This is the précis of Artūrs Logins book Normative Reasons: Between Reasoning and Explanation (Logins 2022).

Studies presenting memory-facilitating effect of emotions typically focused on affective dimensions of arousal and valence. Little is known, however, about the extent to which stimulus-driven basic emotions could have distinct effects on memory. In the present paper we sought to examine the modulatory effect of disgust, fear and sadness on intentional remembering and forgetting using widely used item-method directed forgetting paradigm. Eighteen women underwent fMRI scanning during encoding phase in which they were asked either to remember (R) or to forget (...) (F) pictures. In the test phase all previously used stimuli were re-presented together with the same number of new pictures and participants had to categorize them as old or new, irrespective of the F/R instruction. On the behavioral level we found a typical directed forgetting effect, i.e. higher recognition rates for to-be-remembered (TBR) items than to-be-forgotten (TBF) ones for both neutral and emotional categories. Emotional stimuli had higher recognition rate than neutral ones, while among emotional those eliciting disgust produced highest recognition, but at the same time induced more false alarms. Therefore when false alarm corrected recognition was examined the directed forgetting effect was equally strong irrespective of emotion. Additionally, even though subjects rated disgusting pictures as more arousing and negative than other picture categories, logistic regression on the item level showed that the effect of disgust on recognition memory was stronger than the effect of arousal or valence. On the neural level, ROI analyses (with valence and arousal covariates) revealed that correctly recognized disgusting stimuli evoked the highest activity in the left amygdala compared to all other categories. This structure was also more activated for remembered vs. forgotten stimuli, but only in case of disgust or fear eliciting pictures. Our findings, despite several limitations, suggest that disgust have a special salience in memory relative to other negative emotions, which cannot be put down to differences in arousal or valence. The current results thereby support the suggestion that a purely dimensional model of emotional influences on cognition might not be adequate to account for observed effects. (shrink)

Neste texto perseguimos a polêmica presença do pensador francês Jean-Baptiste Roustaing no cenário espírita brasileiro, compondo-se com a obra de codificação de Allan Kardec. Tomamos, como ponto de referência, o papel de coordenador e representativo da Federação Espírita Brasileira (FEB) no processo, tanto de afirmação da presença de Roustaing ao lado de Kardec, quanto de posterior retirada da obra roustainguista, como leitura reconhecida e recomendada por aquela instituição. Concluímos pelo reconhecimento da importância da permanência da obra de Roustaing como bibliografia (...) avalizada pela FEB, o que, sem dúvida, indica para jogos de poder e de identidade no interior do movimento espírita brasileiro. (shrink)

Abduction is or subsumes a process of inference. It entertains possible hypotheses and it chooses hypotheses for further scrutiny. There is a large literature on various aspects of non-symbolic, subconscious abduction. There is also a very active research community working on the symbolic (logical) characterisation of abduction, which typically treats it as a form of hypothetico-deductive reasoning. In this paper we start to bridge the gap between the symbolic and sub-symbolic approaches to abduction. We are interested in benefiting from developments (...) made by each community. In particular, we are interested in the ability of non-symbolic systems (neural networks) to learn from experience using efficient algorithms and to perform massively parallel computations of alternative abductive explanations. At the same time, we would like to benefit from the rigour and semantic clarity of symbolic logic. We present two approaches to dealing with abduction in neural networks. One of them uses Connectionist Modal Logic and a translation of Horn clauses into modal clauses to come up with a neural network ensemble that computes abductive explanations in a top-down fashion. The other combines neural-symbolic systems and abductive logic programming and proposes a neural architecture which performs a more systematic, bottom-up computation of alternative abductive explanations. Both approaches employ standard neural network architectures which are already known to be highly effective in practical learning applications. Differently from previous work in the area, our aim is to promote the integration of reasoning and learning in a way that the neural network provides the machinery for cognitive computation, inductive learning and hypothetical reasoning, while logic provides the rigour and explanation capability to the systems, facilitating the interaction with the outside world. Although it is left as future work to determine whether the structure of one of the proposed approaches is more amenable to learning than the other, we hope to have contributed to the development of the area by approaching it from the perspective of symbolic and sub-symbolic integration. (shrink)

Model-driven engineering provides abstractions and notations to improve the understanding and to support modeling, coding, and verification of applications for specific domains. Ontologies, on the...

Human organizations’ adoption of the paradigm of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is associated with the growth of techno-empowerment, which is the process of transferring autonomy in decision-making to intelligent machines. Particular persuasive strategies have been identified that may coax people to use intelligent devices. However, there is a substantial research gap regarding what antecedents influence human intention to assign decision-making autonomy to artificial agents. In this study, ethological and evolutionary concepts are applied to explain the drivers for autonomous assistants’ techno-empowerment. (...) The method used in the study was a 4 × 2 between-subject experiment made with 278 persons. The research tool used to collect the data was an online survey. The results show that more positive attitudes and higher trust, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use are correlated with higher intention to allow the autonomous assistant independence in decision-making. Second, the results suggest that the more human-like a non-human agent is, the higher the intention to empower it—but only if this agent simultaneously provides functional and visual anthropomorphic cues explainable by the mimicry effect. (shrink)

SOME REMARKS ON JERZY KMITA’S CONCEPT OF SEMANTICS This article presents the evolution of the concept of semantics by Jerzy Kmita. Three stages could be distinguished in his conception; the first stage is present in his two works, Szkice z teorii poznania naukowego and Z problemów epistemologii historycznej. His book Kultura i poznanie represents the second stage, and the third stage was developed in Jak słowa łączą się ze światem. “Krytyczne stadium neopragmatyzmu,” which is an article on the concept already (...) present in Kultura i poznanie. I intend to compare Kmita’s views with elements of the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. Keywords: SEMANTICS, HUMANISTIC FACTOR, SEMANTIC ASSUMPTIONS, ESSENTIAL FORM, POSTMODERNISM. (shrink)

The present paper attempts to explain Socrates’ remark in Symposium 212b, where the expression “diapherontos askein” is used to describe Socrates’ attitude towards erotic matters [ta erotika]. The analysis of the dialogue shows that a human being with a reliable power of Eros and knowledge about the proper way of life should strengthen their character virtues through self-restraint and justice. This power is a natural component of every person, and the knowledge about life can be obtained both from the Symposium (...) itself and from the speech of Diotima. Furthermore, in the apology delivered by Alcibiades as well as in the Apology and Phaedo, Socrates is presented to the reader as the perfect moral ideal that serves as a criterion for leading a proper life. While the two aforementioned elements provide a suf ficient condition for being a philosopher, they do not guarantee access to transcendent reality. If this access is to be attained at all, it is only through hard work on the moral and intellectual aspect of being human. (shrink)

We start by introducing the idea of echo chambers. Echo chambers are social and epistemic structures in which opinions, leanings, or beliefs about certain topics are amplified and reinforced due to repeated interactions within a closed system; that is, within a system that has a rather homogeneous sample of sources or people, which all share the same attitudes towards the topics in question. Echo chambers are a particularly dangerous phenomena because they prevent the critical assessment of sources and contents, thus (...) leading the people living within them to deliberately ignore or exclude opposing views. In the second part of this paper, we argue that the reason for the appearance of echo chambers lies in the adoption of what we call ‘epistemic vices’. We examine which vices might be responsible for their emergence, and in doing so, we focus on a specific one; ‘epistemic violence’. In assessing and evaluating the role of this epistemic vice, we note that it can be triggered by epistemic contexts characterized by high stakes that may turn ordinary intellectual virtues (such as skepticism) into vices (such as denialism). In the third part of this contribution, we suggest a way to deal with echo chambers. The solution focuses on advocating a responsibilist pedagogy of virtues and vices that -we claim- might be capable of preventing their emergence. (shrink)

In recent years some archaeological commentators have suggested moving away from an exclusively anthropocentric view of social reality. These ideas endorse elevating objects to the same ontological level as humans – thus creating a symmetrical view of reality. However, this symmetry threatens to force us to abandon the human subject and theories of meaning. This article defends a different idea. It is argued here that an archaeology of the social, based on human intentionality, is possible, while maintaining an ontology that (...) does not involve dualistic conceptions of reality. Building upon the philosophical work of Vincent Descombes, it is contended that humans are intentional actors and society is predicated on triadic relations that involve humans, objects and meanings. These relations can only be understood holistically, given that these relations are merely parts of a meta-narrative. These meta-narratives contain specific historical and social settings, and it is only within these settings that social relations are intelligible. (shrink)

First, there are some striking similarities in the history of reception of Fleck’s and Neurath’s ideas. Due to the style of their writings they were not or often not well welcome in their national philosophical communities, i.e., the Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School. This is especially true in the case of Fleck. On the other hand, some prominent logical positivists, like Hempel, are to some extent guilty of making of Neurath a clumsy thinker whose ideas needed to be clear (...) by a more mature philosopher, i.e. Carnap. So their work was often considered as non-scientific. With a lack of response their theories were forgotten for many years, and even if not forgotten they were habitually ridiculed by critics. After a long period of seven thin years they have their renaissance. They are even quite popular. In the last 20 years a number of excellent books and papers on Neurath and Fleck have apperared. But one can hardly find a line of comparison. One might say that this is not surprising at all, as there is nothing to compare there. Neurath was a radical positivist while Fleck’s writing were aimed only against neopositivism. Accordingly, these are poles, and all we can say is that they are completely different. But even if Neurath was a follower of radical neopositivism that Fleck was fighting with, there are some common points in their programmes and I will try to show that even if they are in opposition, their paths intersected at certain points. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta e comenta três dezenas de casos de utilização das armas portuguesas nas portadas de livros quatrocentistas e quinhentistas. Esta utilização enquadra-se no âmbito da heráldica tipográfica, com força expressiva equivalente à dos símbolos pessoais ou familiares, quase sempre porque editores, impressores ou livreiros entendiam que o escudo nacional dignificava sobremaneira o seu trabalho.

The present special issue of Utopian Studies is devoted to utopia and solidarity considered from philosophical, sociopolitical, cultural, and literary perspectives. It was inspired by the 18th Utopian Studies Society Conference "Solidarity and Utopia," which took place in Gdańsk in July 2017. As the papers presented at that conference clearly demonstrated, the most immediate connotations of the word solidarity used in different contexts tend to be positive, invariably inducing utopian or messianic thinking, despite the fact that solidarity is "not morally (...) good per se, it is good only to the extent that its inclusiveness, goal and implications for the individual are morally acceptable."1 Unless it concerns deviant... (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to analyze trends and threats in the provision of medicines to the population of Russia. Recently, Russia has been facing an acute threat to the economic security of the pharmaceutical industry, due to the likelihood of increasing influence on the Russian industry by world players. Therefore, the analysis of trends in the development of the pharmaceutical industry and threats to the medicinal supply of the Russian population has now become particularly relevant. The scientific novelty (...) lies in the justification of the need to develop innovative import substitution of medicines in Russia. As a result, the key problems and factors that hinder the development of the domestic pharmaceutical industry at the present stage are identified. (shrink)

The text, starting from the classic picture taken from Polish literature on the barbaric destruction of higher culture, first shows the contemporary manifestations of an attack on one of the basic...

According to a widely held view epistemic justification is a normative notion. According to another widely held assumption, epistemic justification comes in degrees. Given that gradability requires a context-sensitivity that normativity seems to lack, these two assumptions stand in tension. Giving up the assumption of gradability of justification represents a lesser theoretical cost.

The northern creative trips of the People's Artist of the USSR Vladimir Alexandrovich Igoshev (1921-2007) represent important and vivid pages in his creative biography. The object of this research is the creative heritage of the artist V.A. Igoshev. The subject of the study is the creative trips of the artist V.A. Igoshev to the North (Sverdlovsk and Tyumen regions) of the 1950s and 1960s. The purpose of this study is to reconstruct the overall picture of the northern creative trips of (...) the artist V.A. Igoshev of the 1950s–1960s on the basis of paintings and graphic works of the early "northern cycle", archival materials, exhibition catalogues, Soviet periodicals, individual scientific articles and information from informants. The novelty of the research lies in the most complete and detailed consideration at the moment of the issue of the northern creative trips of the artist V.A. Igoshev in the 1950s and 1960s. Previously, this topic has not received special coverage. Modern researchers of the creative heritage of the artist V.A. Igoshev in their review articles practically did not touch on this problem, limiting themselves to mentioning individual episodes from the creative biography of the master. The author of the study provides historical facts related to specific dates of trips, introduces a list of paintings and graphic works, with all the circumstances of their creation and further exposure at major art exhibitions of the 1950s and 1960s. (shrink)

It is well known that environmental burdens are more pronounced in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, a phenomenon known as environmental injustice. Yet, there have been few studies that have addressed whether the degree of environmental injustice has changed over time. We analyze toxic releases in the United States over the first 26 years of the toxics release inventory and examine whether the decreases in toxic releases differ according to characteristics of the communities in which the emitters reside. We find that decreases (...) over these years are universal but far more substantial in high-income areas. Our results speak to both the nascent literature on information disclosure and that on environmental justice. (shrink)

Tendencies of approach and avoidance seem to be a universal characteristic of humans. Specifically, individuals are faster in avoiding than in approaching negative stimuli and they are faster in approaching than in avoiding positive stimuli. The existence of this automatic approach-avoidance bias has been demonstrated in many studies. Furthermore, this bias is thought to play a key role in psychiatric disorders like drug addiction and phobias. However, its mechanisms are far from clear. Theories of embodied cognition postulate that the nature (...) of gestures plays a key role in this process. To shed light on the role of the involved gesture we employed a 2 × 2 factorial design with two types of stimuli. Participants had either to approach positive and avoid negative stimuli or to avoid positive stimuli and approach negative stimuli. Further, they responded either with a joystick or a button press on a response pad. Participants reacted faster in congruent conditions, i.e., avoiding negative stimuli and approaching positive stimuli, than in incongruent conditions. This replicates the known approach and avoidance bias. However, direct analysis of the button press condition revealed no reaction time advantage for congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. In contrast, in the joystick condition participants were significantly faster performing congruent reactions than incongruent reactions. This interaction, a significant reaction time advantage, when the response is enacted by moving a joystick towards or away from the body provides evidence that approach-avoidance tendencies have a crucial bodily component. (shrink)

Humans are often extraordinary at performing practical reasoning. There are cases where the human computer, slow as it is, is faster than any artificial intelligence system. Are we faster because of the way we perceive knowledge as opposed to the way we represent it? -/- The authors address this question by presenting neural network models that integrate the two most fundamental phenomena of cognition: our ability to learn from experience, and our ability to reason from what has been learned. This (...) book is the first to offer a self-contained presentation of neural network models for a number of computer science logics, including modal, temporal, and epistemic logics. By using a graphical presentation, it explains neural networks through a sound neural-symbolic integration methodology, and it focuses on the benefits of integrating effective robust learning with expressive reasoning capabilities. -/- The book will be invaluable reading for academic researchers, graduate students, and senior undergraduates in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive science and engineering. It will also be of interest to computational logicians, and professional specialists on applications of cognitive, hybrid and artificial intelligence systems. (shrink)