This paper aims at integrating the work onanalogical reasoning in Cognitive Science into thelong trend of philosophical interest, in this century,in analogical reasoning as a basis for scientificmodeling. In the first part of the paper, threesimulations of analogical reasoning, proposed incognitive science, are presented: Gentner''s StructureMatching Engine, Mitchel''s and Hofstadter''s COPYCATand the Analogical Constraint Mapping Engine, proposedby Holyoak and Thagard. The differences andcontroversial points in these simulations arehighlighted in order to make explicit theirpresuppositions concerning the nature of analogicalreasoning. In the (...) last part, this debate in cognitivescience is applied to some traditional philosophicalaccounts of formal and material analogies as a basisfor scientific modeling, like Mary Hesse`s, and tomore recent ones, that already draw from the work inArtificial Intelligence, like that proposed byAronson, Harré and Way. (shrink)

A evolução humana é objeto de pesquisas comprometidas com diferentes agendas. Neste artigo discute-se cenários que concedem à psi-cologia de senso comum um papel central em tentativas de se retraçar tal evolução, colocando em relevo o que nos distinguiria de outras mentes animais: habilidades especiais para representar e, sobretudo, para inter-pretar. Essa perspectiva leva a sério a imagem – central a muito do que se faz em filosofia e nas ciências sociais – de que somos agentes constituí-dos em um ambiente (...) social e cultural. Estará em questão se essa imagem pode ser assimilada pela biologia evolutiva contemporânea, sem que esta abra mão dos seus pressupostos fundamentais e do seu arcabouço con-ceitual e teórico característico. Godfrey-Smith e Sterelny apostam nesse projeto, e se propõem a efetivar essa integração. Em contraste com cená-rios inatistas, que se apóiam em argumentos com base numa pobreza de es-tímulos, emerge daquele projeto um cenário no qual a evolução da mente humana interage com as nossas habilidades interpretativas. Estas habili-dades resultariam, por sua vez, de uma aprendizagem socialmente medi-ada, facilitada por um tipo particular de construção de nichos envolven-do mecanismos de herança não-genética.Human evolution is the subject of different kinds of research committed to different agenda. In this paper I will discuss various scenarios in which folk psychology plays a distinctive role in attempts to keep track of this evolution, making explicit what is distinctive about us, compared to other animal minds: special habilities for representation and, above all, for interpretation. This perspective takes seriously the image that we are agents constituted in a social and cultural environment, which is central to much of what is done in philosophy and the social sciences. I will discuss whether this image can be assimilated by contemporary evolutionary biology, without compromising its fundamental pressupositions and its characteristic conceptual and theoretical framework. Godfrey-Smith and Sterelny embrace this project and attempt to work out the details of this integration. Contrasting with nativist scenarios, which are grounded in poverty of the stimulus arguments, a scenario emerges from that project in which the evolution of the human mind interacts with our interpretative habilities. These habilities would be, in turn, the result of social learning, facilitated by a particular kind of niche construction involving non-genetic inheritance mechanisms. (shrink)

The paper starts with a distinction between kinds of description that can be proposed for a populational dynamics, including a ‘Darwinian’ description, in terms of variation, inheritance and differential fitness, engaging the entities that make up the relevant population. It follows with a categorization of different kinds of cultural populations and an investigation of the most general conditions that have to be fulfilled for an evolutionary and Darwinian dynamics to take place in those populations, especially in the population comprised by (...) the cultural traits themselves. We make salient some approaches to the evolution in the human lineage, such as dual inheritance theory and memetics, that place cultural evolution at the center of their scenarios. In this way, those approaches contribute to the development of a general theory of cultural evolution, and we compare them, in this respect, with other approaches. Those confrontations grant also illustrations of the analogies between biological evolution and cultural evolution, as well as failures in the analogy. (shrink)

Verifica-se um fértil intercâmbio entre filósofos e biólogos, de modo especial nas investigações contemporâneas sobre a evolução humana. Avalio, inicialmente, o compatibilismo como postura filosófica, que coloca em evidência a possibilidade de que hábitos de interpretação, com base numa psicologia de senso comum, tenham desempenhado um papel na evolução em nossa linhagem. Essa hipótese pode lançar luz sobre dilemas que surgem na construção de uma teoria que pressuponha a interação entre modalidades genética e cultural de herança. Para que a cultura (...) desempenhe essa função, é necessário que evoluam capacidades especiais para a aprendizagem social, que estariam associadas a capacidades para interpretar o comportamento de agentes. Num registro metafísico, discuto as condições para que grupos culturais possam ser considerados indivíduos no sentido de unidades de seleção. Num registro metodológico, eu analiso também o emprego de modelos matemáticos em tentativas de se construir cenários plausíveis para a evolução que nos tornou humanos. (shrink)

When is conceptual change so significant that we should talk about a new theory, not a new version of the same theory? We address this problem here, starting from Gould’s discussion of the individuation of the Darwinian theory. He locates his position between two extremes: ‘minimalist’—a theory should be individuated merely by its insertion in a historical lineage—and ‘maximalist’—exhaustive lists of necessary and sufficient conditions are required for individuation. He imputes the minimalist position to Hull and attempts a reductio : (...) this position leads us to give the same ‘name’ to contradictory theories. Gould’s ‘structuralist’ position requires both ‘conceptual continuity’ and descent for individuation. Hull’s attempt to assimilate into his general selectionist framework Kuhn’s notion of ‘exemplar’ and the ‘semantic’ view of the structure of scientific theories can be used to counter Gould’s reductio , and also to integrate structuralist and population thinking about conceptual change. (shrink)

O que colocou o funcionalismo no centro do debate em torno do problema mente-corpo nos últimos trinta anos parece ter sido a sua capacidade de conciliar intuições fisicalistas com uma espécie de não-reducionismo: se por um lado postula-se a existência de entes físicos somente, distribuídos em uma ontologia estratificada, por outro não se falha em explicitar uma distinção real entre as propriedades de entes capacitados a sentir e representar. A superveniência mente-corpo aparentava esclarecer essas intuições dos fisicalistas não-redutivos. Vários dos (...) trabalhos de Kim em torno dessa relação, em especial aqueles publicados antes do fim da década de oitenta, sugeriram a superveniência como uma possível, e promissora, elucidação do estado de coisas em torno do problema da relação entre a mentalidade e o físico. Nos últimos anos, contudo, Kim apresentou um dilema, expressando com bastante pungência que a causação mental revela-se ininte-ligível, valendo ou não valendo a superveniência mente-corpo. Por conseguinte, a superve-niência deixa de compor uma possível solução para o problema, passando a constituí-lo. Como tal conceito de superveniência mente-corpo estende-se naturalmente a uma região de intersecção entre todas as posturas não-reducionistas minimamente fisicalistas, as preo-cupações de Kim, se de fato justificadas, sugerem algo de bastante grave com o fisicalismo não-reducionista. Defenderemos neste trabalho que, apesar do problema da exclusão causal ser genuíno, ainda é cedo para concluirmos a falsidade do fisicalismo não-redutivo. (shrink)

: This paper gives a historical overview of the ways various trends in the philosophy of science dealt with models and their relationship with the topics of heuristics and theoretical dynamics. First of all, N. Campbell’s account of analogies as components of scientific theories is presented. Next, the notion of ‘model’ in the reconstruction of the structure of scientific theories proposed by logical empiricists is examined. This overview finishes with M. Hesse’s attempts to develop Campbell’s early ideas in terms of (...) an analogical inference. The final part of the paper points to contemporary developments on these issues which adopt a cognitivist perspective. It is indicated how discussions in the cognitive sciences might help to flesh out some of the insights philosophers of science had concerning the role models and analogies play in actual scientific theorizing. Key words: models, analogical reasoning, metaphors in science, the structure of scientific theories, theoretical dynamics, heuristics, scientific discovery. (shrink)

Review of Kim, Jaegwon. Philosophy of Mind.

This paper investigates whether it is fruitful to describe the role culture began to play at some point in the Hominin lineage as pointing to a transition in individuality, by reference to the works of Buss, Maynard-Smith and Szathmáry, Michod and Godfrey-Smith. The chief question addressed is whether a population of groups having different cultural phenotypes is either paradigmatically Darwinian or marginal, by using Godfrey-Smith's representation of such transitions in a multi-dimensional space. Richerson and Boyd's «dual inheritance» theory, and the (...) explanation it provides of the evolution of cooperation in the Hominin lineage, is taken into account to shed light on the way Godfrey-Smith deals with cultural evolution, especially concerning the amount of variation in a population of groups with various cultural phenotypes, the role played by multi-level selection in the evolutionary dynamics of such a population and the adequacy of different modalities of group- reproduction. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Kuhn's analysis of the role played by 'exemplars' in normal science should be considered one of his most important contributions to the Philosophy of Science. The paper makes a detailed analysis of the relationship between the various elements of a 'disciplinary matrix'- empirical generalizations, models and exemplars - starting with Kuhn's views as exposed in various of his books and papers. Kuhn's analysis is investigated in the context of the discussions, in the 50s and (...) 60s, about the notion of 'model' in the so called 'received view' of the structure of scientific theories. I refer also to the critics of logical empiricism at this time, that were concerned with analogical models and inspired by Campbell's studies on the dynamics of theories. I argue also that Polanyi's notion of 'tacit knowledge' and some of his discussions of the role played by analogies in mathematics have been an important influence on Kuhn. The paper indicates, furthermore, how Kuhn's intuitions concerning exemplars are being developped in the present, by philosophers of science like Thagard, Paul Churchland and Giere, that adopt a 'cognitivist' stance towards scientific reasoning. (shrink)

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2012v16n1p1 A teoria darwinista tem contribuído para a discussão de problemas nos mais diversos campos filosóficos, entre os quais se inclui a ética e a teoria moral. A sociobiologia e a psicologia evolucionista elucidaram muitos aspectos do comportamento social de diversas espécies animais, a partir de mecanismos como a seleção de parentesco e o altruísmo recíproco que, contudo, são insuficientes para explicar a cooperação no caso humano. Como alternativa, a teoria da dupla herança busca explicar o comportamento humano considerando tanto (...) a biologia quanto as ciências sociais. Segundo esta abordagem, a psicologia social humana é caracterizada por instintos sociais tribais e marcadores simbólicos, que resultam em uma mente que pressupõe princípios morais inatos e universais, selecionados para a vida em grupos orientados por normas sociais, mas que são plasticamente moldados à realidade cultural de cada sociedade. (shrink)

The second edition of the work of the Brazilian physicist Paulo C. Abrantes (2016), entitled Images of nature, images of science, is a good alternative for students of history and philosophy of science. The reason is Abrantes' thesis in this work: to defend that the development of scientific knowledge is dependent on the influence of different images of "nature" and "science" existing during the history of Western scientific-philosophical thought; and an advocate for the historian of science Studying (...) as reasons that allow the adoption of such images at a given time. Through the analysis of historical cases of scientific thought, Abrantes argues that the consolidation of research programs in different subareas of natural science - such as biology, physics and chemistry - was only possible due to the influence, in particular time, of images of nature and science. (shrink)

Discusses the role of education in liberating the oppressed people of the Third World.

We will examine and discuss the nature and content of thedefinitions of the first part of Spinoza’s Ethics in relation to Euclid’s Elements.Our main purpose is to point out that the Spinozistic definitionsare distinct and discrepant from Euclidean definitions in some significantaspects. From this, we will point out and consider the differences andsimilarities that exist between the Euclidean geometric method and theSpinozistic geometric method, in order to problematize the theme of thepresence of the geometric method in Spinoza’s Ethics.

This article endeavours to prove that there were creation myths of human beings or certain things, but there were seldom creation myths of ontological cosmology in ancient China. This will be warranted through the distinction between the concepts of ‘to create’ and ‘to beget’, the distinction between ‘Cosmology I of creationism’ and ‘Cosmology II of begetting’, and the relationship between the One and Many. The only exception is the myth of Nüwa 女娲 as the creator of human beings, but not (...) the creator of the cosmos. Therefore, in ancient Chinese tradition, there were mainly myths of begetting rather than myths of complete creation in the sense similar to creatio ex nihilo.Contribution: Previous research frequently underscores the profound differences between ‘Cosmology I of creationism’ and ‘Cosmology II of begetting’. Based on the discussion of concepts of ‘to create’ [zao 造] and ‘to beget’ [sheng 生], this article argues that, there were mainly myths of begetting rather than myths of complete creation in the sense similar to creatio ex nihilo. (shrink)

This paper discusses John Hick’s response to the problem of religious diversity, based on the distinction between the Real itself and the way He is experienced and thought of by different religious communities. To this end, we divided this work into three sections in addition to the present introduction and the final considerations. In the first section we present the hickian concept of religious phenomenon and discuss the affirmation of him in favor of the ambiguity of the universe; the second (...) section is dedicated to the analysis of Hick’s defense of the rationality of religious belief and in the third section we present Hick’s pluralist hypothesis and some variations and criticisms of this hypothesis proposed by other authors. At the end we present some critical considerations about the success of Hick’s hypothesis to respond to the problem of religious diversity. (shrink)

O livro apresenta o Método Paulo Freire, a mais importante proposta pedagógica pensada a partir da realidade do Terceiro Mundo. Apesar dos mais de vinte anos que o separam da primeira edição, o Método mantém atual a avaliação do papel da educação, o vigor de suas perspectivas e sua aplicabilidade.

Paulo Margutti e José Crisóstomo discutem sobre a possiblidade ou a impossibilidade de ultrapassar o representacionismo correspondentista e principalmente o eventual linguocentrismo da filosofia contemporânea, pós-virada linguística, em que parece que da linguagem pode-se passar apenas à linguagem, a cujo círculo mágico estaríamos, desse modo, inevitavelmente presos. Sendo assim, o mundo “aí fora” novamente nos escapa e o relativismo, o agnosticismo e o ceticismo de novo nos espreitam. Em Nietzsche, é a linguagem, sempre metafórica, que se adéqua aos nossos (...) modos prático-perspectivistas, corpóreos e afetivos, de “recortar” o mundo, ou é o contrário? E em Maturana, o que vem primeiro? Para Crisóstomo, para quem no começo está o ato, ultrapassamos tudo isso através de nosso emaranhamento prático com o mundo, por meio da natureza sensível criativa de nossas práticas e pela tradução de crenças em condutas. Enquanto que, para Margutti, nada disso parece deslocar a primazia incontornável da linguagem, como prática ela própria. Sobre isso, Margutti pergunta pelo suposto aproveitamento, por Crisóstomo, no seu ponto de vista prático-poiético criativo, em versão alegadamente não idealista nem dualista, da noção de autoconsciência, central no idealismo alemão. (shrink)

Experimental results in reference to Brazilian children and adults are presented in the context of current discussions about essentialism and folkbiology. Using an adoption paradigm, we replicate the basic findings of a previous article in this journal concerning the early emergence in children of a birth-parent bias. This cognitive bias supports the claim that causal essentialism cross-culturally constrains the reasoning about the origin, development and maintenance of the characteristics and identity of living kinds. We also report some intriguing differences with (...) earlier findings that speak to theoretical and methodological issues of cultural relativity. (shrink)

Abstract: In a previous article in this journal, Daniel Kelly, Stephen Stich, Kevin Haley, Serena Eng and Daniel Fessler report data that, according to them, foster scepticism about an association between harm and morality existent in the Turiel tradition ( Kelly et al. , 2007 ). This article challenges their interpretation of the data. It does so by explicating some methodological problems in the Turiel tradition that Kelly et al. themselves in a way inherit and by drawing on new evidence (...) coming from a partial replication of their research. (shrink)

One important issue in moral psychology concerns the proper characterisation of the folk understanding of the relationship between harmful transgressions and moral transgressions. Psychologist Elliot Turiel and associates have claimed with a broad range of supporting evidence that harmful transgressions are understood as transgressions that are authority independent and general in scope which, according to them, characterises these transgressions as moral transgressions. Recently many researchers questioned the position advocated by the Turiel tradition with some new evidence. We entered this debate (...) proposing an original, deflationary view in which perceptions of basic-rights violation and injustice are fundamental for the folk understanding of harmful transgressions as moral transgressions in Turiel's sense. In this article we elaborate and refine our deflationary view, while reviewing the debate, addressing various criticisms raised against our perspective, showing how our perspective explains the existent evidence, and suggesting new lines of inquiry. (shrink)

This article presents an analysis of Gödel's dialectica interpretation via a refinement of intuitionistic logic known as linear logic. Linear logic comes naturally into the picture once one observes that the structural rule of contraction is the main cause of the lack of symmetry in Gödel's interpretation. We use the fact that the dialectica interpretation of intuitionistic logic can be viewed as a composition of Girard's embedding of intuitionistic logic into linear logic followed by de Paiva's dialectica interpretation of linear (...) logic. We then investigate the various properties of the dialectica interpretation, such as the characterisation theorem, and variants of Gödel's interpretation within the linear logic context. The role of contraction in extensions to classical logic, arithmetic and analysis is also discussed. (shrink)

O presente artigo discute a crítica de Friedrich Nietzsche ao modo como a noção de história foi utilizada, enquanto um saber objetivo, no âmbito da cultura e da educação na modernidade. O filósofo sustenta que na cultura moderna há um uso desmedido da história, o que constitui um vício que legitima as pseudo-culturas. A educação é, por excelência, o meio propagador da cultura e, segundo Nietzsche, a educação moderna reproduz e legitima um tipo de saber superficial e especializado, que é (...) contrário à vida. No presente artigo elucida-se o conceito de cultura nietzschiano, a fim de compreender as linhas gerais dos apontamentos do filósofo acerca da relação entre história, cultura e educação na modernidade. (shrink)

The pioneering work on environmental regulation in Sweden and that country's leading position in sustainability rankings has paradoxically passed almost unnoticed by academics. To this fact should be added, the scant attention given to the Nordic banking system. Becoming immersed into the realm of Swedish commercial banking ethics, we have focused on one of the top three commercial banks in the country, to map its corporate sustainability policies (CSP) and the compliance of the lending business process (LBP) to these policies. (...) A descriptive-explanatory research framework utilises a critical case with a phronetic design. Data collected through interviews was manipulated under the thematic analysis method. We found a unique understanding of act-utilitarianism, in which, policies and practices are set to prevent financial risks and environment rebounds, as they are symbiotic. This allowed us to enlarge the body of knowledge on Nordic banking's sustainable governance and design the green lending model (GLM). (shrink)

O Estado Novo, corporativo, ancorou toda a sua vasta produção legislativa na área laboral nos princípios, constantes da Constituição de 1933 e do Estatuto do Trabalho Nacional, de proscrição da luta de classes e de solidariedade entre o capital e o trabalho, o que levou a uma forte distorção do direito colectivo de trabalho, marcada pela imposição de sindicatos únicos, pela proibição da greve e pelo forte condicionamento da acção sindical e da negociação colectiva. Nos últimos anos, assistiu-se a uma (...) certa "liberalização" do regime, que se tentava modernizar, até por necessidade do próprio capitalismo português. (shrink)

This paper concerns a recently discovered, puzzling asymmetry in judgments of whether an action is intentional or not (Knobe, Philosophical Psychology 16:309–324, 2003a ; Analysis 63:190–193, b ). We report new data replicating the asymmetry in the context of scenarios wherein an agent achieves an amoral or immoral goal due to luck. Participants’ justifications of their judgments of the intentionality of the agent’s action indicate that two distinct folk concepts of intentional action played a role in their judgments. When viewed (...) from this perspective, the puzzle disappears, although the asymmetry remains. (shrink)

In this book, we come to understand the author's pedagogical thinking even better, through the critical seriousness, humanistic objectivity, and engaged ...

"Mentoring the Mentor" recreates a Freirian dialogue in a printed format. In this volume, sixteen distinguished scholars engage in a critical and thoughtful exchange with Paulo Freire. While some contributors voice appreciation for Freire's ideas and for what it means to -reinvent Freire- in a North American context, others offer sharp critiques of Freire's philosophy and, of equal importance, of the various interpretations of his work. A variety of chapters describe specific uses which have been made of Freire's ideas (...) in diverse educational contexts, from the New York City public schools to the revolutions in Guinea Bissau and Eritrea. Finally, Paulo Freire himself responds to the major issues which are raised in the volume and invites readers to share in a continuing lively dialogue about the meaning of democratic and revolutionary education. -The fundamental task of the mentor is a liberatory task. It is not to encourage the mentor's goals and aspirations and dreams to be reproduced in the mentees, the students, but to give rise to the possibility that the students become the owners of their own history. This is how I understand the need that teachers have to transcend their merely instructive task and to assume the ethical posture of a mentor who truly believes in the total autonomy, freedom, and development of those he or she mentors.- (from Chapter Sixteen, -A Response- by Paulo Freire)". (shrink)

Here a wide distribution of meiotic machinery is shown, indicating the occurrence of sexual processes in all major eukaryotic groups, without exceptions, including the putative “asexuals.” Meiotic machinery has evolved from archaeal DNA repair machinery by means of ancestral gene duplications. Sex is very conserved and widespread in eukaryotes, even though its evolutionary importance is still a matter of debate. The main processes in sex are plasmogamy, followed by karyogamy and meiosis. Meiosis is fundamentally a chromosomal process, which implies recombination (...) and ploidy reduction. Several eukaryotic lineages are proposed to be asexual because their sexual processes are never observed, but presumed asexuality correlates with lack of study. The authors stress the complete lack of meiotic proteins in nucleomorphs and their almost complete loss in the fungus Malassezia. Inversely, complete sets of meiotic proteins are present in fungal groups Glomeromycotina, Trichophyton, and Cryptococcus. Endosymbiont Perkinsela and endoparasitic Microsporidia also present meiotic proteins. (shrink)

In this volume, we have chosen to highlight the importance of education to human rights by reprinting two articles written by Paulo Freire in 1970 for the _Harvard Educational Review_. These articles contain many of Freire's original ideas on human rights and education—issues that are central to his work. Freire was a pioneer in promoting the universal right to education and literacy as part of a commitment to people's struggle against oppression. As Jerome Bruner recognized after Freire's death in (...) May 1997, Freire left as a legacy his commitment to basic human rights: "He was a brave man as well as a far-sighted one. He made us aware of our mindless cruelties, and now the challenge to all of us is to do something about those cruelties.". (shrink)

Upon its recent publication in Portuguese, Paulo Freire’s newest book became an instant success. This English translation is sure to meet with similar acclaim. In Teachers as Cultural Workers, Freire speaks directly to teachers about the lessons learned from a lifetime of experience as an educator and social theorist. No other book so cogently explains the implications for classroom practice of Freire’s latest ideas and the pathbreaking theories found in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and other treatises.This book challenges all (...) who teach to reflect critically on the meaning of the act of teaching as well as the meaning of learning. Freire shows why a teacher’s success depends on a permanent commitment to learning and training, as part of an ongoing appraisal of classroom practice. By observing the curiosity of students and the manner through which students develop strategies for learning, the teacher is helped in discovering doubts, successes, and the teacher’s mistakes. When teachers open themselves to recognize the different roads students take in order to learn, they will become involved in a continual reconstruction of their own paths of curiosity, opening the doors to habits of learning that will benefit everyone in the classroom. (shrink)

_Explores connections between Neoplatonism and Indian philosophy._.