We review studies of an evolution operator ℒ for a discrete Langevin equation with a strongly hyperbolic classical dynamics and a Gaussian noise. The leading eigenvalue of ℒ yields a physically measurable property of the dynamical system, the escape rate from the repeller. The spectrum of the evolution operator ℒ in the weak noise limit can be computed in several ways. A method using a local matrix representation of the operator allows to push the corrections to the escape rate up (...) to order eight in the noise expansion parameter. These corrections then appear to form a divergent series. Actually, via a cumulant expansion, they relate to analogous divergent series for other quantities, the traces of the evolution operators ℒn. Using an integral representation of the evolution operator ℒ, we then investigate the high order corrections to the latter traces. Their asymptotic behavior is found to be controlled by sub-dominant saddle points previously neglected in the perturbative expansion, and to be ultimately described by a kind of trace formula. (shrink)

Discussions of the exilic body in Hollywood cinema have tended to focus on the personal trajectories of émigré actors in the context of the broader history of the industry in which they achieved st...

Our approach aims at accounting for causal claims in terms of how the physical states of the underlying dynamical system evolve with time. Causal claims assert connections between two sets of physicals states—their truth depends on whether the two sets in question are genuinely connected by time evolution such that physical states from one set evolve with time into the states of the other set. We demonstrate the virtues of our approach by showing how it is able to account for (...) typical causes, causally relevant factors, being ‘the’ cause, and cases of overdetermination and causation by absences. (shrink)

Neuroscientists have formulated the model of emotional intelligence based on brain imaging findings of individual differences in EI. The main objective of our study was to operationalize the advantage of high EI individuals in emotional information processing and regulation both at behavioral and neural levels of investigation. We used a self-report measure and a cognitive reappraisal task to demonstrate the role of EI in emotional perception and regulation. Participants saw pictures with negative or neutral captions and shifted from negative context (...) to neutral while we registered brain activation. Behavioral results showed that higher EI participants reported more unpleasant emotions. The Utilization of emotions scores negatively correlated with the valence ratings and the subjective difficulty of reappraisal. In the negative condition, we found activation in hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, cingulate cortex, insula and superior temporal lobe. In the neutral context, we found elevated activation in vision-related areas and HC. During reappraisal condition, we found activation in the medial frontal gyrus, temporal areas, vision-related regions and in cingulate gyrus. We conclude that higher EI is associated with intensive affective experiences even if emotions are unpleasant. Strong skills in utilizing emotions enable one not to repress negative feelings but to use them as source of information. High EI individuals use effective cognitive processes such as directing attention to relevant details; have advantages in allocation of cognitive resources, in conceptualization of emotional scenes and in building emotional memories; they use visual cues, imagination and executive functions to regulate negative emotions effectively. (shrink)

Plato claimed that the regular solids are the building blocks of all matter. His views, commonly referred to as the geometric atomistic model, had enormous impact on human thought despite the fact that four of the five Platonic solids can not fill space without gaps. In this paper we quantify these gaps, showing that the errors in Plato’s estimates were quite small. We also develop a mean field approximation to convex honeycombs using a generalized version of Plato’s idea. This approximation (...) not only admits to view convex mosaics in$$d=3$$d=3dimensions as a continuum but we also find that it is quite accurate, showing that Plato’s geometric intuition may have been remarkable. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive study of the Derveni Papyrus. The papyrus, found in 1962 near Thessaloniki, is not only one of the oldest surviving Greek papyri but is also considered by scholars as a document of primary importance for a better understanding of the religious and philosophical developments in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Gábor Betegh aims to reconstruct and systematically analyse the different strata of the text and their interrelation by exploring the archaeological context; the interpretation of (...) rituals in the first columns of the text; the Orphic poem commented on by the author of the papyrus; and the cosmological and theological doctrines which emerge from the Derveni author's exegesis of the poem. Betegh discusses the place of the text in the context of late Presocratic philosophy and offers an important preliminary edition of the text of the papyrus with critical apparatus and English translation. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated whether infants represent goal‐directed actions of others in a way that allows them to draw inferences to unobserved states of affairs (such as unseen goal states or occluded obstacles). We measured looking times to assess violation of infants' expectations upon perceiving either a change in the actions of computer‐animated figures or in the context of such actions. The first experiment tested whether infants would attribute a goal to an action that they had not seen completed. The second (...) experiment tested whether infants would infer from an observed action the presence of an occluded object that functions as an obstacle. The looking time patterns of 12‐month‐olds indicated that they were able to make both types of inferences, while 9‐month‐olds failed in both tasks. These results demonstrate that, by the end of the first year of life, infants use the principle of rational action not only for the interpretation and prediction of goal‐directed actions, but also for making productive inferences about unseen aspects of their context. We discuss the underlying mechanisms that may be involved in the developmental change from 9 to 12 months of age in the ability to infer hypothetical (unseen) states of affairs in teleological action representations. (shrink)

In natural sciences, the most interesting and relevant questions are the so-called why-questions. There are several different approaches to why-questions and explanations in the literature, however, most of the literature deals with why-questions about particular events, such as ``Why did Adam eat the apple?''. Even the best known theory of explanation, Hempel's covering law model, is designed for explaining particular events. Here we only deal with purely theoretical why-questions about general phenomena of physics, for instance ``Why can no observer move (...) faster than light?'' or ``Why are Kepler's laws valid?''. Here we are not going to develop a whole new theory of why-questions in physics. We will just touch upon some ideas and examples relevant to our subject. (shrink)

I make three related proposals concerning the development of receptive communication in human infants. First, I propose that the presence of communicative intentions can be recognized in others' behaviour before the content of these intentions is accessed or inferred. Second, I claim that such recognition can be achieved by decoding specialized ostensive signals. Third, I argue on empirical bases that, by decoding ostensive signals, human infants are capable of recognizing communicative intentions addressed to them. Thus, learning about actual modes of (...) communication benefits from, and is guided by, infants' preparedness to detect infant-directed ostensive communication. (shrink)

The Panama Papers (2016), Paradise Leaks (2017), and Pandora Papers (2021) have revealed the extensive practice of corporate tax avoidance. Yet, the tax behavior of companies claiming to be “socially responsible” has been less examined. This study examines the association between corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) and tax avoidance, particularly in developing economies, focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). By analyzing data from 600 firm-year observations across 13 SSA countries using panel quantile regression, we found a negative relationship between CSRD, which (...) includes ethical, social, and environmental dimensions, and tax avoidance. This aligns with legitimacy theory, indicating that firms are increasingly adopting CSR transparency to meet societal expectations and gain stakeholder trust, avoiding socially irresponsible behaviors. Furthermore, the quality of national governance significantly moderates the CSRD–tax avoidance relationship, supporting the concept of institutional isomorphism. This evidence is valuable for professionals and policymakers and encourages further research to deepen and broaden these findings. (shrink)

This commentary provides experimental data in support of the critical role of capsaicin-sensitive primary afferent fibers in the initiation and maintenance of pathological pain. The demonstration of capsaicin-induced, centrally-evoked cutaneous hyperalgesia, and of neuroplastic changes elicited by the degeneration of C-fiber primary afferent terminals following peripheral nerve damage, indicates a significant contribution of capsaicin-sensitive sensory ganglion neurons in the development of pathological pain conditions. [coderre & katz].

Continuity as appears to us immediately by intuition differs from its current formalization, the arithmetical continuum or equivalently the set of real numbers used in modern mathematical analysis. Motivated by the known mathematical and physical problems arising from this formalization of the continuum, our aim in this paper is twofold. Firstly, by interpreting Chaitin’s variant of Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem as an inherent uncertainty or fuzziness of the arithmetical continuum, a formal set-theoretic entropy is assigned to the arithmetical continuum. Secondly, (...) by analyzing Noether’s theorem on symmetries and conserved quantities, we argue that whenever the four dimensional space-time continuum containing a single, stationary, asymptotically flat black hole is modeled by the arithmetical continuum in the mathematical formulation of general relativity, the hidden set-theoretic entropy of this latter structure reveals itself as the entropy of the black hole, indicating that this apparently physical quantity might have a pure set-theoretic origin, too. (shrink)

Many argued (Accardi and Fedullo, Pitowsky) that Kolmogorov's axioms of classical probability theory are incompatible with quantum probabilities, and that this is the reason for the violation of Bell's inequalities. Szabó showed that, in fact, these inequalities are not violated by the experimentally observed frequencies if we consider the real, “effective” frequencies. We prove in this work a theorem which generalizes this results: “effective” frequencies associated to quantum events always admit a Kolmogorovian representation, when these events are collected through different (...) experimental setups, the choice of which obeys a classical distribution. (shrink)

According to recent work in experimental philosophy, folk intuitions concerning various metaphysical issues are heavily teleological. The experiments in question, which belong to a broader research program in psychology about ‘promiscuous teleology’, have featured prominently in debates about the methodology of metaphysics, with some authors claiming that the folk’s teleological bias debunks everyday intuitions concerning composition, persistence, and organisms. The present paper argues for a possibility that is very rarely discussed in that debate, namely the idea that the folk’s intuitions (...) could be veridical. Our argument is based on an emerging naturalistic theory of biological functions called “the organismic view”. The gist of the organismic view is that biological systems are characterized by a special circular causal regime where each part of the system contributes to the boundary conditions of some other parts, as well as of the whole. We argue that teleological folk intuitions are veridical in the biological domain under such a view, and they are veridical in the social and artefactual domains under coherent extensions of the organismic view. (shrink)

We study sincere-strategy preference-based approval voting (SP-AV), a system proposed by Brams and Sanver [1] and here adjusted so as to coerce admissibility of the votes (rather than excluding inadmissible votes a priori), with respect to procedural control. In such control scenarios, an external agent seeks to change the outcome of an election via actions such as adding/deleting/partitioning either candidates or voters. SP-AV combines the voters' preference rankings with their approvals of candidates, where in elections with at least two candidates (...) the voters' approval strategies are adjusted – if needed – to approve of their most-preferred candidate and to disapprove of their least-preferred candidate. This rule coerces admissibility of the votes even in the presence of control actions, and hybridizes, in effect, approval with pluralitiy voting. We prove that this system is computationally resistant (i.e., the corresponding control problems are NP-hard) to 19 out of 22 types of constructive and destructive control. Thus, SP-AV has more resistances to control than is currently known for any other natural voting system with a polynomial-time winner problem. In particular, SP-AV is (after Copeland voting, see Faliszewski et al. [2, 3]) the second natural voting system with an easy winner-determination procedure that is known to have full resistance to constructive control, and unlike Copeland voting it in addition displays broad resistance to destructive control (© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim). (shrink)

The paper investigates and refines the proportionalist solution to the causal exclusion problem developed by Menzies and List. First and foremost, it explores the implications of their inter-level compatibility result. It is highlighted that in theory the inter-level causal compatibility of realizer and realized properties allows for scenarios where the higher-level property is multiply realized. By developing concrete illustrations, the paper proves this to be an empirically plausible option. Further non-trivial implications of the framework are unpacked to show that the (...) sensitivity of causal relations to background conditions is as important in deciding on the existence and the direction of exclusion as sensitivity to the realization of the cause. This insight also opens the way to further refinements: a richer reconceptualization of upwards exclusion and a plausible answer to a critic of the Menzies and List project. (shrink)

We explain the general significance of integer-based descriptors for natural shapes and show that the evolution of two such descriptors, called mechanical descriptors (the number _N_(_t_) of static balance points and the Morse–Smale graph associated with the scalar distance function measured from the center of mass) appear to capture (unlike classical geophysical shape descriptors) one of our most fundamental intuitions about natural abrasion: shapes get monotonically _simplified_ in this process. Thus mechanical descriptors help to establish a correlation between subjective and (...) objective descriptors of perceived objects. (shrink)

Based on the existence of polysemy (e.g., lunch can refer to both food and events), it is argued that central tenets of externalist semantics and Fodorian concept atomism, an externalist theory on which words lack semantic structure, are unsound. We evaluate the premise that these arguments rely on—that polysemous words have separate, finer‐grained senses. We survey the evidence across psychology and linguistics and argue that it shows that polysemy does not exist, at least not in this “sense”. The upshot is (...) that if polysemy does not exist, it cannot pose a problem for atomism or externalism. (shrink)

A Critical Notice of Thomas KjellerJohansen, Plato’s Natural Philosophy. A Study of the Timaeus-Critias.

In recent articles in this journal Benoit Gaultier and John Biro have argued that the original Gettier cases and the ones closely modelled on them fail, and the reason for the failure is that the subject in these cases does not actually have the belief that would serve as a counterexample to the justified-true-belief analysis of knowledge. They claim that if our evidence pertains to a particular individual (as in the first case) or to the truth of one of the (...) disjuncts (as in the second case), we do not genuinely believe the existential generalization or the disjunction which logically follows. I will challenge their arguments and suggest that our unwillingness to assert the existential generalization or the disjunction under these conditions does not stem from lack of belief but from pragmatic principles. (shrink)

The article analyzes strategic manoeuvring within the pragmadialectical framework with respect to the selection of starting points in the opening stage to frame the arguments. The Terri Schiavo case is presented, which can provide interesting insights concerning this issue. I would like to show that resolution of the difference of opinion requires the resolution of a subordinate difference of opinion concerning how to label her medical state, and why discussants were not able to resolve this subordinate difference of opinion. After, (...) the conflict that arises between critical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness is examined and how strategic manoeuvring aims to resolve this conflict. In the final part of the paper I argue that the problems raised can be dealt with within the framework of pragma-dialectics. (shrink)

The Speech Act of Referring. According to the speech-act theory whenever we utter a sentence, we perform two acts: the act of referring and that of predicating. By referring, we set out an object that we speak of, and by predicating, we attribute a feature to the object. My paper is a short presentation of Gottlob Frege’s theory of meaning and Bertrand Russell's theory of description. I will try to outline the core concepts and thoughts/arguments that even today define the (...) debate about reference in the analytic tradition. (shrink)

En este texto examinaremos la relación problemática entre parrhesía, necropolítica y víctima. Nuestro trabajo estará radicado en una examinación de la necropolítica y su íntima relación con el biopoder foucaultiano, sus resistencias y efectos. Una resistencia particular está contenida en la noción de parrhesía, la cual recibirá su respectiva modificación modal ante los efectos de la necropolítica bajo las circunstancias examinadas. Con lo anterior, nuestra intención sería retratar una teoría de "víctimas y parrhesía" bajo el contexto de lo necropolítico y (...) la no–filosofía. Nos "serviremos" de la manera más ética posible de material visual, entablando unos respectivos límites teóricos. (shrink)