I propose a systematic survey of the various attitudes proponents of enaction (or enactivism) entertained or are entertaining towards representationalism and towards the use of the concept “mental representation” in cognitive science. For the sake of clarity, a set of distinctions between different varieties of representationalism and anti-representationalism are presented. I also recapitulate and discuss some anti-representationalist trends and strategies one can find the enactive literature, before focusing on some possible limitations of eliminativist versions of enactive anti-representationalism. These limitations are (...) here taken as opportunities for reflecting on the fate of enactivism in its relations with representationalism and anti-representationalism. (shrink)

An English translation of Pierre Bayle's posthumous last book, Entretiens de Maxime et de Themiste (1707), in which Bayle defends his skeptical position on the problem of the evil. This book is often cited and attacked by G.W. Leibniz in his Theodicy (1710). Over one hundred pages of original philosophical and historical material introduce the translation, providing it with context and establishing the work's importance.

Sartori (1970) warned a long time ago of the danger of concept stretching for effective and cumulative theory building. Such concept stretching has happened with regard to deliberation, which has become a very faddish term. For theoretically well-founded empirical research it is better conceptually to distinguish clearly between strategic bargaining and deliberation, although in the empirical political world the two concepts are usually heavily intertwined. Keywords deliberation; concept stretching; strategic bargaining.

From the local level to international politics, deliberation helps to increase mutual understanding and trust, in order to arrive at political decisions of high epistemic value and legitimacy. This book gives deliberation a dynamic dimension, analysing how levels of deliberation rise and fall in group discussions, and introducing the concept of 'deliberative transformative moments' and how they can be applied to deeply divided societies, where deliberation is most needed but also most difficult to work. Discussions between ex-guerrillas and ex-paramilitaries in (...) Colombia, Serbs and Bosnjaks in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and police officers and locals in Brazilian favelas are used as case studies, with participants addressing how peace can be attained in their countries. Allowing access to the records and transcripts of the discussions opens an opportunity for practitioners of conflict resolution to apply this research to their work in trouble spots of the world, creating a link between the theory and practice of deliberation. (shrink)

Is calculation possible without language? Or is the human ability for arithmetic dependent on the language faculty? To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurukú, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Although the Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond 5, they are able to compare and add large approximate numbers that are far beyond their naming range. However, they fail in exact arithmetic with numbers larger than 4 (...) or 5. Our results imply a distinction between a nonverbal system of number approximation and a language-based counting system for exact number and arithmetic. (shrink)

Questions of research ethics are raised when deliberative research is done in war situations.

The mapping of numbers onto space is fundamental to measurement and to mathematics. Is this mapping a cultural invention or a universal intuition shared by all humans regardless of culture and education? We probed number-space mappings in the Mundurucu, an Amazonian indigene group with a reduced numerical lexicon and little or no formal education. At all ages, the Mundurucu mapped symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers onto a logarithmic scale, whereas Western adults used linear mapping with small or symbolic numbers and logarithmic (...) mapping when numbers were presented nonsymbolically under conditions that discouraged counting. This indicates that the mapping of numbers onto space is a universal intuition and that this initial intuition of number is logarithmic. The concept of a linear number line appears to be a cultural invention that fails to develop in the absence of formal education. (shrink)

To deliberate is a skill like any other that can be learned. The paper shows how schools can teach deliberative skills.

Dans la formulation classique habermassienne du modèle délibératif, les arguments doivent être justifiés d’une façon rationnelle, reliant logiquement des raisons à des conclusions. Sur la base de données empiriques, il est montré que les histoires personnelles ont également un rôle à jouer pour une bonne délibération, créant l’empathie à l’égard des besoins des autres. Plus généralement, les émotions ne devraient pas être exclues de la délibération.

We propose a modular ontology of the dynamic features of reality. This amounts, on the one hand, to a purely spatial ontology supporting snapshot views of the world at successive instants of time and, on the other hand, to a purely spatiotemporal ontology of change and process. We argue that dynamic spatial ontology must combine these two distinct types of inventory of the entities and relationships in reality, and we provide characterizations of spatiotemporal reasoning in the light of the interconnections (...) between them. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of somatic evolution by natural selection to our understanding of cancer development. I do so in two steps. In the first part of the paper, I ask to what extent cancer cells meet the formal requirements for evolution by natural selection, relying on Godfrey-Smith’s (2009) framework of Darwinian populations. I argue that although they meet the minimal requirements for natural selection, cancer cells are not paradigmatic Darwinian populations. In the second (...) part of the paper, I examine the most important examples of adaptation in cancer cells. I argue that they are not significant accumulations of evolutionary changes, and that as a consequence natural selection plays a lesser role in their explanation. Their explanation, I argue, is best sought in the previously existing wiring of the healthy cells. (shrink)

Recent empirical and conceptual research has shown that moral considerations have an influence on the way we use the adverb 'intentionally'. Here we propose our own account of these phenomena, according to which they arise from the fact that the adverb 'intentionally' has three different meanings that are differently selected by contextual factors, including normative expectations. We argue that our hypotheses can account for most available data and present some new results that support this. We end by discussing the implications (...) of our account for folk psychology. (shrink)

Pierre Bayle’ın Tarihsel ve Eleştirel Sözlük adlı eserindeki “Spinoza” maddesi, Spinoza felsefesinin temel meselelerine dair genel bir bakış sunar. Söz konusu maddenin burada çevirisi sunduğumuz “N Çıkması”nda ise Bayle, özellikle Spinoza’nın Ethica adlı eserine odaklanarak kip, değişiklik, töz ve Tanrı gibi Spinoza metafiziğinin temel kavramlarına yönelik eleştiriler getirir.

French text publication of the manuscript of the English article en-titled "Physics, History of" and published by Duhem in Volume 12 of the 1911 "Catholic Encyclopedia".

Résumé Charles Wolfe vient de publier Lire le matérialisme (ENS Éditions, 2020), où il esquisse une histoire des différentes formes de matérialisme, y compris le matérialisme vitaliste et les versions du XXe et du XXIe siècle. Pierre-François Moreau, auteur de la préface de l’ouvrage, entame ici une discussion sur les problèmes et les ressources d’une telle histoire.

Why would a philosopher choose to convey his ideas in the form of Manga? This discussion between Masahiro Morioka, author of Manga Introduction to Philosophy, and the translator of its French edition, Pierre Bonneels, shows how philosopher and artist Morioka became acquainted, through images, with fundamental abstract notions. After a short historical analysis of the aesthetic advantages of Manga, consideration is given to this unique way of provoking thought. On this basis, theoretical aspects of “time” and the “I” proposed (...) by Ōmori Shōzō are compared with Morioka’s Manga presentation. Although the questions raised are universal, the authors note that the use of Japanese metaphors enables these two thinkers to draw on a concrete understanding of notions like temporality and identity. (shrink)

Kant argued that Euclidean geometry is synthesized on the basis of an a priori intuition of space. This proposal inspired much behavioral research probing whether spatial navigation in humans and animals conforms to the predictions of Euclidean geometry. However, Euclidean geometry also includes concepts that transcend the perceptible, such as objects that are infinitely small or infinitely large, or statements of necessity and impossibility. We tested the hypothesis that certain aspects of nonperceptible Euclidian geometry map onto intuitions of space that (...) are present in all humans, even in the absence of formal mathematical education. Our tests probed intuitions of points, lines, and surfaces in participants from an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucu, as well as adults and age-matched children controls from the United States and France and younger US children without education in geometry. The responses of Mundurucu adults and children converged with that of mathematically educated adults and children and revealed an intuitive understanding of essential properties of Euclidean geometry. For instance, on a surface described to them as perfectly planar, the Mundurucu's estimations of the internal angles of triangles added up to ∼180 degrees, and when asked explicitly, they stated that there exists one single parallel line to any given line through a given point. These intuitions were also partially in place in the group of younger US participants. We conclude that, during childhood, humans develop geometrical intuitions that spontaneously accord with the principles of Euclidean geometry, even in the absence of training in mathematics. (shrink)

Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as natural selection and life history strategy are so fashioned only because individuals are mortal. Organisms, irrespective of their organization, are composed of basic functional units—cells—and it is our understanding of cell death that lies at the heart of most general explanatory frameworks for organismal mortality. Cell death can be exogenous, arising from transmissible diseases, predation, or other misfortunes, but there are also endogenous forms of death (...) that are sometimes the result of adaptive evolution. These endogenous forms of death—often labeled programmed cell death, PCD—originated in the earliest cells and are maintained across the tree of life. Here, we consider two problematic issues related to PCD (and cell mortality generally). First, we trace the original discoveries of cell death from the nineteenth century and place current conceptions of PCD in their historical context. Revisions of our understanding of PCD demand a reassessment of its origin. Our second aim is thus to structure the proposed origin explanations of PCD into coherent arguments. In our analysis we argue for the evolutionary concept of PCD and the viral defense-immunity hypothesis for the origin of PCD. We suggest that this framework offers a plausible account of PCD early in the history of life, and also provides an epistemic basis for the future development of a general evolutionary account of mortality. (shrink)

We describe an ontology of philosophy that is designed to aid navigation through philosophical literature, including literature in the form of encyclopedia articles and textbooks and in both printed and digital forms. The ontology is designed also to serve integration and structuring of data pertaining to the philosophical literature, and in the long term also to support reasoning about the provenance and contents of such literature, by providing a representation of the philosophical domain that is oriented around what philosophical literature (...) is about. (shrink)

Ce texte présente une partie de la pensée trouvée au sein de l’oeuvre de jeunesse du philosophe japonais Ōmori Shōzō qui appartient à l’école de Tokyo. L’objet de l’analyse proposée est celui de la logique. Le défi est de décrire que la nécessité des énoncés logiques exacts repose sur l’expérience. Ainsi cet examen découvre et expose le logicisme hyper empirique auquel Ōmori nous invite. Nous parlerons du sens possible de la logique « non scientifique » pour insister ensuite sur le (...) sens scientifique de cette dernière. Finalement, nous discuterons de la provenance de la nécessité que comportent en elles les phrases logiques. Nous présenterons ainsi deux origines distinctes de la nécessité. (shrink)

We aim to provide the ontological grounds for an adequate account of persistence. We defend a perspectivalist, or moderate pluralist, position, according to which some aspects of reality can be accounted for in ontological terms only via partial and mutually complementary ontologies, each one of which captures some relevant aspect of reality. Our thesis here is that this is precisely the sort of ontological account that is needed for the understanding of persistence, specifically an account involving two independent ontologies, one (...) for continuants, and one for occurrents. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the innovative character of the approach to metaethics underlying John Dewey’s pragmatism. Dewey's theory of evaluation is contrasted with one of the most dominant contemporary metaethical theses: constructivism. I show that the insistence placed by metaethical constructivists on the actor’s practical point of view, on the rejection of the subjective preferences model, and on a specific form of ethical antirealism and naturalism echoes some of the most crucial claims made by Dewey. This argumentation leads to my main (...) hypothesis: an analysis of Dewey's conception of evaluation allows us to highlight the groundbreaking character of its metaethical approach—an approach that will be characterized as fairly constructivist. (shrink)

Developing earlier studies of the system of numbers in Mundurucu, this paper argues that the Mundurucu numeral system is far more complex than usually assumed. The Mundurucu numeral system provides indirect but insightful arguments for a modular approach to numbers and numerals. It is argued that distinct components must be distinguished, such as a system of representation of numbers in the format of internal magnitudes, a system of representation for individuals and sets, and one-to-one correspondences between the numerosity expressed by (...) the number and its metrics. It is shown that while many-number systems involve a compositionality of units, sets and sets composed of units, few-number languages, such as Mundurucu, do not have access to sets composed of units in the usual way. The nonconfigurational character of the Mundurucu language, which is related to a property for which we coin the term 'low compositionality power', accounts for this and explains the curious fact that Mundurucus make use of marked one-to-one correspondence strategies in order to overcome the limitations of the core system at the perceptual/motor interface of the language faculty. We develop an analysis of a particular construction, parallel numbers, which has not been studied before, elucidating the whole system. This analysis, we argue, sheds new light on classical philosophical, psychological and linguistic debates about numbers and numerals and their relation to language, and more particularly, sheds light on few-number languages. (shrink)

Résumé: Fruit du colloque "Spiritualité japonaise - Perceptions et représentations, entre tradition et occidentalisation" organisé par les Universités Libre de Bruxelles et Catholique de Louvain, cet ouvrage propose des recherches en philosophie de la religion sur le Japon comparativement à l’Occident.

In this paper, I examine Adorno’s controversial claim that human rationality is inherently mimetic. To do so, I break this claim down into three puzzles (the natural historical puzzle, the metaphysical puzzle, and the epistemic puzzle) and consider each in turn. The first puzzle originates in Adorno’s assertion that in the course of human history the mimetic moment of human thought “is melted together with the rational moment”. So whereas, on his narrative, mimesis has become an intrinsic component of human (...) rationality, it appears that we are oblivious to this state of affair and unable to recognize the workings of mimesis in what we otherwise refer to as rationality. The second puzzle concerns the traditional metaphysical question regarding the possibility of knowledge. Adorno holds that the key to this question lies in the “mimetic moment of knowledge”, which he characterizes as the “moment of the elective affinity between the knower and the known.” The third puzzle concerns his views on how the mimetic moment of thought plays out in our epistemic practices. As he puts it, “consciousness knows of its other as much as it resembles that other,” which seems to entail that our very efforts to conceptualize objects somehow rely on imitative processes. I work out what I take to be the basics of Adorno’s understanding of mimesis and use them to make sense of each puzzle. I argue that Adorno’s insistence on the mimetic component of human rationality isn’t meant to promote more mimetic modes of comportment, but a reflexive awareness of the extent to which our rational activities already rely on imitative (or immersive) processes, even those we view as embodying the strongest claims to the contrary. (shrink)

In this paper, we evaluate the project of resurgence of metaphysics based on the pecularity of the quantum domain, a project that is supported by some contemporary philosophers. Beyond the general arguments against scientific realism that are still applicable here, we show that this project is faced with the three following issues that, we believe, make it unrealizable: (a) the problem raised by the realistic interpretation of the wave function, as a description of a ‘concrete physical fact’ of the independent (...) reality; (b) the lack of any experimental counterpart of the (non-local) hidden variables quantum theories, and, in some cases, their incompatibility with the quantum predictions; and (c) the fact that the key-properties of quantum phenomena, like their non-locality, essentially depend on the observables that are used for their description and cannot then be assigned to any ‘independent’ reality. (shrink)

A presentation and discussion of Gottlob Frege's understanding of language, both natural and artificial, with close attention to his texts.

It has been pointed out that Gettier case scenarios have deviant realizations and that deviant realizations raise a difficulty for the logical analysis of thought experiments. Grundmann and Horvath have shown that it is possible to rule out deviant realizations by suitably modifying the scenario of a Gettier-style thought experiment. They hypothesize further that the enriched scenario corresponds to the way expert epistemologists implicitly interpret the original one. However, no precise account of this implicit enrichment is offered, which makes the (...) proposal somewhat ad hoc. Drawing on pragmatic theory, I argue that the content of Grundmann and Horvath’s modified scenario corresponds to the default interpretation of the original scenario and that epistemological expertise is not required to access the deviance-proof interpretation. This Default Interpretation proposal offers thus a more general and independently motivated solution to the Problem of Deviant Realizations. (shrink)

Deliberative Transformative Moments (DTM) is a new concept that serves as an amendment to the DQI. With this new concept it is easier to get at the quick give-and-take of discussions of small groups of ordinary citizens. As an illustration, we apply the concept to discussions about the peace process among Colombian ex-combatants, ex-guerrillas and ex-paramilitaries. Specifically, we show how personal stories can transform a discussion from a low to a high level of deliberation and how they can have the (...) opposite effect. To increase the level of deliberation in the general population, we recommend that good illustrations of DTM’s should be part of the school programs from an early age on, so that children learn how to discuss with others who have different opinions and values. (shrink)

Sleep has long been a topic of fascination for artists and scientists. Why do we sleep? What function does sleep serve? Why do we dream? What significance can we attach to our dreams? We spend so much of our lives sleeping, yet its precise function is unclear, in spite of our increasing understanding of the processes generating and maintaining sleep. We now know that sleep can be accompanied by periods of intense cerebral activity, yet only recently has experimental data started (...) to provide us with some insights into the type of processing taking place in the brain as we sleep. There is now strong evidence that sleep plays a crucial role in learning and in the consolidation of memories. Once the preserve of psychoanalysts, 'dreaming' is now a topic of increasing interest amongst scientists. With research into sleep growing, this volume is both timely and valuable in presenting a unique study of the relationship between sleep, learning, and memory. It brings together a team of international scientists researching sleep in both human and animal subjects. Aimed at researchers within the fields of neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurology, this book will be an important first step in developing a full scientific understanding of the most intriguing state of consciousness. (shrink)

This chapter presents four arguments supporting an age-differentiated tax on bequests, that is, a tax rate on bequests that is varying with the age of the deceased. Whereas those arguments are based on various ethical foundations, and lead to an inheritance tax that can be either increasing or decreasing with the age of the deceased, our comparative analysis leads us to regard one of these arguments as more convincing than the three others: the argument supporting a bequest tax increasing with (...) the age of the deceased, on the grounds of the compensation of unlucky prematurely dead persons in a world of imperfect information. (shrink)

This article claims that one has to distinguish between X° reflexives which do not bear phi-features, such as number, and XP complex reflexive - which do bear such features. The presence/vs absence of features, it is argued, explains the behavior of so called long distance reflexives - first observed, within the generative tradition, in scandinavian languages - but present all over. The observation according to which XP reflexives are clause bound, while X° reflexives in argument position are not, is some (...) times refered to as "Pica's generalization" (see Burzio (1987) which stressed correctly that is was the first time that such a correlatiion betwen reflexives structure, binding domains, and the role of a cycle was observed. The behavioir of reflexives it is argued derives from the properties of abstratc movement at the level of Logical Form. (shrink)

The aim of this master’s thesis is to analyse and highlight the interaction between science, politics and law. More precisely, our research question concerns the use of scientific arguments in social spheres (notably in politics and law) instead of legal or political arguments. In fact, we want to raise the way in which certain actors invoke scientific arguments to impose "objective" elements of fact in debate and, in this way, refrain from politically and "subjectively" discussing these same elements (or, at (...) least, their social consequences). This Master’s thesis will adopt an interdisciplinary theoretical framework (chapter 1) mobilising philosophy of science, philosophy of law, sociology of law, legal technique and analytical theories. Then, we will apply it to a case study: the European regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) after the European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling of 25 July 2015 (chapter 2). The first chapter will provide theoretical elements to rethink the interaction between science, politics and law. The first section will propose a 'state of the art’ of the philosophical literature on the relationship between science (as a regime of truth) and politics. This master’s thesis will assess a truth under construction rather than a transcendental truth. Section 2 anticipates authoritarian claims based on science by considering the relationship science can have with power (Foucault). A solid review of philosophical, sociological and legal literature highlights the risks of giving decision-making power to an all-powerful science. Notably, the use of science to justify discriminatory policies is emphasised as these policies could not be challenged because, at the time, it was considered an objective scientific truth. Finally, section 3 offers a critique of the narratives of neutral and objective science, through the approach of science in action. This sociological approach presented all the doubts and subjectivity of science in action. The second chapter will propose a case study to illustrate the theoretical framework. We have chosen GMOs because they constitute a hybrid 'event', marked by scientific controversies, and with major socio-economic implications. The legal framework of GMOs in the European Union will be presented in the first section. In addition, the legal status of new breeding techniques (NBTs) will be examined. The second section will analyse the ruling of the European Court of Justice which made NBTs subject to GMO regulation. Finally, the third section will propose a reflection on the philosophy of law on the modes of existence of scientific, legal and political disciplines. (shrink)

All humans share a universal, evolutionarily ancient approximate number system (ANS) that estimates and combines the numbers of objects in sets with ratio-limited precision. Interindividual variability in the acuity of the ANS correlates with mathematical achievement, but the causes of this correlation have never been established. We acquired psychophysical measures of ANS acuity in child and adult members of an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucú, who have a very restricted numerical lexicon and highly variable access to mathematics education. (...) By comparing Mundurucú subjects with and without access to schooling, we found that education significantly enhances the acuity with which sets of concrete objects are estimated. These results indicate that culture and education have an important effect on basic number perception. We hypothesize that symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical thinking mutually enhance one another over the course of mathematics instruction. (shrink)

No one is responsible for their conduct because free will is an illusion, say some skeptics. Even when it seems that we have several options, we only have one. Hence, says the free will skeptic, we should reform our practices which involve responsibility attributions, such as punishment and blame. How seriously should we take this doctrine? Is it one that we could live by? One thorn in the side of the skeptic concerns deliberation. When we deliberate about what to do—what (...) film to go see, whom to befriend, which doctrine to follow—we must presume that our options are open to us. But then, every time that skeptics deliberate, they presume something which is incompatible with their doctrine, i.e. that they have several options. In a word, skeptics cannot deliberate qua skeptics. Some philosophers have responded that deliberators don’t have to presume that their options are open; they only have to presume that their choice will be efficacious. I argue that this proposal uses resources which, if they are available and successful, can be employed to refute skepticism. The upshot is that free will skeptics are pushing for a doctrine that is either false or in tension with deliberation. (shrink)

Article Authors Metrics Comments Media Coverage Abstract Author Summary Introduction Results Discussion Supporting information Acknowledgments Author Contributions References Reader Comments (0) Media Coverage (0) Figures Abstract During language processing, humans form complex embedded representations from sequential inputs. Here, we ask whether a “geometrical language” with recursive embedding also underlies the human ability to encode sequences of spatial locations. We introduce a novel paradigm in which subjects are exposed to a sequence of spatial locations on an octagon, and are asked to (...) predict future locations. The sequences vary in complexity according to a well-defined language comprising elementary primitives and recursive rules. A detailed analysis of error patterns indicates that primitives of symmetry and rotation are spontaneously detected and used by adults, preschoolers, and adult members of an indigene group in the Amazon, the Munduruku, who have a restricted numerical and geometrical lexicon and limited access to schooling. Furthermore, subjects readily combine these geometrical primitives into hierarchically organized expressions. By evaluating a large set of such combinations, we obtained a first view of the language needed to account for the representation of visuospatial sequences in humans, and conclude that they encode visuospatial sequences by minimizing the complexity of the structured expressions that capture them. (shrink)

Je voudrais partager avec vous la première partie d'un projet d'article à approche philosophique et dont l'objet est l'impact potentiel de l'idéalisme kantien sur l'idée de la ''révolution libanaise'' du 17 octobre 2019. Cet article a un double objectif : d'une part unifier et clarifier le lexique de cette révolution autour du concept du criticisme kantien et de son élaboration qui nous serait propre, et d'autre part recadrer l'intérêt de la révolution à une focalisation idéelle nécessaire à toute dynamique efficace (...) et pérenne de changement. (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)

A simple definition of consciousness is sensory awareness of the body, the self, and the world. The fetus may be aware of the body, for example by perceiving pain. It reacts to touch, smell, and sound, and shows facial expressions responding to exter- nal stimuli. However, these reactions are probably preprogrammed and have a subcortical nonconscious origin. Furthermore, the fetus is almost continuously asleep and unconscious partially due to endog- enous sedation. Conversely, the newborn infant can be awake, exhibit sensory (...) awareness, and process memorized mental representations. It is also able to differentiate between self and nonself touch, express emotions, and show signs of shared feelings. Yet, it is unreflective, present oriented, and makes little reference to concept of him/herself. Newborn infants display features characteristic of what may be referred to as basic consciousness and they still have to undergo considerable maturation to reach the level of adult consciousness. The preterm infant, ex utero, may open its eyes and establish minimal eye contact with its mother. It also shows avoidance reactions to harmful stimuli. However, the thalamocortical connections are not yet fully established, which is why it can only reach a minimal level of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and discuss critically the main elements of Mario Bunge’s philosophy of mathematics. In particular, I explore how mathematical knowledge is accounted for in Bunge’s systemic emergent materialism.

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