Social and cultural contexts influence power dynamics and shape gender perceptions, roles, and decisions regarding the management of agrobiodiversity for dealing with and adapting to climate change. Based on a feminist political ecology framework and a mixed method approach, this research performs an empirical analysis of two case studies in the northern of India, one in the Himalayan Mountains and another in the Indian-Gangetic plains. It explores context-specific influence of gender roles and responsibilities on on-farm agrobiodiversity management gendered expertise and (...) knowledge related to agrobiodiversity and gendered preferences for practices and institutional arrangements for agrobiodiversity conservation linked to adaptation to climate change. In the Himalayan mountains women actively participate in crop and seed management decisions and tasks, and maintain informal institutions for seed and services exchanges in the case of crisis, which simultaneously favours high levels of agrobiodiversity and enhances women’s social status. By contrast, in the Indio-Gangetic plains, where women from better-off households are socially secluded and women from poorer households work mainly as labourer to respond to high out-migration of men, they exercise less public control over agrobiodiversity, with their role being mainly invisible at the homestead and related to post-production tasks. We finally discuss as improved understanding of the links between gendered spaces, crops, tasks, social status, and agrobiodiversity management can facilitate the design of gender-sensitive policy interventions for conservation and adaptation to climate change. (shrink)

This paper defends an inferential conception of scientific representation. It approaches the notion of representation in a deflationary spirit, and minimally characterizes the concept as it appears in science by means of two necessary conditions: its essential directionality and its capacity to allow surrogate reasoning and inference. The conception is defended by showing that it successfully meets the objections that make its competitors, such as isomorphism and similarity, untenable. In addition the inferential conception captures the objectivity of the cognitive representations (...) used by science, it sheds light on their truth and completeness, and it explains the source of the analogy between scientific and artistic modes of representation. (shrink)

El presente artículo explora algunas de las discusiones teóricas que sobre el concepto de narrativas transmedia se vienen tejiendo actualmente, deteniéndose en particular sobre nociones clave como las de expansión narrativa y relaciones intertextuales, para finalizar indicando la necesidad de constituir una serie de referentes teóricos y metodológicos, que permitan abordar la diversidad de formas expresivas que constituyen los sistemas intertextuales transmedia.

It is still a matter of controversy whether the Principle of the Common Cause (PCC) can be used as a basis for sound causal inference. It is thus to be expected that its application to quantum mechanics should be a correspondingly controversial issue. Indeed the early 90’s saw a flurry of papers addressing just this issue in connection with the EPR correlations. Yet, that debate does not seem to have caught up with the most recent literature on causal inference generally, (...) which has moved on to consider the virtues of a generalised PCC-inspired condition, the so-called Causal Markov Condition (CMC). In this paper we argue that the CMC is an appropriate benchmark for debating possible causal explanations of the EPR correlations. But we go on to take issue with some pronouncements on EPR by defenders of the CMC. (shrink)

Abstract: It is often assumed without argument that fictionalism in the philosophy of science contradicts scientific realism. This paper is a critical analysis of this assumption. The kind of fictionalism that is at present discussed in philosophy of science is characterised, and distinguished from fictionalism in other areas. A distinction is then drawn between forms of fictional representation, and two competing accounts of fiction in science are discussed. I then outline explicitly what I take to be the argument for the (...) incompatibility of scientific realism with fictionalism. I argue that some of its premises are unwarranted, and are moreover questionable from a fictionalist perspective. The conclusion is that fictionalism is neutral in the realism-antirealism debate, pulling neither in favour nor against scientific realism. (shrink)

1Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TB, UKScience Without Laws Ronald Giere Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press 1999 x + 285 Hardback£17.50.

The historical formation of Brazil is distinguished from the majority of ex-colonial nations by one factor that is especially characteristic: an intense process of ethnic and cultural mixing. The Portuguese colonisers, who, unlike the English Puritans in North America, left their families and arrived in Brazil in small groups mainly composed of men, naturally tended to pair off with the women they found available - first of all indigenous women and later African women. There was nothing in Brazil to prevent (...) this spontaneous behaviour similar to the role played in the English colonies of North America by the strength of the family group or the strict religious observance of the community. Thus from the outset Brazil tended to accept racial mixing as a de facto reality. As Gilberto Freyre correctly noted in his book Casa Grande e Senzala:They mixed happily with women of colour from the very first contacts and many mixed-race children resulted, so much so that only a few thousand men were enough to colonize vast areas and compete with the greatest and most numerous peoples as regards the extent of the colonial territory and the effectiveness of colonizing activity. (shrink)

IntroductionThe idea of video recording in the operating room with panoramic cameras and microphones is a new concept that is changing the approach to medical activities in the OR. However, VR in the OR has brought up many concerns regarding patient privacy and has highlighted legal and ethical issues that were never previously exposed.AimTo review the literature concerning these aspects and provide a better ethical and legal understanding of the new challenges concerning VR in the OR.ConclusionsThere is a disparity between (...) the two main legal models concerning VR in the OR, namely the European legal system ) and the American legal framework ). This difference mainly deals with two distinct bioethical paradigms: GDPR places a strong emphasis on protecting patients’ privacy to improve the public health system, whereas HIPAA indicates the need to generate protocols to safeguard the risks connected to medical activity and patient privacy. Following from this point, we may argue that, at the ethical and bioethical level, GDPR and HIPAA depend mainly on two different ethical models: a perspective based on moral acquaintances and weak proceduralism, respectively. It is worth noting the importance of developing additional guidelines concerning different world regions to avoid the ethical problems that may emerge when simply applying a foreign paradigm to a very different culture. (shrink)

This Element has two main aims. The first one is an historically informed review of the philosophy of probability. It describes recent historiography, lays out the distinction between subjective and objective notions, and concludes by applying the historical lessons to the main interpretations of probability. The second aim focuses entirely on objective probability, and advances a number of novel theses regarding its role in scientific practice. A distinction is drawn between traditional attempts to interpret chance, and a novel methodological study (...) of its application. A radical form of pluralism is then introduced, advocating a tripartite distinction between propensities, probabilities and frequencies. Finally, a distinction is drawn between two different applications of chance in statistical modelling which, it is argued, vindicates the overall methodological approach. The ensuing conception of objective probability in practice is the 'complex nexus of chance'. (shrink)

Scientific representation is a currently booming topic, both in analytical philosophy and in history and philosophy of science. The analytical inquiry attempts to come to terms with the relation between theory and world; while historians and philosophers of science aim to develop an account of the practice of model building in the sciences. This article provides a review of recent work within both traditions, and ultimately argues for a practice-based account of the means employed by scientists to effectively achieve representation (...) in the modelling sciences. (shrink)

Mauricio Suárez and Agnes Bolinska apply the tools of communication theory to scientific modeling in order to characterize the informational content of a scientific model. They argue that when represented as a communication channel, a model source conveys information about its target, and that such representations are therefore appropriate whenever modeling is employed for informational gain. They then extract two consequences. First, the introduction of idealizations is akin in informational terms to the introduction of noise in a signal; for (...) in an idealization we introduce ‘extraneous’ elements into the model that have no correlate in the target. Second, abstraction in a model is informationally equivalent to equivocation in the signal; for in an abstraction we “neglect” in the model certain features that obtain in the target. They conclude that it becomes possible in principle to quantify idealization and abstraction in informative models, although precise absolute quantification will be difficult to achieve in practice. (shrink)

El estudio se centró en los textos de las resoluciones de acreditación de alta calidad de las Instituciones de Educación Superior en Colombia. La metodología condujo a un panorama descriptivo y posibilitó la construcción de categorías cualitativas que permitieron analizar fortalezas y debilidades. Los resultados evidencian la brecha urbano- rural; una tendencia de las instituciones oficiales a recibir más años de acreditación que las privadas y la no incidencia del carácter académico en el número de años de acreditación otorgados. Mejorar (...) las condiciones laborales de los profesores y atender las zonas rurales son prioridades que deben atender las políticas nacionales. (shrink)

The, Police Executive Research Forum is completing a major initiative that encourages police chiefs to formalize working relationships with emergency medical personnel. The effort is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance as a demonstration with the goal of preventing recurring violence that eventually leads to homicide. The initiative originally involved a consortium of emergency room clinicians, emergency medical service personnel, as well as police executives. The collaboration initially focused on arguably preventable dimensions of domestic violence (...) and homicide. However, after “9/11” and the ensuing anthrax crisis, the project developed into a three-step draft interactive protocol for earlier police intervention in situations involving possible deaths and mass casualties. With this shift in the project, Police Executive Research Forum’s principal collaborators shifted from emergency clinicians to public health practitioners. (shrink)

I argue against theories that attempt to reduce scientific representation to similarity or isomorphism. These reductive theories aim to radically naturalize the notion of representation, since they treat scientist's purposes and intentions as non-essential to representation. I distinguish between the means and the constituents of representation, and I argue that similarity and isomorphism are common but not universal means of representation. I then present four other arguments to show that similarity and isomorphism are not the constituents of scientific representation. I (...) finish by looking at the prospects for weakened versions of these theories, and I argue that only those that abandon the aim to radically naturalize scientific representation are likely to be successful. (shrink)

On a purely epistemic understanding of experimental realism, manipulation affords a particularly robust kind of causal warrant, which is – like any other warrant – defeasible. I defend a version of Nancy Cartwright’s inference to the most likely cause, and I conclude that this minimally epistemic version of experimental realism is a coherent, adequate and plausible epistemology for science.

This paper argues for a broadly dispositionalist approach to the ontology of Bohmian mechanics . It first distinguishes the ‘minimal’ and the ‘causal’ versions of Bohm’s theory, and then briefly reviews some of the claims advanced on behalf of the ‘causal’ version by its proponents. A number of ontological or interpretive accounts of the wave function in BM are then addressed in detail, including configuration space, multi-field, nomological, and dispositional approaches. The main objection to each account is reviewed, namely the (...) ‘problem of perception’, the ‘problem of communication’, the ‘problem of temporal laws’, and the ‘problem of under-determination’. It is then shown that a version of dispositionalism overcomes the under-determination problem while providing neat solutions to the other three problems. A pragmatic argument is thus furnished for the use of dispositions in the interpretation of the theory more generally. The paper ends in a more speculative note by suggesting ways in which a dispositionalist interpretation of the wave function is in addition able to shed light upon some of the claims of the proponents of the causal version of BM. (shrink)

I argue against an account of scientific representation suggested by the semantic, or structuralist, conception of scientific theories. Proponents of this conception often employ the term “model” to refer to bare “structures”, which naturally leads them to attempt to characterize the relation between models and reality as a purely structural one. I argue instead that scientific models are typically “representations”, in the pragmatist sense of the term: they are inherently intended for specific phenomena. Therefore in general scientific models are not (...) (merely) structures. I then explore some consequences of this pragmatist account of representation, and argue that it sheds light upon the distinction between theories and models. I finish by briefly addressing some critical comments due to Bas Van Fraassen. (shrink)

In “The Toolbox of Science” (1995) together with Towfic Shomar we advocated a form of instrumentalism about scientific theories. We separately developed this view further in a number of subsequent works. Steven French, James Ladyman, Otavio Bueno and Newton Da Costa (FLBD) have since written at least eight papers and a book criticising our work. Here we defend ourselves. First we explain what we mean in denying that models derive from theory – and why their failure to do so should (...) be lamented. Second we defend our use of the London model of superconductivity as an example. Third we point out both advantages and weaknesses of FLBD’s techniques in comparison to traditional Anglophone versions of the semantic conception. Fourth we show that FLBD’s version of the semantic conception has not been applied to our case study. We conclude by raising doubts about FLBD’s overall project. (shrink)

I argue that the Causal Markov Condition (CMC) is in principle applicable to the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) correlations. This is in line with my defence in the past of the applicability of the Principle of Common Cause to quantum mechanics. I first review a contrary claim by Dan Hausman and Jim Woodward, who endeavour to preserve the CMC against a possible counterexample by asserting that the conditions for the application of the CMC are not met in the EPR experiment. In their (...) view the CMC is inapplicable to the EPR correlations—i.e. it neither obtains nor fails. The view is grounded upon the non-separability of the quantum state, and the consequent unavailability of interventions. I urge that whether interventions are available in EPR—and why—is a complex and contextual question that does not have a unique or uniform answer. Instead, I argue that different combinations of causal hypotheses under test and interpretations of quantum mechanics yield different answers to the question. (shrink)

Depersonalization is characterised by a profound disruption of self-awareness mainly characterised by feelings of disembodiment and subjective emotional numbing.It has been proposed that depersonalization is caused by a fronto-limbic suppressive mechanism – presumably mediated via attention – which manifests subjectively as emotional numbing, and disables the process by which perception and cognition normally become emotionally coloured, giving rise to a subjective feeling of ‘unreality’.Our functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies support the above model and indicate that, compared with normal and clinical (...) controls, DPD patients show increased prefrontal activation as well as reduced activation in insula/limbic-related areas to aversive, arousing emotional stimuli.Although a putative inhibitory mechanism on emotional processing might account for the emotional numbing and characteristic perceptual detachment, it is likely, as suggested by some studies, that parietal mechanisms underpin feelings of disembodiment and lack of agency feelings. (shrink)

Resenha do livro: OLIVEIRA, Jelson; VASCONCELOS, Thiago; FROGNEUX, Nathalie. Terra Nenhuma: Ecopornografia e Responsabilidade. Caxias do Sul: EDUCS, 2020, pp. 64.

El designio de este trabajo es mostrar cómo Hans Jonas intenta fundar el deber en el ser y las dificultades que este intento traen consigo.

Early adolescence is a developmental stage that comprises some basic interactional processes with parents, which can be described as gaining autonomy while maintaining relatedness. Studying how maternal and paternal involvement influence the life satisfaction of sons and daughters during early adolescence is especially important while seeking to understand the challenges of this developmental stage. In this paper, we investigate the differential effects of maternal and paternal involvement, as assessed by sons and daughters, on their life satisfaction during early adolescence. We (...) use a unique survey conducted in Chile, The National Survey on Student Trajectories and Transitions, focusing on a subsample of 497 early adolescents attending 5th to 8th grade. Our findings indicate that both paternal and maternal involvement are positively correlated with the life satisfaction of adolescents. We also find that the gender of adolescents moderates the effect of maternal involvement, so daughters who deemed the involvement of their mothers to be more positive reported greater life satisfaction. More positive paternal involvement correlates with greater life satisfaction for sons and daughters. We discuss some mechanisms that might bring about these differences. (shrink)

In this paper we claim that the notion of cognitive representation (and scientific representation in particular) is irreducibly plural. By means of an analogy with the minimalist conception of truth, we show thatthis pluralism is compatible with a generally deflationary attitude towards representation. We then explore the extent and nature of representational pluralism by discussing the positive and negative analogies between the inferential conception of representation advocated by one of us and the minimalist conception of truth.

The article turns to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of state capitalism and their theorization of money and debt in their critique of capitalism to develop an analysis of the governmental management of the current crisis determined by ordo- and neoliberalism. The paper argues that analyses which fail to properly recognize the power of capital to determine both state apparatuses and economic policy thereby fail to grasp the real functioning of money, debt and the Euro in the crisis and end up (...) unwittingly supporting liberalism. This is true of positions such as heterodox theory that, though critical of conventional and neoliberal political economy, nevertheless continue to uphold the state as an independent or mediating mechanism in relation to the power of capital. The neglect of the role which money plays in the strategies of capital to control both the creation of value and the functioning of the state is to be found even in Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism, a neglect which undermines his analysis of power. The paper highlights the implications of the standpoint of state capitalism for a more incisive analysis of the current crisis that reveals what is at stake for political struggles. (shrink)

This paper is divided in two parts. In part I, I argue against two attempts to naturalise the notion of scientific representation, by reducing it to isomorphism and similarity. I distinguish between the means and the constituents of representation, and I argue that isomorphism and similarity are common (although not universal) means of representation; but that they are not constituents of scientific representation. I look at the prospects for weakened versions of these theories, and I argue that only those that (...) abandon the aim to naturalise scientific representation are likely to be successful. In part II of the paper, I present a deflationary conception of scientific representation, which minimally characterises it by means of two necessary conditions: representation is essentially intentional and it has the capacity to allow surrogate reasoning and inference. I then defend this conception by showing that it successfully meets the objections and difficulties that make its competitors, such as isomorphism and similarity, untenable. In addition the inferential conception explains the success of various means of representation in their appropriate domains, and it sheds light on the truth and accuracy of scientific representations. (shrink)

This paper defends the deflationary character of two recent views regarding scientific representation, namely RIG Hughes’ DDI model and the inferential conception. It is first argued that these views’ deflationism is akin to the homonymous position in discussions regarding the nature of truth. There, we are invited to consider the platitudes that the predicate “true” obeys at the level of practice, disregarding any deeper, or more substantive, account of its nature. More generally, for any concept X, a deflationary approach is (...) then defined in opposition to a substantive approach, where a substantive approach to X is an analysis of X in terms of some property P, or relation R, accounting for and explaining the standard use of X. It then becomes possible to characterize a deflationary view of scientific representation in three distinct senses, namely: a “no-theory” view, a “minimalist” view, and a “use-based” view – in line with three standard deflationary responses in the philosophical literature on truth. It is then argued that both the DDI model and the inferential conception may be suitably understood in any of these three different senses. The application of these deflationary ‘hermeneutics’ moreover yields significant improvements on the DDI model, which bring it closer to the inferential conception. It is finally argued that what these approaches have in common – the key to any deflationary account of scientific representation – is the denial that scientific representation may be ultimately reduced to any substantive explanatory property of sources, or targets, or their relations. (shrink)

This is an introductory essay to the symposium on Michael Friedman’s The Dynamics of Reason. It provides a summary description of the symposium and its rationale; an introduction to Michael Friedman’s views on the a priori and what it refers to as ‘developmental Kantianism’; a summary of the content of each of the four contributed papers in the symposium; and a philosophical analysis of the symposium as a whole in relation with developmental Kantianism.

By weakening an inference rule satisfied by logic daC, we define a new paraconsistent logic, which is weaker than logic \ and G′ 3, enjoys properties presented in daC like the substitution theorem, and possesses a strong negation which makes it suitable to express intutionism. Besides, daC ' helps to understand the relationships among other logics, in particular daC, \ and PH1.

This paper reviews four attempts throughout the history of quantum mechanics to explicitly employ dispositional notions in order to solve the quantum paradoxes, namely: Margenau's latencies, Heisenberg's potentialities, Maxwell's propensitons, and the recent selective propensities interpretation of quantum mechanics. Difficulties and challenges are raised for all of them, and it is concluded that the selective propensities approach nicely encompasses the virtues of its predecessors. Finally, some strategies are discussed for reading similar dispositional notions into two other well-known interpretations of quantum (...) mechanics, namely the GRW interpretation and Bohmian mechanics. (shrink)

This article provides a state of the art review of the philosophical literature on scientific representation. It first argues that the topic emerges historically mainly out of what may be called the modelling tradition. It then introduces a number of helpful analytical distinctions, and goes on to divide contemporary approaches to scientific representation into two distinct kinds, substantive and deflationary. Analogies with related discussions of artistic representation in aesthetics, and of the nature of truth in metaphysics are pursued. It is (...) finally urged that the most promising approaches - and the ones most likely to feature prominently in future developments - are deflationary. In particular, a defence is provided of a genuinely inferential conception of representation. (shrink)

This article analyses recent social, cultural and political developments in Latin America, with special reference to the `modernity/coloniality' project, as well as offering an alternative sociological interpretation of the contemporary subcontinent. It analyses in particular Walter Mignolo's work as the main expression of that `post/decolonial' project, a general interpretive effort that reflects actual social changes but offers misguided theoretical and political perspectives. The article then proposes a discussion of modernity as a global civilization which is now unfolding its third phase, (...) characterized by greater complexity and pluralism. In addition it argues that modernity should be seen as a two-pronged phenomenon, featuring not only domination but also emancipation. Against the reification of modernity, the article suggests that we see it as woven by multiple and contingent modernizing moves. (shrink)

Este artigo tem o objetivo de articular a crítica feita por Peter Sloterdijk em Esferas I, de 1998, à insuficiência da tematização do problema da espacialidade em Ser e tempo, obra de Martin Heidegger publicada em 1927, explicitando a solução que Sloterdijk oferece ao recuperar aquilo que, para ele, estava prenhe na obra heideggeriana, isto é, o desenvolvimento apropriado da questão da espacialidade. Nos reportamos primeiramente aos parágrafos em que Heidegger disserta sobre a espacialidade em Ser e tempo para servir (...) de base à crítica que Sloterdijk constrói em Esferas I. Em seguida, recuperamos certa influência teórica que Heidegger sofreu do biólogo estoniano Jakob von Uexküll e do teórico da história Wilhelm Dilthey sobre as noções de vida e mundo ambiente, junto à exposição do conceito de vida fática em Ontologia: Hermenêutica da facticidade. Por fim, a partir da relação entre vida e existência, nos voltamos à obra de Sloterdijk para compreender o que está implicado no conceito de “esfera”, via aberta, segundo Sloterdijk, a partir da rearticulação dos problemas da vida e da espacialidade nos escritos de juventude de Heidegger. (shrink)

The propensity nature of evolutionary fitness has long been appreciated and is nowadays amply discussed. The discussion has, however, on occasion followed long standing conflations in the philosophy of probability literature between propensities, probabilities, and frequencies. In this paper, I apply a more recent conception of propensities in modelling practice to some of the key issues, regarding the mathematical representation of fitness and how it may be regarded as explanatory. The ensuing complex nexus of fitness emphasises the distinction between biological (...) propensities and the probability distributions over offspring numbers that they give rise to; and how critical it is to distinguish the possession conditions of the underlying dispositional properties from those of their probabilistic manifestations. (shrink)

El presente texto tiene por objetivo cuestionar el modo habitual en el que se enseña la ética, y apoyar el uso de las narraciones como una herramienta pedagógica importante en la formación moral. Dado que la ética busca menos la adquisición de unos conocimientos y más una disposición a la acción, bien pudiera servirse de formatos narrativos para desarrollar la sensibilidad debida para la construcción de ciudadanos reflexivos, críticos y empáticos. Al fin y al cabo, la naturaleza antropológica de los (...) seres humanos es ya de hecho narrativa, y toda forma de vida buena reclama, en últimas, la posibilidad de ser contada. La práctica de relatar se constituye como una defensa por la búsqueda y construcción de sentido, en medio de una sociedad en donde la celeridad y la información fragmentada parecieran marcar la única posibilidad de constitución del sí mismo. (shrink)