This paper presents an approach to the belief system based on a computational framework in three levels: first, the logic level with the definition of binary local rules, second, the arithmetic level with the definition of recursive functions and finally the behavioural level with the definition of a recursive construction pattern. Social communication is achieved when different beliefs are expressed, modified, propagated and shared through social nets. This approach is useful to mimic the belief system because the defined functions provide (...) different ways to process the same incoming information as well as a means to propagate it. Our model also provides a means to cross different beliefs so, any incoming information can be processed many times by the same or different functions as it occurs is social nets. (shrink)

The paper examines a central question in the philosophy of dance from the vantage point of a specific choreographic practice: Movenglish. Movenglish attempts to establish a one-to-one mapping between English words and dance movement equivalents in the body in a way that maximally captures both the connotative and denotative aspects of the words in question. The paper argues that the success of Movenglish has several important consequences for the philosophy of dance as well as our understanding of sign (...) systems more generally. The paper elaborates one of the strongest contributions to the philosophy of dance – the work of Susanne Langer – in order to show how the conclusions drawn from the dance produced through Movenglish both contribute to and depart from Langer’s philosophy. (shrink)

Infants have been shown to rely both on auditory and visual cues when processing speech. We investigated the impact of COVID-related changes, in particular of face masks, in early word segmentation abilities. Following up on our previous study demonstrating that, by 4 months, infants already segmented targets presented auditorily at utterance-edge position, and, using the same visual familiarization paradigm, 7–9-month-old infants performed an auditory and an audiovisual word segmentation experiment in two conditions: without and with an FFP2 face mask. Analysis (...) of acoustic and visual cues showed changes in face-masked speech affecting the amount, weight, and location of cues. Utterance-edge position displayed more salient cues than utterance-medial position, but the cues were attenuated in face-masked speech. Results revealed no evidence for segmentation, not even at edge position, regardless of mask condition and auditory or visual speech presentation. However, in the audiovisual experiment, infants attended more to the screen during the test trials when familiarized with without mask speech. Also, the infants attended more to the mouth and less to the eyes in without mask than with mask. In addition, evidence for an advantage of the utterance-edge position in emerging segmentation abilities was found. Thus, audiovisual information provided some support to developing word segmentation. We compared 7–9-monthers segmentation ability observed in the Butler and Frota pre-COVID study with the current auditory without mask data. Mean looking time for edge was significantly higher than unfamiliar in the pre-COVID study only. Measures of cognitive and language development obtained with the CSBS scales showed that the infants of the current study scored significantly lower than the same-age infants from the CSBS normative data. Our results suggest an overall effect of the pandemic on early segmentation abilities and language development, calling for longitudinal studies to determine how development proceeds. (shrink)

I aim to examine what should be demanded of a constructivistic theory trying to describe the construction of a human belief-system. My claim is that such a theory cannot allow entities in the description of how a human being constructs the world he or she lives, that are not allowed in the act of constructing the life-world. I will argue that the only coherent theories describing this activity are either phenomenological or social. That is, theories where the description of the (...) constructing and the construction of the theory itself are identical or the constructor of the theory is taken to live in the same or a similar life-world as the one described. To substantiate my claims I will closely examine the theory of radical constructivism. This theory can be described as an attempt to give a partly empirical description of a non-social construction of a life-world, from an observer's point of view. I will argue that the attempt is not successful. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between blindness and the Enlightenment concept of the system, arguing that blindness is used as a weapon to discredit 17th-century metaphysics, as well as a tool through which thought can take shape or even systematize itself apart from dogmatism. Philosophers use blindness metaphorically, thus equating systematics within the obscurity of ignorance; yet, with Diderot, they also demonstrate that philosophy, for better or for worse, is literally an affair of blindness.

Peirce’s occasional allusion to what he calls ‘nothingness’ motivates this dialogue. The dialogue consists of two interlocutors deliberating over the notion, implicit in recent mathematics, science, logic, and philosophy, and patterned in literature and the arts, of life, and the physical universe as a whole, as a process of self-reflexive, interdependent, interrelated, interactive self-organization, from ‘nothingness’ to what is construed as what is.

There is an emerging consensus that human behavior is governed by two types of processes: System 1 processes, which are quicker, automatic, and run in parallel, and System 2 (S2) processes, which are slower, more conscious, and run in serial. Among such “dual-process” theorists, however, there is disagreement about whether the premises we use in our conscious, S2 reasoning should be considered as beliefs. In this exchange, one facet that has been largely overlooked is how conscious beliefs are structurally and (...) functionally similar to episodic memories. This article will argue that the similarities between beliefs and episodic memories, specifically in light of Daniel Schacter’s widely influential constructive memory framework, highlight a heretofore unexamined empirical weakness of dispositional accounts of S2 beliefs. In addition, this perspective helps situate beliefs within our broader understanding of how information is encoded and retrieved in the brain. (shrink)

The goal of the article is twofold. The first one is to provide logics based on positional semantics which will be suitable for the analysis of epistemic modalities such as ‘agent... knows/beliefs that...’. The second one is to define tableau systemsfor such logics. Firstly, we present the minimal positional logic MR. Then, we change the notion of formulas and semantics in order to consider iterations of the operator of realization and “free” classical formulas. After that, we move on to weaker (...) logics in order to avoid the well known problem of logical omniscience. At the same time, we keep the positional counterparts of modal axioms, and. For all of the considered logics we present sound and complete tableau systems. (shrink)

This paper examines key aspects in the innovative behavior of the construction firms that determine their environmental orientation while innovating. Structural equation modeling was used and data of 222 firms retrieved from the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel for 2010 to analyse the drivers of environmental orientation of the construction firms during the innovation process. The results show that the environmental orientation is positively affected by the product and process orientation of construction firms during the innovation process. Furthermore, the positive relation (...) between the importance of market information sources and environmental orientation, mediated by process and product orientation, is discussed. Finally, a model that explains these relations is proposed and validated. Results have important managerial implications for those companies worried about their eco-innovative focus as the types of actions and relations within firms most suitable for improving their eco-innovative orientation are highlighted. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

Although religious belief is often claimed to help with physical ailments including pain, it is unclear what psychological and neural mechanisms underlie the influence of religious belief on pain. By analogy to other top-down processes of pain modulation we hypothesized that religious belief helps believers reinterpret the emotional significance of pain, leading to emotional detachment from it. Recent findings on emotion regulation support a role for the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a region also important for driving top-down pain inhibitory circuits. (...) Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in practicing Catholics and avowed atheists and agnostics during painful stimulation, here we show the existence of a context-dependent form of analgesia that was triggered by the presentation of an image with a religious content but not by the presentation of a non-religious image. As confirmed by behavioral data, contemplation of the religious image eneabled the religious group to detach themselves from the experience of pain. Critically, this context-dependent modulation of pain specifically engaged the right VLPFC, whereas group-specific preferential liking of one of the pictures was associated with activation in the ventral midbrain. We suggest that religious belief might provide a framework that allows individuals to engage known pain-regulatory brain processes. (shrink)

My purpose is to offer an assessment of the scientific legacy of Converse's “Belief Systems” by reviewing five productive lines of research stimulated by his authoritative analysis and unsettling conclusions. First I recount the later life history of Converse's notion of “nonattitudes,” and suggest that as important as nonattitudes are, we should be paying at least as much attention to their opposite: attitudes held with conviction. Second, I argue that the problem of insufficient information that resides at the center of (...) Converse's analysis has not gone away, and that newly fashioned models of information processing offer only partial remedies. Third, I suggest that the concept of the “average voter” is a malicious fiction, as it blinds us to the enormous variation in political attention, interest, and knowledge that characterizes mass publics, in Converse's time as in our own. Fourth, I develop an affirmative aspect of Converse's analysis that has mostly been overlooked: namely, that if ideological reasoning is beyond most citizens’ capacity and interest, they might fall back on a simple and reasonable alternative, which I will call “group‐centrism.” And fifth, I consider the possibility that while the majority of individual citizens falls short of democratic standards, the public as a whole might do rather well. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Technocentrism: Supporting Constructionism in the Classroom” by Karen Brennan. Upshot: If we are to move beyond technocentricism, we need not only to equip teachers with pedagogical approaches but to support a change in their beliefs, values and assumptions. While factors such as assessment practices and institutional norms can limit the impact of professional development by considering the ways in which teachers form their teacher-identity and the factors that can motivate change, we can begin (...) to develop approaches to professional development that can have lasting impact on teachers and their learners. (shrink)

Background: It has been widely reported that medical trainees experience situations with profound ethical implications during their clinical rotations. To address this, most U.S. medical schools include ethics curricula in their undergraduate programs. However, the contents of these curricula vary substantially. Our pilot study aimed to discover, from the students’ perspective, how ethics pedagogy prepares medical students for clerkship and what gaps might remain. Methods: This qualitative study organized focus groups of third- and fourth-year medical students. Participants recounted ethical concerns (...) encountered during clerkship rotations and reflected on how their medical school ethics curriculum informed their responses to these scenarios. Transcripts of the focus-group sessions were analyzed using a grounded theory approach to identify common themes that characterized the students’ experiences. Results: While students’ accounts demonstrated a solid grasp of ethical theory and attunement to ethical concerns presented in the clinic, they also consistently evinced an inability to act on these issues given clerks’ particular position in a complex learning hierarchy. Students felt they received too little training in the role-specific application of medical ethics as clinical trainees. We found a desire among trainees for enhanced practical ethics training in preparation for the clerkship phase of medical education. Conclusion: We recommend several strategies that can begin to address these findings. The use of roleplaying with standardized patients can enable students to practice engagement with ethical issues. Conventional ethics courses can focus more on action-based pedagogy and instruction in conflict management techniques. Finally, clear structures for reporting and seeking advice and support for addressing ethical issues can lessen students’ apprehension about acting on ethical concerns. (shrink)

The paper develops a proof-theoretic semantics for belief reports by extending the constructive type-theoretical formalism presented in Więckowski with a specific kind of set-forming operator suited for the representation of belief attitudes. The extended formalism allows us to interpret constructions which involve, e.g., iteration of belief, quantifying into belief contexts, and anaphora in belief reports. Moreover, constructive solutions to canonical instances of the problem of hyperintensionality are suggested. The paper includes a discussion of Ranta’s constructive account of belief reports.

Niklas Luhmann’s approach to relationships was ambivalent. While references to the word abound in his work, his systems theory renders ‘relationship’ redundant as key concept. This has made it difficult for Luhmannian theorists to describe social forms that endure beyond serial interactions. Attempts have been made to overcome this ‘latency problem’ by conceptualising relationships as social systems. Contending that by focusing on communication these attempts reproduce rather than solve the problem, this article proposes an alternative solution. Centred in Luhmann’s conception (...) of meaning, it conceives of relationships as meaning forms ( Sinnformen) in whose construal the phenomenalising capacities of psychical systems play a vital role: mental operations such as imagined interactions routinely bridge phases of non-interaction, which are constitutive elements of relationships. This critical reconstruction aims to contribute to a fuller grasp of the interdependencies between serial interactions and enduring relationships in Luhmann’s own terms. (shrink)

Globally, robots can be described as some sets of moving parts that are dedicated to a task while using their own energy. Yet, humans commonly qualify those machines as being intelligent, autonomous or being able to learn, know, feel, make decisions, etc. Is it merely a way of talking or does it mean that robots could eventually be more than a complex set of moving parts? On the one hand, the language of robotics allows multiple interpretations (leading sometimes (...) to misreading or confusion in various contexts). On the other hand, the status of robots is challenged more and more by technical achievements and humans’ own empirical beliefs. In this paper, we follow a linguistic approach in order to explore the relevance of these words when talking about robots. Since we note that the words impose themselves (even if opposed), we discuss the efficiency of a rhetorical strategy in order to work with such a lexicon in robotics. More precisely, we explore the argumentative technique of the dissociation of notions through the study of a practical case: the case of robot lawn mowers versus hedgehogs. (shrink)

Frost's article advocates for universal models of reading and critiques recent models that concentrate in what has been described as “cracking the orthographic code.” Although the challenge to develop models that can account for word recognition beyond Indo-European languages is welcomed, we argue that reading models should also be constrained by general principles of visual processing and object recognition.

In Unsettled Thoughts, Julia Staffel argues that non-ideal thinkers should seek to approximate ideal Bayesian rationality. She argues that the more rational you are, the more benefits of rationality you will enjoy. After summarizing Staffel's main results, this paper looks more closely at two issues that arise later in the book: the relationship between Bayesian rationality and other kinds of rationality, and the role that outright belief plays in addition to credence. Ultimately, I argue that there are several roles (...) that outright belief might play, and I explore different ways that these roles for belief might fit together. (shrink)

In beliefs we live, we move and we are [...] the beliefs constitute the base of our life, the land on which we live [...] All our conduct, including the intellectual life, depends on the system of our authentic beliefs. In them [...] lies latent, as implications of whatever specifically we do or we think [...] the man, at heart, is believing or, which is equal, the deepest stratum of our life, the spirit that maintains and carries all the others, (...) is formed by beliefs...We know that the human being is a social animal. This is a common fact. Moreover, the human being is defined as a rational being. It is clear and nobody can deny that human creations include logic, mathematics, philosophy, science, and jurisprudence. These are all products of rationality or abstract thought. Nevertheless, human sociability goes further that the sociability of an animal herd. Societies were founded, cohere, develop, degenerate and die based on their belief systems. Reason cannot prove the .. (shrink)

JOHN CORCORAN AND WAGNER SANZ, Disbelief Logic Complements Belief Logic. Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150 USA E-mail: corcoran@buffalo.edu Filosofia, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiás, GO 74001-970 Brazil E-mail: sanz@fchf.ufg.br -/- Consider two doxastic states belief and disbelief. Belief is taking a proposition to be true and disbelief taking it to be false. Judging also dichotomizes: accepting a proposition results in belief and rejecting in disbelief. Stating follows suit: asserting a proposition conveys belief and denying conveys disbelief. Traditional logic (...) implicitly focused on logical relations and processes needed in expanding and organizing systems of beliefs. Deducing a conclusion from beliefs results in belief of the conclusion. Deduction presupposes consequence: one proposition is a consequence of a set of a propositions if the latter logically implies the former. The role of consequence depends on its being truth-preserving: every consequence of a set of truths is true. This paper, which builds on previous work by the second author, explores roles of logic in expanding and organizing systems of disbeliefs. Aducing a conclusion from disbeliefs results in disbelief of the conclusion. Aduction presupposes contrequence: one proposition is a contrequence of a set of propositions if the set of negations or contradictory opposites of the latter logically implies that of the former. The role of contrequence depends on its being falsity-preserving: every contrequence of a set of falsehoods is false. A system of aductions that includes, for every contrequence of a given set, an aduction of the contrequence from the set is said to be complete. Historical and philosophical discussion is illustrated and enriched by presenting complete systems of aductions constructed by the second author. One such, a natural aduction system for Aristotelian categorical propositions, is based on a natural deduction system attributed to Aristotle by the first author and others. ADDED NOTE: Wagner Sanz reconstructed Aristotle’s logic the way it would have been had Aristole focused on constructing “anti-sciences” instead of sciences: more generally, on systems of disbeliefs. (shrink)

The paper presents a system for construction classification representing multiple levels of specification, such as grammatical functions, grammatically reflected actants, and lexical semantics, aligned with a compositional system of sign combination mediating between a construction perspective and a valence perspective. The system uses a feature structure formalism based on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar but with essential elements from Lexical Functional Grammar, and has as implementation background large scale HPSG grammars. While on the one extreme being able to encode word level (...) selection in multi-word patterns, the system on the other provides a compact format for construction specification, allowing for cross-language comparison both in construction and valence frame inventories. Pivotal in these capacities as well as in sign formalization in general are the grammatical functions. The paper motivates the usefulness of the various functionalities and illustrates the way in which they work together in a formally uniform system. (shrink)

We propose an extension of answer sets, that we call safe beliefs, that can be used to study several properties and notions of answer sets and logic programming from a more general point of view. Our definition, based on intuitionistic logic and following ideas from D. Pearce [Stable inference as intuitionistic validity, Logic Programming 38 79–91], also provides a general approach to define several semantics based on different logics or inference systems. We prove that, in particular, intuitionistic logic can be (...) replaced with any other proper intermediate logic without modifying the resulting semantics. We also show that the answer set semantics satisfies an important property, the “extension by definition”, that can be used to construct program translations. As a result we are able to provide a polynomial translation from propositional theories into the class of disjunctive programs. (shrink)

We propose an extension of answer sets, that we call safe beliefs, that can be used to study several properties and notions of answer sets and logic programming from a more general point of view. Our definition, based on intuitionistic logic and following ideas from D. Pearce [Stable inference as intuitionistic validity, Logic Programming 38 79–91], also provides a general approach to define several semantics based on different logics or inference systems. We prove that, in particular, intuitionistic logic can be (...) replaced with any other proper intermediate logic without modifying the resulting semantics. We also show that the answer set semantics satisfies an important property, the “extension by definition”, that can be used to construct program translations. As a result we are able to provide a polynomial translation from propositional theories into the class of disjunctive programs. (shrink)

This book presents a learned and ingenious attempt to understand the origin and nature of philosophical inquiry. It draws on material from numerous disciplines and from all periods of philosophy and provides challenging arguments on a wide range of topics. The author constructs a hierarchy of ontological claims, beginning with perceptual experience, moving to language and science. He traces subtle and unexpected relations among these and concludes by offering a system for classifying philosophical theories which reveals why they take (...) the form they do and why philosophical dispute is ineradicable. The book offers many fresh insights into such topics as the nature of experience, the nature of language and that of philosophy itself. It will interest a wide range of philosophers, in particular those concerned with categorical schemes, grammar and ontology. (shrink)

Peirce is far too strange for the uses to which he is put in art history. This is a plea to art historians for a moratorium on Peirce citations.

J. Angelo Corlett’s response to Leigh Turner defends the current practice of anonymous refereeing in scholarly journals. In reply to him: a slightly refined proposal for signed referees’ reports, with temporarily blind refereeing, would restore to the process of publication, in philosophy at least, the sense of responsibility for rational debate, cooperation, mutual criticism, and simple courtesy which is expected among colleagues in public academic relations, and would also allow more credit for the difficult task for refereeing. Personal observation of (...) the quality of referees’ reports suggests that a gathering of anecdotal evidence would show the need for reform. (shrink)

The value and significance of Stanley Milgram’s experiments on Obedience to Authority have been the subject of a controversy that we propose to analyze in the light of the role played by the reference to cybernetics Milgram introduced in his 1974 work. This reference is part of the series of theoretical analyses proposed by Milgram in the core of his book Obedience to Authority (1974). It constitutes the central basis for the formulation of the concept of the “agentic state”. And (...) yet, only a few direct analyses have been performed on this reference in the framework of studies of Milgram’s work. It nevertheless plays a central role in several ways. Firstly, it provides Milgram with a consistent and generalizing framework which allows him to integrate certain elements, which could otherwise have appeared to diverge from the general explanation proposed, into a unified and apparently consistent interpretation. Secondly, the specific use of this reference allows him to strengthen his obedience paradigm as a general social human behavioral trend. Indeed, the way Milgram presents this cybernetic paradigm is not neutral in that he opts for a paradigm promoting the vertical and hierarchical. Our work is twofold. Firstly, we analyze the way Milgram’s successive presentations of his experiment translates into a radicalization and a unification of the paradigm of obedience to authority by lateralizing explanatory elements, even though such elements were considered by Milgram. Secondly, we highlight why the reference to cybernetics allows for this radicalization and provides his work with a theoretical basis while at the same time discussing certain limits and problems with this reference. (shrink)

Let us suppose that thematic roles, or something very much like them, are needed to describe lexical and semantic patterns in the behavior of verbal predicates. But what about nouns? Is there evidence independent of verbal constructions motivating a system of nominal thematic relations? We suggest that the general problem of argument selection does in fact motivate a set of quintessentially nominal thematic proto-roles which we call Proto- Part and Proto-Whole. These nominal proto-roles are parallel to but (...) distinct from the verbal proto-roles of Proto-Agent and Proto-Patient proposed by Dowty (1991) to account for argument selection in verbal predicates. The resulting theory of nominal argument selection is properly semantic, that is, it distinguishes between argument positions purely on the basis of the semantic entailments of the predicates involved. Furthermore, it is non-dynamic, that is, it describes static patterns of lexicalization without hypothesizing any productive grammatical process that maps semantic arguments to syntactic arguments during the derivation of a sentence. (shrink)

Dans ce texte, nous proposons un cadre, qui vise à intégrer les contributions des approches constructionnistes et biologiques dans un domaine précis, celui des maladies mentales. Pour ce faire, nous utiliserons quelques propositions récentes faites par des philosophes de la biologie — plus spécifiquement les idées avancées par les tenants de la « théorie des systèmes développementaux » ainsi que la notion d’« enracinement génératif » .In this paper, we are proposing a framework to integrate the core insights of the (...) constructivist and biological approaches of mental illness. In order to do so, we will use some recent propositions by philosophers of biology, specifically ideas put forth by «developmental system theory» and the notion of «generative entrenchment». (shrink)

Understanding how people form opinions about climate change has proven to be challenging. One of the most common approaches to studying climate change beliefs is to assume people employ motivated reasoning. We first detail how scholars in this area have applied motivated reasoning perspectives, identifying a variety of different judgment goals on which they have focused. We next argue that existing findings fail to conclusively show motivated reasoning, much less isolate which specific goals guide opinion formation about climate change. Then, (...) we describe a novel motivational systems framework that would allow a more precise identification of the role of motivated reasoning in such opinions. Finally, we conclude by providing examples from completed and planned studies that apply this framework. Ultimately, we hope to give scholars and practitioners better tools to isolate why people hold the climate opinions they do and to develop effective communication strategies to change those opinions. (shrink)

And he sent out the call that resulted in this amazing, inspiring book: "In 100 words, please share empowering stories and thoughts that best encapsulate your insight, wisdom and feelings on how we can move towards a more just, fulfilling, ...

Context: This paper is intended for readers familiar with Humberto Maturana’s theory of autopoietic systems and with the still unresolved debate concerning the existence of non-biological autopoietic systems. Because the seminal work of the Chilean biologist has not yet been fully and correctly understood in other disciplines, I consider that it is necessary to offer a more generalized concept of the autopoietic system, derived by implication from Maturana’s grounding definition. Problem: The above-mentioned debate is rooted in a deficient application of (...) some rigorous distinctions, definitions, and epistemological considerations introduced by Maturana when he coined the term “autopoiesis.” Some researchers think that social or economic organizations could be considered as autopoietic systems of a higher order because they appear to behave autonomously and be self-organized and self-producing. However, in practice some precise distinctions would need to be verified through observation in order to claim properly their autopoietic nature. These distinctions were defined by Varela, Maturana and Uribe in 1974 as a set of six decisional rules (“MV&U rules”) whereby an observer may possibly justify this stand. My aim is to pinpoint clearly the basic cognitive tasks that an observer should perform in order to ascertain such a claim. Method: I accomplish this with a thorough analysis of the entailments derived from each rule when applied to the most general case – when the observational domain where the system manifests itself is not specified. A bottom-up approach is used to avoid referring to “apparent autopoietic behavior” as a starting point distinction (top-down approach): the aim is to distinguish “autopoietic behavior” as an outcome of more basic distinctions, not as a premise for these. These may be used as abstract tools to facilitate a rigorous description of observations and lead to precise explanations of the emergence of complex self-generated dynamic systems. In theory, this conceptual frame is not limited to the macro-molecular domain and may therefore be applicable to non-biological systems. Results: According to MV&U rules, the most important distinctions are those that refer to intra-boundary phenomenology: this focus is necessary to explain how the key processes involved in the emergence of autopoiesis actually manifest themselves. These explanations are crucial to validating a claim about the “autopoietic nature” of an observed system. Implications: This work could help multidisciplinary researchers to apply properly the theory of autopoietic systems beyond the realm of biology and to settle ongoing debates. It could also help investigations related to the specifications of software simulation processes for modeling a minimal artificial autopoietic system. However, the rigorous focus on the role of intra-boundary phenomenology and self-production of components reveals that our chances of detecting “natural” meta-molecular autopoietic systems are scarce. (shrink)

Psychoneural reduction is under attack again, only this time from a former ally: cognitive neuroscience. It has become popular to think of the brain as a complex system whose theoretically important properties emerge from dynamic, non-linear interactions between its component parts. ``Emergence'' is supposed to replace reduction: the latter is thought to be incapable of explaining the brain qua complex system. Rather than engage this issue at the level of theories of reduction versus theories of emergence, I here emphasize a (...) role that reductionism plays – and will continue to play – even if neuroscience adopts this ``complex systems'' view. In detailed investigations into the function of complex neural circuits, certain questions can only be addressed by moving down levels and scales. This role for reduction also finds a place for approaches that dominate mainstream neuroscience, like the widespread use of experimental techniques and theories from molecular biology and biochemistry. These are difficult to reconcile with the anti-reductionist sentiments of the ``complex systems'' branch of cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

The multiple commons is an important context in a world facing the eco-challenge. The platform for land use negotiation is a perspective concerning the good governance of the multiple commons. Platforms are devices or procedures for social learning and negotiation about effective collective action. They create collective decision making capacity at eco-system levels at which critical ecological services need to be managed. Taking platforms seriously as an option for designing a more sustainable society assumes a belief in the human capacity (...) to engage in collective action. Unfortunately, human thinking about humans is dominated by perspectives that emphasize either technical solutions to given human ends, or perspectives that emphasize the selfish nature of human ends. This article focuses especially on the latter: the strategic narratives that have become dominant as society increasingly becomes designed on economic principles. The paper seeks to explain the dominance of strategic narratives and provides social science evidence for alternative perspectives. It concludes with cornerstones for an alternative narrative. (shrink)

Real-world economies are open-ended dynamic systems consisting of heterogeneous interacting participants. Human participants are decision-makers who strategically take into account the past actions and potential future actions of other participants. All participants are forced to be locally constructive, meaning their actions at any given time must be based on their local states; and participant actions at any given time affect future local states. Taken together, these essential properties imply real-world economies are locally-constructive sequential games. This paper discusses a modeling approach, (...) Agent-based Computational Economics, that permits researchers to study economic systems from this point of view. ACE modeling principles and objectives are first concisely presented and explained. The remainder of the paper then highlights challenging issues and edgier explorations that ACE researchers are currently pursuing. (shrink)

It is now well known that, on pain of triviality, the probability of a conditional cannot be identified with the corresponding conditional probability [25]. This surprising impossibility result has a qualitative counterpart. In fact, Peter Gärdenfors showed in [13] that believing ‘If A then B’ cannot be equated with the act of believing B on the supposition that A — as long as supposing obeys minimal Bayesian constraints. Recent work has shown that in spite of these negative results, the question (...) ‘how to accept a conditional?’ has a clear answer. Even if conditionals are not truth-carriers, they do have precise acceptability conditions. Nevertheless most epistemic models of conditionals do not provide acceptance conditions for iterated conditionals. One of the main goals of this essay is to provide a comprehensive account of the notion of epistemic conditionality covering all forms of iteration. First we propose an account of the basic idea of epistemic conditionality, by studying the conditionals validated by epistemic models where iteration is permitted but not constrained by special axioms. Our modeling does not presuppose that epistemic states should be represented by belief sets (we only assume that to each epistemic state corresponds an associated belief state). A full encoding of the basic epistemic conditionals (encompassing all forms of iteration) is presented and a representation result is proved. In the second part of the essay we argue that the notion of change involved in the evaluation of conditionals is suppositional, and that such notion should be distinguished from the notion of updating (modelled by AGM and other methods). We conclude by considering how some of the recent modellings of iterated change fare as methods for iterated supposing. (shrink)

Many philosophers have used the concept of belief system or some related notion as a basic tool of epistemological discussion and analysis. A belief system is a set of propositions or statements which represents a person’s doxastic state or credal state in a certain situation; it consists of the propositions which the person either explicitly or implicitly accepts in the situation. One of the many concerns of epistemologists is to attempt to formulate general “conditions of rationality” for belief systems. I (...) want to suggest in the present paper that in this endeavour philosophers usually treat belief systems as if they were artifacts or tools made for various epistemic purposes: for providing satisfactory answers to interesting questions, for helping to find answers to new questions, and for providing resources for argumentation and research. Insofar as epistemology and philosophy of science can legitimately be viewed in this way, they may be regarded as “sciences of the artificial” in Herbert Simon’s sense, and not as sciences of the “natural world” or parts of natural science, as some proponents of “naturalised epistemology” have recently suggested. (shrink)

We propose a revision operator on a stratified belief base, i.e., a belief base that stores beliefs in different strata corresponding to the value an agent assigns to these beliefs. Furthermore, the operator will be defined as to perform the revision in such a way that information is never lost upon revision but stored in a stratum or layer containing information perceived as having a lower value. In this manner, if the revision of one layer leads to the rejection of (...) some information to maintain consistency, instead of being withdrawn it will be kept and introduced in a different layer with lower value. Throughout this development we will follow the principle of minimal change, being one of the important principles proposed in belief change theory, particularly emphasized in the AGM model. Regarding the reasoning part from the stratified belief base, the agent will obtain the inferences using an argumentative formalism. Thus, the argumentation framework will decide which information prevails when sentences of different layers are used for entailing conflicting beliefs. We will also illustrate how inferences are changed and how the status of arguments can be modified after a revision process. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous nous concentrons sur le problème du principe premier chez Damascius. La question est celle de savoir dans quelle mesure la discursivité – le fait d’en parler – affecte ce problème et l’accès de notre pensée. Bien que le principe premier se veut indicible, toute tentative de le suggérer ne nous rend qu’une image discursive et donc inadéquate de lui. Toute tentative de raffiner notre perspective sur le principe ne fait que nous en éloigner d’avantage. Quelle est (...) alors la solution de Damascius? Comment peut‑on toujours parler du principe, tout en le reconnaissant indicible? Quel est le rôle du discours dans la saisie du principe? Peut‑il devenir plus qu’une entrave? Nous analysons la manière dont Damascius comprend son propre discours sur le principe et comment il transforme ce discours inévitablement inadéquat, en une manière de produire la conscience du principe. Le principe n’est pas décrit, mais plutôt rendu manifeste par un véritable “travail d’enfantement” (ὠδίς) de la pensée. Nous analysons les manières de ce travail d’enfantement, afin de montrer comment l’indicible se manifeste à travers lui, sans recevoir une expression concrète, qui risquerait de le transformer en objet de notre pensée. Nous montrerons que le travail d’enfantement n’est pas le signe de l’impossibilité de saisir le principe et d’un indépassable tourment qui accablerait la pensée à cause de cette incapacité. Au contraire, il représente une manière indirecte, non‑descriptive, mais très technique et rigoureuse, dont on peut obtenir la conscience de l’indicible, dans le cadre du discours et par sa médiation. (shrink)

We investigate whether infant‐directed speech (IDS) could facilitate word form learning when compared to adult‐directed speech (ADS). To study this, we examine the distribution of word forms at two levels, acoustic and phonological, using a large database of spontaneous speech in Japanese. At the acoustic level we show that, as has been documented before for phonemes, the realizations of words are more variable and less discriminable inIDSthan inADS. At the phonological level, we find an effect in the opposite direction: (...) TheIDSlexicon contains more distinctive words (such as onomatopoeias) than theADScounterpart. Combining the acoustic and phonological metrics together in a global discriminability score reveals that the bigger separation of lexical categories in the phonological space does not compensate for the opposite effect observed at the acoustic level. As a result,IDSword forms are still globally less discriminable thanADSword forms, even though the effect is numerically small. We discuss the implication of these findings for the view that the functional role ofIDSis to improve language learnability. (shrink)

Grounded theory methodology is perceived as challenging due to its systematic and rigorous process. However, this is because most people do not realize that the strategies used in the grounded theory data analysis process are used by laypeople and professionals regularly, if not daily. This article aims to help others interested in grounded theory with a background in qualitative data analysis feel comfortable engaging in the methodology and constructing multiple theories in the same study. It shares my latest experience incorporating (...) various data analysis strategies with the constructivist approach: holistic and systems thinking, situational analysis, dramaturgical analysis, perspective taking, and abstraction. The examples remove the mystery from abstraction and abductive reasoning. (shrink)

While niche construction theory locates animal artefacts in their constructors’ environment, hence treating them as capable of exerting selective pressure on both the constructors and their descendants, the extended phenotype concept assimilates artefacts with their constructors’ genes. Analogous contrasts apply in the case of endoparasite and brood parasite genes influencing host behaviour. The explanatory power of these competing approaches are assessed by re-examining the core chapters of Richard Dawkins’ _The Extended Phenotype_. Because animal artefacts have multiple evolutionary consequences for their (...) constructors, the extra-body effects of a gene seemingly include feedback effects on multiple other genes, a result which is more consistent with niche construction theory than with selfish gene theory. In the case of endoparasite genes influencing host behaviour, Dawkins’ argument leaves out what appears to be the key explanatory component, namely the role of the host’s own bodily systems in making it possible for such genes to exist. For action at a distance, it is unclear whether the key genes have extended effects because they sit in the body of the manipulating organism, or alternatively do not have such effects because they sit in the body of its victim. It is argued that niche construction theory offers a superior explanation in all three cases, regardless of whether the extended phenotype concept is interpreted in selfish gene or selfish organism terms. (shrink)