(E. Chuliá. El poder y la palabra. Prensa y poder político en las dictaduras. El régimen de Franco ante la prensa y el periodismo, UNED, Madrid, 2001.

Philosophy has historically played an important role: it has provided individuals and whole societies with conceptions of the world, which have made meaningful their individual and collective lives. But in our contemporary world, that role has been minimized under the impact of science and technology, the global exchange of information, and the transformation of social structures. The possibility of progress in this respect depends on the possibility of recovering the values of respect and love for others, as well as respect (...) for their cultural values. Finally, it depends on the possibility of turning the notion of humanity into a meaningful one for everybody—not only as a biological species—but rather as a truly global community of people, where differences will always exists and will be most welcome and common projects in the interest of everybody will be agreed upon and developed. (shrink)

In this paper the role of values in scientific and technological processes of inquiry is discussed. It is argued that a distinction between science and technology cannot any longer be attempted on the basis of being based upon respectively different sets of values and aims. Furthermore, it is argued that usually these attempts have wrongly characterised science and technology in terms of a fixed and immutable set of aims, values and norms. This sort of characterisation has often been put forward (...) not only for the purposes of such a distinction but as a general idea in philosophy of science. Some of the problems of such and approach are discussed, particularly by examining some recent ideas of Shapere and Laudan, concerning the processes of consensus shaping in the sciences. So, it is concluded that we have to reject the idea that both science and technology are based on a technical interest in knowledge, an idea that normally blurrs the significance of changes at their axiological level, as much as the conception that science and technology belong to completely different camps, which quite often takes their respective axiological levels as immutable. (shrink)

In The Logic of Scientific Discovery Karl Popper rejected psicologism, i. e., “the doctrine that statements can be justified not only by statements but also by perceptual experience”. According to him, this doctrine founders on the problem of induction and of universals. “For we can utter no scie..

This paper focuses on the conceptual relationship between rationality and progress as applied to scientific development. The concept of methodology is used in the sense of a model of scientific change. It is argued, as against e.g. recent discussion by Larry Laudan, that progress implies rationality. The notion of rationality useful for this conception of scientific development includes instrumental rationality, butalso the idea of rational paradigm-shift, which is analysed in terms of changes of conceptual frameworks. The key idea is the (...) posibility of a rational reconstruction of series of conceptual frameworks, where the shift from one framework to its successor may be reconstructed as rational in the sense of there being reasons in the successor for accepting the change, and thus the whole series being rational. (shrink)

In this paper, some theoretical problems about a relevant conceptualization helpful to understand resistance to scientific and technological change are discussed. An interpretative perspective is developed, and some concepts are elucidated, according to which certain processes become scientific changes because, among other things, but in a fundamental way, they are constituted as changes by members of a community. Certain cognitive processes are typified as “scientific”, “technological” and “scientific-technological”, and the importance of their relationship to processes of exploitation is stressed. It (...) is suggested that resistance to changes increases and becomes more problematic when less exploitation is involved in the changes, i.e. when the processes are closer to what here is called scientific, rather than technological or scientific-technological knowledge. Some exampIes are drawn from the history of science to illustrate these ideas. (shrink)

Driven by the use cases of PubChemRDF and SCAIView, we have developed a first community-based clinical trial ontology (CTO) by following the OBO Foundry principles. CTO uses the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as the top level ontology and reuses many terms from existing ontologies. CTO has also defined many clinical trial-specific terms. The general CTO design pattern is based on the PICO framework together with two applications. First, the PubChemRDF use case demonstrates how a drug Gleevec is linked to multiple (...) clinical trials investigating Gleevec’s related chemical compounds. Second, the SCAIView text mining engine shows how the use of CTO terms in its search algorithm can identify publications referring to COVID-19-related clinical trials. Future opportunities and challenges are discussed. (shrink)

In 1966 the Brazilian physicist Klaus Tausk (b. 1927) circulated a preprint from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, criticizing Adriana Daneri, Angelo Loinger, and Giovanni Maria Prosperi`s theory of 1962 on the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. A heated controversy ensued between two opposing camps within the orthodox interpretation of quantum theory, represented by Leon Rosenfeld and Eugene P. Wigner. The controversy went well beyond the strictly scientific issues, however, reflecting philosophical and political commitments within the (...) context of the Cold War, the relationship between science in developed and Third World countries, the importance of social skills, and personal idiosyncrasies. (shrink)

We are walking too quickly down the road to physical and psychological utopia without pausing to assess the potential damage to our humanity from this brave new ...

On a widely held characterization, triadic joint attention is the capacity to perceptually attend to an object or event together with another subject. In the last four decades, research in developmental psychology has provided increasing evidence of the crucial role that this capacity plays in socio-cognitive development, early language acquisition, and the development of perspective-taking. Yet, there is a striking discrepancy between the general agreement that joint attention is critical in various domains, and the lack of theoretical consensus on how (...) to account for it. This paper pursues three interrelated aims: (i) it examines the contrast between reductive and non-reductive views of (triadic) joint attention, by bringing into focus the notion of recursive mindreading; (ii) it assembles, advances, and discusses a number of arguments against reductive views; (iii) finally, in dialogue with some prominent non-reductive views, it outlines the case for a non-reductive view that gives pride of place to the idea that co-attenders relate to one another as a ‘you’. (shrink)

Humble leadership can be described as a positive psychological feature that allows leaders to admit their limitations, be open to new ideas, and give a voice to others while also recognizing their merits. The present study (n = 268 participants) explored the persuasive effects of a female politician communicating a humble stance by considering the role emotional displays at play (joy, calmness, sadness, and anger) when discussing a moral issue (hosting immigrants). The results revealed that the politician elicited positive emotions (...) and evaluations of her competence and benevolence, especially when exhibiting a sad facial display, by contributing to the intention to accept the moral gist of her persuasive message. Overall, these ‘gendered’ effects are discussed in relation to the ‘political authenticity’, which can be perceived as high especially when the humble message is connected with several social reasons, as is the case with gender or social status. (shrink)

The way in which people change and represent their spiritual evolution is often determined by recurrent language structures. Through the analysis of ancient and modern stories and their words and images, this book describes the nature of conversion through explorations of the encounter with the religious message, the discomfort of spiritual uncertainty, the loss of personal and social identity, the anxiety of destabilization, the reconstitution of the self and the discovery of a new language of the soul.

Volume I provides a detailed analysis of cylindric algebras, starting with a formulation of their axioms and a development of their elementary properties, and proceeding to a deeper study of their interrelationships by means of general algebraic notions such as subalgebras, homomorphisms, direct products, free algebras, reducts and relativized algebras.

_The Radical Orthodoxy Reader _presents a selection of key readings in the field of Radical Orthodoxy, the most influential theological movement in contemporary academic theology. Radical Orthodoxy draws on pre-Enlightenment theology and philosophy to engage critically with the assumption and priorities of secularism, modernity, postmodernity, and associated theologies. In doing so it explores a wide and exciting range of issues: music, language, society, the body, the city, power, motion, space, time, personhood, sex and gender. As such it is both controversial (...) and extremely stimulating; provoking much fruitful debate amongst contemporary theologians. To assist those encountering Radical Orthodoxy for the first time, each section has an introductory commentary, related reading and helpful questions to encourage in-depth understanding and further study. (shrink)

Zum ersten Mal uberhaupt werden durch die vorliegende Untersuchung verschiedene zentrale Aspekte der literarischen Kleinform aSprucho in umfassender Weise behandelt.

The prologue of the Sophistici elenchi is as close an Aristotelian text gets to dealing with language as a subject matter in its own right, only in reverse. Language and its features bear consideration to the extent that they account for some major predicaments discursive reasoning is prone to, both as a separate and as a common endeavour. That being said, the linguistic pitfalls that trick us into thinking that whatever is the case for words and word-compounds is also the (...) case for the things and facts linguistic items stand for reveal as much about good linguistic habits and sound argumentation as they themselves are revealed by the principles and rules our argumentation goes by. In this connection, Aristotle resorted to a curious (or not so curious) analogy between words and counters which played a major role in explaining why language is such a powerful source of illusion and deception. As it happens, Aristotle accounting analogy is a case in point for showcasing the level of sophistication medieval Latin literature on fallacies achieved as early as the first half of the twelfth century. As a matter of fact, Western commentators managed to build compelling cases both in favour of and against the understanding that was to become and still is the standard story – which, of course, speaks volumes about their exegetical proficiency and technical expertise. On the one hand, trusting implicitly Boethius’ translation and well aware of his views on disputational hazards as opposed to computational reliability, they usually understood Aristotle’s comparison as if it was an analogy in name only. On the other hand, despite Boethius’ translation put them at a considerable disadvantage, Latin commentators were able to construe Aristotle’s analogy as bringing together two sets of symbolic variables (words and counters) that are neither entirely free nor entirely bound – which expose them to subtle but critical shifts in value and meaning. (shrink)

This paper reviews the hole argument as an argument against spacetime substantivalism. After a careful presentation of the argument itself, I critically review possible responses.

I chart the philosophical development of neglected figure Margaret Macdonald and situate that development in the context of mid-century analytic philosophy more broadly. I examine Macdonald’s changing attitude towards verificationism, and show that these changing views led her, in 1950 and beyond, to a very thorough appreciation of language use as capable of being employed in the execution of distinctive kinds of performative act. I compare Macdonald’s views with the far better known work of J. L. Austin, and I emphasise (...) the extent to which she has, despite her insightful contributions, been omitted from the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Despite its importance in the history of philosophy, the work of the Spanish thinker Averro"es (1126-1198) has been left largely unexplored in this century. This book is the only general account of Averro"es' philosophy in English. Leaman analyzes his thought and influence, particularly his metaphysics and theory of meaning, arguing that while his work belongs within the cultural and political context of medieval Islam, it remains of considerable philosophical and historical significance.