In the recent literature on confirmation there are two leading approaches to the provision of a probabilistic measure of the degree to which a hypothesis is confirmed by evidence. The first is to construe the degree to which evidence E confirms hypothesis H as a function that is directly proportional to p and inversely proportional to p . I shall refer to this as the probability approach. The second approach construes the notion as a function that is directly proportional to (...) the true-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is true, p – and inversely proportional to the false-positive rate – the probability of the evidence if the hypothesis is false, p . These reverse conditional probabilities – of the evidence on the truth or falsehood of the hypothesis – are sometimes known as likelihoods. I shall refer to the approach to confirmation that uses them as the likelihood approach.For each of these approaches, there are two obvious options as to how to define the confirmation function. The first is to define it as the difference between the magnitude that is treated as increasing confirmation or p ) and the magnitude that is treated as decreasing confirmation or p ). The second is to define confirmation as the quotient of these two magnitudes.This yields four different measures of confirmation, represented in the following table: Differences RatiosProbabilities PD = p – p1 PR = Graphic2Likelihoods LD = p – p3 LR = Graphic4All these measures agree on whether or not E provides some support for H. Intuitively, we want to say that E provides some support for H just in case learning that E is true would make us assign a higher probability to H, i.e. when p(H …. (shrink)

In this paper we describe the implicative subreducts of RWH-algebras, which will be called IRWH-algebras, by using some techniques considered to the study of the implicative-infimum subreducts of weak Heyting algebras. More precisely, we present a quasi-equational base for the quasivariety of IRWH-algebras. We also introduce open implicative filters in order to study the lattice of relative congruences of IRWH-algebras. Moreover, we introduce and study irreducible open implicative filters with the aim to study the quasivariety generated by the class of (...) the totally ordered IRWH-algebras. (shrink)

An introduction to the basic concepts and results of contemporary logic, including a discussion of the basic mathematical tools needed to master the technical aspects of the subject.

Information theoretic semantics proposes to construe predicate reference in terms of nomological relations between distal properties and properties of representational mental events. Research on the model has largely concentrated on the problem of choosing the nomological relation in terms of which distal properties are to be singled out. I argue that, in addition to this, an information theoretic account has to provide a specification of which properties of representational mental events will play a role in determining reference, qua bearers of (...) nomological relations. I contend that this task poses a serious additional challenge to the viability of the model. (shrink)

Propaganda has been historically used for the benefit of certain social groups faced up to another. This propaganda is not always ethical at all. It is based on misconceptions, lies, and fallacies. We have analyzed (by using an experimental Psychology task) the presence and cognitive weight of certain mental footnotes and their influence on the Reasoning of Hispanic-Americans (Ecuadorian). These mental footnotes have been extracted from the classical work “A brief account of the destruction of the Indies” of Bartolomé de (...) las Casas in 1552. The most relevant and significant finding of this study is the clear evidence that nowadays we can still find these historical falsehoods in the current cognitive system of Ecuadorian people which are product of a well-planned and maliciously orchestrated propaganda. We conclude that all the contents of the Spanish black legend are the consequences of the aspirations of some social sectors to boycott the Spanish culture. (shrink)

The main aim of the present study is to identify which mental footnotes (related to Adam Smith’s Capitalism) have more weight in the current cognitive processing of participants. We used the “Wealth of Nations” as the main source of the concepts from this author. An experimental design (based on a previous qualitative research) was carried out to test the influence of mental footnotes on the citizens’ decision on the validity of the concepts. The findings point out that there are strong, (...) current, mental footnotes related to the Adam Smith’s concept of price. People mostly understand that, for every product, the entrepreneur has to recover their initial investment and to gain a profit. On the other hand, the fact that entrepreneurs have to pay some expenditures and they need to have profits determines the price of products. (shrink)

Aim: The main aim of the present study is to identify which mental footnotes (related to Marx’s and Engels’ Socialism) have more weight in the current cognitive processing of citizens. Background: We used the “Manifesto of the communist party” as the main source of the thoughts from these authors. Method: An experimental design (based on a previous qualitative research) was carried out to test the influence of mental footnotes on the citizens’ decision on the validity of the concepts. Results: The (...) findings point out that there are strong, current, mental footnotes related to the Marx’s and Engels’ concept of bourgeoisie. Conclusions: The Marx’s and Engels’ Philosophy is currently alive, at least, some concepts related to bourgeoisie. People mostly think that the current means of production of modern bourgeoisie were developed in the feudal age, proletariat struggles with bourgeoisie from the beginning, Communism and Socialism are the only political movement that recognized this bourgeoisie-proletariat antagonism and the means of production are nowadays extended to other social classes. The present methodology (from an Experimental Psychology perspective) means a reliable technique to extract the essence of a text and to test the influence of its concepts on human cognitive processing. (shrink)

I focus on a family of inferences that are intuitively incapable of producing knowledge of their conclusions, although they appear to satisfy sufficient conditions for inferential knowledge postulated by plausible epistemological theories. They include Moorean inferences and inductive-bootstrapping inferences. I provide an account of why these inferences are not capable of producing knowledge. I argue that the reason why these inferences fail to produce knowledge of their conclusions is that inferential knowledge requires that the subject is more likely to believe (...) the premises of the inference if the conclusion is true than if it is false. I end by comparing the treatment of these cases that emerges from the approach that I recommend with the position advocated by Sherrilyn Roush in her recent book, Tracking Truth (2005). (shrink)

An account of predicate reference is presented which attempts to steer a middle course between reductionism, which construes the notion in terms of speakers' inclinations, and {transcendent) realism, which construes the notion in terms of properties. It is first introduced in the context of a discussion of the accounts of length (distance) advanced by Hans Reichenbach, Adolf Grünbaum and Hilary Putnam. A general account of predicate reference is then developed that explains the notion in terms of speakers' inclinations, while rejecting (...) the idea that this explanation should take the form of a reduction. The view is presented as a vindication of extreme nominalism, as it explains predicate reference solely in terms of the notion of qualia introduced by C.I. Lewis and developed by Nelson Goodman, which, it is argued, is definable in terms of speakers' classificatory propensities. Some connections are explored between the position that is presented and the views of Michael Dummett, John McDowell, Mark Johnston and Hilary Putnam, among others. (shrink)

I endorse Kripke's (Wittgenstein's) conclusion that the standard of correct application required by the notion of rule-following can only be made sense of in terms of intersubjective agreement. This is not to be taken, as Kripke does, merely as providing assertibility conditions, but rather as a genuine account of what normativity consists in. As Blackburn has pointed out, this result entails that the notion of objective judgment is dependent, in a sense, on the shared inclinations of the members of the (...) community. But since the sceptical paradox admits of no noncommunal solution, it is the inclination-independence of the notion of objective judgment that has to be given up. (shrink)

Replies to contributions to a symposium on the book, Scepticism and Reliable Belief.

Reviewed Works:Andrea Sorbi, Complexity, Logic, and Recursion Theory.Klaus Ambos-Spies, Elvira Mayordomo, Resource-Bounded Measure and Randomness.Marat Arslanov, Degree Structures in Local Degree Theory.Jose L. Balcazar, Ricard Gavalda, Montserrat Hermo, Compressibility of Infinite Binary Sequences.S. Barry Cooper, Beyond Godel's Theorem: The Failure to Capture Information Content.Robert A. Di Paola, Franco Montagna, Progressions of Theories of Bounded Arithmetic.Rodney G. Downey, On Presentations of Algebraic Structures.Sophie Fischer, Lane Hemaspaandra, Leen Torenvliet, Witness-Isomorphic Reductions and Local Search.William Gasarch, Carl H. Smith, A Survey of Inductive Inference (...) with an Emphasis on Queries.Andre Nies, A Uniformity of Degree Structures.Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Short Course on Logic, Algebra, and Topology.Andrea Sorbi, The Enumeration Degrees of the $\sigma^0_2$ Sets.Peter van Emde Boas, The Convenience of Tilings. (shrink)

Hedonic adaptation, the tendency for affective experience to return toward a baseline after improvements or setbacks, has been widely studied in psychology and economics, but its implications for theodicy have received little attention. This paper argues that adaptation introduces a distinctive constraint on the problem of evil by foregrounding a neglected dimension of suffering: its recurrence. Even when objective conditions improve, relief tends to lose experiential force as evaluative baselines reset and perceived suffering reasserts itself. I develop a minimal framework (...) distinguishing external circumstances from perceived suffering and identify two structural features of adaptation: the persistence of deviations from baseline and the degree of asymmetry between recovery from adversity and habituation to improvement. The framework shows why even benevolently calibrated trajectories can at best reduce cumulative burden rather than secure lasting experiential relief. These dynamics have differential implications for soul-making, free-will, providential-restraint, and interventionist theodicies, reframing what divine benevolence can be taken to accomplish within affective life. They also supplement skeptical theism by identifying an affective source of opacity and illuminate an experiential pathway to divine hiddenness. (shrink)

En aras del universalismo y en contra del totalitarismo, la ética discursiva ha mostrado con Jürgen Habermas un déficit práctico al negar a la filosofía moral la posibilidad de reflexionar sobre las condiciones alienantes del diálogo desde un ethos concreto. Este artículo analiza el modo en que la teoría de la resonancia formulada por Hartmut Rosa permite revitalizar el debate sobre las condiciones que pueden minar las bases para el diálogo en las sociedades aceleradas sin apoyarse en el concepto de (...) ethos, sino en el de modo de relacionarse con el mundo [Modus der Weltbeziehung]. (shrink)

Extending the growing literature on the role of grit in different life domains, this research explores the relationship between grit and involvement in entrepreneurship. The research highlights the role of personal income and satisfaction with one’s current financial situation as moderators of the relationship between grit and entrepreneurial behavior. Using a large representative sample of Spanish young adults and controlling for a number of potential confounding variables, we find that grit is modestly negatively related to the probability of involvement in (...) entrepreneurship. As predicted, however, this relationship is qualified by both income and satisfaction with current financial situation, though in opposite directions and more weakly for satisfaction with financial status. Gritty individuals with higher levels of income are more prone to become entrepreneurs than gritty individuals with lower levels of income. Gritty individuals with lower levels of satisfaction with their financial situation are more likely to set up a business or become self-employed. (shrink)

A biography of Pedro Alfonso is proposed from the information today known. There is reproduced our mathematical deduction of the icon Trinitario of a parchment of Chartres of the XIIIth century from a figure precabalística introduced in 1110 by Pedro Alfonso of Huesca and it is presented three other materializations of the «alternated link of three rings any two not linked».

Based on brain state-dependent behavioral changes, consolidation of sensorimotor memories has been posited to evolve in two different functional stages. Only the second of these stages requires sleep and leads to performance benefits. Recent results, however, suggest that sleep is not always crucial for the expression of delayed behavioral gains but might be critical for enhancing automaticity in the absence of attention, another expression of memory consolidation.

For the sake of universalism and against totalitarianism, discursive ethics has shown with Jürgen Habermas a practical deficit by denying moral philosophy the possibility of reflecting on the alienating conditions for dialogue through a specific ethos. This article examines how Hartmut Rosa's theory of resonance can revitalise the debate on the conditions that can undermine the basis for dialogue in accelerated societies, based not on the concept of ethos, but on the concept of mode of world-relationship [Modus der Weltbeziehung].

The integration of biomedical terminologies is indispensable to the process of information integration. When terminologies are linked merely through the alignment of their leaf terms, however, differences in context and ontological structure are ignored. Making use of the SNAP and SPAN ontologies, we show how three reference domain ontologies can be integrated at a higher level, through what we shall call the OBR framework (for: Ontology of Biomedical Reality). OBR is designed to facilitate inference across the boundaries of domain ontologies (...) in anatomy, physiology and pathology. (shrink)

Two stages of the creative writing process were characterized through mobile scalp electroencephalography in a 16-week creative writing workshop. Portable dry EEG systems with synchronized head acceleration, video recordings, and journal entries, recorded mobile brain-body activity of Spanish heritage students. Each student's brain-body activity was recorded as they experienced spaces in Houston, Texas, and while they worked on their creative texts. We used Generalized Partial Directed Coherence to compare the functional connectivity among both stages. There was a trend of higher (...) gPDC in the Preparation stage from right temporo-parietal to left anterior-frontal brain scalp areas within 1–50 Hz, not reaching statistical significance. The opposite directionality was found for the Generation stage, with statistical significant differences restricted to the delta band. There was statistically higher gPDC observed for the inter-hemispheric connections AF07–AF08 in the delta and theta bands, and AF08 to TP09 in the alpha and beta bands. The left anterior-frontal recordings showed higher power localized to the gamma band for the Generation stage. An ancillary analysis of Sample Entropy did not show significant difference. The information transfer from anterior-frontal to temporal-parietal areas of the scalp may reflect multisensory interpretation during the Preparation stage, while brain signals originating at temporal-parietal toward frontal locations during the Generation stage may reflect the final decision making process to translate the multisensory experience into a creative text. (shrink)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and resulting health and economic crisis has caused major disruptions in the functioning of food systems and revived the discussion on what forms balanced, effective and responsible crisis management. As part of its thought leadership and its social responsibility in times of crisis, WUR is uniquely placed to contribute to the scientific knowledge base and data collection mechanisms required for early recognition and rapid response. In addition, WUR takes on the challenge to generate timely insights into (...) the possible scenarios for the prevention of a crisis and during and after emergencies to enable our clients and stakeholders to make informed decisions. Lastly, WUR can provide a better understanding of the mechanisms of spillover, and tangible and practical tools to help reduce the risk of spillover events from occurring, prevent pathogen spread, or mitigate the impacts of a future pandemic. In its research institutes and university, WUR brings together expertise in human, animal, plant and environmental health, the global agri-food system, economics, social sciences, food safety and security, ethics, and policy. Here, in the knowledge that COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic, we present WUR’s ambition and capabilities towards an integrated global multi-stakeholder approach to the prevention and management of potentially pandemic diseases, across the four phases of crisis management; prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery and learning. (shrink)

The scientific literature highlights the risk of the appearance of internalizing and externalizing symptoms, together with difficulties in the academic area, linked to diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. This is normally assessed by teachers and primary caregivers, disregarding the self-perception of the adolescents themselves, which limits detection of this disorder at an evolutionary stage. Our aim was to analyze the psychometric properties of a self-report for ADHD in adolescence and its relationship with psychopathology and academic performance. This study assessed (...) an incidental sample of 267 students from secondary schools in the Region of Murcia, Spain, using the EDAH questionnaire adapted for self-report, in order to analyze its psychometric properties in assessing ADHD. The Youth Self-Report and the Brief Self-Control Scale were also used to determine their association with psychopathological, self-control and academic performance variables. An ADHD prevalence of between 3.7 and 13.1% was observed depending on the established cut-off point. The adapted EDAH showed adequate reliability indices and explained a high variance percentage. Adolescents with anxiety/depression difficulties, dissocial behavior, aggressiveness, and poor performance in mathematics showed a higher amount of ADHD symptoms. Moreover, self-control, dissocial behavior, age, and performance in Social Sciences acted as predictors of the disorder. The good psychometric properties of this questionnaire and its adequate correspondence with other variables of interest suggest it is an appropriate self-report instrument to assess ADHD in adolescence. (shrink)

Thematically organized around the major concerns of Basil Bernstein's work as a sociologist, this book includes chapters from some of the leading sociologists and educational scholars. Each section attempts to provide a critical evaluation of Bernstein's work, framed within four interrelated contexts: his sociological theory, sociology of language and code theory, sociology of education and social reproduction, and the influence of his sociology on educational research. In a separate section, Bernstein himself responds to the earlier chapters. The book examines Bernstein's (...) sociology of schools in relation to his general sociological theory and in doing so demonstrates that sociology is an essential lens for understanding the structure and processes of schooling. It also provides a critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of Bernstein's work, as well as a correction to current work in education, which eschews theory in favor of practicality. (shrink)

Proximity and interpersonal contact are prominent components of social connection. Giving affective touch to others is fundamental for human bonding. This brief report presents preliminary results from a pilot study. It explores if exposure to bonding scenes impacts the activity of specific muscles related to physical interaction. Fingers flexion is a very important component when performing most actions of affectionate contact. We explored the visuo-motor affective interplay by priming participants with bonding scenes and assessing the electromyographic activity of the fingers (...) flexor muscle, in the absence of any overt movements. Photographs of dyads in social interaction and of the same dyads not interacting were employed. We examined the effects upon the electromyographical activity: during the passive exposure to pictures, and during picture offset and when expecting the signal to perform a fingers flexion task. Interacting dyads compared to matched non-interacting dyads increased electromyographic activity of the fingers flexor muscle in both contexts. Specific capture of visual bonding cues at the level of visual cortex had been described in the literature. Here we showed that the neural processing of visual bonding cues reaches the fingers flexor muscle. Besides, previous visualization of bonding cues enhanced background electromyographic activity during motor preparation to perform the fingers flexion task, which might reflect a sustained leakage of central motor activity downstream leading to increase in firing of the respective motor neurons. These data suggest, at the effector level, an implicit visuo-motor connection in which social interaction cues evoke intrinsic dispositions toward affectionate social behavior. (shrink)

We highlight the various domains of the flavivirus virulence factor NS1 and speculate on potential implications of the NS1 3D structure in understanding its role in flavivirus pathogenesis. Flavivirus non‐structural protein 1 (NS1) is a virulence factor with dual functions in genome replication and immune evasion. Crystal structures of NS1, combined with reconstructions from electron microscopy (EM), provide insight into the architecture of dimeric NS1 on cell membranes and the assembly of a secreted hexameric NS1‐lipid complex found in patient sera. (...) Three structural domains of NS1 likely have distinct roles in membrane association, replication complex assembly, and immune system avoidance. A conserved hydrophobic inner face is sequestered either on the membrane or in the interior of the secreted hexamer and contains regions implicated in viral replication. The exposed variable outer face is presented to cellular and secreted components of the immune system in infected patients and contains candidate regions for immune system modulation. We anticipate that knowledge of the distinct NS1 domains and assembly will lead to advances in elucidating virus‐host interactions mediated through NS1 and in dissecting the role of NS1 in viral genome replication. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to explore and to verify the utility of the five moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity) to differentiate between two understudied groups, namely, young offenders who use violence against their parents or dating partners, as well as to predict the extent to which these young people justify violence and perceive themselves as aggressive. Although both types of violence imply, by definition, harming someone (low care) and adopting a position of authority (high authority), (...) we hypothesize a very different role for at least these two moral foundations. Our results support this idea and show a much lower regard for the five moral foundations, including care and authority, in the child-to-parent violence group (CPV;N= 65) than in the dating violence group (DV;N= 69). Additionally, the authority foundation was able to increase the effectiveness of correctly classifying the participants in one group or the other by 29%. Finally, care and authority, along with fairness, served to predict justification of violence and self-perceived aggressiveness. The moral foundations approach provides preliminary evidence to better understand two specific types of youth violence and extract preventive educational and treatment strategies. (shrink)