Mathematics educators suggest that students of all ages need to participate in productive forms of mathematical argument (NCTM, 2000). Accordingly, we developed two complementary frameworks for analyzing the emergence of mathematical argumentation in one second‐grade classroom. Children attempted to resolve contesting claims about the “space covered” by three different‐looking rectangles of equal area measure. Our first analysis renders the topology of the semantic structure of the classroom conversation as a directed graph. The graph affords clear “at a glance” visualization of (...) how various senses of mathematics—as imagined, as performed, and as historically rooted—were interrelated. The graph represents the emergence and intercoordination between conceptual and procedural knowledge in the ebb and flow of classroom conversation. The graph has not just descriptive, but also predictive power: Interconnectedness among the nodes of the graph representing the first 40 min of conversation predicted the structure of recall in the final ten minutes by children who had played little overt role in the conversation up to that point. The second, complementary framework draws upon Goffman's expanded repertoire of roles in speech to demonstrate how the teacher orchestrated this classroom conversation to establish coherent argument. In this second analysis, we establish how the teacher mediated between the everyday talk of her students and the discourse of mathematics. Her revoicing of student talk created interstices for identity and participation in the formation of the argument. Together, the two forms of analysis illuminate the emergence of mathematical argument at two levels: as collective structure and concurrently, as individual activity. (shrink)

This paper discusses the discourse contrasts that arise in connection to direct evidentiality in Southern Aymara (henceforth, Aymara), an understudied Andean language. Aymara has two direct evidentials, the enclitic _=wa_ and the covert morpheme _-_∅, which are used whenever the speaker has the best possible grounds for some proposition. I make the novel observation that a sentence with _=wa_ can be felicitously uttered if the speaker attempts to update the common ground by addressing an issue on the table. In fact, (...) the sentence with _=wa_ that is uttered must be congruent with prior discourse; I tie this to the claim that _=wa_ is a (presentational) focus marker (Proulx in Language Sciences 9(1):91–102, 1987 ). This paper thus claims that _=wa_ is a marker that combines evidentiality and focus. In contrast, uttering a sentence with _-_∅ entails that the speaker’s contribution is already in the common ground, which likens this evidential to common ground management operators—there is no congruence requirement in this case. I identify which construction can be used in different discourse settings (conversation openers and telling anecdotes). I implement a formal analysis based on Farkas and Bruce (Journal of Semantics 27:81–118, 2010 ) and Faller (Semantics and Pragmatics 12(8):1–53, 2019 ) that links evidentiality and discourse. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to analyze the meaning of examples in C. Hempel’s works. Hempel uses many examples referring to readings of magnetic hand, burning of white phosphorus, predictions of properties of some elements of the table of Mendeleev, to astrophysical hypotheses, terms of total solar eclipse, throwing of dice, as well as on unmarried men, on white and black swans, green mermaids, black crows and white shoes, blue roses, predictions of Jones’ recovery, the eruption of Vesuvius, the (...) assassination of Julius Caesar, and other “special cases” and “concrete facts”. The question is raised as to whether the case studies are mere illustrative material, a form of argumentation; a way of verifying Hempel’s ideas, their “demonstrable confirmation”, and in this sense a definite empirical basis for the study. The necessity of analyzing concrete examples in the context of Hempel’s theoretical research is shown, for which the examples turn out to be an occasion for investigating the logic of confirmation and the logic of explanation, for analyzing the structures of explanans and explanandum, for understanding the differences in inductive and deductive logical constructions, and for analyzing “quasi-induction”. The paper discusses Hempel’s famous example, the crow paradox, which is named in his honor and is a kind of logical provocation. (shrink)

This book argues against the conventional idea that Protestantism effectively ceased to play an important role in American higher education around the end of the 19th century. Employing Princeton as an example, the study shows that Protestantism was not abandoned but rather modified to conform to the educational values and intellectual standards of the modern university. Drawing upon a wealth of neglected primary sources, Kemeny sheds new light on the role of religion in higher education by examining what was (...) happening both inside and outside the classroom, and by illustrating that religious and secular commitments were not neatly divisible but rather commingled. (shrink)

Resuelta evidente la desigualdad que ha develado la crisis sanitaria a nivel global. Sin embargo, no se trata de una fotografía actual, sino que ha puesto de manifiesto las falencias estructurales del sistema económico político global y, con ello, los devastadores efectos sobre el ser humano en todas sus dimensiones. Las consecuencias de la pandemia no son homogéneas dentro de una misma sociedad. Existen sectores que se han vuelto más ricos y otros más pobres. Las distancias en salud, bienestar y (...) dignidad de los individuos han aumentado y estamos ante una crisis de que esta injusticia se siga calcificando. El ser humano no sólo tiene que sobrevivir sino lograr la fundamental biopsicosocial realización tanto individual como colectiva. Por lo tanto, es imperativo, recuperar al Otro, al necesitado, dentro del discurso y, sobre todo, en la acción política, mirando al Otro como un fin en sí mismo, y no como un medio. Este es el origen y debe volver a ser la finalidad primordial de la política interna y externa de cada gobierno. Para ello, la reflexión filosófica nos proporciona nuevas perspectivas para reestructurar la realidad, cambiando, y mejorando, las escalas de valores y nuestro modo de actuar. La postpandemia nos plantea un único objetivo, el restaurar y reactivar las verdaderas relaciones intersubjetivas, rehumanizando al hombre, es decir, volviendo a la raíz de la esencia de toda sociedad, que no es otra que el ser humano mismo, como un fin en sí mismo. No se podrá lograr de manera inmediata, por lo tanto es fundamental recanalizar todas las herramientas e instituciones políticas hacia y para el bienestar del hombre, sin devastar su entorno, donde la reflexión filosófica es primordial para construir un nuevo mundo. (shrink)

We show that in the Maxwell–Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon suggests that the Maxwell equations and the Lorentz force law ought rather to be read as a system of delay differential equations, that is, differential equations that relate a function and its derivatives at different times. This mathematical reformulation, however, leads to physical and philosophical consequences for the ontological (...) status of the electromagnetic field. In particular, fields cannot be taken as independent degrees of freedom, which suggests that one should not add them to the ontology. (shrink)

It is proved that Vaught's conjecture is true for modules over an arbitrary countable hereditary noetherian prime ring.

It is proved that Vaught's conjecture is true for modules over an arbitrary countable serial ring. It follows from the structural result that every module with few models over a (countable) serial ring is ω-stable.

Gift of utterance: expanding vocabularies for truth -- Dainty as candle-lights: veiled truths and shadowy lies -- Philomela and the risk of history -- Truth: a muddy sprout -- No auditors in the courtroom of history.

According to the doctrine of Super-Humeanism, the world’s mosaic consists only of permanent matter points and changing spatial relations, while all the other entities and features figuring in scientific theories are nomological parameters, whose role is merely to build the best law system. In this paper, I develop an argument against Super-Humeanism by pointing out that it is vulnerable to and does not have the resources to solve the well-known problem of immanent comparisons. Firstly, I show that it cannot endorse (...) a fundamentalist solution à la Lewis, since its two pillars—a minimalist ontology and a best system account of lawhood—would generate, together, a tedious problem of internal coherence. Secondly, I consider anti-fundamentalist strategies, proposed within Humeanism, and find them inapplicable to the Super-Humean doctrine. The concern is that, since it is impossible to choose the best law system within Super-Humeanism, this doctrine may be charged with incoherence. (shrink)

Many arguments have been made against gene editing. This paper addresses the commonly invoked argument that gene editing violates human dignity and is ultimately a subversion of human nature. There are several drawbacks to this argument. Above all, the concept of what human dignity means is unclear. It is not possible to condemn a practice that violates human dignity if we do not know exactly what is being violated. The argument’s entire reasoning is thus undermined. Analyses of the arguments involved (...) in this discussion have often led to the conclusion that gene editing contravenes the principle of genetic identity (genetic immutability) thereby subverting a requisite of human dignity and ultimately threatening human nature. This paper refutes these arguments and shows that any opposition to gene editing cannot rely on the human dignity argument. (shrink)

Replicability is usually considered to be one of the cornerstones of science; however, the growing recognition of nonreplicable experiments and studies in scientific journals—a phenomenon that has been called ‘replicability crisis’—has spurred a debate on the meaning, function, and significance of replicability in science. Amid this discussion, it has become clear that replicability is not a monolithic concept; what is still controversial is exactly how the distinction between different kinds of replicability should be laid out terminologically and conceptually, and to (...) what extent it bears on the more general debate on the centrality of replicability in science. This paper’s goals are to clarify the different uses of the terms related to replicability and, more importantly, to conceptually specify the kinds of replicability and their respective epistemic functions. (shrink)

One dimension of cognitive success concerns getting it right: having many true beliefs and no false ones. Another dimension of cognitive success concerns using the right concepts. For example, using a concept of a person that systematically excludes people of certain demographics from its extension is a sort of cognitive deficiency. This view, if correct, tasks inquirers with critically examining the concepts they are using and perhaps replacing those concepts with new and better ones. This task is often referred to (...) as “conceptual engineering”. However, so far it is unclear what exactly happens in cases of conceptual engineering. How does language change when we engineer a concept? This article offers an answer. I propose a view on which, when speakers assess the truth of propositions, they often rely on assumptions with regard to what is required for their truth. For example, when speakers assess whether unborn fetuses are people, they rely on assumptions with regard to what is required to be a person. Based on this idea, I develop a model of conceptual engineering according to which speakers “engineer concepts” when they change how they assess the truth of propositions. For example, speakers engineer the concept of a person when they change how they assess the truth of the proposition that unborn fetuses are people. (shrink)

We wish to give a precise formulation of the intuitive concept: The degree to which the known facts support a given hypothesis.

Do numbers exist? Carnap (1956 [1950]) famously argues that this question can be understood in an “internal” and in an “external” sense, and calls “external” questions “non-cognitive”. Carnap also says that external questions are raised “only by philosophers” (p. 207), which means that, in his view, philosophers raise ”non-cognitive” questions. However, it is not clear how the internal/external distinction and Carnap’s related views about philosophy should be understood. This paper provides a new interpretation. I draw attention to Carnap’s distinction between (...) purely external statements, which are independent from all frameworks, and pragmatic external statements, which concern which framework one should adopt, and argue that the latter express noncognitive mental states. Specifically, I argue that “frameworks” are systems of rules for the assessment of statements, which are utterances of ordinary language sentences. Pragmatic external statements express noncognitive dispositions to follow only certain rules of assessment. For instance, “numbers exist” understood as a pragmatic external statement expresses a noncognitive disposition to use only rules of assessment according to which numbers do exist. Carnap can thereby be understood as proposing a distinctive form of noncognitivism about ontology that is in some respects analogous to norm-expressivism in metaethics. (shrink)

In a time marked by the development of innovative treatments in healthcare and the need for health professionals to deal with resulting ethical dilemmas in clinical practice, this study was developed to determine the influence of the bioethics teaching on the moral competence of medical and nursing students. The authors conduct a longitudinal study using the Moral Competence Test extended version before and after attending the ethics curricular unit, in three nursing schools and three medical schools of Portugal. In this (...) questionnaire the participant is confronted with three ethical dilemmas and asked to evaluate arguments for and against the attitude of the main character. For both nursing and medical students, C-score was lower after the attendance of the ethics curricular units, with a statistically significant decrease in the total score for nursing students and a decrease not statistically significant for medical students. A multivariate analysis did not find any association between this decrease and gender, course, or age. The phenomenon of moral segmentation was observed, with better performance in the worker and judge dilemma, than in the doctor dilemma. These results highlight the need to reflect on the curricular strategies that can be implemented for health professionals to better develop moral competence and decision-making, allowing for the provision of humanized health care. (shrink)

Ontological expressivism is the view that ontological existence claims express non-cognitive mental states. I develop a version of ontological expressivism that is modeled after Gibbard’s (2003) norm-expressivism. I argue that, when speakers assess whether, say, composite objects exist, they rely on assumptions with regard to what is required for composition to occur. These assumptions guide their assessment, similar to how norms may guide the assessment of normative propositions. Against this backdrop, I argue that “some objects have parts”, uttered in the (...) context of an ontological disagreement, expresses a noncognitive disposition to assess the truth of propositions by using only rules of assessment according to which the proposition that some objects have parts is to be evaluated as true. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show some of my contributions to the exegesis of Quine’s philosophy, emphasizing the role played by notions such as empathy and transcendence in his philosophical system. I hold that Quine is a rigorous systematic philosopher, and that in order to understand each one of his theses and critiques we need to analyze them within the totality of his philosophical investigations. I believe that his system derives from what we call his epistemological project and (...) that all his philosophical theses are founded in his theory of language learning. I also maintain that Quine’s philosophy shows a very strong pragmatic aspect more closely related to Wittgenstein’s tradition and that one of speech acts theorists than to the Skinnerian tradition with which Quine is often associated. In addition I believe that the overall position of his theses has been presented in Word and Object, and that all his subsequent works served to clarify or complement his ideas, not to change them. Thus, I do not agree with those who argue that Quine changed his philosophical position in the course of time. (shrink)

Easy Ontologists, most notably Thomasson (2015), argue that ontological questions are shallow. They think that these questions can either be answered by using our ordinary conceptual competence—of course tables exist!—or are meaningless, or else should be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Ontology thus is “easy”, requiring no distinctively metaphysical investigation. This paper raises a two-stage objection to Easy Ontology. We first argue that questions concerning which entities exist are inextricably bound up with “ontological category questions”, which are questions concerning the identity (...) of and differences between kinds of entities. We then argue that ontological category questions do not have trivial answers, are meaningful, and cannot be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Easy Ontology hence does not constitute a comprehensive ontological methodology. While some of ontology might be easy, category questions form a central part of ontology and are not answered easily. (shrink)

Im Beitrag werden Veränderungen der Kommunikation durch digitale Medien, ihre psychischen Bedeutungen und Folgen, u. a. anhand von empirischen Befunden zu Social-Media-Praktiken von Jugendlichen und von Eltern thematisiert. Bezugsrahmen der Analyse sind dabei kulturelle Wandlungen sowie soziale und psychische Bedeutungen von Aufmerksamkeit: geteilte Aufmerksamkeit als ein Kern der Kommunikation, aber auch die für psychische Entwicklung notwendige geschenkte, für den anderen oder für anderes offene Aufmerksamkeit als ein wesentliches Moment der Zuwendung, Empathie und Bezogenheit – im Gegensatz zu selbstbezogener Aufmerksamkeit und (...) instrumenteller Aufmerksamkeitslenkung. Überdies werden Folgen fragmentierter Aufmerksamkeit, wie sie aus der Überlagerung von Online- und Offline-Kommunikation resultiert, für psychische Entwicklungen betrachtet. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss whether the results of loop quantum gravity (LQG) constitute a fatal blow to Humeanism. There is at least a prima facie reason for believing so: while Humeanism regards spatiotemporal relations as fundamental, LQG describes the fundamental layer of our reality in terms of spin networks, which are not in spacetime. However, the question should be tackled more carefully. After explaining the importance of the debate on the tenability of Humeanism in light of LQG, and having (...) presented the Humean doctrine, I review two cases which present serious threats to Humeanism, one concerning the fundamentality of vectorial quantities and the other concerning quantum entanglement. In particular, I recall the strategies that are usually employed in these two cases in order to save Humeanism: in the first case, the strategy consists in amending the characterization of the Humean mosaic; in the second case, it consists in adopting a realist or nomological interpretation of the wave function. These solutions will turn out to be helpful in my discussion of LQG where, after describing LQG, I show that Humeans might save their doctrine either by endorsing a realist interpretation of spin networks, or by giving them a nomological status and, at the same time, by revisiting the characterization of the Humean mosaic. However, I conclude that both solutions are wanting. (shrink)

The acquisition of complex motor, cognitive, and social skills, like playing a musical instrument or mastering sports or a language, is generally associated with implicit skill learning . Although it is a general view that SL is most effective in childhood, and such skills are best acquired if learning starts early, this idea has rarely been tested by systematic empirical studies on the developmental pathways of SL from childhood to old age. In this paper, we challenge the view that childhood (...) and early school years are the prime time for skill learning by tracking age-related changes in performance in three different paradigms of SL. We collected data from participants between 7 and 87 years for a Serial Reaction Time Task testing the learning of motor sequences, an Artificial Grammar Learning task testing the extraction of regularities from auditory sequences, and Probabilistic Category Learning in the Weather Prediction task , a non-sequential categorization task. Results on all three tasks show that adolescence and adulthood are the most efficient periods for skill learning, since instead of becoming less and less effective with age, SL improves from childhood into adulthood and then later declines with aging. (shrink)

Includes chapters on scientific language, mathematics, probability, credibility and induction, scientific explanations, life, and science and values.

MARK LOŠONC, PREDRAG KRSTIĆ, HOLOKAUST I FILOZOFIJA, INSTITUT ZA FILOZOFIJU I DRUŠTVENU TEORIJU, BEOGRAD, 2018.Vera Mevorah.