We provide a list of open problems in the research area of generalised Baire spaces, compiled with the help of the participants of two workshops held in Amsterdam (2014) and Hamburg (2015).

In recent decades, advances in the life sciences have created an unprecedentedly detailed picture of heredity and the formation of the phenotype where clusters of simplistic reductionist and deterministic views and interpretations have begun to lose ground to more complex and holistic notions. The developments in gene regulation and epigenetics have become a vivid emblem of the ongoing ‘softening’ of heredity. Despite this headway, the outlook and rhetoric widely popular in the twentieth century favoring the ‘gene’ in the ‘genegenetic plasticityphenotypeenvironment’ (...) tetrad have not been successfully tackled but continue to exist in parallel with a new, equally monochromatic, viewpoint championing genetic plasticity. An examination of epigenetics and its presentation in the public sphere, open to a conversation with the social disciplines and philosophy, could address this dichotomy and contribute to the discourse. This article outlines key biological aspects of epigenetics and discusses the language, presentation and wider resonance of this field of life science research. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe participants in this symposium raise many insightful criticisms and reservations about my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter. But none substantially undermine its main thesis: that rational political ignorance and rational irrationality are major problems for democracy that are best addressed by limiting and decentralizing government power. Part I of this reply addresses criticisms of my analysis of the problem of political ignorance and its causes. Part II assesses challenges to my proposed solution.

The paper introduces mathematical encoding for subjective experience and meaning in natural cognition. The code is based on a quantum-theoretic qubit structure supplementing classical bit with circular dimension, functioning as a process-causal template for representation of contexts relative to the basis decision. The qubit state space is demarcated in categories of emotional experience of animals and humans. Features of the resulting spherical map align with major theoreties in cognitive and emotion science, modeling of natural language, and semiotics, suggesting several generalizations (...) and improvements. The developed model bridges psychological, quantum-theoretic, and semiotic perspectives, allowing for an integrative account of subjectivity, agency, and meaning in living Nature.Graphical abstract. (shrink)

This study investigated 204 doctors' and nurses' perceived knowledge of bloodborne pathogens and their attitudes towards bloodborne pathogen-infected health care workers. A structured questionnaire examined: (1) their perceived knowledge of bloodborne pathogens; (2) their attitudes towards bloodborne pathogen-infected personnel; and (3) their opinions on limitation of employment of bloodborne pathogen-infected personnel and restrictions on performing clinical procedures. The levels of HIV-related knowledge were significantly higher than for hepatitis C and B viruses. Although the participants demonstrated more positive attitudes towards hepatitis (...) C- and B-infected health care workers, 64% recommended restricting infected personnel from performing invasive procedures. Attitudes were negatively correlated with opinions on restricting infected personnel from health care work or limiting their involvement in clinical activities. This study highlights the need to formulate a policy to cope with the professional and moral dilemmas related to infected health care workers employed in hospitals, especially for those involved in invasive procedures. (shrink)

Medical doctors arrive at a diagnosis after considering various types of evidence, including the patient's complaints, their outer appearance, talk, and non-verbal behavior. In psychiatry, the role of conversation is more important than in somatic medicine, because it is in the patient's talk that the disease can express itself. Some elements of the conversational machinery have been studied in diagnostic interviews in a psychiatric ward. In the interviews, a recurrent pattern of the doctor’s questions and the patient’s answers was found. (...) Schegloff (2007) showed that “known answer” questions form a distinctive three-part sequence type: question-response-evaluation. In diagnostic interviews in psychiatry, the questions don't address knowledge but the capacity to perform the task. Not all the test questions have a correct answer, and the result of the evaluation is not always announced by the doctor. The doctor consistently repeats the patient’s answer without evaluating it and then adds a follow-up question. At least parts of the repeated cycles in the sequence of doctor-patient interaction exhibit the following pattern: Doctor’s question > Patient’s answer > Doctor’s echo > (optional Doctor's follow-up question). When the doctor's questions seek real information—and do not just test capacity—they sometimes resort to a reformulation of the patient’s answers instead of just repeating it; this reformulation works as a prompt. The questions in the clinical interview appear to follow two lines of accountability: the ordinary conversational order and that which is provided by the professional reasoning aimed at checking diagnostic hypotheses. The second line is not usually accessible to the patient. (shrink)

Advocates of ?deliberative democracy? want citizens to actively participate in serious dialogue over political issues, not merely go to the polls every few years. Unfortunately, these ideals don't take into account widespread political ignorance and irrationality. Most voters neither attain the level of knowledge needed to make deliberative democracy work, nor do they rationally evaluate the political information they do possess. The vast size and complexity of modern government make it unlikely that most citizens can ever reach the levels of (...) knowledge and rationality required by deliberative democracy, even if they were better informed than they are at present. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHélène Landemore's Democratic Reason effectively demonstrates how cognitive diversity may potentially improve the quality of democratic decisions. But in setting out the preconditions that democracy must meet in order for the many to make collectively well-informed decisions, Landemore undermines the case for voter competence more than she strengthens it. The conditions she specifies are highly unlikely to be achieved by any real-world democracy. Widespread voter ignorance and the size and complexity of modern government are severe obstacles to any effort to (...) implement Landemore's vision. Better-informed decision making is more likely to be achieved by allowing a wider range of issues to be decided by “voting with your feet” instead of at the ballot box. (shrink)

The role of passion and more generally irrational elements in processing knowledge are discussed. This seems to be a paradox, as science by definition is beyond passion. At the same time science is the expression of a culture. This paradox is examined through the experience and work of crucial figures in physics such as Newton and Einstein. Science is a dialogue between man and nature: part of the search for the transcendental which is common to many cultural activities: art, music, (...) literature. Our time is one of expectation, anxiety, and bifurcation. Far from there being an ?end? of science, our period will see the birth of a new vision, a new science whose cornerstone encloses the arrow of time: a science that makes us and our creativity the expression of a fundamental trend in the universe. (shrink)

Abstract In Politicians Don't Pander, Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro show that politicians follow public opinion much less slavishly than conventional wisdom suggests. However, the case studies they themselves rely on show that public opinion constrains policy makers more than they claim. Conversely, to the extent that political leaders are able to ignore the public's wishes, Jacobs and Shapiro do not adequately consider the possibility that this is due in large part to severe voter ignorance of public policy. In urging (...) greater obedience to the popular will, the authors also overlook the danger that increased adherence to the often internally contradictory wishes of the electorate may be impossible or undesirable. (shrink)

Assessment in ethics education faces a challenge. From the perspectives of teachers, students, and third-party evaluators like the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and the National Institutes of Health, assessment of student performance is essential. Because of the complexity of ethical case analysis, however, it is difficult to formulate assessment criteria, and to recognize when students fulfill them. Improvement in students’ moral reasoning skills can serve as the focus of assessment. In previous work, Rosa Lynn Pinkus and Claire Gloeckner (...) developed a novel instrument for assessing moral reasoning skills in bioengineering ethics. In this paper, we compare that approach to existing assessment techniques, and evaluate its validity and reliability. We find that it is sensitive to knowledge gain and that independent coders agree on how to apply it. (shrink)

Our study aims to deal with different and similar conditions between Ghazali and Kant, as characters that can show two different thinking forms and two different cultural structures in their thoughts, in context of the same subject. We will deal with why and how that the approaches of both thinkers to the subject transcendental dialectic occur by passing through which stages and try to display that both cultural world incline to this subject by which aim.Çalışmamız iki ayrı düşünme biçimi ve (...) iki ayrı kültürel yapıyı düşüncelerinde gösterebilen kişilikler olarak Gazali ve Kant arasındaki benzer ve ayrık durumları aynı konu bağlamında ele almak amacındadır. Her iki düşünürün de aşkınsal diyalektik konusuna yaklaşımının hangi aşamalardan geçerek gerçekleştiğini, niçini ve nasılı ile birlikte ele alacak ve her iki kültür dünyasının hangi amaç ile bu konuya eğildiklerini göstermeye çalışacağız. (shrink)

The paper describes an algorithm for semantic representation of behavioral contexts relative to a dichotomic decision alternative. The contexts are represented as quantum qubit states in two-dimensional Hilbert space visualized as points on the Bloch sphere. The azimuthal coordinate of this sphere functions as a one-dimensional semantic space in which the contexts are accommodated according to their subjective relevance to the considered uncertainty. The contexts are processed in triples defined by knowledge of a subject about a binary situational factor. The (...) obtained triads of context representations function as stable cognitive structure at the same time allowing a subject to model probabilistically-variative behavior. The developed algorithm illustrates an approach for quantitative subjectively-semantic modeling of behavior based on conceptual and mathematical apparatus of quantum theory. (shrink)

Psychology suffers from the absence of mathematically-formalized primitives. As a result, conceptual and quantitative studies lack an ontological basis that would situate them in the company of natural sciences. The article addresses this problem by describing a minimal psychic structure, expressed in the algebra of quantum theory. The structure is demarcated into categories of emotion and color, renowned as elementary psychological phenomena. This is achieved by means of quantum-theoretic qubit state space, isomorphic to emotion and color experiences both in meaning (...) and math. In particular, colors are mapped to the qubit states through geometric affinity between the HSL-RGB color solids and the Bloch sphere, widely used in physics. The resulting correspondence aligns with the recent model of subjective experience, producing a unified spherical map of emotions and colors. This structure is identified as a semantic atom of natural thinking—a unit of affectively-colored personal meaning, involved in elementary acts of a binary decision. The model contributes to finding a unified ontology of both inert and living Nature, bridging previously disconnected fields of research. In particular, it enables theory-based coordination of emotion, decision, and cybernetic sciences, needed to achieve new levels of practical impact. (shrink)

In this article, although we will focus on virtue ethics, we will not discuss the derivatives or types of virtue in depth. Here, we will talk about teleological virtue rather than the question of whether epistemological virtues or not. However, it is a fact that in Plato and Aristotle, teleology is closely related to epistemology. This is because knowledge is needed for virtue to be realized, and knowledge is ultimately acquired for a purpose. This shows us that teleology determines the (...) epistemological aspect of this highest peak of Ancient Greek wisdom. When we compare this with the utilitarian understanding of the Sophists, we see that a purpose is needed for the realization of virtue. The Sophists’ denial of absolute reality eliminates the purpose of finding virtue or vice. (shrink)

In this book, after discussing the fundamental problems of current science and other philosophic concepts, beginning with controversies between Heraclitus and Parmenides, Ilya Prigogine launches into a message of great hope: the future has not been determined. Contrary to globalisation and the apparent contemporary mass culture society, individual behaviour is beginning to increasingly become the key factor which governs the evolution of both the world and society as a whole. It is a message that challenges existing widespread views, implicitly (...) or explicitly, through mass communication, moreover the importance of the individual's actions implies a reflection of each person on the responsibilities that each one assumes when taking or acting upon a decision. This responsibility is associated with the freedom of thought as well as a critical analysis of fashions, customs, preconceived ideas, and ideologies, externally imposed: exactly contrary to the ideas of those who wish us to be "perfect consumers" in a world dominated only by monetary wealth. Challenging this drive towards the elimination of freedom of though in the individual is now imperative if we are to save man and his planet from catastrophe which seems to be ever imminent and (unfortunately) irreversible. This last book of Ilya Prigogine provides a small, disputable, but nonetheless valuable contribution towards that end. (shrink)

For decades, scholars have recognized that most citizens have little or no political knowledge, and that it is in fact rational for the average voter to make little or no effort to acquire political information. Rational ignorance is fully compatible with the so‐called “paradox of voting” because it will often be rational for citizens to vote, but irrational for them to become well informed. Furthermore, rational ignorance leads not only to inadequate acquisition of political information, but also to ineffective use (...) of the information that citizens do possess. The combination of these two problems has fundamental implications for a variety of issues in public policy and international affairs. (shrink)

La science classique s'est trouvée associée à un désenchantement du monde. C'est la leçon que Jacques Monod entendait tirer des progrès de la biologie : "L'ancienne alliance est rompue. L'homme sait enfin qu'il est seul dans l'immensité indifférente de l'Univers d'où il a émergé par hasard." Notre science n'est plus ce savoir classique, nous pouvons déchiffrer le récit d'une "nouvelle alliance". Loin de l'exclure du monde qu'elle décrit, la science retrouve comme un problème l'appartenance de l'homme à ce monde. Les (...) théories scientifiques ne peuvent plus supposer la possibilité d'un savoir omniscient : nous lisons, jusque dans leurs principes, les traces d'une activité d'exploration au sein d'une nature en évolution. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 49 Heft: 1 Seiten: 149-164.

Social epistemology balances neoclassic and nonclassic, normative and descriptive, and veritistic and constructionist approaches. Among these approaches exist two terminologically different though (in fact) similar proposals: naturalization and socialization. Both proposals lead to a kind of interdisciplinary imperialism reducing epistemology to a ?positive science? like sociology of knowledge, social history of science, and science and technology studies. I call this attitude the ?strong version? of naturalism. How, then, can we save epistemology without indulging in purely transcendental contemplations while simultaneously securing (...) its connections to the empirical sciences that analyze knowledge in a social context? Can social epistemology be reduced to any one or to a set of special approaches to knowledge as a completely naturalizing program? If not, is social epistemology a kind of philosophical epistemology and what is its differencia specifica? And how is the social epistemology related to special approaches to knowledge? In proposing a ?weak version? of naturalism?an idea of the social epistemology based on interdisciplinary interaction?a reimagining of the concepts of ?interdisciplinarity? and ?context? is required. (shrink)

This essay responds to the argument that Jonathan Riley offers in the February 2013 issue of Political Theory for rendering Isaiah Berlin’s theory of pluralism consistent with his commitment to negative liberty. I show that the “standard of humanity” that Riley attributes to Berlin fails to take account of Berlin’s distinction between “political” liberty (which has nothing to do with our humanity as such) and what Berlin calls “basic” liberty (which does). Consequently, Riley ends up conflating the conditions for living (...) in a decent society (one which respects a minimal core set of human rights) with being a human being. And this leads him to make the further, mistaken assumption that humans need to “exercise” their generic human capacities in order to remain human and not become, in Riley’s words, “robots or moral idiots.” While Riley’s essay is a valuable contribution to our understanding of what we might call Berlin’s ethic of human rights, it ultimately fails in its effort to show that the domain of human rights constitutes Berlin’s standard of humanity (as opposed to decency), and therefore it fails to show that normal human beings must assign overriding moral priority to a modicum of political liberty in order to secure their humanity. (shrink)

Abstract If voters do not understand the programs of rival candidates or their likely consequences, they cannot rationally exercise control over government. An ignorant electorate cannot achieve true democratic control over public policy. The immense size and scope of modern government makes it virtually impossible for voters to acquire sufficient knowledge to exercise such control. The problem is exacerbated by voters? strong incentive to be ?rationally ignorant? of politics. This danger to democracy cannot readily be circumvented through ?shortcut? methods of (...) economizing on voter knowledge costs. A truly democratic government must, therefore, be strictly limited in scope. (shrink)

A frequent criticism of the neuroscientific approach to consciousness is that its theories describe only 'correlates' or 'analogues' of consciousness, and so fail to address the nature of consciousness itself. Despite its apparent logical simplicity, this criticism in fact relies on some substantive assumptions about the nature and evolution of scientific explanations. In particular, it is usually assumed that, in expressing correlations, neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) theories must fail to capture the causal structure relating brain and mind. Drawing on (...) work in the history and philosophy of science, I argue that this assumption - along with the related claim that even a correct NCC theory would fail to explain consciousness - is grounded in an inadequate conception of the way in which scientific explanations develop. Examination of parallel developments in 20th century biology reveals that, under the right circumstances, seemingly crude correspondences can play an essential role in scientific discovery and can sometimes become central to our everyday understanding of the phenomena in question. A proper understanding of this process clarifies the value of NCC theories and sheds light on the standards by which they should be evaluated. In closing, I describe two specific criteria for evaluating NCC proposals: intertheoretic bridge potential and detailed mapping. (shrink)

Questions concerning mediated causal effects are of great interest in psychology, cognitive science, medicine, social science, public health, and many other disciplines. For instance, about 60% of recent papers published in leading journals in social psychology contain at least one mediation test (Rucker, Preacher, Tormala, & Petty, 2011). Standard parametric approaches to mediation analysis employ regression models, and either the “difference method” (Judd & Kenny, 1981), more common in epidemiology, or the “product method” (Baron & Kenny, 1986), more common in (...) the social sciences. In this article, we first discuss a known, but perhaps often unappreciated, fact that these parametric approaches are a special case of a general counterfactual framework for reasoning about causality first described by Neyman (1923) and Rubin (1924) and linked to causal graphical models by Robins (1986) and Pearl (2006). We then show a number of advantages of this framework. First, it makes the strong assumptions underlying mediation analysis explicit. Second, it avoids a number of problems present in the product and difference methods, such as biased estimates of effects in certain cases. Finally, we show the generality of this framework by proving a novel result which allows mediation analysis to be applied to longitudinal settings with unobserved confounders. (shrink)

Abortion is the most common and controversial issue in many parts of the world. Approximately 46 million abortions are performed worldwide every year. The world ratio is 26 induced abortions per 100 known pregnancies. Pakistan has an estimated abortion rate of 29 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age, despite the procedure being illegal except to save a woman’s life. 890,000 abortions are performed annually in Pakistan. Many government and non-government organizations are working on the issue of abortion. Muslim jurists (...) are unanimous in declaring that after the fetus is completely formed and has been given a soul, abortion is haram (forbidden). (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe ethics of science becomes a significant part of science and technology studies since it pays attention not exclusively to the moral impact of society on scientists but to that of scienc...

The approach proposed by Jennifer Lackey is an analytical version of social epistemology, in which the subject of the research is the nature of collective (group) beliefs. She analyzes the possibility of explaining cognitive collectivity and reducing collective knowledge to the individual one at the example of deviant knowledge types - lie and bullshit. In the given paper, the author argues that Lackey's point of view deserves criticism for neither “group" nor “belief" receive a clear definition; no criteria are proposed (...) to distinguish cognitively relevant and irrelevant social factors; the opposition of the individual and the group is retained. The author argues that the concept of collective knowledge could be much more consistent if one uses the group-grid approach elaborated by M. Douglas; one shows the social nature of the individual; one applies the entire toolkit of philosophy of language and discourse analysis for reduction of beliefs to linguistic expressions. Still the concept under criticism moves then closer to the criticalsocial epistemology, which is hardly acceptable for Lackey. What follows is. (shrink)

"Draws on philosophical and novelistic texts from the Western European and Russian canons to explore a crucial moment in the epistemological history of narrative and present a nonreductive way of conjugating the histories of philosophy and ...

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Educational Theory, Volume 72, Issue 1, Page 5-25, February 2022.

The article shows that Russian philosophical community is very sensitive towards the history and the current state of philosophy of science and of science studies, which are a subject matter of special interest by virtue of a dedicated space in the university education system. This status is also supported by its proximity to the international philosophical mainstream of the 20th century and its specific object, its connection with science. Philosophy of science at the same time retains some neutrality in relation (...) to the dominant political ideology and proposes claims for an objective knowledge. History of philosophy of science, therefore, serves largely as a history of philosophical rationalism, and its prospects are determined by the strengthening of the role of science in modern culture. However, the modern existence of philosophy of science is undergoing substantial change and experiences a series of challenges. Among them there are the humiliation of intellectuals and scientists in society political voluntarism, mass consumption and the cult of mysticism. Under these conditions, a philosophical study of science and technology is forced to take on the challenges of social criticism and shape special civil institutions for self-preservation. Thus philosophy of science integrates the political, ethical and even social engineering components that allow for treating it as a hard core of interdisciplinary interaction of all socio-humanitarian disciplines. (shrink)

Ali Tekin, Varlık ve Akıl: Aristoteles ve Fârâbî’de Burhan Teorisi [Being and Intellect: Theory of Demonstration in Aristotle and al-Fārābī], 477 pp.

Posner's “pragmatic” defense of broad judicial deference to legislative power still reflects the shortcomings noted in my review of his Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy. His pragmatism still fails to provide meaningful criteria for decision making that do not collapse into an indeterminate relativism; and his argument that strict constraints on judicial power are required by respect for democracy underestimates the importance of two serious interconnected weaknesses of the modern state: widespread voter ignorance, and interest‐group exploitation of that ignorance.