We model a piece of text of human language telling a story by means of the quantum structure describing a Bose gas in a state close to a Bose–Einstein condensate near absolute zero temperature. For this we introduce energy levels for the words (concepts) used in the story and we also introduce the new notion of ‘cogniton’ as the quantum of human thought. Words (concepts) are then cognitons in different energy states as it is the case for photons in different (...) energy states, or states of different radiative frequency, when the considered boson gas is that of the quanta of the electromagnetic field. We show that Bose–Einstein statistics delivers a very good model for these pieces of texts telling stories, both for short stories and for long stories of the size of novels. We analyze an unexpected connection with Zipf’s law in human language, the Zipf ranking relating to the energy levels of the words, and the Bose–Einstein graph coinciding with the Zipf graph. We investigate the issue of ‘identity and indistinguishability’ from this new perspective and conjecture that the way one can easily understand how two of ‘the same concepts’ are ‘absolutely identical and indistinguishable’ in human language is also the way in which quantum particles are absolutely identical and indistinguishable in physical reality, providing in this way new evidence for our conceptuality interpretation of quantum theory. (shrink)

We model a piece of text of human language telling a story by means of the quantum structure describing a Bose gas in a state close to a Bose–Einstein condensate near absolute zero temperature. For this we introduce energy levels for the words used in the story and we also introduce the new notion of ‘cogniton’ as the quantum of human thought. Words are then cognitons in different energy states as it is the case for photons in different energy states, (...) or states of different radiative frequency, when the considered boson gas is that of the quanta of the electromagnetic field. We show that Bose–Einstein statistics delivers a very good model for these pieces of texts telling stories, both for short stories and for long stories of the size of novels. We analyze an unexpected connection with Zipf’s law in human language, the Zipf ranking relating to the energy levels of the words, and the Bose–Einstein graph coinciding with the Zipf graph. We investigate the issue of ‘identity and indistinguishability’ from this new perspective and conjecture that the way one can easily understand how two of ‘the same concepts’ are ‘absolutely identical and indistinguishable’ in human language is also the way in which quantum particles are absolutely identical and indistinguishable in physical reality, providing in this way new evidence for our conceptuality interpretation of quantum theory. (shrink)

We model a piece of text of human language telling a story by means of the quantum structure describing a Bose gas in a state close to a Bose–Einstein condensate near absolute zero temperature. For this we introduce energy levels for the words used in the story and we also introduce the new notion of ‘cogniton’ as the quantum of human thought. Words are then cognitons in different energy states as it is the case for photons in different energy states, (...) or states of different radiative frequency, when the considered boson gas is that of the quanta of the electromagnetic field. We show that Bose–Einstein statistics delivers a very good model for these pieces of texts telling stories, both for short stories and for long stories of the size of novels. We analyze an unexpected connection with Zipf’s law in human language, the Zipf ranking relating to the energy levels of the words, and the Bose–Einstein graph coinciding with the Zipf graph. We investigate the issue of ‘identity and indistinguishability’ from this new perspective and conjecture that the way one can easily understand how two of ‘the same concepts’ are ‘absolutely identical and indistinguishable’ in human language is also the way in which quantum particles are absolutely identical and indistinguishable in physical reality, providing in this way new evidence for our conceptuality interpretation of quantum theory. (shrink)

We show that data collected from corpuses of documents violate the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of Bell’s inequality and therefore indicate the presence of quantum entanglement in their structure. We obtain this result by considering two concepts and their combination and coincidence operations consisting of searches of co-occurrences of exemplars of these concepts in specific corpuses of documents. Measuring the frequencies of these co-occurrences and calculating the relative frequencies as approximate probabilities entering in the CHSH inequality, we obtain manifest violations of the (...) latter for all considered corpuses of documents. In comparing these violations with those analogously obtained in an earlier work for the same combined concepts in psychological coincidence experiments with human participants, also violating the CHSH inequality, we identify the entanglement as being carried by the meaning connection between the two considered concepts within the combination they form. We explain the stronger violation for the corpuses of documents, as compared to the violation in the psychology experiments, as being due to the superior meaning domain of the human mind and, on the other side, to the latter reaching a broader domain of meaning and being possibly also actively influenced during the experimentation. We mention some of the issues to be analyzed in future work such as the violations of the CHSH inequality being larger than the ‘Cirel’son bound’ for all of the considered corpuses of documents. (shrink)

We investigate the hypothesis that within a combination of a ‘number concept’ plus a ‘substantive concept’, such as ‘eleven animals’, the identity and indistinguishability present on the level of the concepts, i.e., all eleven animals are identical and indistinguishable, gives rise to a statistical structure of the Bose–Einstein type similar to how Bose–Einstein statistics is present for identical and indistinguishable quantum particles. We proceed by identifying evidence for this hypothesis by extracting the statistical data from the World-Wide-Web utilizing the Google (...) Search tool. By using the Kullback–Leibler divergence method, we then compare the obtained distribution with the Maxwell–Boltzmann as well as with the Bose–Einstein distributions and show that the Bose–Einstein’s provides a better fit as compared to the Maxwell–Boltzmann’s. (shrink)

We motivate the possibility of using notions and methods derived from quantum physics, and more specifically from the research field known as ‘quantum cognition’, to optimally model different situations in the field of medicine, its decision-making processes and ensuing practices, particularly in relation to chronic and rare diseases. This also as a way to devise alternative approaches to the generally adopted double-blind gold standard.

In the first half of this two-part article, we analyzed a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of directions that they considered to be the best example of Two Different Wind Directions, and showed that the data violate the CHSH version of Bell’s inequality, with same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments in physics. In this second part, we complete our analysis by presenting a symmetrized version of the experiment, still violating the CHSH inequality but now (...) also obeying the marginal law, for which we provide a full quantum modeling in Hilbert space, using a singlet state and suitably chosen product measurements. We also address some of the criticisms that have been recently directed at experiments of this kind, according to which they would not highlight the presence of genuine forms of entanglement. We explain that these criticisms are based on a view of entanglement that is too restrictive, thus unable to capture all possible ways physical and conceptual entities can connect and form systems behaving as a whole. We also provide an example of a mechanical model showing that the violations of the marginal law and Bell inequalities are generally to be associated with different mechanisms. (shrink)

We present a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of spatial directions that they considered to be the best example of Two different wind directions. Data are shown to violate the CHSH version of Bell’s inequality with the same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments with entangled spins. Wind directions thus appear to be conceptual entities connected through meaning, in human cognition, in a similar way as spins appear to be entangled in experiments conducted in physics (...) laboratories. This is the first part of a two-part article. In the second part we present a symmetrized version of the same experiment for which we provide a quantum modeling of the collected data in Hilbert space. (shrink)

In the first half of this two-part article, we analyzed a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of directions that they considered to be the best example of Two Different Wind Directions, and showed that the data violate the CHSH version of Bell’s inequality, with same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments in physics. In this second part, we complete our analysis by presenting a symmetrized version of the experiment, still violating the CHSH inequality but now (...) also obeying the marginal law, for which we provide a full quantum modeling in Hilbert space, using a singlet state and suitably chosen product measurements. We also address some of the criticisms that have been recently directed at experiments of this kind, according to which they would not highlight the presence of genuine forms of entanglement. We explain that these criticisms are based on a view of entanglement that is too restrictive, thus unable to capture all possible ways physical and conceptual entities can connect and form systems behaving as a whole. We also provide an example of a mechanical model showing that the violations of the marginal law and Bell inequalities are generally to be associated with different mechanisms. (shrink)

We present a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of spatial directions that they considered to be the best example of Two different wind directions. Data are shown to violate the CHSH version of Bell’s inequality with the same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments with entangled spins. Wind directions thus appear to be conceptual entities connected through meaning, in human cognition, in a similar way as spins appear to be entangled in experiments conducted in physics (...) laboratories. This is the first part of a two-part article. In the second part (Aerts et al. in Found Sci, 2017) we present a symmetrized version of the same experiment for which we provide a quantum modeling of the collected data in Hilbert space. (shrink)

We motivate the possibility of using notions and methods derived from quantum physics, and more specifically from the research field known as ‘quantum cognition’, to optimally model different situations in the field of medicine, its decision-making processes and ensuing practices, particularly in relation to chronic and rare diseases. This also as a way to devise alternative approaches to the generally adopted double-blind gold standard.

It is vital that social workers have a deep and critical understanding of the social work value-base, and are able to analyse and apply values and ethics to their everyday practice. This fully-revised edition of one of our best-selling titles identifies current issues in social work and then applies an ethical dimension. These issues are then investigated further within an anti-discriminatory framework and against the background of the code of practice for social care workers and employers. Traditional value perspectives are (...) clearly explained and current developments in virtue theory and the ethics of care for social work are also introduced. (shrink)

contemporary ethical project--one that should inform our lives as well as our thoughts.

In _Ecce Homo_ Friedrich Nietzsche calls himself "the first immoralist" and adds "that makes me the annihilator _par excellence_". Lester Hunt examines this and other radical claims in order to show that Nietzsche does have a coherent ethical and political philosophy. He uses Nietzsche's writings as a starting point for a critique of a wider, contemporary ethical project - one that should inform our lives as well as our thoughts.

This paper’s main contention is that some basically methodological developments in science which are apparently distant and unrelated can be seen as part of a sequential story. Focusing on general inferential and epistemological matters, the paper links occurrences separated by both in time and space, by formal and representational issues rather than social or disciplinary links. It focuses on a few limited aspects of several cognitive practices in medical and biological contexts separated by geography, disciplines and decades, but connected by (...) long term transdisciplinary representational and inferential structures and constraints. The paper intends to show a given set of knowledge claims based on organizing statistically empirical data can be seen to have been underpinned by a previous, more familiar, and probably more natural, narrative handling of similar evidence. To achieve that this paper moves from medicine in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to the second half of the nineteenth century in England among gentleman naturalists, following its subject: the shift from narrative depiction of hereditary transmission of physical peculiarities to posterior statistical articulations of the same phenomena. Some early defenders of heredity as an important causal presence in the understanding of life adopted singular narratives, in the form of case stories from medical and natural history traditions, to flesh out a special kind of causality peculiar to heredity. This work tries to reconstruct historically the rationale that drove the use of such narratives. It then shows that when this rationale was methodologically challenged, its basic narrative and probabilistic underpinings were transferred to the statistical quantificational tools that took their place. (shrink)

The debate about justice in immigration seems somehow stagnated given that it seems justice requires both further exclusion and more porous borders. In the face of this, I propose to take a step back and to realize that the general problem of borders—to determine what kind of borders liberal democracies ought to have—gives rise to two particular problems: first, to justify exclusive control over the administration of borders (the problem of legitimacy of borders) and, second, to specify how this control (...) ought to be exercised (the problem of justice of borders). The literature has explored the second but ignored the first. Therefore, I propose a different approach to the ethics of immigration by focusing on concerns of legitimacy in a three-step framework: first, identifying the kind of authority or power that immigration controls exercise; second, redefining borders as international and domestic institutions that issue that kind of power; and finally, considering supranational institutions that redistribute the right to exclude among legitimate borders. (shrink)

This article assesses an assumption pervasive in one strain of arguments in favor of stringent immigration controls. The assumption affirms that—for the case of regular admissions—to a certain extent states are permitted to prioritize the interests of their citizens and residents by issuing exclusionary immigration policies (call this the priority assumption). Using the normative methodology of applied international ethics, I suggest some broad constraints to this priority assumption that have a bearing on justifications for current practical immigration policy in Europe, (...) North America, and beyond. I do so by redefining borders as domestic-international institutions that open up borders not only to (internal) standards of justice but also to standards of international legitimacy. (shrink)

This article examines fashion models as gender myths and cultural iconsthrough a cultural history of modelling. It reveals the construction of models’ personas by the successive addition of meaningful signs:physique, manner, attitude, nationality, class, race, salary, chameleonism, slenderness and so on. On the basis of empirical material on models’ experiences gathered from interviews, secondary oral sources and autobiographical material, the author approaches models’ bodies, identities and public personas as artefacts performed through the reiteration of collectively defined gender standards and practices. (...) This approach overcomes the contrast cast in fashion discourse between visibility/invisibility, private/public, real/unreal while disclosing the hegemonic beauty standards as fiction. (shrink)

La utilización de la radio de manera planificada e intencionada en el proceso educativo contribuye a que los jóvenes adquieran una amplia gama de conocimientos referidos a diversos temas académicos, científicos y humanísticos, de una manera interactiva y vivencial. Partiendo de esta premisa es posible inferir que la radio constituye un recurso útil y valioso para consolidar competencias para la convivencia social en los estudiantes de educación media. Es por ello que el objetivo de este estudio es proponer el uso (...) de la radio como un recurso tecnológico pertinente para la asimilación de competencias para la convivencia social. Para alcanzar el objetivo propuesto el trabajo se enmarca en una investigación de tipo documental. Los resultados del estudio evidencian que la incorporación de la radio a la dinámica de trabajo pedagógico es potencialmente útil en la estimulación de competencias para la convivencia social, fortaleciendo significativamente aptitudes afectivas y morales como la igualdad, el respeto, el trabajo colaborativo y en equipo, la solidaridad, entre otros, además de propiciar en el estudiante el mejoramiento de sus habilidades para la expresión oral y escrita. (shrink)

En la genealogía del cuidado de sí, Foucault afirma que la filosofía cartesiana propina a esta tradición el golpe definitivo que la condena al olvido. A partir de entonces, el sujeto ya no debe practicar sobre su ser de sujeto ninguna transformación para acceder a la verdad, basta con el empleo correcto de sus facultades cognoscitivas. En este artículo se defiende que en Descartes la cuestión del cuidado no es olvidada, sino que precisamente la empresa de la reconstrucción del edificio (...) del conocimiento para la búsqueda de la verdad es abordada como fruto de una decisión moral sobre la forma de vida. (shrink)

Business ethics as an applied inquiry requires an expanded normative method which allows both philosophical and religious ethical considerations to be employed in resolving complex issues or cases. The proposed foundational normative method provides a comprehensive framework composed of major philosophical and religious ethical theories. An extensive rationale from the current trends in business ethics and metaethical considerations supports the development of this method which is illustrated in several case studies. By using this method, scholars and business persons gain greater (...) certitude about the ethical quality of their deliberations and decision making than what may be achieved with current nonsystematic or nascent normative methods. (shrink)

This paper argues that our modern concept of biological heredity was first clearly introduced in a theoretical and practical setting by the generation of French physicians that were active between 1810 and 1830. It describes how from a traditional focus on hereditary transmission of disease, influential French medical men like Esquirol, Fodéré, Piorry, Lévy, moved towards considering heredity a central concept for the conception of the human bodily frame, and its set of physical and moral dispositions. The notion of heredity (...) as a natural force, with a wide ranging capabilities of transmitting differentially both fundamental and accidental characters was generalized by that generation of physicians with the help of contemporary naturalists and physiologists. By 1830 the term hérédité was widespread, and it shared the explanatory and semantic qualities of traditional medical concepts like constitution and temperament. An analysis is given of the main developments that led to the conception of biological (including human) bodies as consisting of a layered, hierarchical organization of characters, differentially affected by the laws of conservation (Heredity) and change (Inneity, Variation). The mid-century work of the French physician Prosper Lucas, Traité Philosophique et Physiologique de L'Hérédité Naturelle, is shown to be the culmination of the efforts of several generations of French physicians towards having a feasible, complexly structured notion of how heredity works. (shrink)

This publishes the Taubman Lectures for September 2013. The aim of the book is to trace the reception of the Torah from the Babylonian...

Biological science does not try to distinguish between health and disease. Biology is concerned with the interaction between living organisms and their environment. What we call health or disease is quite irrelevant.These reactions between the individual and his environment are complex. The individual and his surroundings form an integrated system which we can arbitrarily divide into two parts. There is an “external” component, by which we mean such factors as light, heat, percentage of oxygen in the air, quantity of minerals (...) or vitamins in food, micro-organisms in food or air, and so on. These can induce changes in what we arbitrarily call the “internal” component. Here we include such crude factors as anatomical structures, or finer details like composition of intercellular fluid, or secretions of glands, or changes of electrical potential in nerve or muscle. (shrink)

What is African American Politics? What form should it take? How does it conceptualize white supremacy? In In the Shadow of Du Bois, Robert Gooding-Williams uses the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Fredrick Douglass to provide answers to these questions. While the choices of Douglass and Du Bois make a great deal of sense, they reproduce the tendency of confining political theory to literature – a move that bounds the genre in problematic ways. In this article, I (...) in effect attempt to “unbound” the genre by considering Ella Baker, a civil rights era political organizer. (shrink)

This comprehensive anthology of Bertrand Russell's writings brings together his definitive essays from the period 1903 to 1959. It covers the most fertile and the most lasting work on every significant area he published in.

In jurisprudential literature, the adjective 'defeasible' appears as a predicate of many terms: concepts, laws, rules, reasoning, justification, proof, and so on. In this paper, we analyze the effects of some versions of the thesis of the defeasibility of legal norms on the reconstruction of the notion of legal validity. We analyze some possible justifications of this thesis considered as a claim concerning validity, and enquire into two possible sets of problems related to the defeasibility of the criteria of identification (...) of a legal system. We also provide a formalization of some options regarding defeasible criteria of identification, which can be used as a tool for meta-jurisprudential analysis. Finally, the thesis according to which defeasibility is better conceived of as a feature of legal application is examined and questioned. (shrink)