Text-guided image generation models can be prompted to generate images using nonce words adversarially designed to robustly evoke specific visual concepts. Two approaches for such generation are introduced: macaronic prompting, which involves designing cryptic hybrid words by concatenating subword units from different languages; and evocative prompting, which involves designing nonce words whose broad morphological features are similar enough to that of existing words to trigger robust visual associations. The two methods can also be combined to generate images associated (...) with more specific visual concepts. The implications of these techniques for the circumvention of existing approaches to content moderation, and particularly the generation of offensive or harmful images, are discussed. (shrink)

Aristotle contrasts standard animal generation with ‘spontaneous generation’, which happens when some material putrefies and gives rise to a new organism. This paper addresses two interrelated puzzles about spontaneous generation. First, is it of the same ‘fundamental kind’ of causal process as standard generation? Second, is it ‘spontaneous’, as understood in Physics 2.4–6: rare, accidentally caused, and among things that are for the sake of something? I argue that both puzzles turn on the same questions about (...) the process types involved. I show that the type putrefaction plays a more important role in spontaneous generation than has been recognized so far. Because putrefaction does not play this role in standard generation, the two processes are of different ‘fundamental’ kinds. Moreover, spontaneous generation happens rarely in that it is rare for processes of putrefaction to happen in such a way that they can also be described in terms of concoction. (shrink)

In several applications of sequent calculi going beyond pure logic, an introduction of suitably defined rules seems to be more profitable than addition of extra axiomatic sequents. A program of formalization of mathematical theories via rules of special sort was developed successfully by Negri and von Plato. In this paper a general theorem on possible ways of transforming axiomatic sequents into rules in sequent calculi is proved. We discuss its possible applications and provide some case studies for illustration.

Generation and Corruption II is concerned with Aristotle's theory of the elements, their reciprocal transformations and the cause of their perpetual generation and corruption. These matters are essential to Aristotle's picture of the world, making themselves felt throughout his natural science, including those portions of it that concern living things. What is more, the very inquiry Aristotle pursues in this text, with its focus on definition, generality, and causation, throws important light on his philosophy of science more generally. (...) This volume contains eleven new essays, one for each of the chapters of this Aristotelian text, plus a general introduction and an English translation of the Greek text. It gives substantial attention to an important and neglected text, and highlights its relevance to other topics of current and enduring interest. (shrink)

Narrative generation is growing in importance for data utilization, particularly in the context of co-creation with artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Narratives can, for example, bridge theoretical objects with social understanding and promote human actions. Furthermore, clarifying the narrative generation mechanism is essential for constructing effective relationships between humans and AI agents. However, the narrative generation mechanism in data utilization processes has not been fully elucidated. In this study, we developed a framework called the hierarchical narrative representation (HieNaR) (...) to systematize the structure of narrative generation in data utilization processes. HieNaR comprises twelve levels, ranging from the set of texts down to the particle level (e.g., text, sentence, word, character, and stroke), allowing for a comprehensive analysis of narrative structures. We evaluated the usefulness of HieNaR through case studies, examining both individual user experiences and collaborative work between humans and an AI agent. The results demonstrated that the data utilization process interprets data by inquiring whether it satisfies higher-level expectations. In collaboration, AI agents can be understood as co-creative partners in data utilization, possessing their own worldviews. Through these findings, this study not only elucidates the mechanism of narrative generation in data utilization processes but also provides a foundation for improving human–AI collaboration. (shrink)

Generation of Animals is one of Aristotle's most mature, sophisticated, and carefully crafted scientific writings. His overall goal is to provide a comprehensive and systematic account of how animals reproduce, including a study of their reproductive organs, what we would call fertilization, embryogenesis, and organogenesis. In this book, international experts present thirteen original essays providing a philosophically and historically informed introduction to this important work. They shed light on the unity and structure of the Generation of Animals, the (...) main theses that Aristotle defends in the work, and the method of inquiry he adopts. They also open up new avenues of exploration of this difficult and still largely unexplored work. The volume will be essential for scholars and students of ancient philosophy as well as of the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Gottfried Leibniz is well known for his claim to have “rehabilitated” the substantial forms of scholastic philosophy, forging a reconciliation of the New Philosophy of Descartes, Mersenne and Gassendi with Aristotelian metaphysics (in his so-called Discourse on Metaphysics, 1686). Much less celebrated is the fact that fifty years earlier (in his Hypomnemata Physica, 1636) the Bratislavan physician and natural philosopher Daniel Sennert had already argued for the indispensability to atomism of (suitably re-interpreted) Aristotelian forms, in explicit opposition to the rejection (...) of substantial forms by his fellow atomist Sébastien Basson.1.. (shrink)

First-generation college students, typically defined as those whose parents have not completed a Bachelor’s degree, have increasingly captured the attention of higher education researchers over the...

The controversy over spontaneous generation and the theory of evolution was part of the broader issue of the nature of life. It was the vitalists, who had originally accepted the doctrine of heterogenesis, who now were forced to reject abiogenesis. Their commitment to the view that life was unique and autonomous was so strong that, once the link between evolution and the abiogenetic origin of life had been made, they were almost constrained to reject evolution. It is not surprising (...) that one finds this extreme position among German scientists, for it was only in Germany that the strong connection had been made. In Britain, with its strong empirical tradition, the theory of evolution was never completely tied to the doctrine of abiogenesis.Many nonvitalistic biologists were equally committed to the view that there was a gradation between the living and the nonliving, and saw in the doctrine of evolution a vindication of these views. To many of this school, abiogenesis was an a priori necessity requiring no empirical proof. If they sought for any empirical justification for their views on abiogenesis, one feels that such proof was never of great importance to them. Many—particularly the Germans—regarded those who denied abiogenesis because of the lack of proof to be guilty of following an outdated methodology: “that modern scientists still put so uncommon value on the inductive proof of spontaneous generation, is the clearest indication that few place confidence in the first principle of the theory of knowledge.” To them an acceptance of abiogenesis was necessary “in order to understand nature according to the laws of causality.” 105. (shrink)

Third generation prospect theory is a theory of choices and of judgments of highest buying and lowest selling prices of risky prospects, i.e., of willingness to pay and willingness to accept. The gap between WTP and WTA is sometimes called the “endowment effect” and was previously called the “point of view” effect. Third generation prospect theory combines cumulative prospect theory for risky prospects with the theory that judged values are based on the integration of price paid or price (...) received with the consequences of gambles. In TGPT, the discrepancy between WTP and WTA is due to loss aversion-losses have greater absolute utility than gains of the same value. TGPT was developed independently of similar developments by Birnbaum and Zimmermann :145–187, 1998) and Luce. This paper reviews theoretical and empirical findings, to show that TGPT fails as a descriptive model of both choices and judgments. Evidence refutes three implications of TGPT, but they are consistent with configural weight models in which loss aversion is not needed to describe the results. In the configural weight models, buyers place greater weight on lower consequences, attributes or estimates of value compared to sellers, who place greater configural weight on higher aspects of an object or prospect. (shrink)

Evidence generation by current Social and Health Sciences is coping with some important barriers that difficult credibility of scientific products. Information and communication technologies have a strong impact over social relationships in our postmodern societies. The incidence of post-truth in our context is generating a pernicious relativism, far from contrasting the information veracity. The aim of this paper is to analyze and discuss the challenges of research methods and statistical models, more specifically for Psychological research, taking into account the (...) impact of novel techniques as big data and virtual reality. Special attention is also devoted to the discussion about statistical shortcomings of psychological research and to the reproducibility problem. Finally, some potential solutions are proposed to be applied in order to improve the quality of scientific evidence. (shrink)

Bernard Norton's friends in the history of science have had many reasons for commemorating, with admiration and affection, not only his research and teaching but no less his conversation and his company. One of his most estimable traits was his refusal to beat about the bush in raising the questions he thought worthwhile pursuing. I still remember discoursing at Pittsburgh on Darwin's route to his theory of natural selection, and being asked at the end by Bernard what were Darwin's views (...) on heredity. I answered with the conventional waffle to the effect that the theory concerned the populational fate rather than the individual production and transmission of heritable variation, so that whatever views Darwin had on heredity had only a subsidiary place in his theorizing. Bernard was not fooled. ‘I would have thought’, he said, ‘that in order to understand anyone's theorising about evolution it would be necessary to look at his views on heredity’. (shrink)

Generation Z people are a significant force driving the modern world. They lead educated lifestyles, enjoy expressing themselves creatively, and prefer to seek out new ideas or approaches to achieve the finest results. The research study aims to examine the tourism motivation and the image that affects the cultural tourism decisions of tourists of Generation Z. The study employed quantitative research techniques to gather data from 385 Thai Generation Z tourists. The research findings revealed that status and (...) prestige significantly influenced cultural tourism decisions, followed by cultural, emotional, affective, physical, and interpersonal motivation. Moreover, the pre-conceptualized image of the tourist destinations has the most significant influence on cultural tourism decisions, followed by tourists' perceptions and the tourists' feelings. This has practical implications for economic development at both the national and regional levels. At the same time, it reflects much about Generation Z's needs and expectations, calling for the urgency to preserve the cultural heritage of the locality and the country as a whole. This is expected to maintain the value of cultural tourism, generating a balance of development in the future. (shrink)

Among the non-monotonic reasoning processes, abduction is one of the most important. Usually described as the process of looking for explanations, it has been recognized as one of the most commonly used in our daily activities. Still, the traditional definitions of an abductive problem and an abductive solution mention only theories and formulas, leaving agency out of the picture. Our work proposes a study of abductive reasoning from an epistemic and dynamic perspective. In the first part we explore syntactic definitions (...) of both an abductive problem in terms of an agent’s information and an abductive solution in terms of the actions that modify the agent’s information. We look at diverse kinds of agents, including not only omniscient ones but also those whose information is not closed under logical consequence and those whose reasoning abilities are not complete. In the second part, we look at an existing logical framework whose semantic model allows us to interpret the previously stated formulas, and we define two actions that represent forms of abductive reasoning. (shrink)

The presence of the fiery substance illuminates the transparent medium. White (leukon) corresponds to the presence of this determinant of what is actually transparent. Conversely, black (melaton) corresponds to its absence. The absence of the fiery substance darkens the transparent medium. White and black are thus associated with a fundamental condition on the visibility of remote external particulars. No doubt in part because of this Aristotle attempts to explain the other hues in terms of the ratio of white and black. (...) He considers three such accounts, in terms of (1) juxtaposition, (2) overlap, and (3) mixture, advocating the third. On all three accounts chromatic hues are determined by white and black in various ratios, the accounts differing only in how these ratios are implemented. (shrink)