Tolerance spaces are sets equipped with a reflexive, symmetric, but not necessarily transitive, relation of indistinguishability, and are useful for describing vagueness based on error-prone measurements. We show that any tolerance space can be embedded in one generated by comparisons using prototypical objects. As a result propositions, definable on a tolerance space can be translated into propositions behaving classically.

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is a governance framework promoted by influential policy makers such as the European Commission and academics from the fields of science and technology studies and management. This book is the first text to serve industry. Inspired by existing Corporate Responsibility standards and principles, it offers a selection of tools that can assist practitioners in implementing RRI in business and industry. -/- Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is integrative. It is a convergence of Technology Assessment (TA) (...) and Ethics, including corporate responsibility. The task of linking RRI to existing frameworks has only just begun. This book is a welcome example, showing how Corporate Responsibility tools can drive the implementation of RRI. Prof. Armin Grunwald, Head of the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag and Head of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. -/- This is a simple, short, yet encyclopaedic work designed to help business implement RRI using the many tools of Corporate Responsibility (CR) already in place, everything from ISO9001 to the Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability. It makes clear the ways in which RRI is an extension of ideas already well-developed in CR. I learned a lot reading it. Prof. Michael Davis, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. (shrink)

We introduce a class of set-theoretic operators on a tolerance space that models the process of minimal belief contraction, and therefore a natural process of iterated contraction can be defined. We characterize the class of contraction operators and study the properties of the associated iterated belief contraction.

This manuscript, divided into two parts, provides a contextual and historiographical analysis of Edwin Arthur Burtt's classic The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. My discussion corroborates the sparse technical literature on Burtt (Moriarty, 1994; Villemaire, 2002), positioning his work in the aftermath of American idealism and the rise of realist, pragmatist and naturalist alternatives. However, I depart from the existing interpretations both in content and focus. Disagreeing with Moriarty, I maintain that Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations is not an idealist work. (...) Moreover, I provide an alternative to Villemaire's mainly Deweyite/pragmatist reading, emphasizing the import of new realism and naturalism. Burtt's historical thesis should not be viewed as outlining a systematic philosophical position, but rather as a (coherent) culmination of numerous philosophical problematics. To support my conclusion, I provide a substantial summary of Burtt's text alongside a contextual analysis of the philosophical issues that preoccupied his teachers and peers in Columbia's philosophy department. I conclude with a historiographical section, rendering explicit the connections between Burtt's understanding of the scientific revolution, and his distinctive early 20th century American intellectual context. (shrink)

We pursue an account of merging through the use of geodesic semantics, the semantics based on the length of the shortest path on a graph. This approach has been fruitful in other areas of belief change such as revision and update. To this end, we introduce three binary merging operators of propositions defined on the graph of their valuations and we characterize them with a finite set of postulates.

Over every and each sport event, a dark veil spreads and obfuscates the celebration: doping. Although anti-doping policies have been widely applied, controlling and diminishing this phenomenon has not been achieved yet and the use of doping is commonplace. In this article, I propose the concept of narcissistic civilization as a tool to interpret this phenomenon. I seek for a parallel reading between the Freudian idea of narcissism and its extension to social narcissism by Fromm, together with Heidegger’s analysis of (...) technology, keeping in mind that doping is a technological application. In this way I point out that both theories share a common view in that humans tend to fail in the distinction between the external reality as an object and their own self as the interpreter, that is between the ¨I¨ and the ¨not I¨. By making this fusion of the two theories that originate from different intellectual traditions, I aspire to provide an interpretation tool for the broad use of doping: I conclude that doping can be understood with the assumption of a narcissistic civilization, focused on technology, that calls for the use of PEDs. (shrink)

This article discusses The Travelling Players (1975), Theo Angelopoulos's provocative film, by upholding the priority the director's audio-visual images assign to the future as what Deleuze calls ‘the pure and empty form of time’. It also argues that The Travelling Players supplements the Deleuzian quartet of crystal-images with a new type of crystal-image: Angelopoulos crafts images of extraordinary consistency that act as filters, splitting and sieving time at once, a kind of audio-visual refinery laid out on the silver screen, with (...) the distillation process dedicated to blocking repression, its past and present iterations, from contaminating the yet-to-come, banishing the negative from returning in the future. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 64 Heft: 3 Seiten: 452-464.

Artificial Intelligence is making rapid and remarkable progress in the development of more sophisticated and powerful systems. However, the acknowledgement of several problems with modern machine learning approaches has prompted a shift in AI benchmarking away from task-oriented testing towards ability-oriented testing, in which AI systems are tested on their capacity to solve certain kinds of novel problems. The Animal-AI Environment is one such benchmark which aims to apply the ability-oriented testing used in comparative psychology to AI systems. Here, we (...) present the first direct human-AI comparison in the Animal-AI Environment, using children aged 6–10. We found that children of all ages were significantly better than a sample of 30 AIs across most of the tests we examined, as well as performing significantly better than the two top-scoring AIs, “ironbar” and “Trrrrr,” from the Animal-AI Olympics Competition 2019. While children and AIs performed similarly on basic navigational tasks, AIs performed significantly worse in more complex cognitive tests, including detour tasks, spatial elimination tasks, and object permanence tasks, indicating that AIs lack several cognitive abilities that children aged 6–10 possess. Both children and AIs performed poorly on tool-use tasks, suggesting that these tests are challenging for both biological and non-biological machines. (shrink)

Machines can now match, or outperform, human performance in several reasoning and decision tasks. Some say that all that intelligence amounts to is smart computation. This is not a new thesis, dating back to Leibniz as well as Simon and Newell, but what is new is what smart means. Today it is identified with complex statistics and optimisation. Simon’s meaning, however, of smart rested on bounded rationality, a unified view of human and artificial decision making. This view was f l (...) eshed out by Gigerenzer as fast-and-frugal heuristics. Interestingly, such heuristics are typically sparse, as some machine learning models are optimised to be. So, one might hope that we can make sense of artificial intelligence in human terms after all, and face the upcoming challenges with open-mindedness and courage, just like Simon, and of course Wilkes, would have done. (shrink)

The covid-19 pandemic has supposed a greater marginalization of sexual and gender minorities. This marginalization has been an effect both of the public management’s prioritization of the epidemiological situation, and of a generalized social backlash attributed to the unprecedented lockdown conditions. Within this framework, and among other vulnerable social collectivities, trans people have seen their testimonies particularly unaddressed and exempt of credibility. Group dynamics of reinforcement of categories, as well as the dissemination of fake news through the Internet and the (...) reactivation of outdated debates on legitimacy within the public sphere, have given rise to a generalized mistrust and polarization. The present text utilizes qualitative data obtained through a larger research project on accessibility of trans people to psychological services, to conflate barriers to health services, with infodemia on social media, social distancing, the uprising of conservative discourses, and minority stress. (shrink)

We consider some natural sets of real numbers arising in ergodic theory and show that they are, respectively, complete in the classes${\cal D}_2 \left( {{\bf{\Pi }}_3^0 } \right)$and${\cal D}_\omega \left( {{\bf{\Pi }}_3^0 } \right)$, that is, the class of sets which are 2-differences (respectively,ω-differences) of${\bf{\Pi }}_3^0 $sets.

Centré sur l’univers polytechnicien de la première moitié du xixe siècle, le présent article souhaite mettre en regard les échanges scientifiques – oraux, épistolaires, ou liés à la diffusion de textes – développés au sein d’un « monde social » particulier avec les caractéristiques spécifiques de ce monde. En faisant dialoguer des considérations générales sur les différentes composantes de l’univers polytechnicien et une série de « vignettes » qui donnent à ces considérations de la chair historique, nous concluons à l’existence (...) d’un monde social dont les règles de fonctionnement – sociales, intellectuelles et morales –, l’équipement matériel, ainsi que les traits anthropologiques de ceux qui l’habitent font de lui un univers particulièrement propice au développement des échanges entre ses membres. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to evaluate “ReStress Mindset,” an internet-delivered intervention that combines the Stress Mindset Training Program with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. To that end, the current study determined whether the pilot study’s findings on the intervention’s effectiveness on stress mindset and stress response among university students in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, remained for 3 months following the completion of “ReStress Mindset” intervention. Twenty-six participants were randomly assigned to an intervention and a control group. Participants (...) in the intervention group attended 5 weekly sessions online, between the second and third waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. All participants completed self-report questionnaires before, at the end of the intervention and 3 months after the completion of the program. The “ReStress Mindset” intervention resulted in a statistically significant increase in “stress-is-enhancing” mindset, life satisfaction, and self-efficacy against stress, as well as a statistically significant decrease in “stress-is-debilitating” mindset, with these effects lasting 3 months after the program’s completion. The findings of this study suggest that university students could benefit from the “ReStress Mindset” intervention in order to cultivate and maintain a positive stress mindset and increase their life satisfaction and self-efficacy against stress, even during the COVID-19 pandemic or any other highly stressful period or crisis. (shrink)

We show that Gabbay’s nonmonotonic consequence relations c an be reduced to a new family of relations, called entrenchment relations. Entrenchment relations provide a direct generalization of epistemic entrenchment and expectation ordering introduced by G ̈ardenfors and Makinson for the study of belief revision and expectation inference, respectively.

Die Studie greift die philosophische Frage nach den Grenzen undder möglichen Überwindung des Formalismus auf. Sie bietet eine kritische Rekonstruktion des Frühwerks von Georg Lukács, in dem eine eigenartig ästhetizistische Kulturkritik miteiner ethischen Utopie dostojewskischer Prägung ergänzt werden sollte. Das Aufzeigen der Einheit wie der Aporien dieses zweigleisigen Ansatzes wirft neues Licht auf Lukács' marxistische Wende Ende 1918.

We study the topological models of a logic of knowledge for topological reasoning, introduced by Larry Moss and Rohit Parikh (1992). Among our results is the confirmation of a conjecture by Moss and Parikh, as well as the finite satisfiability property and decidability for the theory of topological models.

In this study we explore the encounters emerging from the restructured categorizations of subjectivity in the context of an open system that constantly confronts the structures that create it. On the one hand, science formulates valid propositions through the ratio that ensures and confirms the acquisition of knowledge, but on the other hand, the truth of its propositions is related to those mental processes which seek the truth of deeper values than those discovered on the surface of reality. The question (...) arisen in this case is by what criteria we are able to go back to removing those antinomies (objectivism/perspectivism) in order to develop the interdisciplinary terms between the humanitarian field of science and sciences in a spirit of unification. In this way, we approach the potential of scientific reformulation in terms of the above interpretive perspectives in order to project the overcoming of divisions under the principles of diversity and critical thinking both in the field of philosophy and science as well. (shrink)

After the initial formulation of the concept of reification in Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness (HCC, 1923), a series of confusing uses of it within critical theory have contributed to blurring its contours. In his pre-Marxist work, while analyzing the social rationalization process, Lukács located the modern form of mediation between subject and object and connected it with certain effects on the level of human consciousness and behavior. This very scheme is repeated and refined in HCC. In the Reification (...) essay, Lukács uses the neo-Kantian concept of the “form of objectivity” to grasp the central constitutive form of all kinds of objects in bourgeois society. He interprets Marx’s commodity form as the “archetype” of all capitalist objectivity, which consists in converting qualitative contents into quantitative categories. Thus, the formal/calculative rationality of exchange penetrates all kinds of objectification in modern society. In Lukács’s view, only in its modern, universalized form does rational objectification bring about the phenomenon of reification, i.e. the de-historicization and political neutralization of the social relations that constitute the social system and the dominant forms of consciousness. This systemic, cultural, and political understanding of reification can prove to be fruitful in the context of contemporary discussions on democratic transformative praxis. (shrink)

Rational inference relations were introduced by Lehmann and Magidor as the ideal systems for drawing conclusions from a conditional base. However, there has been no simple characterization of these relations, other than its original representation by preferential models. In this paper, we shall characterize them with a class of total preorders of formulas by improving and extending G ̈ardenfors and Makinson’s results f or expectation inference relations. A second representation is application-oriented and is obtained by considering a class of consequence (...) operators that grade sets of defaults according to our reliance on them. The finitary fragment of this class of consequence operators has been employed by recent default logic formalisms based on maxiconsistency. (shrink)

We provide a critique of the usual functionalist, cognition-first reading of Aristotle’s theory of emotion and then offer an alternative understanding of Aristotle's theory of cognition and emotion that brings to bear certain biological considerations evidenced in his arguments on the integration of form and matter (hylomorphism) and the hierarchical organization of the biological world. This, of course, does not suggest that we are critical of all varieties of functionalism, but only those which fail to utilize and incorporate findings in (...) neuroscience. One way to help bridge the gap between mind and the physical world is through empirical findings. Based upon our new reading of Aristotle, we identify affinities with contemporary research in the cognitive neuroscience of emotion and developmental research on emotion. (shrink)

In this paper, we study some new examples of ideals on $$\omega $$ with maximal Tukey type (that is, maximal among partial orders of size continuum). This discussion segues into an examination of a refinement of the Tukey order—known as the weak Rudin–Keisler order—and its structure when restricted to these ideals of maximal Tukey type. Mirroring a result of Fremlin (Note Mat 11:177–214, 1991) on the Tukey order, we also show that there is an analytic P-ideal above all other analytic (...) P-ideals in the weak Rudin–Keisler order. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to introduce a class of distance-based iterated revision operators generated by minimizing the geodesic distance on a graph. Such operators correspond bijectively to metrics and have a simple finite presentation. As distance is generated by distinguishability, our framework is appropriate for modelling contexts where distance is generated by threshold, and therefore, when measurement is erroneous.

This manuscript, divided into two parts, provides a contextual and historiographical analysis of Edwin Arthur Burtt's classic The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. My discussion corroborates the sparse technical literature on Burtt (Moriarty, 1994; Villemaire, 2002), positioning his work in the aftermath of American idealism and the rise of realist, pragmatist and naturalist alternatives. However, I depart from the existing interpretations both in content and focus. Disagreeing with Moriarty, I maintain that Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations is not an idealist work. (...) Moreover, I provide an alternative to Villemaire's mainly Deweyite/pragmatist reading, emphasizing the import of new realism and naturalism. Burtt's historical thesis should not be viewed as outlining a systematic philosophical position, but rather as a (coherent) culmination of numerous philosophical problematics. To support my conclusion, I provide a substantial summary of Burtt's text alongside a contextual analysis of the philosophical issues that preoccupied his teachers and peers in Columbia's philosophy department. I conclude with a historiographical section, rendering explicit the connections between Burtt's understanding of the scientific revolution, and his distinctive early 20th century American intellectual context. (shrink)