RESUMEN: Aplicando una metodología hermenéutica intertextual, el artículo ofrece un análisis de diferentes momentos en la articulación del humanismo poscolonial, sistematizando los nexos conceptuales entre las propuestas de Fanon / Bhabha y Bhabha / Said. El artículo interpreta el humanismo poscolonial como una epistemología crítica que permite dilucidar los mecanismos de violencia cultural y epistémica inherentes a los proyectos y a las narrativas etno-nacionalistas, y plantea la posibilidad de un horizonte de ciudadanía intercultural en el contexto presente de crisis de (...) la Unión Europea posBrexit.ABSTRACT: This article offers an analysis of different moments in the articulation of postcolonial humanism through a systematization of conceptual nexus among the proposals of Fanon / Bhabha and Bhabha / Said, the article highlights the contemporary dimensions of postcolonial humanism. By doing intertextual hermeneutic analysis, the article interprets postcolonial humanism as a critical epistemology that elucidates the mechanisms of cultural and epistemic violence inherent to ethno-nationalist narratives and strategies, in the current context of postBrexit EU crisis.PALABRAS CLAVE: interculturalidad; etno-nacionalismo; humanismo poscolonial; democracia; derechos universalesKEYWORDS: interculturality; ethno-nationalism; postcolonial humanism; democracy; universal rights. (shrink)

La génesis del humanismo en la UNESCO -- Maneras de pensar y hacer las paces -- El multiculturalismo revisitado desde la crítica poscolonial -- Las (des)ilusiones del pueblo : hegemonías, resistencias y nacionalismos -- El nuevo humanismo y la filosofía para la paz.

The aim of this article is to present a renewed reading of ethical-normative debates on recognition of cultural differences, by interrogating the initiatives that have constituted the international minority rights framework. The article is divided into three sections: 1. The first section approaches an introductory definition of minority rights. 2. The second section presents the philosophical reading of Charles Taylor on minority rights, within the ethical framework of his communitarian conception of freedom and individual development. 3. The third section presents (...) the philosophical reading of Bhabha on minority rights, within the ethical framework of his humanistic critique to the political construction of cultural differences. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Critiques leveled at epistemic decolonization call for a reorientation in theories of colonialism. The colonial imagination, a rhetorical tool that normalizes a sensible order of dispossession and appropriation, can be a reoriented site of contestation. By imagining an identity whose only means of relating is through opposition, the colonial imagination renders identities that inhabit a state of solitude. Two letters from Hernán Cortés to King Carlos V of Spain show how this colonial imagining aims to normalize dispossession and appropriation (...) of the relations Originary peoples have with lands, waters, airs, and other-than-human relatives. Considering this argument, rhetorical studies needs to readjust its analytical timeframe beyond the times of settler-colonial nation-states and colonization. (shrink)

A comienzos de la década de los 80, el filósofo Gilles Deleuze aplicó la teoría de la imagen de Bergson expuesta en Materia y Memoria (1896) a la imagen cinematográfica con la intención de desarrollar nuevas herramientas conceptuales que, a través de un análisis de la historia del cine, permitieran poder delinear mejor tanto la relación cognoscitiva más allá de los presupuestos de sujeto-objeto, como una teoría de la comunicación pre-verbal no estructuralizada fonéticamente que superara definitivamente la concepción lacaniana del (...) lenguaje. Si bien dichos análisis pueden ser vistos también como el establecimiento de unos principios alternativos a las teorías del montaje tanto de Vertov como de Eizenshtéin, el interés primario de nuestro paper se centrará en la redefinición de las categorías espacio-temporales que conlleva esta nueva teoría del cine esgrimida por Deleuze. Concretamente analizaremos cómo la nueva tecnología cinematográfica, especialmente en su desarrollo europeo de la segunda postguerra (Godard, Fellini, Syberberg, Tarkovski) supone una comprensión temporal por completo ajena a cualquier comprensión de causalidad lineal, teleológica o no, de corte cronológico. En su lugar, el cine en tanto que medio de comunicación propio del mundo metropolitano contemporáneo emplea unas categorías temporales más cercanas a conceptos como “acontecimiento” o “haecceitas”, que en algunos puntos lo acercan a la concepción del tiempo desarrollada por Walter Benjamin, pero que por otro lo relacionan directamente con formas aiónicas del mismo ya estudiadas por Deleuze en la década de los 60, y aplicadas al estudio del dadaísmo en la de los 70. (shrink)

J. T. Ismael's monograph is an ambitious contribution to metaphysics and the philosophy of language and mind. She tackles a philosophical question whose origin goes back to Descartes: What am I? The self is not a mere thing among things--but if so, what is it, and what is its relationship to the world?

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive substance from the Amazon rainforest regions of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. Although its use originated among indigenous tribes in the Amazon basin, it has become increasingly popularized in Western society through the transnational markets of spirituality and religiosity driven by globalization, Postmodernity, and new forms of religious practice. In this paper, we will overview the arrival of ayahuasca in Uruguay by way of four different groups. We will then focus on one of these groups, a (...) holistic alternative therapies center, influenced by Peruvian shamanic traditions in the design of its ceremonies. Last we will introduce a “distributed cognition” model to explain ayahuasca rituals as a system of activity. (shrink)

BackgroundDistorted gambling-related cognitions are tightly related to gambling problems, and are one of the main targets of treatment for disordered gambling, but their etiology remains uncertain. Although folk wisdom and some theoretical approaches have linked them to lower domain-general reasoning abilities, evidence regarding that relationship remains unconvincing.MethodIn the present cross-sectional study, the relationship between probabilistic/abstract reasoning, as measured by the Berlin Numeracy Test, and the Matrices Test, respectively, and the five dimensions of the Gambling-Related Cognitions Scale, was tested in a (...) sample of 77 patients with gambling disorder and 58 individuals without gambling problems.Results and interpretationNeither BNT nor matrices scores were significantly related to gambling-related cognitions, according to frequentist analyses, performed both considering and disregarding group in the models. Correlation Bayesian analyses largely supported the null hypothesis, i.e., the absence of relationships between the measures of interest. This pattern or results reinforces the idea that distorted cognitions do not originate in a general lack of understanding of probability or low fluid intelligence, but probably result from motivated reasoning. (shrink)

The preponderance of female stereotypes in various films has become intense. Regardless of film genre, its effect on media-saturated culture has become somehow profound. This has become a concern to many people especially to feminists. Hence, this film study is conducted to explore how the female lead characters are stereotyped in films particularly in select official James Bond 007 films. During the analysis, the researcher utilizes an adapted film analysis rubric. The results show that: 1) the leading female characters in (...) the three films analyzed are portrayed mainly as objects of Bond’s sexual desire while he establishes and maintains a chauvinistic role all throughout each film; 2) Bond engages in dualistic relationships with the lead female characters when he uses them to satisfy his own desires for a woman as a means to an end (as particularly exemplified and portrayed in the character of Countess Lisl in For Your Eyes Only); 3) the treatment of some female stereotypes in the three films analyzed is consistent, e.g. a particular stereotype of a lead female character as object of sexual desire is sustained all throughout the film. The study, therefore, concludes that the lead female characters in the select films are generally portrayed in oppressive stereotypes. Keywords: Mass Communication, lead female character, female stereotypes, James Bond007, descriptive design (qualitative film analysis), Philippines. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics seems to portray nature as nonseparable, in the sense that it allows spatiotemporally separated entities to have states that cannot be fully specified without reference to each other. This is often said to implicate some form of “holism.” We aim to clarify what this means, and why this seems plausible. Our core idea is that the best explanation for nonseparability is a “common ground” explanation, which casts nonseparable entities in a holistic light, as scattered reflections of a more (...) unified underlying reality. (shrink)

In 1687 Isaac Newton ushered in a new scientific era in which laws of nature could be used to predict the movements of matter with almost perfect precision. Newton's physics also posed a profound challenge to our self-understanding, however, for the very same laws that keep airplanes in the air and rivers flowing downhill tell us that it is in principle possible to predict what each of us will do every second of our entire lives, given the early conditions of (...) the universe. Can it really be that even while you toss and turn late at night in the throes of an important decision and it seems like the scales of fate hang in the balance, that your decision is a foregone conclusion? Can it really be that everything you have done and everything you ever will do is determined by facts that were in place long before you were born? This problem is one of the staples of philosophical discussion. It is discussed by everyone from freshman in their first philosophy class, to theoretical physicists in bars after conferences. And yet there is no topic that remains more unsettling, and less well understood. If you want to get behind the façade, past the bare statement of determinism, and really try to understand what physics is telling us in its own terms, read this book. The problem of free will raises all kinds of questions. What does it mean to make a decision, and what does it mean to say that our actions are determined? What are laws of nature? What are causes? What sorts of things are we, when viewed through the lenses of physics, and how do we fit into the natural order? Ismael provides a deeply informed account of what physics tells us about ourselves. The result is a vision that is abstract, alien, illuminating, and-Ismael argues-affirmative of most of what we all believe about our own freedom. Written in a jargon-free style, How Physics Makes Us Free provides an accessible and innovative take on a central question of human existence. (shrink)

The arrival of Buddhism to Uruguay is related to various historical and cultural factors, such as the democratic opening at eighties, the progressive globalization in the country, the break of post (modernism) with a hegemonic rationalist-positivist model, the emergence of so-called New Religious Movements and opening of goods symbolic-religious markets, generally aimed at middle and upper social strata with economic and cultural capital is conducive to the proposed use of existential and introspective way of life. In this paper we analyze (...) the arrival of the different Buddhist lineages in Uruguay (Tibetan and Japanese), and the historical and socio-cultural context which activates their emergency. (shrink)

En el siguiente trabajo analizaremos la relación entre cognición y tecnología a través del concepto de “cognición distribuida” relacionado con las ciencias cognitivas. A través del mismo nos introduciremos en el problema de los límites entre mente y artefactos, si podemos decir que la mente extiende su naturaleza a través de la tecnología y la cultura, o si debemos hablar únicamente de cognición dentro de los límites del sistema nervioso.

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew from Amazonas, popularized in the last decades in part through transnational religious networks, but also due to interest in exploring spirituality through altered states of consciousness among academic schools and scientific researchers. In this article, the author analyzes the relation between science and religion proposing that the “demarcation problem” between the two arises from the relations among consciousness, intentionality, and spirituality. The analysis starts at the beginning of modern science, continues through the nineteenth century, and (...) then examines the appearance of new schools in psychology and anthropology in the countercultural milieu of the 1960s. The author analyzes the case of ayahuasca against this historical background, first, in the general context of ayahuasca studies in the academic field. Second, he briefly describes three cases from Spain. Finally, he discusses the permeability of science to “spiritual ontologies” from an interdisciplinary perspective, using insights from social and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 31, Issue 2, pp 127 - 146 The aim of this paper is to trace Thomas Hobbes’s arguments for the rejection of spiritual possession in _Leviathan_. Several layers of Hobbes’s thought converge in this subject: his suggestion regarding the sovereign’s right to control religious doctrine; his mechanistic critique of incorporeal substances; his tirade against demonology and Pagan philosophy; his ideas about fear and the natural seeds of religion; his Biblical criticism. Hobbes’s reflections over the matter of spiritual (...) possession allowed him to simultaneously attack institutionalized and charismatic supernatural experiences, rejecting on Biblical as well as philosophical grounds the possibility of demonic and divine possession. This assault on traditional pneumatology led him to new interpretations of the notions of spirit and immateriality, a core element in _Leviathan_’s resignification of the interaction between nature and supernature. The paper will address Hobbes’s call for a civil exorcism―political, exegetical, and philosophical―against the spiritual powers that possess the Commonwealth. (shrink)

Nous proposons ci-après l’étude de la relation entre science et spiritualité chez Georges Lemaître, savant et croyant, un des acteurs principaux de la fondation de la cosmologie moderne. Il s’agit d’explorer la nature et le rôle de cette relation lors d’un épisode important de l’histoire des sciences, plus généralement de l’histoire de la pensée. Le mot spiritualité est ici entendu au sens suivant : l’idée et la recherche du divin, du vrai. Il résulte de la présente approche une appréhension élargie (...) de la prime histoire de la théorie dite du « big bang ». (shrink)

O foco deste artigo é realçar as contribuições de Deleuze e Guattari sobre a linguagem, e como se articula com o legado de Canetti e as noções de palavras de ordem, discurso indireto – além dos conceitos mais conhecidos de agenciamento, imanência e a formação de saber. Além disso, explica-se a relação entre o discurso e o poder, tal como é compreendida por Fairclough e a conexão que o poder tem com as estruturas sociais. A aproximação entre a linguagem e (...) o poder foi contemplada por esses autores a partir de uma perspectiva diferente, enquanto Deleuze e Guattari voltavam-se para o poder imanente da linguagem, Fairclough focou no poder existente a partir da relação entre o discurso e a estrutura social. (shrink)

Firm managers play an important role in the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. Education is emerging as the key factor in developing a sense of moral responsibility amongst the business students who will eventually become company managers and decision makers. The aim of this research is, thus, twofold. First, to analyze the existence of a direct positive correlation between university students’ perception of CSR and its impact on business performance; and second, to examine the extent to which two (...) factors (advantages brought by CSR and responsibilities toward stakeholders) act as mediation variables in the aforementioned correlation. The analysis was performed with a sample of 390 business‐related university students. Amongst the potential contributions made by this study we can highlight the possibility of knowing future managers’ way of thinking and of knowing the aspects where educational centers might improve their CSR teaching. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics seems to portray nature as nonseparable, in the sense that it allows spatiotemporally separated entities to have states that cannot be fully specified without reference to each other. This is often said to implicate some form of “holism.” We aim to clarify what this means, and why this seems plausible. Our core idea is that the best explanation for nonseparability is a “common ground” explanation, which casts nonseparable entities in a holistic light, as scattered reflections of a more (...) unified underlying reality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This paper re-examines the import of Rawls’s theory of justice for private sector institutions in the face of the decline of the welfare state. The argument is based on a Rawlsian conception of justice as the establishment of a basic structure of society that guarantees a fair distribution of primary goods. We propose that the decline of the welfare state witnessed in Western countries over the past forty years prompts a reassessment of the boundaries of the basic structure in order (...) to include additional corporate institutions. A discussion centered on the primary good of self-respect, but extensible to power and prerogatives as well as income and wealth, examines how the legislator should intervene in private sector institutions to counterbalance any unfairness that results from the decline of the welfare state. (shrink)

En la presente investigación se valoran las prácticas inclusivas de 6 1 docentes de educación básica de Colima, Sonora y San Luis Potosí adscritos a escuelas urbanas y rurales de México nominadas como exitosas. Se aplicaron varios instrumentos, como la GEPIA, la SACIE, el TEIP, el Cuestionario para Favorecer los Aprendizajes de Mitchell y el Protocolo C ODCA.

Graphical AbstractPheomelanogenesis may have evolved as an excretory mechanism to remove excess cysteine, and in humans this might potentially confer a greater ability to avoid disease such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, in which excess cysteine is a contributory cause.

Since at least the 1970s, the countryside of Western Europe has been the site of a myriad of “new” communal initiatives. Rural areas that were abandoned during the last century have witnessed the arrival of new inhabitants. These newcomers often flock to the mountains escaping urban lifestyles characterized by individualism, mass-oriented livelihoods, and isolation. Many of these individuals move to areas like the Catalan Pyrenees, where common property and communal institutions have had a strong historical presence. In embracing rural life, (...) these new inhabitants are looking for a more integrated social life in which the commons are, on the one hand, a form of collective private property, and, on the other, represent a more egalitarian way of life in which contributing to the collective effort is not only an efficient way of dealing with particularly harsh ecological conditions, but also an ideological statement that defines the community as something different: an alternative to urban capitalism. Two definitions of the commons are colliding in these mountains; two longstanding lines of political thought are converging and establishing a dialogue that is not always easy: (1) traditional ideologies of land ownership that defined common property over the centuries, not based on economic equality, but on private property and locally shared responsibility on the economic base of the community; and (2) utopian anti-capitalism that views the commons as an alternative mode of social organization and ownership based on egalitarianism. (shrink)

Com o tema: Filosofia da Educação: é possível educação sem filosofar? O Curso de Filosofia da Metodista promoveu a Semana da Filosofia 2019. A proposta foi articular pressupostos e referenciais filosóficos e sua interface com a educação. Além disso, identificar a relação necessária entre essas duas áreas fundamentais para a formação humana.

J. T. Ismael's monograph is an ambitious contribution to metaphysics and the philosophy of language and mind. She tackles a philosophical question whose origin goes back to Descartes: What am I? The self is not a mere thing among things--but if so, what is it, and what is its relationship to the world? Ismael is an original and creative thinker who tries to understand our problematic concepts about the self and how they are related to our use of (...) language in particular. (shrink)

The role of probability is one of the most contested issues in the interpretation of contemporary physics. In this paper, I’ll be reevaluating some widely held assumptions about where and how probabilities arise. Larry Sklar voices the conventional wisdom about probability in classical physics in a piece in the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy, when he writes that “Statistical mechanics was the first foundational physical theory in which probabilistic concepts and probabilistic explanation played a fundamental role.” And the conventional wisdom (...) about quantum probabilities is that they are basic, not reducible to the types of probabilities we see in statistical mechanics. In the first section of this paper, I’ll argue that in fact classical physics was steeped in probability long before statistical mechanics came on the scene, specifically, that an objective measure over phase space is an indispensable component of any informative physical theory. In the next section, I’ll argue that this objective measure is the fundamental form of physical probability and that quantum probabilities can be defined in terms of it. In the last, I’ll raise some questions about the metaphysical status of the fundamental measure. (shrink)

Mechanisms occurring at the atomic level are now known to drive processes essential for life, as revealed by quantum effects on biochemical reactions. Some macroscopic characteristics of organisms may thus show an atomic imprint, which may be transferred across organisms and affect their evolution. This possibility is considered here for the first time, with the aim of elucidating the appearance of an animal innovation with an unclear evolutionary origin: migratory behaviour. This trait may be mediated by a radical pair (RP) (...) mechanism in the retinal flavoprotein cryptochrome, providing essential magnetic orientation for migration. Isotopes may affect the performance of quantum processes through their nuclear spin. Here, we consider a simple model and then apply the standard open quantum system approach to the spin dynamics of cryptochrome RP. We changed the spin quantum number (I) and g‐factor of hydrogen and nitrogen isotopes to investigate their effect on RP's yield and magnetic sensitivity. Strong differences arose between isotopes with I = 1 and I = 1/2 in their contribution to cryptochrome magnetic sensitivity, particularly regarding Earth's magnetic field strengths (25–65 µT). In most cases, isotopic substitution improved RP's magnetic sensitivity. Migratory behaviour may thus have been favoured in animals with certain isotopic compositions of cryptochrome. (shrink)

In this paper we study the variety \(\textsf{WL}\) of bounded distributive lattices endowed with an implication, called weak Lewis distributive lattices. This variety corresponds to the algebraic semantics of the \(\{\vee,\wedge,\Rightarrow,\bot,\top \}\) -fragment of the arithmetical base preservativity logic \(\mathsf {iP^{-}}\). The variety \(\textsf{WL}\) properly contains the variety of bounded distributive lattices with strict implication, also known as weak Heyting algebras. We introduce the notion of WL-frame and we prove a representation theorem for WL-lattices by means of WL-frames. We extended (...) this representation to a topological duality by means of Priestley spaces endowed with a special neighbourhood relation between points and closed upsets of the space. These results are applied in order to give a representation and a topological duality for the variety of weak Heyting–Lewis algebras, i.e., for the algebraic semantics of the arithmetical base preservativity logic \(\textsf{iP}^{-}\). (shrink)

Huw Price has argued that on an interventionist account of cause the distinction is perspectival, and the claim prompted some interesting responses from interventionists and in particular an exchange with Woodward that raises questions about what it means to say that one or another structure is perspectival. I’ll introduce his reasons for claiming that the distinction between cause and effect on an interventionist account is perspectival. Then I’ll introduce a distinction between different ways in which a class of concepts can (...) be said to depend on facts about their users. Three importantly different forms of dependence will emerge from the discussion: Pragmatic dependence on us: truth conditions for x-beliefs can be given by a function f \ of more fundamental physical structures making no explicit reference to human agents. But there are any other number of functions ) ontologically on a par with x and what explains the distinguished role f plays in our practical and epistemic lives are facts about us. Implicit relativization: truth conditions for x-beliefs are relative to agent or context; the context supplies the value of a hidden parameter that determines the truth of x-beliefs. Indexicals: like implicit relativization except that the surface syntax contains a term whose semantic value is context-dependent. I suggest that Price’s insights are best understood in the first way. This will draw a crucial disanalogy with his central examples of perspectival concepts, but it will refine the thesis in a way that is more faithful to what his arguments show. The refined thesis will also support generalization to other concepts, and clarify the foundations of the quite distinctive research program that Price has been developing for a number of years. (shrink)

It is well known that the formal system developed by Frege in Begriffsschrift is based upon the distinction between function and argument—as opposed to the traditional distinction between subject and predicate. Almost all of the modern commentaries on Frege's work suggest a semantic interpretation of this distinction, and identify it with the ontological structure of function and object, upon which Grundgesetze is based. Those commentaries agree that the system proposed by Frege in Begriffsschrift has some gaps, but it is taken (...) as an essentially correct formal system for second-order logic: the first one in the history of logic. However, there is strong textual evidence that such an interpretation should be rejected. This evidence shows that the nature of the distinction between function and argument is stated by Frege in a significantly different way: it applies only to expressions and not to entities. The formal system based on this distinction is tremendously flexible and is suitable for making explicit the logical structure of contents as well as of deductive chains. We put forward a new reconstruction of the function-argument scheme and the quantification theory in Begriffsschrift. After that, we discuss the usual semantic interpretation of Begriffsschrift and show its inconsistencies with a rigorous reading of the text. (shrink)

Three decades ago, interactions between evolutionary biology and physiology gave rise to evolutionary physiology. This caused comparative physiologists to improve their research methods by incorporating evolutionary thinking. Simultaneously, evolutionary biologists began focusing more on physiological mechanisms that may help to explain constraints on and trade‐offs during microevolutionary processes, as well as macroevolutionary patterns in physiological diversity. Here we argue that evolutionary physiology has yet to reach its full potential, and propose new avenues that may lead to unexpected advances. Viewing physiological (...) adaptations in wild animals as potential solutions to human diseases offers enormous possibilities for biomedicine. New evidence of epigenetic modifications as mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity that regulate physiological traits may also arise in coming years, which may also represent an overlooked enhancer of adaptation via natural selection to explain physiological evolution. Synergistic interactions at these intersections and other areas will lead to a novel understanding of organismal biology. (shrink)

En el siglo XX, la música popular fue el lenguaje artístico más contundente y una de las grandes fuerzas estéticas de Brasil. Desde los años 30, ella ocupó una posición importante en debates culturales y proyectos nacionalistas y, a lo largo de los años, expandió su alcance con el avance de los medios de comunicación. Dicha inversión todavía resultó, más allá de lo esperado, en la producción de una modalidad crítica de canción. Así que en los 60, Al igual que (...) el arte moderno, la canción se tornó reflexiva, operando de manera crítica en relación a sí misma y al contexto cultural y político. El componente reflexivo de la canción parece haber ampliado considerablemente su alcance cultural. Tanto es así que no parece irrazonable señalar una conexión profunda entre la canción y un cierto horizonte de construcción nacional. En este trabajo, intentamos hacer un panorama del desarrollo de la música popular brasileña de modo a aclarar ese proceso y, tal vez, posibilitar nuevos planteamientos para pensar sus posibilidades críticas desde su dimensión estética. (shrink)

First para: Before the 17th century, there was not much discussion, and little uniformity in conception, of natural laws. The rise of science in 17th century, Newton’s mathematization of physics, and the provision of strict, deterministic laws that applied equally to the heavens and to the terrestrial realm had a profound impact in transforming the philosophical imagination. A philosophical conception of physical law built on the example of Newtonian Mechanics became quickly entrenched. Between the 17th and 20th centuries, there was (...) a great deal of philosophical interest in probabilities, but probabilities were mostly regarded as having something to do with the management of opinion, not as having a fundamental role in science. Probabilities made their first appearance in an evidently ineliminable way in the laws of a fundamental theory with the advent of quantum mechanics. Quantum probabilities have come to be called ‘chances’ in the philosophical literature, and their interpretation has been one of the central problems in philosophy of science now for almost a century. There continue to be hold-outs that insist that there must be an underlying probability-free replacement for quantum mechanics and Bohmians have had some success in formulating a deterministic alternative to quantum mechanics, but most physicists accept that the probabilistic character of the quantum mechanical laws is likely to be retained in any successor theory. While physics has adjusted itself comfortably to the existence of ineliminably probabilistic laws, philosophy has not managed arrive at a stable interpretation of quantum probability. The difficulty is that there are a number of constraints that an interpretation of chance must satisfy, constraints that appear to be partially definitive of the concept and it proves to be extraordinarily difficult to meet them simultaneously. (shrink)

Funding agencies and large public scientific institutions are increasingly using the term “research portfolio” as a means of characterizing their research. While portfolios have long been used as a heuristic for managing corporate R&D, they remain ill-defined in a science policy context where research is aimed at achieving societal outcomes. In this article we analyze the discursive uses of the term “research portfolio” and propose some general considerations for their application in science policy. We explore the use of the term (...) in private R&D and related scholarly literature in existing science policy practices, and seek insight in relevant literature in science policy scholarship. While the financial analogy can in some instances be instructive, a simple transposition from the world of finance or of corporate R&D to public research is problematic. However, we do identify potentially fruitful uses of portfolio analysis in science policy. In particular, our review suggests that the concept of research portfolio can indeed be a useful analytical instrument for tackling complex societal challenges. Specifically, the strands of scholarship identified suggest that the use of research portfolio should: i) recognize the diversity of research lines relevant for a given societal challenge, given the uncertainty and ambiguity of research outcomes; ii) examine the relationships between research options of a portfolio and the expected societal outcomes; and iii) adopt a systemic perspective to research portfolios – i.e. examine a portfolio as a functional whole, rather than as the sum of its parts. We argue that with these considerations, portfolio-driven approaches may foster social inclusion in science policy decisions, help deliberation between “alternative” portfolios to tackle complex societal challenges, as well as promote cost-effectiveness and transparency. (shrink)