The paper deals with the relation between realism and pragmatism in the contemporary philosophy of science by investigating two rival positions: Ilkka Niiniluoto’s "critical scientific realism" and Hilary Putnam’s "internal realism." The crucial difference between these two philosophers lies in their notions of truth. It turns out, however, that Putnam has, in his most recent writings, come closer to the kind of scientific realism he earlier abandoned as "metaphysical." Many realistic critiques of his thought have, therefore, become rather irrelevant. Putnam’s (...) pragmatic version of realism can even be seen as accommodating the traditional idea of correspondence truth, provided that this notion is liberated from all kinds of essentialism. The Putnamean pragmatist does not share Niiniluoto’s and other realists’ desire to "define" truth. What is extremely problematic in Putnam’s latest views, however, is his attempt to return to a pre- or non-philosophical way of thinking about the relation between language and the world. His pragmatism is at least sometimes unpleasantly close to Rortyan anti-representationalism. (shrink)

Summary Summary In 1908 the First International Congress of Refrigeration took place in Paris, organised by a score of French industrialists and supported by some of the major railway and shipping companies. A few months later, in January 1909, the International Association of Refrigeration was founded with the aim of encouraging the general progress of the science and industries of artificial cold. The aim of this paper consists in examining the early years of the Association with a particular (...) focus on its scientific character. The research is based on the documents published by the Association from 1908 to 1914, and on private correspondence between two of the main scientists, both Nobel Prize recipients, who played an important role in its establishment: the Swiss physicist Édouard Guillaume (1861–1938) and the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853–1926). Both scientists had a specific vision for their own role in the Association and for the Association itself. Their correspondence reveals a great range of tensions between the various nation-state members of the Association, its various spheres of activity, but also tensions due to personal ambitions and conflicts of interest. (shrink)

This review-essay looks at three texts from, or about, the early days of the Situationist International. The first volume of Guy Debord’s Correspondence reveals the SI’s internal discussions during their decisive first three years; Bernstein’s book represents an example of the continued relevance of the technique of détournement; while Wark’s text demonstrates both the breadth of the Situationist project and that, despite being continually mined by the academy, activists, the creative industries, and other more sinister recuperators, their work (...) has not been depleted of its vitality. Taken together, the three books undermine a series of preconceptions about the SI, namely in terms of Debord’s role at the centre of the group and the SI’s engagement with the forces of the ‘spectacled’. (shrink)

This review-essay looks at three texts from, or about, the early days of the Situationist International. The first volume of Guy Debord’s Correspondence reveals the SI’s internal discussions during their decisive first three years; Bernstein’s book represents an example of the continued relevance of the technique of détournement; while Wark’s text demonstrates both the breadth of the Situationist project and that, despite being continually mined by the academy, activists, the creative industries, and other more sinister recuperators, their work (...) has not been depleted of its vitality. Taken together, the three books undermine a series of preconceptions about the SI, namely in terms of Debord’s role at the centre of the group and the SI’s engagement with the forces of the ‘spectacled’. (shrink)

This book is devoted to the problems of the growth of science. These prob lems, neglected for a long time by the philosophers of science, have become in the 60's and 70's a subject of vivid discussion. There are philosophers who stress only the dependence of science upon various sociological, psycho logical and other factors and deny any internal laws of the development of knowledge, like approaching the truth. The majority rejects such nihilism and searches for the laws of the (...) growth of science. However, they often overlook the role of the Correspondence Principle which connects the suc cessive scientific theories. On the other hand, some authors, while stressing the role of this principle, overlook logical difficulties connected with it, e. g. the problem of the incompatibility of successive theories, of the falsity of some of their assumptions, etc. I believe the Correspondence Principle to be a basic principle of the pro gress of contemporary physics and, probably, of every advanced science. How ever, this principle must be properly interpreted and the above-mentioned logical difficulties must be solved. Their solution requires, as it seems, revealing the idealizational nature of the basic laws of science, in any case of the quantitative laws of advanced sciences. This point has been recently emphasized by some Polish philosophers, especially in Poznan. (shrink)

Following the concept of internal representations, signal processing in a neuronal system has to be evaluated exclusively on the basis of internal system characteristics. Thus, this approach omits the external observer as a control function for sensory integration. Instead, the configuration of the system and its computational performance are the effects of endogeneous factors. Such self-referential operation is due to a strictly local computation in a network. Thereby, computations follow a set of rules that constitutes the emergent behaviour of the (...) system. Because these rules can be demonstrated to correspond to a "logic" intrinsic to the system, it can be shown that the concept of internal representation provides the basis for neurosemantics. (shrink)

In the article, international contacts of Soviet students and teachers of secondary schools at the regional level in the 1950-1970s are considered on the basis of the published literature and new archival sources. In the context of the formation of the socialist community, relations between the USSR and East Germany were regarded as exemplary. Their high importance was determined by the role of the German question in world politics. Socio-economic and cultural rapprochement between the USSR and the GDR over (...) a large period of time formed international cooperation at the local level. Particular attention in the article is paid to advantageous practices of creating special schools, and international friendship clubs in the southern Urals. It is proved that the development of educational relations was conditioned by focusing extracurricular activities of the Soviet school on international education, the availability of highly qualified, enthusiastic organizers of higher education and creative teachers of the German language, with regional connections of the Russian-German friendship. The author noted that the close friendship linking the international students of the Southern Urals and the GDR was considered in the USSR as a part of traditional ideological and moral education. Foreign correspondence and practical cooperation, such as the organization of short-term assignments and trainings for teachers, guided tours for students, joint vacations in summer camps, spiritually enriched students and motivated them to improve their own language skills. (shrink)

Coherence and correspondence are classical contenders as theories of truth. In this paper we examine them instead as interacting factors in the dynamics of belief across epistemic networks. We construct an agent-based model of network contact in which agents are characterized not in terms of single beliefs but in terms of internal belief suites. Individuals update elements of their belief suites on input from other agents in order both to maximize internal belief coherence and to incorporate ‘trickled in’ elements (...) of truth as correspondence. Results, though often intuitive, prove more complex than in simpler models (Hegselmann & Krause 2002, 2006; Grim, Singer, Reade & Fisher 2015). The optimistic finding is that pressures toward internal coherence can exploit and expand on small elements of truth as correspondence is introduced into epistemic networks. Less optimistic results show that pressures for coherence can also work directly against the incorporation of truth, particularly when coherence is established first and new data is introduced later. (shrink)

Mathematical correspondence offers a rich heritage for the history of mathematics and science, as well as cultural history and other areas. It naturally covers a vast range of topics, and not only of a scientific nature; it includes letters between mathematicians, but also between mathematicians and politicians, publishers, and men or women of culture. Wallis, Leibniz, the Bernoullis, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Lagrange, Gauss, Hermite, Betti, Cremona, Poincaré and van der Waerden are undoubtedly authors of great interest and their letters are (...) valuable documents, but the correspondence of less well-known authors, too, can often make an equally important contribution to our understanding of developments in the history of science. Mathematical correspondences also play an important role in the editions of collected works, contributing to the reconstruction of scientific biographies, as well as the genesis of scientific ideas, and in the correct dating and interpretation of scientific writings. This volume is based on the symposium “Mathematical Correspondences and Critical Editions,” held at the 6th International Conference of the ESHS in Lisbon, Portugal in 2014. In the context of the more than fifteen major and minor editions of mathematical correspondences and collected works presented in detail, the volume discusses issues such as • History and prospects of past and ongoing edition projects, • Critical aspects of past editions, • The complementary role of printed and digital editions, • Integral and partial editions of correspondence, • Reproduction techniques for manuscripts, images and formulae, and the editorial challenges and opportunities presented by digital technology. (shrink)

Building computational models of engineered exemplars, or prototypes, is a common practice in the bioengineering sciences. Computational models in this domain are often built in a patchwork fashion, drawing on data and bits of theory from many different domains, and in tandem with actual physical models, as the key objective is to engineer these prototypes of natural phenomena. Interestingly, such patchy model building, often combined with visualizations, whose format is open to a wide range of choice, leads to the discovery (...) of new concepts and control structures. Two key questions are raised by this practice: how could discoveries arise from building external representations for which there is wide latitude in choice of the components from which they are built, and thus can be considered significantly arbitrary, and how could such discoveries allow engineering a real-world prototype system. To examine these questions, we present two case studies of discoveries that emerged from the building of such computational models in the bioengineering sciences. We then develop a process model that accounts for the discovery and transfer problems raised by both these cases, focusing on the process of building the model. Specifically, to account for the discovery problem, we propose that the process of building such models gradually leads to a close coupling between the modeler’s internal processes and the external dynamic model. To account for the transfer problem, we propose that the process of building the model leads to the creation of an enactive model that is generic, which closely enacts, and thus reveals, the way the system-level behavior of the engineered prototype emerges in time through the interaction of its parts. This enactive replication process leads to the model and the prototype forming a new class, which allows concepts and control structures developed for the computational model to be transfered to the real-world prototype. We argue that this account requires rethinking correspondence in engineering sciences as a plastic and enactive relation. A closer focus on the process of building models is required to develop a general account of this emerging approach to discovery. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher and reformer, was at the height of his fame and influence in the 1820s. The 301 letters in this volume, many of which are previously unpublished, contain correspondence with international leaders such as Simn Bolvar, the 'Liberator', and Bernardino Rivadavia of Buenos Aires, British statesmen such as Robert Peel and Henry Brougham, and leading intellectuals such as John Stuart Mill and Sarah Austin.

Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher and reformer, was at the height of his fame and influence in the 1820s. The 301 letters in this volume, many of which are previously unpublished, contain correspondence with international leaders such as Simón Bolívar, the 'Liberator', and Bernardino Rivadavia of Buenos Aires, British statesmen such as Robert Peel and Henry Brougham, and leading intellectuals such as John Stuart Mill and Sarah Austin.

I examine the (mediated) correspondence between Spinoza and Robert Boyle concerning the latter’s account of fluidity and his experiments on reconstitution of niter in the light of the epistemology and doctrine of method contained in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. I argue that both the Treatise and the correspondence reveal that for Spinoza, the proper method of science is not experimental, and that he accepted a powerful under-determination thesis. I argue that, in contrast to modern (...) versions, Spinoza’s form of naturalism was a highly rationalist and anti-empirical one. I conclude with a brief account of the value of experience and experimentation for Spinoza’s scientific method. (shrink)

Chapter 1 First Person Access to Mental States. Mind Science and Subjective Qualities -/- Abstract. The philosophy of mind as we know it today starts with Ryle. What defines and at the same time differentiates it from the previous tradition of study on mind is the persuasion that any rigorous approach to mental phenomena must conform to the criteria of scientificity applied by the natural sciences, i.e. its investigations and results must be intersubjectively and publicly controllable. In Ryle’s view, philosophy (...) of mind needs to adopt an antimentalist stance to achieve this aim. Antimentalism not only definitively rejects the idea that mind is a substance separated from the body, it also denies that mental phenomena radically differ from physical phenomena by virtue of several unique features. Most problematically, mental phenomena have a conscious character (mental states are related to specific qualitative feelings) and are accessible only to the first-person (only the subject knows directly what s/he is experiencing inside his/her mind). Ryle takes a strong stance on antimentalism going so far as to maintain that an approach to mind which aims to meet the criteria of scientificity set by the natural sciences must avoid any reference to internal, unobservable mental states. In his view (which is considered a specifically philosophical version of psychological behaviorism and also addresses questions put forward in psychological research), mental states can be redescribed in terms of behavioral dispositions. In this chapter, we address the historical roots of the antimentalist view and analyze its relation to the later tradition of research on mind. We show that, compared to the antimentalist stance, functionalism and cognitivism take a step back when they maintain that direct reference to mental states is necessary since mental states cause and therefore explain human behavior. This step backwards is often interpreted as a return to mentalism. However, this is only partially true. Indeed, we suggest that these later traditions retain one important element of Ryle’s antimentalism, i.e. the idea that mental states must be uniquely identified using external and publicly observable criteria, while excluding any reference to introspection and those qualitative dimensions of a mental state, which are accessible only to the first-person. According to the perspective we put forward, this epistemological stance has continued to influence contemporary research on mind and current philosophical and psychological theories which both tend to exclude the subjective qualities of human experience from their accounts of how the mind works. The issue we raise here is whether this is legitimate or whether subjective qualities do play a role with respect to the way our mind works. The conclusion of this chapter anticipates the argument the book makes in in favor of this latter position, starting from a particular angle, i.e. the problem of how we categorize concepts related to our internal states. -/- Chapter 2 The Misleading Aspects of the Mind/Computer Analogy. The Grounding Problem and the Thorny Issue of Propriosensitive Information -/- Abstract. After the crisis of behaviorism, cognitivism and functionalism became the predominant models in the field of psychology and of philosophy, respectively. Their success is mainly due to the new key they use for interpreting mental processes: the mind/computer analogy. On the basis of this analogy, mental operations are seen as cognitive processes based on computations, i.e. on manipulations of abstract symbols which are in turn understood as informational unities (representations). This chapter identifies two main problems with this model. The first is how these symbols can relate to and communicate with perception and thus allow us to identify and classify what we perceive through the senses. Here we limit ourselves to presenting this issue in relation to the classical symbol grounding problem originally put forward by Harnad on the basis of Searle’s Chinese room argument. An attempt to address the problem raised here will be made in chap. 3. The second point we discuss in relation to the mind/computer analogy concerns the idea of information it fosters. Indeed, following this analogy, information is something available in the external world which can be captured by the senses and transmitted to the central system without being influenced or modified by the procedures of transmission. This perspective does not take into account that – unlike computers – in living beings information is acquired by means of the body. As Ulric Neisser has already pointed out, the body is itself an informational source that provides us with additional sensory experience that influences (modifies or complements) the information extracted from the external world by the senses. To develop this line of analysis and to determine exactly what information is provided by the body and how this might influence cognition, we examine Sherrington’s and Gibson’s positions. Moving on from their views, we qualify bodily information in terms of ‘proprioception’. We use ‘proprioception’ in a broad sense to describe any kind of experience we have of our internal states (including postural information as well as sensations related to the general state of the body and its parts). Following Damasio’s and Craig’s studies, we further elaborate this position, arguing that living beings are equipped with an internal propriosensitive monitoring system which maps all the changes that constantly occur in our body and that give us perceptual (‘proprioceptive’ or propriosensitive) information about what happens inside us. Moreover, relying on Goldie’s and Ratcliffe’s view, we show that emotional information can also be considered as a form of ‘proprioception’ which contributes to determining everything we perceive. This analysis leads us to the second main thesis of this book: ‘proprioception’ is a form of internal perception and it is an essential component of the sensory information we can access and use for all cognitive purposes. -/- Chapter 3 Semantic Competence from the Inside: Conceptual Architecture and Composition -/- Abstract. Concepts are essential constituents of thought: they are the instruments we use to categorize our experience, i.e. to classify things and group them together in homogeneous sets. Here we define concepts as the internal mental information (representations) that allows us, among other things, to master words in natural language. By analyzing the way in which individuals master word meanings we explore a number of hypotheses regarding the nature of concepts. Following Diego Marconi’s research, we differentiate between two kind of abilities that underpin lexical competence – so-called ‘referential’ and ‘inferential competence’ – and we suggest that, in order to support these abilities, concepts must also include two corresponding kinds of information, i.e. inferential and referential information. We point out that the most widely used and acknowledged theories of concepts do not make this distinction, instead broadly characterizing the information used for categorization in terms of propositionally described feature lists. However, we show that while feature lists can explain inferential competence, they do not account for referential competence. To address the issue of referential competence we examine Ray Jackendoff’s hypothesis that to account for the possibility of linking perceptual and conceptual information we need to assume the existence of a (visual) representation that encodes the geometric and topological properties of objects and bridges the gap between the percept and the concept. Furthermore, we analyze the extension of this work by Jesse Prinz who introduced the notion of a proxytype, a perceptual representation of a class of objects that incorporates structural and parametric information related to their appearance. However, as we point out, proxytypes can only explain the relationship between perception and concepts with respect to instances that can be perceived through the senses and that belong to the same class by virtue of their physical similarity. We suggest that this notion be extended to include larger conceptual classes. To accomplish this, we further develop Mark Johnson, George Lakoff and Jean Mandler’s idea of a schematic image and argue that conceptual representations include a perceptual schema. Perceptual schemata are non-linguistic, structured experiential gestalts (patterns or maps) that make use of information taken from all sensory modalities, including body perception. They accomplish a quasi-conceptual function: they allow us to recognize and to classify different instances. In this work, we hypothesize that perceptual schemata are an essential component of concepts, but not identical to them. Instead, we suggest that concepts include both perceptual and propositional information with perceptual schemata providing the ‘perceptual core concept’ that grounds related propositional information. -/- Chapter 4 In the Beginning There Were Categories. The Bodily Origin of Prelinguistic Categorical Organization: The Example of Folkbiological Taxonomies -/- Abstract. Studies of categorization in psychology and the cognitive sciences have made use of the notions of ‘category’ and ‘concept’ without precisely defining what is meant by either; in fact, often these terms have been used as synonyms, making it difficult to address specific issues related to conceptual development. This chapter begins by discussing the definitions of, as well as the distinctions between, ‘categories’ and ‘concepts’ in the classical philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Kant and Husserl). We introduce our view of categories with reference to Husserl. Categorization is defined as the way in which our experience is originally (pre-linguistically) organized in a passive and fully unconscious manner on the basis of universal structuring principles. Conceptualization is explained as a later process in which the earlier categorical macro-classes are further subdivided into more specific and detailed sets; this later process also relies on linguistic learning and exposure to culture. On the basis of Ray Jackendoff, Jean Mandler, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s work, we hypothesize that categorization is a two-step process that begins with the formation of homogeneous sets of entities partitioned into regions that describe the ontological boundaries of the objects that humans perceive (categories) and continues at a later stage with the development of more specific classifications (concepts). In this chapter, we mainly address three related issues: Why should we assume that there is categorical organization which precedes the development of a conceptual system? How do categories and concepts relate to each other? Shall we hypothesize that categories are innate or that they are formed before concepts on the basis of information and organizational structure available at a very early developmental stage? We show that categorical partitions are necessary for categorization and, following Mandler, that the general categories we form at an early age do not match our adult superordinate concepts. As for the third issue, we argue that there might be no need to assume that categories are innately present in the human mind, since their formation can be explained – at least in certain cases – by basic mechanisms that work on body (propriosensitive) information. This hypothesis will not be discussed in general, but in relation to a particularly relevant example of categorical partition, i.e. the folk-biological dichotomy between ANIMATE/INANIMATE. This is compared with other dichotomies that derive from it, but are not directly categorical such as LIVING/NON-LIVING and BIOLOGICAL/NON-BIOLOGICAL. -/- Chapter 5 Internal States: From Headache to Anger. Conceptualization and Semantic Mastery -/- Abstract. Here we ask if we can also apply the distinction between referential and inferential competence we introduced in Chapter 3 to words that do not refer to things that are perceived using the external senses, especially to words/concepts that denote bodily experiences (such as pain, thirst, hunger, etc.) or emotions. We introduce and discuss the hypothesis that – even though such words/concepts do not refer to intersubjectively identifiable entities in the external world – they do have a kind of referent that can be accessed via direct perception, more specifically ‘proprioception’, as we have defined it in terms of all propriosensitive information we can consciously access. In the first part of the chapter, we specifically consider terms denoting bodily experiences such as ‘pain’ or ‘hunger’ and argue that their referents are identified and classified from a first-personal point of view on the basis of four main characteristics: their specific intensity, their localization in the body, their co-occurrence with other signals and above all their specific qualitative sensations. Emotions are addressed in the second part of the chapter. We suggest that there is a continuity between bodily experiences and emotions. In particular, we argue for a perceptual theory of emotions in line with that proposed by James and Lange at the end of the 19th century and developed more recently by authors such as Damasio (see also chap. 2§5, §6). The hypothesis we put forward is that the referential information that supports the categorization of emotions and therefore also our mastery of terms referring to emotions consists in the perception (i.e. the ‘proprioception’) of those bodily states and changes in bodily states which constitute our emotional experience. In the context of this discussion we examine some objections to this line of reasoning that arise from a cognitivist perspective and following authors such as Oatley, Johnson-Laird and Frijda, we distinguish between basic emotions that can be identified and classified solely on the basis on how they feel and complex emotions whose identification and classification additionally depends on cognitive factors. To describe how emotions are identified and classified on the basis of how they feel, we rely on Marcel and Lambie’s distinction between an ‘emotion state’ and an ‘emotion experience’. Both notions indicate kinds of feelings that we consciously experience. However, they describe first-order and second order emotion awareness respectively. The emotion state is the feeling we have of the bodily states and changes that occur when we are experiencing an emotion, while the emotion experience is the fully developed and integrated emotion we both experience and are, with reflection, aware of experiencing. On the basis of this differentiation, we also show that the same characteristics that aid in the identification and classification of bodily experiences (specific qualitative sensations; somatic localization; specific intensity; presence/absence of specific concomitant sensations) can also be used for the identification and classification of emotions – at least basic emotions. In the last two sections of the chapter we present some clinical evidence on the semantic competence of people who suffer from Alexithymia and Autism Spectrum Disorder which supports the conclusions of our preceding analyses. -/- Chapter 6 The ‘Proprioceptive’ Component of Abstract Concepts -/- Abstract. In this chapter, we address the issue of whether the mastery of abstract words requires only inferential knowledge and thus, if the concepts that support the mastery of abstract words include only linguistic information. We start by differentiating the notions of ‘abstract’ and ‘general’ which are often erroneously confused. We then identify a strict definition of abstract, as contrasted with ‘concrete’, that applies to words or concepts whose referent cannot be experienced by the senses. We argue that abstract words/concepts would be better described as theoretical, because they are usually conceived as structured sets of inferential knowledge expressed linguistically; that is, as small theories. Pointing out parallels with Carnap’s analysis of this issue in philosophy of science, we hypothesize that words/concepts denoting non-observable entities are not all ‘equally theoretical’, because their link to sensory experience can be stronger or weaker. We revive the distinction, inspired by Quine, between theoretical and intertheoretical concepts/words. This distinction relies on the fact that the former – unlike the latter – retains a strong, although indirect, connection with perception. In Quine’s discussion, perception is understood uniquely in terms of observability, i.e. of external sensory experience. Here we argue, however, that bodily, ‘proprioceptive’ (i.e. propriosensitive) experience can also serve to referentially ground theoretical (i.e. abstract) concepts/words. We frame this issue using the example of the theoretical concept ‘freedom’ and Lakoff’s hypothesis that this concept is developed on the basis of bodily information. We contrast this with the example of ‘democracy’ which more closely resembles an intertheoretical concept/word. Furthermore, we show that one of the classical views put forward in psycholinguistic research to explain how abstract concepts are mentally represented – i.e. Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory – points in the same direction as our analysis. The same is true of Barsalou’s work suggesting that we use internal information to understand at least some abstract words. To sustain this position, we put forward two lines of evidence: the first comes from psycholinguistic studies while the second examines deficits of semantic competence exhibited by people with Autism Spectrum Disorder. On the basis of our analysis, we put forward a classification that distinguishes between different kinds of concreteness and different degrees of abstraction: concepts/words referring to body experiences and basic emotions are described as analogous to concrete concepts/words because they are grounded in perceptual (i.e. propriosensitive) experience, while abstract concepts/words are considered more or less abstract depending on whether they are intratheoretical (and rely entirely on inferential information) or theoretical (and are partially grounded in perceptual – or more often in propriosensitive perceptual – information). In the last section of the chapter we consider two scales that have been used in psycholinguistic research to measure the degree of concreteness vs. abstractness of words and we show that – used conjointly – they can provide a measure of the internal vs. external grounding of specific words. (shrink)

ArgumentUp until the French Revolution, European mathematics was an “aristocratic” activity, the intellectual pastime of a small circle of men who were convinced they were collaborating on a universal undertaking free of all space-time constraints, as they believed they were ideally in dialogue with the Greek founders and with mathematicians of all languages and eras. The nineteenth century saw its transformation into a “democratic” but also “patriotic” activity: the dominant tendency, as shown by recent research to analyze this transformation, seems (...) to be the national one, albeit accompanied by numerous analogies from the point of view of the processes of national evolution, possibly staggered in time. Nevertheless, the very homogeneity of the individual national processes leads us to view mathematics in the context of the national-universal tension that the spread of liberal democracy was subjected to over the past two centuries. In order to analyze national-universal tension in mathematics, viewed as an intellectual undertaking and a profession of the new bourgeois society, it is necessary to investigate whether the network of international communication survived the political, social, and cultural upheavals of the French Revolution and the European wars waged in the early nineteenth century, whether national passions have transformed this network, and if so, in what way. Luigi Cremona's international correspondence indicates that relationships among individuals have been restructured by the force of national membership, but that the universal nature of mathematics has actually been boosted by a vision shared by mathematicians from all countries concerning the role of their discipline in democratic and liberal society as the basis of scientific culture and technological innovation, as well as a basic component of public education. (shrink)

This article, corresponding to a part of the restitution of a financed international research project between France, Brazil, Canada, Italy and Belgium, aims to offer a modelisation and qualitative evaluation of mediation care settings based on an original methodological tool that involves identifying the typical games at the foundations of creativity, following a multidisciplinary perspective. Therapeutic mediations are settings or devices organised around a “pliable medium”, often artistic, like painting, modeling, writing, ​and theatre, which are very widespread in institutional (...) practices, both in France and abroad. The scientific objectives of this research consist in a multi-disciplinary exploration (anthropology, criminology, neuroscience, clinical psychology) of the process of creative symbolisation understood as a process of transformation involving play. According to this orientation, play can be defined as a psychic process whereby a subjective experience can be explored with pleasure, and consequently symbolised and appropriated. Our fundamental and original hypothesis is that play is at the source of the creative process, conceived as a work of metabolisation by the psyche of playful experiences during the different stages of life. The review of the understanding of play in psychoanalysis, anthropology, criminology and neuroscience emphasises the richness of this model and the importance of reflecting on the typical games in the field of psychic care. A clinical example of treatment in a pictorial therapeutic mediation setting of a child with psychotic disorders makes it possible to identify a number of typical games as well as the modalities of interpretation of the therapists through play. These multidisciplinary studies lead to the presentation of a general table of typical games, and these first results highlight the richness of identifying typical games in clinical settings. Ultimately, the multidisciplinary approach shows the interest of the model of play in the evaluation of therapeutic mediation settings, with a convergence of the different disciplines emphasising the pertinence of this model. The scientific impact of this research overlaps with its societal impact, through the development of innovative tools for evaluating therapeutic mediations, in order to take account of the evolution of the different forms of social expression of psychic suffering. (shrink)

Although now largely forgotten, the international language movement was, from the 1880s to the end of the Second World War, a matter of widespread public interest, as well as a concern of numerous scientists and scholars. The primary goal was to establish a language for international communication, but in the early twentieth century an increasing accent was placed on philosophical considerations: wanted was a language better suited to the needs of modern science and rational thought. In this paper, (...) we examine the example of the English scholar C.K. Ogden's international language Basic English and his efforts to win the Vienna Circle philosophers Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap over to the project. Basic is shown to be an implementation of key ideas in Ogden's philosophy of language, ideas shared to a large extent with Neurath and Carnap. This we see through an examination of their unpublished correspondence, as well as through the collaboration that emerged between Ogden and Neurath, in which Neurath's Isotype, a system for graphically representing statistical data, became closely aligned with Basic. Through the ideas and endeavours we investigate here, we gain a new perspective on this crucial period in the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

We deal with the ranking problem of the nodes in a directed graph. The bilateral relationships specified by a directed graph may reflect the outcomes of a sport competition, the mutual reference structure between websites, or a group preference structure over alternatives. We introduce a class of scoring methods for directed graphs, indexed by a single nonnegative parameter α. This parameter reflects the internal slackening of a node within an underlying iterative process. The class of so-called internal slackening scoring methods, (...) denoted by λα, consists of the limits of these processes. It is seen that λ0 extends the invariant scoring method, while λ∞ extends the fair bets scoring method. Method λ1 corresponds with the existing λ-scoring method of Borm et al. (Ann Oper Res 109(1):61–75, 2002) and can be seen as a compromise between λ0 and λ∞. In particular, an explicit proportionality relation between λα and λ1 is derived. Moreover, the internal slackening scoring methods are applied to the setting of social choice situations where they give rise to a class of social choice correspondences that refine both the Top cycle correspondence and the Uncovered set correspondence. (shrink)

This essay characterizes a version of internal realism. In §1 I will argue that for semantical reasons we should be realists of a strong kind. In §2 I plead for an internalistic setting of realism starting from the thesis that truth is, at least, not a non-epistemic concept. We have to bear the consequences of this in form of a more complicated concept of truth. The ‘internal’ of ‘internal realism’ points to the justification aspect of truth. The ‘realism’ of ‘internal (...) realism’ points to the correspondence aspect. A thesis concerning the irreducibility of the two aspects will be established in §3. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that Heidegger, contrary to the view of many scholars, in fact endorsed a view of truth as a sort of correspondence. I first show how it is a mistake to take Heidegger's notion of 'unconcealment' as a definition of propositional truth. It is thus not only possible but also essential to disambiguate Heidegger's use of the word 'truth', which he occasionally used to refer to both truth as it is ordinarily understood and unconcealment understood (...) as the condition of the possibility of truth. I then show how Heidegger accepted that propositional truth, or 'correctness', as he sometimes called it, consists in our utterances or beliefs corresponding to the way things are. Heidegger's objection to correspondence theories of truth was not directed at the notion of correspondence as such, but rather at the way in which correspondence is typically taken to consist in an agreement between representations and objects. Indeed, Heidegger took his account of unconcealment as explaining how it is possible for propositions to correspond to the world, thus making unconcealment the ground of propositional truth. I conclude by discussing briefly some of the consequences for Heidegger interpretation which follow from a correct understanding of Heidegger's notion of propositional truth. (shrink)

In The Heart of Human Rights, Allen Buchanan emphasizes the distinction between moral human rights (MHRs) on the one hand and international legal human rights (ILHRs) on the other. MHRs are the moral rights held universally by all humans simply in virtue of being human. ILHRs are the legal rights of international practice, which are articulated in the United Nations’ International Bill of Rights and related legal documents. One of the most controversial aspects of Buchanan’s account of (...) human rights is its denial of any significant role for MHRs in the justification of the content of ILHRs. This is at odds with the orthodoxy according to which there is a close connection between MHRs and ILHRs. In particular, Buchanan challenges what he calls the ‘Mirroring View’ according to which each ILHR constitutes the reflection of some corresponding MHR. Buchanan is right to subject the Mirroring View to scrutiny, and although I agree that it should be rejected, I argue in this paper that his alternative account of the justification of ILHRs is also problematic. In particular, I argue that rejecting the Mirroring View does not entail the irrelevance of MHRs to the justification of the content of ILHRs, and I propose an alternative account that avoids the shortcomings of the Mirroring View while nevertheless placing MHRs at the core of the justification of ILHRs. (shrink)

During the last forty years there has been a remarkable resurgence in interest by 16th-century historians in the Strasbourg Reformer, Martin Bucer. The components and originality of his thoughts and his actions, as well as the reality of his ideas are emerging more and more. This is largely due to the new edition of his works undertaken by an international committee, established in 1952. This edition is divided into three sections: _Opera Latina_ ; _Deutsche Schriften_ ; _Correspondance_. The present (...) second volume of the _Correspondance_ essentially covers five themes: 1) the controversies with the Roman church, 2) the evangelical propaganda, especially in the Roman speaking countries, 3) the sacramentarian dispute and the search for reconciliation, 4) the Peasant war and 5) the beginning of the anabaptist crisis. (shrink)

What is the ontological status of facts? Are facts linguistic or extra-linguistic entities? If facts are extra-linguistic entities, are they mind-independent or relative to languages, theories or conceptual schemes? Based on a minimal definition of facts, the author argues that what are specified by true statements are not identical to true propositions expressed, so facts are not linguistic entities. Furthermore, what are specified by true statements are not to which a true statement corresponds, so facts are not mind-independent, either as (...) concrete entities in the universe or as abstract entities in the world as it is. Last, the author presents an internal factual realist answer: although facts are neither in the world as it is, nor in a language, facts are real and exist in a world under consideration. A fact, as a non-linguistic correlate of a true statement of a language, exists in a world specified by the language. (shrink)

The article discusses the rights of minorities in the system of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It establishes a conceptual distinction between universal rights, specific rights of minorities in general and specific rights of particular minorities. Universal rights correspond to all individuals (e,g,, “no one shall be subjected to torture”) or all groups of a certain class (e.g., “all families are entitled to protection”). Minority groups and their members are entitled to these rights in the same (...) way as any other individual or group. Specific rights of minorities in general are granted to minority groups (e.g., “minority groups have the right to speak their own language”) or their members (e.g., “persons belonging to a minority group have the right to speak the language of the group”). Finally, specific rights of particular minorities are granted to specific groups identified by their characteristics (e.g., “the linguistic minority X has the right to speak the X language”) or their members (e.g., “any member of the linguistic minority X has the right to speak the X language”). Treaties and international declarations often refer to universal rights and specific rights of minorities in general. However, these rights are usually recognised in broad terms, and their implementation may lead to the recognition of specific rights in favour of particular minorities or their members. Protection of minorities (in the broad sense of the expression) is based on two pillars: on the one hand, the protection against discrimination; on the other hand, the protection of minorities in the strict sense. The first pillar is an aspect of the general principle of nondiscrimination and requires respect for both formal and substantive equalities. The protection of minorities in the strict sense involves the preservation of their particular identity. The purpose of the equality in a formal sense is achieved through universal rights, to the extent that these are granted to minority groups and their members. On the contrary, to achieve equality in a substantive sense, it could be necessary to implement positive measures. The implementation of these measures will usually lead to the recognition of specific rights of minority groups or their members. Finally, the protection of the distinctive characteristics of the minorities will also be done through specific rights. Thus, on the one hand, there are rights, which are intended to protect the minority forms of life (i.e. to protect differences), and, on the other hand, those that are intended to allow minorities equal access to different uniform social goods (i.e. to protect equality). Whereas the former ones seek to protect and promote the particularities of the minority culture (e.g., the right to receive education in their own language), the latter ones are recognised to overcome the disadvantages that minority groups and their members face and are not intended to promote peculiarities, but rather to permit equal access to resources and social opportunities. Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights enshrines specific rights of minorities intended to protect and promote their own forms of life. Although economic rights are not mentioned (the article refers to the rights “to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, [and] to use their own language”), they may stem from the explicitly recognised rights. The rights recognised by the Covenant are not collective, but individual rights (“in those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right [...]”). The rights recognised in the Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities are of the same nature. The principle of equality and non-discrimination is contained in Articles 2.1 and 26 of the Covenant. This principle forbids direct and indirect discrimination, be it de iure or de facto. As this is a universal right, minorities can also benefit from it. According to the Human Rights Committee, Article 27 imposes on States the adoption of positive measures that exceed an attitude of mere abstention. In the same way, positive measures may be necessary to make the principle of equality and non-discrimination effective. Although neither Article 27 nor Articles 2.1 and 26 refer to individuals belonging to a specific minority, the concrete implementation of these articles through positive measures may produce specific rights for persons belonging to particular minority groups. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that anyone who accepts the ontology of scientific realism can only accept a pragmatic theory of truth, i.e., a theory on which truth is what it is epistemically right to believe. But the combination of realism with such a theory of truth is a form of internal realism; therefore, a scientific realist should be an internal realist. The strategy of the paper is to argue that there is no adequate semantic or correspondence theory of (...) truth compatible with a realist ontology, that a redundancy theory cannot account for the value of truth, and that the only kind of truth theory which can account for the value of truth, and is compatible with a realist ontology, is a pragmatic theory. The kind of truth theory I wish to defend is objective and naturalistic, and the ontology is realistic. My position is, therefore, one of objective, naturalistic realism. (shrink)

Realism and constructivism, two key contemporary theoretical approaches to the study of international relations, are commonly taught as mutually exclusive ways of understanding the subject. Realist Constructivism explores the common ground between the two, and demonstrates that, rather than being in simple opposition, they have areas of both tension and overlap. There is indeed space to engage in a realist constructivism. But at the same time, there are important distinctions between them, and there remains a need for a constructivism (...) that is not realist, and a realism that is not constructivist. Samuel Barkin argues more broadly for a different way of thinking about theories of international relations, that focuses on the corresponding elements within various approaches rather than on a small set of mutually exclusive paradigms. Realist Constructivism provides an interesting new way for scholars and students to think about international relations theory. (shrink)

The recent proliferation of International Accountability Standards (IAS) has attracted significant academic interest, but the extent of their adoption and integration by global firms remains underinvestigated.Capitalizing on institutional theory and the typology of strategic responses to institutional pressures proposed by Oliver (Acad Manage Rev 16(1): 145-179, 1991), this article uses an interpretive research methodology to analyze a sample of MNC practitioners' views regarding IAS, and derive some insights in relation to expected patterns of strategic responses to these new institutional (...) pressures. The article also presents relevant remarks relating to the usefulness of institutional theory in the context of research relating to IAS. The findings suggest patterns of engagement combining elements of both conformity and resistance, although the answers correspond most closely to a decoupling or symbolic conformity strategic response. The findings are fleshed out and their implications delineated/assessed. (shrink)

La correspondance entre Descartes et Huygens, quoique maintenant absorbée dans le corpus général des lettres de Descartes, garde son intérêt et son importance propre. A part son caractère unique, comme série complète de lettres échangées entre deux hommes d’une distinction si différente, elle nous montre avec quelle précaution il nous faut accepter le texte des lettres de Clerselier et le récit de Baillet sur la vie de Descartes en Hollande. Et comme toutes les vies de Descartes reposent finalement sur Clerselier (...) et Baillet, notre Correspondance nous montre qu’il est nécessaire d’examiner à nouveau tout le problème. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to discuss difficulties which face Hilary Putnam’s internal realism, difficulties which involve issues in semantics. I hope to show that Putnam has not presented a viable theory of truth. Putnam wishes to avoid relativism, which he claims is incoherent. My argument against Putnam’s theory of truth will be that Putnam has avoided relativism at only a very superficial level. On a deeper analysis we will see that Putnam has in fact not avoided relativism.Putnam has abandoned (...) the correspondence theory of truth since he can make no sense of the claim that our words, thoughts, images, sensations, etc. correspond to external objects. Considerations of human psychology (1983a, p.viii), as well as problems concerning reference (1981; 1983a, pp.vii-xviii; 1983b), have led Putnam to adopt the view that truth must be analyzed in terms of justification. (shrink)

Organizational research constitutes a differentiated, complex and fragmented field with multiple contradicting and incommensurable theories that make fundamentally different claims about the social and organizational reality. In contrast to natural sciences, the progress in this field can’t be attributed to the principle of truthlikeness where theories compete against each other and only best theories survive and prove they are closer to the truth and thus demonstrate scientific knowledge accumulation. We defend the structural realist view on the nature of organizational theories (...) in order to demonstrate that despite the multiplicity of isolated and competing explanations of organization-environment relations these theories are still logically compatible and mutually consistent which, in turn, assures theoretical progress in the field. Although postulating different and incompatible ontologies, three most successful organization-environments theories, namely, contingency theory, new institutionalism and population ecology share the same explanations of the relations between organizations and environments at the structural level. Without this principle one would say that what occurs in the field of organization theory is a change rather than a progress. (shrink)

Aby Warburg's Nachlass, the heart of the Warburg Institute Archive, is complemented by other large holdings which are no less remarkable. Quietly accumulating over the decades, still only provisionally cataloged, the vast corpus of letters filed as “General Correspondence” reveals itself to be a spectacularly rich resource for twentieth-century cultural and intellectual history. The secretariat was efficient: most everything was kept, letters received as well as copies of letters sent, meaning that the visitor to Woburn Square can sit in (...) a single archive, read both sides of exchanges, and follow conversations over years — a rare circumstance. The academic staff maintained contact with an impressively large number of internationally active scholars, working in many fields, and the letters are characteristically substantive. In this article, the author indicates how a book she is presently writing, Warburg Circles, 1929 – 1964, has been shaped by these archival holdings. She offers a brief history of the consolidated archive now located on the fourth floor of the Warburg Institute, a story that throws light on recent scholarly trends; and she gives examples of the sorts of historical insight that may be gained from this corpus of correspondence. (shrink)

Critical scientific realism is contrasted with the neo‐pragmatist views of Goodman, Kuhn, and Putnam. Ontological realism can be combined with conceptual pluralism, which accepts that the mind‐independent world can be carved up or structured by various linguistic frameworks. The world can be regarded as a lawlike flux of causal processes, and its existing objects are individuated and identified relative to conceptual frameworks. This agrees with Putnam's criticism of metaphysical realism that presupposes a ready‐made world. But it is argued that conceptual (...) pluralism is compatible with the non‐epistemic correspondence account of truth, so that critical realism differs also from Putnam's internal realism, Goodman's irrealist account of worldmaking, and Kuhn's Darwinian Kantianism. (shrink)

Psychiatric diagnostic covariation suggests that the underlying structure of psychopathology is not one of circumscribed disorders. Quantitative modeling of individual differences in diagnostic patterns has uncovered several broad domains of mental disorder liability, of which the Internalizing and Externalizing spectra have garnered the greatest support. These dimensions have generally been estimated from lifetime or past-year comorbidity patters, which are distal from the covariation of symptoms and maladaptive behavior that ebb and flow in daily life. In this study, structural models are (...) applied to daily diary data ( Median = 94 days) of maladaptive behaviors collected from a sample ( N = 101) of individuals diagnosed with personality disorders (PDs). Using multilevel and unified structural equation modeling, between-person, within-person, and person-specific structures were estimated from 16 behaviors that are encompassed by the Internalizing and Externalizing spectra. At the between-person level (i.e., individual differences in average endorsement across days) we found support for a two-factor Internalizing–Externalizing model, which exhibits significant associations with corresponding diagnostic spectra. At the within-person level (i.e., dynamic covariation among daily behavior pooled across individuals) we found support for a more differentiated, four-factor, Negative Affect-Detachment-Hostility-Disinhibition structure. Finally, we demonstrate that the person-specific structures of associations between these four domains are highly idiosyncratic. (shrink)

This inclusive cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering education and context. In so doing the book offers a reflection on contextual boundaries with an overall boundary crossing ambition and juxtaposes important cases of critical participation within engineering education with sophisticated scholarly reflection on both opportunities and discontents. Whether, and in what way engineering education is or ought to be contextualized or de-contextualized is an object of heated debate among engineering educators. The uniqueness of this study is that this debate (...) is given comprehensive coverage - presenting both instrumentally inclined as well as radical positions on transforming engineering education. In contextualizing engineering education, this book offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary, meta- and interdisciplinary perspectives on how cultural, professional, institutional, and educational systems contexts shape histories, structural dynamics, ideologies and challenges as well as new pathways in engineering education. Topics addressed include examining engineering education in countries ranging from India to America, to racial and gender equity in engineering education and incorporating social awareness into the area. Using context as "bridge" this book confronts engineering education head on. Contending engineering ideologies and corresponding views on context are juxtaposed with contending discourses of reform. The uniqueness of the book is that it brings together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and engineering from Europe - both East and West - with the United States, China, Brazil, India and Australia. (shrink)

Guy Debord, founder of the Situationist International and filmmaker, kept a meticulous record of his correspondence between 1951 and 1994. Published by Fayard, the fifth volume of the correspondence includes several letters signed ‘Glaucos’ (a character from the Iliad), which were sent to Afonso Monteiro, Gianfranco Sanguinetti, Eduardo Rothe, and Jaime Semprún. In those letters, Debord developed several analyses of the ‘Carnation Revolution’, arguing that ‘the Portuguese proletariat’ had gone ‘further than the May 1968 movement’. Debord initially (...) supported a local group called Conselho para o Desenvolvimento da Revolução Social, but he would later criticise it for not taking sufficient action. He also encouraged Jaime Semprún to write La Guerre Social au Portugal, a book published by Éditions Champ Libre in May 1975. This article analyses Debord’s correspondence in 1974 and 1975, offering a critical assessment of how he related to the revolutionary situation in Portugal. (shrink)

For many assertions, the correspondence theory of truth seems intuitively to give the best account of the difference between truth and falsity, but one of its problems is how to explicate the notions of “correspondence” and “truthmaking”. In conformity with the view of David Armstrong, it is claimed that truthmaking is an internal relation between a truthmaker and a truth(-value-)bearer. The truthbearer (a token proposition) can exist without the truthmaker (an object or a state of affairs), and vice (...) versa, but when both exist the truthmaker necessarily makes the truthbearer true and correspondence obtains. Contrary to Armstrong’s reductionist analyses of internal relations and propositions, however, it is argued that internal relations can have a mind-independent existence and “add to being”, that truthbearers and truthmakers are categorially different, and that the correspondence theory of truth requires a distinction between internal relations with heterogeneous and homogeneous relata, respectively. (shrink)

Three visual habituation studies using abstract animations tested the claim that infants’ attachment behavior in the Strange Situation procedure corresponds to their expectations about caregiver–infant interactions. Three unique patterns of expectations were revealed. Securely attached infants expected infants to seek comfort from caregivers and expected caregivers to provide comfort. Insecure-resistant infants not only expected infants to seek comfort from caregivers but also expected caregivers to withhold comfort. Insecure-avoidant infants expected infants to avoid seeking comfort from caregivers and expected caregivers to (...) withhold comfort. These data support Bowlby’s (1958) original claims—that infants form internal working models of attachment that are expressed in infants’ own behavior. (shrink)