This article introduces a computational model which illustrates how a population of agents can coordinate a vocabulary for goal oriented behavior through repeated local interactions, called “Action Games”. Using principles of self organization and specific assumptions on their behavior, the agents learn the goals and a vocabulary for them. It is shown that the proposed model can be used to investigate the coordination of vocabularies for goal oriented behavior both in a vertical and in a horizontal transmission scheme. Furthermore, it (...) is shown that in this model shared vocabularies can only be learned from multiple demonstrations consisting of exactly these actions that are strictly required to reach the goal. Keywords: robot imitation; self organization; vocabularies. (shrink)

There is a noticeable gap between results of cognitive neuroscientific research into basic mathematical abilities and philosophical and empirical investigations of mathematics as a distinct intellectual activity. The paper explores the relevance of a Wittgensteinian framework for dealing with this discrepancy.

This article provides somephilosophical ``groundwork'' for contemporary debatesabout the status of the idea(l) of critical thinking.The major part of the article consists of a discussionof three conceptions of ``criticality,'' viz., criticaldogmatism, transcendental critique (Karl-Otto Apel),and deconstruction (Jacques Derrida). It is shown thatthese conceptions not only differ in their answer tothe question what it is ``to be critical.'' They alsoprovide different justifications for critique andhence different answers to the question what giveseach of them the ``right'' to be critical. It is arguedthat (...) while transcendental critique is able to solvesome of the problems of the dogmatic approach tocriticality, deconstruction provides the most coherentand self-reflexive conception of critique. A crucialcharacteristic of the deconstructive style of critiqueis that this style is not motivated by the truth ofthe criterion (as in critical dogmatism) or by acertain conception of rationality (as intranscendental critique), but rather by a concern forjustice. It is suggested that this concern should becentral to any redescription of the idea(l) ofcritical thinking. (shrink)

We performed an EEG graph analysis on data from 31 typical readers (22.27 ± 2.53 y/o) and 24 dyslexics (22.99 ± 2.29 y/o), recorded while they were engaged in an audiovisual task and during resting-state. The task simulates reading acquisition as participants learned new letter-sound mappings via feedback. EEG data was filtered for the delta (0.5–4 Hz), theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (8–13 Hz), and beta (13–30 Hz) bands. We computed the Phase Lag Index (PLI) to provide an estimate of the (...) functional connectivity between all pairs of electrodes per band. Then, networks were constructed using a Minimum Spanning Tree (MST), a unique sub-graph connecting all nodes (electrodes) without loops, aimed at minimizing bias in between groups and conditions comparisons. Both groups showed a comparable accuracy increase during task blocks, indicating that they correctly learned the new associations. The EEG results revealed lower task-specific theta connectivity, and lower theta degree correlation over both rest and task recordings, indicating less network integration in dyslexics compared to typical readers. This pattern suggests a role of theta oscillations in dyslexia and may reflect differences in task engagement between the groups, although robust correlations between MST metrics and performance indices were lacking. (shrink)

Stress is increasingly being recognized as one of the main factors that is negatively affecting our health, and therefore there is a need to regulate daily stress and prevent long-term stress. This need seems particularly important for adults with mild intellectual disabilities who have been shown to have more difficulties coping with stress than adults without intellectual disabilities. Hence, the development of music therapy interventions for stress reduction, particularly within populations where needs may be greater, is becoming increasingly important. In (...) order to gain more insight into the practice-based knowledge on how music therapists lower stress levels of their patients with MID during music therapy sessions, we conducted focus group interviews with music therapists working with adults with MID from different countries and clinical institutions in Europe. Results provide an overview of the most-used interventions for stress reduction within and outside of music. Data-analysis resulted in the further specification of therapeutic goals, intervention techniques, the use of musical instruments, and related therapeutic change factors. The main findings indicate that music therapists used little to no receptive interventions for stress reduction, but preferred to use active interventions, which were mainly based on musical improvisation. Results show that three therapy goals for stress relief could be distinguished. The goal of “synchronizing” can be seen as a sub goal because it often precedes working on the other two goals of “tension release” or “direct relaxation,” which can also be seen as two ways of reaching stress reduction in adults with MID through music therapy interventions. Furthermore, the tempo and the dynamics of the music are considered as the most important musical components to reduce stress in adults with MID. Practical implications for stress-reducing music therapy interventions for adults with MID are discussed as well as recommendations for future research. (shrink)

Isaac Beeckman was a master craftsman from the Zeeland town Middelburg who studied to become schoolmaster in the Holland towns of Rotterdam and Dordrecht. He was a strict Calvinist and a tireless observer and contemplator of natural phenomena. Foremost, he was the first mechanical philosopher in Europe who played a key role in the intellectual development of René Descartes and inspired pioneers of mechanistic thinking Marin Mersenne and Pierre Gassendi . We know this because Beeckman kept a journal throughout his (...) life in which he recorded his observations and ideas. The journal is a treasure trove of early modern knowing. Beeckman had a keen eye for the world around him and responded to what he saw, as well as the reflections of others, with a highly original mind. The journal was discovered in 1905 by Cornelis de Waard , who subsequently edited and published it between 1939 and 1953 . Although some acquainta .. (shrink)

I suppose I’m writing this because of my 1965 paper on Pacifism. In that essay I argued that pacifism is self-contradictory. That’s a strong charge, and also not entirely clear. Let’s start by trying to clarify the charge and related ones.Pacifism has traditionally been understood as total opposition to violence, even the use of it in defense of oneself when under attack. I earlier maintained (in my well-known “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis” (Narveson, Ethics, 75:4, 259–271, 1965)) that this position is (...) contradictory, if it is intended to mean that one has no right to use violence. While that is perhaps going too far, pacifism as so characterized is surely, as I have later argued, self-defeating in an obvious sense of that expression. But in any case, contemporary theorists who describe their views as pacifist profess to hold no such doctrine—they regard that familiar characterization of pacifism as a caricature. They do express strong opposition to war, but even that is not unlimited. If the chips are genuinely down, they will approve going to war-level self-defense—but they deny that it ever is really necessary, or at least that it is necessary nearly as often as actual war-making behavior among nations would suggest.In this it is not clear that we have a purely philosophical disagreement. How much opposition to war qualifies a view as “pacifist”? That is now very hard to say. After all, all decently liberal thinkers are against violence as a standardly available way of pursuing one’s ends. We all agree that if violence is to be justified, it takes something special. It should be a “last resort,” Just War theorists have classically said, and while ‘last’ is very difficult to pin down, at least, violence should be very far from the first thing a responsible nation thinks of. What’s more, the “something special” is not just that one’s ends are so important. It has to be that the violence would be employed in defense, of self or of other innocent parties under threat. So if there is genuine disagreement, it must be along this line: that we are morally required to make very substantial sacrifices in the pursuits of our otherwise legitimate interests, including our interests in security, in order to avoid using the violence of war.Is this reasonable? I think not. We should, of course, be reasonable, and that includes refraining from violence—except when the violence is necessary to counter the aggressive violence of others. For we reason, on practical matters, in terms of benefits and costs. Agents, especially political agents, can, alas, benefit from violence where that violence is unilateral. Thus it is rational to see to it that it won’t be unilateral. And when it is not unilateral, then the balance is in favor—strongly in favor—of peace. It remains that we must, alas, be able to make war in the possible case that we can’t have peace. When everybody shares the preference for peace, then we can scale down and hopefully even eliminate war-making capability. (Contemporary nations have already scaled down considerably—there have been few wars in the classic sense of military exchanges between states as such in recent times.) But until the scaling down is universal and includes a genuine renunciation of the use of warlike methods to achieve ends other than genuine self-defense, what most of us think of as “pacifism” is a non-option in the near run. (shrink)

Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in an urban elementary school, this volume is an examination of how school division politics, regional economic policies, parental concerns, urban development efforts, popular cultures, gender ideologies, racial politics, and university and corporate agendas come together to produce educational effects. Unlike conventional school ethnographies, the focus of this work is less on classrooms than on the webs of social relations that embed schools in neighborhoods, cities, states, and regions. Utilizing a variety of narratives (...) and analytical styles, this volume: * explores how curriculum innovations are simultaneously made possible by and undermined by school district politics, neighborhood histories, and the spatial and temporal organizations of teachers' and parents' lives; * situates the educational discourse of administrators and teachers in the changing economic and political climates of the city; * analyzes the motivations behind an effort by school and business proponents to refashion classrooms within the school into business enterprises, and of children's efforts to make sense of the scheme; * examines the role of the school as a neighborhood institution, situating it at the intersections of city planners' efforts to regulate city space and children's efforts to carve out live spaces through out-of-school routines; * contemplates the meaning of school as a site for bodily experience, and looks at how patterns of space and control in the school shaped children's bodies, and at how they continued to use body-based languages to construct maturity, gender, and race; and * investigates the school as a space for the deployment of symbolic resources where children learned and constructed identities through their engagements with television, comic books, movies, and sports. _Tangled Up In School_ raises questions about how we draw the boundaries of the school, about how schools fit into the lives of children and cities, and about what we mean when we talk about "school.". (shrink)

Suhrawardī has been hailed as a crucial thinker in the history of philosophy in the Islamic world, as first suggested by Henry Corbin. However, the actual influence of Suhrawardī on thinkers after him has mostly been assumed rather than established. In the centuries after Suhrawardī, the late-medieval and early-modern period of Islamic intellectual history, the writing of commentaries was a popular phenomenon. This did not automatically mean that the commentator was in favor of the ideas of the original author. Therefore, (...) tracing a commentary tradition is a measurement that gives us a fairly good insight, both positive and negative, into the reception of a particular intellectual. In this article I... (shrink)

Česká filosofka Albína Dratvová (1892–1969) je připomínána především pro své práce z filosofie přírodních věd a jako autorka řady učebnic filosofie a logiky pro střední školy. Významnou část jejího myšlenkového odkazu tvoří také publikace antropologicko-etické. Mezi nimi má důležité místo knížka Duše dnešní ženy. Autorka v ní vychází z vlastní zkušenosti a vlastních zážitků a věnuje se významu a úkolům duševní činnosti žen v nových podmínkách a formách ženské aktivity. Jemná analýza duševní situace žen je i výzvou a návodem pro (...) nalezení smyslu života. (shrink)

We show that considerable sets of positive linear operators namely their extensions as closures, adjoints or Friedrichs positive self-adjoint extensions form operator (generalized) effect algebras. Moreover, in these cases the partial effect algebraic operation of two operators coincides with usual sum of operators in complex Hilbert spaces whenever it is defined. These sets include also unbounded operators which play important role of observables (e.g., momentum and position) in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics.

I joined Trevelyan College (Trevs), Durham University in 2011 as a mature student under former professor and principle of the college Martyn Evans. It was to be the beginning of a transformative journey culminating in my doctoral thesis: Balanced Wonder: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Role of Wonder in Human Flourishing. -/- In 2020 Trevs kindly asked me to contribute to the Alumni Magazine Hippocampus and in particular to the ‘Where Are They Now’ section. -/- “You Haven’t Done Anything” is (...) my contribution and it highlights in a humorous fashion some of the things I have achieved since I left Trevs. -/- Sections: -/- Standing still is rarely a good strategy in life -/- If One Lives Wisely Sometimes Less is More and Infinately More Valuable. (shrink)

Connecting with peers online to overcome social isolation has become particularly important during the pandemic-related school closures across many countries. In the context of contact restrictions, feelings of isolation and loneliness are more prevalent and the regulation of these negative emotions to maintain a positive well-being challenges adolescents. This is especially the case for those individuals who might have a high need to belong and difficulties in emotional competences. The difficult social situation during contact restrictions, more time for online communication (...) and maladaptive emotion regulation might lead to aggressive communication patterns in the form of cyberbullying perpetration. In an online study with N = 205 adolescents aged 14–19, we assessed the frequency of online and offline contacts, need to belong, emotion regulation problems, feelings of loneliness, and cyberbullying perpetration as predictors of adolescents’ well-being. In particular, we explored whether cyberbullying perpetration might function as a maladaptive strategy to deal with feelings of loneliness and therefore predicts well-being. This effect was expected to be stronger for those with a higher need to belong and with higher emotion regulation problems. Results of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed that well-being was significantly predicted by less emotion regulation difficulties, less feeling isolated and more cyberbullying perpetration. We also tested whether the need to belong or emotion regulation problems moderated the association between cyberbullying and well-being. While the results for emotion regulation problems were not significant, the moderation effect for the need to belong was significant: For students with a high need to belong, well-being was more strongly related to cyberbullying perpetration than for students with a medium need to belong. For students with a low need to belong, cyberbullying was not significantly associated with well-being. That cyberbullying perpetration predicted well-being positively is rather surprising in the light of previous research showing negative psychosocial outcomes also for cyberbullying perpetrators. The moderation analysis provides a hint at underlying processes: In times of distance learning and contact restrictions, cyberbullying may be a way of coming into contact with others and to regulate loneliness maladaptively. (shrink)

Der Band vereint Beiträge zu neueren Entwicklungen in der Schrifttheorie, vor allem aus linguistischer, philosophischer, medientheoretischer und sprachdidaktischer Perspektive. Dabei geht es zum einen um die Frage, mit welchen Methoden und Kategorien Schrift und Schreiben analysiert werden können und worin sich die geschriebene Sprache medial von der gesprochenen unterscheidet. Zum anderen werden Einflüsse des Mediums Alphabetschrift auf die historische Entwicklung dieser Disziplinen nachgezeichnet und verschiedene Schrifttypen im Verhältnis zueinander beschrieben. Ausgangspunkt für die Beiträge waren die schrifttheoretischen Arbeiten Christian Stetters, insbesondere (...) seine Thesen, dass die Alphabetschrift nicht als eine Art Lautschrift zu begreifen sei, und dass die spezifischen Eigenschaften dieses Schrifttyps zur Genese formaler Sprachbetrachtung in Sprachwissenschaft und Philosophie entscheidend beigetragen haben. In den Beiträgen des Bandes werden Schwierigkeiten der Orthographie-Reform ebenso reflektiert wie didaktische Kontroversen zum Schriftspracherwerb, die Pragmatik des Schreibens ebenso wie die Ästhetik unterschiedlicher Schriftarten. (shrink)

Článek spadá do tematické oblasti současných snah o oživení Aristotelovy etické teorie. V užším vymezení jde o téma aktualizace konceptu morálního charakteru (či mravní ctnosti), které je spojováno s využitím poznatků psychologických věd. Zde pak klíčovou pozornost věnuji problému kritérií, podle kterých můžeme posuzovat adekvátnost návrhů na takovou aktualizaci. Vedle běžně respektovaných kritérií interdisciplinarity a empirické a normativní adekvátnosti představuji kritérium funkce, které je ústředním pojmem článku. Cílem článku je formulovat toto kritérium a pro jeho vyjasnění co nejlépe vystihnout funk­ci (...) (zjednodušeně řečeno užitečnost či přínos) Aristotelovy etické teorie. Dále je mým zámě­rem na příkladech představit, jaké důsledky by mělo přijetí tohoto kritéria (tedy zachování či zefektivnění funkce) pro posuzování adekvátnosti návrhů k aktualizaci Aristotelova konceptu morálního charakteru. Za funkci Aristotelovy etické teorie považuji zvyšování naší morální gramotnosti a tvrdím, že tato funkce vyplývá ze stěžejního rysu Aristotelovy práce, z důsledné analýzy a nalezení vzájemných vazeb mezi pojmy, které spojujeme s každodenní morálkou a s prožíváním dob­rého a spokojeného života. Na konkrétních příkladech ukazuji, jak snahy naplnit jiná kritéria adekvátní aktualizace mohou vést k pojmové redukci, zahlcení irelevantními informacemi, nebo jinak narážet na kritérium funkce. Naplnění všech zde představených kritérií ilustruji na analogii dovednosti, kterou jakožto aktualizaci představila Julia Annasová. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 210 Seiten: 191-207.

Quantum computing technologies have become a hot topic in academia and industry receiving much attention and financial support from all sides. Building a quantum computer that can be used practically is in itself an outstanding challenge that has become the ‘new race to the moon’. Next to researchers and vendors of future computing technologies, national authorities are showing strong interest in maturing this technology due to its known potential to break many of today’s encryption techniques, which would have significant and (...) potentially disruptive impact on our society. It is, however, quite likely that quantum computing has beneficial impact on many computational disciplines. In this article we describe our vision of future developments in scientific computing that would be enabled by the advent of software-programmable quantum computers. We thereby assume that quantum computers will form part of a hybrid accelerated computing platform like GPUs and co-processor cards do today. In particular, we address the potential of quantum algorithms to bring major breakthroughs in applied mathematics and its applications. Finally, we give several examples that demonstrate the possible impact of quantum-accelerated scientific computing on society. (shrink)