Le modèle atomique de Bohr a été l'un des exemples les plus brillants de la méthodologie des programmes de recherche d'Imre Lakatos. Les grandes lignes du programme de recherche de Bohr (Bohr 1913) peuvent être caractérisées par : 1. Le problème initial ; 2. Ses heuristiques négatives et positives ; 3. Les problèmes qu'il a tenté de résoudre au cours du développement ; 4. Son point de dégénérescence (point de saturation) et, enfin, 5. Le programme (...) par lequel il a été remplacé. 10.13140/RG.2.2.21718.68166 . (shrink)

People suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) do things they do not want to do, and/or they think things they do not want to think. In about 10 percent of OCD patients, none of the available treatment options is effective. A small group of these patients is currently being treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS). Deep brain stimulation involves the implantation of electrodes in the brain. These electrodes give a continuous electrical pulse to the brain area in which they are implanted. (...) It turns out that patients may experience profound changes as a result of DBS treatment. It is not just the symptoms that change; patients rather seem to experience a different way of being in the world. These global effects are insufficiently captured by traditional psychiatric scales, which mainly consist of behavioural measures of the severity of the symptoms. In this article we aim to capture the changes in the patients’ phenomenology and make sense of the broad range of changes they report. For that we introduce an enactive, affordance-based model that fleshes out the dynamic interactions between person and world in four aspects. The first aspect is the patients’ experience of the world. We propose to specify the patients’ world in terms of a field of affordances, with the three dimensions of broadness of scope (‘width’ of the field), temporal horizon (‘depth’), and relevance of the perceived affordances (‘height’). The second aspect is the person-side of the interaction, that is, the patients’ self-experience, notably their moods and feelings. Thirdly, we point to the different characteristics of the way in which patients relate to the world. And lastly, the existential stance refers to the stance that patients take towards the changes they experience: the second-order evaluative relation to their interactions and themselves. With our model we intend to specify the notion of being in the world in order to do justice to the phenomenological effects of DBS treatment. (shrink)

In this chapter, one considers finance at its very foundations, namely, at the place where assumptions are being made about the ways to measure the two key ingredients of finance: risk and return. It is well known that returns for a large class of assets display a number of stylized facts that cannot be squared with the traditional views of 1960s financial economics (normality and continuity assumptions, i.e. Brownian representation of market dynamics). Despite the empirical counterevidence, normality and continuity assumptions (...) were part and parcel of financial theory and practice, embedded in all financial practices and beliefs. Our aim is to build on this puzzle for extracting some clues revealing the use of one research strategy in academic community, model tinkering defined as a particular research habit. We choose to focus on one specific moment of the scientific controversies in academic finance: the ‘leptokurtic crisis’ opened by Mandelbrot in 1962. The profoundness of the crisis came from the angle of the Mandelbrot’s attack: not only he emphasized an empirical inadequacy of the Brownian representation, but also he argued for an inadequate grounding of this representation. We give some insights in this crisis and display the model tinkering strategies of the financial academic community in the 1970s and the 1980s. (shrink)

Current theories of the division of cognitive labor are confined to the “context of justification,” assuming exogenous theories. But new theories are made from the same labor that is used for developing existing theories, and if none of this labor is ever allocated to create new alternatives, then scientific progress is impossible. A unified model is proposed in which theories are no longer given but a function of the division of labor in the model itself. The interactions of individuals balancing (...) the exploitation of existing theories and the exploration of new theories results in a robust cyclical pattern. (shrink)

Understanding the pervasiveness of sin is central to Christian theology. The question of why humans are so sinful given an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God presents a challenge and a puzzle. Here, we investigate Friedrich Schleiermacher’s biocultural evolutionary account of sin. We look at empirical evidence to support it and use the cultural Price equation to provide a naturalistic model of the transmission of sin. This model can help us understand how sin can be ubiquitous and unavoidable, even though it (...) is not biologically transmitted, and even if there is no historical Fall that precipitated the tendency to sin. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the conceptual problems arising when using network analysis in person- centered care (PCC) in psychiatry. Personalized network models are potentially helpful tools for PCC, but we argue that using them in psychiatric practice raises boundary problems, i.e., problems in demarcating what should and should not be included in the model, which may limit their ability to provide clinically-relevant knowledge. Models can have explanatory and representational boundaries, among others. We argue that we can make more explicit (...) what kind of questions personalized network models can address in PCC, given their representational and explanatory boundaries, using perspectival reasoning. (shrink)

This article critically discusses the concept of economic rationality, arguing that it is too narrow and specific to encompass the full concept of practical rationality. Economic rationality is identified here with the use of the optimizing model of decision, as well as of expected utility apparatus to deal with uncertainty. To argue that practical rationality is broader than economic rationality, the article claims that practical rationality includes bounded rationality as a particular case, and that bounded rationality cannot be reduced to (...) economic rationality as defined here. (shrink)

This article investigates the ethical requirements and features that characterize the professional life of successful contemporary classical orchestras, with particular focus on the leadership style of their conductors. As we will show, the traditional authoritarian approach, marked by the conductor’s commanding charisma and strict demand for obedience from orchestra members, has evolved today into a more ethically-based transformational style of leadership. This new approach is rooted in principles of respect, voluntary compliance, and trust. The present paper delves into the interpersonal (...) dynamics within contemporary orchestras, focusing specifically on the character traits required to establish trust and collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra members, as well as among the orchestra members themselves. In particular, drawing from recent research in psychology, we underscore the significance of deference, empathy, and shared commitment toward the common goal of excellence in performance. We conclude that the ethics-centered style of leadership adopted by most contemporary conductors may extend beyond the realm of music, offering insights applicable to leaders in various other fields. By fostering deep connections, shared purpose, and collaboration, this approach has the potential to enhance organizational performance and outcomes in general. (shrink)

In this article we raise a problem, and we offer two practical contributions to its solution. The problem is that academic communities interested in digital publishing do not have adequate tools to help them in choosing a publishing model that suits their needs. We believe that excessive focus on Open Access (OA) has obscured some important issues; moreover exclusive emphasis on increasing openness has contributed to an agenda and to policies that show clear practical shortcomings. We believe that academic communities (...) have different needs and priorities; therefore there cannot be a ranking of publishing models that fits all and is based on only one criterion or value. We thus believe that two things are needed. First, communities need help in working out what they want from their digital publications. Their needs and desiderata should be made explicit and their relative importance estimated. This exercise leads to the formulation and ordering of their objectives. Second, available publishing models should be assessed on the basis of these objectives, so as to choose one that satisfies them well. Accordingly we have developed a framework that assists communities in going through these two steps. The framework can be used informally, as a guide to the collection and systematic organization of the information needed to make an informed choice of publishing model. In order to do so it maps the values that should be weighed and the technical features that embed them. Building on our framework, we also offer a method to produce ordinal and cardinal scores of publishing models. When these techniques are applied the framework becomes a formal decision–making tool. Finally, the framework stresses that, while the OA movement tackles important issues in digital publishing, it cannot incorporate the whole range of values and interests that are at the core of academic publishing. Therefore the framework suggests a broader agenda that is relevant in making better policy decisions around academic publishing and OA. (shrink)

Le présent travail s'inscrit à l'intersection de deux problèmes épistémologiques majeurs. D'une part, le problème de la démarcation scientifique, qui consiste à identifier ce qui distingue intrinsèquement un système (un énoncé, une théorie, ...) scientifique d'un système non scientifique ou pseudo-scientifique. D'autre part, le problème de l'unité épistémologique des sciences, qui consiste à se demander si toutes les disciplines à vocation scientifique peuvent être vues comme des instanciations d'une notion unique de la scientificité. Ces deux problèmes ont soulevé de nombreux (...) débats ayant mis en évidence un ensemble important de difficultés. Le terme « scientifique » désigne en effet des méthodes empiriques, des constructions théoriques et des pratiques de recherche si hétérogènes qu’il semble voué à l’échec d’en chercher une définition aisée à circonscrire. De plus, les objets des disciplines scientifiques sont eux-mêmes de natures très diverses, ce qui semble rendre pareillement caduque toute recherche d’un concept unique de science qui pourrait s’appliquer indépendamment de la discipline en question. Dans cette thèse, je me propose de prendre à contre-pied cet état de fait en soutenant la possibilité et la pertinence d'un modèle unitaire de la scientificité, tout en me restreignant à une approche épistémologique comparée entre les sciences physiques et les sciences sociales. Pour défendre mon propos, j’ai mobilisé deux types de réponses pouvant être opposées au constat présenté plus haut. D’une part, des réponses de principe, où j’examine et m’oppose à des arguments théoriques soutenant l’impossibilité ou en tout cas la difficulté de définir la scientificité en général, et la nécessité pour les sciences sociales de jouir d’une définition à part. D’autre part, je mobilise également des réponses par l’exemple. J’étudie alors plus en détail l’approche dite « analytique » en sociologie. Ce courant a cela d’intéressant pour mon propos qu’il ne semble pas nécessiter d’épistémologie alternative à celle ayant cours, par exemple, en physique ou en biologie, tout en prétendant bien produire des connaissances sur le monde social. Il s’agit donc d’un contre-exemple concret et manifeste de la thèse soutenant que la sociologie ne peut pas jouir du même type d’épistémologie que les autres disciplines. Plus concrètement, j’élabore un (méta-)modèle unitaire de la scientificité en me concentrant sur une unité d’analyse bien circonscrite : les modèles. Je distingue chez ses derniers, classiquement, deux composantes principales : une composante empirique, qui a pour vocation à identifier des régularités dans le réel auquel on a accès à travers des données, et une composante théorique, à visée explicative et classificatoire. Je propose alors de construire formellement un degré de scientificité global dans lequel se combinent la maximisation d’une certaine quantité d’information définie sur la composante empirique et un critère d’invariance structurelle défini sur la composante théorique. Ces diverses constructions, bien que formelles, permettent d’éclairer efficacement les questions épistémologiques que je me suis données au départ de mon travail, ce dernier ayant vocation à constituer une étape supplémentaire vers un modèle unitaire de la scientificité. (shrink)

Human behavior and thought often exhibit a familiar pattern of within group similarity and between group difference. Many of these patterns are attributed to cultural differences. For much of the history of its investigation into behavior and thought, however, cognitive science has been disproportionately focused on uncovering and explaining the more universal features of human minds—or the universal features of minds in general. -/- This entry charts out the ways in which this has changed over recent decades. It sketches the (...) motivation behind the cultural turn in cognitive science, and situates some of its central findings with respect to the questions that animate it and the debates that it has inspired. Woven throughout the entry are examples of how the cognitive science of culture, and especially its elevated concern with different forms of diversity and variation, continues to influence and be influenced by philosophers. -/- One cluster of philosophical work falls within the traditional subject matter of philosophy of science, in this case of the cognitive and social sciences. Philosophers have analyzed and assessed the methods and evidence central to the scientific study of cognition and culture, and have offered conceptual scrutiny, clarification, and synthesis. Research in a second vein sees philosophers themselves contributing more directly to cognitive scientific projects, (co)constructing theories, helping build computational models, even gathering empirical data. A third kind of work is naturalistic philosophy or philosophy of nature, wherein philosophers seek to use results from the cognitive science of culture to inform or transform debates over long-standing philosophical questions, including questions about the nature of philosophy and philosophical methodology itself. (shrink)

The appearance of openly accessible Artificial Intelligence Applications such as Large Language Models, nowadays capable of almost human-level performances in complex reasoning tasks had a tremendous impact on public opinion. Are we going to be "replaced" by the machines? Or - even worse - "ruled" by them? The behavior of these systems is so advanced they might almost appear "alive" to end users, and there have been claims about these programs being "sentient". Since many of our relationships of power and (...) social dominance are apparently based on intelligence, where the "smarter" seems to prevail on the "dumber" (as we see for example with livestock farming, or with the distribution of salaries according to formal and intellectual qualifications etc.) the emergence of programs and AI applications of this level of sophistication brings us to the question "what will AI do to us?". Our error is to frame Artificial Intelligence in the same way we frame Natural Intelligence and mistakenly address it as we would do with biological life, even applying to it the same biopolitical categories. We here try to reverse the common arguments in relationship between life and intelligence and show that our progresses in Artificial Intelligence might have no immediate consequence for the topic of life as such, as life and intelligence are well separated issues, and - even when we would like to somehow fuse them together, we are very far away from having an "Artificial Life" to the degree of complexity and effectiveness we have with "Artificial Intelligence". (shrink)

This paper analyses the phenomenology and epistemology of chatbots such as ChatGPT and Bard. The computational architecture underpinning these chatbots are large language models (LLMs), which are generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems trained on a massive dataset of text extracted from the Web. We conceptualise these LLMs as multifunctional computational cognitive artifacts, used for various cognitive tasks such as translating, summarizing, answering questions, information-seeking, and much more. Phenomenologically, LLMs can be experienced as a “quasi-other”; when that happens, users anthropomorphise them. (...) For most users, current LLMs are black boxes, i.e., for the most part, they lack data transparency and algorithmic transparency. They can, however, be phenomenologically and informationally transparent, in which case there is an interactional flow. Anthropomorphising and interactional flow can, in some users, create an attitude of (unwarranted) trust towards the output LLMs generate. We conclude this paper by drawing on the epistemology of trust and testimony to examine the epistemic implications of these dimensions. Whilst LLMs generally generate accurate responses, we observe two epistemic pitfalls. Ideally, users should be able to match the level of trust that they place in LLMs to the degree that LLMs are trustworthy. However, both their data and algorithmic opacity and their phenomenological and informational transparency can make it difficult for users to calibrate their trust correctly. The effects of these limitations are twofold: users may adopt unwarranted attitudes of trust towards the outputs of LLMs (which is particularly problematic when LLMs hallucinate), and the trustworthiness of LLMs may be undermined. (shrink)

of “Reason and the structure of Davidson’s ‘Desire-Belief-Model’ ” by Henk bij de Weg In the present discussion in the analytic theory of action, broadly two models for the explanation or justification of actions can be distinguished: the internalist and the externalist model. Against this background, I discuss Davidson’s version of the internalist Desire-Belief Model . First, I show that what Davidson calls “pro attitude” has two distinct meanings. An implication of this is that Davidson’s DBM actually comprises two different (...) models: the “classical” DBM and a model that has an extra premise, the “nonclassical” model. However, from another point of view one can say that the classical DBM is the nonclassical model in which a premise is missing. In order to determine which viewpoint is correct, I introduce Schütz’s distinction between “because-motives” and “in-order-to-motives”. With the help of this distinction, I can show that the classical DBM is an incomplete version of the nonclassical model. Besides of the premise that refers to the agent’s pro attitude, we need this extra premise in order to refer to the occasion as experienced by the agent that makes him or her act. Only then can we fully explain or justify an action. (shrink)

Après avoir introduit la notion d’espace public dans le contexte de la « théorie générale de la société » avec laquelle Habermas a entrepris une reconstruction de l’évolution des systèmes sociaux et, aussi, de la naissance de la sphère publique au cœur des sociétés bourgeoises et des changements à travers et au-delà des sociétés de masse, cet article se propose d’élaborer un cadre analytique du modèle habermasien de la sphère politique publique, décrivant aujourd’hui sa structure et ses fonctions spécifiques, (...) par rapport à la société civile et au système politique (fonctions de «caisse de résonance », « filtre », « contrôle » et « pression de rationalisation »). Dans un effort pour clarifier le «sens critique» d’un modèle de recherche « normatif » dans son contenu, mais suffisamment « réaliste », Habermas remonte à deux questions essentielles pour des sciences de la communication: a) l’indépendance des médias de masse; et b) les leur effets sur l’auditoire. Ce passage permet de mettre en évidence la « structure » et la « qualité » de la discussion publique. (shrink)

Contemporary debates about scientific institutions and practice feature many proposed reforms. Most of these require increased efforts from scientists. But how do scientists’ incentives for effort interact? How can scientific institutions encourage scientists to invest effort in research? We explore these questions using a game-theoretic model of publication markets. We employ a base game between authors and reviewers, before assessing some of its tendencies by means of analysis and simulations. We compare how the effort expenditures of these groups interact in (...) our model under a variety of settings, such as double-blind and open review systems. We make a number of findings, including that open review can increase the effort of authors in a range of circumstances and that these effects can manifest in a policy-relevant period of time. However, we find that open review’s impact on authors’ efforts is sensitive to the strength of several other influences. (shrink)

The relationship between topological explanation and mechanistic explanation is unclear. Most philosophers agree that at least some topological explanations are mechanistic explanations. The crucial question is how to make sense of this claim. Zednik (Philos Psychol 32(1):23–51, 2019) argues that topological explanations are mechanistic if they (i) describe mechanism sketches that (ii) pick out organizational properties of mechanisms. While we agree with Zednik’s conclusion, we critically discuss Zednik’s account and show that it fails as a general account of how and (...) when topological explanations are mechanistic. First, if topological explanations were just mechanism sketches, this implies that they could be enriched by replacing topological terms with mechanistic detail. This, however, conflicts how topological explanations are used in scientific practice. Second, Zednik’s account fails to show how topological properties can be organizational properties of mechanisms that have a place in mechanistic explanation. The core issue is that Zednik’s account ignores that topological properties often are _global_ properties while mechanistic explanantia refer to _local_ properties. We demonstrate how these problems can be solved by a recent account of mechanistic completeness (Craver and Kaplan in Br J Philos Sci 71(1):287–319, 2020; Kohár and Krickel in Calzavarini and Viola (eds) Neural mechanisms—new challenges in the philosophy of neuroscience, Springer, New York, 2021) and use a multilayer network model of Alzheimer’s Disease to illustrate this. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that one of the arguments usually put forward in defence of universism is in tension with current set theoretic practice. According to universism, there is only one set theoretic universe, V, and when applying the method of forcing we are not producing new universes, but only simulating them inside V. Since the usual interpretation of set generic forcing is used to produce a “simulation” of an extension of V from a countable set inside V itself, (...) the above argument is credited to be a strong defence of universism. However, I claim, such an argument does not take into account current mathematical practice. Indeed, it is possible to find theorems that are available to the multiversists but that the advocate of universism cannot prove. For example, it is possible to prove results on infinite games in non-well-founded set-theories plus the axiom of determinacy (such as ZF + AFA + PD) that are not available in ZFC + PD. These results, I contend, are philosophically problematic on a strict universist approach to forcing. I suggest that the best way to avoid the difficulty is to adopt a pluralist conception of set theory and embrace a set theoretic multiverse. Consequently, the current practice of set generic forcing better supports a multiverse conception of set theory. (shrink)

How does one know the phenomenal character of one’s own experience? I aim to present and defend a new view of the epistemology of qualia that addresses this issue. My view results from a reworking of Dretske’s displaced perception model. The guiding line is the key Wittgensteinian insight of his Private Language Argument, namely the claim that no inner perception of qualia can justify our corresponding qualia-beliefs. My reworking of the original model starts with the rejection of Dretske’s representationalism, as (...) well as any other metaphysical views about the ultimate nature of qualia. The reworking of the displaced perception model I am proposing is supposed to be compatible with any available meta- physical view on qualia. The second step consists of rejecting the epistemological misgivings of the original model, namely the view that knowing qualia requires “connecting beliefs” along with “meta-representations.” Yet, Dretske’s crucial mistake has been to force knowledge of qualia into the “belief-box.” As a matter of fact, there is only one belief involved in intro- specting qualia, namely the qualia-belief itself. The third final step is this. Assuming the key Wittgensteinian insight, I argue that introspection of qualia is a process that is both epis- temically reliable and automatic. It is reliable because it dispenses with justification of any beliefs whatsoever. Moreover, it is automatic because it also dispenses with reflexive con- necting beliefs. For example, it takes nonconceptual awareness of the color blue as an input and automatically yields the belief that phenomenal blue is the conscious character of my experience of the sky as an output just by employing the concept BLUE. (shrink)

Cognitive sciences as an interdisciplinary field, involving scientific disciplines (such as computer science, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, economics, etc.), philosophical disciplines (philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, analytic philosophy, etc.) and engineering (notably knowledge engineering), have a vast theoretical and practical content, some even conflicting. In this interdisciplinary context and on computational modeling, ontologies play a crucial role in communication between disciplines and also in a process of innovation of theories, models and experiments in cognitive sciences. We propose a model for (...) this process here. An ontological commitment is advocated as the framework of a scientific realism, which leads computational modeling to search for more realistic models, for a complex systems perspective of nature and cognition. In that way multiagent modeling of complex systems has been fulfilling an important role. (shrink)

I aim to develop an alternative theoretical model for the direct cognition of the elementary states of others called the theory of interaction (henceforth TI), also known as the “second person” approach. The model I propose emerges from a critical reformulation of the displaced perception model proposed by FRED DRETSKE (1995) for the introspective knowledge of our own mental states. Moreover, against Dretske, I argue that no meta-representation (second-order representation of a first-order representation as a representation) is involved in the (...) process, but only concepts, rudimentary enough, of others’ emotions: contentment and discontentment. Strictly speaking, all the empirical data and findings in developmental psychology only support the hypothesis that children in the pre-linguistic phase understand perceptual facial expressions of contentment and discontentment. My proposal consists of the following thesis: The direct perception of others' elementary mental states is not a perception in the usual sense of the word according to which we just perceive things, but rather a “perception of facts.” But how to understand that? It is nothing more than an epistemological process that is automatic and reliable at the same time. It is reliable in the epistemological-externalist sense of not involving any inference, reflection, theorizing or epistemic justification: a baby’s perception of her mom’s facial expression of discontentment (in the usual sense of “per- ception”) does not constitute a reason supporting the belief that mommy is discontent. The very word “belief” should not be understood in the usual sense but rather in the sense of a natural inclination for truth. But at the same time, it is automatic because the belief is a result or output of a process entirely subliminal and computational in nature. Thus, for instance, a child perceives that her mom is discontent (fact-awareness) by perceiving consciously (“perception” in the usual sense) a facial expression of discontentment (sensorial input) but recognizes that her mother is discontent as a result (output) of an entirely subliminal process. (shrink)

Item analysis is a general term that refers to the specific methods used in education to evaluate test items, typically for the purpose of test construction and revision. Construction and analysis of science examinations in high school curricula needs the integration of integrated process and skill type which help students develop their rational and logical thinking. This exploratory study aimed to investigate the comparative results of item analyses using Rasch Model Analysis and SPSS. It examined the reliability, mean difficulty, mean (...) ability, discrimination index, mean trend scores, infit and misfit, and item-person and fit maps using the results of the Basic & Integrated Science Process and Skill Test (BISPST) administered to secondary science high school teachers in the Division of Nueva Vizcaya. The Rasch Model Analysis and SPSS revealed the same unsatisfactory value of internal consistency or the reliability coefficient Cronbach’s alpha (0.66 and 0.67), mean score (19.52) and standard deviation (4.53) of the BISPST. The mean item difficulty was set at 0 by definition (SD = 2.02) and the mean examinee ability was 1.56 (SD = 0.98), which means that the examinees were able to correctly answer 61% of items on average. 33 items with difficulty lower than the least able examinee. The mean ability using Rasch Model Analysis per item showed that high performers in the test got the correct answers compared to the low performing group. This is the same and consistent with the results of the mean trend scores of the upper, middle and lower groups as generated by the SPSS. Choices in the BISPST were found to be effective distracters. Although most items needs revision as revealed by the values generated by both softwares, no items were found to be misfit in the distribution. (shrink)

Abstract: The Pull Bayesian Significance Test (FBST) for precise hy- potheses is applied to a Multivariate Normal Structure (MNS) model. In the FBST we compute the evidence against the precise hypothesis. This evi- dence is the probability of the Highest Relative Surprise Set (HRSS) tangent to the sub-manifold (of the parameter space) that defines the null hypothesis. The MNS model we present appears when testing equivalence conditions for genetic expression measurements, using micro-array technology.

ABSTRACTA longstanding tradition in philosophy distinguishes between knowthatand know-how. This traditional “anti-intellectualist” view is soentrenched in folk psychology that it is often invoked in supportof an allegedly equivalent distinction between explicit and implicitmemory, derived from the so-called “standard model of memory.”In the last two decades, the received philosophical view has beenchallenged by an “intellectualist” view of know-how. Surprisingly, defenders of the anti-intellectualist view have turned to the cognitivescience of memory, and to the standard model in particular, todefend their view. Here, (...) I argue that this strategy is a mistake. As it turns out, upon closer scrutiny, the evidence from cognitivepsychology and neuroscience of memory does not support theanti-intellectualist approach, mainly because the standard modelof memory is likely wrong. However, this need not be interpretedas good news for the intellectualist, for it is not clear that theempirical evidence necessarily supp... (shrink)

Wat betreft economische groei en ontwikkeling van de werkloosheid heeft de Nederlandse economie het sinds 1973 slechter gedaan dan andere OECD-landen. Op de vraag naar de oorzaken van die slechte prestatie zijn in het verleden uiteenlopende antwoorden gegeven door o.m. Bomhoff en Clavaux. Ook zijn er diverse wegen aangegeven om op te rukken naar een betere positie. In dit artikel presenteren de auteurs de resultaten van een internationale doorsnee-analyse om de verschillen in economisch succes tussen landen met behulp van een (...) eenvoudig neo-klassiek macro-economisch model te verklaren. Dit biedt de mogelijkheid om te traceren wat de rol van de exportgroei, de groei van de bevolking, de wisselkoers, de verhouding tussen de binnenlandse en de buitenlandse prijsontwikkeling en de investeringsquote voor verschillen in economische ontwikkeling is geweest. Vooral de uitvoer gecorrigeerd voor de omvang van de bevolking, de investeringsquote en de nominale wisselkoers komen als belangrijke verklarende variabelen naar voren. Op grond van hun analyse komen de auteurs tot de conclusie dat een beleid gericht op het verbeteren van de Nederlandse economische prestatie op lange termijn zich vooral zou moeten concentreren op het benutten van exportkansen en op een hoog investeringsniveau ter bevordering van technologische vernieuwing en daarmee verbetering van de concurrentiepositie. Daarbij moet worden voorkomen dat revaluatie van de gulden het exporteffect teniet doet. (shrink)

This article aims to carry out a review and analysis of the relationship and influence of sophist thought and epistemology in modern Brief strategic psychotherapy, Nardone model. The particular interest of this research revolves around the epistemological aspects and the questioning of objective reality and how this may have influenced the praxis of brief therapy. The epistemological, theoretical, and philosophical contributions of the sophists promoted a cultural change in the Hellenic world their legacy continues to this day, greatly influencing various (...) fields of knowledge, from philosophy to psychotherapy. A review of the preliminary evidence published in the philosophical and psychological literature is presented, examining sophist epistemology and its influence on brief strategic therapy, analyzing its epistemological approach related to relativism and skepticism, at the same time showing a philosophy that continues to this day that influences contemporary thinking and modern psychotherapy, especially Brief Strategic Therapy. From the review and analysis, is evidenced the influence of the sophists thinking on epistemology, the questioning of objective reality, and the clinical practice of brief strategic therapy. (shrink)

Against the background of revolutionary digital technologies, mobile learning and the crisis of conventional paradigms in mass societies, the present study shows how innovative and multidisciplinary research capable of both observing and interpreting reality as well as consolidating a pedagogical model open to intercultural dialogue with faith and ethics will allow different cultures to re-appropriate the scientific, pedagogic, ethical and linguistic methodologies necessary for the formation of the ‘human being’. The post-modern condition of the ‘liquid society’, where only transient values (...) are given, with the consequence of uncertainty and dissatisfaction, is the right time to return to the true moral values, i.e. those described by the classical philosophy and the Christian religion that fully realize the human being. This inspiration enables Pedagogy to overcome the uncertainties that afflict subjects in education; overcome the absence of languages and shared ethics; overcome the paroxysmal defense of freedom of thought and action; respond to the lack of model teachers who can have a positive influence on their students; discourage marked and more widespread individualism. (shrink)

How does one know the phenomenal character of one’s own experience? I aim to present and defend a new view of the epistemology of qualia that addresses this issue. My view results from a reworking of Dretske’s displaced perception model. The guiding line is the key Wittgensteinian insight of his Private Language Argument, namely the claim that no inner perception of qualia can justify our corresponding qualia beliefs. My reworking of the original model starts with the rejection of Dretske’s representationalism, (...) as well as any other metaphysical views about the ultimate nature of qualia. The reworking of the displaced perception model I am proposing is supposed to be compatible with any available metaphysical view on qualia. The second step consists of rejecting the epistemological misgivings of the original model, namely the view that knowing qualia requires “connecting beliefs” along with “meta-representations.” Yet, Dretske’s crucial mistake has been to force knowledge of qualia into the “belief-box.” As a matter of fact, there is only one belief involved in introspecting qualia, namely the qualia-belief itself. The third final step is this. Assuming the key Wittgensteinian insight, I argue that introspection of qualia is a process that is both epis- temically reliable and automatic. It is reliable because it dispenses with justification of any beliefs whatsoever. Moreover, it is automatic because it also dispenses with reflexive connecting beliefs. For example, it takes nonconceptual awareness of the color blue as an input and automatically yields the belief that phenomenal blue is the conscious character of my experience of the sky as an output just by employing the concept BLUE. (shrink)

The Fully Bayesian Significance Test (FBST) is a coherent Bayesian significance test for sharp hypotheses. This paper proposes the FBST as a model selection tool for general mixture models, and compares its performance with Mclust, a model-based clustering software. The FBST robust performance strongly encourages further developments and investigations.

During the first half of the twentieth century, many philosophers of memory opposed the postulation of memory traces based on the claim that a satisfactory account of remembering need not include references to causal processes involved in recollection. However, in 1966, an influential paper by Martin and Deutscher showed that causal claims are indeed necessary for a proper account of remembering. This, however, did not settle the issue, as in 1977 Malcolm argued that even if one were to buy Martin (...) and Deutscher’s argument for causal claims, we still don’t need to postulate the existence of memory traces. This paper reconstructs the dialectic between realists and anti-realists about memory traces, suggesting that ultimately realists’ arguments amount to inferences to the best explanation. I then argue that Malcolm’s anti-realist strategy consists in the suggestion that causal explanations that do not invoke memory traces are at least as good as those that do. But then, Malcolm, I argue that there are a large number of memory phenomena for which explanations that do not postulate the existence of memory traces are definitively worse than explanations that do postulate them. Next, I offer a causal model based on an interventionist framework to illustrate when memory traces can help to explain memory phenomena and proceed to substantiate the model with details coming from extant findings in the neuroscience of memory. (shrink)

We show how the Full Bayesian Significance Test (FBST) can be used as a model selection criterion. The FBST was presented by Pereira and Stern as a coherent Bayesian significance test. Key Words: Bayesian test; Evidence; Global optimization; Information; Model selection; Numerical integration; Posterior density; Precise hypothesis; Regularization. AMS: 62A15; 62F15; 62H15.

Based on de Broglie’s wave hypothesis and the covariant ether, the Three Wave Hypothesis (TWH) has been proposed and developed in the last century. In 2007, the author found that the TWH may be attributed to a kinematical classical system of two perpendicular rolling circles. In 2012, the author showed that the position vector of a point in a model of two rolling circles in plane can be transformed to a complex vector under a proposed effect of partial observation. In (...) the present project, this concept of transformation is developed to be a lab observation concept. Under this transformation of the lab observer, it is found that velocity equation of the motion of the point is transformed to an equation analogising the relativistic quantum mechanics equation (Dirac equation). Many other analogies has been found, and are listed in a comparison table. The analogy tries to explain the entanglement within the scope of the transformation. These analogies may suggest that both quantum mechanics and special relativity are emergent, both of them are unified, and of the same origin. The similarities suggest analogies and propose questions of interpretation for the standard quantum theory, without any possible causal claims. (shrink)

John P. Burgess is the John N. Woodhull Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Logic and Methodology program at the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of Jack H. Silver with a thesis on descriptive set theory. He is a very distinguished and influential philosopher of mathematics. He has written several books: A Subject with No Object (with G. Rosen, Oxford University Press, 1997), Computability and Logic (with G. Boolos and R. Jeffrey, (...) 5th ed., Cambridge University Press, 2007), Fixing Frege (Princeton University Press, 2005), Mathematics, Models, and Modality (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Philosophical Logic (Princeton University Press, 2009), Truth (with A. G. Burgess, Princeton University Press, 2011), Saul Kripke: Puzzles & Mysteries (Polity Press, 2012), Rigor & Structure (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Set Theory (Cambridge Elements, Forthcoming). In this interview, Professor Burgess talks about how his interests in mathematics and philosophy developed and relate to each other. He then answers questions about specific themes of his philosophical work, with a focus on issues pertaining to philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

One of the most pressing questions concerning singular demonstrative mental contents is what makes their content singular: that is to say, what makes it the case that individual objects are the representata of these mental states. Many philosophers have required sophisticated intellectual capacities for singular content to be possible, such as the possession of an elaborate scheme of space and time. A more recent reaction to this strategy proposes to account for singular content solely on the basis of empirical models (...) of visual processing. We believe both sides make good points, and offer an intermediate way of looking into singular content. Our suggestion is that singular content may be traced to psychological capacities to form flexible, abstract representations in the prefrontal cortex. This allows them to be sustained for increasingly longer periods of time and extrapolated beyond the context of perception, thus going beyond lowlevel sensory representations while also falling short of more sophisticated intellectual abilities. (shrink)

In the last two decades, philosophy of neuroscience has predominantly focused on explanation. Indeed, it has been argued that mechanistic models are the standards of explanatory success in neuroscience over, among other things, topological models. However, explanatory power is only one virtue of a scientific model. Another is its predictive power. Unfortunately, the notion of prediction has received comparatively little attention in the philosophy of neuroscience, in part because predictions seem disconnected from interventions. In contrast, we argue that topological predictions (...) can and do guide interventions in science, both inside and outside of neuroscience. Topological models allow researchers to predict many phenomena, including diseases, treatment outcomes, aging, and cognition, among others. Moreover, we argue that these predictions also offer strategies for useful interventions. Topology-based predictions play this role regardless of whether they do or can receive a mechanistic interpretation. We conclude by making a case for philosophers to focus on prediction in neuroscience in addition to explanation alone. (shrink)

A impossibilidade de se fundamentar os direitos humanos hoje de maneira satisfatória, sem recorrer a modelos essencialistas ou metafísicos, parece correlata à universalidade de sua defesa e promoção. Uma abordagem fenomenológica favorece uma leitura perspectivista da alteridade, tornando altamente defensável e razoável que se aplique uma semântica transcendental ao problema da fundamentação dos direitos humanos. The impossibility of satisfactorily grounding human rights today, without resorting to essentialist or metaphysical models, seems correlated to the universality of their defense and promotion. A (...) phenomenological approach favors a perspectivist reading of alterity, making it highly defensible and reasonable that transcendental semantics be applied to the problem of the foundations of human rights. (shrink)

An intuitive and widely accepted view is that (a) beliefs aim at truth, (b) many citizens have stable and meaningful political beliefs, and (c) citizens choose to support political candidates or parties on the basis of their political beliefs. We argue that all three claims are false. First, we argue that political beliefs often differ from ordinary world-modelling beliefs because they do not aim at truth. Second, we draw on empirical evidence from political science and psychology to argue that most (...) people lack stable and meaningful political beliefs. Third, we claim that the true psychological basis for voting behavior is not an individual’s political beliefs but rather group identity. Along the way, we reflect on what this means for normative democratic theory. (shrink)

There is a common assumption that evolutionary explanations of religion undermine religious beliefs. Do etiological accounts similarly affect the rationality of religious practices? To answer this question, this paper looks at two influential evolutionary accounts of ritual, the hazard-precaution model and costly signaling theory. It examines whether Cuneo’s account of ritual knowledge as knowing to engage God can be maintained in the light of these evolutionary accounts. While the evolutionary accounts under consideration are not metaphysically incompatible with the idea that (...) religious rituals engage God, they cast doubt on whether many, if not all, rituals can do this successfully. (shrink)

There are calls from various sectors, including the popular press, industry, and academia, to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies in general, and large language models (LLMs) (such as ChatGPT and Gemini) in particular, into various spheres of the South African higher education sector. Nonetheless, the implementation of such technologies is not without ethical risks, notably those related to bias, unfairness, privacy violations, misinformation, lack of transparency, and threats to autonomy. This paper gives an overview of the more pertinent ethical concerns (...) that may result from the deployment of various current AI technologies in the South African higher education context. It provides a broad overview of the relevant AI ethics literature and distills a few general AI-ethics principles that can serve as guidelines for the ethical development, adoption, and use of AI systems. Suggestions are made as to how these might be applied to mitigate the ethical concerns in the South African higher education context. Overall, it is argued that AI technologies should only be adopted if they offer demonstrable benefits to stakeholders affected by them and that care should be taken to ensure that any potential harms are adequately addressed. (shrink)

Conditional independence tests have received special attention lately in machine learning and computational intelligence related literature as an important indicator of the relationship among the variables used by their models. In the field of probabilistic graphical models, which includes Bayesian network models, conditional independence tests are especially important for the task of learning the probabilistic graphical model structure from data. In this paper, we propose the full Bayesian significance test for tests of conditional independence for discrete datasets. The full Bayesian (...) significance test is a powerful Bayesian test for precise hypothesis, as an alternative to the frequentist’s significance tests (characterized by the calculation of the p-value). (shrink)

There is confusion among scholars of Bohr as to whether he should be categorized as an instrumentalist (see Faye 1991) or a realist (see Folse 1985). I argue that Bohr is a realist, and that the confusion is due to the fact that he holds a very special view of realism, which did not coincide with the philosophers’ views. His approach was sometimes labelled instrumentalist and other times realist, because he was an instrumentalist on the theoretical level, but (...) a realist on the level of models. Such a realist position is what I call phenomenological realism. In this paper, and by taking Bohr’s debate with Einstein as a paradigm, I try to prove that Bohr was such a realist. (shrink)

A first-order theory T has the Independence Property provided deduction of a statement of type (quantifiers) (P -> (P1 or P2 or .. or Pn)) in T implies that (quantifiers) (P -> Pi) can be deduced in T for some i, 1 <= i <= n). Variants of this property have been noticed for some time in logic programming and in linear programming. We show that a first-order theory has the Independence Property for the class of basic formulas provided it (...) can be axiomatized with Horn sentences. The existence of free models is a useful intermediate result. The independence Property is also a tool to decide that a sentence cannot be deduced. We illustrate this with the case of the classical Caratheodory theorem for Pasch-Peano geometries. (shrink)

Gene clustering is a useful exploratory technique to group together genes with similar expression levels under distinct cell cycle phases or distinct conditions. It helps the biologist to identify potentially meaningful relationships between genes. In this study, we propose a clustering method based on multivariate normal mixture models, where the number of clusters is predicted via sequential hypothesis tests: at each step, the method considers a mixture model of m components (m = 2 in the first step) and tests if (...) in fact it should be m - 1. If the hypothesis is rejected, m is increased and a new test is carried out. The method continues (increasing m) until the hypothesis is accepted. The theoretical core of the method is the full Bayesian significance test, an intuitive Bayesian approach, which needs no model complexity penalization nor positive probabilities for sharp hypotheses. Numerical experiments were based on a cDNA microarray dataset consisting of expression levels of 205 genes belonging to four functional categories, for 10 distinct strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. To analyze the method’s sensitivity to data dimension, we performed principal components analysis on the original dataset and predicted the number of classes using 2 to 10 principal components. Compared to Mclust (model-based clustering), our method shows more consistent results. (shrink)

The Gompertz distribution is commonly used in biology for modeling fatigue and mortality. This paper studies a class of models proposed by Adham and Walker, featuring a Gompertz type distribution where the dependence structure is modeled by a lognormal distribution, and develops a new multivariate formulation that facilitates several numerical and computational aspects. This paper also implements the FBST, the Full Bayesian Significance Test for pertinent sharp (precise) hypotheses on the lognormal covariance structure. The FBST’s e-value, ev(H), gives the epistemic (...) value of hypothesis, H, or the value of evidence in the observed in support of H. (shrink)

[Ronald de Sousa] Taking literally the concept of emotional truth requires breaking the monopoly on truth of belief-like states. To this end, I look to perceptions for a model of non-propositional states that might be true or false, and to desires for a model of propositional attitudes the norm of which is other than the semantic satisfaction of their propositional object. Those models inspire a conception of generic truth, which can admit of degrees for analogue representations such as emotions; belief-like (...) states, by contrast, are digital representations. I argue that the gravest problem-objectivity-is not insurmountable. /// [Adam Morton ] It is accuracy rather than truth itself that is valuable. Emotional truth is a dubious though attractive notion, but emotional accuracy is much easier to make sense of. My approach to accuracy goes via an account of what makes a story accurate. Stories can be accurate but not true, and emotions can be accurate whether or not they are true. The capacity for emotional accuracy, for emotions that fit a person's situation, is an aspect of emotional intelligence, which is as important an aspect of rational human agency as the intelligent formation of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

This paper analyses the arguments for and against what we have called automatic organ procurement model in relation to the organs of the deceased. For this purpose, this work provides empirical evidence to assess the potential impact of this model on donation rates and on public opinion. Specifically, we examine first the reasons supporting this model, with special reference to utilitarian and justice arguments. On the other hand, we analyse both the approaches based on the violation of pre mortem and (...) post mortem interests opposing this theoretical model and the rejection the model would generate in the population. Finally, we point out the aspects that, in our opinion, should be exhaustively regulated if this model were implemented. In particular, we refer to the legal status of the human body, the treatments for end-of-life patients, the incentives for health professionals and the recognition of the right to conscientious objection. (shrink)

This thesis describes two classes of Dialectica categories. Chapter one introduces dialectica categories based on Goedel's Dialectica interpretation and shows that they constitute a model of Girard's Intuitionistic Linear Logic. Chapter two shows that, with extra assumptions, we can provide a comonad that interprets Girard's !-course modality. Chapter three presents the second class of Dialectica categories, a simplification suggested by Girard, that models (classical) Linear Logic and chapter four shows how to provide modalities ! and ? for this second class (...) of construction. (shrink)

Constructivism is frequently met with objections, criticism and often equated with nihilism or relativism. Sometimes even blamed for what some would randomly picture as unwanted side effects of radicalism or of a progressivist era: such misconceptions are not only due to an imprecise grasp of the premises shared by the constructivist family of systems. The structure of media, political systems, and economic models, still up today impel societal understandings of knowledge on neo-positivistic grounds. The first part of this essay outlines (...) such pressures while sketching how language and worldviews play critical roles in our knowledge construction. Focusing on recent mediatic events, this work advances displaying some essential limits regarding the construction of human knowledge. Though unavoidable, some of the distinguishing aspects regarding the nature of our narratives are then critically reviewed. Later, it is shown how a special kind of self-denial that certain sub-stories implicitly hold about their own narrative nature leaves us with clashing worldviews that eventually collide onto crisis. Finally, it’ll be argued that it’s precisely in this scenario where a constructivist depiction of social discourses may move us away from any adolescent intent of elucidating absolutes within mere heuristics, to the pragmatic need of arriving on satisfactory agreements between parties (DOI: 10.4236/ojpp.2022). (shrink)

La présentation qui suit traite de la Colombeia - legs extrêmement riche que nous devons à Francisco de Miranda - et de l’impact qu’a pu avoir à son époque la diffusion des quatre versions connues du “Plan de gouvernance pour une Amérique colombienne” élaboré par Francisco de Miranda (Caracas, 1750- Cadix, 1816) et publié tout au long de son engagement politique pour l’indépendance de l’Amérique Hispanique. Malgré les deux occasions manquées de 1801 et 1806, quand il fit la tentative de (...) mettre en partie en place son “Plan de Gouvernance”, l’on sait que celui-ci n’a jamais réellement été adopté en tant que modèle et pour une organisation politique du nouvel ordre de l’Amérique latine postcoloniale (que ce soit dans les anciennes colonies espagnoles ou au Brésil). Pourtant, il serait pertinent de se demander si le dit “Plan de gouvernance” a été pris en compte par ceux qui à l’époque prirent les décisions politiques des nouveaux états américains tout au long du processus d’émancipation et de formation constitutionnelle des pays hispano-américains. La proposition politique de Miranda prévoyait en même temps le démantèlement de l’État monarchique hispano américain et l’appropriation de quelques notions appartenant à l’empire des Incas. Il apparaît donc essentiel de savoir si dans le reste du continent hispano américain d’autres projets pré-constitutionnels comme celui proposé par le “Précurseur ”avaient été élaborés. Dans l’affirmative, il faudrait alors se demander s’il a existé un lien ou une parenté idéologique entre Miranda et ceux qui, à l’époque ou plus tard, ont élaboré de tels projets Constitutionnels pour un nouveau modèle de gouvernement en l’Amérique Latine . (shrink)

The distinction between the body schema and the body image has become the stock in trade of much recent work in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy. Yet little is known about the interactions between these two types of body representations. We need to account not only for their dissociations in rare cases, but also for their convergence most of the time. Indeed in our everyday life the body we perceive does not conflict with the body we act with. Are the body (...) image and the body schema then somehow reshaping each other or are they relatively independent and do they only happen to be congruent? On the basis of the study of bodily hallucinations, we consider which model can best account for the body schema/body image interactions. (shrink)