This paper aims at pointing out the parallel between the contradictions within the foundations of the Theory of Human Rights, according to Hannah Arendt’s approach, and the paradoxes in the democratic societies, in Alexis de Tocqueville’s and Claude Lefort’s points of view. Moreover, I would like to state the importance of the concrete efetiveness of human rights in contemporary democratic societies.

Hannah Arendt says that "violence is nothing more than the most flagrant manifestation of power."[1] Given this definition, one might expect that violence takes many forms. Numerous writers have, in fact, applied violence to more than direct bodily harm. Within philosophy, Newton Garver, for example, has developed a typology of violence that includes overt and covert forms, as well as personal..

How do social factors affect group learning in diverse populations? Evidence from cognitive science gives us some insight into this question, but is generally limited to showing how social factors play out in small groups over short time periods. To study larger groups and longer time periods, we argue that we can combine evidence about social factors from cognitive science with agent-based models of group learning. In this vein, we demonstrate the usefulness of idealized models of inquiry, in which the (...) assumption of Bayesian agents is used to isolate and explore the impact of social factors. We show that whether a certain social factor is beneficial to the community’s epistemic aims depends on its particular manifestation by focusing on the impacts of homophily – the tendency of individuals to associate with similar others – on group inquiry. (shrink)

Edited book containing the following essays: 1 Getting over Gettier, Alan Musgrave.- 2 Justified Believing: Avoiding the Paradox Gregory W. Dawes.- 3 Literature and Truthfulness,Gregory Currie.- 4 Where the Buck-passing Stops, Andrew Moore.- 5 Universal Darwinism: Its Scope and Limits, James Maclaurin, - 6 The Future of Utilitarianism,Tim Mulgan. 7 Kant on Experiment, Alberto Vanzo.- 8 Did Newton ʻFeignʼ the Corpuscular Hypothesis? Kirsten Walsh.- 9 The Progress of Scotland: The Edinburgh Philosophical Societies and the Experimental Method, Juan Gomez.- 10 (...) Propositions: Truth vs. Existence, Heather Dyke.- 11 Against Advanced Modalizing, Josh Parsons.- 12 Spread Worlds, Plenitude and Modal Realism: A Problem for DavidLewis, Charles R. Pigden and Rebecca E. B. Entwisle.- 13 Defending Quine on Ontological Commitment. 14. The Scandal of Platonism, Vladimír Svoboda.- 15 A Neglected Reply to Prior's Dilemma J. C. Beall. 16 Mathematical and Empirical Concepts, Pavel Materna.- 17 Post-Fregean Thoughts on Propositional Unity, Bjørn Jespersen.- 18 Best-path Theorem Proving: Compiling Derivations, Martin Frické.- 19 Is Imperative Inference Impossible?, Hannah Clark-Younger. ​. (shrink)

In Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism, Shannon Sullivan considers: "What can white people do to help end racial injustice?". As one response to this question, Sullivan argues that prescribing "white shame" and "white guilt" is useless, since promoting these ideas leads to self-hate and inaction on the part of white people. In this paper, I agree with Sullivan, but for different reasons. I argue that assuming that white people can feel ashamed simply about being white within (...) our current society is unfounded. I will maintain that the project of "promoting white shame" is fraught to begin with, and show the significance of this finding for conversations about white people's role in... (shrink)

Olfaction has recently been highlighted as a sense poorly connected with language. Odor is difficult to verbalize, and it has few qualities that afford mimicry by vision or sound. At the same time, emotion is thought to be the most salient dimension of an odor, and it could therefore be an olfactory dimension more easily communicated. We investigated whether sounds imitative of an innate disgust response can be associated with unpleasant odors. In two experiments, participants were asked to make a (...) forced choice between a pseudoword including a disgust sound and a neutral pseudoword, for pleasant and unpleasant odors. Overall, participants chose more disgust pseudowords than neutral pseudowords for unpleasant odors, but this was not the case for pleasant odors. This effect was not driven by a general association between unpleasant sounds and unpleasant odors, but specifically the sounds [x/χ] and [f], thought to reflect physical responses to disgusting odors, as seen in the Polish fu! or the English ugh!. In line with growing evidence that language can encode odor, we provide the first experimental evidence for an association between the sound of a word and odor valence. (shrink)

When managing their emotions, individuals often recruit the help of others; however, most emotion regulation research has focused on self-regulation. Theories of emotion and aging suggest younger and older adults differ in the emotion regulation strategies they use when regulating their own emotions. If how individuals regulate their own emotions and the emotions of others are related, these theorised age differences may also emerge for interpersonal emotion regulation. In two studies, younger and older adults’ intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation strategy (...) choices were examined via self-report and behavioural assessments of regulating the emotions of another participant (Study 1; N = 80) and of a virtual human (Study 2; N = 100). Across both studies, younger adults reported greater intrapersonal suppression but not greater reappraisal. Younger and older adults were generally similar (supported by Bayesian analyses) for both self-reported and behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. Behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation was not related to self-reported intra- and interpersonal preferences. These results suggest interpersonal emotion regulation in ageing may show distinct patterns from theorised age differences in intrapersonal emotion regulation. (shrink)

A growing volume of research from global data demonstrates that institutional care under conditions of deprivation is profoundly damaging to children, particularly during the critical early years of development. However, how these individuals develop over a life course remains unclear. This study uses data from a survey on the health and development of 420 children mostly under the age of three, placed in 12 infant care institutions between 1958 and 1961 in Zurich, Switzerland. The children exhibited significant delays in cognitive, (...) social, and motor development in the first years of life. Moreover, a follow-up of a subsample of 143 children about 10 years later revealed persistent difficulties, including depression, school related-problems, and stereotypies. Between 2019 and 2021, these formerly institutionalized study participants were located through the Swiss population registry and invited to participate once again in the research project. Now in their early sixties, they are studied for their health, further development, and life-course trajectories. A mixed-methods approach using questionnaires, neuropsychological assessments, and narrative biographical interviews was implemented by a multidisciplinary team. Combining prospective and retrospective data with standardized quantitative and biographical qualitative data allows a rich reconstruction of life histories. The availability of a community sample from the same geographic location, the 1954–1961 cohort of the Zurich Longitudinal Studies, described in detail in a paper in this issue, enables comparison with an unaffected cohort. This article describes the study design and study participants in detail and discusses the potential and limitations of a comparison with a community sample. It outlines a set of challenges and solutions encountered in the process of a lifespan longitudinal study from early childhood into the cusp of old age with a potentially vulnerable sample and summarizes the lessons learned along the way. (shrink)

Studies of multiple paternity in mammals and other animal species generally report proportion of multiple paternity among litters, mean litter sizes, and mean number of sires per litter. It is shown how these variables can be used to produce an estimate of the probability of reproductive success for a male that has mated with a female. This estimate of male success is more informative about the mating system that alternative measures, like the proportion of litters with multiple paternity or the (...) mean number of sires per litter. The probability of success for a mated male can be measured both theoretically and empirically, and gives an estimate of the intensity of sperm competition and of a male's “confidence of paternity” upon mating. The probability of success for mated males for ten “exemplar” species of mammals is estimated and they are compared for insights into the functioning of their mating systems. (shrink)

Background: Cognitive Training may contribute to the maintenance and even enhancement of cognitive functions in healthy older adults. However, the question who benefits most from multi-domain CTs is still highly under-investigated.Objective: The goal is to investigate prognostic factors and models for changes in cognitive test performance in healthy older adults after a multi-domain CT.Methods: The data bases MEDLINE, Web of Science Core Collection, CENTRAL, and PsycInfo were searched up to July 2019. Studies investigating prognostic factors and/or models on cognitive outcomes (...) after conducting a multi-domain CT in healthy older adults were included. Risk of Bias was assessed using the QUIPS and the PROBAST tool.Results: 23 prognostic factor and model studies were included. Results indicate a high heterogeneity regarding the conducted multi-domain CTs, the investigated prognostic factors, the investigated outcomes, and the used statistical approaches. Age and neuropsychological performance at study entry were the most investigated predictors, yet they show inconsistent results.Conclusion: Data on prognostic factors and models of changes after multi-domain CT are still too rare and inconsistent to draw clear conclusions due to statistical shortcomings and low reporting quality. Approaches for future research are outlined.Registration:https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, ID: CRD42020147531. (shrink)

We ask when, for a pair of structures $\mathcal {A}_1,\mathcal {A}_2$, there is a uniform effective procedure that, given copies of the two structures, unlabeled, always produces a copy of $\mathcal {A}_1$. We give some conditions guaranteeing that there is such a procedure. The conditions might suggest that for the pair of orderings $\mathcal {A}_1$ of type $\omega _1^{CK}$ and $\mathcal {A}_2$ of Harrison type, there should not be any such procedure, but, in fact, there is one. We construct an (...) example for which there is no such procedure. The construction involves forcing. On the way to constructing our example, we prove a general result on modifying Cohen generics. (shrink)

Provability, Computability and Reflection.

There is growing interest in nature-based interventions to improve human health and wellbeing. An important nascent area is exploring the potential of outdoor therapies to treat and prevent common mental health problems like depression. In this conceptual analysis on the nature–depression nexus, we distil some of the main issues for consideration when NBIs for depression are being developed. We argue that understanding the mechanisms, or ‘active ingredients’ in NBIs is crucial to understand what works and for whom. Successfully identifying modifiable (...) mediating intervention targets will pave the way for interventions with increased efficacy. We highlight a non-exhaustive list of five clinically relevant putative, candidate mechanisms which may underly the beneficial effects of NBIs on depression: stress, rumination, mindfulness, sleep and exercise. We also make the case that when developing NBIs it is important to not neglect young people, explore personalised approaches and focus on both treatment and prevention approaches. To achieve these aims methodologically rigorous programmes of clinical research are needed that include well-powered and controlled experimental designs including randomised controlled trials, qualitative research, longitudinal studies and large prospective cohorts. (shrink)

[1] Man and spirit: the speculative philosophers.--[2] Man and man: the social philosophers.--[3] Man and the state: the political philosophers.--[4] Man and the universe: the philosophers of science.

In a famous passage from his al-Bāhir, al-Samaw’al proves the identity which we would now write as (ab)n=anbn\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(ab)^n=a^n b^n$$\end{document} for the cases n=3,4\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$n=3,4$$\end{document}. He also calculates the equivalent of the expansion of the binomial (a+b)n\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(a+b)^n$$\end{document} for the same values of n and describes the construction of what we now call the Pascal Triangle, showing (...) the table up to its 12th row. We give a literal translation of the whole passage, along with paraphrases in more modern or symbolic form. We discuss the influence of the Euclidean tradition on al-Samaw’al’s presentation, and the role that diagrams might have played in helping al-Samaw’al’s readers follow his arguments, including his supposed use of an early form of mathematical induction. (shrink)

In this paper we make some general remarks on the use of non-classical logics, in particular paraconsistent logic, in the foundational analysis of physical theories. As a case-study, we present a reconstruction of P.\ -D.\ F\'evrier's 'logic of complementarity' as a strict three-valued logic and also a paraconsistent version of it. At the end, we sketch our own approach to complementarity, which is based on a paraconsistent logic termed 'paraclassical logic'.