This article critically analyses the notion of intentionality from several philosophical cognitive points of view. The authors argue that the notion of mental representation in the wider sense and intentionality in the narrower sense remains elusive despite accommodated paradoxes, improved semantic precision and more sophisticated strategies in dealing with intentionality. We will argue that different approaches to intentionality appear to be coherent in their inferences. However, most of them become contradictory and mutually exclusive when juxtaposed and applied to borderline questions. (...) While the explanatory value of both philosophy of mind as well as cognitive psychology should not be underestimated, we must note that not even hard-core neuroscience has been able to pin point what is going on in our minds, let alone come up with a clear cut explanation how it works or a definition of what thought really is. To date, however, intentionality is the best of all explanatory models regarding mental representations. (shrink)

O objetivo desse artigo é apresentar com base no pensamento do filósofo alemão Gottlob Frege, a concepção de conhecimento, partindo especialmente dos artigos “Sobre o sentido e a referência” e “As fontes de conhecimento em Matemática e em Ciências Naturais Matemáticas”. Para Frege só poderíamos afirmar que conhecemos alguma coisa, se o pensamento expressado por esta coisa for reconhecido como verdadeiro. Desta forma, antes de apresentarmos a concepção do autor relacionada à forma de reconhecer a verdade expressada por um pensamento, (...) temos que compreender o que Frege entende por verdade. Abordaremos primeiramente aquilo que Frege chama de “fontes do conhecimento”, que seriam as possibilidades de verificação de verdade de um enunciado, e em sequência, a concepção da linguagem, visando apontar de que modo “verdade” e “linguagem” se relacionam. Em seguida, buscaremos orientar nosso trabalho em torno das fontes de conhecimento como formas de reconhecer a verdade, apresentando suas contribuições e suas dificuldades.: The following article aims to present based in the thought of the german philosophy Gottlob Frege, the conception of knowledge, especially starting from the articles “On Sense and Reference” and “The sources of knowledge in Mathematics and Mathematical Natural Sciences”. For Frege we could only affirm we know something, if the expressed thought by this thing is recognized as truth. Thus, before we present the author’s conception related to how to recognize the truth expressed by a thought, we have to understand what Frege understand by truth. First we will discuss what Frege calls "sources of knowledge", which would be the possibilities of truth’s verification of a statement, and in sequence, the language’s conception aiming to identify how "truth" and "language" are related. Then we seek to guide our work around the sources of knowledge as ways to recognize the truth, presenting their contributions and their difficulties. Keywords: Experience. Logic. Geometry. Truth. Knowledge. (shrink)

Our intent with this article, given its space limitations, is converging two contemporary models of mind domain. Both are fundamental heuristic tools, being the first, the modular theory of mind, which enables us to understand important aspects of human cognition such as language, memory, learning (cognitive sciences). The second, the ornamental mind theory, explains certain apparent wasteful behaviors. The fundamental presuppositions of both metaphors are distinct: whilst the modular model is a product of cognitive sciences, the ornamental model is the (...) yield of the sexual selection principle. Basically, as heuristic tools, the modular theory demonstrates the mind as a computation, as a product of selection (natural selection) which processes information; on its turn, the ornamental mind theory proposes an awkward idea, which Amotz Zahavi called the handicap principle (sexual selection). (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 O presente estudo pretende analisar algumas questões relacionadas à forma como a historiografia avaliou a contribuiçáo lógica oferecida pelos filósofos estoicos. Trata-se, sobretudo, de dois posicionamentos em aberta oposiçáo: uma primeira análise é essencialmente negativa e depreciativa, negando qualquer valor às elaborações estoicas no campo da lógica; de outra parte, existe uma revalorizaçáo da importância da lógica dos estoicos na história da Filosofia, de modo geral, e na história da Lógica, especificamente. A principal (...) referência positiva aqui sublinhada é o trabalho do lógico Lukasiewicz. Pretende-se, assim, oferecer subsídios para uma reflexáo que amplie a avaliaçáo do potencial que a lógica estoica oferece aos estudiosos da Filosofia e da Lógica. (shrink)

O presente artigo pressupõe que contextos científicos se reduzem a contextos linguísticos e que, assumindo uma tese wittgensteiniana, portanto, “o mistério não está nas coisas; está no confuso modo que adotamos para falar delas”. Os pressupostos epistemológicos de tal tese fundamentam-se em quatro características da razão mesma, a saber, que: o exercício racional se faz mediante conceitos, até certo ponto inexatos e vagos; os conceitos elaborados pela atividade racional constituem-se em categorias para o pensamento; a atividade racional é discursiva, isto (...) é, fixa-se, expressa-se e comunica-se por meio da linguagem; e, por final, o produto final da atividade racional são os contextos racionais ou contextos científicos que são, na verdade, contextos linguísticos. (shrink)

Prof. Dr. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner combines two essential attributes: He is one of the brilliant minds of our times, and his specialization is on one of the most relevant discussions on philosophy, Trans/Post/Metahumanism. He received his BA from King’s College/University of London, his MA by thesis from the University of Durham, UK, and his Dr. Phil. from the University of Jena, Germany. In recent years, he taught at the University of Jena, University of Erfurt, University of Klagenfurt, Ewha Woman’s University (...) in Seoul and University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. (shrink)

Departing from modal logic, Jean-Yves Girard, as a logician interested in philosophy, presented a distinction between essentialism and existentialism in logic. Carlos Lobo reflected about the Girard’s concept to reinterpret the Husserlian Platonism in regard of the status of logical modalities. We start rescuing the notion of modal logic in the Edmund Husserl’s works, especially Formal and Transcendental Logic and First Philosophy. Developing this reflexion, we propose a new contribution to this discussion, reinterpreting the platonic influence in the Husserlian notions (...) of eidos and science, light of some readings of Lee Hardy and Johanna M. Tito. As a conclusion of this dialogue between Husserl and Girard, the method of eidetic variation is presented as a tool to review the idea of science, in a manner consistent with the phenomenological approach. (shrink)

Introduction: The actions taken by the government to deal with the consequences of the coronavirus diseases 2019 pandemic caused different levels of restriction on the mobility of the population. The need to continue offering physical exercise to individuals after stroke became an emergency. However, these individuals may have barriers to adhere to the programs delivered remotely. There is a lack of evidence related to adherence, attendance, safety, and satisfaction of remote exercise programs for this population.Objective: The aim was to evaluate (...) adherence and barriers to attend a remote physical exercise program for individuals after stroke. We aimed to identify adherence and attendance rate of the remote physical exercise program ; to identify the safety of a remote physical exercise program ; and to identify the overall experience to participate in a remote program.Materials and methods: This is a longitudinal study, including 36 stroke survivors who already attended a face-to-face physical exercise program prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The remote physical exercise program included sessions for 2 days/week for a duration of 22 weeks, with a total of 44 sessions, which were delivered asynchrony via recorded video sessions. As outcome measures, we performed two questionnaires to identify attendance, barriers, safety, and overall experience related to the program.Results: The adherence rate was 86. The attendance rate was 19, with a total of 8 sessions. The main barriers for lower attendance rate were as follows: lack of motor skills and physical fitness to workout in 80 reports, followed by no exercise companion in 44 reports. The remote physical program has been shown to be safe, and the overall experience was positive from the perspectives of the participants and the family members.Conclusion: Although the adherence rate was high, the attendance rate was low on the remote physical exercise program. The main barriers to attending the program remotely reflect the need of tailoring individually an asynchrony mode of delivering the sessions to individuals after stroke. Our results also indicate how the COVID-19 impacted the health conditions of stroke survivors. The program was safe, and the overall experience indicated a change in the mental, physical, and social health of individuals after stroke and their family members. (shrink)

The use of transcranial Electrical Stimulation in the modulation of cognitive brain functions to improve neuropsychiatric conditions has extensively increased over the decades. tES techniques have also raised new challenges associated with study design, stimulation protocol, functional specificity, and dose-response relationship. In this paper, we addressed challenges through the emerging methodology to investigate the dose-response relationship of High Definition-transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, identifying the role of negative valence in tinnitus perception. In light of the neurofunctional testable framework and tES application, (...) hypotheses were formulated to measure clinical and surrogate endpoints. We posited that conscious pairing adequately pleasant stimuli with tinnitus perception results in correction of the loudness misperception and would be reinforced by concurrent active HD-tDCS on the left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex. The dose-response relationship between HD-tDCS specificity and the loudness perception is also modeled. We conducted a double-blind, randomized crossover pilot study with six recruited tinnitus patients. Accrued data was utilized to design a well-controlled adaptive seamless Bayesian dose-response study. The sample size and optimum interims were anticipated for adaptive decision-making about efficacy, safety, and single session dose parameters. Furthermore, preliminary pilot study results were sufficient to show a significant difference within the longitudinally detected self-report tinnitus loudness between before and under positive emotion induction. This study demonstrated a research methodology used to improve emotion regulation in tinnitus patients. In the projected method, positive emotion induction is essential for promoting functional targeting under HD-tDCS anatomical specificity to indicate the efficacy and facilitate the dose-finding process. The continuous updating of prior knowledge about efficacy and dose during the exploratory stage adapts the anticipated dose-response model. Consequently, the effective dose range to make superiority neuromodulation in correcting loudness misperception of tinnitus will be redefined. Highly effective dose adapts the study to a standard randomized trial and transforms it into the confirmatory stage in which active HD-tDCS protocol is compared with a sham trial. Establishing the HD-tDCS intervention protocols relying on this novel method provides reliable evidence for regulatory agencies to approve or reject the efficacy and safety. Furthermore, this paper supports a technical report for designing multimodality data-driven complementary investigations in emotion regulation, including EEG-driven neuro markers, Stroop-driven attention biases, and neuroimaging-driven brain network dynamics. (shrink)

The growth of urban violence in Brazil, as in other countries, has led citizens to demand more severe and punitive measures to solve the problem of juvenile crime. One motion submitted to the Brazilian parliament, for instance, proposes to reduce the age of penal majority from 18 to 16 years. Our hypothesis is that popular opinions about this proposal are largely constrained by construal levels and psychological distance. Accordingly, we expect that the knowledge and proximity to the circumstances associated with (...) juvenile transgression will influence opinions about the proposal. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated how opinion against or for the proposal can be explained by psychological distance and moral development theory. We studied two samples, composed of people who do not have a deep experience with the subject and workers from a juvenile justice court. After collecting socio-demographic information from the subjects and their answer to moral dilemmas, the data was subjected to a multivariate analysis by multimodal logistic regression for socio-demographic characteristics, Kohlberg moral stages, and opinion on the reduction of APM as dependent variables. Our findings suggest that 1) opinion about the APM depends on psychological distance and 2) socioeconomic variables may influence the average construal level of adolescent transgressors in the public’s perspective. (shrink)

AimTo evaluate the cognitive functioning of subjects practicing trance mediumship in Brazil.MethodThe study was based on the measurement of cognitive functions of 19 spirits mediums through neuropsychological tests such as the Brief Cognitive Screening Battery, the Verbal Fluency Test, the digit span test, the cube test, the five digit test and an evaluation of mental health through scales such as the Beck Depression Inventory, the Self-Report Questionnaire, and the Trauma History Questionnaire. The sample included the participation of spirit mediums divided (...) into two groups. The more experienced group with 11 subjects had more than 10 years of mediumistic practice, while the other less experienced group with 8 subjects had 1–5 years of experience. The inclusion criteria were psychophonic mediums with regular trance practices for at least one year. The data collected were analyzed using the SPSS statistical package.ResultsRegarding performance on the BCSB and digit span test, all subjects reached scores at the median or higher in comparison to standardized scores of Brazilians. Scores of 90% on the cube test and 42% on the FAS were reached in comparison to median or higher values, versus the median of standardized scores among Brazilians. On the FDT, we found statistical significance in the choice stage, with higher performance of subjects whose initial age of trance recognition occurred before 21 years old. On the BDI scale, no participant met the criteria for major depression. The SRQ showed an incidence of common mental disorders in 21% of the sample, which was more prevalent in the LEG.ConclusionThe cognitive functioning of subjects who practice trance mediumship in Brazil is associated with cognitive health. Executive dysfunction may be a tendency in LEG. However, an incidence of common mental disorders in the LEG was observed. Executive processing was higher in the subgroup with early practices of recognizing the phenomenon. (shrink)

Over recent years, various semantics have been proposed for dealing with updates in the setting of logic programs. The availability of different semantics naturally raises the question of which are most adequate to model updates. A systematic approach to face this question is to identify general principles against which such semantics could be evaluated. In this paper we motivate and introduce a new such principle the refined extension principle. Such principle is complied with by the stable model semantics for (single) (...) logic programs. It turns out that none of the existing semantics for logic program updates, even though generalisations of the stable model semantics, comply with this principle. For this reason, we define a refinement of the dynamic stable model semantics for Dynamic Logic Programs that complies with the principle. (shrink)

O estudo analisa os álbuns confeccionados pelas professoras do primeiro ano primário do Colégio Farroupilha (Porto Alegre/RS), de 1948 a 1966, com fotografias das turmas e as cartinhas de cada aluno, acompanhadas de fotografia individual. Os alunos entregavam o álbum à diretora da escola na "Festa do Livro", evento realizado anualmente, no mês de outubro, para marcar a passagem à nova cartilha a ser utilizada: Cartilha Proença (1926), de Antonio Firmino de Proença. O colégio adotava, no início da alfabetização, a (...) Cartilha de Vivi e Vavá (1938), de Célia Rabello. Em setembro, os alunos chegavam ao fim dessa cartilha, sabendo ler, escrever e contar. Para comemorar o processo de alfabetização, a cartilha apresentava como último texto de leitura "Festa do Livro", mote para a realização de evento similar na escola, que também comemorava a entrada da primavera. Os álbuns e, especialmente, as cartinhas, são um expressivo corpus documental do cotidiano da escola e das práticas educativas realizadas ao longo do primeiro ano, quando se efetivava o processo de alfabetização,expressando toda uma rede paralela de significações. O estudo detém-se no exame da materialidade desse acervo, assim como analisa a prática de escritas escolares infantis, objetivando perceber os mecanismos continuidade e descontinuidade presentes no trabalho pedagógico. (shrink)

O estudo analisa os álbuns confeccionados pelas professoras do primeiro ano primário do Colégio Farroupilha (Porto Alegre/RS), de 1948 a 1966, com fotografias das turmas e as cartinhas de cada aluno, acompanhadas de fotografia individual. Os alunos entregavam o álbum à diretora da escola na �Festa do Livro�, evento realizado anualmente, no mês de outubro, para marcar a passagem à nova cartilha a ser utilizada: Cartilha Proença (1926), de Antonio Firmino de Proença. O colégio adotava, no início da alfabetização, a (...) Cartilha de Vivi e Vavá (1938), de Célia Rabello. Em setembro, os alunos chegavam ao fim dessa cartilha, sabendo ler, escrever e contar. Para comemorar o processo de alfabetização, a cartilha apresentava como último texto de leitura �Festa do Livro�, mote para a realização de evento similar na escola, que também comemorava a entrada da primavera. Os álbuns e, especialmente, as cartinhas, são um expressivo corpus documental do cotidiano da escola e das práticas educativas realizadas ao longo do primeiro ano, quando se efetivava o processo de alfabetização, expressando toda uma rede paralela de significações. O estudo detém-se no exame da materialidade desse acervo, assim como analisa a prática de escritas escolares infantis, objetivando perceber os mecanismos de continuidade e descontinuidade presentes no trabalho pedagógico. (shrink)

In its purpose of rethink the relation between truth and method, the philosophical hermeneutics recovers the philosophical problem of the comprehension, privileging as main reference the truth experience of art as an ontological occurrence, which singularity enlarges the knowledge building about the human reality and drives a critic to the methodological model of the scientific modern rationality. The aim of this work is to analyze the character of ontological opening of the art as a truth experience and human formation, considering (...) the nature of its declarative language and the way of being of its own unhide (aletheia). As an expression of finitude, how the art declaration, in its come-to-talk, is determinant for a formation hermeneutics? It is shown the explicit of the art’s updating declaration in its ontological truth character as an experience of game, symbol and party. It is highlighted the hermeneutical relation between the art and formation emphasizing the hermeneutical experience of art in its horizon of opening, dialogical iteration and growing of meaning questions about the human existential reality. (shrink)

v. 1 Dottrina del peccato originale. -- v. 2. Le nozioni di peccato e colpa.

In actuarial parlance, the price of an insurance policy is considered fair if customers bearing the same risk are charged the same price. The estimate of this fair amount hinges on the expected value obtained by weighting the different claims by their probability. We argue that, historically, this concept of actuarial fairness originates in an Aristotelian principle of justice in exchange (equality in risk). We will examine how this principle was formalized in the 16th century and shaped in life insurance (...) during the following two hundred years, in two different interpretations. The Domatian account of actuarial fairness relied on subjective uncertainty: An agreement on risk was fair if both parties were equally ignorant about the chances of an uncertain event. The objectivist version grounded any agreement on an objective risk estimate drawn from a mortality table. We will show how the objectivist approach collapsed in the market for life annuities during the 18th century, leaving open the question of why we still speak of actuarial fairness as if it were an objective expected value. (shrink)

The text analyses the new images produced by artificial neural networks such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) from the perspective of photography and, more specifically, cameraless photography. The images produced by GANs are located within the wider framework of the impact of machine learning technologies on contemporary visual culture and contemporary artistic practices. In the final section, the article focuses on the work of two artists who have explicity tackled the relations between GAN-generated images and the traditions of photography and (...) cameraless photography, with their multiple intertwinings of human and non-human agencies: Mario Klingemann and Grégory Chatonsky. (shrink)

Often presented as a new form of materialism, theories of media have been repeatedly fascinated by the idea of dematerialization—more precisely, by a vision of the history of technical media as a process teleologically oriented toward a future characterized by the overcoming of the weight, the opaqueness, and the resistance of materiality and by the advent of new, pervasive forms of instantaneous communication. Light, be it natural or artificial, has often played a key role in this historical narrative. With its (...) diffused presence, limitless plasticity, ultimate speed, ambiguous status between infinitely small particles and electromagnetic waves, and crucial role in the transmission of images and signals, light has often raised the question of the materiality of media itself, pointing to the possibility of immediacy—of an immediate, instantaneous, immaterial transmission. In this article I analyze the presence of this idea of dematerialization as the end point of media history in the writings of László Moholy-Nagy and Marshall McLuhan, whose thinking about media is centered on the assumption that light is the most fundamental medium, one that leads the entire range of technical media to gradually dematerialize and merge within the environment or even dissolve into the atmosphere. (shrink)

An ontology of Leibnizian relationalism, consisting in distance relations among sparse matter points and their change only, is well recognized as a serious option in the context of classical mechanics. In this paper, we investigate how this ontology fares when it comes to general relativistic physics. Using a Humean strategy, we regard the gravitational field as a means to represent the overall change in the distance relations among point particles in a way that achieves the best combination of being simple (...) and being informative. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is twofold. First, it provides a quick look at the foundations of modern relational mechanics by tracing its development from Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti's original ideas until present-day's pure shape dynamics. Secondly, it discusses the most appropriate metaphysics for pure shape dynamics, showing that relationalism is more of a nuanced thesis rather than an elusive one. The chapter ends with a brief assessment of the prospects of pure shape dynamics in light of quantum physics.

This paper provides a detailed analysis of how, according to Kant, the moral badness of some third parties’ actions can be established with certainty (by anyone, not only by the agent’s own conscience or by God). This account helps clarify why Kant affirms that some forms of wrongdoing (of which there are a “multitude of woeful examples”) can be demonstrated to be immoral, while excluding the possibility of proving the moral goodness of any action. The paper concludes by arguing that (...) the possible certainty of judgements imputing immorality to actions of others is not rational but rather moral. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on relationalism about space and time as motivated by a minimalist ontology of the physical world: there are only matter points that are individuated by the distance relations among them, with these relations changing. We assess two strategies to combine this ontology with physics, using classical mechanics as example: the Humean strategy adopts the standard, non-relationalist physical theories as they stand and interprets their formal apparatus as the means of bookkeeping of the change of the distance relations (...) instead of committing us to additional elements of the ontology. The alternative theory strategy seeks to combine the relationalist ontology with a relationalist physical theory that reproduces the predictions of the standard theory in the domain where these are empirically tested. We show that, as things stand, this strategy cannot be accomplished without compromising a minimalist relationalist ontology. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta los resultados preliminares obtenidos en la conformación del Atlas Iberoamericano en Bioética que ha desarrollado el Centro Anáhuac de Desarrollo Estratégico en Bioética (CADEBI) respecto a la identificación y análisis de las instituciones de Bioética existentes en la Región. Se realizó una revisión documental a través de motores de búsqueda, bases de datos, redes sociales y otras fuentes. La información obtenida se agrupó en seis diferentes categorías de acuerdo con la estructura, objetivos y actividades que desarrollan. De (...) esta manera, se realizó un diagnóstico inicial con base en las fuentes documentales disponibles en la Web. Como parte de los resultados, se identificaron 157 instituciones en 25 países; así como la variación en la densidad institucional, concentrándose principalmente en España (29 instituciones), México (26 instituciones), Argentina (17 instituciones), Brasil (13 instituciones), Chile (11 instituciones) y Colombia (8 instituciones). Además, se resalta la importancia de las comisiones nacionales de bioética en el desarrollo institucional, señalando la relación entre el avance científico y tecnológico de los países y el desarrollo de la bioética. El texto concluye con la propuesta de crear un Observatorio de la Red Iberoamericana de Bioética para documentar y promover el intercambio institucional y científico en la Región, así como algunas recomendaciones derivadas del desarrollo de este trabajo. (shrink)

Background Neuroimaging and lesion studies suggested that the dorsolateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices mediate visual metacognitive awareness. The causal evidence provided by non-invasive brain stimulation, however, is inconsistent. -/- Objective/hypothesis Here we revisit a major figure discrimination experiment adding a new Kanizsa figure task trying to resolve whether bilateral continuous theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS) over these regions affects perceptual metacognition. Specifically, we tested whether subjective visibility ratings and/or metacognitive efficiency are lower when cTBS is applied to these two (...) regions in comparison to an active control region. -/- Methods A within-subjects design including three sessions spaced by one-week intervals was implemented. In each session, every participant was administered bilateral cTBS to either prefrontal, control or parietal cortices. Two concurrent tasks were performed, a real and an illusory figure task, stabilising objective performance with use of an adaptive staircase procedure. -/- Results When performing the replicated task, cTBS was found insufficient to disrupt neither visibility ratings nor metacognitive efficiency. However, with use of Kanizsa style illusory figures, cTBS over the dorsolateral prefrontal, but not over the posterior parietal cortex, was observed to significantly diminish metacognitive efficiency. -/- Conclusion(s) Real and illusory figure tasks demonstrated different cTBS effects. A possible explanation is the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in the creation of expectations, which is necessary for efficient metacognition. Failure to replicate previous findings for the real figure task, however, cannot be said to support, conclusively, the notion that these brain regions have a causal role in metacognitive awareness. This inconsistent finding may result from certain limitations of our study, thereby suggesting the need for yet further investigation. (shrink)

Esse texto é um escrito que, ao final, é um termo médio entre um Artigo e um Ensaio. O objetivo é expor nossa compreensão sobre o sentido d“o material” e as implicações onto(epistemo)lógicas desta concepção no pensamento de Karl Marx. Em plano geral, primeiramente, nosso texto discorre sobre o que nomeamos de “a questão primeira”, qual seja: o que é “o material” no interior e no contexto dos escritos de Marx? Para cumprir essa tarefa procedemos com leituras de textos marxianos (...) visando identificar, neles, passagens importantes aonde o conceito de “material” é pressuposto, citado ou implicado. No segundo momento do texto, afirmamos que os resultados das análises do sentido d“o material” nos possibilitam induzir e/ou deduzir que o materialismo de Marx é dialético. Por fim, apresentamos algumas conclusões que decorrem do aceite da validade e veracidade da tese de que Marx pensa dialeticamente, de que seu materialismo é dialético. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is characterised by marked language deficits, but it is not clear how these deficits arise from the alteration of genes related to the disease. The goal of this paper is to aid the bridging of the gap between genes and schizophrenia and, ultimately, give support to the view that the abnormal presentation of language in this condition is heavily rooted in the evolutionary processes that brought about modern language. To that end we will focus on how the schizophrenic brain (...) processes language and, particularly, on its distinctive oscillatory profile during language processing. Additionally, we will show that candidate genes for schizophrenia are overrepresented among the set of genes that are believed to be important for the evolution of the human faculty of language. These genes crucially include (and are related to) genes involved in brain rhythmicity. We will claim that this translational effort and the links we uncover may help develop an understanding of language evolution, along with the aetiology of schizophrenia, its clinical/linguistic profile, and its high prevalence among modern populations. (shrink)

The focus of the following article is on the use of new robotic systems in the manufacturing industry with respect to the social dimension. Since “intuitive” human–machine interaction (HMI) in robotic systems becomes a significant objective of technical progress, new models of work organization are needed. This hypothesis will be investigated through the following two aims: The first aim is to identify relevant research questions related to the potential use of robotic systems in different systems of work organization at the (...) manufacturing shop-floor level. The second aim is to discuss the conceptualization of (old) organizational problems of human–robot interaction (HRI). In this context, the article reflects on the limits of cognitive and perceptual workload for robot operators in complex working systems. This will be particularly relevant whenever more robots with different “roles” are to be increasingly used in the manufacturing industry. The integration of such complex socio-technical systems needs further empirical and conceptual research with regard to “social” aspects of the technical dimension. Future research should, therefore, also integrate economic and societal issues to understand the full dimensions of new human–robot interaction in industry today. (shrink)

Pure shape dynamics (PSD) is a novel implementation of the relational framework originally proposed by Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti. PSD represents a Leibnizian/Machian approach to physics in that it completely describes the dynamical evolution of a physical system without resorting to any structure external to the system itself. The chapter discusses how PSD effectively describes a de Broglie-Bohm N-body system and the conceptual benefits of such a relational description. The analysis will highlight the new directions in the quest for (...) an understanding of the nature of the wave function that are opened up by a modern relationalist elaboration on de Broglie's and Bohm's original insights. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of past traumatic war experiences on preadolescents in the Gaza Strip, which could be useful for psychological intervention with current and future child victims. Participants were 521 preadolescents from United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, aged 11 and 13 years old. Sections I to IV from Iraqi Version-Arabic of Harvard Trauma Questionnaire was used to assess trauma experiences and Post-Traumatic Stress (...) Disorder (PTSD). The results show that the preadolescents in the Gaza Strip witnessed the destruction of their homes and the murder of family members and friends. A quarter of the individuals assessed either suffered torture or witnessed others undergoing it, including sexual assaults. Almost half of them experienced a lack of food and clean water. The traumatic and torture experiences seriously affected preadolescents’ mental health as 26.29% met criteria for the diagnosis of PTSD. The data analysis revealed two PTSD modalities, with the severity of impact depending on whether social implications were involved. Further research is required to check whether these two modalities fit to PTSD and complex PTSD. Understanding the effects of past wars on preadolescents in Gaza and distinguishing between different PTSD types could enhance comprehension of the impacts of current attacks on child victims. It can also aid in determining the type of intervention needed to minimize the impact on the mental health of Palestinian youth, enhancing their resilience through psychological and social support. (shrink)

Approaching the topic of robotics-work relation in a general and international context enables the possibility to know more about the impacts in different sectors. In this book the main discussion themes are followed in order to understand which the main dimensions are included in such debate. In that way, it becomes possible to understand the possible answers and available alternatives. The book follows the themes of relation between employment and technology, the automation as rationalization process and robotics as a technology (...) reference. The other topics are the emergence of ethical, legal and social aspects of this technology, the development that can be perceived in the case of Portugal, and the conclusions about the limits and perspectives of new robotic developments. This edition has empirical information on the Portuguese case and also includes data from the main resources of the global debate on this issue: the new developments of automation and its relation with the work content and employment. The author underlined the importance of the contribute that he got from the discussions at the ITAS Working Group on Robotics Technology Assessment, and at the ITAS Research Group on Technology and Work, in Germany, and at the Observatory of Technology Assessment at CICSNOVA in Portugal. The book is include in a series supported by the Portuguese-American Foundation for Development (FLAD) and was published by Glaciar. (shrink)