Arguing for the theoretical importance of the concept of “subject” or “self” on behalf of the “psychiatric/psycho-pathological thinking” is justified in so far as, as Costa, Bezerra Jr., and Gama say, “this is still an indispensable concept for understanding the conditions for the gestation and functioning of psychological life.” In what sense are these concepts “indispensable?”All the hints suggest them as necessary complements for neurobiological investigations to become useful for clinical employment. So, if we consider that it is possible (...) to approach mental phenomena connecting in some way their two sides to favor clinical use, the neurobiological and the psychological, we might as well suppose that any... (shrink)

(or not oveA-complete.) . Let * be a unary operator defined on the set F of formulas of the language £ (ie, if A is a formula of £, then *A is also a ...

Recently, a number of philosophers of biology have endorsed views about random drift that, we will argue, rest on an implicit assumption that the meaning of concepts such as drift can be understood through an examination of the mathematical models in which drift appears. They also seem to implicitly assume that ontological questions about the causality of terms appearing in the models can be gleaned from the models alone. We will question these general assumptions by showing how the same equation (...) — the simple 2 = p2 + 2pq + q2 — can be given radically different interpretations, one of which is a physical, causal process and one of which is not. This shows that mathematical models on their own yield neither interpretations nor ontological conclusions. Instead, we argue that these issues can only be resolved by considering the phenomena that the models were originally designed to represent and the phenomena to which the models are currently applied. When one does take those factors into account, starting with the motivation for Sewall Wright’s and R.A. Fisher’s early drift models and ending with contemporary applications, a very different picture of the concept of drift emerges. On this view, drift is a term for a set of physical processes, namely, indiscriminate sampling processes. (shrink)

Hospital systems commonly face the challenge of determining just ways to allocate scarce drugs during national shortages. There is no standardised approach of how this should be instituted, but principles of distributive justice are commonly used so that patients who are most likely to benefit from the drug receive it. As a result, clinical indications, in which the evidence for the drug is assumed to be established, are often prioritised over research use. In this manuscript, we present a case of (...) a phase II investigational trial of intravenous thiamine for delirium prevention in patients undergoing haematopoietic stem cell transplantation to emphasise several shortcomings in the overarching prioritisation of clinical over research uses of scarce drugs. Specifically, we present the following considerations: clinical use may not have stronger evidence than research use; a strong scientific rationale for research use may outweigh the claim for clinical indications in which there is weak evidence; treatment within the context of a clinical trial may be the standard of care; and research use may not only benefit patients receiving the treatment but also offers the prospect of improving future clinical care. In summary, we argue against allocation schemes that prohibit all research uses of scarce drugs and instead recommend that allocation schemes include a balanced approach that weighs risks and benefits of access to scarce drugs irrespective of the research versus clinical use designation. (shrink)

Solving numeric, logic and language puzzles and paradoxes is common within a wide community of high school and university students, fact witnessed by the increasing number of books published by mathematicians such as Martin Gardner, Douglas Hofstadter [in one of the best popular science books on paradoxes ], inspired by Gödel’s incompleteness theorems), Patrick Hughes and George Brecht and Raymond M. Smullyan, inter alia. Books by Smullyan are, however, much more involved, since they introduce learning trajectories and strategies across several (...) subjects of mathematical logic, as difficult as combinatorial logic, computability theory, and proof theory. These books provide solutions to their suggested exercises. Both statements and their solutions are written in the natural language, introducing some informal algorithms. As an exercise in Mathematics we wonder if an easy proof system could be devised to solve the amusing equations proposed by Smullyan in his books. Moreover, university students of logic could well train themselves in constructing deductive systems to solve puzzles instead of a non-uniform treatment one by one. In this paper, addressing students, we introduce one such formal systems, a tableaux approach able to provide the solutions to the puzzles involving either propositional logic, first order logic, or aspect logic. Let the reader amuse herself or himself! (shrink)

The question of the subject seems to occupy much of the current psychiatric/psychological landscape. Some theoreticians affirm that the subject or the self is an imaginary fiction, not a substantial entity in whose structure causes of psychological disorders and their respective antidotes are latent. “Subject,” they continue, “is what the vernacular speech says it is, that is, a self-reference marker that indexes human organisms’ sensory/motor singularity.” This marker, however, has nothing in common with a supposed metaphysical ethereal substrate, made up (...) of particles such as will, freedom, autonomy, ineffable consciousness, reason, emotions, desires, beliefs, judgments, aspirations, or interests. Taking such an... (shrink)

Founded in Asia, in the third century, by Mani, manicheism constituted, by itself, in a doctrinal viewpoint, in a gnosis that mixed oriental principles of sects/religions, specially from Zoroastrism and Budism, Greek-Roman Philosophy and Christianism. His basic thesis consisted of statement of two ontological principles: Good or Light, presented by the sun, and Evil or Darkness, personified in matter. From this ontological Dualism arose a cosmology/soteriology that presented the salvation history of world in three moments: the first-one, initial, embodies the (...) two principles cosmic origins and their first conflicts. The second-one, medial, is the mixture time is characterized by the downfall of one the Light parts in the matter, as well as it is the universe being creation time. At last, the third-one, final, marks the liberation of all Light particles, imbricated in the matter, meaning the Light return to Father's kingdom and the matter's definitive downfall into the hell. (shrink)

The authors present a critical edition of the Quaestio de formalitatibus of John Duns Scotus. In the introduction to their edition, they examine the evidence of the manuscripts and the external and internal evidence to determine the authorship, place and date of the question. They conclude that the Quaestio was disputed by John Duns Scotus at Paris in the Franciscan studium sometime between 1305 and 1307. Chronologically, Scotus’ Quaestio, disputed at Paris, would seem to be his final, magisterial word on (...) the subject of the formal distinction. Finally, the authors examine the transmission of the text in each of the manuscripts in order to establish a stemma codicum and the principles that govern their edition. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to solve the following problem: given a logic, how to turn it into a paraconsistent one? In other words, given a logic in which ex falso quodlibet holds, how to convert it into a logic not satisfying this principle? We use a framework provided by category theory in order to define a category of consequence structures. Then, we propose a functor to transform a logic not able to deal with contradictions into a paraconsistent one. Moreover, (...) we study the case of paraconsistentization of propositional classical logic. (shrink)