The introduction of the notion of family resemblance represented a major shift in Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the meaning of words, moving away from a belief that words were well defined, to a view that words denoted less well defined categories of meaning. This paper presents the use of the notion of family resemblance in the area of machine learning as an example of the benefits that can accrue from adopting the kind of paradigm shift taken by Wittgenstein. The paper presents (...) a model capable of learning exemplars using the principle of family resemblance and adopting Bayesian networks for a representation of exemplars. An empirical evaluation is presented on three data sets and shows promising results that suggest that previous assumptions about the way we categories need reopening. (shrink)

Convocada por diferentes estudiosos de los Padres de la Iglesia y del cristianismo antiguo en Latinoamérica, a saber, los profesores Ana Cristina Villa Betancourt, Andrés Mauricio Quevedo Rodríguez y Estiven Valencia Marín, de Colombia; Alejandro Nicola y Francisco Basttita-Harriet, de Argentina; Bruno Gripp, de Brasil; Pamela Chávez Aguilar, de Chile; y Jesús Ma. Aguiñaga Fernández, de México.

Contrary to the view maintained by many philosophers that science employs the deductive testing of hypotheses, observational natural sciences such as paleoanthropology and the earth sciences apply a scientific methodology consisting in the proposal of hypotheses which are best fitted to the available empirical data, i.e. which best explain the data. Observational natural sciences are predominantly empirical. They are grounded in observation, and they do not implement any Popperian deductive testing of hypotheses. Theoretical natural sciences such as mathematical physics also (...) apply inference to the best explanation for the introduction of significant concepts and hypotheses. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that in contemporary science, the use of abductive reasoning continues to be as effective as ever. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende estudiar el sentido, propósito y función de la teoría del significado de Davidson. Para ello, aclara en primer lugar, el concepto de teoría del significado y examina las características que tiene la propuesta de Davidson. Finalmente, estudia la cuestión de si el concepto de significado que Davidson nos ofrece corresponde o no a la noción intuitiva de significado.

John Worrall ofreció hace veinte años una forma no típica, supuestamente viable, de realismo científico a la que llamó realismo estructural. Se suponía que éste era una alternativa al realismo típico y una forma viable de realismo. Las cuestiones principales que discuto en este artículo son lo que denomino los dos dogmas del realismo estructural: la idea de que hay retención de estructura en el cambio teórico, y la idea de que las estructuras teóricas describen el mundo. Arthur Fine proclamó (...) que el realismo científico había muerto. Yo afirmo que el intento de Worrall de resucitar el realismo científico ha fracasado. (shrink)

I present an outline of a normative and non selectionist theory capable of ascribing functional statements to biological items. Biological items are ussually exemplified by the organs as well as traits or behaviours. But we can consider representations too. In fact, my proposal is focused towards a teleosemantical theory of mental content. The teleosemantic approach explains the content of beliefs in terms of the biological functions of those states. Usually, teleosemantical theories of mental representation either ellaborate previously a general theory (...) of functions for biological items, this is the case for Millikan, Neander or Price, orassume a previous selectionist one, as Papineau does. But these proposals are frequently adaptationist in order to keep normatitvity in whatever functional adscription. The recent contributions to the state of the art show the problems of this kind of selectionist view. But they don’t consider the problem of normativity in functional adscriptions. And this problem become important when we pay attention to mental representations as biological facts. I propose an outline of a nonselectionist nor adaptationist account of biological functions capable of keeping normativity. My account is suitable to biological traits, in general, and mental representations characterized in terms of biological functions. (shrink)