This paper examines the views of Fogelin, Woods, Johnstone, etc., concerning deep disa-greements, force-five standoffs, philosophical controversies, etc. My approach is to reconstruct their views and critiques of them as meta-arguments, and to elaborate the meta-argumentative aspects of radical disa-greements. It turns out that deep disagreements are resolvable to a greater degree than usually thought, but only by using special principles and practices, such as meta-argumentation, ad hominem argumentation, Ramsey’s principle, etc.

Comparatively little scholarly attention has been given to the question of futility in chronic psychiatric disorders, with the exception of a small body of work on so-called end-stage anorexia nervosa. A review of this literature provides the background for a critical examination of whether the concept of futility has any clinically meaningful, ethically justifiable, and legally defensible application to AN. In this article, the arguments for and against futility judgments in AN are analyzed with special emphasis on determinations of capacity (...) in this serious mental illness. Parallels between the futility disputes in medical and psychiatric disorders, where applicable, will be drawn to further illuminate whether or not the concept that continued psychiatric treatment for AN is ever truly futile. (shrink)

This study aims to contribute to emerging human-robot interaction research by adding longitudinal findings to a limited number of long-term social robotics home studies. We placed 70 robots in users’ homes for a period of up to six months, and used questionnaires and interviews to collect data at six points during this period. Results indicate that users’ evaluations of the robot dropped initially, but later rose after the robot had been used for a longer period of time. This is congruent (...) with the so-called mere-exposure effect, which shows an increasing positive evaluation of a novel stimulus once people become familiar with it. Before adoption, users focus on control beliefs showing that previous experiences with robots or other technologies allows to create a mental image of what having and using a robot in the home would entail. After adoption, users focus on utilitarian and hedonic attitudes showing that especially usefulness, social presence, enjoyment and attractiveness are important factors for long-term acceptance. (shrink)

Laboratory ethnographies have provided valuable insights in the workings of contemporary science and technology and about facts in the making. Nearly all these ethnographic studies have been conducted at nonprofit research institutes. In this article, the authors argue that it is time for science and technology studies (STS) ethnography to direct its gaze toward for-profit knowledge production sites. The authors do so, based on a long-standing recognition that nonprofit academic laboratories do not have a monopoly on knowledge construction. First, they (...) historicize STS’ focus on public knowledge production, distinguishing between two roles for STS. Second, they argue that relationships between industry and society have changed, resulting in increasing corporate transparency. Third, they argue that this change enables STS ethnography to enter corporations and corporate laboratories. The authors conclude by proposing a research agenda for the social study of corporate science. (shrink)

In this paper, I plan to show that the use of a specific population concept—Millstein’s Causal Interactionist Population Concept (CIPC)—has interesting and counter-intuitive ramifications for discussions of the reality of biological race in human beings. These peculiar ramifications apply to human beings writ large and to individuals. While this in and of itself may not be problematic, I plan to show that the ramifications that follow from applying Millstein’s CIPC to human beings complicates specific biological racial realist accounts—naïve or otherwise. (...) I conclude with the notion that even if biological races do exist—by fulfilling all of the criteria needed for Millstein’s population concept (which, given particular worries raised by Gannett (Synthese 177:363–385, 2010), and Winther and Kaplan (Theoria 60:54–80, 2013) may not)—the lower-bound limit for the scope of biological racial realism is at the level of populations, and as such they cannot say anything about whether or not individual organisms themselves have races. (shrink)

Our sense of self includes awareness of our thoughts and movements, and our control over them. This feeling can be altered or lost in neuropsychiatric disorders as well as in phenomena such as “automatic writing” whereby writing is attributed to an external source. Here, we employed suggestion in highly hypnotically suggestible participants to model various experiences of automatic writing during a sentence completion task. Results showed that the induction of hypnosis, without additional suggestion, was associated with a small but significant (...) reduction of control, ownership, and awareness for writing. Targeted suggestions produced a double dissociation between thought and movement components of writing, for both feelings of control and ownership, and additionally, reduced awareness of writing. Overall, suggestion produced selective alterations in the control, ownership, and awareness of thought and motor components of writing, thus enabling key aspects of automatic writing, observed across different clinical and cultural settings, to be modelled. (shrink)

Statistical distributions have great applicability for modeling data in almost every applied sector. Among the available classical distributions, the inverse Weibull distribution has received considerable attention. In the practice of distribution theory, numerous methods have been studied and suggested/introduced to increase the flexibility level of the traditional probability distributions. In this paper, we implement different distribution methods to obtain five new different versions of the inverse Weibull model. The new modifications of the inverse Weibull model are called the logarithm transformed-inverse (...) Weibull, a flexible reduced logarithmic-inverse Weibull, the weighted TX-inverse Weibull, a new generalized-inverse Weibull, and the alpha power transformed extended-inverse Weibull distributions. To illustrate the flexibility and applicability of the new modifications of the inverse Weibull model, a biomedical data set is analyzed. The data set consists of 108 observations and represents the mortality rate of the COVID-19-infected patients. The practical application shows that the new generalized-inverse Weibull is the best modification of the inverse Weibull distribution. (shrink)

Information is a peculiar quantity. Unlike matter and energy, which are conserved by the laws of physics, the aggregation of knowledge from many sources can in fact produce more information (synergy) or less (redundancy) than the sum of its parts. This feature can endow groups with problem‐solving strategies that are superior to those possible among noninteracting individuals and, in turn, may provide a selection drive toward collective cooperation and coordination. Here we explore the formal properties of information aggregation as a (...) general principle for explaining features of social organization. We quantify information in terms of the general formalism of information theory, which also prescribes the rules of how different pieces of evidence inform the solution of a given problem. We then show how several canonical examples of collective cognition and coordination can be understood through principles of minimization of uncertainty (maximization of predictability) under information pooling over many individuals. We discuss in some detail how collective coordination in swarms, markets, natural language processing, and collaborative filtering may be guided by the optimal aggregation of information in social collectives. We also identify circumstances when these processes fail, leading, for example, to inefficient markets. The contrast to approaches to understand coordination and collaboration via decision and game theory is also briefly discussed. (shrink)

We study the existence of weak solutions for the coupled system of functional integral equations of Urysohn-Stieltjes type in the reflexive Banach spaceE. As an application, the coupled system of Hammerstien-Stieltjes functional integral equations is also studied.

The growth in the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry poses a number of challenges for healthcare practice, among a number of other areas of concern. Several companies providing this service send their customers reports including information variously referred to as genetic ethnicity, genetic heritage, biogeographic ancestry, and genetic ancestry. In this article, we argue that such information should not be used in healthcare consultations or to assess health risks. Far from representing a move toward personalized medicine, use of this information poses (...) risks both to patients as individuals and to racialized ethnic groups because of the way it misrepresents human genetic diversity. (shrink)

In this paper we define Martin-L¨of complexes to be algebras for monads on the category of (reflexive) globular sets which freely add cells in accordance with the rules of intensional Martin-L¨of type theory. We then study the resulting categories of algebras for several theories. Our principal result is that there exists a cofibrantly generated Quillen model structure on the category of 1-truncated Martin-L¨of complexes and that this category is Quillen equivalent to the category of groupoids. In particular, 1-truncated Martin-L¨of complexes (...) are a model of homotopy 1-types. In order to establish these facts we give a proof-theoretic analysis, using a modified version of Tait’s logical predicates argument, of the propositional equality classes of terms of identity type in the 1-truncated theory. (shrink)

RESUMO Este texto apresenta parte de pesquisa recém-concluída, que delineia dimensões e balizas para o que vem sendo denominado perspectiva discursiva de alfabetização. Princípios da teoria da enunciação e de estudos que analisam as relações entre sujeito e linguagem e o papel das interações discursivas nos processos de ensino e aprendizagem organizam a base teórico-metodológica do estudo, em que se analisam relatos escritos por cinco professoras alfabetizadoras durante 18 meses. Duas dimensões teórico-metodológicas de análise são trabalhadas: discursiva e indiciária. Mergulha-se (...) nos modos como a prática pedagógica é movimentada em sala de aula, em busca de indícios para descrever a situação discursiva em que foram colhidos, analisá-los e interpretá-los. A pesquisa tem como horizonte compreender como podem ser concebidas metodologias de alfabetização em que o trabalho com a vida das crianças na cultura escrita se sobreponha ao trabalho tradicionalmente realizado com foco no sistema de escrita. ABSTRACT This paper presents data from a recently finished research that outlines dimensions and guidelines for what has been named discursive perspective on literacy. Principles of the theory of enunciation and studies that analyze the relationships between subject and language as well as the role of discursive interactions in the teaching and learning processes, organize the theoretical and methodological basis of the study. We analyzed reports written by five literacy teachers for 18 months. Two theoretical-methodological dimensions of analysis were employed, the discursive and the evidential. We focus on the ways the pedagogical practice is developed in the classroom, seeking for indexes to describe the discursive situation from which they were collected, and to analyze and interpret them. The aim of the research was to understand how to construct literacy methodologies in which working with children's lives in written culture overcomes the traditional work focused on the writing system. (shrink)

Este artigo tem por objetivo destacar a presença feminina nos relatos sobre mártires cristãos nos séculos II e III d.C. Utiliza os pressupostos teóricos e metodológicos da história das mulheres. Destaca as experiências e as ações das mulheres como sujeitos ativos num contexto histórico específico. A documentação contém uma substancial presença de mulheres que ultrapassaram barreiras sociais e religiosas e confessaram publicamente a sua opção de fé. Mais do que uma descrição e um registro da participação feminina, alguns problemas são (...) analisados e explicados a partir da delimitação de aspectos específicos da vida das mulheres, incluindo a presença de um universo simbólico fortíssimo. O documento principal é a “Paixão de Perpétua e Felicidade”, que trata da prisão e condenação ao suplício de um grupo de homens e mulheres que confessaram e reafirmaram seu credo religioso cristão, no século III, na cidade de Cartago, na África do Norte. O documento é considerado um arquétipo dos atos dos mártires cristãos e, do mesmo modo, um registro documental que trata diretamente de duas mulheres. A análise demonstra a construção de modelos de resistência e liberdade, apontando características mais profundas e inerentes ao mundo feminino da época. Palavras-chave: História das mulheres; Mártires; Perpétua e Felicidade; Memória; Resistência. ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to emphasize woman’s presence in Christian martyrs’ descriptions during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, making use of theoretical and methodological fundamentals of the history of women. It highlights their experiences and actions as active subjects in a specific historical context. The documentation refers to a considerable number of women who crossed social and religious barriers and confessed their option of faith in public. More than describing and recording woman’s participation, it analyzes and explains some situations with basis on the delimitation of specific aspects of the women’s life, including the remarkable presence of a symbolic universe. The most important document is the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, which deals with the arresting, condemnation and martyrdom of a group of men and women who had confessed and reaffirmed their Christian creeds. The fact took place in the city of Cartago, in North Africa, in the 3rd century. The document is considered an archetype of Christian martyrs’ acts and a documentary record of the two women. The analysis demonstrates the construction of models of resistance and freedom that characterize the depth of the feminine world at the time. Key words: History of the women; Martyrs; Perpetua and Felicitas; Memory; Resistance. (shrink)

Deception is part of the natural repertoire of adaptive behaviours in many organisms. In humans we see it in all domains of human activity including health care. Within health care, deception can be a matter of concern, but it is also used to protect patients, for instance against overwhelming and negative diagnostics. This paper demonstrates that deception and self‐deception are closely interlinked and that self‐deception facilitates deception. Furthermore, self‐deception tends to be used to reduce the discomfort we feel when we (...) are dishonest (cognitive dissonance). The paper includes references to core psychological mechanisms and ethical aspects. (shrink)