entanglement: a collapse of objective (...) reality?, Oswaldo Melo Souza Filho; 7.Realismo interno e o paradoxo de Putnam, Renato Mendes Rocha; 8.Uma informação, dois formatos, dois destinos, Cícero Antônio Cavalcante Barroso; 9.O Mentiroso e as intuições acerca da noção de verdade na perspectiva de Saul Kripke, Ederson Safra Melo; 10.A conceptual difficulty with some definitions of behavior, Filipe Lazzeri; 11.A faceta epistêmica do problema da referência, Saulo Moraes de Assis; 12.Princípios metafísicos do método newtoniano, Bruno Camilo de Oliveira; 13.A resposta aristotélica para a aporia do regresso ao infinito nas demonstrações, Daniel Lourenço; 14.O uso da doutrina da ponderação aplicado ao principialismo, Cinthia Berwanger Pereira; 15.A fenomenologia da vida interior em Hannah Arendt, Elizabete Olinda Guerra; 16.Por que achar que o direito é formado por ordens é um fracasso?, ria Alice da Silva; 17 Por que ainda há poucas mulheres na filosofia? Uma versão modificada do modelo das “vozes diferentes”, Tânia A. Kuhnen; 18.Algumas considerações sobre Substância, Forma e Matéria na Metafísica de Aristóteles, Gabriel Geller Xavier. (shrink)

In this essay are discussed topics for formulation of a brief critique of two conceptions of Euro-Christian cosmology: the negation of the body and the transcendent deity inaccessible to pointout the relation of such points to a more central discourse of religion: the negation of this world infavor of a metaphysical reality unknown and inaccessible by the senses. Nietzsche and Antonio Bispo dos Santos (Nêgo Bispo) assist us in the reflection of such theme, the German philosopher provideshis considerations (...) about the Despisers of the body, the fable of the true world and his criticism of pure Platonism and the people, already the Brazilian quilombola thinker provides us with his considerationson biointeractivity with territorialized gods, explaining why cultures of immanent gods usually have arelationship of greater respect with the environment. (shrink)

Ligado directamente a la dinámica de los movimientos renovadores del arte que surgieron en la España de los años veinte, el texto de Ortega y Gasset ofrece unas perspectivas más amplias y entronca con la renovación de la estética y la historia del arte que había iniciado la tradición teórica e historiográfica alemana a finales del siglo XIX. Ofrecemos, además otros escritos que, como «¿Una exposición Zuloaga?», «La Gioconda», «Diálogo sobre el arte nuevo», «Ensayo de estética a manera de (...) prólogo» y «Sobre la crítica del arte», permiten una mejor comprensión del pensamiento de Ortega y del debate artístico y estético en España. La presente edición va precedida de un prólogo de Valeriano Bozal. (shrink)

The aim of this paper was to present ongoing research on the social representations relating to ritalin in Brazil between 1998 and 2008. Over this period, there was a considerable increase in ritalin usage and expansion of its use to purposes other than therapeutic use. Ritalin has been used not only for treating attention disorders, but also to enhance cognitive functions in healthy individuals. The research has developed through two fields of investigation with different methodologies. In the first field, Brazilian (...) scientific and popular publications have been investigated, with analysis on the arguments justifying ritalin usage and how scientific results are disseminated to the lay public in large-circulation newspapers. In the second field, focus groups have been used to explore the social representations that university students, students' parents and healthcare professionals have in relation to the use of ritalin for enhancing cognitive performance. -/- . (shrink)

Es común escuchar que el mundo Occidental debe a los árabes el descubrimiento del álgebra. No obstante, el desarrollo de esta disciplina puede interpretarse como un crisol de distintas tradiciones científicas que fue posible gracias a la clasificación, traducción y crítica tanto de los clásicos como de las obras que los árabes obtuvieron de los pueblos que conquistaron. Entre estos trabajos se encontraba Los Elementos de Euclides. Los Elementos fueron cuidadosamente traducidos durante el califato de Al-Ma’mūn por el matemático Mohammed (...) ibn-Musa Al-Khwārizmī, autor de Al-jabr wa’l muqābalah, quien sentó los fundamentos de la disciplina que más tarde sería conocida como álgebra y quien, en la primera parte de su obra, nos proporciona tres métodos para resolver tres tipos de ecuaciones que llama “ecuaciones combinadas”. A lo largo de este artículo se ofrecen argumentos para sostener que los métodos para resolver estas ecuaciones constituyen una reinterpretación, en el terreno algebraico, de los teoremas 6, 7 y 8 del segundo libro de Los Elementos de Euclides. Mi objetivo es dar respuesta a la siguiente pregunta: ¿Qué lectura de Los elementos Euclides posibilitó la emergencia del álgebra en el mundo árabe? Para responderla necesario explorar el acercamiento que los árabes tuvieron con el Libro II de Los Elementos, con el fin de proponer una interpretación de los posibles factores que los llevaron a formular el álgebra. Esto último, en particular, se encuentra en la primera parte de la obra de Al-Khwārizmī. Palabras clave: Álgebra, Al-Khwārizmī, Euclides, Ecuación, Teorema. (shrink)

Phylogeography, a relatively new subdicipline of evolutionary biology that attempts to unify the fields of phylogenetics and population biology in an explicit geographical context, has hosted in recent years a highly polarized debate related to the purported benefits and limitations that qualitative versus quantitative methods might contribute or impose on inferential processes in evolutionary biology. Here we present a friendly, non-technical introduction to the conflicting methods underlying the controversy, and exemplify it with a balanced selection of quotes from the primary (...) biological literature, to invite the philosophy of biology community to pay attention to the elements that have played a primary role in its presumed resolution. We also present the basic features of our own metascientific take on the debate, and point out—as a preliminary step in preparation for upcoming, more detailed treatments—the importance that appeals to authority in fields external to phylogeography per se have played in the current status of this highly visible evolutionary biology dispute. (shrink)

Many word forms in natural language are polysemous, but only some of them allow for co-predication, that is, they allow for simultaneous predications selecting for two different meanings or senses of a nominal in a sentence. In this paper, we try to explain (i) why some groups of senses allow co-predication and others do not, and (ii) how we interpret co-predicative sentences. The paper focuses on those groups of senses that allow co-predication in an especially robust and stable way. We (...) argue, using these cases, but focusing particularly on the multiply polysemous word ‘school’, that the senses involved in co-predication form especially robust activation packages, which allow hearers and readers to access all the different senses in interpretation. (shrink)

Ang pagpapalaganap ng wikang Filipino ay hindi payak na romantisasyon ng nasyonalismo. Sa halip, ito ay instrumento tungo sa higit na demokratisasyon ng wikang Filipino, at samakatuwid ay may malalim na implikasyon sa usapin ng katarungang panlipunan. Sa kontekstong ito mabibigyang-diin ang dulot na suliranin ng Dambuhalang Pagkakahating Pangkalinangan, na dahilan kung bakit mas namomonopolisa ng elit ang mga daluyan ng kapangyarihan tulad ng edukasyon, komersyo at pulitika. Tungo sa paghahanap ng lunas sa suliraning ito, makatutulong ang pagsasa-Filipino ng agham (...) panlipunan bilang esensyal na bahagi ng sistemang pang-edukasyon. -/- Bilang ambag sa adhikaing ito ng pagsasa-Filipino ng agham panlipunan, naglunsad ang pag-aaral na ito ng isang payak na bahaginan ng best practices para sa pagsasa-Filipino ng pagtuturo at pananaliksik sa antas ng silid-aralan at Departamento/Kolehiyo. Hinalaw ang best practices na ito mula sa iba’t ibang guro, mananaliksik, at institusyon, para makabuo ng isang munting imbentaryo ng mga “armas-panturo.” Binubuo ang imbentaryong ito ng 17 gawi/aktibidad/programa para sa antas ng silid-aralan, at 6 gawi/aktibidad/programa para sa antas ng Departamento/Kolehiyo. Nilalayon na maging munting batis ang imbentaryong ito para sa pagpapainam ng pedagohiya ng mga guro at polisiya ng mga institusyon tungo sa higit na pagsasa-Filipino ng pagtuturo at pananaliksik sa agham panlipunan. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta a teoria supervalorativista da vagueza e discute a objecção, que frequentemente lhe é dirigida, segundo a qual essa teoria não consegue dar conta do fenómeno da vagueza de ordem superior.

An ontology of Leibnizian relationalism, consisting in distance relations among sparse matter points and their change only, is well recognized as a serious option in the context of classical mechanics. In this paper, we investigate how this ontology fares when it comes to general relativistic physics. Using a Humean strategy, we regard the gravitational field as a means to represent the overall change in the distance relations among point particles in a way that achieves the best combination of being simple (...) and being informative. (shrink)

The study determined the influence of innate mathematical characteristics on the number sense competencies of junior high school students in a Philippine public school. The descriptive-correlational research design was used to accomplish the study involving a nonrandom sample of sixty 7th-grade students attending synchronous math sessions. Data obtained from the math-specific Learning Style and Self-Efficacy questionnaires and the modified Number Sense Test (NST) were analyzed and interpreted using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s Chi-Square, and Simple Linear Regression analysis. The research instruments and (...) statistics were all validated and tested for reliability. The analysis revealed that the students are visual learners, had no or slight self-efficacy, and their number sense competency level is poor. They encountered difficulty in all the components and domains of the NST. Moreover, the students’ mathematical self-efficacy is significantly related and may influence their number sense competency level. Building upon the learners’ self-efficacy to further their understanding and skills in number sense is necessary. (shrink)

Paunang Salita Ang kasalukuyang aklat ay produkto ng masigasig na pagsusumikap ng mga mag-aaral ng BA Kasaysayan sa Politeknikong Unibersidad ng Pilipinas, Sta. Mesa sa ilalim ng klase na Historiograpiya ni Dr. Zeus A. Salazar. Tinatangka nitong maitala para sa salinlahi ang mga kaganapan sa kanilang suplemental na klase tuwing Martes sa Bahay Escaler, ang tahanan ng kanilang Guro. -/- Magkagayumpaman, hindi ito talaga maitatangi sa mahabang kasaysayan ng pagtuturo ni Salazar. Ang pagkakatitikan/pagpapakatitikan higit sa lahat ay isa nang signature (...) style sa pagtuturo ni Salazar mula pa noong dekada 1970. Mababanggit din ang kinagawian niyang pagdaragdag ng oras labas sa opisyal na oras ng klase upang magpalalim ng mga paksang inaral sa loob nito, kung hindi man sa mga kapihang matatagpuan sa kaligiran ng U.P. Campus kung saan siya nagturo nang may 40 taon, at sa Bahay Gomburza mismo, ang dating tahanan ni Salazar. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on relationalism about space and time as motivated by a minimalist ontology of the physical world: there are only matter points that are individuated by the distance relations among them, with these relations changing. We assess two strategies to combine this ontology with physics, using classical mechanics as example: the Humean strategy adopts the standard, non-relationalist physical theories as they stand and interprets their formal apparatus as the means of bookkeeping of the change of the distance relations (...) instead of committing us to additional elements of the ontology. The alternative theory strategy seeks to combine the relationalist ontology with a relationalist physical theory that reproduces the predictions of the standard theory in the domain where these are empirically tested. We show that, as things stand, this strategy cannot be accomplished without compromising a minimalist relationalist ontology. (shrink)

Constituent power : the concept of a crisis -- Virtue and fortune : the machiavellian paradigm -- The Atlantic model and the theory of counterpower -- Political emancipation in the American constitution -- The revolution and the constitution of labor -- Communist desire and the dialectic restored -- The constitution of strength.

The goal of this essay is twofold. First, it provides a quick look at the foundations of modern relational mechanics by tracing its development from Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti's original ideas until present-day's pure shape dynamics. Secondly, it discusses the most appropriate metaphysics for pure shape dynamics, showing that relationalism is more of a nuanced thesis rather than an elusive one. The chapter ends with a brief assessment of the prospects of pure shape dynamics in light of quantum physics.

Most words in natural language are vague, that is to say, they lack sharp boundaries and, hence, they have (actual or potential) borderline cases, where the word in question neither definitely applies nor definitely fails to apply. Vagueness gives rise to paradoxes, the best known of which is the sorites (concerned with how many grains of sand are needed to make a heap). Besides offering a solution to such paradoxes, a theory of vagueness should systematically describe how the truth conditions (...) of sentences with vague terms are determined; and it should also define the right logical principles for reasoning with such sentences. This article offers an introduction to the main theories of vagueness and to the problems they have to face. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the thesis suggested by Cappelen and Lepore, according to which if contextualism were true, communication would require many items, and therefore would be fragile; communication is not fragile, and therefore, communication does not demand a large number of conditions, and contextualism is false. While we should grant the robustness of communication, it is not guaranteed by some unchanging conditions, but by different flexible mechanisms that enhance the chances of mutual understanding at a relatively low (...) cost –– this is true, in particular, of different feedback mechanisms and of alternative ways to make the same information mutually available. Communication is not a series of successive, individual and independent actions; dialogues are a kind of joint activity in which misunderstandings are jointly repaired by participants as part of the very activity they are engaged in. Moreover, as we consider the roles of hearers in a conversation, we see that no construal makes Cappelen and Lepore’’s argument both plausible and relevant. The hearer can either be overhearer or a certified participant. If the hearer is an overhearer, it may be the case that he easily misunderstands what is said, but it has no consequence to the understanding of what takes place in a dialogue, since, ex hypothesi, he is not a party to it. If the hearer is a participant, many of the conditions of mutual understanding will be assured in the dialogical activity itself, and both he and the speaker will make efforts to assure that mutual understanding do take place, as part of their responsibilities as parties to a dialogue –– and their argument is not plausible. (shrink)

The paper discusses from a metaphysical standpoint the nature of the dependence relation underpinning the talk of mutual action between material and spatiotemporal structures in general relativity. It is shown that the standard analyses of dependence in terms of causation or grounding are ill-suited for the general relativistic context. Instead, a non-standard analytical framework in terms of structural equation modeling is exploited, which leads to the conclusion that the kind of dependence encoded in the Einstein field equations is a novel (...) one. (shrink)

Our question, in this paper, is about the plausibility of the expressivist account of one’s self- attribution of mental states. More to the point, we will strictly follow the principle of charity as a mean to show that an expressivist philosopher can have good and reasonable answers to the set of objections put together in so called “Geach’s point”. Using this method, we hope to give enough evidences that an expressivist philosopher has enough resources to build a plausible explanation for (...) one’s attribution of mental states to herself. (shrink)

Ang sanaysay na ito ay isang deskriptibong pagbasa sa To Be in History: Dark Days of Authoritarianism na pinatnugutan ni Melba Padilla Maggay, sa lente ng “kuwentong buhay,” partikular na ang bersyon nito na dinalumat ni Clemen Aquino, isa sa mga pangunahing tagapagtaguyod ng Sosyolohiyang Pilipino. Sisiyasatin ang saysay ng mga kuwentong buhay na nilalaman ng akda sa konteksto ng mga kontemporaryong reyalidad ng lipunang Pilipino, tulad ng rehimeng Duterte, pagsuporta ng mga Kristiyano sa mga represibong administrasyon, at pambabaluktot ng (...) kasaysayan. (shrink)

À primeira vista, pode-se pensar que toda restrição à dúvida é contrária à progressão do conhecimento e antidemocrática. Este argumento é utilizado por diferentes sabores de negacionismo. No entanto, um exame do modo como funcionam dúvidas nos mostra que existem exigências epistêmicas para a legitimidade da dúvida que não são satisfeitas pelos negacionismos. Uma consequência deste argumento é que a normatividade epistêmica não é absorvida pela normatividade política. A especificidade da normatividade epistêmica, que explica porque a dúvida de negacionistas não (...) é legítima, desaparece em teorias construtivistas. Teses construtivistas resultam de uma confusão entre o fato de teorias serem construtos sociais e a tese que elas constroem os fatos sobre os quais portam a teoria ela mesma. A legitimidade da dúvida depende de processos sociais de filtragem epistêmica. Os filtros epistêmicos socialmente construídos refletem um fato profundo da evolução da cultura humana: a produção cumulativa, social e assimétrica do conhecimento. (shrink)

In actuarial parlance, the price of an insurance policy is considered fair if customers bearing the same risk are charged the same price. The estimate of this fair amount hinges on the expected value obtained by weighting the different claims by their probability. We argue that, historically, this concept of actuarial fairness originates in an Aristotelian principle of justice in exchange (equality in risk). We will examine how this principle was formalized in the 16th century and shaped in life insurance (...) during the following two hundred years, in two different interpretations. The Domatian account of actuarial fairness relied on subjective uncertainty: An agreement on risk was fair if both parties were equally ignorant about the chances of an uncertain event. The objectivist version grounded any agreement on an objective risk estimate drawn from a mortality table. We will show how the objectivist approach collapsed in the market for life annuities during the 18th century, leaving open the question of why we still speak of actuarial fairness as if it were an objective expected value. (shrink)

This paper argues that many of the conceptual controversies in evolutionary biology are due to the use of different operational definitions. Since the set of operations is not consistent, then there are many ways to understand, in practice, how concepts should be investigated. In this paper we introduce a formal analysis to study the scope of operationalism and we conclude that the controversial concepts are in fact umbrella variables, that is, a single term can be referring to different processes, phenomena (...) or entities linked by a large ontological commitment driving operationalism. If this is correct, then many of the controversies in evolutionary biology are due, in part, to the operationalization of the objects of study. (shrink)

The paper introduces an extension of the proposal according to which conceptual representations in cognitive agents should be intended as heterogeneous proxytypes. The main contribution of this paper is in that it details how to reconcile, under a heterogeneous representational perspective, different theories of typicality about conceptual representation and reasoning. In particular, it provides a novel theoretical hypothesis - as well as a novel categorization algorithm called DELTA - showing how to integrate the representational and reasoning assumptions of the theory-theory (...) of concepts with the those ascribed to the prototype and exemplars-based theories. (shrink)

One of the early propositions on the nature of Southeast Asia comes from George Coedes’ 1968 The Indianized states of Southeast Asia, which assumes that Southeast Asia and its identity construction resulted from the region’s passive acceptance of culture from India and China. Such is the case that that the cultural landscape of the region becomes a mere accumulation of external influences. Robert Redfield’s notion of “great and little traditions” that Southeast Asian historians used in examining and understanding Southeast Asian (...) identity and history influenced these ideas. Zeus Salazar’s 1988 The Malayan connection, challenges this framing of Southeast Asian history. -/- This study aims to evaluate Salazar’s historiographical contributions to Southeast Asian studies, especially in terms of his efforts to problematize and establish the pan-Malayan identity of insular Southeast Asia. This will be undertaken through a critical review of his works such as Kabihasnang Asyano: Isang pangkasaysayang introduksyon [Asian civilization: A historical introduction] (1990); The Malayan connection (1998); Ang Pilipinong banua/banwa sa mundong Melano-Polynesiano [The Philippines in the Melano-Polynesian world] (2006); and, Asya: Kasaysayan at kabihasnan [Asia: History and civilization] (2010), as well as the works of some scholars in Southeast Asian Studies who have been influenced by Salazar and his works. The research will also show that the nationalist historiography that Salazar advocates emphasizes and highlights the Southeast Asian region’s Austronesian roots as the basis of the region’s cultural identity. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es explorar la respuesta editorial de las revistas ante artículos de investigación que puedan contener errores metodológicos o ser casos de fraude. 17.244 artículos comentados en PubPeer, una web de revisión post-publicación, fueron procesados y clasificados de acuerdo a diferentes errores y categorías de fraude. Luego, la respuesta editorial (i.e., notas editoriales) a estas publicaciones fueron extraídas de PubPeer, Retraction Watch and PubMed para obtener la imagen más amplia. Los resultados muestran que solo 21,5% de (...) los artículos que merecen una nota editorial (i.e., errores honestos, fallos metodológicos, fraude en la publicación, manipulación) fueron corregidos por la revista. Este porcentaje podría subir a 34% para las publicaciones de 2019. Esta respuesta es muy diferente entre revistas, pero similar entre disciplinas. Otro resultado interesante es que las revistas de alto impacto sufren más de manipulación de imágenes, mientras que el fraude en la publicación es más frecuente en revistas de bajo impacto. El estudio concluye con la observación de que las revistas deben mejorar su respuesta a artículos problemáticos. (shrink)

Book Description (Blurb): Cognitive Design for Artificial Minds explains the crucial role that human cognition research plays in the design and realization of artificial intelligence systems, illustrating the steps necessary for the design of artificial models of cognition. It bridges the gap between the theoretical, experimental and technological issues addressed in the context of AI of cognitive inspiration and computational cognitive science. -/- Beginning with an overview of the historical, methodological and technical issues in the field of Cognitively-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, (...) Lieto illustrates how the cognitive design approach has an important role to play in the development of intelligent AI technologies and plausible computational models of cognition. Introducing a unique perspective that draws upon Cybernetics and early AI principles, Lieto emphasizes the need for an equivalence between cognitive processes and implemented AI procedures, in order to realise biologically and cognitively inspired artificial minds. He also introduces the Minimal Cognitive Grid, a pragmatic method to rank the different degrees of biologically and cognitive accuracy of artificial systems in order project and predict their explanatory power with respect to the natural systems taken as source of inspiration. -/- Providing a comprehensive overview of cognitive design principles in constructing artificial minds, this text will be essential reading for students and researchers of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. (shrink)

In recent decades, investigation of brain injuries associated with amnesia allowed progress in the philosophy and science of memory, but it also paved the way for the hubris of assuming that memory is an exclusively neural phenomenon. Nonetheless, there are methodological and conceptual reasons preventing a reduction of the ecological and contextual phenomenon of memory to a neural phenomenon, since memory is the observed action of an individual before being the simple output of a brain (or, at least, so we (...) will argue), and there is no good reason to suppose that it is necessary to postulate a more basic reality to memory lying behind the mere individual actions. (shrink)

Although there is increasing recognition that theory and practice in science are often inseparably intertwined, discussions of scientific controversies often continue to focus on theory, and not practice or methodologies. As a contribution to constructing a framework towards understanding controversies linked to scientific practices, we introduce the notion of borrowed epistemic credibility, to describe the situation in which scientists exploit fallacious similarities between accepted tenets in other fields to garner support for a given position in their own field. Our proposal (...) is based on the analysis of a recent controversy in phylogeography, a biological subdiscipline concerned with the study of the historical causes of variation in genetic diversity within species in concrete biogeographical locations. Through a review of the arguments that support the two conflicting phylogeographic schools, we show that ‘theory’ plays essentially no role as a foundation of the controversy, whereas both sides borrow epistemic credibility from sources such as formal logic, similarity of results to those in other scientific areas, the authority of prominent scientists, or the presumed superiority of quantitative vs. verbal reasoning. Our case study underscores the indivisibility of theory and practice and provide a means to re-examine important philosophical issues such as the meaning of inference, rationality, justification, and objectivity in scientific practice. (shrink)

The paper shows how the Bohmian approach to quantum physics can be applied to develop a clear and coherent ontology of non-perturbative quantum gravity. We suggest retaining discrete objects as the primitive ontology also when it comes to a quantum theory of space-time and therefore focus on loop quantum gravity. We conceive atoms of space, represented in terms of nodes linked by edges in a graph, as the primitive ontology of the theory and show how a non-local law in which (...) a universal and stationary wave-function figures can provide an order of configurations of such atoms of space such that the classical space-time of general relativity is approximated. Although there is as yet no fully worked out physical theory of quantum gravity, we regard the Bohmian approach as setting up a standard that proposals for a serious ontology in this field should meet and as opening up a route for fruitful physical and mathematical investigations. (shrink)

In this paper we identify and characterize an analysis of two problematic aspects affecting the representational level of cognitive architectures (CAs), namely: the limited size and the homogeneous typology of the encoded and processed knowledge. We argue that such aspects may constitute not only a technological problem that, in our opinion, should be addressed in order to build arti cial agents able to exhibit intelligent behaviours in general scenarios, but also an epistemological one, since they limit the plausibility of the (...) comparison of the CAs' knowledge representation and processing mechanisms with those executed by humans in their everyday activities. In the fi nal part of the paper further directions of research will be explored, trying to address current limitations and future challenges. (shrink)

The paper investigates the kind of dependence relation that best portrays Machian frame-dragging in general relativity. The question is tricky because frame-dragging relates local inertial frames to distant distributions of matter in a time-independent way, thus establishing some sort of non-local link between the two. For this reason, a plain causal interpretation of frame-dragging faces huge challenges. The paper will shed light on the issue by using a generalized structural equation model analysis in terms of manipulationist counterfactuals recently applied in (...) the context of metaphysical enquiry by Schaffer (2016) and Wilson (2017). The verdict of the analysis will be that frame-dragging is best understood in terms of a novel type of dependence relation that is half-way between causation and grounding. (shrink)

Nos anos 1970s, Hilary Putnam defendeu a tese que designadores de espécies naturais, como “água”, “tigre” e “ouro”, são termos indexicais que mudam de significado a cada contexto. No entanto, Tyler Burge rejeitou essa tese, e Putnam veio a adotar a posição de Burge. A rejeição de Burge está apoiada na distinção entre crenças de dicto e crenças de re. Nesse artigo veremos os pontos de contato entre as posições de Putnam e Burge, a posição de Putnam nos anos 1970s, (...) os principais argumentos de Burge contra a tese da indexicalidade dos designadores de espécies naturais e a diferença entre crenças de dicto e crenças de re. (shrink)

We intoduce a novel extension of Description Logics (DLs) of typicality by means of probabilities able to represent and reason about typical properties and defeasible inheritance in DLs.

The paper investigates the type of realism that best suits the framework of decoherence taken at face value without postulating a plurality of worlds, or additional hidden variables, or non-unitary dynamical mechanisms. It is argued that this reading of decoherence leads to an extremely radical type of perspectival realism, especially when cosmological decoherence is considered.

Pure shape dynamics (PSD) is a novel implementation of the relational framework originally proposed by Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti. PSD represents a Leibnizian/Machian approach to physics in that it completely describes the dynamical evolution of a physical system without resorting to any structure external to the system itself. The chapter discusses how PSD effectively describes a de Broglie-Bohm N-body system and the conceptual benefits of such a relational description. The analysis will highlight the new directions in the quest for (...) an understanding of the nature of the wave function that are opened up by a modern relationalist elaboration on de Broglie's and Bohm's original insights. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to engage with C. Thi Nguyen’s characterization of the echo chamber and to propose two things. First, I argue that a proper reading of his concept of echo chamber should make use of the notion of ignorance in the form of a structural epistemic insensitivity. My main contention is that ignorance as a substantive structural practice accounts for the epistemically deleterious effects of echo chambers. Second, I propose that from the talk of ignorance we (...) should be able to see echo chambers in terms of their more harmful impacts in our daily lives. To do that, I argue that we should think of echo chambers as tools to promote hermeneutical domination. If my representation of Nguyen’s concept is accurate, I believe we can see some important theoretical consequences stemming from the way Nguyen understands it. (shrink)

I will present the rationale followed for the conceptualization and the following development the Dual PECCS system that relies on the cognitively grounded heterogeneous proxytypes representational hypothesis [Lieto 2014]. Such hypothesis allows integrating exemplars and prototype theories of categorization as well as theory-theory [Lieto 2019] and has provided useful insights in the context of cognitive modelling for what concerns the typicality effects in categorization [Lieto, 2021]. As argued in [Lieto et al., 2018b] a pivotal role in this respect is played (...) by the use of the conceptual spaces framework and by its integration with a symbolic knowledge representation layer. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the specific shift in the meaning of “civilization” that took place in texts and documents of early American philosophical naturalism. Particularly, it will focus on the specific role that naturalization plays in the edification of a newly secularized, science-oriented, and democratic society, as well as of a naturalized conception of culture and civilization. Indeed, as the work of many philosophers and intellectuals of the Forties highlights, naturalism represents not only the banner of a new idea of civilization, (...) but at the same time becomes the symbol of a powerful postwar ideology. (shrink)

In this article we present an advanced version of Dual-PECCS, a cognitively-inspired knowledge representation and reasoning system aimed at extending the capabilities of artificial systems in conceptual categorization tasks. It combines different sorts of common-sense categorization (prototypical and exemplars-based categorization) with standard monotonic categorization procedures. These different types of inferential procedures are reconciled according to the tenets coming from the dual process theory of reasoning. On the other hand, from a representational perspective, the system relies on the hypothesis of conceptual (...) structures represented as heterogeneous proxytypes. Dual-PECCS has been experimentally assessed in a task of conceptual categorization where a target concept illustrated by a simple common-sense linguistic description had to be identified by resorting to a mix of categorization strategies, and its output has been compared to human responses. The obtained results suggest that our approach can be beneficial to improve the representational and reasoning conceptual capabilities of standard cognitive artificial systems, and –in addition– that it may be plausibly applied to different general computational models of cognition. The current version of the system, in fact, extends our previous work, in that Dual-PECCS is now integrated and tested into two cognitive architectures, ACT-R and CLARION, implementing different assumptions on the underlying invariant structures governing human cognition. Such integration allowed us to extend our previous evaluation. (shrink)

Nang masakop ng Estados Unidos ang Pilipinas, dumating sa bansa ang isa pang uri ng Kristiyanismo na iba sa bitbit ng mga Espanyol-ang Protestantismo (na nagsimulang isilang noong ika-16 na dantaon sa Europa sa pamumuno nina Luther, Calvin, at Zwingli). Salaysay ni T. Valentino Sitoy (1989, iii, 7-11), 1899 unang dumating ang mga misyonerong Protestante sa Pilipinas, na kinabibilangan ng mga Presbyterian, Baptist, at Methodist. Kalaunan ay sinundan ito ng pagdating ng mga Episcopalian, Seventh-Day Adventist, United Brethren, Disciples, Christian and (...) Missionary Alliance, at iba pa. Ilan sa mga ito ay nagsama-sama upang mabuo ang Evangelical Union. Hinati nila ang Pilipinas sa iba't ibang probinsya ng mission fields (tulad ng ginawa dati ng mga Heswita, Rekoletos, Augustino, Pransiskano, at Dominikano), upang hindi sila magkaagawan sa populasyon na babahaginan ng ebanghelyo. (shrink)

We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of the combination of prototypical concepts. The proposed logic relies on the logic of typicality ALC + TR, whose semantics is based on the notion of rational closure, as well as on the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics, and is equipped with a cognitive heuristic used by humans for concept composition. We first extend the logic of typicality ALC + TR by typicality inclusions of the (...) form p :: T(C) v D, whose intuitive meaning is that “we believe with degree p about the fact that typical Cs are Ds”. As in the distributed semantics, we define different scenarios containing only some typicality inclusions, each one having a suitable probability. We then exploit such scenarios in order to ascribe typical properties to a concept C obtained as the combination of two prototypical concepts. We also show that reasoning in the proposed Description Logic is EXPTIME-complete as for the underlying standard Description Logic ALC. (shrink)

Epistemological disjunctivism is a philosophical theory that has received special attention in the recent years. Particularly because it has been seen by many as a way of renewing discussions that range from the nature of justification of our daily beliefs to the possibility of unveiling the structure of the problem of radical skepticism and of responding to it. Duncan Pritchard is one of the authors who have offered a particular view of disjunctivism and ways of conceiving of disjunctivist treatments to (...) such questions. His work has as its main source of inspiration the seminal work of John McDowell. In this paper, I present a way of understanding the problem ofradicalskepticism and the mannerin which epistemological disjunctivism aimsto offer solutionsto it. In orderto do that, I present McDowell’s general proposal and discuss in which way his account differs from Pritchard’s own disjunctivism. At the end, I try to show how Pritchard’s approach tries to respond to radical skepticism not only by appealing to a disjunctivist reading of our epistemic position, but also by offering a revision of our structure of reasons. (shrink)