SÍNTESE - Um dos aspectos mais amplamente abordados em estudos recentes de Filosofia da Ciência tem sido o debate epistemológico criado em tomo das idéias de Thomas Kuhn e Karl Popper. Na tentativa de resolver a controvérsia estabelecida, Imre Lakatos propôs a falsificação metodológica sofisticada. O presente artigo coloca em foco esta proposição, discutindo sua formulação e destacando a contribuição de Lakatos ao raciocinio epistemológico. PALAVRAS-CHAVE - filosofia da ciência, Lakatos, falsificação metodológica.

Despite society’s increasing sensitivity toward green production, companies often struggle to find effective communication strategies that induce consumers to buy green products or engage in other environmentally friendly behaviors. To add clarity to this situation, we investigated the effectiveness of negative versus positive message framing in promoting green products, whereby companies highlight the detrimental versus beneficial environmental consequences of choosing less versus more green options, respectively. Across four experiments, we show that negatively framed messages are more effective than positively framed (...) ones in prompting consumers to engage in pro-environmental behaviors. More importantly, we find that anticipated shame is the emotion responsible for this effect. Furthermore, both environmental concern and the type of product promoted serve as moderators; thus, the mediating role of anticipated shame is attenuated when environmental concern is low and the product is a luxury one. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our work, along with its limitations and some directions for future research. (shrink)

Jeffery Aubin,Dianne Cole,Julio Cesar Dias Chaves,Jonathan von Kodar,Anne-France Morand,Timothy Pettipiece,Paul-Hubert Poirier,Martin Voyer,Eric Crégheur.

Cognition or higher brain activity is sometimes seen as a phenomenon greater than the sum of its parts. This viewpoint however is largely dependent on the state of the art of experimental techniques that endeavor to characterize morphology and its association to function. Retinal ganglion cells are readily accessible for this work and we discuss recent advances in computational techniques in identifying novel parameters that describe structural attributes possibly associated with specific function. These parameters are based on calculating wavelet gradients (...) from cell images followed by the extraction of meaningful measures including 2nd wavelet moment, entropy of orientation, and curvature. For the three cell types analyzed, the mean 2nd wavelet moment, which relates to the field of influence of the dendritic-tree segments was significantly different. cells had the highest mean 2nd wavelet moment, followed by the and cells (134 ± 22, 93 ± 19 and 63 ± 12, respectively). There was no significant difference between cells for entropy of orientation, indicating no class with a preferential orientation of their dendritic tree. Curvature provided similar results to the 2nd wavelet moment with cells having the highest curvature followed by and the cells (mean ± SD: 161 ± 15; 134 ± 22; 121 ± 15). Our feature space analysis also indicated a difference between these cell types. No difference was found between the and cell types and their physiological counterparts the Y and X cells based on wavelet analysis. Both the X and Y cells can be divided into two subtypes, the ON- and OFF-center cells based on the stratification level of the dendritic tree within the retina. Using 2nd wavelet moment, a difference in their morphological attributes, not reported previously, was noted for these subtypes. The 2nd wavelet moment and curvature are further discussed with respect to explaining regularity of spacing and coverage associated with retinal ganglion cell mosaics. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic led to various government-imposed limitations on social interaction and strict home confinement. Such involuntary social-distancing policies can exacerbate feelings of loneliness and alter emotional well-being. Dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis is a potential mechanism for loneliness’ deleterious health effects. In this study, we explored whether pre-pandemic diurnal cortisol output, a measure of HPA axis function, may predict the propensity to changes in loneliness during long-term COVID-19 home confinement and if extraversion would moderate this relationship. This (...) association has been explored by analysing the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and strict home confinement on social and emotional loneliness in 45 Spanish young adults. Diurnal cortisol levels were measured from five saliva samples obtained across a day just before the pandemic, and data about participants’ perceived loneliness, empathic state, extraversion, and prospective volunteering were obtained both before and during the confinement. Participants’ social and family loneliness increased during long-term strict home confinement, while prospective volunteering tendencies and extraversion decreased. Importantly, after adjusting for relevant confounders, moderation analyses revealed that in young adults with high pre-pandemic extraversion, a higher AUCG predicted a larger increase in social loneliness during confinement, while in individuals with low extraversion, AUCG was negatively related to change in loneliness. Our findings highlight the utility of pre-pandemic diurnal cortisol output in predicting the social impact of COVID-19 home confinement, presenting this hormone as a potential biomarker for a priori identification of at-risk groups during public health crises. (shrink)

Jeffery Aubin ,Marie Chantal ,Dianne Cole ,Julio Chaves ,Cathelyne Duchesne ,Christel Freu ,Steve Johnston ,Brice Jones ,Amaury Levillayer ,Stéphanie Machabée ,Paul-Hubert Poirier ,Philippe Therrien ,Jonathan von Kodar ,Martin Voyer ,Jennifer Wees ,Eric Crégheur.

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from (...) social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic. (shrink)

Double strand break (DSB) repair is suppressed during mitosis because RNF8 and downstream DNA damage response (DDR) factors, including 53BP1, do not localize to mitotic chromatin. Discovery of the mitotic kinase‐dependent mechanism that inhibits DSB repair during cell division was recently reported. It was shown that restoring mitotic DSB repair was detrimental, resulting in repair dependent genome instability and covalent telomere fusions. The telomere DDR that occurs naturally during cellular aging and in cancer is known to be refractory to G2/M (...) checkpoint activation. Such DDR‐positive telomeres, and those that occur as part of the telomere‐dependent prolonged mitotic arrest checkpoint, normally pass through mitosis without covalent ligation, but result in cell growth arrest in G1 phase. The discovery that suppressing DSB repair during mitosis may function primarily to protect DDR‐positive telomeres from fusing during cell division reinforces the unique cooperation between telomeres and the DDR to mediate tumor suppression. (shrink)

M. Blondel, cuya "filosofia de la acción" se halla en la linea del "espiritualismo frances" para el que la filosofía no es una actividad puramente de la razón sino del conjunto de la vida, abordó, después de L'Action (1893), el tema del conocimiento en L'illusion idéaliste (1898). Su propósito era responder a las "ilusiones" del conocimiento - "realista" e idealista - , particularmente a esta última. Para ello justifica la utilización de un "método de inmanencia" - no del sistema de (...) inmanencia - y reconduce el conocimiento hacia una forma de acción. En el artículo se presenta este proceso, y se discute las implicaciones que tiene de cara a la verdad y a la naturaleza de la transcendencia epistemológica y religiosa. /// M. Blondel, dont la "philosophie de l'action" se dévellope dans le sillage du "spiritualisme français" pour lequel la philosophic n'est pas une activité de la pure raison, mais de l'emsemble de la vie, a abordé, après L'Action (1893), le théme de la connaissance dans L'illusion idéaliste (1898). Son intention était de répondre aux illusions de la connaissance - "realiste" et idéaliste - en particulier à cette dernière. Pour ce faire, il montre qu'il faut utiliser une "méthode d'immanence" - non pas du système de l'immanence - et reconduire la connaissance vers une forme d'action. Le present article décrit ce processus et discute les implications qu'il suscite quant à la vérité et à la nature de la transcendance épistemologique et religieuse. /// After L'Action (1893), M. Blondel, whose "philosophy of action" is in line with "french spiritualism", which takes philosophy as an activity envolving not simply reason but the whole life, has dealt with the issue of knowledge in L'Illusion idealiste (1898). He aimed to explain the ''illusions" of knowledge - both the ''realist" and the "idealist" ones - , but particularly the latter. It is for this reason that he justifies the use of a "method of immanence" - not of a system of immanence, and deals with knowledge as a type of action. The paper explains this process and discusses its implications as to both truth and the nature of epistemologic and religious transcendence. (shrink)

The governance of human (germline) genome modification at the international and transnational level -- The regulation of human germline genome modification in Canada (E Kleiderman) -- The regulation of human germline genome modification in the United States (Kerry Macintosh) -- The regulation of human germline genome modification in Mexico (M Medina Arellano) -- The regulation of human germline genome modification in Europe (J Almqvist, C Romano) -- The regulation of human germline genome modification in the United Kingdom (J Lawford Davies) (...) -- The regulation of human germline genome modification in Germany (T Faltus). (shrink)

Reseña Sandel, M. (2020). La tiranía del mérito: ¿Qué ha sido del bien común? Traducción Albino Santos Mosquera, Debate (368 páginas).

Book review: ANTOGNAZZA, M.R. 2016. Leibniz: A very short introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 175 p.

In the digital era, video games have become a major propaganda tool, used for political purposes by state agents and different organisations, including extremist groups. Similarly, some titles have structured their narratives with an educational and awareness-raising purpose, denouncing the senselessness and violence of different terrorist groups. In this article, we will present a general theoretical framework on how video games have been used in the virtual war on terrorism, either in favour of or against it, either by means of (...) special creations or through modifications of famous war games. Next, we will include a case study referring to Spain, analysing the representation in this video game format of the ETA problem or the 11-M jihadist attacks. As a preliminary result, we would like to highlight the importance of this interactive format today, whether from a propaganda, educational or informative point of view. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who died at the stake, is one of the best-known symbols of anti-establishment thought. The theme of this volume, which is offered as a collection of essays to honor the distinguished Bruno scholar Hilary Gatti, reflects her constant concern for the principles of cultural freedom and independent thinking. Several essays deal with Bruno himself, including an analysis of the Eroici furori, a study of his reception in relation to the group known as the Novatores, and discussions of (...) several important aspects of his stay in England. The authors and texts discussed here are linked by a relentless interest in the question of authority and originality, and they range from literary figures such as Alberti (1404-72), Vasari (1511-74) and the proponents of quantitative verse in sixteenth-century England to controversial philosophers who, like Bruno, were condemned by the Church, such as Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) and Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585-1619). Taken together, these chapters show how much that was new and revolutionary in early modern culture came from its confrontation with the past. Martin McLaughlin is Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian at Oxford. Elisabetta Tarantino is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Italian at the University of Warwick. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci's _Prison Notebooks_ have offered concepts, categories, and political solutions that have been applied in a variety of social and political contexts, from postwar Italy to the insurgencies of the Arab Spring. The contributors to _Gramsci in the World_ examine the diverse receptions and uses of Gramscian thought, highlighting its possibilities and limits for understanding and changing the world. Among other topics, they explore Gramsci's importance to Caribbean anticolonial thinkers like Stuart Hall, his presence in decolonial indigenous movements in (...) the Andes, and his relevance to understanding the Chinese Left. The contributors consider why Gramsci has had relatively little impact in the United States while also showing how he was a major force in pushing Marxism beyond Europe—especially into the Arab world and other regions of the Global South. Rather than taking one interpretive position on Gramsci, the contributors demonstrate the ongoing relevance of his ideas to revolutionary theory and praxis. Contributors. Alberto Burgio, Cesare Casarino, Maria Elisa Cevasco, Kate Crehan, Roberto M. Dainotto, Michael Denning, Harry Harootunian, Fredric Jameson, R. A. Judy, Patrizia Manduchi, Andrea Scapolo, Peter D. Thomas, Catherine Walsh, Pu Wang, Cosimo Zene. (shrink)

The year 1897 saw the publication of the first of the modern logical paradoxes. It was published by Cesare Burali-Forti, the Italian mathematician whose name it has come to bear. Burali-Forti's own formulation of the paradox was not altogether satisfactory, as he had confused well-ordered sets as defined by Cantor with what he himself called “perfectly ordered sets”. However, he soon realized his mistake, and published a note admitting the error and making the correction. He concluded the note with (...) the observation that his result could be established on the basis of the correct definition of well-ordered set as easily as for the “perfectly ordered sets” for which it had first been obtained. We shall reproduce his results in their corrected form. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes’s Demon and the Madness of Don QuixoteSteven NadlerDescartes’s “malicious demon” (genius malignus, le mauvais génie)—the evil deceiver of the Meditations on First Philosophy whose hypothetical existence threatens to undermine radically Descartes’s confidence in his cognitive f aculties—is an artful philosophical and literary device. There is considerable debate over the significance of this powerful and malevolent being within Descartes’s argumentative strategy. Some insist that its role is a substantive (...) one, with Descartes in troducing the deceiver in order to deepen yet further the skeptical doubts of the First Meditation, doubts from which he hopes, by the grace of a benevolent God, eventually to rescue himself. 1 Others claim that its role is merely a rhetorical one, with the demon meant simply to reinforce already philosophically well-established skeptical doubts that, in the face of everyday habit, are difficult to sustain. 2 Either way, there is no underestimating the force of the hypothesis as an epistemological tool for subverting our faith in our reasoning and sensory powers. [End Page 41]It is useful to place the “evil genius” in the context of seventeenth-century intellectual culture 3 not just for our understanding of what may have been the historical origins of this most extreme and “metaphysical” 4 of all skeptical doubts but also for broadening our appreciation of its significance beyond epistemology alone. When we grasp the various practical (moral, legal, and social) problems and the literary and artistic possibilities raised by the demon hypoth esis, we can see why such an improbably hyper-skeptical thesis is nonetheless deserving of general interest. To take just one example, Richard Popkin, in his seminal work on the history of skepticism in early modern thought, describes the knotty problems that are generated in the legal context of a trial when the issue of the demonic is raised (as in the case of someone on trial for witchcraft). 5In the service of this contextualizing project I compare Descartes’s meditator (with his self-assumed skeptical pose) with a near-contemporary literary character of particular fame and importance. What is especially striking—and instructive—in this comp arison are the parallels and resonances between the kind of general, systematic, philosophically-generated hyperbolic doubt that Descartes introduces by way of his deceptor potentissimus et malignus and the initially more particular (but perhaps eq ually systematic) distrust of the faculties that is suggested by Don Quixote’s own “rationalization” of his illusions. 6 In fact precisely the same philosophical problem is raised both in the first major work of modern philosophy and in the first modern novel: in the face of the possibility of ongoing deception by some powerful and malicious being, how can we possibly trus t our sensory and rational faculties to provide us with true and reliable knowledge? Descartes’s philosophical work can even provide us with a key to understanding part of the nature of Don Quixote’s madness, to systematizing it in its epistemological dim ensions. Reciprocally, it may be that Cervantes’s hero gives us a concrete picture of what it would be like to try to live in the radically deceptive world of the skepticism of the First Meditation. [End Page 42]Did Cervantes’s novel have a direct influence on Descartes’s philosophical reflections? The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1604; the second part, written after several pirated editions of Part I had been circulating for a number of year s, appeared in 1614, the year before Cervantes’s death. The novel was immediately and enormously popular and was quickly translated into a number of other languages. The first French translation of Part I (by César Oudin) was published in 1614. In 1618, François de Rosset translated Part II, and these two translations were published together in one volume in 1639, 1646, and 1665. 7 We can be confident that Descartes knew about Cervantes’s works; and while we cannot say with certainty that he read Don Quixote, given his education, social status, interest in novels of chivalry, and the intellectual circles in which he traveled, it would be surprising if he did not. He... (shrink)

Reseña crítica del volumen del Bollettino del Centro di Studi Vichiani que recoge las Actas del Congreso "Vico in Italia e in Germania" , con análisis de las aportaciones de Gebhardt, Agrimi, Otto, Cantelli, Papini, Grassi, Pinchard, Di Magno, Fellmann, Di Cesare, Badaloni, Poggeler, Jermann, Giuliani, Geldsetzer y Jacobelli Isoldi.A Critical review of the Bollettino del Centro di Studi Vichiani , volume which includes the Congress’ proceedings "Vico in Italia e in Germania" . It contains also an assessment of (...) Gebhardt’s, Agrimi’s, Otto’s, Cantelli’s, Papini’s, Grassi’s, Pinchard’s, Di Magno’s, Fellmann’s, Di Cesare’s, Badaloni’s, Poggeler’s, Jermann’s, Giuliani’s, Geldsetzer’s and Jacobelli Isoldi’s studies. (shrink)

In the Organon Aristotle describes some deductive schemata in which inconsistencies do not entail the trivialization of the logical theory involved. This thesis is corroborated by three different theoretical topics by him discussed, which are presented in this paper. We analyse inference schema used by Aristotle in the Protrepticus and the method of indirect demonstration for categorical syllogisms. Both methods exemplify as Aristotle employs classical reductio ad absurdum strategies. Following, we discuss valid syllogisms from opposite premises (contrary and contradictory) studied (...) by the Stagerian in the Analytica Priora (B15). According to him, the following syllogisms are valid from opposite premises, in which small Latin letters stand for terms such as subject and predicate, and capital Latin letters stand for the categorical propositions such as in the traditional notation: (i) in the second figure, Eba,Aba ` Eaa (Cesare), Aba, Eba ` Eaa (Camestres), Eba, I ba ` Oaa (Festino), and Aba,Oba ` Oaa (Baroco); (ii) in the third one, Eab,Aab ` Oaa (Felapton), Oab,Aab ` Oaa (Bocardo) and Eab, Iab ` Oaa (Ferison). Finally, we discuss the passage from the Analytica Posteriora (A11) in which Aristotle states that the Principle of Non-Contradiction is not generally presupposed in all demonstrations (scientific syllogisms), but only in those in which the conclusion must be proved from the Principle; the Stagerian states that if a syllogism of the first figure has the major term consistent, the other terms of the demonstration can be each one separately inconsistent. These results allow us to propose an interpretation of his deductive theory as a broad sense paraconsistent theory. Firstly, we proceed to a hermeneutical analysis, evaluating its logical significance and the interplay of the results with some other points of Aristotle’s philosophy. Secondly, we point to a logical interpretation of the Aristotelian syllogisms from opposite premises in the antilogisms method proposed by Christine Ladd-Franklin in 1883, and we also present a logical treatment of the Aristotelian demonstration with inconsistent material in the paraconsistent logics Cn, 1 _ n _!, introduced by da Costa in 1963. These two issues seem having not yet been analysed in detail in the literature. (shrink)

No Órganon Aristóteles descreve alguns esquemas dedutivos nos quais a presença de inconsistências não acarreta a trivialização da teoria lógica envolvida. Esta tese é corroborada por três diferentes situações teóricas estudadas por ele, as quais são apresentadas neste trabalho. Analizamos o esquema de inferência utilizado por Aristóteles no Protrepticus e o método de demonstração indireta para os silogismos categóricos. Ambos os métodos exemplificam como Aristóteles emprega estratégias de redução ao absurdo logicamente clássicas. Na sequência, discutimos os silogismos válidos a partir (...) de premissas opostas (contrárias e contraditórias) estudadas pelo Estagirita no Analytica Priora (B15). De acordo com o autor, os seguintes silogismos são válidos a partir de premissas opostas, nos quais letras latinas minúsculas denotam termos como sujeito e predicado, enquanto que letras latinas maiúsculas denotam proposições categóricas tal como na notação tradicional: (i) na segunda figura, Eba,Aba ` Eaa (Cesare), Aba, Eba ` Eaa (Camestres), Eba, I ba ` Oaa (Festino), e Aba,Oba ` Oaa (Baroco); (ii) na terceira, Eab,Aab ` Oaa (Felapton), Oab,Aab ` Oaa (Bocardo) e Eab, Iab ` Oaa (Ferison). Por fim, discutimos a passagem do Analytica Posteriora (A11) no qual Aristóteles enuncia que o Princípio de Não-Contradição não é, em geral, pressuposto de toda demonstração (silogismo científico), mas apenas daquelas nas quais a conclusão deve ser provada a partir do Princípio; o Estagirita enuncia que se um silogismo da primeira figura tiver o termo maior consistente, os outros termos da demonstração podem ser separadamente inconsistentes. Estes resultados permitem-nos propor uma interpretação de sua teoria dedutiva como uma teoria paraconsistente lato sensu. Primeiramente, efetuamos uma análise hermenêutica, avaliando seu significado lógico e a correlação desses resultados com outros aspectos da filosofia de Aristóteles. Em segundo lugar, consignamos uma interpretação dos silogismos aristotélicos a partir de premissas opostas à luz dos antilogismos propostos por Christine Ladd-Franklin em 1883, e da demonstração aristotélica com termos inconsistentes nas lógicas paraconsistentes Cn, 1 n !, introduzidas por da Costa em 1963. Esses dois aspectos não parecem ter sido ainda detalhadamente analisados na literatura. DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n1p71. (shrink)