In this article, I give a counterexample to a claim made in that empirically equivalent theories can often be regarded as theoretically equivalent by treating one as having surplus structure, thereby overcoming the problem of underdetermination of theory choice. The case I present is that of Lorentz's ether theory and Einstein's theory of special relativity. I argue that Norton's suggestion that surplus structure is present in Lorentz's theory in the form of the ether state of rest is based on a (...) misunderstanding of the role that the ether plays in Lorentz's theory, and that in general, consideration of the conceptual framework in which a theory is embedded is vital to understanding the relationship between different theories. (shrink)

We address a recent proposal concerning ‘surplus structure’ due to Nguyen et al.. We argue that the sense of ‘surplus structure’ captured by their formal criterion is importantly different from—and in a sense, opposite to—another sense of ‘surplus structure’ used by philosophers. We argue that minimizing structure in one sense is generally incompatible with minimizing structure in the other sense. We then show how these distinctions bear on Nguyen et al.’s arguments about Yang-Mills theory and on the hole argument.

We argue that several apparently distinct responses to the hole argument, all invoking formal or mathematical considerations, should be viewed as a unified “mathematical response.” We then consider and rebut two prominent critiques of the mathematical response before reflecting on what is ultimately at issue in this literature.

No seu texto A Refutação do Idealismo, faz, primeiro, uma análise lógica da proposição esse é percipi pois considera-a o fundamento da crença idealista de que o universo é espiritual. Após demonstrar a inconsistência lógica da proposição, Moore, ao invés de dar o artigo por encerrado, dá uma guinada fenomenológica e passa a discutir a fenomenologia da percepção idealista que identifica o perceber com o percebido. Por que Moore julga necessário complementar sua análise lógica com uma análise fenomenológica? O texto (...) carrega passagens pouco claras, e julgamos que o diálogo com Bradley é a chave para o entendimento dessas passagens. Assim, este estudo levanta as hipóteses de que Moore, na segunda parte da Refutação, dirige sua artilharia contra argumentos específicos de Bradley, e assim indiretamente contra o hegelianismo inglês, à procura de uma brecha para concluir contra o princípio de imanência. (shrink)

According to the orthodox treatment of risk preferences in decision theory, they are to be explained in terms of the agent's desires about concrete outcomes. The orthodoxy has been criticised both for conflating two types of attitudes and for committing agents to attitudes that do not seem rationally required. To avoid these problems, it has been suggested that an agent's attitudes to risk should be captured by a risk function that is independent of her utility and probability functions. The main (...) problem with that approach is that it suggests that attitudes to risk are wholly distinct from people's (non-instrumental) desires. To overcome this problem, we develop a framework where an agent's utility function is defined over chance propositions (i.e., propositions describing objective probability distributions) as well as ordinary (non-chance) ones, and argue that one should explain different risk attitudes in terms of different forms of the utility function over such propositions. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated endorsement of two types of prescriptive views of aging, namely active aging and altruistic disengagement. The study comprised a large international sample of middle-aged and older adults, covering the age range from 40 to 90 years. Participants rated their personal endorsement of prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement targeting older adults in general. Findings showed that endorsement was higher for prescriptions for active aging than for prescriptions for altruistic disengagement. Age groups in the (...) sample differed regarding their endorsement of both prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement with older adults showing higher endorsement than middle-aged adults did. Prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement related positively to each other and to the superordinate social belief that older adults should not become a burden, which attests to their functional similarity. In contrast, prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement were associated with psychological adjustment in opposite ways, with endorsement of active aging being related to better adjustment outcomes such as life satisfaction and subjective health. Our findings highlight the internalization of prescriptive views of aging in older people and their implications for their development and well-being. (shrink)

Chance Neutrality is the thesis that, conditional on some proposition being true, its chance of being true should be a matter of practical indifference. The aim of this article is to examine whether Chance Neutrality is a requirement of rationality. We prove that given Chance Neutrality, the Principal Principle entails a thesis called Linearity; the centerpiece of von Neumann and Morgenstern’s expected utility theory. With this in mind, we argue that the Principal Principle is a requirement of practical rationality but (...) that Linearity is not and, hence, that Chance Neutrality is not rationally required. (shrink)

Global challenge-led research seeks to contribute to solution-generation for complex problems. Multicultural, multidisciplinary, and multisectoral teams must be capable of operating in highly deman...

Many policy decisions take input from collections of scientific models. Such decisions face significant and often poorly understood uncertainty. We rework the so-called confidence approach to tackle decision-making under severe uncertainty with multiple models, and we illustrate the approach with a case study: insurance pricing using hurricane models. The confidence approach has important consequences for this case and offers a powerful framework for a wide class of problems. We end by discussing different ways in which model ensembles can feed information (...) into the approach, appropriate to different collections of models. (shrink)

Achieving a high quality of life is dependent upon how individuals face adversity. Positive psychological interventions are well-suited to support coping efforts; however, experimental research is limited. The purpose of the current research was to examine whether different savoring interventions could increase important coping resources in response to a social-evaluative hassle. We completed an experimental mixed subject design study with a university student sample. All participants completed a hassle induction task and were then randomly assigned into different intervention groups. Positive (...) emotion ratings were collected at three points in time. Results revealed a significant time x intervention interaction effect, such that individuals in the savoring the moment intervention reported higher levels of positive emotions compared to individuals assigned to the true control group, guided imagery control group, and savoring through reminiscence intervention. Such findings represent a significant extension to savoring theory and offer support for savoring the moment exercises as a primary prevention strategy to bolster effective responses to social-evaluative hassles. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated explicit and implicit endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes. To achieve that, we captured endorsement of a wide range of prescriptive expectations targeting both younger and older people. Younger and older adults participated in the study. We assessed implicit endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes with the Propositional Evaluation Paradigm and used a direct measure to assess explicit endorsement. In general, we found strong support for age-specificity in both explicit and implicit endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes: Sentences (...) ascribing expectations for young/old to the respective age group were endorsed much more strongly than sentences in which expectations for young/old were ascribed to the other age group. Age group differences in the endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes were found. Compared to younger participants, older participants showed stronger endorsement for prescriptive beliefs targeting both younger and older targets. Explicit and implicit endorsement of prescriptive age stereotypes did not correlate with one another, thus revealing they might assess independent belief systems with different predictive potential. (shrink)

The question of how to handle incidental findings has sparked a heated debate among neuroimaging researchers and medical ethicists, a debate whose urgency stems largely from the recent explosion in the number of imaging studies being conducted and in the sheer volume of scans being acquired. Perhaps the point of greatest controversy within this debate is whether the magnetic resonance imaging scans of all research participants should be reviewed in an active search for pathology and, moreover, whether this search should (...) be performed by a radiologist. Resistance to routine readings performed by radiologists, as opposed to selective review of those scans on which investigators have spotted a possible IF, has been fueled in part by the obvious and enormous cost — financial and logistical — of engaging radiologists to read massive numbers of scans. This cost would be especially burdensome, even prohibitive, to investigators who are not affiliated with a medical center, because of their limited access to radiologists and other medical expertise. (shrink)

: Creativity, mostly ignored in Western philosophy due to its supposed mysteriousness, has recently become a respected research topic in psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. We discuss how in science the approach has mainly been to describe creativity as an information-based process, coherently with a computational view of the human mind started with the cognitive revolution. This view has produced progressively convincing models of creativity, up to current artificial neural network systems, vaguely inspired by biological neural processing, but already competing (...) with human creativity in several fields. These successes suggest that creativity might not be an exclusively human function, but actually a way of functioning of any natural or artificial system implementing the creative process. We conclude by acknowledging that the information-based view of creativity has tremendous explanatory and generative power, but we propose a thought experiment to start discussing how it actually leaves out the experiential side of being creative. Keywords: Creative Cognition; Cognitive Neuroscience; Computational Creativity; Generative Algorithms; Cognitive Science La creatività come processo basato sull’informazione Riassunto: La creatività, spesso ignorata dalla filosofia occidentale per la sua presunta oscurità, in tempi recenti è diventata un rispettabile oggetto di ricerca per la psicologia, la neuroscienza e l’intelligenza artificiale. Vogliamo illustrare il modo in cui lo sguardo scientifico sia rivolto prevalentemente a considerare la creatività come processo information-based, coerentemente con la prospettiva computazionale sulla mente umana aperta dalla rivoluzione cognitiva. Questa prospettiva ha prodotto modelli della creatività sempre più convincenti, fino agli attuali sistemi di reti neurali artificiali, vagamente inspirati al processamento biologico neurale, ma già competitivi rispetto alla creatività umana in molti ambiti. Questi successi suggeriscono che la creatività possa non essere una funzione esclusivamente umana ma in effetti un modo di funzionare di un sistema naturale o artificiale capace di implementare il processo creativo. In conclusione, pur riconoscendo come il considerare la creatività come processo information-based possieda grande potere esplicativo e generativo, proporremo un esperimento mentale per aprire una discussione sul come questa prospettiva non copra in effetti il lato esperienziale dell’essere creativo. Parole chiave: Cognizione creativa; Neuroscienza cognitiva; Creatività computazionale; Algoritmi generativi; Scienza cognitiva. (shrink)

We weigh the presumed benefts of routinely searching all research scans for incidental fndings against its substantial risks, including false-positive and false-negative fndings, and the possibility of triggering unnecessary, costly evaluations and perhaps harmful treatments. We argue that routinely searching for IFs may not maximize benefts and minimize risks to participants.

The article presents a critical evaluation on the concept of justice as equality proposed by John Rawls. Based on the analysis of the latest book written by Rawls the article defends (1) the necessary compromise in any kind of political concept interested in the justice with real and individual f..

O objetivo deste artigo é fornecer uma elucidação do conceito de pessoa. Para tal, pretendo em primeiro lugar apresentar a caracterização desse conceito fornecida por Strawson, como sua solução para o problema tradicional da relação mente/corpo. Na medida em que a caracterização do conceito de pessoa fornecida por Strawson se revela incompleta, pretendo então, investigar a tese de Frankfurt segundo a qual o conceito de vontade livre deve ser considerado como o critéri decisivo para caracterização de uma pessoa. Aceitando, com (...) Frankfurt, que apenas entidades às quais atribuímos liberdade podem ser consideradas como pessoas, pretendo contra Frankfurt mostrar que o aspecto crucial para a distribuição entre pessoas e outras entidades não é fornecido pelo conceito de vontade libre, mas pela nossa compreensão de liberdade como autodeterminação. (shrink)

Despite an increase in international business ethics research in recent years, the number of studies focused on Latin America and China has been deficient. As trade among Pacific Rim nations increases, an understanding of the ethical beliefs of the people in this region of the world will become increasingly important. In the current study 208 respondents from Peru and China are queried about their ethical ideologies, firm practices, and commitment to organizational performance. The empirical results reveal that Chinese workers are (...) more relativistic and less idealistic than their Peruvian counterparts. One explanation for the disparity between these two groups is likely the variation in collectivism that can be traced to different levels of importance across ingroups and outgroups. In addition to a summary of the results, future research directions and managerial implications are discussed. (shrink)

In this chapter, we explore whether agents have an epistemic duty to eradicate implicit bias. Recent research shows that implicit biases are widespread and they have a wide variety of epistemic effects on our doxastic attitudes. First, we offer some examples and features of implicit biases. Second, we clarify what it means to have an epistemic duty, and discuss the kind of epistemic duties we might have regarding implicit bias. Third, we argue that we have an epistemic duty to eradicate (...) implicit biases that have negative epistemic impact. Finally, we defend this view against the objection that we lack the relevant control over implicit bias that’s required for such a duty. We argue that we have a kind of reflective control over the implicit biases that we are duty-bound to eradicate. And since, as we show, we have this control over a wide variety of implicit biases, there are a lot of implicit biases that we have epistemic duties to eradicate. (shrink)

En este artículo presentamos, a partir de ciertos escritos heideggerianos inéditos en castellano, un diálogo o discusión entre Martin Heidegger y Ernst Jünger, diálogo desde el cual podemos plantear la cuestión de la crítica a la Modernidad en el delicado momento de la experiencia de la Primera Guerra Mundial como escenario privilegiado de un mundo dominado por la técnica y el trabajo. Se trataría, para Heidegger, de pensar lo que vio y lo que no vio Jünger: el fundamento metafísico de (...) una época que se expande en el modo calculador de la dominación técnica y que se manifi esta, especialmente, en sus fenómenos políticos, bélicos y técnicos. El diálogo entre ambos autores nos permite diagnosticar el nihilismo en el final de la Modernidad occidental. (shrink)

The blink response to visual threat is a standard bedside method for testing visual processing. In response to a sudden gesture directed toward the eyes, a person with a normal blink response will promptly contract both orbicularis oculi muscles to close the eyelids momentarily. There is no consensus as to whether blinking to visual threat (BVT) is purely reflex1 or a cognitively mediated behavior that heralds consciousness; i.e., is incompatible with the diagnosis of the vegetative state (VS).2,3 Some authors stated (...) that “one should be extremely cautious in making the diagnosis of the VS when there is . . . response to threatening gestures.”4 Others stated that “react(ion) to visual threat” is a “compatible but atypical feature” of VS.5 Similarly, other guidelines stated that the “threat response is usually absent” in VS.6 Finally, BVT was not mentioned in some workgroup criteria on the minimally conscious state.7 The aim of the study was to determine the incidence of BVT in patients whose clinical features are in all other respects typical of the VS, as assessed by means of validated testing.7 We also investigated whether the presence of BVT in patients considered vegetative is predictive of recovery of consciousness. (shrink)

En este artículo, proponemos que es posible analizar la referencia a hechos y eventos a partir de un análisis lingüístico. Para esto, proveemos, en primer lugar, una caracterización ontológica de hechos y eventos basada en una ontología platonista, que contiene entidades concretas y abstractas y se encuentra jerarquizada en niveles, y en segundo lugar, un análisis de la referencia a hechos y eventos que parte de un análisis gramatical de las descripciones definidas que pueden ser relacionadas a dichas entidades. Finalmente, (...) determinamos si es posible referir a los hechos y a los eventos o no. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 4-16, January 2022.

Os princípios emancipatórios da filosofia de educação atual, enquadrados no paradigma da complexidade e de educação ao longo da vida, incitou-nos a escrever este documento. O foco será a compreensão da vinculação a um paradigma e das suas consequências teóricas e metodológicas, demonstrando especificamente como tal se concretiza na investigação-ação enquadrada no paradigma da complexidade, teorizando em educação não formal e intervenção comunitária. Procuramos, assim, tecer um enquadramento que mostre como a investigação-ação e métodos associados se coadunam neste tipo de (...) pesquisa e intervenção em filosofia de educação não formal. (shrink)

Bilinguals have been shown to perform worse than monolinguals in a variety of verbal tasks. This study investigated this bilingual verbal cost in a large-scale picture-naming study conducted in Spanish. We explored how individual characteristics of the participants and the linguistic properties of the words being spoken influence this performance cost. In particular, we focused on the contributions of lexical frequency and phonological similarity across translations. The naming performance of Spanish-Catalan bilinguals speaking in their dominant and non-dominant language was compared (...) to that of Spanish monolinguals. Single trial naming latencies were analyzed by means of linear mixed models accounting for individual effects at the participant and item level. While decreasing lexical frequency was shown to increase naming latencies in all groups, this variable by itself did not account for the bilingual cost. In turn, our results showed that the bilingual cost disappeared when naming words with high phonological similarity across translations. In short, our results show that frequency of use can play a role in the emergence of the bilingual cost, but that phonological similarity across translations should be regarded as one of the most important variables that determine the bilingual cost in speech production. Low phonological similarity across translations yields worse performance in bilinguals and promotes the bilingual cost in naming performance. The implications of our results for the effect of phonological similarity across translations within the bilingual speech production system are discussed. (shrink)

Art and Belief presents new work at the intersection of philosophy of mind and philosophy of art. Topics include the cognitive contributions artworks can make, the phenomenon of fictional persuasion, and the nature of aesthetic testimony, and the relation between belief and truth in our experience of art.