This paper will aim to accomplish two things to show Luhmann’s and Hegel’s support of language and communication as dependent on culture, but also their differences with respect to how culture is formed in conjunction with the environment. This paper will firstly show how Hegel distinguishes between the imagination and reason in a different manner from Luhmann, as Hegel considers them logically connected while Luhmann considers them as coextensive. Secondly, this paper will show how reason and imagination create culture through (...) the environment via dialectical idealism in Hegel and a poly-contextural constructivist approach in Luhmann. (shrink)

The conciliationist and steadfast approaches have dominated the conversation in the epistemology of disagreement. In this paper, drawing on Jennifer Lackey’s justificationist approach and the casuistry paradigm in medical ethics, I will develop a more contextual epistemology of political disagreement. On this account, a given political disagreement’s scope, domain, genealogy, and consequence can be helpful for determining whether we should respond to that disagreement at the level of our confidence, beliefs, or with policy. Though some may argue that responding with (...) policy is a practical consideration instead of an epistemic matter, I argue that even policy responses to disagreements have an epistemic dimension to them that we should not ignore. (shrink)

Human beings can be said to naturally seek familiarity in their environment for survival purposes, and this can explain why the mere-exposure effect, where being merely exposed to external factors in our environment, can increase preference for these factors. Familiarity in this sense can thus be framed as important for affect and preference formation and considered built upon both the subjective process of fluency and the objects of experience being processed. The feeling of uncanniness is often considered the opposite of (...) familiarity, yet within its semantic vicinity. By considering the term ‘uncanny’ as having a double meaning linked to both familiarity and unfamiliarity, however, this paper will show how this ambiguity allows for a semantic relatedness of this concept to process fluency rather than familiarity. This connection will in turn be shown to have ramifications for affect through the proposal of a fourth model of process fluency: The Embodied Fluency Model. Through consideration of Mori’s shinkawan, Freud’s notion of the uncanny, and Heidegger’s connection between uncanniness and Angst, an exploration into conceiving how fluency and uncanniness share attributes that allow for a different view on affect is propounded. (shrink)

Natural scientific views on the human being have the tendency to reduce selfhood toa static object. This tendency arguably derives from the need to objectify the present in which the human being is found. Phenomenology avoids such a reduction by engaging with the present instead of distancing from it for the sake of analysis. This beneficence that derives froma phenomenological view of reality is argued to be a warranted view a counseling therapist should adopt. Not only can a therapist who (...) involves phenomenological perspectives in their practice succeed in viewing their clients non-instrumentally, but such a therapist can also “Be” genuine. The paper conceives of the therapist capable of performing these phenomenological tasks in therapy as adopting a mode of Being which we highlight as akin to the ancient concept: hypostasis. This conception in turn is shown to have epistemological ramifications for the meaning of “understanding”, which is shown quite suitably in the example of therapeutic presence. Heidegger’s Dasein serves as conceptual example of self in the paper to elucidate the connection between hypostasis and understanding throughout. (shrink)

In the last year or so (and going back many decades) there has been extensive claims by major computational scientists, engineers, and others that AGI (artificial general intelligence) is 5 or 10 years away, but without a scintilla of scientific evidence, for a broad body of these claims: Computers will become conscious, have a “theory of mind,” think and reason, will become more intelligent than humans, and so on. But the claims are science fiction, not science. -/- This article reviews (...) evidence for the following three (3) propositions using extensive body of scientific research and related sources from the cognitive and neurosciences; evolutionary evidence; linguistics; data science; comparative psychology; self-driving cars, and robotics; and the learning sciences. (1) Do computing machines think or reason? (2) Are computing machines sentient or conscious? (3) Do computing machines have a theory of mind? (shrink)

The status of philosophy is contingent upon the civilizations that embrace or undermine its importance. Such status is never fully understood, nor clear, due in part to its inutility. In a goal-oriented world, philosophizing is pointless if it does not produce material results. One point of philosophy though is not only to recognize, but promote activities which are uniquely human and which therefore artificial intelligence could not possibly simulate. Improvisation, as one such activity, can reveal the importance of philosophy as (...) a discipline by maintaining the relevance of subjectivity. In order to justify the presence of philosophy in the university, one important way is to have philosophy maintain the notion that the mental cannot be reduced to the material or physical. Consequently, phenomenology in philosophy’s defense becomes more relevant the more we realize that philosophy is threatened by the interdependency of materialism, A.I. research, and the corporatization of the university. (shrink)

The categorical imperative inherent in Kant’s ethics has had indubitable historical influence on societies worldwide whether in the form of laws, democracy or public deliberation. The Toronto Van Attack of 2018 and its subsequent legal trial is a case example that shows how the categorical imperative can be applied to assist in understanding the reasoning for the case’s guilty verdict. This paper will convey the applicability of the categorical imperative for examining criminal case studies by closing the gap between ethical (...) theory and practice. Such closure will be shown to assist in understanding why a perpetrator of a crime can be found guilty of following a hypothetical imperative to base their actions. The rationale for the verdict in this case will be shown to be based on the perpetrator’s responsibility in the form of maintaining autonomy despite having an autism diagnosis. The perpetrator will be shown to have acted on an irrational will and yet was treated in the legal sense as a rational individual. Such rationality was maintained despite complications with their autonomy in the form of relativism and ethical solipsism. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss the relevance of epistemology of disagreement to political disagreement. The two major positions in the epistemology of disagreement literature are the steadfast and the conciliationist approaches: while the conciliationist says that disagreement with one’s epistemic equals should compel one to epistemically “split the difference” with those peers, the steadfast approach claims that one can maintain one’s antecedent position even in the face of such peer disagreement. Martin Ebeling applies a conciliationist approach to democratic deliberations, (...) arguing that deliberative participants ought to pursue full epistemic conciliation when disagreeing with their peers on political questions. I argue that this epistemic “splitting the difference” could make participants vulnerable to certain cognitive biases. We might avoid these biases by paying more attention to the deliberative environment in which disagreement takes place. (shrink)

This paper aims to uncover some of the important contributions the phenomenological method can offer to philosophical issues in literary studies. It leads us to the idea that the archetypes found in fiction are intuited phenomenologically. This idea is then linked to a social constructive attainment of meaning for reality. From the intersubjectivity provided by phenomenology, empathy with characters in fiction is then displayed as more than an intellectual activity, as it becomes known to have practical implications. It is framed (...) as involving the same processes as the empathy we have with people in the real world. This equivalency allows for the plausibility of the notion that fiction-making is a necessary process for our interpretations of reality. It designates our involvement in fiction as beneficial to our experience of the real world and supports the notion it can train us to empathize. Such training is displayed to be posssible from phenomenology’s role in the process of empathy. Phenomenology's method de-centers the Cartesian ego to prevent any impasse between internal consciousness and the external world. Since they are bridged together by intentionality, we learn that phenomenology is a method that can contribute to how we conceive of empathy. (shrink)

The conflict between aesthetic experience and the modern vision of the world frames aesthetic experience as a defender of the plurality derived from the perspectives of individuals. This signifies that aesthetic experience confronts the unilateralism of modernity’s vision. This article propounds that this role of aesthetic experience is based on its defense of subjectivity and individuality. This defense, when investigated, reveals the compatibility between phenomenology and pragmatism. This compatibility also demonstrates that aesthetic experience should be understood as a phenomenological experience. (...) Therefore, phenomenology and pragmatism reveal a comradery that permits them to work in tandem, defending subjectivity and pluralism in the face of modernity. (shrink)

Spanish translation, introductory study and notes on Charles Leslie Stevenson’s “Persuasive Definitions”. Published in Stevenson, Charles L. “Definiciones persuasivas”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. VIII, n. 1 (2021), pp. 105–125. -/- [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “Presentación. Las definiciones persuasivas según Charles L. Stevenson”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. VIII, n. 1 (2021), pp. 101–104].

Forcing occurs when a magician influences the audience's decisions without their awareness. To investigate the mechanisms behind this effect, we examined several stimulus and personality predictors. In Study 1, a magician flipped through a deck of playing cards while participants were asked to choose one. Although the magician could influence the choice almost every time (98%), relatively few (9%) noticed this influence. In Study 2, participants observed rapid series of cards on a computer, with one target card shown longer than (...) the rest. We expected people would tend to choose this card without noticing that it was shown longest. Both stimulus and personality factors predicted the choice of card, depending on whether the influence was noticed. These results show that combining real-world and laboratory research can be a powerful way to study magic and can provide new methods to study the feeling of free will. (shrink)

What is art? What is beauty? Why are we driven to create? People have been struggling with the answers to these questions for millenia. In this book Jay Friedenberg examines age old and contemporary responses to the perceptual and performative side of aesthetics. The work is wide-ranging in scope, addressing all forms of art including painting, photography, writing, film, music, theater, dance, and more. Issues are examined from multiple perspectives with separate chapters on history, philosophy, mathematics, physics, psychology, and neuroscience. (...) This beautifully illustrated book can be read by a general audience or used as an undergraduate or graduate textbook for courses in art history, aesthetics, or media studies. (shrink)

Narratologists commonly draw a distinction between the story and those things that tell the story- the tellings, as I will call them here. Here is an example intended to highlight that distinction. The Parable of the Sower is a parable found in the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. Though the relevant pieces of text in the Gospels are remarkably similar, no two of the four are identical. The verses in Matthew, (...) Mark and Luke, have been translated and paraphrased, along with the rest of the Bible, into literally thousands of different languages and versions, all of which include the The Parable of the Sower. (shrink)

Philippine folk dances can be dated back as early as the pre-colonial period which inherited by our forefathers and passed through several generations of Filipinos. These traditional dances are considered treasures of our homeland for they depict the humble beginnings of our native countrymen and serve as a symbol of national identity. The study utilized focused ethnography and was limited on the documentation of the ethnic dance of Ayta Ambala’s tribe, their cultural values along with its cultural heritage situated at (...) Barangay Tubo-Tubo, Dinalupihan, Bataan which were considered unpublished, especially their respective dance patterns or movements. There were ten (10) informants involved in the study. Five (5) were key informants (KIs) who represent the emic perspective while five (5) were general informants (GIs) who represent the etic perspective of the paper. Findings revealed that Dances of Ayta Ambala include: Courtship (Sayaw Magligaw), Ceremonial (Sayaw Talipe), and Occupational (Sayaw Pangangaho). The said dances reflect different activities that are commong among the tribe. It also includes the historical background, costume, time signature, props, structural formation, dance steps, and figures. Although the values are not directly presented, these are still manifesting through the themes of their dances. Included in the cultural values are bravery, respect, and gratitude which are also part of the embodiment of different dances of Ayta Ambala. As observed, the other two emerging themes are also connected to the cultural heritage of Ayta Ambala. This means, their dances mirror their surroundings, their daily activities, and their identity as tribes. The emerging themes on cultural heritage are religious beliefs, courtships, and livelihood. (shrink)

I seek to emphasize Immanuel Kant’s lingering and unsavory impact on medical ethics by emphasizing Kantian ethics’ disregard for non- rational humans. We must be considerate when discussing individuals who have some form of dementia, conditions that irreversibly diminish the ability to use rational thought, sometimes to a degree of severity that hinders essential daily functions. I argue that to consider ourselves proponents of human equality we must treat humans with dementia as members of the kingdom of ends.

Explores the role of dance education both inside and outside the arts.

In a recent issue of Philosophy East and West Douglas Berger defends a new reading of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XXIV : 18, arguing that most contemporary translators mistranslate the important term prajñaptir upādāya, misreading it as a compound indicating "dependent designation" or something of the sort, instead of taking it simply to mean "this notion, once acquired." He attributes this alleged error, pervasive in modern scholarship, to Candrakīrti, who, Berger correctly notes, argues for the interpretation he rejects.Berger's analysis, and the reading of (...) the text he suggests is grounded on that analysis, is insightful and fascinating, and certainly generates an understanding of Nāgārjuna's enterprise that is welcome .. (shrink)

The field of value alignment, or more broadly machine ethics, is becoming increasingly important as artificial intelligence developments accelerate. By ‘alignment’ we mean giving a generally intelligent software system the capability to act in ways that are beneficial, or at least minimally harmful, to humans. There are a large number of techniques that are being experimented with, but this work often fails to specify what values exactly we should be aligning. When making a decision, an agent is supposed to maximize (...) the expected utility of its value function. Classically, this has been referred to as happiness, but this is just one of many things that people value. -/- In order to resolve this issue, we need to determine a set of human values that represent humanity's interests. Although this problem might seem intractable, research shows that people of various cultures and religions actually share more in common than they realize. In this book we review world religions, moral philosophy and evolutionary psychology to elucidate a common set of shared values. We then show how these values can be used to address the alignment problem and conclude with problems and goals for future research. -/- The key audience for this book will be researchers in the field of ethics and artificial intelligence who are interested in, or working on this problem. These people will come from various professions and include philosophers, computer programmers and psychologists, as the problem itself is multi-disciplinary. (shrink)

What does it mean to be human? Philosophers and theologians have been wrestling with this question for centuries. Recent advances in cognition, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and robotics have yielded insights that bring us even closer to an answer. There are now computer programs that can accurately recognize faces, engage in conversation, and even compose music. There are also robots that can walk up a flight of stairs, work cooperatively with each other and express emotion. If machines can do everything we (...) can, does that mean we are machines? -/- This book examines whether an artificial person can be constructed and if so, what that might tell us about our future and ourselves. Different human capacities such as perception, creativity, consciousness, social behavior, and free will are described in separate chapters. Technological advances in these areas are summarized and compared to our own abilities. The book adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, with a naturalistic perspective drawn from biology and psychology matched against a technological perspective based on computer science and robotics. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays written on a variety of topics relevant to the future of humankind. The chapters are organized foundationally starting with how it is we can know and understand reality. This is followed by descriptions of future technologies and the new science that will drive them. Then we take a look at ourselves, how smart we are and how intelligent our machines may become. The final sections paint a larger picture, examining civilization with a focus (...) on what we’ve done wrong historically and how we may correct such mistakes. (shrink)

This discussion interprets William Blake's poetry and painting across the hermeneutic philosophy of Martin Heidegger and his analysis of Dasein. It shows Blake's eighteenth-century discourse to be, like Heidegger's philosophy of Dasein, a radical critique of philosophical, scientific, and artistic thinking. To better understand the connections between Blake and Heidegger, the development of aesthetic philosophy from classical aesthetics through Nietzsche is charted. The parameters of eighteenth-century aesthetics, and the rise of hermeneutics in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, are discussed (...) as a response to the limitations of the neoclassical. On this basis, ideas and practices central to Blake's poetry such as "eternity" and "Albion" are compared to Heidegger's concepts of Dasein in order to shed additional light on the pioneering nature of Blake's work, and to see that he may be understood in terms of later aesthetic philosophies. (shrink)

La negativa a imaginar la "otra" sociedad más allá del capitalismo no está ajena a la prohibición judía de nombrar o describir a Dios. Cualquiera que sea la fuente del tabú, de las principales figuras relacionadas con la Escuela de Frankfurt, solo Mar- cuse se ha atrevido en los últimos años a romperlo. Solo Marcuse ha tratado de decir lo indecible en un esfuerzo cada vez más urgente por reintroducir un molde utópico a la teoría socialista.

The aim of this dissertation is to offer and defend a correspondence theory of truth. I begin by critically examining the coherence, pragmatic, simple, redundancy, disquotational, minimal, and prosentential theories of truth. Special attention is paid to several versions of disquotationalism, whose plausibility has led to its fairly constant support since the pioneering work of Alfred Tarski, through that by W. V. Quine, and recently in the work of Paul Horwich. I argue that none of these theories meets the correspondence (...) intuition---that a true sentence or proposition in some way corresponds to reality---despite the explicit claims by each to capture this intuition. I distinguish six versions of the correspondence theory, and defend two against traditional objections, standardly taken as decisive against them, and show, plainly, that these two theories capture the correspondence intuition. Due to the importance of meeting this intuition, only these two theories stands a chance of being a satisfactory theory of truth. I argue that the version of the correspondence theory incorporating a simple semantic representation relation is preferable to its rival, for which the representation relation is complex. I present and argue for a novel version of this correspondence theory according to which truth is a correspondence property sensitive to semantic context. One consequence of this context-sensitivity is that an ungrounded sentence does not express a proposition. In addition to accounting for the similarity between the Liar and Truth-Teller sentences, this theory of truth is immune to the Liar Paradox, including empirical versions. It is argued that the Liar Paradox is devastating to all of the other theories above, and even formal theories of truth designed to solve it, such as the revision and vagueness theories. Customized versions of the Liar Paradox besetting this theory are handled by its context-sensitivity, and by enforcing the distinction between truth and truth value. This same pair of considerations also yields solutions to Lob's Paradox and Grelling's Paradox. Arguments similar to those given to defend this correspondence theory show that with one minor alteration, Kripke's fixed point theory may be used to model this correspondence notion of truth. (shrink)

Classical cognitivist and connectionist models posit a Cartesian disembodiment of mind assuming that brain events can adequately explain thought and related notions such as intellect. Instead, we argue for the bodily basis of thought and its continuity beyond the sensorimotor stage. Indeed, there are no eternally fixed representations of the external world in the "motor system," rather, it is under the guidance of both internal and external factors with important linkages to frontal, parietal, cerebellar, basal ganglionic, and cingulate gyrus areas (...) that subserve cognitive and motivational activities. Indeed, the motor system, including related structures, is a self-organizing dynamical system contextualized among musculoskeletal, environmental (e.g., gravity), and social forces. We do not simply inhabit our bodies; we literally use them to think with. (shrink)

We propose that there are four fundamental kinds of metaphor that are uniquely mapped onto specific brain ‘‘networks’’ and present preliterate (i.e., evolutionary, including before the appearance of written language in the historical record), prelinguistic (i.e., developmental, before the appearance of speech in human development), and extralinguistic (i.e., neuropsychological, cognitive) evidence supportive of this view. We contend that these basic metaphors are largely nonconceptual and entail (a) perceptual–perceptual, (b) cross-modal, (c) movement–movement, and (d) perceptual-affective mappings that, at least, in the (...) initial stages of processing may operate largely outside of conscious awareness. In opposition to our basic metaphor theory (BmT), the standard theory (SmT) maintains that metaphor is a conceptual mapping from some base domain to some target domain and/or represents class-inclusion (categorical) assertions. The SmT captures aspects of secondary or conceptual metaphoric relations but not primary or basic metaphoric relations in our view. We believe our theory (BmT) explains more about how people actually recognize or create metaphoric associations across disparate domains of experience partly because they are ‘‘pre-wired’’ to make these links. (shrink)

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. For one thing, (...) there are questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume—both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in—to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? For another, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as deliberating agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections §§1–3 of the present article, while sections §§4–6 cover the second set of issues. (shrink)

Two major clarifications have greatly abetted the understanding and fruitful expansion of the theory of natural selection in recent years: the acknowledgment that interactors, not replicators, constitute the causal unit of selection; and the recognition that interactors are Darwinian individuals, and that such individuals exist with potency at several levels of organization (genes, organisms, demes, and species in particular), thus engendering a rich hierarchical theory of selection in contrast with Darwin’s own emphasis on the organismic level. But a piece of (...) the argument has been missing, and individuals at levels distinct from organisms have been denied potency (although granted existence within the undeniable logic of the theory), because they do not achieve individuality with the same devices used by organisms and therefore seem weak by comparison. We show here that different features define Darwinian individuality across scales of size and time. In particular, species-individuals may develop few emergent features as direct adaptations. The interactor approach works with emergent fitnesses, not with emergent features; and species, as a consequence of their different mechanism for achieving individuality (reproductive exclusivity among subparts, that is, among organisms), express many effects from other levels. Organisms, by contrast, suppress upwardly cascading effects, because the organismic style of individuality (by functional integration of subparts) does not permit much competition or differential reproduction of parts from within. Species do not suppress the operation of lower levels; such effects therefore become available as exaptations conferring emergent fitness—a primary source of the different strength that species achieve as effective Darwinian individuals in evolution. (shrink)

The word ‘extremist’ is often used pejoratively, but it’s not clear what, if anything, is wrong with extremism. My project is to give an account of moral extremism as a vice. It consists roughly in having moral convictions so intense that they cause a sort of moral tunnel vision, pushing salient competing considerations out of mind. We should be interested in moral extremism for several reasons: it’s consequential, it’s insidious – we don’t expect immorality to arise from excessive devotion to (...) morality – and it’s yet to attract much philosophical attention. I give several examples of moral extremism from history and explore their social-political implications. I also consider how we should evaluate people who miss the mark, being either too extreme in the service of a good cause or inconsistent with their righteous convictions. I compare John Brown and John Quincy Adams, who fell on either side of this spectrum, as examples. (shrink)

Marchetto of Padua, Lucidarium, authentic, plagal, perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, mixed, odd numbers, even numbers, Aristotle, Metaphysics, Alcmaeon of Croton, causa significationis, dyapente, diatesseron, concord, senaria, Pomerium, Donatus, Vetulus, mode 5, commixed, corda, discant, dyad, voice leading.

A common strategy unites much that philosophers have written about the virtues. The strategy can be traced back at least to Aristotle, who suggested that human beings have a characteristic function or activity, and that the virtues are traits of character which enable humans to perform this kind of activity excellently or well. The defining feature of this approach is that it treats the virtues as functional concepts, to be both identified and justified by reference to some independent goal or (...) end which they enable people to attain. Some recent philosophers seem to have hoped that by following this perfectionist strategy, we might attain a more convincing account of our moral practices than rule-based theories of ethics have been able to provide. (shrink)

Medical ghostwriting is the practice in which pharmaceutical companies engage an outside writer to draft a manuscript submitted for publication in the names of “honorary authors,” typically academic key opinion leaders. Using newly-posted documents from paroxetine litigation, we show how the use of ghostwriters and key opinion leaders contributed to the publication of a medical journal article containing manipulated outcome data to favor the proprietary medication. The article was ghostwritten and managed by SmithKline Beecham, now GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Scientific Therapeutics (...) Information, Inc. without acknowledging their contribution in the published article. The named authors with financial ties to GSK, had little or no direct involvement in the paroxetine 352 bipolar trial results and most had not reviewed any of the manuscript drafts. The manuscript was originally rejected by peer review; however, its ultimate acceptance to the American Journal of Psychiatry was facilitated by the journal editor who also had financial ties to GSK. Thus, GSK was able to take an under-powered and non-informative trial with negative results and present it as a positive marketing vehicle for off-label promotion of paroxetine for bipolar depression. In addition to the commercial spin of paroxetine efficacy, important protocol-designated safety data were unreported that may have shown paroxetine to produce potentially harmful adverse events. (shrink)

The question of how to arrive at a consensus on human rights norm in a diverse, pluralistic, and interconnected global environment is critical. This volume is a contribution to an intercultural understanding of human rights in the context of India and its relationship to the West. The legitimacy of the global legal, economic, and political order is increasingly premised on the discourse of international human rights. Yet the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights developed with little or no consultation from (...) non-Western nations such as India. In response, there has developed an extensive literature and cross-cultural analysis of human rights in the areas of African, East-Asian, and Islamic studies, yet there is a comparative dearth of conceptual research relating to India. As problematically, there is an lacuna in the previous literature; it simply stops short at analyzing how Western understandings of human rights may be supported from within various non-Western cultural self-understandings; yet, surely, there is more to this issue. The chapters in this collection pioneer a distinct approach that takes such deliberation to a further level by examining what it is that the West itself may have to learn from various Indian articulations of human rights as well. (shrink)

Professor Rahn takes the approach to the analysis of Western art music developed recently by theorists such as Benjamin Boretz and extends it to address non-Western forms. In the process, he rejects recent ethnomusicological formulations based on mentalism, cultural determinism, and the psychology of perception as potentially fruitful bases for analysing music in general. Instead he stresses the desirability of formulating a theory to deal with all music, rather than merely Western forms, and emphasizes the need to evaluate an analysis (...) and compare it with other interpretations, and demonstrates how this may be done. The theoretical concepts which form the basis of Rahn's approach are discussed and applied: first to individual pieces of non-Western music which have enjoyed a fairly high profile in ethnomusicological literature, and second to repertoires or groups of pieces. The author also discusses the fields of anthropology and psychology, showing how his approach serves as a starting point for studies of perception and the concepts, norms, and values found in specific music cultures. In conclusion, he lists what he considers to be musical universals and takes up the more controversial issues implicit in his discussion. (shrink)

There is a plurality of theoretical approaches, methodological tools, and explanatory strategies in the social sciences. Different fields rely on different methods and explanatory tools even when they study the very same phenomena. We illustrate this plurality of the social sciences with the studies of crowds. We show how three different takes on crowd phenomena—psychology, rational choice theory, and network theory—can complement one another. We conclude that social scientists are better described as researchers endowed with explanatory toolkits than specialists of (...) some specific social domain. Social scientists’ toolkits are adapted for identifying and specifying the role of specific causal factors among the multiple factors that produce social phenomena. These factors can be, in a nonexclusive way, economic incentives, psychological processes, the ecology, or aspects of the social and cultural environment. The plurality of methods and theories in the social sciences flies in the face of the project to unify the sciences associated with the positivists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet, the compatibility and consilience of theories and practices still have epistemic value: they enable the development of more powerful and robust theories and they allow the advent of interdisciplinary studies. We present the integrative stance as the will to improve compatibility and consilience across fields, yet recognize that the plurality of causes of social phenomena invite a diversity of methodological and theoretical tools. We conclude by characterizing naturalism as an integrative stance applied to fields that belong to the social science and to the natural sciences. (shrink)

The Planteome project provides a suite of reference and species-specific ontologies for plants and annotations to genes and phenotypes. Ontologies serve as common standards for semantic integration of a large and growing corpus of plant genomics, phenomics and genetics data. The reference ontologies include the Plant Ontology, Plant Trait Ontology, and the Plant Experimental Conditions Ontology developed by the Planteome project, along with the Gene Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Phenotype and Attribute Ontology, and others. The project also provides (...) access to species-specific Crop Ontologies developed by various plant breeding and research communities from around the world. We provide integrated data on plant traits, phenotypes, and gene function and expression from 95 plant taxa, annotated with reference ontology terms. (shrink)

The Plant Ontology (PO; http://www.plantontology.org/) is a publicly-available, collaborative effort to develop and maintain a controlled, structured vocabulary (“ontology”) of terms to describe plant anatomy, morphology and the stages of plant development. The goals of the PO are to link (annotate) gene expression and phenotype data to plant structures and stages of plant development, using the data model adopted by the Gene Ontology. From its original design covering only rice, maize and Arabidopsis, the scope of the PO has been expanded (...) to include all green plants. The PO was the first multi-species anatomy ontology developed for the annotation of genes and phenotypes. Also, to our knowledge, it was one of the first biological ontologies that provides translations (via synonyms) in non-English languages such as Japanese and Spanish. There are about 2.2 million annotations linking PO terms to over 110,000 unique data objects representing genes or gene models, proteins, RNAs, germplasm and Quantitative Traits Loci (QTLs) from 22 plant species. In this paper, we focus on the plant anatomical entity branch of the PO, describing the organizing principles, resources available to users, and examples of how the PO is integrated into other plant genomics databases and web portals. We also provide two examples of comparative analyses, demonstrating how the ontology structure and PO-annotated data can be used to discover the patterns of expression of the LEAFY (LFY) and terpene synthase (TPS) gene homologs. (shrink)

The Plant Ontology (PO) is a community resource consisting of standardized terms, definitions, and logical relations describing plant structures and development stages, augmented by a large database of annotations from genomic and phenomic studies. This paper describes the structure of the ontology and the design principles we used in constructing PO terms for plant development stages. It also provides details of the methodology and rationale behind our revision and expansion of the PO to cover development stages for all plants, particularly (...) the land plants (bryophytes through angiosperms). As a case study to illustrate the general approach, we examine variation in gene expression across embryo development stages in Arabidopsis and maize, demonstrating how the PO can be used to compare patterns of expression across stages and in developmentally different species. Although many genes appear to be active throughout embryo development, we identified a small set of uniquely expressed genes for each stage of embryo development and also between the two species. Evaluating the different sets of genes expressed during embryo development in Arabidopsis or maize may inform future studies of the divergent developmental pathways observed in monocotyledonous versus dicotyledonous species. The PO and its annotation databasemake plant data for any species more discoverable and accessible through common formats, thus providing support for applications in plant pathology, image analysis, and comparative development and evolution. (shrink)

Plants from a handful of species provide the primary source of food for all people, yet this source is vulnerable to multiple stressors, such as disease, drought, and nutrient deficiency. With rapid population growth and climate uncertainty, the need to produce crops that can tolerate or resist plant stressors is more crucial than ever. Traditional plant breeding methods may not be sufficient to overcome this challenge, and methods such as highOthroughput sequencing and automated scoring of phenotypes can provide significant new (...) insights. Ontologies are essential tools for accessing and analysing the large quantities of data that come with these newer methods. As part of a larger project to develop ontologies that describe plant phenotypes and stresses, we are developing a plant disease extension of the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDOPlant). The IDOPlant is envisioned as a reference ontology designed to cover any plant infectious disease. In addition to novel terms for infectious diseases, IDOPlant includes terms imported from other ontologies that describe plants, pathogens, and vectors, the geographic location and ecology of diseases and hosts, and molecular functions and interactions of hosts and pathogens. To encompass this range of data, we are suggesting inOhouse ontology development complemented with reuse of terms from orthogonal ontologies developed as part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. The study of plant diseases provides an example of how an ontological framework can be used to model complex biological phenomena such as plant disease, and how plant infectious diseases differ from, and are similar to, infectious diseases in other organism. (shrink)

Loneliness in medicine is a serious problem not just for patients, for whom illness is intrinsically isolating, but also for physicians in the contemporary condition of medicine. We explore this problem by investigating the ideal physician-patient relationship, whose analogy with friendship has held enduring normative appeal. Drawing from Talbot Brewer and Nir Ben-Moshe, we argue that this appeal lies in a dynamic form of companionship incompatible with static models of friendship-like physician-patient relationships: a mutual refinement of embodied virtue that draws (...) both persons together. The ideal physician-patient relationship has a dialectical character that fosters each member's improvement of phenomenologically recognizing and embodying moral virtues. A key component of this dynamic is a commitment to the common goal of the patient's health, realized through joint interactivities and conversations over time. The physician's presence to the patient's suffering—understood best as an alienating phenomenological condition for the patient—orients and discloses possibilities for virtuous caregiving by structuring the meanings of the goals, conversations, and joint narrative constitutive of their relationship. Presence to suffering, paradoxically, is perhaps an important prerequisite for this dynamic partnership. These activities dialectically build an interpretive horizon of understanding through which moral goods and character refinement—in and for the other—may become revealed for both persons in their shared being-in-the-world. This analysis of suffering, mood, and revealing of (possible) moral goods has implications for addressing the modern problem of loneliness for patients and physicians, who are increasingly inhibited from building flourishing relationships with each other. (shrink)

Bio-ontologies are essential tools for accessing and analyzing the rapidly growing pool of plant genomic and phenomic data. Ontologies provide structured vocabularies to support consistent aggregation of data and a semantic framework for automated analyses and reasoning. They are a key component of the Semantic Web. This paper provides background on what bio-ontologies are, why they are relevant to botany, and the principles of ontology development. It includes an overview of ontologies and related resources that are relevant to plant science, (...) with a detailed description of the Plant Ontology (PO). We discuss the challenges of building an ontology that covers all green plants (Viridiplantae). Key results: Ontologies can advance plant science in four keys areas: 1. comparative genetics, genomics, phenomics, and development, 2. taxonomy and systematics, 3. semantic applications and 4. education. Conclusions: Bio-ontologies offer a flexible framework for comparative plant biology, based on common botanical understanding. As genomic and phenomic data become available for more species, we anticipate that the annotation of data with ontology terms will become less centralized, while at the same time, the need for cross-species queries will become more common, causing more researchers in plant science to turn to ontologies. (shrink)

The Philippine educational system established alternative delivery modes of education, such as the Modified Work and Study Program, to eradicate student dropout incidence. This phenomenological study aims to probe the challenges and explore the coping mechanism of MWSP students in studying mathematics. The study was conducted at a public high school offering the program. Six students were chosen to participate in the study. Focus group discussion was utilized for the data gathering of the study. Results showed that mediocrity of resources (...) and conspicuous learning environment were the leading challenges that MWSP students encounter. Moreover, the coping mechanisms include good classroom management, utilization of concrete examples, time scheduling, steward support, motivational encouragement, and recreational and body relaxation. It is recommended that MWSP mathematics teachers integrate innovative strategies, provide more concrete contextualized examples, intensify the development of learning kits, and reinforce teaching and learning through supplementary materials. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are increasingly arguing for the importance of doing scientifically- and socially-engaged work, suggesting that we need to reduce barriers to extra-disciplinary engagement and broaden our impact. Yet, we currently lack empirical data to inform these discussions, leaving a number of important questions unanswered. How common is it for philosophers of science to engage other communities, and in what ways are they engaging? What barriers are most prevalent when it comes to broadly disseminating one’s work or collaborating with (...) others? To what extent do philosophers of science actually value an engaged approach? Our project addresses this gap in our collective knowledge by providing empirical data regarding the state of philosophy of science today. We report the results of a survey of 299 philosophers of science about their attitudes towards and experiences with engaging those outside the discipline. Our data suggest that a significant majority of philosophers of science think it is important for non-philosophers to read and make use of their work; most are engaging with communities outside the discipline; and many think philosophy of science, as a discipline, has an obligation to ensure it has a broader impact. Interestingly, however, many of these same philosophers believe engaged work is generally undervalued in the discipline. We think these findings call for cautious optimism on the part of those who value engaged work—while there seems to be more interest in engaging other communities than many assume, significant barriers still remain. (shrink)

The Plant Ontology (PO) (http://www.plantontology.org) (Jaiswal et al., 2005; Avraham et al., 2008) was designed to facilitate cross-database querying and to foster consistent use of plant-specific terminology in annotation. As new data are generated from the ever-expanding list of plant genome projects, the need for a consistent, cross-taxon vocabulary has grown. To meet this need, the PO is being expanded to represent all plants. This is the first ontology designed to encompass anatomical structures as well as growth and developmental stages (...) across such a broad taxonomic range. While other ontologies such as the Gene Ontology (GO) (The Gene Ontology Consortium, 2010) or Cell Type Ontology (CL) (Bard et al., 2005) cover all living organisms, they are confined to structures at the cellular level and below. The diversity of growth forms and life histories within plants presents a challenge, but also provides unique opportunities to study developmental and evolutionary homology across organisms. (shrink)

In defending his interest-relative account of knowledge in Knowledge and Practical Interests (2005), Jason Stanley relies heavily on intuitions about several bank cases. We experimentally test the empirical claims that Stanley seems to make concerning our common-sense intuitions about these bank cases. Additionally, we test the empirical claims that Jonathan Schaffer seems to make in his critique of Stanley. We argue that our data impugn what both Stanley and Schaffer claim our intuitions about such cases are. To account for these (...) results, one must develop a better conception of the connection between a subject's interests and her body of knowledge than those offered by Stanley and Schaffer. (shrink)

Functional diversity holds the promise of understanding ecosystems in ways unattainable by taxonomic diversity studies. Underlying this promise is the intuition that investigating the diversity of what organisms actually do—i.e. their functional traits—within ecosystems will generate more reliable insights into the ways these ecosystems behave, compared to considering only species diversity. But this promise also rests on several conceptual and methodological—i.e. epistemic—assumptions that cut across various theories and domains of ecology. These assumptions should be clearly addressed, notably for the sake (...) of an effective comparison and integration across domains, and for assessing whether or not to use functional diversity approaches for developing ecological management strategies. The objective of this contribution is to identify and critically analyze the most salient of these assumptions. To this aim, we provide an “epistemic roadmap” that pinpoints these assumptions along a set of historical, conceptual, empirical, theoretical, and normative dimensions. (shrink)