Statistical Default Logic (SDL) is an expansion of classical (i.e., Reiter) default logic that allows us to model common inference patterns found in standard inferential statistics, e.g., hypothesis testing and the estimation of a population‘s mean, variance and proportions. This paper presents an embedding of an important subset of SDL theories, called literal statistical default theories, into stable model semantics. The embedding is designed to compute the signature set of literals that uniquely distinguishes each extension on a statistical default theory (...) at a pre-assigned error-bound probability. (shrink)
In this paper we show the embedding of Hybrid Probabilistic Logic Programs into the rather general framework of Residuated Logic Programs, where the main results of (definite) logic programming are validly extrapolated, namely the extension of the immediate consequences operator of van Emden and Kowalski. The importance of this result is that for the first time a framework encompassing several quite distinct logic programming semantics is described, namely Generalized Annotated Logic Programs, Fuzzy Logic Programming, Hybrid Probabilistic Logic Programs, and Possibilistic (...) Logic Programming. Moreover, the embedding provides a more general semantical structure paving the way for defining paraconsistent probabilistic reasoning with a logic programming semantics. (shrink)
Recent investigations have explored how large-scale systems in the brain operate in the processes of retrieving knowledge for words and concepts. Much of the crucial evidence derives from lesion studies, because word retrieval and concept retrieval can be clearly dissociated in brain-damaged individuals. We discuss these findings from the perspective of our neurobiological framework, which is cited in Pulvermüller's target article.
Background: Waiving parent permission can be an option in some epidemiological and social research with adolescents. However, exemptions have not been uniformly considered or applied. Our aim is to critically assess the different factors that could be taken into account when making decisions about waiving active parental permission in observational research with adolescents.DiscussionIn some cases alternatives to parental permission could be applied to protect the rights of both adolescents and parents and also to assure the benefits to adolescents as a (...) group that can come from appropriately conducted studies. However, the criteria of ensuring minimal risk can be difficult to define and apply and a distinction between harm and discomfort is reviewed. Waiving active parental permission could be acceptable when the risk of harm is minimal; when the research questions are related to an activity for which adolescents are not legally considered to be children; when the risk of harm or discomfort may increase if parental permission is required; and when risk of discomfort is low because the questionnaire is not potentially offensive for some adolescents and/or for some parents.SummaryStringent rules concerning parental permission in some studies could be detrimental to adolescents. A framework and a decision tree guide are proposed to help researchers and Research Ethics Committees in their decisions on whether active parental permission must be obtained. (shrink)
1. Cine y vanguardias : el cine como promesa estético-política desde Dziga Vertov y Jean Epstein -- 2. Deleuze y las potencias del cine : el acontecimiento de lo inorgánico -- 3. De la vida inorgánica a la vida histórica : recuperación del carácter narrativo del cine a partir de Jacques Ranciere.
A fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX un pedagogo mendocino C. N. Vergara (Mendoza, 1859-1929) hace experiencia en Buenos Aires, Argentina, de una república escolar animada por una política solidaria. Con este escrito pretendemos situar la experiencia para tensionar las nociones de república-institución educativa-política y solidaridad. Tomamos como pre-texto para acometer la cuestión, incidentes del siglo XXI. Algunos testimonios que dicen sobre la vida que circula hacia fuera y hacia dentro de las instituciones educativas. Incidentes que como ejercicios (...) de pensamiento nos dan qué pensar. La infancia literal de los primeros años de vida, la de Josefina y la de Milena, en los testimonios adultomorfos que se entregan a “experienciar” la posibilidad siempre abierta de la emergencia de un sujeto que eclipsa. Pero también de aquella infancia escolarizada a la que el devenir infante le ha sido intervenido institucionalmente. La institución educativa argentina, específicamente en la Escuela Normal Mixta de Mercedes se presenta en toda su potencia en la afirmación de un lugar en el filosofar y, para una filosofía movilizante y movilizadora que no permanezca dentro de los muros sino que los atraviese y se desborde en la calle en la renovación de los actores, de los actos y sus ejecuciones. (shrink)
The legacy of René Descartes' notorious dualism of mind and body extends far beyond academia into everyday thinking: "These athletes are prepared both mentally and physically," and "There's nothing wrong with your body--it's all in your mind." Even among those of us who have battled Descartes' vision, there has been a powerful tendency to treat the mind (that is to say, the brain) as the body's boss, the pilot of the ship. Falling in with this standard way of thinking, we (...) ignore an important alternative: viewing the brain (and hence the mind) as one organ among many, a relatively recent usurper of control, whose functions cannot properly be understood until we see it not as the boss, but as just one more somewhat fractious servant, working to further the interests of the body that shelters and fuels it, and gives its activities meaning. This historical or evolutionary perspective reminds me of the change that has come over Oxford in the thirty years since I was a student there. It used to be that the dons were in charge, while the bursars and other bureaucrats, right up to the Vice Chancellor, acted under their guidance and at their behest. Nowadays the dons, like their counterparts on American university faculties, are more clearly in the role of employees hired by a central Administration, but from where, finally, does the University get its meaning? In evolutionary history, a similar change has crept over the administration of our bodies. Where resides the "I" who is in charge of my body? In his wonderfully written book, Antonio Damasio seeks to restore our appreciation for the perspective of the body, and the shared balance of powers from which we emerge as conscious persons. (shrink)
This paper discusses some of the requirements for the control architecture of an intelligent human-like agent with multiple independent dynamically changing motives in a dynamically changing only partly predictable world. The architecture proposed includes a combination of reactive, deliberative and meta-management mechanisms along with one or more global ``alarm'' systems. The engineering design requirements are discussed in relation our evolutionary history, evidence of brain function and recent theories of Damasio and others about the relationships between intelligence and emotions. (The (...) paper was completed in haste for a deadline and I forgot to explain why Descartes was in the title. See Damasio 1994.). (shrink)
Carlos Pereda califica mi concepción de la moral de realismo particularista y objeta a mi defensa tanto del realismo como del particularismo. En mi respuesta trato de mostrar cómo nuestras discrepancias en torno al papel de los principios en la deliberación moral es, excepto en un punto crucial, cuestión de énfasis. No ocurre lo mismo, sin embargo, con mi reivindicación del realismo moral, pues parte de lo que intento mostrar en el libro es que los programas constructivistas de los (...) que habla Pereda no pueden pensarse coherentemente. \\\ Carlos Pereda presents my view about morality as a sort of particularist realism and objects both to my defence of realism and that of particularism. In my reply, I argue that our discrepancies about the role of principies in moral deliberation is, except in a crucial respect, a matter of emphasis. Something quite different happens, however, with my vindication of moral realism. For part of what I try to show in my book is that constructivist programs like the one suggested by Pereda cannot be coherently thought. (shrink)
Some authors have speculated about the fact that if the law were connected to morality, then it would not be relevant, because morality would be enough to regulate social life. A study of this objection to the connection thesis will be outlined in this paper. In other words, the possible answers to the question about the practical difference that law gives to morality will be analyzed. The work of the Argentine philosopher Carlos Nino will be taken as the starting (...) point for this task. (shrink)
Upshot: In his latest book, Antonio Damasio explores the neural underpinnings of self-consciousness in an evolutionary context, while reconsidering his previous views. His current views may be interesting for constructivists.
O estudo da natureza da mente ocupa um lugar de destaque na agenda das investigações da Filosofia da Mente, porque sua abordagem parece fornecer uma explicaçáo da forma pela qual os humanos têm acesso aos dados da realidade. Pretendemos problematizar a teoria cartesiana de natureza da mente a partir de sua concepçáo de idéias inatas produzida a partir de um instrumental matemático, que segundo Descartes, nasce com o sujeito. Para tanto, faremos uma breve explanaçáo do método cartesiano, assim como de (...) sua concepçáo de sujeito, para chegar, enfim, à análise do que Descartes entende como idéia. Após o que uma breve análise da noçáo de idéias inatas será por nós realizada. Indicaremos entáo, como o pensamento cartesiano dá margem para o questionamento de sua distinçáo mente/corpo, esta que o neurocientista Damásio náo aceita, assim como náo aceita a prioridade da razáo sobre o sentimento. A natureza da mente náo é metafísica como o disse Descartes, para Damásio ela é biológica. (shrink)
Traduçáo. texto Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} retirado de Carlos E. Caorsi (Ed.). Ensayos sobre Strawson . Universidad de la República/Faculdad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Montevidéo,1992, p. 55-71.
The distinction between cognitive and perceptual theories of emotion is entrenched in the literature on emotion and is openly used by individual emotion theorists when classifying their own theories and those of others. In this paper, I argue that the distinction between cognitive and perceptual theories of emotion is more pernicious than it is helpful, while at the same time insisting that there are nonetheless important perceptual and cognitive factors in emotion that need to be distinguished. A general representational metatheoretical (...) framework for reconciling cognitive and perceptual theories is proposed. This is the Representational Theory of Emotion (RTE). A detailed case study of Antonio Damasio's important new contribution to emotion theory is presented in defense of the RTE. The paper is intended for readers interested in the foundations of emotion theory and cognitive science. (shrink)
Research on patients with damage to ventromedial frontal cortices suggests a key role for emotions in practical decision making. This field of investigation is often associated with Antonio Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis–a putative account of the mechanism by which autonomic tags guide decision making in typical individuals. Here we discuss two ‘myths’ surrounding the direction and interpretation of this research. First, it is often assumed that there is a single somatic marker hypothesis. As others have noted, however, Damasio’s (...) ‘hypothesis’ admits of multiple interpretations (Colombetti, [2008]; Dunn et al. [2006]). Our analysis builds upon this point by characterizing decision making as a multi-stage process and identifying the various potential roles for somatic markers. The second myth is that the available evidence suggests a role for somatic markers in the core stages of decision making, i.e. during the generation, deliberation or evaluation of candidate options. To the contrary, we suggest that somatic markers most likely have a peripheral role, in the recognition of decision points, or in the motivation of action. This conclusion is based on an examination of the past 25 years of research conducted by Damasio and colleagues, focusing in particular on some early experiments that have been largely neglected by the critical literature. (shrink)
I consider some themes and issues arising in recent work on moral responsibility, focusing on three recent books —Carlos Moya's Moral Responsibility, Al Mele's Free Will and Luck, and John Martin Fischer's My Way. I argue that these texts collectively suggest some difficulties with the way in which many issues are currently framed in the free will debates, including disputes about what constitutes compatibilism and incompatibilism and the relevance of intuitions and ordinary language for describing the metaphysics of free (...) will and moral responsibility. I also argue that each of the accounts raise more particular puzzles: it is unclear to what extent Moya’s account is properly an account of free will; Mele’s account raises questions about the significance of luck for compatibilist theories; and Fischer’s account of the value of responsibility as self-expression raises questions about the normative significance of moral responsibility. (shrink)
This article examines Nietzsche’s analysis of the phenomenology of agent causation. Sense of agent causation, our sense of self-efficacy, is tenacious because it originates, according to Nietzsche’s hypothesis, in the embodied and situated experience of effort in overcoming resistances. It arises at the level of the organism and is sustained by higher-order cognitive functions. Based on this hypothesis, Nietzsche regards the sense of self as emerging from a homeostatic system of drives and affects that unify such as to maintain self-efficacy (...) levels. He relies on the same hypothesis to explain the emergence of an ascetic moral system and its specific, interpretive-affective ‘mechanism of willing’. The article aligns Nietzsche’s account of agent causation with Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy studies and Antonio Damasio’s recent account of self-systems as homeostatic systems. (shrink)
Don Juan said that my body was disappearing and only my head was going to remain, and in such a condition the only way to stay awake and move around was by becoming a crow ... He ordered me to straighten up my head and put it on my chin. He said that in the chin were the crow's legs. He commanded me to feel the legs and observe that they were coming out slowly. He then said ... that the (...) tail would come out of my neck. He ordered me to extend the tail like a fan, and to feel how it swept the floor ...I had no difficulty whatsoever eliciting the corresponding sensations to each one of his commands. I had the perception of growing bird's legs, which were weak and wobbly at first. I felt the tail coming out of the back of my neck and wings out of my cheekbones. . (shrink)
Taking for granted that Marx’s economic theory enjoys a scientific status and, furthermore, that it installed a real Copernican revolution in sociology, the present paper explores the possibility of deriving a system of law deserving the name of “scientific” in so far as it would be in keeping with the theses of the latter scientific theory. In this context, the paper argues against a claim recently sustained by Fernández Liria and Alegre Zahonero, for whom a system of right compatible with (...) Marx’s theory would be compatible, too, with the classic juridical formulations conceived during the Enlightenment. The main reason why this paper testifies against such compatibility is that the enlightened concepts of “equality”, “liberty” and “autonomy” count with the individual as the realm for their juridical application. However, Marx’s subject matter being the social means of production (and not the individuals’ production of value), we conclude that the only juridical subject that could justifiably be derived from his economic investigation would be the “social class”. Finally, the paper suggests that the only way a scientific system of law could grant a juridical status to the individual would be by taking into account the other theory that also installed a Copernican revolution in the social sciences, though this time in the field of psychology: Freud’s psychoanalysis. Key words: Copernican revolution, science, scientific. (shrink)
This paper presents an outline of Carlos Vaz Ferreira's moderate anti-intellectualism, paying special attention to the relations between science and philosophy as complementary aspects of human knowledge. Explicitly opposing William James's radical anti-intellectualism, and thus apparently anti-Pragmatist, Vaz is in fact very close to the central ideas of Pragmatism. A defense of reason as a valuable help for penetrating into reality, combined with the recognition of extra-rational elements that contribute to human apprehension of reality, results in a position that (...) can be characterized by its anti-rationalism, fallibilism and pluralism. (shrink)
Arguments over whether emotions and moods are feelings have demonstrated confusion over the concept of a feeling and, in particular, what it is that feelings can—and cannot—do. I argue that the causal and explanatory roles we assign emotions and moods in our theories are inconsistent with their being feelings. Sidestepping debates over the natures of emotions and moods I frame my arguments primarily in terms of what it is emotions, moods and feelings do. I provide an analysis that clarifies the (...) role feelings can play in our psychology that is consistent with current psychological and neurological data. (shrink)
We are strongly inclined to believe in moral responsibility, that some human agents truly deserve moral praise or blame for some of their actions. However, recent philosophical discussion has put this natural belief in the reality of moral responsibility under suspicion. There are important reasons to think that moral responsibility is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism, possibly rendering moral responsibility an impossibility. This book lays out the major arguments for skepticism about moral responsibility and subjects them to sustained and (...) penetrating critical analysis. Moral Responsibility lays out the intricate dialectic involved in these issues in a helpful and accessible way. The book goes on to suggest a way in which skepticism can be avoided, arguing that an excessive pre-eminence given to the will might lie at the root of skepticism of moral responsibility. Carlos Moya offers an alternative to skepticism, showing how a cognitive approach to moral responsibility which stresses the importance of belief would rescue our natural and centrally important faith in the reality of moral responsibility. (shrink)
“Epistemic Dexterity: A Ramseyian Account of Epistemic Virtue” by Abrol Fairweather & Carlos Montemayor: A modification of F.P. Ramsey’s (1927) success semantics supports a naturalized theory of epistemic virtue that includes motivational components (desires) and can potentially explain both epistemic reliability and responsibility with a single normative-explanatory principle. An “epistemic Ramsey success” will also provide a better account of the “because of” condition central to virtue-reliabilist accounts of knowledge from Greco, Sosa and Pritchard. Ramsey said that the truth condition (...) of a belief is the condition that guarantees the success of desires based on that belief. Taken as a theory of epistemic achievements, the truth condition for the attribution of an epistemic achievement is the condition that guarantees the success of epistemic desires and is also a success based on abilities attributable to the agent. One of its major advantages is that it may be the best way to achieve a naturalistic version of the etiologcal requirement on knowledge in virtue epistemology while also supporting important responsibilist desiderata. The account defended is robustly agent-centered in the straightforward sense that individual desires are partly constitutive of epistemic successes like having a rational belief, justified belief, and even of knowledge once we see the both the reliabilist and repsonsibilist desiderata are met. Another important aspect of the paper is that it provides a plausible psychology for virtue epistemology that is grounded in important empirical findings on agency, and thus constitutes a form of naturalized virtue epistemology. (shrink)
: American Trypanosomiasis, known as Chagas disease, was discovered in 1909 under peculiar circumstances: its discoverer, Carlos Chagas, was sent to a small village of Central Brazil to carry out an anti-malaria campaign when he came across a blood sucking insect--the vector for the parasite infection. He had been alerted to the coincidence of peculiar symptoms and the presence of this insect in the wood and earth dwellings of the region. He was deeply involved in theoretical controversies in international (...) protozoology; he was engaged in the consolidation of a scientific role and corresponding institutional conditions in Brazil, and equally immersed in the nationalist sanitary struggles of his days. In these contexts, Chagas assembled a remarkable discovery discourse, regarding the biology of the parasite, its life cycle and mode of transmission. Furthermore, he provided the clinical description of a new disease. Despite immediate international recognition, however, the unstable institutional arrangements surrounding his work damaged its local legitimacy for decades. His authority was widely recognized abroad, but rejected at home. (shrink)
DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO ITABORAHY, Luiz Carlos. O horizonte da juventude na educação e pastoral populares : história, diálogo e configuração de Medellín a Puebla (1968-1979). 2012. 207 folhas. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte.
La historia personal y profesional de Carlos París discurre al hilo de la convulsa historia de España del último medio siglo, y la narra con una honestidad de la que muy pocos pueden hacer gala. Así, sin ira y sin tapujos, describe, por ejemplo, cómo pasó de una adhesión inicial a presupuestos falangistas a ser candidato del PCE, valorando cada etapa y cada motivo de cambio con un gran sentido crítico. Por su pluma desfilan también personajes fundamentales en la (...) vida española de los últimos cincuenta años con quienes Carlos París ha tenido una sólida relación, como Manuel Fraga, Javier Solana, Manuel Castells, Rosa Regàs, Ricardo de la Cierva, José Antonio Maravall, José María Valverde, Nicolás Sartorius y un largo etcétera. De la lectura de estas memorias se desprende, en fin, el retrato de una gran figura intelectual y humana que jamás se ha limitado a ser convidado de piedra ni en su país ni en el tiempo que le ha tocado vivir.Carlos París (Bilbao, 1925) es Catedrático Emérito de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, en la que fundó su Departamento de filosofía y de cuya Facultad de Filosofía y Letras fue elegido decano en las primeras elecciones. Es Doctor Honoris Causa por la Universidad de Valencia y ha sido Presidente de la Sociedad Española de Filosofía y del Ateneo Científico, Literario y Artístico de Madrid. Su obra ha sido objeto de diversos estudios y congresos internacionales, y recientemente se ha creado un Foro dedicado al análisis y difusión de su pensamiento. Hay que destacar, sobre todo, sus ensayos: Física y filosofía, 1952; Crítica de la civilización nuclear, 1985 o Fantasía y razón moderna-Don Quijote, Odiseo y Fausto, 2001, entre muchos otros; y también sus obras de creación literaria: la novela Bajo constelaciones burlonas (1981) o el libro de relatos La machina speculatrix-Cuatro sarcasmos sobre el mundo actual (1989). (shrink)
I never met Gian-Carlo Rota but I have often made references to his writings on the philosophy of mathematics, sometimes agreeing, sometimes disagreeing. In this paper I will discuss his views concerning four questions: the existence of mathematical objects, definition in mathematics, the notion of proof, the relation of philosophy of mathematics to mathematics.
In the 1960s molecular population geneticists used Monte Carlo experiments to evaluate particular diffusion equation models. In this paper I examine the nature of this comparative evaluation and argue for three claims: first, Monte Carlo experiments are genuine experiments: second, Monte Carlo experiments can provide an important meansfor evaluating the adequacy of highly idealized theoretical models; and, third, the evaluation of the computational adequacy of a diffusion model with Monte Carlo experiments is significantlydifferent from the evaluation of the emperical adequacy (...) of the same diffusion model. (shrink)
This paper reviews and enhances numerical models for determining thermal, elastic and electrical properties of carbon nanotube-reinforced polymer composites. For the determination of the effective stress–strain curve and thermal conductivity of the composite material, finite-element analysis (FEA), in conjunction with the embedded fibre method (EFM), is used. Variable nanotube geometry, alignment and waviness are taken into account. First, a random morphology of a user-defined volume fraction of nanotubes is generated, and their properties are incorporated into the polymer matrix using the (...) EFM. Next, incremental and iterative FEA approaches are used for the determination of the nonlinear properties of the nanocomposite. For the determination of the electrical properties, a spanning network identification algorithm is used. First, a realistic nanotube morphology is generated from input parameters defined by the user. The spanning network algorithm then determines the connectivity between nanotubes in a representative volume element. Then, interconnected nanotube networks are converted to equivalent resistor circuits. Finally, Kirchhoff's current law is used in conjunction with FEA to solve for the voltages and currents in the system and thus calculate the effective electrical conductivity of the nanocomposite. The model accounts for electrical transport mechanisms such as electron hopping and simultaneously calculates percolation probability, identifies the backbone and determines the effective conductivity. Monte Carlo analysis of 500 random microstructures is performed to capture the stochastic nature of the fibre generation and to derive statistically reliable results. The models are validated by comparison with various experimental datasets reported in the recent literature. (shrink)
The essay examines both the dances and the dance notation of renowned nineteenth century choreographer Carlo Blasis. It looks in detail at Blasis major treatise The Code of Terpsichore in an effort to evaluate how Blasis linked a science of movement to a conception of the body oriented around the prevailing aesthetics informing all of the fine arts. Identifying Blasis as both a philosopher and a mechanist, this essay analyzes his approach to teaching basic ballet vocabulary, and in particular the (...) arabesque. Whereas Kleist, with his Marionettentheater, proposes the puppet as a figure of grace, located somewhere between animal and doll, Blasis brings together the movement science of mechanics and the descriptive theory of grace (as mimesis) in a poetics of the arabesque, a synthesis of elevation and evanescence, which we see when we conjure up pictures of nineteenth century Romantic ballet. (shrink)
Exploring how people represent natural categories is a key step toward developing a better understanding of how people learn, form memories, and make decisions. Much research on categorization has focused on artificial categories that are created in the laboratory, since studying natural categories defined on high-dimensional stimuli such as images is methodologically challenging. Recent work has produced methods for identifying these representations from observed behavior, such as reverse correlation (RC). We compare RC against an alternative method for inferring the structure (...) of natural categories called Markov chain Monte Carlo with People (MCMCP). Based on an algorithm used in computer science and statistics, MCMCP provides a way to sample from the set of stimuli associated with a natural category. We apply MCMCP and RC to the problem of recovering natural categories that correspond to two kinds of facial affect (happy and sad) from realistic images of faces. Our results show that MCMCP requires fewer trials to obtain a higher quality estimate of people’s mental representations of these two categories. (shrink)
The article is the consequence of some critical notes to the contribution of Paolo Bellan, arising from reading of essays of Francesco Emmolo and Carlo Sini and the assumption of a purely phenomenological perspective in the interpretation of the processes of acquisition of scientific knowledge.
Damasio remarks, it "informs virtually all research on mind and brain, explicitly or implicitly." Indeed, serial information processing models generally run this risk (Kinsbourne, 1985). The commentaries provide a wealth of confirming instances of the seductive power of this idea. Our sternest critics Block, Farah, Libet, and Treisman) adopt fairly standard Cartesian positions; more interesting are those commentators who take themselves to be mainly in agreement with us, but who express reservations or offer support with arguments that betray a (...) continuing allegiance to one or another tenet of the view we sought to discredit. (shrink)
This paper extends earlier work by its authors on formal aspects of the processes of contracting a theory to eliminate a proposition and revising a theory to introduce a proposition. In the course of the earlier work, Gardenfors developed general postulates of a more or less equational nature for such processes, whilst Alchourron and Makinson studied the particular case of contraction functions that are maximal, in the sense of yielding a maximal subset of the theory (or alternatively, of one of (...) its axiomatic bases), that fails to imply the proposition being eliminated. In the present paper, the authors study a broader class, including contraction functions that may be less than maximal. Specifically, they investigate "partial meet contraction functions", which are defined to yield the intersection of some nonempty family of maximal subsets of the theory that fail to imply the proposition being eliminated. Basic properties of these functions are established: it is shown in particular that they satisfy the Gardenfors postulates, and moreover that they are sufficiently general to provide a representation theorem for those postulates. Some special classes of partial meet contraction functions, notably those that are "relational" and "transitively relational", are studied in detail, and their connections with certain "supplementary postulates" of Gardenfors investigated, with a further representation theorem established. (shrink)
The received view of dynamical explanation is that dynamical cognitive science seeks to provide covering law explanations of cognitive phenomena. By analyzing three prominent examples of dynamicist research, I show that the received view is misleading: some dynamical explanations are mechanistic explanations, and in this way resemble computational and connectionist explanations. Interestingly, these dynamical explanations invoke the mathematical framework of dynamical systems theory to describe mechanisms far more complex and distributed than the ones typically considered by philosophers. Therefore, contemporary dynamicist (...) research reveals the need for a more sophisticated account of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)
The science of complexity is based on a new way of thinking that stands in sharp contrast to the philosophy underlying Newtonian science, which is based on reductionism, determinism, and objective knowledge. This paper reviews the historical development of this new world view, focusing on its philosophical foundations. Determinism was challenged by quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Systems theory replaced reductionism by a scientifically based holism. Cybernetics and postmodern social science showed that knowledge is intrinsically subjective. These developments are being (...) integrated under the header of “complexity science”. Its central paradigm is the multi-agent system. Agents are intrinsically subjective and uncertain about their environment and future, but out of their local interactions, a global organization emerges. Although different philosophers, and in particular the postmodernists, have voiced similar ideas, the paradigm of complexity still needs to be fully assimilated by philosophy. This will throw a new light on old philosophical issues such as relativism, ethics and the role of the subject. (shrink)
This paper has two aims: (1) to point the way towards a novel alternative to cognitive theories of emotion, and (2) to delineate a number of different functions that the emotions play in cognition, functions that become visible from outside the framework of cognitive theories. First, I hold that the Higher Order Representational (HOR) theories of consciousness ? as generally formulated ? are inadequate insofar as they fail to account for selective attention. After posing this dilemma, I resolve it in (...) such a manner that the following thesis arises: the emotions play a key role in shaping selective attention. This thesis is in accord with A. Damasio?s (1994) noteworthy neuroscientific work on emotion. I then begin to formulate an alternative to cognitive theories of emotion, and I show how this new account has implications for the following issues: face recognition, two brain disorders (Capgras? and Fregoli syndrome), the frame problem in A. I., and the research program of affective computing. (shrink)
The purpose of the paper is to present a logical framework that allow to formalize a kind of prima facie duties, defeasible conditional duties, indefeasible conditional duties and actual (indefeasible) duties, as well as to show their logical interconnections.
