Inspired by Hintikka’s ideas on constructivism, we are going to ‘effectivize’ the game-theoretic semantics for independence-friendly first-order logic, but in a somewhat different way than he did in the monograph ‘The Principles of Mathematics Revisited’. First we show that Nelson’s realizability interpretation—which extends the famous Kleene’s realizability interpretation by adding ‘strong negation’—restricted to the implication-free first-order formulas can be viewed as an effective version of GTS for FOL. Then we propose a realizability interpretation for IF-FOL, inspired by the so-called ‘trump (...) semantics’ which was discovered by Hodges, and show that this trump realizability interpretation can be viewed as an effective version of GTS for IF-FOL. Finally we prove that the trump realizability interpretation for IF-FOL appropriately generalises Nelson’s restricted realizability interpretation for the implication-free first-order formulas. (shrink)

Corruption in the construction industry is a serious problem in China. As such, fighting this corruption has become a priority target of the Chinese government, with the main effort being to discover and prosecute its perpetrators. This study profiles the demographic characteristics of major incidences of corruption in construction. It draws on the database of the 83 complete recorded cases of construction related corruption held by the Chinese National Bureau of Corruption Prevention. Categorical variables were drawn from the database, and (...) ‘association rule mining analysis’ was used to identify associations between variables as a means of profiling perpetrators. Such profiling may be used as predictors of future incidences of corruption, and consequently to inform policy makers in their fight against corruption. The results signal corruption within the Chinese construction industry to be correlated with age, with incidences rising as managers’ approach retirement age. Moreover, a majority of perpetrators operate within government agencies, are department deputies in direct contact with projects, and extort the greatest amounts per case from second tier cities. The relatively lengthy average 6.4-year period before cases come to public attention corroborates the view that current efforts at fighting corruption remain inadequate. (shrink)

The most enigmatic feature of polytene chromosomes is their banding pattern, the genetic organization of which has been a very attractive puzzle for many years. Recent genome‐wide protein mapping efforts have produced a wealth of data for the chromosome proteins of Drosophila cells. Based on their specific protein composition, the chromosomes comprise two types of bands, as well as interbands. These differ in terms of time of replication and specific types of proteins. The interbands are characterized by their association with (...) “active” chromatin proteins, nucleosome remodeling, and origin recognition complexes, and so they have three functions: acting as binding sites for RNA pol II, initiation of replication and nucleosome remodeling of short fragments of DNA. The borders and organization of the same band and interband regions are largely identical, irrespective of the cell type studied. This demonstrates that the banding pattern is a universal principle of the organization of interphase polytene and non‐polytene chromosomes.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssaysCaught in the act: Rapid, symbiont‐driven evolution AbstractFunction and evolution of sex determination mechanisms, genes and pathways in insects Abstract. (shrink)

The relevance of the article is due to the fact that in the modern world, various utopian concepts do not lose their ideological strength, which for more than two centuries have significantly influenced public consciousness and have caused significant transformations in the socio-cultural life of mankind. The connection among social utopias and Christian eschatology has been noticed for a long time, and the thoughts expressed on this occasion by Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann in articles and diary entries can contribute to a (...) better understanding of deep cognitive processes that largely determine modern social realities. The purpose of the study was based on the analysis of the works of this worthy representative of the philosophy of the Russian diaspora, comparing the traditional religious eschatological "prototype" and later views on the "end of history". These views contributed to the development of utopianism and ideologism in the public mind. The authors focus attention on the antinomical nature of Christian eschatology, in contrast to the various socio-utopian modifications that define social ideals in a field transcendental to everyday human activities. The striving of religious thinking towards the "non-worldly" ideal, as Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann believed, made it possible to form a Christian's attitude to earthly life, which inevitably required a qualitative transformation corresponding to the notion of the ultimate goal. However, over time, the Christian faith paid less and less attention to the eschatological dimension of human life, which contributed to the formation of new eschatologies seeking their social ideals in the immediate givenness of earthly life and affirming the belief in the possibility of their empirical achievement. The authors of the article come to the conclusion that the most important factor in the formation and development of the "ideological faith" in the public consciousness, the concept of which is defined in the most general terms in the works of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, was the isolation of the dominant ideological structures based on social utopian ideas, from traditional faith grounds. Thus, ideologies ceased to be functional aspects of concrete historical religions, lost their official character and themselves became the foundation for pseudo-religious creativity. (shrink)

Many philosophers deny that happiness can be equated with pleasurable experiences. Nozick introduced an experience machine thought experiment to support the idea that happiness requires pleasurable experiences that are “in contact with reality.” In this thought experiment, people can choose to plug into a machine that induces exclusively pleasurable experiences. We test Nozick’s hypothesis that people will reject this offer. We also contrast Nozick’s experience machine scenario with scenarios that are less artificial, and offer options which are less invasive or (...) disruptive than being connected to a machine, specifically scenarios in which people are offered an experience pill or a pill that improves overall functioning. (shrink)

Обсуждается широкий круг проблем взаимоотношения сознания и материи. Особое внимание уделено анализу структуры и свойств сознания в рамках информационной эволюции. А также – анализу роли специфических (невычислительных) свойств сознания в процедуре классических и квантовых измерений. В частности, подробно обсуждается вопрос о «клонировании» сознания (возможности копирования его свойств его на новый материальный носитель). Мы надеемся, что сформулированный нами обобщенный принцип дополнительности откроет новые пути для исследования проблем сознания в рамках фундаментальной физической картины мира.

Central and East Europeans have a great deal in common, both historically and culturally, with West Europeans and North Americans, but tend to be more interdependent. Interdependence has been shown to be linked to holistic cognition. East Asians are more interdependent than Americans and are more holistic. If interdependence causes holism, we would expect Central and East Europeans to be more holistic than West Europeans and North Americans. In two studies we found evidence that Central and East Europeans are indeed (...) more holistic than Westerners on three tasks, one of which examined categorization and two of which measured patterns of visual attention. These studies support the argument that cross-cultural differences in cognition are due to society level differences in independence/interdependence. (shrink)

Discussive logic was introduced by Jaskowski as a logic of discussion. In this note we show that some natural translation-based formalizations of discussive logic in modal logic do not yield a paraconsistent logic but rather classical logic. Some alternative modal formalizations of discussive logic that avoid the collapse into classical logic are put forward.

Through the analysis of certain aspects of Leonardo Bruni’s language, and in particular his use of “popolo” and “res publica”, we strive to understand the extent to which the politics of the early humanists remained rooted in the recent past of the City of Florence, despite the obvious ideological innovations (and without considering those of a stylistic and literary nature). Bruni seems to have inherited the primacy and unity of the Florentine people directly from the discourses of the 14th-century jurists. (...) On the other hand, “respublica” turns out to be, in his texts, both an entirely traditional notion and the emblem of the process of essentialisation of a people reconstituted in its universal dimension thanks to the definitive expulsion of conflict from the horizon of possibilities. At the same time, in a dialogue with Claudia Moatti in particular, we try to ascertain how, with which tools, some research on Roman history helps us grasp the metamorphoses of the ‘people’ in a much later period. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse the concept of coerced exchange (and partly of voluntary exchange inasmuch as the absence of coercion is its necessary condition), which is of utmost importance to economic theory in general and to the Austrian School of Economics in particular. The subject matter literature normally assumes that a coerced action occurs under threat. Threats in turn can be studied from the perspective of speech act theory, which is concerned with the speaker’s intentions. Ultimately, our goal is (...) to provide a descriptive (i.e. non-moralized) definitions of threat and coercion, based on the analysis of the coercer’s intentions. If successful, we would be in a position to present such an account of coerced and voluntary exchanges that is compatible with both speech act theory and the Austrian methodology. Although we focus on the Austrian School of Economics, we believe that our investigations might impact on economic theory in general. We also criticize a rights-based account of coercion employed in the research practice of some neo-Austrians and based on the libertarian ethic of property rights. (shrink)

Explora as noções deleuzinas sobre o cinema e problematiza elementos relacionados a indexação de filmes. Aprofunda as questões cinematográficas trabalhadas por Deleuze, que concebe dois principais regimes de imagens, compreendidos no cinema clássico e no cinema moderno. O cinema clássico é fundado na imagem-movimento, a qual submete o tempo à ação, já o cinema moderno, caracteriza-se pela imagem-tempo, a qual desvincula tempo e movimento e revela situações óticas e sonoras puras. Analisa o problema do tempo em três filmes dirigidos por (...) Michelangelo Antonini, conhecidos como trilogia da incomunicabilidade, A Aventura (1960), A Noite (1961) e O Eclipse (1962). A partir da análise de filmes sob a abordagem deleuziana é possível ampliar as dimensões presentes na indexação, tanto no processo de leitura quanto de análise do documento, considerando a dimensão do afeto. (shrink)

Although Bastin et al. propose a useful model for thinking about the structure of memory and memory deficits, their distinction between entities and relational encoding is incompatible with data showing that even individual objects – prototypical “entities” – are made up of distinct features which require binding. Thus, “entity” and “relational” brain regions may need to solve fundamentally the same problems.

This paper summarizes the discussion on technoscience and its key question whether the phenomenon indicated by this term means a radical transformation of science and its replacement with some new social objectification. Based on the remarks of the discussion participants, we raise questions on mathematical rationality contribution in technoscience development, technical (magical) domination on nature (environment) and man as the leitmotif of the New European culture and the connection of techno-science, financial capital and liberal capitalism.

The article provides proof that the concept of time articulated in Russian philosophy of the nineteenth century was very close to the understanding of time in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. This explains the close attention of Russian culture to the philosophical system of the French thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century. It also allows us to hypothesize about the possible influence of the ideas of Russian philosophers of the late nineteenth century on Bergson. Bergson’s most original idea (...) is the recognition of the metaphysical primacy of the subjective, inner time of the human in relation to physical time. In physical time, only the moment of the present has real existence; in internal time, designated by Bergson as duration, all moments of the past are preserved as real, and this is expressed by memory. Internal time turns out to be the spiritual Absolute from which the entire material world originates. A very similar metaphysical concept is presented in Pyotr Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters. According to Chaadaev, each person is directly involved in the spiritual Absolute, which has the characteristic of integral time. In this time, all moments are in unity, and there is no division into the past, present, and future; this division arises only in the time intrinsic to the material reality that originates from the spiritual Absolute. In the religious teaching of Leo Tolstoy, personality is defined as the appearance of God within the limits of material existence, so a person is simultaneously involved in the earthly physical time and absolute time, which manifests itself through memory. The article concludes that Bergson’s ideas determined the most important features of Russian avant-garde culture of the twentieth century; in particular, thanks to them, the opposite trends of Russian thought were brought to unity: metaphysics of pan-unity and personalism. (shrink)

A wide range of problems of the relationship between consciousness and matter are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the structure and properties of consciousness in the framework of information evolution. The role of specific (non-computational) properties of consciousness in the procedure of classical and quantum measurements is analyzed. In particular, the issue of "cloning" of consciousness (the possibility of copying its properties onto a new material carrier) is discussed in detail. We hope that the generalized principle (...) of complementarity formulated by us will open up new ways for studying the problems of consciousness within the framework of the fundamental physical picture of the world. (shrink)

This volume presents a sketch of the Meaning-Text linguistic approach, richly illustrated by examples borrowed mainly, but not exclusively, from English. Chapter 1 expounds the basic idea that underlies this approach—that a natural language must be described as a correspondence between linguistic meanings and linguistic texts—and explains the organization of the book. Chapter 2 introduces the notion of linguistic functional model, the three postulates of the Meaning-Text approach (a language is a particular meaning-text correspondence, a language must be described by (...) a functional model and linguistic utterances must be treated at the level of the sentence and that of the word) and the perspective “from meaning to text” for linguistic descriptions. Chapter 3 contains a characterization of a particular Meaning-Text model: formal linguistic representations on the semantic, the syntactic and the morphological levels and the modules of a linguistic model that link these representations. Chapter 4 covers two central problems of the Meaning-Text approach: semantic decomposition and restricted lexical cooccurrence (≈ lexical functions); particular attention is paid to the correlation between semantic components in the definition of a lexical unit and the values of its lexical functions. Chapter 5 discusses five select issues: 1) the orientation of a linguistic description must be from meaning to text (using as data Spanish semivowels and Russian binominative constructions); 2) a system of notions and terms for linguistics (linguistic sign and the operation of linguistic union; notion of word; case, voice, and ergative construction); 3) formal description of meaning (strict semantic decomposition, standardization of semantemes, the adequacy of decomposition, the maximal block principle); 4) the Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary (with a sample of complete lexical entries for Russian vocables); 5) dependencies in language, in particular—syntactic dependencies (the criteria for establishing a set of surface-syntactic relations for a language are formulated). Three appendices follow: a phonetic table, an inventory of surface-syntactic relations for English and an overview of all possible combinations of the three types of dependency (semantic, syntactic, and morphological). The book is supplied with a detailed index of notions and terms, which includes a linguistic glossary. (shrink)

The article deals with the symbolic meanings that the images of America and Switzerland have in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky. It is shown that the meanings of these two images are interconnected and constitute a dialectical contradiction, and each image, in turn, has two contradictory meanings - positive and negative. America acts, on the one hand, as a symbol of the openness and freedom of man, his desire to build the future on his own, but, on the other hand, (...) it expresses a dead-end path of development based only on material values. Switzerland embodies the ideal of spiritual development, which is the inner essence of European civilization, but at the same time it symbolizes the patriarchal, sinless state of man, which does not correspond to real earthly life. Switzerland is the ideal of the heavenly state of an earthly person, but this ideal is impossible in real life. The tragedy of the impracticability of this ideal is most clearly demonstrated by Dostoevsky through the story of Prince Myshkin in the novel The Idiot. (shrink)

Cet entretien avec le mathématicien Alessandro Sarti presente les enjeux théoriques et politiques de la recherche autour du phénomène de l’heterogenèse différentielle. En lien avec les pensées philosophiques de Deleuze et Simondon, cette notion tente de décrire différemment la genèse des formes vivantes à la croisée des sciences naturelles et sociales.

The considerable prominence of internet addiction (IA) in adolescence is at least partly explained by the limited knowledge thus far available on this complex phenomenon. In discussing IA, it is necessary to be aware that this is a construct for which there is still no clear definition in the literature. Nonetheless, its important clinical implications, as emerging in recent years, justify the lively interest of researchers in this new form of behavioral addiction. Over the years, studies have associated IA with (...) numerous clinical problems. However, fewer studies have investigated what factors might mediate the relationship between IA and the different problems associated with it. Ours is one such study. The Italian version of the SCL-90 and the IAT were administered to a sample of almost 800 adolescents aged between 16 and 22 years. We found the presence of a significant association between IA and two variables: somatization (β = 7.80; p < 0.001) and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (β = 2.18; p < 0.05). In line with our hypothesis, the results showed that somatization predicted the relationship between obsessive-compulsive symptoms and IA (β = −2.75; t = −3.55; p < 0.001), explaining 24.5% of its variance (ΔR2 = 1.2%; F = 12.78; p < 0.01). In addition, simple slopes analyses revealed that, on reaching clinical significance (+1 SD), somatization showed higher moderation effects in the relationship between obsessive-compulsive symptoms and IA (β = 6.13; t = 7.83; p < 0.001). These results appear to be of great interest due to the absence of similar evidence in the literature, and may open the way for further research in the IA field. Although the absence of studies in the literature does not allow us to offer an exhaustive explanation of these results, our study supports current addiction theories which emphasize the important function performed by the enteroceptive system, alongside the more cited reflexive and impulsive systems. (shrink)

Evolution and literature bring us into thinking about literature as an evolutionary adaptation and perception of literature as something that is strongly anchored in the distant history of mankind and even in its evolutionary prehistory.

Conceptual spaces have become an increasingly popular modeling tool in cognitive psychology. The core idea of the conceptual spaces approach is that concepts can be represented as regions in similarity spaces. While it is generally acknowledged that not every region in such a space represents a natural concept, it is still an open question what distinguishes those regions that represent natural concepts from those that do not. The central claim of this paper is that natural concepts are represented by the (...) cells of an optimally designed similarity space. (shrink)

Conditionals are sentences of the form 'If A, then B', and they play a central role in scientific, logical, and everyday reasoning. They have been in the philosophical limelight for centuries, and more recently, they have been receiving attention from psychologists, linguists, and computer scientists. In spite of this, many key questions concerning conditionals remain unanswered. While most of the work on conditionals has addressed semantical questions - questions about the truth conditions of conditionals - this book focuses on the (...) main epistemological questions that conditionals give rise to, such as: what are the probabilities of conditionals? When is a conditional acceptable or assertable? What do we learn when we receive new conditional information? In answering these questions, this book combines the formal tools of logic and probability theory with the experimental approach of cognitive psychology. It will be of interest to students and researchers in logic, epistemology, and psychology of reasoning. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the notion of coherence by explicating in probabilistic terms, step by step, what seem to be our most basic intuitions about that notion, to wit, that coherence is a matter of hanging or fitting together, and that coherence is a matter of degree. A qualitative theory of coherence will serve as a stepping stone to formulate a set of quantitative measures of coherence, each of which seems to capture well the aforementioned (...) intuitions. Subsequently it will be argued that one of those measures does better than the others in light of some more specific intuitions about coherence. This measure will be defended against two seemingly obvious objections. (shrink)

Various authors have recently argued that you cannot rationally stick to your belief in the face of known disagreement with an epistemic peer, that is, a person you take to have the same evidence and judgmental skills as you do. For, they claim, because there is but one rational response to any body of evidence, a disagreement with an epistemic peer indicates that at least one of you is not responding rationally to the evidence. Given that you take your peer (...) to have the same judgmental skills as you do, and thus regard her to be equally good at assessing the evidence as you are, you will have as much reason for thinking that it is you who is not responding rationally to the evidence as for thinking that it is her. You thus have reason for thinking that your belief on the disputed matter is not a rational response to the evidence. Hence, you cannot rationally stick to your belief. (shrink)

A defense of the rationality of adductive inference from the criticisms of Bayesian theorists.

This paper is concerned with formal solutions to the lottery paradox on which high probability defeasibly warrants acceptance. It considers some recently proposed solutions of this type and presents an argument showing that these solutions are trivial in that they boil down to the claim that perfect probability is sufficient for rational acceptability. The argument is then generalized, showing that a broad class of similar solutions faces the same problem. An argument against some formal solutions to the lottery paradox The (...) argument generalized Some variations Adding modalities Anticipated objections. (shrink)

It is undeniable that inductive reasoning has brought us much good. At least since Hume, however, philosophers have wondered how to justify our reliance on induction. In important recent work, Schurz points out that philosophers have been wrongly assuming that justifying induction is tantamount to showing induction to be reliable. According to him, to justify our reliance on induction, it is enough to show that induction is optimal. His optimality approach consists of two steps: an analytic argument for meta-induction (that (...) is, induction over inductive methods) and an application of meta-induction to empirical findings concerning the predictive accuracy of our actual inductive practices as compared to various non-inductive methods. The present article agrees with Schurz’s general conclusion but also argues that it leaves an important aspect of our inductive practices unaccounted for, to wit, that these practices have so far been highly successful; to satisfy the optimality requirement, induction only needs to be as successful as random guessing. To explain the success of induction, I turn to insights from social epistemology, also highlighted in Schurz’s work, and make these formally explicit in a framework that combines the Hegselmann–Krause model for opinion dynamics and Carnap’s system of λ rules. Within this framework, I use a standard evolutionary algorithm to show how communities of interacting agents may, through variation and selection, come to consist of highly successful inductive reasoners. (shrink)

The conceptual spaces approach has recently emerged as a novel account of concepts. Its guiding idea is that concepts can be represented geometrically, by means of metrical spaces. While it is generally recognized that many of our concepts are vague, the question of how to model vagueness in the conceptual spaces approach has not been addressed so far, even though the answer is far from straightforward. The present paper aims to fill this lacuna.

It has been claimed that epistemic peers, upon discovering that they disagree on some issue, should give up their opposing views and ‘split the difference’. The present paper challenges this claim by showing, with the help of computer simulations, that what the rational response to the discovery of peer disagreement is—whether it is sticking to one’s belief or splitting the difference—depends on factors that are contingent and highly context-sensitive.Keywords: Peer disagreement; Computer simulations; Opinion dynamics; Hegselmann–Krause model; Social epistemology.

This article compares inference to the best explanation with Bayes’s rule in a social setting, specifically, in the context of a variant of the Hegselmann–Krause model in which agents not only update their belief states on the basis of evidence they receive directly from the world, but also take into account the belief states of their fellow agents. So far, the update rules mentioned have been studied only in an individualistic setting, and it is known that in such a setting (...) both have their strengths as well as their weaknesses. It is shown here that in a social setting, inference to the best explanation outperforms Bayes’s rule according to every desirable criterion. 1 What Is Inference to the Best Explanation?2 Judging the Rules—By Which Lights?3 From an Individualistic to a Social Perspective 3.1 The Hegselmann–Krause model 3.2 A probabilistic extension of the Hegselmann–Krause model 3.3 Simulations4 Results and Discussion5 Interpretation6 Conclusion. (shrink)

Bayesians have traditionally taken a dim view of the Inference to the Best Explanation, arguing that, if IBE is at variance with Bayes ' rule, then it runs afoul of the dynamic Dutch book argument. More recently, Bayes ' rule has been claimed to be superior on grounds of conduciveness to our epistemic goal. The present paper aims to show that neither of these arguments succeeds in undermining IBE.

According to what is now commonly referred to as “the Equation” in the literature on indicative conditionals, the probability of any indicative conditional equals the probability of its consequent of the conditional given the antecedent of the conditional. Philosophers widely agree in their assessment that the triviality arguments of Lewis and others have conclusively shown the Equation to be tenable only at the expense of the view that indicative conditionals express propositions. This study challenges the correctness of that assessment by (...) presenting data that cast doubt on an assumption underlying all triviality arguments. (shrink)

There is an ongoing controversy in philosophy about the connection between explanation and inference. According to Bayesians, explanatory considerations should be given weight in determining which inferences to make, if at all, only insofar as doing so is compatible with Strict Conditionalization. Explanationists, on the other hand, hold that explanatory considerations can be relevant to the question of how much confidence to invest in our hypotheses in ways which violate Strict Conditionalization. The controversy has focused on normative issues. This paper (...) investigates experimentally the descriptive question of whether judgments of the explanatory goodness of hypotheses do play a role when people revise their degrees of belief in those hypotheses upon the receipt of new evidence. We present the results of three experiments that together strongly support the predictive superiority of the explanationist position. (shrink)

Van Fraassen (1989) argues that Inference to the Best Explanation is incoherent in the sense that adopting it as a rule for belief change will make one susceptible to a dynamic Dutch book. The present paper argues against this. A strategy is described that allows us to infer to the best explanation free of charge.

The Lottery Paradox and the Preface Paradox both involve the thesis that high probability is sufficient for rational acceptability. The standard solution to these paradoxes denies that rational acceptability is deductively closed. This solution has a number of untoward consequences. The present paper suggests that a better solution to the paradoxes is to replace the thesis that high probability suffices for rational acceptability with a somewhat stricter thesis. This avoids the untoward consequences of the standard solution. The new solution will (...) be defended against a seemingly obvious objection. 1 The paradoxes of rational acceptability 2 The standard solution 3 A new solution to the paradoxes 4 Basic assumptions 5 The new solution defended 6 Conclusion 7 Appendix. (shrink)

There has been a probabilistic turn in contemporary cognitive science. Far and away, most of the work in this vein is Bayesian, at least in name. Coinciding with this development, philosophers have increasingly promoted Bayesianism as the best normative account of how humans ought to reason. In this paper, we make a push for exploring the probabilistic terrain outside of Bayesianism. Non-Bayesian, but still probabilistic, theories provide plausible competitors both to descriptive and normative Bayesian accounts. We argue for this general (...) idea via recent work on explanationist models of updating, which are fundamentally probabilistic but assign a substantial, non-Bayesian role to explanatory considerations. (shrink)