Regional aspects of science communication represent a potential asset and as such are quite suitable topic for further examination with respect to future social and economic development in Prague based on the city's main development strategies. Closer analysis of SCIP aspects at re- gional level can present a suitable complement for development of suitable measures and projects of the regional innovation and education policies. This study focuses on research questions related to regional dimension of (...) science communication, its impacts and suitable tools. Document analysis and questionnaire distributed among selected experts were chosen as tools for elaboration of the study. Results suggest that regional dimension of science communication policy and initiatives is a relevant one in case of Prague. However, the attention given to this topic by national and regional authorities is unsatisfactory resulting in lack of co-ordination of activities of the respective stakeholders. Impacts of SCIP, as far as causality can be identified, lie in encouraging young people in their interest in science, increasing awareness of general public in science-related issues and explaining role of science in society and problems that science is facing. To maximise effects of science communication there is a space for national and regional authorities to play an integrating role. Given the concentration of SCIP actors, the City of Prague could aspire to develop its science communication policy in order to promote itself as a Central European centre of science. (shrink)

Pain research is still dominated by biomedical perspectives and the need to articulate pain in ways other than those offered by evidence based medical models is pressing. Examining closely subjective experiences of pain, this book explores the way in which pain is situated, communicated and formed in a larger cultural and social context. Dimensions of Pain explores the lived experience of pain, and questions of identity and pain, from a range of different disciplinary perspectives within the humanities and social sciences. (...) Discussing the acuity and temporality of pain, its isolating impact, the embodied expression of pain, pain and sexuality, gender and ethnicity, it also includes a cluster of three chapters discusses the phenomenon and experience of labour pains. This volume revitalizes the study of pain, offering productive ways of carefully thinking through its different aspects and exploring the positive and enriching side of world-forming pain as well as its limiting aspects. It will be of interest to academics and students interested in pain from a range of backgrounds, including philosophy, sociology, nursing, midwifery, medicine and gender studies. (shrink)

The emergence of a `new' discourse on science in connection with events to do with the environment, food safety or public health has caused questions to be raised concerning the suitability of the triangular communication model generally applied to scientific popularization, i.e. in which there is an `intermediary' discourse plying between science and the general public. This `traditional' discourse would appear, then, to co-exist alongside the new discourse. The pragmatic functions of these two separate discourses on (...) class='Hi'>science are compared here by looking at the linguistic and discursive variations which characterize their communicative and cognitive dimensions. In the new discourse on science, which has come to light over the past few years, the strict task of `popularizing' appears to have been dropped in favour of explaining the social stakes of the issues in question: thus the typically didactic and scientific nature of the cognitivo-discursive category, explanation can be seen to make way for a different type of explanation, which uses an interdiscursive memory bank built upon the productions of the mass media destined for the general public. (shrink)

The summary reveals various areas of Belarusian-Russian collaboration in philosophy: problems of the methodology of scientific knowledge, transdisciplinary synthesis of philosophy and science, philosophical foundations of physics, scientific realism, theory of harmony and self-organization of complex systems, modern epistemological theories, the sociocultural foundations, risks, and prospects of the digital society, human problems in the context of convergent technologies, anthropological foundations of intercultural communication, the world heritage of philosophical thought, the reception of Russian philosophy in the Belarusian intellectual tradition. (...) Special attential is paid to the content, possibilities, and prospects of the agreement on cooperation in the field of scientific and educational activity between the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The areas of mutual interest are scientific research activity, academic work, publishing, humanitarian expertise, training of scientific personnel, interaction of young scientists, career guidance work with schoolchildren, popularization of philosophical knowledge. Under current conditions, the Belarusian and Russian philosophers consider important the studies of civilizational dynamics in the light of the formation of a multipolar world, the philosophical and ethical aspects of the transformation of social practices in the post-COVID era, the philosophical problems of developing artificial intelligence, and the praxeological dimension of philosophical knowledge. Emphasis is placed on the importance of scientific and humanitarian partnership in the development of research and educational potential in the post-Soviet space. (shrink)

Modern science forms an inseparable whole with modern technology. A good deal, if not the greater part of present-day scientific research takes place in industrial research laboratories where science is practised in a technological setting and is exploited for technological ends. In The Netherlands, for instance, 60 to 70% of all the research in physics takes place in, or is financed by industry. For other highly industrialised countries the situation is not very much different. The foregoing means that (...) scientists working on unified field theories, cosmological models, the foundations of quantum mechanics, evolution theory etc. can hardly be said to represent the whole of modern science. Clearly they form a minority among the community of scientists. Nevertheless, philosophers of science tend to direct their attention to the work of this minority and to base their models of science on it. As a consequence, the technological dimension of science, and the methodological problems connected with it, have stayed in the dark. However, in order to arrive at an adequate picture of modern science and of the way it develops, its technological dimension should be taken into account. For instance, the fact that solid state physics has become, in the course of this century, one of the major fields of research within the physical sciences, can only be understood on the basis of the technological relevance of the kind of knowledge produced by this type of research. -/- . (shrink)

Some argue that the term “explanation” in science is ambiguous, referring to at least three distinct concepts: a communicative concept, a representational concept, and an ontic concept. Each is defined in a different way with its own sets of norms and goals, and each of which can apply in contexts where the others do not. In this paper, I argue that such a view is false. Instead, I propose that a scientific explanation is a complex entity that can always (...) be analyzed along a communicative dimension, a representational dimension, and an ontic dimension. But all three are always present within scientific explanations. I highlight what such an account looks like, and the potential problems it faces (namely that a single explanation can appear to have incompatible sets of norms and goals that govern it). I propose a solution to this problem and demonstrate how this account can help to dissolve current disputes in philosophy of science regarding debates between epistemic and ontic accounts of mechanistic explanations in the life sciences. (shrink)

Pain research is still dominated by biomedical perspectives and the need to articulate pain in ways other than those offered by evidence based medical models is pressing. Examining closely subjective experiences of pain, this book explores the way in which pain is situated, communicated and formed in a larger cultural and social context. Dimensions of Pain explores the lived experience of pain, and questions of identity and pain, from a range of different disciplinary perspectives within the humanities and social sciences. (...) Discussing the acuity and temporality of pain, its isolating impact, the embodied expression of pain, pain and sexuality, gender and ethnicity, it also includes a cluster of three chapters discusses the phenomenon and experience of labour pains. This volume revitalizes the study of pain, offering productive ways of carefully thinking through its different aspects and exploring the positive and enriching side of world-forming pain as well as its limiting aspects. It will be of interest to academics and students interested in pain from a range of backgrounds, including philosophy, sociology, nursing, midwifery, medicine and gender studies. (shrink)

Most discussions of the reproducibility crisis focus on its epistemic aspect: the fact that the scientific community fails to follow some norms of scientific investigation, which leads to high rates of irreproducibility via a high rate of false positive findings. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a heretofore underappreciated and understudied dimension to the reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience that may prove to be at least as important as the epistemic dimension. (...) This is the communication dimension. The link between communication and reproducibility is immediate: independent investigators would not be able to recreate an experiment whose design or implementation were inadequately described. I exploit evidence of a replicability and reproducibility crisis in computational science, as well as research into quality of reporting to support the claim that a widespread failure to adhere to reporting standards, especially the norm of descriptive completeness, is an important contributing factor in the current reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience. (shrink)

This article aims at a critical reevaluation of the trading zone concept. It starts from a case study of the Faraday–Whewell collaboration in coming to terms with electrolysis experiments. The case is supposed to be an example of a trade zone of science/philosophy interaction though it demonstrates the unequal nature of the “trade.” This requires the analysis to log in some details concerning Galison’s metaphor of trading zones, which reveals its market-oriented connotations. The following criticism of the market metaphor (...) for science applies a revised version of Boris Hessen’s argument against misinterpretation of technology by some British scientists. A closer look at the ancient trade rituals in Marcel Mauss’ seminal work enables discovering another cultural pattern for describing scientific communication as opposed to trade—gift. This helps picture science as a distribution of social roles and statuses and uncovers the normative and value dimension of gift zones language. (shrink)

Histories of science in modern China often explore their subjects within global or national frameworks. This essay uses data from gazetteers to address the place-based nature of Chinese agricultural science as it developed at smaller geographical scales. Information contained in gazetteers suggests that regional environmental knowledge and site-specific social networks influenced the construction and communication of scientific ideas about farming at the local level. By highlighting these dimensions of knowledge making, this essay demonstrates the benefits of (...) using gazetteers to grapple with the importance of place in Chinese science. (shrink)

This article offers a discussion on the opportunity of collaborative, multi-actor (public, private, science, social, and civic actors) partnerships as experimental policymaking and governance solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation plans geographically localized at the urban, metropolitan, and regional level. It sets out considerations as regards the need to design newly conceived permanent or temporary institutional geographies by building on the analysis of examples of policies implementing this kind of partnerships in Italy (e.g., river contracts; river foundations; neighborhood (...) agreements; pacts of collaboration; city science offices; urban sustainable development and innovation partnerships, etc.). Finally, the article draws attention to the challenges entailed by these partnerships including ethics, accountability, and climate justice concerns. (shrink)

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".

As the distance between science and society is collapsed with the growth of contemporary knowledge societies, so a range of different approaches to the democratic governance of science superseding its Enlightenment government is emerging. In light of these different approaches, this article focuses on the figure of the scientific citizen and the variable dimensions of a new scientific citizenship. Three models of democracy - advanced consumer, deliberative and radical/pluralist - are put forward as both partly competing and partly (...) complementary frameworks within which the new rights and responsibilities of the scientific citizen can be articulated and discussed. In each case the theory and practice of scientific citizenship are viewed against the background of contemporary developments within the field of science communication; the rise of the public understanding of science movement; the new enthusiasm for advancing public engagements with science, and the legitimate place of different forms of public protest and dissent within new designs for democratic governance. (shrink)

Husserl focused perhaps more than any other philosopher on the relationship between philosophy and psychology. This problem was important to him because the European project of universal science must include sciences of consciousness that address questions of meaning, value and purpose so crucial for humanity. This paper provides a sketch of the later Husserl’s thinking on this issue in order to clarify the relationships among transcendental philosophy as the mother of the sciences, psychology as the foundational mental science, (...) and the various regional sciences of persons. Radicalizing and extending the transcendental tradition to free philosophy from naturalism, Husserl developed methods and fundamental concepts for understanding consciousness in its distinctive world constituting function. In parallel fashion, Husserl traced the historical failures of psychology to its naturalistic philosophy, from which he liberated the discipline by means of phenomenological reflections on the intentional property of its subject matter. This pure focus on mental processes resulted in the clarification of the transcendental phenomenological foundation of psychology as well as a recognition of the paradoxical manner in which psychological processes are both world constituting and mundanely present in the lives of persons. The apperceptive synthesis of transcendental consciousness and mundane embodiment in the identification of the person is proposed as essential for a non-naturalistic, intentional psychology, which provides appropriate concepts and the method of intentional analysis for such sciences of persons as sociology, history, literary studies, and religious studies. The problems, means, and inevitable inadequacies of communicating transcendental insights in language are discussed. Analysis of the complexity of living persons discloses their transcendental dimension in the manifolds their mundane activities and in their products, including use, cultural, and art objects as well as social institutions. Attention is drawn to resources in phenomenology beyond Husserl and in the genuine psychological intuitions of non-phenomenologists for generating non-naturalistic, phenomenologically grounded person sciences. (shrink)

The article shows that Kuhn's concept of incommensurability emphasizes mainly the objective dimension of communication. To the thesis about the incommensurability of the meanings of scientific concepts in competing paradigms, we oppose the idea of a three-dimensional space of communicative dimensions. We supplement the objective dimension of communication, within which the environmental evolutionary selection of the best knowledge is carried out, with equal social and temporal horizons.

Researchers have argued that believing in conspiracy theories is dangerous and harmful, both for the individual and the community. In the philosophical debate, the divide is between the generalists, who argue that conspiracy theories are prima facie problematic, and the particularists, who argue that since conspiracies do occur, we ought to take conspiracy theories seriously, and consider them on merit. Much of the empirical research has focused on correlations between conspiracy belief and personality traits, such as narcissism, illusory pattern perception, (...) and paranoia, in the spirit of a generalist account. However, there is also ample empirical evidence that conspiracy belief is widespread in the population at large, which would be surprising and in need of explanation if the generalists were correct. In sociology and political science studies have demonstrated the role of group motivation and social aspects of belief in conspiracies. There is currently lacking a unified account of what motivates conspiracy belief that can capture the different intuitions, if possible, in one framework. This is the lacuna I wish to address, by introducing a framework that incorporate the many dimensions of conspiracy theories. The framework identifies three motivating factors for endorsing a conspiracy theory: group cohesion, cognitive needs, and truth seeking. A fourth dimension is the isolation value, or the level of ‘knowledge-anomie’ that the conspiracy theory takes. Thus, the framework is able to capture more normal cognitive functions that drive conspiracy beliefs, such as adopting to the in-group’s beliefs and the quest for truth, but also the plausibly more abnormal ones. Conspiracy theories can be positioned in a three-dimensional space depending on the degree to which they exemplify each motivating factor and the extent they deviate from the ‘knowledge-norm’. I suggest that the generalist and the particularist have focused on different parts of this common three-dimensional space. I also indicate a relatively small area where I believe pathological conspiracy belief is to be positioned. Ultimately, it is an empirical question what part of the space (pathological or otherwise) conspiracy theories occupy. (shrink)

AbstractIn many cultures, interactions between humans and plants are rooted in what is called “relational values”—values that derive from relationships and entail reciprocity. In Mexico, biocultural diversity is mirrored in the knowledge and use of some 6500 plant species and the domestication of over 250 Mesoamerican native crop species. This research explores how different sets of values are attributed to plants and how these influence management strategies to maintain plant resources in wild and anthropogenic environments. We ran workshops in two (...) communities in a highly biodiverse region in western Mexico, to ascertain the values and management activities related to important plant resources. The relationship between values attributed to plants and management activities was examined through redundancy analysis. A total of 180 plant resources were mentioned during the workshops, with a broad spectrum of values attributed to them, including material, non-material, and regulatory dimensions. We divided plant management strategies into three general categories of increasing intensity and complexity. We found that participants in the Indigenous community value and manage more wild plant resources than people in the non-Indigenous community. We also identified relationships between plant resource values and the type of management performed; for example, more intensive forms of management, such as sowing seeds, were used for seasonal plants that had a food value. By valuing and managing different sets of plant resources from forest, agricultural plots, and home gardens, people enabled multi-functional landscapes to form, illustrating a key feature of relational values in agroecosystems, which promotes both conservation and domestication of plants. (shrink)

Studies of epistemic communities and collaborative research in the social sciences have deepened the understanding of how science works, and more specifically how the social dimensions of scientific practice both enable and impede social scientists in realizing their epistemic goals. Two types of studies of epistemic communities are distinguished: general theories of epistemic communities aim to construct accounts of theoretical change applicable to all social scientific specialties, whereas historical studies emphasize the contingencies that affect specific social scientific disciplines, subfields, (...) or institutions. Although collaborative research plays a less pronounced role in the social sciences than in the natural sciences, collaboration has enabled social scientists to investigate topics that would otherwise be difficult to investigate. (shrink)

The only complete study of Buber as a political thinker. Shed new light upon Buber's I Thou, while also attempting to understand Buber's Zionist thought and activity in a new and fresh manner.

Cost, expected benefits, and risks are paramount in grant agencies' decisions to fund scientific research. In _Cognitive Economy,_ Nicholas Rescher outlines a general theory for the cost-effective use of intellectual resources, amplifying the theories of Charles Sanders Pierce, who stressed an “economy of research.” Rescher discusses the requirements of cooperation, communication, cognitive importance, cognitive economy, as well as the economic factors bearing on induction and simplicity. He then applies his model to several case studies and to clarifying the limits (...) imposed on science by economic considerations. (shrink)

In Western medicine the interpretation prevails that mental illness is a psychological and/or biological disorder. Most important concepts in health psychology, such as sense of coherence, self‐efficacy, hope, or dispositional optimism are all very cognition and individual centered. In this individualized perspective, mental illness is constructed in such a way that it can be treated in a dyadic doctor–patient or therapist–patient relationship with the help of drugs or therapeutic techniques. In this article, I would like to develop a contrasting social (...) construction of mental illness. In Umbanda and Candomblé temples in Brazil, what is interpreted in the Western model as illness is understood as a “spiritual problem.” Here, the individual is constructed in relationship to the community, and individual health and healing is footed in moral‐spiritual orders. In presenting the details of my investigation, I will apply Grawe’s common factors as a foil for developing the link between mental illness and its social context. (shrink)

The Foucaultian sociologist Nikolas Rose has influentially argued that psychosocial technologies have offered means through which the ideals of democracy can be made congruent with the management of social life and the government of citizens in modern western liberal democracies. This interpretation is contested here through an examination of the 1948 International Congress on Mental Health held in London and the mental hygiene movement that organized it. It is argued that, in Britain, this movement’s theory and practice represents an uneasy (...) and ambiguous attempt to reconcile visions of ‘the modern’ with ‘the traditional’. The mental hygienist emphasis on the family is central. Here it appears as a forcing-house of the modern self-sustaining individual. Mental hygienists cast the social organization of ‘traditional’ communities as static, with rigid authority frustrating both social progress and the full emergence of individual personality. Yet mental hygienists were also concerned about threats to social cohesion and secure personhood under modernity. If the social organization of ‘traditional’ communities was patterned by the archetype of the family, with its personal relations of authority, mental hygienists compressed these relations into the ‘private’ family. Situated here they became part of a developmental process of mental adjustment through which ‘mature’, responsible citizens emerged. This reformulation of the family’s centrality for the social order informed mental hygienist critiques of the growth of state power under existing forms of democracy, as well as suspicion of popular political participation or protest, and of movements towards greater egalitarianism. (shrink)

The epistemology and phenomenology of contemporary society tend to be deepened, and the philosophical challenges never are minimal that we may be called to face with the kind of post-modern chaos from the rapidly changing phenomena of the global community. The ballast held on the identity of faculty members as a teacher and researcher now turns due so as to be recast with our intrinsic of routine performance. I considered their quality as bent on the intellectual strife on the method (...) and the kind of attitude, say, evaluation and consultation. In this paper, the authors have presented some thought and implications that triangulated the triad, i.e., research methodology, program evaluation and consulting illustration on the college research program rankings. The author is hoped that the discourse can help the academicians to share the attribute of different methods as well as the dimension of evaluation and consulting, perhaps essentially related with their work role in terms of teaching and researching. Keywords: Research Method, Qualitative Studies, Mixed Method, Program Evaluation, Theory and Philosophy, Program Rankings, Consulting, Journal Writing. (shrink)

Acceptance of three tenets of the doctrine of scientific objectivity, namely, the tenets of consensus, compartmentalization, and ahistorical truth, undermines scientists‘ appreciation of the importance of scientific controversy and consideration of the policy and value implications of controversial scientific theories. This essay rejects these tenets and suggests scientists appreciate theoretical diversity, learn rational means for adjudicating value differences, and cultivate conversational as well as written forms of communication.

The moral terrain of science, the full range of ethical considerations that are part of the scientific endeavor, has not been mapped. Without such a map, we cannot examine the responsibilities of scientists to see if the institutions of science are adequately constructed. This paper attempts such a map by describing four dimensions of the terrain: (1) the bases to which scientists are responsible (scientific reasoning, the scientific community, and the broader society); (2) the nature of the responsibility (...) (general or role); (3) the level of responsibility (minimum demand or ideal); and (4) who bears the responsibility (the individual or the community). Such a map will be used to elucidate the recent debate over the publication of studies concerning H5N1 flu virus. (shrink)

Communicating Biological Sciences discusses the 'ethics' of science communication in light of recent developments in biotechnology and biomedicine. It focuses on the role of metaphors in the creation of visions and the framing of scientific advances, as well as their impact on patterns of public acceptance and rejection, trust and scepticism. Its rigorous investigation will appeal not only to science writers and scientists, but also to scholars of sociology, science and technology studies, media and journalism.

With a vast majority of the land in the Driftless Region of the Midwestern United States dedicated to agricultural production, the future of farming has significant economic, social, recreational, agricultural, and ecological implications. An important literature stream has developed on ways agriculture can change to impact both human and ecological communities positively. In this study, we examine the processes and extent to which community narratives assert and inform regional identities that shape the meaning of being a good farmer. Using (...) a mixed methods approach, we examine what farmers consider good farming and how they utilize community narratives to assert their perspective of good farming. Employing a correlational analysis, we examined the relative importance of the four dimensions of good farming (productivist, conservationist, civic-minded, and naturalist). In addition, we used narrative analysis to explore the development of community narratives that assert a multi-dimensional view of good farming. Data for this study was collected through 21 semi-structured interviews with farmers, two focus groups of farmers, and a survey of farmers with 82 survey participants. The mean scores for conservationist, civic-minded, and naturalist dimensions were significantly higher than those for productivists. There was no significant correlation between the productivists dimension and the three other dimensions of good farming. Through analysis of transcripts, we identified a community narrative that actively problematized a dominant cultural narrative centered on production agriculture. Collectively, a community narrative is emerging in the Driftless Region that sought to normalize agricultural practices that promote profitable farms, vibrant communities, and a wide array of ecosystem services. (shrink)

In bringing together a global community of philosophers, Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science develops novel perspectives on epistemology and philosophy of science by demonstrating how frameworks from academic philosophy (e.g. standpoint theory, social epistemology, feminist philosophy of science) and related fields (e.g. decolonial studies, transdisciplinarity, global history of science) can contribute to critical engagement with global dimensions of knowledge and science. -/- Global challenges such as climate change, food production, and infectious diseases raise complex (...) questions about scientific knowledge production and its interactions with local knowledge systems and social realities. As academic philosophy provides relatively little reflection on global negotiations of knowledge, many pressing scientific and societal issues remain disconnected from core debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. -/- This book is an invitation to broaden agendas of academic philosophy by presenting epistemology and philosophy of science as globally engaged fields that address heterogeneous forms of knowledge production and their interactions with local livelihoods, practices, and worldviews. This integrative ambition makes the book equally relevant for philosophers and interdisciplinary scholars who are concerned with methodological and political challenges at the intersection of science and society. (shrink)

The article aims to delve into the ethical dimension of Ubuntu philosophy, which is an African philosophy that reverberates in other cultures and in various forms, thus exemplifying its universality and universalizability. In this dimension, it tries to re-examine the notion of ethics in relation to morals/morality, including “is” and “ought”, with reference to the human person. Moreover, Ubuntu philosophy is articulated and communicated in the maxim that is an essential component inthe lived experiences of the Bantu-speaking African (...) community: “A person is a person through other persons.” With this, the article integrates some related European and Asian philosophies, considering the fact that Ubuntu philosophy endures as it is tenaciously upheld and edified alongside its implications. (shrink)

Planetary protection is not just a matter of science. It is also a matter of value. This is so independently of whether we only include the protection of science or if we also include other goals. Excluding other values than the protection of science is thus a value statement, not a scientific statement and it does not make planetary protection value neutral. It just makes the axiological basis (that is, the value basis) for planetary protection more limited (...) in a way that is inconsistent with the axiological grounds for back contamination, ethically questionable and strategically unwise. However we look at it, we cannot get away from the conclusion that the axiological dimension of planetary protection is a task that needs to involve experts on value theory as well as experts from a range of different sciences and also include opinions from outside the academic community. (shrink)

The question of the division of cognitive labor has given rise to various models characterizing the way scientists should distribute their efforts. These models often consider the scientific community as a self-governed sphere constituted by rational agents making choices on the basis of fixed rules. Such models have recently been criticized for not taking into account the real mechanisms of science funding. Hence, the question of the utility of the DCL models in guiding science policy remains an open (...) one. In this paper, we show that two unconsidered dimensions would have to be taken into account. First, DCL studies miss the existence of distinct levels of epistemic objectives organizing the research process. Indeed, the scientific field is structured as a system of hierarchical, interconnected practices which are defined both by their inherent purposes and by various superposed external functions. Second, I criticize the absence of ontological considerations, since the epistemological significance of pluralism is highly dependent on the nature of the object under study. Because of these missing dimensions, current DCL models might have a limited usefulness to identify good practices of research governance. (shrink)

In recent years, institutional financial institutions such as the World Bank have taken a keen interest in the links between governance and economic development in East Asia and in other regions of the world. However, the concept of governance has proven difficult to measure in cross-national studies and its meaning in the minds of citizens and experts may differ noticeably. This article examines elite and mass perceptions of governance using the World Governance Indicators developed by scholars affiliated with the World (...) Bank and survey data derived from the 2006 wave of the AsiaBarometer Survey conducted in seven societies. The results of the analysis capture considerable variation at the country and individual levels for how citizens and experts perceive governance in this region of the world. In addition, a multivariate test uncovered some convergence between citizen and expert assessments but only for some of the various governance components. (shrink)

The question of the division of cognitive labor has given rise to various models characterizing the way scientists should distribute their efforts. These models often consider the scientific community as a self-governed sphere constituted by rational agents making choices on the basis of fixed rules. Such models have recently been criticized for not taking into account the real mechanisms of science funding. Hence, the question of the utility of the DCL models in guiding science policy remains an open (...) one. In this paper, we show that two unconsidered dimensions would have to be taken into account. First, DCL studies miss the existence of distinct levels of epistemic objectives organizing the research process. Indeed, the scientific field is structured as a system of hierarchical, interconnected practices which are defined both by their inherent purposes and by various superposed external functions. Second, I criticize the absence of ontological considerations, since the epistemological significance of pluralism is highly dependent on the nature of the object under study. Because of these missing dimensions, current DCL models might have a limited usefulness to identify good practices of research governance. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century references to the syllogism by J. S. Mill and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. reveal a distinct approach to the logic of inference in the formative years of pragmatism. In the latter may be found an element of the emergence of generals from particulars. Fallibilism in law and science reflects their social dimension as part of the communal ordering of experience. This implies a distinct approach to uncertainty, as experience yet to be integrated within a developing system of (...) classification. (shrink)

This is the second of three volumes containing a report from the International Panel on Social Progress. The IPSP is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the twenty-first (...) century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. This particular volume covers topics such as democracy and the rule of law, violence and wars, international organizations and global governance, and media and communications. (shrink)

This article sets out to improve our analytical understanding of the concept of “linking social capital.” Concretely, the article focuses on disaster contexts where the importance of linking social capital intensifies both for the vulnerable communities and for the local authorities concerned. Through an analysis of existing analytical practices, the article concludes that linking social capital is often subordinated to the two related social capital concepts of bonding and bridging, and that linking social capital is often exclusively defined and operationalized (...) based on expressions of organizational trust and participation. The article proposes a recalibration to encompass the political dynamics, and political survival theory is recommended as a way to address the hitherto underexplored governance dimension. Rather than using trust as the analytical pivot, this analytical entry point may facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the potential risks inherent in the relationships between local authorities and communities in disaster settings. (shrink)

As science educators, we must view the changing nature of society brought on by technology and the global nature of society as an impetus to reexamine the nature of science instruction. We have been bestowed with the responsibility to educate students on a variety of topics that less than two decades ago did not exist. Many of these social issues are controversial in nature and are directly linked to the local, regional, national, and global communities in which (...) we exist. However, including these social issues in the extant curriculum of science has, at best, been limited. This is true even though the National Science Education Standards specifically indicate that science and technology, as well as science in personal and social perspectives, are integral to science education. The following study examines a group of science teachers’ beliefs about the implementation of controversial social/technological issues in the extant science curriculum. Indications are that teachers believe that social issues are important to study, yet lack the support from their communities to teach social issues. (shrink)

Fragmented regions face a range of collective action problems on issues ranging from transportation to affordable housing. Specifically, within regions, free-rider and race-to-the-bottom problems both abound. This Article offers theoretical lenses to clarify the sources of, and barriers to solving, these problems. First, it introduces the concept of concentricity to better understand the region. The municipality and the region represent coexisting, concentric communities and nodes of competition. The geographically based identity that one espouses may toggle between the local and the (...) regional across different contexts. Second, this Article describes a community-competitor feedback loop. Drawing on social science literature, the Article shows how encouraging deep identification with a community can inspire competition with other communities. And encouraging competition between communities can deepen community identity. The Article then applies these theories to practical considerations. Given the persistent nature of hyperlocal identity, intraregional competition, and the resultant feedback loop, mandatory regional solutions may often be politically unattainable, even when they are the optimal solution. Accordingly, this Article presents two voluntary, cooperative regionalist solutions that embrace and potentially exploit regions’ concentric identities, instead of doing the more costly work of dislodging local identity. (shrink)

The article aims to delve into the ethical dimension of Ubuntu philosophy, which is an African philosophy that reverberates in other cultures and in various forms, thus exemplifying its universality and universalizability. In this dimension, it tries to re-examine the notion of ethics in relation to morals/morality, including “is” and “ought”, with reference to the human person. Moreover, Ubuntu philosophy is articulated and communicated in the maxim that is an essential component inthe lived experiences of the Bantu-speaking African (...) community: “A person is a person through other persons.” With this, the article integrates some related European and Asian philosophies, considering the fact that Ubuntu philosophy endures as it is tenaciously upheld and edified alongside its implications. (shrink)

Science in film, and usual equivalents such asscience on filmorscience on screen, refer to the cinematographic representation, staging, and enactment of actors, information, and processes involved in any aspect or dimension of science and its history. Of course, boundaries are blurry, and films shot as research tools or documentation also display science on screen. Nonetheless, they generally count asscientific film, andscience inandon filmorscreentend to designate productions whose purpose is entertainment and education. Moreover, these two purposes are (...) often combined, and inherently concern empirical, methodological, and conceptual challenges associated withpopularization,science communication, and thepublic understanding of science. It is in these areas that the notion of thedeficit modelemerged to designate a point of view and a mode of understanding, as well as a set of practical and theoretical problems about the relationship between science and the public. (shrink)

Be aware... and you will be mindful of a notable ambiguity in semiotics as well as of those who have masterfully strived to transcend it. This event, commented on by Elize Bisanz (Texas Tech University) and chaired by William Passarini (Institute for Philosophical Studies), is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of (...) Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project. *** Ionut Untea is currently a fellow-in-residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, in Stuttgart, where he is researching on the semioethic and aesthetic coordinates of the “social compact” and intercorporeal relationships. In 2021, he has taught a course entitled “Intercultural Philosophy: Semiotic Approaches and Aesthetic Themes” as a Visiting Professor at Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro. Since 2016, he has been teaching History of Western Philosophy and Semiotics at Southeast University, Nanjing. He previously taught at the University of La Rochelle, and was a postdoctoral fellow of the Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue (FIIRD) at the University of Geneva. He obtained his doctorate in 2013 at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), in Paris. He holds Romanian citizenship, having obtained his first degrees in philosophy and theology at the University of Bucharest. His focus is on the modern and contemporary intersections between semiotic, moral, political and religious thought. He has published recently “Peircean and Confucian Interpretations of Self-Development: Semiotic, Normative and Aesthetic Aspects,” Philosophy East and West 72.1: January 2022: 188–209. His recent work has appeared in academic journals such as The American Journal of Semiotics (2021), Semiotica (2021), Ethical Perspectives (2021, 2019), Philosophical Forum (2019), Journal of Aesthetic Education (2020), Politics and Religion (2019), The Monist (2018). *** Dr. Bisanz's education includes an MA (Philosophy) from the University of Lüneburg in Germany; Graduate Studies in Jacques Derrida's philosophy Seminars at l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; a Ph.D. (History of Communication Sciences) from the Technische University of Berlin; and a post-doc Habilitation Degree (Image Studies), from the University of Lüneburg. Bisanz has published several interdisciplinary books reflecting her educational background; these include a major European edition of Peirce's writings The Logic of Interdisciplinarity: Charles S. Peirce, The Monist Series (Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 2009), which was realized with the aid of research and publication grants from State and private endowments; Prolegomena to a Science of Reasoning: Phaneroscopy, Semeiotic, Logic, which is a collection of manuscripts by Peirce on reasoning (Peter Lang Publishers, Berlin, 2016); Overcoming the Iconic Turn: Cultural Concepts of Images [in German: Die Überwindung des Ikonischen: Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven der Bildwissenschaft] (transcript Verlag, Hamburg, 2010). Bisanz is a member of the advising board of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Semiotik and chair of the society's subdivision for Cultural Studies. Since her Fulbright scholarship in 2006 at Texas Tech University, Bisanz has been an active member of the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism. She has organized several international congresses dedicated to Peirce and interdisciplinary research. *** Homepage: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s Auditorium: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s/auditorium *** Technical support assured by Robert Junqueira. The cover image for the video was designed by Zahra Soltani. (shrink)

This paper examines the points of disagreement between Petrus Camper and J. W. von Goethe regarding the existence of the inter-maxillary bone in humans as the link between man and the rest of nature. This historical case illustrates the fundamental role of aesthetic judgements in scientific discovery. Thus, I shall show how the eighteenth century discovery of the inter-maxillary bone in humans was largely determined by aesthetic factors—specifically, those sets of assumptions and criteria implied in the aesthetic schemata of Camper (...) and Goethe. I argue that the relevance of scientifically ascertainable morphological properties that count as evidence for the existence of bona fide anatomical structures depend on the aesthetic schema adopted by the communities assessing the classification. At the same time, I propose and explain mechanisms by which aesthetic considerations might determine the acceptability of empirical claims about the world. Based on the reconstruction of the arguments of Camper and Goethe, I conclude that aesthetic considerations play a substantive role in both the generation and preliminary evaluation of scientific hypotheses. This paper suggests a complementary relation between the mediation of aesthetic criteria in theory choice and in scientific discovery in that while aesthetic considerations in theory choice lead to conservatism; in the context of discovery they often lead to innovation. (shrink)

Chapter 12 is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion in science communication are in danger of generating much concern without effecting change and systematic transformations. This radical volume addresses these circular discourses and reveals the gaps in the field. Putting the spotlight on the marginalised voices of so-called 'racialised minorities', and those from Global South regions, it interrogates the global footprint of the science communication enterprise. Moving beyond tokenistic and extractive (...) approaches, this book creates a space for academics and practitioners to challenge issues around race and sociocultural inclusion, providing mutual learning, paradigm-shifting perspectives, and innovative ways forward for the science communication advancement agenda. (shrink)

Chapter 1 First Person Access to Mental States. Mind Science and Subjective Qualities -/- Abstract. The philosophy of mind as we know it today starts with Ryle. What defines and at the same time differentiates it from the previous tradition of study on mind is the persuasion that any rigorous approach to mental phenomena must conform to the criteria of scientificity applied by the natural sciences, i.e. its investigations and results must be intersubjectively and publicly controllable. In Ryle’s view, (...) philosophy of mind needs to adopt an antimentalist stance to achieve this aim. Antimentalism not only definitively rejects the idea that mind is a substance separated from the body, it also denies that mental phenomena radically differ from physical phenomena by virtue of several unique features. Most problematically, mental phenomena have a conscious character (mental states are related to specific qualitative feelings) and are accessible only to the first-person (only the subject knows directly what s/he is experiencing inside his/her mind). Ryle takes a strong stance on antimentalism going so far as to maintain that an approach to mind which aims to meet the criteria of scientificity set by the natural sciences must avoid any reference to internal, unobservable mental states. In his view (which is considered a specifically philosophical version of psychological behaviorism and also addresses questions put forward in psychological research), mental states can be redescribed in terms of behavioral dispositions. In this chapter, we address the historical roots of the antimentalist view and analyze its relation to the later tradition of research on mind. We show that, compared to the antimentalist stance, functionalism and cognitivism take a step back when they maintain that direct reference to mental states is necessary since mental states cause and therefore explain human behavior. This step backwards is often interpreted as a return to mentalism. However, this is only partially true. Indeed, we suggest that these later traditions retain one important element of Ryle’s antimentalism, i.e. the idea that mental states must be uniquely identified using external and publicly observable criteria, while excluding any reference to introspection and those qualitative dimensions of a mental state, which are accessible only to the first-person. According to the perspective we put forward, this epistemological stance has continued to influence contemporary research on mind and current philosophical and psychological theories which both tend to exclude the subjective qualities of human experience from their accounts of how the mind works. The issue we raise here is whether this is legitimate or whether subjective qualities do play a role with respect to the way our mind works. The conclusion of this chapter anticipates the argument the book makes in in favor of this latter position, starting from a particular angle, i.e. the problem of how we categorize concepts related to our internal states. -/- Chapter 2 The Misleading Aspects of the Mind/Computer Analogy. The Grounding Problem and the Thorny Issue of Propriosensitive Information -/- Abstract. After the crisis of behaviorism, cognitivism and functionalism became the predominant models in the field of psychology and of philosophy, respectively. Their success is mainly due to the new key they use for interpreting mental processes: the mind/computer analogy. On the basis of this analogy, mental operations are seen as cognitive processes based on computations, i.e. on manipulations of abstract symbols which are in turn understood as informational unities (representations). This chapter identifies two main problems with this model. The first is how these symbols can relate to and communicate with perception and thus allow us to identify and classify what we perceive through the senses. Here we limit ourselves to presenting this issue in relation to the classical symbol grounding problem originally put forward by Harnad on the basis of Searle’s Chinese room argument. An attempt to address the problem raised here will be made in chap. 3. The second point we discuss in relation to the mind/computer analogy concerns the idea of information it fosters. Indeed, following this analogy, information is something available in the external world which can be captured by the senses and transmitted to the central system without being influenced or modified by the procedures of transmission. This perspective does not take into account that – unlike computers – in living beings information is acquired by means of the body. As Ulric Neisser has already pointed out, the body is itself an informational source that provides us with additional sensory experience that influences (modifies or complements) the information extracted from the external world by the senses. To develop this line of analysis and to determine exactly what information is provided by the body and how this might influence cognition, we examine Sherrington’s and Gibson’s positions. Moving on from their views, we qualify bodily information in terms of ‘proprioception’. We use ‘proprioception’ in a broad sense to describe any kind of experience we have of our internal states (including postural information as well as sensations related to the general state of the body and its parts). Following Damasio’s and Craig’s studies, we further elaborate this position, arguing that living beings are equipped with an internal propriosensitive monitoring system which maps all the changes that constantly occur in our body and that give us perceptual (‘proprioceptive’ or propriosensitive) information about what happens inside us. Moreover, relying on Goldie’s and Ratcliffe’s view, we show that emotional information can also be considered as a form of ‘proprioception’ which contributes to determining everything we perceive. This analysis leads us to the second main thesis of this book: ‘proprioception’ is a form of internal perception and it is an essential component of the sensory information we can access and use for all cognitive purposes. -/- Chapter 3 Semantic Competence from the Inside: Conceptual Architecture and Composition -/- Abstract. Concepts are essential constituents of thought: they are the instruments we use to categorize our experience, i.e. to classify things and group them together in homogeneous sets. Here we define concepts as the internal mental information (representations) that allows us, among other things, to master words in natural language. By analyzing the way in which individuals master word meanings we explore a number of hypotheses regarding the nature of concepts. Following Diego Marconi’s research, we differentiate between two kind of abilities that underpin lexical competence – so-called ‘referential’ and ‘inferential competence’ – and we suggest that, in order to support these abilities, concepts must also include two corresponding kinds of information, i.e. inferential and referential information. We point out that the most widely used and acknowledged theories of concepts do not make this distinction, instead broadly characterizing the information used for categorization in terms of propositionally described feature lists. However, we show that while feature lists can explain inferential competence, they do not account for referential competence. To address the issue of referential competence we examine Ray Jackendoff’s hypothesis that to account for the possibility of linking perceptual and conceptual information we need to assume the existence of a (visual) representation that encodes the geometric and topological properties of objects and bridges the gap between the percept and the concept. Furthermore, we analyze the extension of this work by Jesse Prinz who introduced the notion of a proxytype, a perceptual representation of a class of objects that incorporates structural and parametric information related to their appearance. However, as we point out, proxytypes can only explain the relationship between perception and concepts with respect to instances that can be perceived through the senses and that belong to the same class by virtue of their physical similarity. We suggest that this notion be extended to include larger conceptual classes. To accomplish this, we further develop Mark Johnson, George Lakoff and Jean Mandler’s idea of a schematic image and argue that conceptual representations include a perceptual schema. Perceptual schemata are non-linguistic, structured experiential gestalts (patterns or maps) that make use of information taken from all sensory modalities, including body perception. They accomplish a quasi-conceptual function: they allow us to recognize and to classify different instances. In this work, we hypothesize that perceptual schemata are an essential component of concepts, but not identical to them. Instead, we suggest that concepts include both perceptual and propositional information with perceptual schemata providing the ‘perceptual core concept’ that grounds related propositional information. -/- Chapter 4 In the Beginning There Were Categories. The Bodily Origin of Prelinguistic Categorical Organization: The Example of Folkbiological Taxonomies -/- Abstract. Studies of categorization in psychology and the cognitive sciences have made use of the notions of ‘category’ and ‘concept’ without precisely defining what is meant by either; in fact, often these terms have been used as synonyms, making it difficult to address specific issues related to conceptual development. This chapter begins by discussing the definitions of, as well as the distinctions between, ‘categories’ and ‘concepts’ in the classical philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Kant and Husserl). We introduce our view of categories with reference to Husserl. Categorization is defined as the way in which our experience is originally (pre-linguistically) organized in a passive and fully unconscious manner on the basis of universal structuring principles. Conceptualization is explained as a later process in which the earlier categorical macro-classes are further subdivided into more specific and detailed sets; this later process also relies on linguistic learning and exposure to culture. On the basis of Ray Jackendoff, Jean Mandler, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, we hypothesize that categorization is a two-step process that begins with the formation of homogeneous sets of entities partitioned into regions that describe the ontological boundaries of the objects that humans perceive (categories) and continues at a later stage with the development of more specific classifications (concepts). In this chapter, we mainly address three related issues: Why should we assume that there is categorical organization which precedes the development of a conceptual system? How do categories and concepts relate to each other? Shall we hypothesize that categories are innate or that they are formed before concepts on the basis of information and organizational structure available at a very early developmental stage? We show that categorical partitions are necessary for categorization and, following Mandler, that the general categories we form at an early age do not match our adult superordinate concepts. As for the third issue, we argue that there might be no need to assume that categories are innately present in the human mind, since their formation can be explained – at least in certain cases – by basic mechanisms that work on body (propriosensitive) information. This hypothesis will not be discussed in general, but in relation to a particularly relevant example of categorical partition, i.e. the folk-biological dichotomy between ANIMATE/INANIMATE. This is compared with other dichotomies that derive from it, but are not directly categorical such as LIVING/NON-LIVING and BIOLOGICAL/NON-BIOLOGICAL. -/- Chapter 5 Internal States: From Headache to Anger. Conceptualization and Semantic Mastery -/- Abstract. Here we ask if we can also apply the distinction between referential and inferential competence we introduced in Chapter 3 to words that do not refer to things that are perceived using the external senses, especially to words/concepts that denote bodily experiences (such as pain, thirst, hunger, etc.) or emotions. We introduce and discuss the hypothesis that – even though such words/concepts do not refer to intersubjectively identifiable entities in the external world – they do have a kind of referent that can be accessed via direct perception, more specifically ‘proprioception’, as we have defined it in terms of all propriosensitive information we can consciously access. In the first part of the chapter, we specifically consider terms denoting bodily experiences such as ‘pain’ or ‘hunger’ and argue that their referents are identified and classified from a first-personal point of view on the basis of four main characteristics: their specific intensity, their localization in the body, their co-occurrence with other signals and above all their specific qualitative sensations. Emotions are addressed in the second part of the chapter. We suggest that there is a continuity between bodily experiences and emotions. In particular, we argue for a perceptual theory of emotions in line with that proposed by James and Lange at the end of the 19th century and developed more recently by authors such as Damasio (see also chap. 2§5, §6). The hypothesis we put forward is that the referential information that supports the categorization of emotions and therefore also our mastery of terms referring to emotions consists in the perception (i.e. the ‘proprioception’) of those bodily states and changes in bodily states which constitute our emotional experience. In the context of this discussion we examine some objections to this line of reasoning that arise from a cognitivist perspective and following authors such as Oatley, Johnson-Laird and Frijda, we distinguish between basic emotions that can be identified and classified solely on the basis on how they feel and complex emotions whose identification and classification additionally depends on cognitive factors. To describe how emotions are identified and classified on the basis of how they feel, we rely on Marcel and Lambie’s distinction between an ‘emotion state’ and an ‘emotion experience’. Both notions indicate kinds of feelings that we consciously experience. However, they describe first-order and second order emotion awareness respectively. The emotion state is the feeling we have of the bodily states and changes that occur when we are experiencing an emotion, while the emotion experience is the fully developed and integrated emotion we both experience and are, with reflection, aware of experiencing. On the basis of this differentiation, we also show that the same characteristics that aid in the identification and classification of bodily experiences (specific qualitative sensations; somatic localization; specific intensity; presence/absence of specific concomitant sensations) can also be used for the identification and classification of emotions – at least basic emotions. In the last two sections of the chapter we present some clinical evidence on the semantic competence of people who suffer from Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder which supports the conclusions of our preceding analyses. -/- Chapter 6 The ‘Proprioceptive’ Component of Abstract Concepts -/- Abstract. In this chapter, we address the issue of whether the mastery of abstract words requires only inferential knowledge and thus, if the concepts that support the mastery of abstract words include only linguistic information. We start by differentiating the notions of ‘abstract’ and ‘general’ which are often erroneously confused. We then identify a strict definition of abstract, as contrasted with ‘concrete’, that applies to words or concepts whose referent cannot be experienced by the senses. We argue that abstract words/concepts would be better described as theoretical, because they are usually conceived as structured sets of inferential knowledge expressed linguistically; that is, as small theories. Pointing out parallels with Carnap’s analysis of this issue in philosophy of science, we hypothesize that words/concepts denoting non-observable entities are not all ‘equally theoretical’, because their link to sensory experience can be stronger or weaker. We revive the distinction, inspired by Quine, between theoretical and intertheoretical concepts/words. This distinction relies on the fact that the former – unlike the latter – retains a strong, although indirect, connection with perception. In Quine’s discussion, perception is understood uniquely in terms of observability, i.e. of external sensory experience. Here we argue, however, that bodily, ‘proprioceptive’ (i.e. propriosensitive) experience can also serve to referentially ground theoretical (i.e. abstract) concepts/words. We frame this issue using the example of the theoretical concept ‘freedom’ and Lakoff’s hypothesis that this concept is developed on the basis of bodily information. We contrast this with the example of ‘democracy’ which more closely resembles an intertheoretical concept/word. Furthermore, we show that one of the classical views put forward in psycholinguistic research to explain how abstract concepts are mentally represented – i.e. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory – points in the same direction as our analysis. The same is true of Barsalou’s work suggesting that we use internal information to understand at least some abstract words. To sustain this position, we put forward two lines of evidence: the first comes from psycholinguistic studies while the second examines deficits of semantic competence exhibited by people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. On the basis of our analysis, we put forward a classification that distinguishes between different kinds of concreteness and different degrees of abstraction: concepts/words referring to body experiences and basic emotions are described as analogous to concrete concepts/words because they are grounded in perceptual (i.e. propriosensitive) experience, while abstract concepts/words are considered more or less abstract depending on whether they are intratheoretical (and rely entirely on inferential information) or theoretical (and are partially grounded in perceptual – or more often in propriosensitive perceptual – information). In the last section of the chapter we consider two scales that have been used in psycholinguistic research to measure the degree of concreteness vs. abstractness of words and we show that – used conjointly – they can provide a measure of the internal vs. external grounding of specific words. (shrink)