Many thought experiments are used to probe theoretical statements. One crucial strategy for doing this, or so I will argue, is the following. A TE reveals an inconsistency in part of our previously held, sometimes empirically well-established, theoretical statements. A TEer or her critic then proposes a resolution in the form of a conjecture, a hypothesis that merits further investigation. To explore this characterisation of the epistemic function of such TEs, I clarify the nature of the inconsistencies revealed by TEs, (...) and how TEs reveal and resolve them. I argue that this can be done without settling the question of which cognitive processes are involved in performing a TE; be they propositional or non-propositional. The upshot is that TEs’ reliability, like real experiments, is to be found, in part, in their replicability by the epistemic community, not in their cognitive underpinnings. (shrink)

The philosophical literatures on models and thought experiments have been developing exponentially, and independently, for decades. This independence is surprising, given how similar models and thought experiments are. They each have “lives of their own,” they sit between theory and experience, they are important for both pedagogy and cutting-edge science, they galvanize conceptual changes and paradigm shifts, and they involve entertaining imaginary scenarios and working out what happens. Recently, philosophers have begun to highlight these similarities. This entry aims at taking (...) the idea further, by trying to systematically identify places where insights from one literature can be taken up in the other. Along the way, important differences will also be highlighted. (shrink)

Experiments (E), computer simulations (CS) and thought experiments (TE) are usually seen as playing different roles in science and as having different epistemologies. Accordingly, they are usually analyzed separately. We argue in this paper that these activities can contribute to answering the same questions by playing the same epistemic role when they are used to unfold the content of a well-described scenario. We emphasize that in such cases, these three activities can be described by means of the same conceptual framework—even (...) if each of them, because they involve different types of processes, fall under these concepts in different ways. We further illustrate our claims by presenting a threefold case study describing how a TE, a CS and an E were indeed used in the same role at different periods to answer the same questions about the possibility of a physical Maxwellian demon. We also point at fluid dynamics as another field where these activities seem to be playing the same unfolding role. We analyze the importance of unfolding as a general task of science and highlight how our description in terms of epistemic functions articulates in a noncommittal way with the epistemology of these three activities and accounts for their similarities and the existence of hybrid forms of activities. We finally emphasize that picturing these activities as functionally substitutable does not imply that they are epistemologically substitutable. (shrink)

It is usually claimed that in order to assess a thought experiment we should assess the nomological possibility, or realizability in principle, of its scenario. This is undoubtedly true for many TEs, such as Bohr’s reply to Einstein’s photon box. Nevertheless, in some cases, such as Maxwell’s demon, this requirement should be relaxed. Many accounts of TEs fail in this regard. In particular, experimental and some mental model accounts are too strict, since they always require realizability in principle. This paper (...) aims at analysing the notion of possibility at play in the scenarios of scientific TEs, and sheds some new light on their nature and function. (shrink)

The ongoing epistemological debate on scientific thought experiments (TEs) revolves, in part, around the now famous Galileo’s falling bodies TE and how it could justify its conclusions. In this paper, I argue that the TE’s function is misrepresented in this a-historical debate. I retrace the history of this TE and show that it constituted the first step in two general “argumentative strategies”, excogitated by Galileo to defend two different theories of free-fall, in 1590’s and then in the 1638. I analyse (...) both argumentative strategies and argue that their function was to eliminate potential causal factors: the TE serving to eliminate absolute weight as a causal factor, while the subsequent arguments served to explore the effect of specific weight, with conflicting conclusions in 1590 and 1638. I will argue thorough the paper that the TE is best grasped when we analyse Galileo’s restriction, in the TE’s scenario and conclusion, to bodies of the same material or specific weight. Finally, I will draw out two implications for the debate on TEs. (shrink)

Scientists investigating the thermal properties of black holes rely heavily on theoretical and non-empirical tools, such as mathematical derivations, analogue experiments and thought experiments. Although the use of mathematical derivations and analogue experiments in the context of black hole physics has recently received a great deal of attention among philosophers of science, the use of thought experiments (TEs) in that context has been almost completely neglected. In this paper, we will start filling this gap by systematically analyzing the epistemic role (...) of the two TEs that gave birth to black hole thermodynamics, namely Wheeler’s demon and Geroch’s engine. We will argue that the two main epistemic functions of these TEs are to reveal and resolve inconsistencies, in line with El Skaf’s (Probing theoretical statements with thought experiments. Synthese 199:6119–6147, 2021) approach to TEs. We will, then, go beyond El Skaf’s approach by stressing an important difference between the strategies employed to assess the reliability of each epistemic function. (shrink)

Using a large sample of 3,040 U.S. firms and 16,606 firm-year observations over the 1991–2010 period, we find strong evidence that firm internationalization is positively related to the firm’s corporate social responsibility rating. This finding persists when we use alternative estimation methods, samples, and proxies for internationalization and when we address endogeneity concerns. We also provide evidence that the positive relation between internationalization and CSR rating holds for a large sample of firms from 44 countries. Finally, we offer novel evidence (...) that firms with extensive foreign subsidiaries in countries with well-functioning political and legal institutions have better CSR ratings. Our findings shed light on the role of internationalization in influencing multinational firms’ CSR activities in the U.S. and around the world. (shrink)

This study provides evidence on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and firms’ credit ratings. We find that credit rating agencies tend to award relatively high ratings to firms with good social performance. This pattern is robust to controlling for key firm characteristics as well as endogeneity between CSR and credit ratings. We also find that CSR strengths and concerns influence credit ratings and that the individual components of CSR that relate to primary stakeholder management matter most in explaining firms’ (...) creditworthiness. Overall, our results suggest that CSR performance conveys important non-financial information that rating agencies are likely to use in their evaluation of firms’ creditworthiness, and that CSR investments—particularly those that extend beyond compliance behavior to reflect what is desired by society—can lead to lower financing costs resulting from higher credit ratings. (shrink)

This paper examines the reasons for the high level of unmet needfor contraception in rural Egypt, using data from the individual survey andservice availability module of the 1988Ð89 Egypt Demographic and HealthSurvey. Two broad sets of potential factors are considered: characteristics ofa woman which influence her desire for children and thus her propensity touse contraception, and factors relating to the family planning serviceenvironment in which she lives. The results from a multivariate analysis showthat certain individual characteristics, such as family composition (...) andeducation, have a strong impact on the level of contraceptive use and on theproportion of total demand for spacing or limiting childbearing that is metby use of family planning. Unmet need, however, remains fairly constantacross demographic and socioeconomic subgroups of the population. Thelargest variations in unmet need are regional, but elements of the familyplanning services, namely the provision of a community-based nurse whodistributes family planning and female doctors at clinics, also play animportant role. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus disease is regarded as one of the most imminent disease outbreaks which threaten public health on various levels worldwide. Because of the unpredictable outbreak nature and the virus’s pandemic intensity, people are experiencing depression, anxiety, and other strain reactions. The response to prevent and control the new coronavirus pneumonia has reached a crucial point. Therefore, it is essential—for safety and prevention purposes—to promptly predict and forecast the virus outbreak in the course of this troublesome time to have (...) control over its mortality. Recently, deep learning models are playing essential roles in handling time-series data in different applications. This paper presents a comparative study of two deep learning methods to forecast the confirmed cases and death cases of COVID-19. Long short-term memory and gated recurrent unit have been applied on time-series data in three countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, from 1/5/2020 to 6/12/2020. The results show that LSTM has achieved the best performance in confirmed cases in the three countries, and GRU has achieved the best performance in death cases in Egypt and Kuwait. (shrink)

Welcome to Angelaki’s General Issue I 2023. Submissions for our general issues are accepted year-round.Angelaki is an internationally renowned journal and one of the most read of Routledge, Taylor...

Welcome to Angelaki’s General Issue II 2023. Submissions for our general issues are accepted year-round.Angelaki is an internationally renowned journal and one of the most read of Routledge, Taylor...

Topic of quantum chaos has begun to draw increasing attention in recent years. So, to ensure the security of digital image, an image encryption algorithm based on combining a hyperchaotic system and quantum 3D logistic map is proposed. This algorithm is applied in four stages. Initially, the key generator builds upon the foundation of mean for any row or column of the edges of the plain image. Its output value is used to yield initial conditions and parameters of the proposed (...) image encryption scheme. Next, it diffuses the plain image by the random sequences generated by 3D hyperchaotic system, and the diffusion process is realized by implementing XOR operation. Then, the diffused image and chaotic sequences are produced by the 3D quantum chaotic logistic map, expressed as a quantum superposition state using density matrix which is a representation of the state of a quantum system, and finally the resulting quantum image is then confused and diffused simultaneously by a unitary matrix generated by logistic chaos using XNOR operation to obtain the final cipher image. Because of the dependence on the plain image, the algorithm can frustrate the chosen-plaintext and known-plaintext attacks. Simulation results and theoretical analysis verify that the presented scheme has high safety performance, a good encryption effect, and a large key space. The method can effectively resist exhaustive, statistical, and differential attacks. Moreover, the encryption time of the proposed method is satisfactory, and the method can be efficiently used in practice for the secure transmission of image information. (shrink)

This essay proposes an interpretation of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man based on a combination of textual analysis and contemporary theoretical approaches to the specific questions of trauma, grief, and...

Welcome to Angelaki’s general issue 2018 II. Submissions for our general issues are accepted year-round. In view of an ever-rising rate of high-quality article submission, Angelaki is happy to anno...

Welcome to Angelaki’s general issue II 2020. Submissions for our general issues are accepted year-round. Angelaki is an internationally renowned journal and one of the most read of Routledge, Taylo...

Welcome to Angelaki’s General Issue I 2022. Submissions for our general issues are accepted year-round.Angelaki is an internationally renowned journal and one of the most read of Routledge, Taylor...

This article investigates the impacts of proper modeling of the wake effects and wind speed delays, between different wind turbines' rows, on the dynamic performance accuracy of the wind farms models. Three different modeling scenarios were compared to highlight the impacts of wake effects and wind speed time-delay models. In the first scenario, wind wake effect and time delay are ignored. Consequently, all wind turbines are assumed subjected to the same wind speed profile. The second scenario considers the wind wake (...) effect, and it was modeled by reducing the incident wind speed values by 0.5 m/s from one row to the next row facing the wind. The last scenario, the proposed model, used the wind wake effect model developed for wind turbines micrositting applications and considered the effect of the delay time between the wind speed profiles incident on the different wind turbines' rows. (shrink)

BackgroundIn Morocco, medical research ethics training was integrated into the medical curriculum during the 2015 reform. In the same year, a law on medical research ethics was enacted to protect individuals participating in medical research. These improvements, whether in the reform or in the enactment of the law, could positively impact the knowledge of these researchers and, consequently, their attitudes and practices regarding medical research ethics. The main objective of this work is to assess Moroccan physicians’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices (...) at the beginning of their careers (interns and residents) in medical research ethics.Patients and methodsThis is a multicenter cross-sectional study conducted in 2021 among Moroccan physicians. Three scores were created and validated to assess physicians’ level of knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding research ethics. A descriptive analysis was carried out, followed by a univariate analysis and a multivariate analysis using multivariate binary logistic regression to study the factors associated with the different calculated scores.ResultsA total of 924 physicians were included in the study, with an average age of 27.8 ± 2.2 years. 40.7% had a high medical research ethics knowledge score, and 68.8% had good attitudes. These two scores were positively associated with age and were statistically higher in residents and in physicians who had received training in medical research ethics during their medical curriculum. Only 29,9% of physicians who had participated in research studies had adequate practices with medical research ethics. This score was statistically higher in residents and in physicians who had heard about research ethics.ConclusionA genuine introduction to ethics in the medical curriculum is essential to enhance researchers’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices. This, in turn, can lead to an increase in both the quantity and quality of research conducted in Morocco. (shrink)

When one looks at the extensive literature on collectivity in philosophy, it may seem that every item in the family of collective states, traits and entities has been examined, but one crucial state has largely been left out of focus: collective intellectual self-trust. In this article I propose a novel conception of collective intellectual self-trust and explain the role of collective intellectual self-trust in groups. I start with a short overview of individual intellectual self-trust, then I introduce what kinds of (...) groups are capable of having collective intellectual self-trust. Against this background I develop the constituents of collective intellectual self-trust. Then I turn to the differences between warranted and unwarranted collective intellectual self-trust and their function in different groups. I close by discussing an objection about the acquisition of collective intellectual self-trust. These are first steps in an epistemology of collective intellectual self-trust that aim to provide the ground for further work in this field. (shrink)

Research on the nature of science and science education enjoys a longhistory, with its origins in Ernst Mach's work in the late nineteenthcentury and John Dewey's at the beginning of the twentieth century.As early as 1909 the Central Association for Science and MathematicsTeachers published an article – ‘A Consideration of the Principles thatShould Determine the Courses in Biology in Secondary Schools’ – inSchool Science and Mathematics that reflected foundational concernsabout science and how school curricula should be informed by them. Sincethen (...) a large body of literature has developed related to the teaching andlearning about nature of science – see, for example, the Lederman and Meichtry reviews cited below. As well there has been intensephilosophical, historical and philosophical debate about the nature of scienceitself, culminating in the much-publicised ‘Science Wars’ of recent time. Thereferences listed here primarily focus on the empirical research related to thenature of science as an educational goal; along with a few influential philosophicalworks by such authors as Kuhn, Popper, Laudan, Lakatos, and others. Whilenot exhaustive, the list should prove useful to educators, and scholars in otherfields, interested in the nature of science and how its understanding can berealised as a goal of science instruction. The authors welcome correspondenceregarding omissions from the list, and on-going additions that can be made to it. (shrink)

La teoría problemática del filósofo belga Michel Meyer abrió un nuevo horizonte filosófico y argumentativo para librar al pensamiento humano del dominio de la tendencia proposicional. Una tendencia que impuso un patrón sistemático, a lo largo de la historia del pensamiento humano, con una referencia lógica basada en los principios de no contradicción, de identidad y de tercero excluido. Este artículo se centrará en las aportaciones de la teoría llamada “de la problematologie” para liberar a la interpretación de la tiranía (...) proposicional que reduce la pluralidad de las respuestas a una dicotomía proposicional A o -A. (shrink)

Few figures of the Middle Ages command the attention of so many modern disciplines as Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253). Theology, Philosophy, History, and Science are all areas which his life and thought continue to have significance and to inspire re-interpretation. Accompanied by a series of original commentaries, this new edition of Grosseteste's work, with English translation, draws together the perspectives of modern scientists and medieval specialists. Volume I of a six volume series, Knowing and Speaking presents two of the earliest (...) of Grosseteste's works, the treatises On the Liberal Arts and On the Generation of Sounds. These are accompanied by a significant Middle English treatise on the Seven Liberal Arts whose anonymous fifteenth-century author translated and excerpted passages from Grosseteste's treatises in a re-imagining of their structure and function.0Each work is treated separately within the volume, which is constructed in three parts. On the Liberal Arts sets Grosseteste's thoughts on the arts subjects and emphasises moral concerns about the purpose of learning. On the Generation of Sounds builds on the theories and statements of On the Liberal Arts in connection to the production of sound, elaborating the earlier position, relating the generation of sounds to human vocal and speech production. (shrink)

Malek Bennabi naît en 1905 dans une Algérie occupée par la France. Aux côtés de savants algériens dont la devise est "L'islam est notre religion, l'Algérie est notre patrie, l'Arabe notre langue", il forme sa pensée, qui demeure encore trop injustement méconnue jusque dans son pays natal. Les axes centraux de l'idéologie bennabienne (religion, spiritualité, réforme, colonisabilité...) trouvent pourtant leurs échos dans la France d'aujourd'hui. Son constat situant la décadence de la civilisation islamique à la fin de la dynastie Almohade (...) (XIIIe siècle) est percutant. Il engendre un ensemble de conséquences dont les savants contemporains n'ont peut-être pas encore pris la mesure. Cet ouvrage trace les parallèles entre l'analyse visionnaire de Bennabi et les caractéristiques de l'époque actuelle. Si les modalités des maux peuvent être différenciées, l'analogie entre les événements des deux époques permet de tirer de son oeuvre des solutions actuelles et efficaces. (shrink)