The spreading of COVID-19 misinformation on social media could have severe consequences on people's behavior. In this paper, we investigated the emotional expression of misinformation related to the COVID-19 crisis on Twitter and whether emotional valence differed depending on the type of misinformation. We collected 17,463,220 English tweets with 76 COVID-19-related hashtags for March 2020. Using Google Fact Check Explorer API we identified 226 unique COVID-19 false stories for March 2020. These were clustered into six types of misinformation. Applying the (...) 226 classifiers to the Twitter sample we identified 690,004 tweets. Instead of running the sentiment on all tweets we manually coded a random subset of 100 tweets for each classifier to increase the validity, reducing the dataset to 2,097 tweets. We found that only a minor part of the entire dataset was related to misinformation. Also, misinformation in general does not lean towards a certain emotional valence. However, looking at comparisons of emotional valence for different types of misinformation uncovered that misinformation related to “virus” and “conspiracy” had a more negative valence than “cures,” “vaccine,” “politics,” and “other.” Knowing from existing studies that negative misinformation spreads faster, this demonstrates that filtering for misinformation type is fruitful and indicates that a focus on “virus” and “conspiracy” could be one strategy in combating misinformation. As emotional contexts affect misinformation spreading, the knowledge about emotional valence for different types of misinformation will help to better understand the spreading and consequences of misinformation. (shrink)

To assess the effectiveness of Visual Thinking Strategies in medical education curricula, a pretest–posttest experimental study design was used to evaluate the impact of participating in VTS workshops on first-year medical students. A total of forty-one intervention and sixty comparative students completed the study which included the analysis of clinical images followed by a measurement of word count, length of time analyzing images, and quality of written observations of clinical images. VTS training increased the total number of words used to (...) describe clinical images, the time spent analyzing the images, and the number of clinically relevant observations. (shrink)

Kalinowski conceives metaphysics as a set of propositions which can be axiomatized. This paper exposes the typical rules of an axiomatic system comparing them with the metaphysical system developed by Kalinowski. These rules are linguistic rules, but also admission-rules and transformation-rules. They always refer to the metaphysical propositions (wich are first or second propositions, as it is usual in logical systems). This paper tries to evaluate Kalinowski's attempt.

For two decades, ultramontane Roman Catholics viewed Newman with suspicion and surreptitiously questioned his orthodoxy; such covert charges were practically impossible to refute. Vindication came only in Newman’s declining years, when Pope Leo XIII named him a cardinal. Such an honor was an irrefutable riposte to Newman’s critics. His elevation to the cardinalate unleashed a torrent of congratulations from religious communities and civic organizations, from personal friends as well as from the general public. This article revisits Newman’s cardinalatial years and (...) samples some of the “Addresses” and messages of congratulation that he received along with his replies. (shrink)

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester trabajó por la renovación estética y humana de la literatura. Su poética experimentó una gran evolución, desde una perspectiva más solemne y preocupada por la heroicidad del mito hacia una postura crítica más próxima a la desmitificación y al proceso creativo lúdico, intertextual y paródico. En este trabajo se estudia cómo evoluciona su poética en los textos literarios y teóricos en relación con la censura. Se puede observar que, conforme construye su poética, se reducen las (...) críticas de los censores y, en algunos casos, estos expresan su admiración por la inteligencia con que critica a la sociedad. Esto se debe a que sus primeras obras están más dirigidas a la realidad inmediata, mientras que después adquieren un sentido más sutil y universal. (shrink)

Mario Gómez-Torrente (2006) says that whilst theoretical identifications (e.g. 'All lightning is electrical discharge') do not entail their own necessitations, they do entail the necessitation of a weaker statement. And he claims that this weaker entailment serves Kripke's purposes as well as the stronger one would have. I argue that this is false. Section 1 says what the weaker entailment is; section 2 says why it matters. Section 3 argues that the entailment identified at section 1 does not meet (...) the purpose identified at section 2. Section 4 rejects two possible objections. The aim is to illustrate (not establish) the general claim that those 'modal facts' that are not entirely speculative are quite useless. (shrink)

This paper examines from a historical perspective Tarski's 1936 essay, "On the concept of logical consequence." I focus on two main aims. The primary aim is to show how Tarski's definition of logical consequence satisfies two desiderata he himself sets forth for it: (1) it must declare logically correct certain formalizations of the -rule and (2) it must allow for variation of the individual domain in the test for logical consequence. My arguments provide a refutation of some interpreters of Tarski, (...) and notably John Etchemendy, who have claimed that his definition does not satisfy those desiderata. A secondary aim of the paper is to offer some basic elements for an understanding of Tarski's definition in the historical logico-philosophical context in which it was proposed. Such historical understanding provides useful insights on Tarski's informal ideas on logical consequence and their internal cohesion. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine some passages of Tarski‘s paper ’On the concept of logical consequence’ and to show that some recent readings of those passages are wrong. John Etchemendy has claimed that in those passages Tarski gave an argument purporting to show that the notion of logical consequence defined by him (as opposed to some pretheoretic notion of logical consequence) possesses certain modal properties. Etchemendy further claims that the argument he attributes to Tarski is fallacious. Some (...) of Etchemendy’s critics have granted him that Tarski did give an argument purporting to show that the defined notion possesses certain modal properties ; but they have claimed that Tarski’s argument was not a fallacious one. I will show that both Etchemendy and his critics are wrong; in the relevant passages, Tarski did not offer (nor did he intend to offer) an argument that the defined notion of logical consequence possesses any modal properties. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this paper I try to analyze the fate of a new medical model that was developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in European Latin society, particularly in the southern parts of Latin Europe. This model won the approval of the communities in which it was developed as part of an incipient network of medical care and attention. The new healer (Christian and male )that emerged from this model, whether physician or surgeon, based his practice on his knowledge (...) of Aristotelian natural philosophy. He was an intellectual and a social product fashioned and supported by traditional and new urban leader groups, whether civil or ecclesiastic, Christian or Jewish. Health and healers were considered part of the urban social organization both in large cities and in smaller towns.Full social acceptance of this new model was achieved only after heated debate. In practice, the new way of conceiving of medicine did not begin to become socially accepted outside intellectual circles until the new healer was able to offer specific solutions for the maintenance or restoration of health, both at an individual and at a collective level, and according to the criteria and feelings of the leader groups of the society of that time.Progress in research allows us to identify nene factors, at least, that were involed in the construction of these novelties in late medieval Latin society. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson’s potentially most important contribution to epistemicism about vagueness lies in his arguments for the basic epistemicist claim that the alleged cut-off points of vague predicates are not knowable. His arguments for this are based on so-called ‘margin for error principles’. This paper argues that these principles fail to provide a good argument for the basic claim. Williamson has offered at least two kinds of margin for error principles applicable to vague predicates. A certain fallacy of equivocation seems to (...) underlie his justification for both kinds of principles. Besides, the margin for error principles of the first kind can be used in the derivation of unacceptable consequences, while the margin for error principles of the second kind can be shown to be compatible with the falsity of epistemicism, under a number of assumptions acceptable to the epistemicist. (shrink)

This paper presents some difficulties for Timothy Williamson's epistemicist view of vagueness and for an argument he gives in its defense. First, I claim that the argument, which uses the notion of an "omniscient speaker", is question-begging. Next, I argue that some presumably true scientific hypotheses, which postulate certain relations between everyday vague predicates and scientific predicates, make the central theses of epistemicism highly implausible. Finally, I show that the "margin for error principles" used by Williamson to explain away the (...) kind of ignorance conjectured by epistemicism lead to new sorites-like arguments with unacceptable conclusions. (shrink)

Contrary to what often seems to be the implicit belief, Tarski's 1933 version of the theorem on the indefinability of truth did not mention semantic notions, either defined or intuitive. I state this version in a somewhat modernized form and explain briefly the self-imposed mathematico-philosophical constraints that led Tarski to formulate it as he did. I also point out that close attention to its content suggests a refined view of the exact contrast between Tarski's achievement and Gödel's achievement in his (...) earlier discovery of another version of the result. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, I express doubts that Tarski and Carnap were guilty of some confusions about the relations between truth and meaning, attributed to them by Soames. In the second part, I consider Quine's Carrollian argument against conventionalism about logical truth, discussed only briefly and approvingly by Soames, and I explore the question whether some not obviously incorrect forms of conventionalism about logical truth, such as what I call "finitary conventionalism", are immune to Quine's argument.

Este artículo es producto de una reflexión etnográfica sobre el proceso de cambio sufrido por una cultura del trabajo asociada a la explotación del carbón y su vinculación con la ciudad de Lota, ubicada en el centro sur de Chile, la que se constituye comohabitacional y de servicios junto con el desarrollo de la monoindustria desde la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Por una parte, se analiza cómo, desde la condición laboral, social y de vida de los trabajadores y la (...) población, se configura un sujeto histórico con identidad laboral y de clase, el que genera un discurso teleológico que da paso a una visión utópica durante el ciclo de vida de la explotación del mineral. Por otra, se analiza cómo el fin de la explotación del mineral en 1997, tras el cierre de los yacimientos, hace que los sujetos transformen su utopía en ucronía; es decir, cómo el fin de la narrativa que movilizaba las acciones genera una temporalidad alternativa que no tiene tiempo real, lo que revela las dificultades para reestructurar la biografía y memoria de una comunidad especializada. This article is the result of an ethnographic observation of the process of change undergone by a labor culture associated to the coal mining and its relationship with the city of Lota, located in the center South of Chile a city that has been constituted as a residential and services center along with the development of the monoindustry, from the second half of the nineteenth century. On one hand, it analyzes how this has shaped an historical subject with labor and class identity considering the working, social and living conditions of the mining workers and the population. This historical subject generates a teleological discourse that leads to a utopianist vision during the service life of the mineral´s exploitation. On the other hand, we analyze how the end of the mining activity in 1997, after the coal mine´s closing, causes the subjects to transform their utopia into uchronia; that is to say, how the aim of the narrative that addressed the actions generates an alternative temporality that has no real time, which reveals the difficulties to reconstruct the biography and memory of a specialized community. (shrink)

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

Some arguments against David Lewis’s modal realism seek to exploit apparent inconsistencies between it and anthropic reasoning. A recent argument, in particular, seeks to exploit an inconsistency between modal realism and typicality anthropic premises, premises common in the literature on physical multiverses, to the effect that observers who are like human observers in certain respects must be typical in the relevant multiverse. Here I argue that typicality premises are not applicable to the description of Lewis’s metaphysical multiverse, where the proportions (...) of metaphysically possible observers possessing the pertinent properties can be independently established by metaphysical reasoning. However, other kinds of reasonable anthropic premises can be seen to be consistent with and usable within modal realism. (shrink)

Cuando se leen los relatos que los grandes santos hacen de su experiencia de Dios, encontramos expresiones que rompen las reglas de la lógica lingüística, prueba de que hay experiencias que no son fáciles de describir y transmitir. San Agustín, en el contexto de una de las más célebres páginas de sus Confesiones, esa en la que exclama: “Tarde te amé, hermosura tan antigua y siempre nueva”, dice, por una parte, que Dios está “dentro” de él, para añadir a renglón (...) seguido que las cosas están dentro de Dios, pues si no estuvieran en él, no serían. En San Pablo encontramos expresiones similares: por una parte, se puede leer en sus cartas que “Cristo vive en mí”, y por otra, el autor de los Hechos de los Apóstoles pone en su boca que “en Dios vivimos, nos movemos y somos”. Este doble modo de concebir la relación de Dios con la realidad creada, con el cosmos y con el ser humano, resulta paradójico y es una provocación para el pensamiento.¿Dios está en la realidad, se hace presente en ella de algún modo, o es más bien la realidad la que está en Dios? Posiblemente no hay contradicción entre ambas imágenes, sino complementariedad. Tomás de Aquino, como veremos, afirma las dos cosas. Dios es de una naturaleza tal que, por una parte puede hacerse presente en la realidad mundana y humana y, por otra, llevar dentro de sí estas mismas realidades. ¿Hay alguna analogía, alguna imagen que pueda servir para describir una naturaleza así y ayudarnos a comprender mejor el ser divino? En definitiva, ¿qué significa “estar en” o “dentro de” las criaturas por parte de Dios y en o dentro de Dios por parte de las criaturas? ¿Se trata de simples imágenes o estas imágenes son modelos que tienen alguna correspondencia con la realidad?When you read the accounts that the great saints do of their experience of God, you find expressions that break the rules of linguistic logic, what proves that there are experiences not easy to describe and transmit. St Augustine in the context of one of the most known pages of his Confessions, where he exclaims: “Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new”, says that God is inside him and adds immediately after that things are inside God, since if things were not in him they wouldn’t exist. We find similar expressions in St Paul: On the one hand, one can read in one of his letters: “Christ lives in me”, on the other hand, the author of the Acts of the Apostles puts in his mouth: “in God we live and move and have our being”. This double way of understanding God’s relation to created things, the cosmos and human beings, is paradoxical and becomes a provocation to reason.Is God inside reality, is he present in it someway, or is rather reality which is in God? Possibly there is not contradiction between the two images, but they complement each other. Thomas Aquinas, as we’ll see later, states the two. God is such a nature, that, on the one hand, he can be present in wordly and human reality, on the other hand, he can contain inside himself these realities. Is there any analogy, any image able to describe a nature like this that could help us to understand better his divine being? In short, what does it mean to be in or inside the creatures in relation to God and to be in or inside God in relation to creatures? Is it about simple images or these images are models with some relation to reality? (shrink)

Tomás de Aquino comienza su síntesis teológica definitiva preguntándose por la legitimidad y necesidad de la teología. Inmediatamente después se plantea la pregunta por sus contenidos: ¿de qué trata la ciencia teológica? Si la teología es la ciencia de la Revelación y su fundamento está en la revelación que Dios en Cristo hace de sí mismo, parece que su contenido tiene que ser Dios mismo. Un contenido que solo es cognoscible si Dios se da a conocer, porque el ser humano, (...) con sus fuerzas, con su sola razón, solo puede alcanzarle de forma limitada y parcial, en suma, solo puede saber de su existencia, pero no de sus designios, de sus intenciones y mucho menos de su naturaleza.Para Sto. Tomás es claro que Dios es el sujeto, el contenido de la Teología. Esta ciencia es un “tratado sobre Dios”. Ahora bien, Tomás de Aquino es consciente de una dificultad: si el fundamento de la Teología es la Sagrada Escritura, que es el lugar en el que se contiene la Revelación de Dios, resulta que “en la Sagrada Escritura se trata de muchas cosas además de Dios, como son las criaturas y los actos humanos”. Tomás de Aquino resuelve la dificultad argumentando que Dios es el sujeto de la teología no exactamente por ser su único contenido o por ser el único sujeto del que trata esta ciencia, sino porque todo lo que ella trata “lo hace teniendo como punto de mira a Dios, bien porque se trata de Dios mismo, bien porque se trata de algo referido a él como principio y como fin”.Thomas Aquinas begins his definitive theological synthesis asking for legitimacy and need of theology. Immediately he asks for the contents: what is theological science about? If theology is the science of Revelation, and its foundation is the revelation that God makes of himself in Christ, it seems that its content must be God himself1. A content that can only be known, if God shows himself, because a human being, with its strength and its sole mind, only can get him in a limited and partial way, in short, it can only know of his existence, but not his plans, his intentions, and even less, his nature.For St Thomas it is clear that God is the subject, the content of theology. This science is a “treatise about God”. However, Thomas Aquinas is conscious of a difficulty: If Sacred Scripture that is the place where God’s revelation is contained, is the foundation of theology, “it turns out that Sacred Scripture deals with many more things besides God, that is, creatures and human acts”. Thomas Aquinas will solve this difficulty arguing that God is the subject of theology not because he is exactly the only content or subject of this science, but because all it deals with, “is done with reference to God himself either because it is about God or about something referred to God as beginning and end”. (shrink)

Filipe Martone argues that reference-fixing intentions where the intended object is represented by means of a description can never fix the reference of a demonstrative, and that a speaker, as a matter of empirical fact, never has simultaneous perceptual and non-perceptual reference-fixing intentions that she can intend as fixing the reference of a demonstrative. In this note I reject Martone’s arguments for these claims.

Axel Barceló has extended the objectivist apparatus for handling color terms that I develop in my book Roads to Reference, so that the extension covers also some aesthetic predicates. In this note I argue that Barceló’s extension probably attempts to go too far.

There have been several different and even opposed conceptions of the problem of logical constants, i.e. of the requirements that a good theory of logical constants ought to satisfy. This paper is in the first place a survey of these conceptions and a critique of the theories they have given rise to. A second aim of the paper is to sketch some ideas about what a good theory would look like. A third aim is to draw from these ideas and (...) from the preceding survey the conclusion that most conceptions of the problem of logical constants involve requirements of a philosophically demanding nature which are probably not satisfiable by any minimally adequate theory. (shrink)