In this paper, we would show how the logical object “square of opposition”, viewed as semiotic object, has been historically transformed since its appearance in Aristotle’s texts until the works of Vasiliev. These transformations were accompanied each time with a new understanding and interpretation of Aristotle’s original text and, in the last case, with a transformation of its geometric configuration. The initial textual codification of the theory of opposition in Aristotle’s works is transformed into a diagrammatic one, based on a (...) new “reading” of the Aristotelian text by the medieval scholars that altered the semantics of the O form. Further, based on the medieval “Neo-Aristotelian” reading, the logicians of the nineteenth century suggest new diagrammatic representations, based on new interpretations of quantification of judgements within the algebraic and the functional logical traditions. In all these interpretations, the original square configuration remains invariant. However, Nikolai A. Vasiliev marks a turning point in history. He explicitly attacks the established logical tradition and suggests a new alternation of semantics of the O form, based on Aristotelian concepts that were neglected in the Aristotelian tradition of logic, notably the concept of indefinite judgement. This leads to a configurational transformation of the “square” of opposition into a “triangle”, where the points standing for the O and I forms are contracted into one point, the M form that now stands for particular judgement with altered semantics. The new transformation goes beyond the Aristotelian logic paradigm to a new “Non-Aristotelian” logic, i.e. to paraconsistent logic, although the argumentation used in support of it is phrased in Aristotelian style and the context of discovery is foundational. It establishes a bifurcation point in the development of logic. No unique logic is recognized, but different logics concerning different domains. One branch of logic remains to be the “Neo-Aristotelian” one, while the new logic is “Non-Aristotelian”. (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)

Kirk Lougheed argues that active euthanasia (here ‘euthanasia’) is impermissible for people who are extremely sick and cannot exercise their vital forcei because (1) exercising vital force does not require volition but only being an object of caring relationships and (2) African philosophy entails other-regarding deontological duties to stay alive.1 In this commentary, we point out an implication of Lougheed’s view that is morally problematic and offer a revision that avoids this implication. We also argue for an additional advantage of (...) this revision. Lougheed’s view implies that a person who is the object of very few relationships has a much weaker duty to stay alive than a person who is well-loved and the object of many relationships. This is because he seems to think that duties to stay alive are derived entirely from one’s relationship with other people. While he is clear that a person, even if terminally ill or permanently unconscious, has a duty to stay alive so that they could remain the object of harmonious relationships, he is silent on whether duties to stay alive could be grounded in reasons that have to do with oneself. Plausibly, on this view, the strength of one’s duty to stay alive depends solely …. (shrink)

Innovation can include creativity, innovation mechanisms, and entrepreneurship. The ability to innovate is an important indicator of economic and social development, and creativity is an educational indicator of learning effectiveness. This article explores creativity and innovation from an educational perspective and proposes a sustainability-oriented creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship education framework that uses creative problem solving. This framework contains four layers and three dimensions. The first layer concerns the thinker and basic structure, and the second layer contains the catalyst of sustainable (...) development goals (SDGs). The third layer is the advanced structure of cultivating SDG thinkers. The final layer is the generation of students who will attempt to start up social enterprises. The three aspects apply the creative nature of diffuse thinking to social innovation; apply demand expansion to extend individual needs to societal needs; and apply educational goal development to encourage sustainability. We expect this framework, which can turn thinkers into doers through creativity and social innovation, to apply to different disciplines. This article provides suggestions for (1) designing curriculum in creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship education (CIE) for different education level and (2) transitioning technical and vocational education in developing economies on the road to sustainable development. (shrink)

We give a new proof of Friedman's conjecture that every uncountable Δ11 set of reals has a member of each hyperdegree greater than or equal to the hyperjump.

To explore the reducibility of non-trivial generalized syllogisms with the quantifiers in Square {not all} and Square {most}, this paper first gives the formalization of generalized syllogisms on the basis of set theory, and then proves the validity of the generalized syllogism EMO-3 by first-order logic and generalized quantifier theory; Finally, with the help of some reductive operations, the other 20 valid generalized syllogisms are deduced from the syllogism EMO-3. In other words, there are the reducible relationships between/among the 21 (...) valid syllogisms. The reason for this is that any quantifier in a square can define the other three quantifiers. This research method is applicable to the study of syllogisms with quantifiers in other squares. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic raised not only overwhelming practical challenges but also deep ethical dilemmas for educators. There have been few efforts to connect these challenges to either ethical dilemmas teachers faced in pre-pandemic times or to philosophical analyses of complex normative terrain of teachers’ work. We facilitated eleven discussion groups with 101 educators from seven countries on the dilemmas they faced due to COVID-19. Analysis of these sessions reveals how the pandemic amplified, exacerbated and augmented pre-pandemic educational dilemmas in ways (...) that recalibrated teachers’ core values and beliefs, and highlights the importance of engaging teachers in ethical dialogue. (shrink)

We prove that there is no maximal low d.c.e degree.

Despite significant advances in various special areas in the study of language, the question of what the basic nature of the theory of a language is remains controversial and unclear. In this paper we propose to rectify this situation and argue for a general perspective — one which only a few theorists have explicitly endorsed — by showing that it is at once theoretically illuminating and empirically plausible. This perspective consists of the following claims: that the most basic theory of (...) a language is a theory of communication viz., of understanding and production; that a theory of communication in this sense presupposes a theory of thought; that a grammar is most fruitfully thought of as a component of a theory of communication; and that so-called theories of meaning form a rather heterogeneous group, some of which being fragments of grammars, others being theories of thought, and still others being what are sometimes referred to as theories of reference. We shall be particularly concerned with and here. (shrink)

This paper proposes an epistemic logical framework for demanding knowing why in the natural sciences. Our focus is on the phenomena and their respective causal factors revealed by experiments. Two novel modalities \(\textsf{E}(\psi,\varphi )\) and \(\textsf {W}((\psi _1,\varphi _1)\bullet (\psi _2,\varphi _2)\bullet \cdots \bullet (\psi _n,\varphi _n))\) are introduced over models that deviate from the usual epistemic models by having both experimental evidence and the scientific theories, which is inspired by scientific practices. The modality \(\textsf{E}\) expresses scientists’ have (conclusive) experimental (...) evidence indicating a dependence relation between the causal factor \(\psi \) and \(\varphi \). Based on the evidence, scientists often package some (perhaps seemingly unrelated) phenomena together, and the modality \(\textsf{W}\) captures scientists’ knowing why in their entirety, or having systematic knowledge-why of them, which amounts to having a _unified_ scientific theory of all these dependences. A sound and complete axiomatization is given, followed by a decidability result. Many notions of much philosophical interest are embodied in the present framework. We also draw several comparisons and connections with some existing relevant logical work. (shrink)

The comparative analysis of the W. Golding’s novels demonstrates that the identification of God is the central problem in the works of the famous English writer. Golding did not consider Divinity only in connection with Christian orthodoxy, rational view of the world. In his novels, God gets different embodiments according to the wide cultural tradition. The group of heroes is trying to determine Divinity by force of the religious ritual in such fables as Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Rites (...) of Passage, Double Tongue, The Scorpion God. The writer was convinced that the base of any religion is violence and triumph of mass consciousness, it can lead to tyranny, totalitarian system. The heroes of novels Pincher Martin, Darkness Visible opposed God to the ego. To Cris and Sophy God became ‘the black lighting‘, the death, the damnation. By the example of their fates, Golding revealed the cult of self-will and individual freedom as the main problem of the contemporary society. Paths to God of Golding’s saints are different and profoundly individual, they are far away of any standards. They believe in spiritual foundation of the objective reality, they can reach the theophany and spread their consciousness to the compassion of other people. However, saints are exclusion, that is why the author’s viewpoint is conveyed by the spiritual searches of Jocelin, Talbolt, Arieka. Each of them had come up the hard way from proud self-assurance to doubting and searching the truth. Golding supposed that the man cannot touch the ground of Divinity, but his aspiration for God is the root of human and morality. The author saw God as spiritual foundation of the objective reality that is becoming acquainted due to intuition, individual spiritual search and creativity. (shrink)

In September 2008, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists successfully switched on the historic biggest physics device, the Large ...

Resumen: La cultura filosófica tradicional china se refiere al pensamiento filosófico y las tradiciones culturales de la antigua China que incluye diferentes escuelas filosóficas y sistemas de pensamiento como el confucianismo, el taoísmo, el mohismo y el legalismo. Como sistema de pensamiento único en la antigua China, la cultura filosófica tradicional china es una herencia acumulada por la nación china. La cultura Han Fu es un componente importante de la cultura tradicional china, que abarca orígenes históricos, características morfológicas, materiales y (...) técnicas, costumbres, connotaciones culturales y valores espirituales. Puede aplicarse y heredarse en la sociedad contemporánea, así como integrarse e interactuar con otros elementos culturales tradicionales. Como importante portadora del pensamiento filosófico tradicional chino, la cultura Han Fu es también una manifestación concreta de la cultura nacional china y del espíritu humanista moderno. Como forma de heredar y exhibir la cultura de la vestimenta tradicional china, la representación de la cultura Han Fu ha recibido cada vez más atención y afecto y ha desempeñado un papel importante en la larga historia, y su evolución y desarrollo también han sido influenciados y moldeados por la cultura filosófica tradicional china. Por tal motivo, este artículo utilizó el enfoque hermenéutico, el materialismo dialéctico y el materialismo histórico, explorando las manifestaciones de la cultura filosófica tradicional china en la cultura Han Fu, con el fin de comprender y heredar mejor la cultura Han Fu. El artículo presenta primero los pensamientos filosóficos tradicionales chinos, que incluyen principalmente el confucianismo, el taoísmo y el pensamiento budista; luego se elaboraron varios conceptos importantes en el pensamiento filosófico; luego, consideraremos y analizaremos las ideas filosóficas contenidas en la cultura Han Fu, y señalaremos la encarnación y aplicación de las ideas filosóficas de “unidad del cielo y el hombre” y “neutralidad” en la cultura Han Fu; Finalmente, el valor del desempeño de Han Fu se elabora a partir de dos aspectos: su expresión de valor, forma de expresión y contenido. Mediante el estudio, se descubrió que la cultura Han Fu puede presentar y expresar sus ideas centrales de una manera específica para demostrar mejor el pensamiento filosófico tradicional chino, lo que ayuda a instar mejor a las personas a utilizar la cultura Han Fu como herramienta y utilizarla para publicitar. sus ideas y conceptos relevantes. (shrink)

Solving problems with insight culminates in an “Aha! moment”: a feeling of confidence and pleasure. In daily life, insights are often followed by important decisions, such as deciding what to do with a new idea. Here, we investigated whether having an Aha! moment affects subsequent decision-making. Because Aha! moments tend to elicit positive affect, which is generally associated with an increased risk-taking tendency, we hypothesized that people would favor a monetary payout with more upside despite greater uncertainty after solving a (...) problem with insight. Participants were asked to solve verbal puzzles and report whether they solved them with insight or without insight. After each puzzle, they chose between two bonuses: a fixed payout or a risk payout with 50% chance of receiving a high or a low payout. Participants were more likely to choose the risk payout after they solved with insight compared to without, suggesting a temporarily higher risk preference. The study provided pre­liminary evidence of a carryover effect - the impact of an Aha! moment on the subsequent risk choice - that can have implications in everyday decision-making. (shrink)

Las definiciones populares de la filosofía (incluyendo algunas que se pueden calificar como tradicionales) en términos de (i) “amor al saber” o “amor a la sabiduría”, (ii) “madre de todas las ciencias”, (iii) “opio para aliviar las penas” o “terapia” (iv) o “investigación sobre el porqué de las cosas” son claramente insatisfactorias. Me he encontrado con estas y otras definiciones similares en auditorios constituidos principalmente por no-filósofos. Adicionalmente, considero que el imperativo vocacional que se nos impone a todos aquellos que (...) consagramos nuestros esfuerzos al saber filosófico nos exige buscar una caracterización adecuada de ese saber, i.e., lo mínimo que debe poder responder cualquier filósofo es cuál es la naturaleza del saber filosófico. En este artículo voy a ofrecer las razones por las cuales dichas definiciones son inadecuadas y formularé una definición del término “filosofía” sin los defectos identificados en las definiciones anteriores. La reflexión que adelantaré no será un mero ejercicio ocioso de elucidación conceptual, pues lo que busco es una comprensión profunda de la naturaleza misma del saber filosófico. (shrink)

In his work, the author critically interprets the idea of the connection of the achievements of William Whewell in the field of the philosophy of science with the prevailing sentiments and social-cultural attitudes in the so-called Victorian era. The author believes that, on the contrary, all of Whewell’s positive achievements should be associated with the development of world science, with the spirit of the times, and above all, with its neo-Kantian background, whereas his mistakes and delusions (rejection of evolutionism, support (...) for the idea of phlogiston) really resulted from specifically English conservatism and blind trust in the actual social institutions and ideas both in science and in politics. (shrink)

It is noteworthy that today, both in Europe and throughout the geolithic space, problems related to religion, in particular in their confessional expression, have come to the fore again. They are actualized not only in the context of the globalization processes and their consequences that the world is experiencing, but also of the serious challenges that the international community faces and which are to some extent generated by a religious factor, in particular its Islamic variety.

Through its struggle for three centuries, a demonstration of the strength of their beliefs, the patience and suffering of Christians in the beginning of IV. have achieved to a large extent what they demanded, what they wrote and what the apologists of Christianity sought. The latter gained the right to freedom of his being in a polytheistic state.

Due to the excellent approximation ability, the neural networks based control method is used to achieve adaptive consensus of the fractional-order uncertain nonlinear multiagent systems with external disturbance. The unknown nonlinear term and the external disturbance term in the systems are compensated by using the radial basis function neural networks method, a corresponding fractional-order adaption law is designed to approach the ideal neural network weight matrix of the unknown nonlinear terms, and a control law is designed eventually. According to the (...) designed Lyapunov candidate function and the fractional theory, the systems stability is proved, and the adaptive consensus can be guaranteed by using the designed control law. Finally, two simulations are shown to illustrate the validity of the obtained results. (shrink)

Modern epistemology adopted the idea of historicism, of the historicity of knowledge and the self-consciousness of the cognizer. The research, undertaken within cultural–historical epistemology, also spread in the context of the prevailing tendencies in the sphere of modern epistemology. The specificity of this type of epistemology is related to a special interpretation of the history of cognition. On this interpretation knowledge represents a cultural phenomenon that has an existentially-symbolical meaning for the cognizer. Therefore this type of epistemology returns us to (...) the dimension of knowledge, which has in fact been lost today. It returns us to the original antique notion of knowledge as “good,” as something that changes the person who acquires it. And here in this context comes forth such a feature of knowledge as its integrity. At the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Russian philosophers turned to the problem field of “integral knowledge,” the core of which lies in the unity of the integral and cognitive, which is reflected in the concreteness of knowledge. Such an understanding of knowledge enabled the articulation of a number of ideas that enriched European traditions of socio-humanitarian research and influenced the development of semiotics and structuralism both in Europe and in Russia. The ideas of R. Jakobson that stimulated the structure-semiotic research in the first half of the twentieth century are very well-known to world humanity science. Yet their epistemological potential is related to the idea of the integral knowledge. The epistemological turn towards historicism in semiotics in Russia was accomplished by G. Shpet. Jakobson communicated with Shpet at the Moscow linguistic circle in the 1920s. They both referred to the ideas of Husserl, and, as Jakobson acknowledged himself, he borrowed many ideas from Shpet—in particular, the idea of semiotics. Shpet’s helped implement the idea of “integral knowledge” that opened a perspective of the analysis of knowledge as an open symbolic sign system. This methodological approach appears to be especially topical nowadays in the sphere of humanities, which scientific character does not exclude historicism. The ideas of Russian philosophers, then, provide a productive context immediately as well as long-term prospects for developing the methodology of the humanities. The concepts that prevail in modern methodology accentuate the historical relativity and the outer social determinacy of scientific knowledge. Meanwhile the problem of the cultural–historical status of the humanities and the problem of addressing the idea of “integral knowledge” become increasingly topical and allow the transfer of the epistemological search for the conditions and the landmarks of scientificity. (shrink)

This study used structural equation modeling to verify the performance of the ethical decision-making models developed by Jones and by Kelley and Elm. A comparison showed that the Kelley and Elm decision model yielded the optimal degree of fit. The investigations conducted in this study indicated that moral intensities are not an objective, existing concept but rather the product of subjective perception influenced by organizational factors. In addition to directly influencing ethical decisions, organizational factors indirectly influence ethical decisions through moral (...) intensities. (shrink)

Our understanding of the cognitive processes involved in reading has been advanced by computational models that simulate those processes. Unfortunately, most of these models have been developed to explain the reading of English and other alphabetic languages, with relatively fewer efforts to examine whether or not the assumptions of these models also explain what has been learned from other languages and, in particular, non-alphabetic writing systems like Chinese. In this article, we will review those computational models that have been developed (...) to explain the reading of Chinese, with the goal of comparing their theoretical assumptions to those of models that explain the reading of English. Our analysis indicates that there are both points of convergence and divergence between the theoretical assumptions of Chinese versus English models, suggesting that the cognitive systems supporting reading may be differentially influenced by features of the languages and/or writing systems, or that certain theoretical assumptions developed to explain the reading of one language might be adapted to explain the reading of others. (shrink)

This paper is a cognitive semantic analysis of a CCTV educational commercial, which is one of a series designed and produced in preparation for, and in celebration of, the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Called the “Beijing Opera Episode”, this TV commercial converges on the theme: “To mount the stage of the world, and to put on a show of China”. That is, China sees her hosting of the 2008 Olympics by Beijing as a great opportunity for her to step onto (...) the international stage to perform a show of China. This theme, which alludes to China's globalization and retention of cultural identity, is conceptualized and expressed in terms of a central metaphor of theatrical performance: hosting the beijing olympics is performing beijing opera on an international stage. This study first analyzes in detail how this central metaphor is manifested multimodally through visual and aural as well as verbal discourse, thus examining it as a multimodal metaphor. The study then applies a decompositional approach, based on the distinction between primary and complex metaphors, to analyzing the central metaphor as a metaphorical compound with its internal structures and components, which is nevertheless built on a more general cognitive foundation. The study also offers a linguistic perspective on a cultural model underlying the central metaphor, which is arguably a Chinese cultural model for understanding various aspects and events of life in general. At the core of this cultural model is the widespread life is a stage metaphor, which however has a specific manifestation within the Chinese cultural context. (shrink)