Well-known epistemologies of science have implications for how best to understand knowledge transfer (KT). Yet, to date, no serious attempt has been made to explicate these particular implications. This paper infers views about KT from two popular epistemologies; what we characterize as incommensurabilitist views (after Devitt, 2001; Bird, 2002, 2008; Sankey and Hoyningen-Huene 2013) and voluntarist views (after Van Fraassen, 1984; Dupré, 2001; Chakravartty, 2015). We argue views of the former sort define the methodological, ontological, and social conditions under which (...) research operates within ‘different worlds’ (to use Kuhn's expression), and entail that genuine KTs under those conditions should be difficult or even impossible. By contrast, more liberal voluntarist views recognize epistemological processes that allow for transfers across different sciences even under such conditions. After outlining these antithetical positions, we identify two kinds of KTs present in well-known episodes in the history of ecology—specifically, successful model transfers from chemical kinetics and thermodynamics into areas of ecological research—which reveal significant limitations of incommensurabilitist views. We conclude by discussing how the selected examples support a pluralistic voluntarism regarding KT. (shrink)

Well-known epistemologies of science have implications for how best to understand knowledge transfer (KT). Yet, to date, no serious attempt has been made explicate these particular implications. This paper infers views about KT from two popular epistemologies; what we characterize as incommensurabilitist views (after Devitt 2001; Bird 2002, 2008; Sankey and Hoyningen-Huene 2013) and voluntarist views (after van Fraassen 1984; Dupré 2001; Chakravartty 2015). We argue views of the former sort define the methodological, ontological, and social conditions under which research (...) operates within ‘different worlds’ (to use Kuhn’s expression), and entail that genuine KTs under those conditions should be difficult or even impossible. By contrast, more liberal voluntarist views recognize epistemological processes that allow for transfers across different sciences even under such conditions. After outlining these antithetical positions, we identify two kinds of KTs of two kinds present in well-known episodes in the history of ecology—specifically, successful model transfers from chemical kinetics and thermodynamics into areas of ecological research—which reveal significant limitations of incommensurabilitist views. We conclude by discussing how the selected examples support a pluralistic voluntarism regarding KT. (shrink)

Reagon, Bellin and Boniface argue that traditional models of evidence-based practice focus too much on randomised controlled trials and neglect 'the multiple truths of occupational therapy'. This opinion piece points out several flaws in their argument, and suggests that it is unethical to rely on weaker evidence sources when higher quality evidence exists. Ironically, the evidence that they provide to support their argument regarding different types of evidence is itself very weak.

If “Big Gods” evolved in part because of their ability to morally regulate groups of people who cannot count on kin or reciprocal altruism to get along, then powerful gods would tend to be good gods. If the mechanism for this cooperation is some kind of fear of supernatural punishment, then we may expect that mighty gods tend to be punishing gods. The present study is a statistical analysis of superhuman being concepts from 20 countries on five continents to explore (...) whether the goodness of a god is related to its mightiness. Gods that looked more like the God of classical theism and gods that were low in anthropomorphism were more likely to be regarded as morally good and to be the target of religious practices. Mighty gods were not, however, especially likely to punish or to be a “high god.”. (shrink)

Are the places that superhuman beings purportedly act and dwell randomly or arbitrarily distributed? Inspired by theoretical work in cognitive science of religion, descriptions of superhuman beings were solicited from informants in 20 countries on five continents, resulting in 108 usable descriptions, including information about these beings’ properties, their dwelling location, and whether they were the target of rituals. Whether superhuman beings are the subject of religious and ritual practices appeared to co-vary in relation to both features of physical geography (...) and cognitive factors. Good gods were more likely the focus of religious practices than evil gods, and where the gods are thought to dwell mattered. If either the being was thought to dwell in a dangerous place or a resource rich place, it was more likely to have practices directed at it. (shrink)

Science is our best way of finding out about the natural world, and philosophers who write about that world ought to be sensitive to the claims of our best science. There are obstacles, however, to outsiders using science well. We think philosophers are prone to misuse science: to give undue weight to results that are untested; to highlight favorable and ignore unfavorable data; to give illegitimate weight to the authority of science; to leap from scientific premises to philosophical conclusions without (...) spelling out their relevance; to treat mere resonance between a scientific theory and a philosophical view as empirical evidence for the philosophical view. This article identifies and illustrates some of the ways in which philosophers misuse science, explains why these pitfalls are easy to fall into, and concludes with suggestions for avoiding them. (shrink)

Drawing from contemporary blog data, this article examines an emerging project termed “neuroqueer.” Neuroqueer is a collaboration of activists, academics, and bloggers engaging in online community building. Neuroqueer requires those who engage in it to disidentify from both oppressive dominant and counterculture identities that perpetuate destructive medical model discourses of cure. It is a queer/crip response to discussions about gender, sexuality, and disability as pathology that works to deconstruct normative identity categories. Blog members employ neuroqueer practices to subversively combat exclusion (...) through rejection of able-hetero assimilation and counteridentification in favor of disidentification. Of particular interest for this special issue are the ways in which neuroqueer perspectives build more fluid conceptualizations of both gender and intersectionality through conscious disidentification from neurotypical norms and medical notions of cure on which they are often unconsciously based. (shrink)

This article demonstrates that typical restrictions which are imposed in dialogical logic in order to recover first-order logical consequence from a fragment of natural language argumentation are also forthcoming from preference profiles of boundedly rational players, provided that these players instantiate a specific player type and compute partial strategies. We present two structural rules, which are formulated similarly to closure rules for tableaux proofs that restrict players' strategies to a mapping between games in extensive forms and proof trees. Both rules (...) are motivated from players' preferences and limitations; they can therefore be viewed as being player-self-imposable. First-order logical consequence is thus shown to result from playing a specific type of argumentation game. The alignment of such games with the normative model of the Pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation is positively evaluated. But explicit rules to guarantee that the argumentation game instantiates first-order logical consequence have now become gratuitous, since their normative content arises directly from players' preferences and limitations. A similar naturalization for non-classical logics is discussed. (shrink)

Adults and children spontaneously produce gestures while they speak, and such gestures appear to support and expand on the information communicated by the verbal channel. Little research, however, has been carried out to examine the role played by gesture in the listener's representation of accumulating information. Do listeners attend to the gestures that accompany narrative speech? In what kinds of relationships between gesture and speech do listeners attend to the gestural channel? If listeners do attend to information received in gesture, (...) how is this information represented— is it 'tagged' as originating in the gestural channel? In this article research is described that addresses these questions. Results show that listeners do attend to information conveyed in gesture, when that information supplements or even contradicts the information conveyed by speech. And information received via gesture is available for retelling in speech. These results are taken to demonstrate that gesture is not taken by the listener to be epiphenomenal to the act of speaking, or a simple manual translation of speech. But they also suggest that the information conveyed in a discourse may be represented in a manner that is neither gesture nor language, although accessible to both channels. (shrink)

Humor plays an essential role in human interactions. Precisely what makes something funny, however, remains elusive. While research on natural language understanding has made significant advancements in recent years, there has been little direct integration of humor research with computational models of language understanding. In this paper, we propose two information-theoretic measures—ambiguity and distinctiveness—derived from a simple model of sentence processing. We test these measures on a set of puns and regular sentences and show that they correlate significantly with human (...) judgments of funniness. Moreover, within a set of puns, the distinctiveness measure distinguishes exceptionally funny puns from mediocre ones. Our work is the first, to our knowledge, to integrate a computational model of general language understanding and humor theory to quantitatively predict humor at a fine-grained level. We present it as an example of a framework for applying models of language processing to understand higher level linguistic and cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

Cet article propose d’interroger le dispositif de soins mis en place dans les hôpitaux pour accompagner le couple face à la fin de vie. Le partenaire est souvent oublié. Pourtant, il est impliqué dans les remaniements psychiques dès l’annonce de la maladie grave. À partir de cas cliniques, l’auteur montre l’importance de la créativité du psychologue pour repenser sa pratique auprès du couple. Un maillage institutionnel est nécessaire pour que le couple retrouve un accès à son intimité et à une (...) certaine symbolisation. (shrink)

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a process for managing construction project information in such a way as to provide a basis for enhanced decision-making and for collaboration in a construction supply chain. One impediment to the uptake of BIM is the limited interoperability of different BIM systems. To overcome this problem, a set of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) has been proposed as a standard for the construction industry. Building on IFC, the ifcOWL ontology was developed in order to facilitate representation (...) of building data in a consistent fashion across the Web by using the Web Ontology Language (OWL). This study presents a critical analysis of the ifcOWL ontology and of the associated interoperability issues. It shows how these issues can be resolved by using Basic Formal Ontology (ISO/IEC 21838-2) as top-level architecture. A set of competency questions is used as the basis for comparison of the original ifcOWL with the enhanced ontology, and the latter is used to align with a second ontology – the ontology for building intelligent environments (DOGONT) – in order to demonstrate the added value derived from BFO by showing how querying the enhanced ifcOWL yields useful additional information. (shrink)

The introduction of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Quebec and Canada raises the question of extending this service to minors. The constant presence of nurses at the patient’s bedside leads them to receive requests related to MAID. The aim of this study is to explore the perceptions of nurses working in paediatric oncology services concerning the possibility for adolescents over 14 years of age requesting MAID. Six nurses working in paediatric oncology or palliative care or in direct contact with (...) adolescents at the end of their lives as part of their nursing work took part in an individual semi-directed interview. The results of this research highlight that: 1) nurses recognise their supportive role in the care of patients at the end of life; 2) most have a professional opinion in favour of the MAID for adults and distinguish this from their personal opinion; 3) they value the discussions around the MAID and are concerned about the establishment of criteria for it; and 4) long experience as a nurse leads to more concerns about the expansion of the MAID, but at the same time makes nurses more comfortable providing information about this subject. In light of these findings, academic and paediatric health care institutions need to recognise and evaluate the need for training nurses on MAID to better equip them to deal with such situations and thus better meet the needs of their patients. (shrink)

This article argues that there is a discrepancy between Jürgen Habermas's initial plea for critical and rational identities and his more recent glorification of the European model. Initially, Constitutional Patriotism could be apprehended as a critical standard for existing political practices. However, Habermas's recent political texts tend to lose all kind of reflexive distance in their apprehension of the European identity — which is presented as distinct and even superior to its counter-model, the US. Such a `Europatriotic' temptation should be (...) resisted. The `thick' European identity advocated by Habermas has no truly federative dimension and could undermine the unique normative potential of a political entity composed of distinct identities. Consequently, the article suggests an elucidation of liberal postnationalism with a view to explaining its refusal to tie Europe's legitimacy to an identification logic. (shrink)

The completion of the human genome project in 2000 dramatically emphasized the imminent success of the genetic revolution. The ethical and social consequences of this scientific development are immense. From human reproduction to life-extending therapies, from the impact on gender and race to public health and public safety, there is scarcely a part of our lives left unaffected by the impact of the new genetics. A Companion to Genethics is the first substantial study of the multifaceted dimensions of the genetic (...) revolution and its philosophical, ethical, social, and political significance. It brings together the best and most influential contemporary writing about genethics. Newly commissioned essays from prominent figures in the current debate provide a wide-ranging and fascinating scholarly analysis of all the issues that arise from this explosive science. (shrink)

In ‘Are biological traits explained by their “selected effect” functions?’, Christie, Brusse, Bourrat, Takacs, and Griffiths argue that selected effect functions only explain the presence of a trait (or the frequency of a trait in a population) in cases in which the selective environment has been uniform, illustrating their point with cases of coevolution, frequency-dependent selection, and bet-hedging. This commentary suggests that selected effect functions are explanatory even in those cases, and that Christie, Brusse, et al. are mistaken about the (...) explanatory aims of the selected effects theory, criticizing it for failing to do something it never set out to do. (shrink)

Ratio Juris, Volume 34, Issue 2, Page 106-120, June 2021.

Résumé Nombre de personnages d’ À la recherche du temps perdu font preuve de ce que Proust appelle « distinction morale » : non la moralité même (le contenu bon ou moral d’une action ou d’une pensée), mais l’apparence de moralité que l’on manifeste en présence d’autrui. Cette apparence de moralité est-elle fidèle ou trompeuse, est-elle une marque de sincérité ou de duplicité morale? Ni simple extériorisation d’un contenu moral intérieur, ni faux-semblant ou simulation de moralité, la distinction morale n’adhère (...) au sentiment intérieur et n’est sincère que dans la mesure où elle suppose une part de dissimulation. (shrink)

Conceived to commemorate the victims of South Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War, the statue of the Vietnam Pieta invites us to question who shapes the memory of this neglected facet of the conflict. The present article analyzes the various actors involved in this contentious process in and across both countries, starting with the South Korean activists behind the statue’s making and the movement for recognizing the crimes committed by their army. Examining these activists’ advocacy work since the late 1990s, (...) the article argues that they are triply situated in the fight over remembering South Korea’s intervention in Vietnam. Truth advocates first appear in a position of privilege and leadership vis-à-vis Vietnamese victims of South Korean military wrongdoings, which raises the issue of the material and political asymmetries at stake in the construction of memory. Simultaneously, the same advocates occupy a position of marginality vis-à-vis the dominant public discourse held on the war by Hanoi and Seoul, whose common interest lies in deepening their mutually beneficial but unequal economic partnership. Thirdly, the memory of the conflict pits truth activists against another group within their own civil society: veterans’ organizations aggressively denying all war crimes accusations. Ultimately, remembering the war is not the object of a bilateral dispute between the South Korean and Vietnamese states, but rather a site of domestic tensions within South Korea itself. (shrink)

In this paper I present the double disjunction task as introduced by Johnson-Laird. This experiment is meant to show how mental model theory explains the discrepancy between logical competence and logical performance of individuals in deductive reasoning. I review the results of the task and identify three problems in the way the task is designed, that all fall under a lack of coordination between the subject and the experimenter, and an insufficient representation of the semantic/pragmatic interface. I then propose a (...) reformulation of the task, that makes explicit the underlying semantic reasoning and emphasizes the difference of interpretation of the DDT between the experimenter and the subjects. (shrink)

The South China Sea territorial dispute has been a contentious issue in the international community. In the course of 3 years, China and the Philippines had undergone arbitral proceedings over the maritime rights and entitlements in the South China Sea. As the Permanent Court of Arbitration reached its decision, this paper aims to examine the interpretation process of the Arbitral Tribunal in the judgment of the South China Sea conflict between China and the Philippines. The primary objective of the study (...) is to reconstruct or explain how the Tribunal came up with its interpretation of the written arguments presented by the parties involved and to distinguish whether such reconstruction the Tribunal has successfully interpreted or made sense of the said arguments and submissions. Doing so would necessitate a pragmatic analysis– the relevance-theoretic account of human communication and cognition. Data analyzed include written submissions and arguments as well as the legal documents used during the arbitral process. Using content analysis, the data were evaluated through applying the tool of interpretation based on the criteria set by the three conditions of the relevance theory: logical condition, pragmatic condition, and condition of optimal relevance. This paper argues that in order for the addressee of an utterance, in this case the Arbitral Tribunal, to attain a successful interpretation, it should meet these three conditions. This study found that the reconstruction of the interpretation based on the three conditions showed that the Tribunal had attained a valid and correct interpretation of the Philippines’ and China’s arguments. Furthermore, the paper asserts that implied conclusion and the contextual assumptions can be a guiding principle for the cognitive comprehension or interpretation of legal texts. (shrink)

This paper aims to expose the potential for adapting Althusser’s theory of interpellation to a phenomenological framework, with the help of its recoveries by Judith Butler and Sara Ahmed. Not only do their writings help to address several criticisms of Althusser’s theory of ideology –notably its latent determinism and universalization of the subject– but they also help us better understand how ideology functions at the level of the marginalized body. Indeed, ideology acts as a discursive and corporeal orientation of the (...) subject in the world, and this by limiting its space, its temporality and the objects accessible to it. By linking interpellation and the body, it will also be possible to expand Butler’s theory of emancipation towards a bodily performativity having the lived body as its object. To this effect, we will point out that Ahmed’s writings on interpellation complement Butler’s, as they open the door to a resistance to ideology embedded in the body via the concept of disorientation. While disorientation can serve as a mechanism of subjugation, it can also, according to some phenomenologists, create new emancipatory paths and possibilities for the marginalised subject. (shrink)

Ruth Millikan’s teleological theory of mental content is complex and often misunderstood. This paper motivates and clarifies some of the complexities of the theory, and shows that paying careful attention to its details yields answers to a number of common objections to teleological theories, in particular, the problem of novel mental states, the problem of functionally false beliefs, and problems about indeterminacy or multiplicity of function.

À la fin du xe siècle, en Germanie ottonienne, dans des circonstances politiques particulières, se développe une nouvelle forme de pouvoir au féminin, qui ne se restreint plus aux seules souveraines. Les filles et sœurs d’empereurs, en particulier Mathilde, abbesse de Quedlinburg, puis Sophie, moniale à Gandersheim, et Adélaïde, moniale à Quedlinburg, participent activement au gouvernement et à la représentation impériale du pouvoir. Elles peuvent exercer la régence et reçoivent de nouveaux titres, comme celui de dominae imperiales, qui leur est (...) accordé par l’autrice des Annales de Quedlinburg, formidable miroir du pouvoir de ces femmes à l’aube du xie siècle. Cette nouvelle configuration témoigne de l’intégration pleine et entière des femmes à la dynastie ottonienne, qui se pense dans son ensemble comme dynastie souveraine. (shrink)

Contemporary consumer culture sees the body as the crucial indicator of the self and apparent bodily ageing as problematic. All bodies age, but how is evidence of ageing culturally interpreted? This article develops a critical-pragmatic analysis of consumerized body discourses, with particular focus on the semiotics of the visibly ageing face, in the context of lifestyle magazine features and advertisements on skin care. Such texts work to equate ageing with the look of ageing, problematize ageing appearance, and offer marketized solutions (...) to the ‘problem’ of ageing, using markedly gendered strategies. Texts aimed at a female market project skin care as a serious issue, pathologize the look of ageing, offer highly technologized solutions, and naturalize surgical intervention. The male market is being discursively engaged by strategies designed to normalize male investment in products and processes traditionally seen as in the domain of female bodily grooming. Consumerized male narcissism is enabled by ironic, ‘uncommitted’ discourses, the use of highly masculinized images and text, and, more recently, discourses which draw attention to the salience of the female appraising gaze. (shrink)

Causal and predictive learning research often employs intuitive and familiar hypothetical scenarios to facilitate learning novel relationships. The allergist task, in which participants are asked to diagnose the allergies of a fictitious patient, is one example of this. In such studies, it is common practice to ask participants to ignore their existing knowledge of the scenario and make judgments based only on the relationships presented within the experiment. Causal judgments appear to be sensitive to instructions that modify assumptions about the (...) scenario. However, the extent to which prior knowledge continues to affect competition for associative learning, even after participants are instructed to disregard it, is unknown. To answer this, we created a cue competition design that capitalized on prevailing beliefs about the allergenic properties of various foods. High and low allergenic foods were paired with foods moderately associated with allergy to create two compounds; high + moderate and low + moderate. We expected high allergenic foods to produce greater competition for associative memory than low allergenic foods. High allergenic foods may affect learning either because they generate a strong memory of allergy or because they are more salient in the context of the task. We therefore also manipulated the consistency of the high allergenic cue-outcome relationship with prior beliefs about the nature of the allergies. A high allergenic food that is paired with an inconsistent allergenic outcome should generate more prediction error and thus more competition for learning, than one that is consistent with prior beliefs. Participants were instructed to either use or ignore their knowledge of food allergies to complete the task. We found that while participants were able to set aside their prior knowledge when making causal judgments about the foods in question, associative memory was weaker for the cues paired with highly allergenic foods than cues paired with low allergenic foods regardless of instructions. The consistency manipulation had little effect on this result, suggesting that the effects in associative memory are most likely driven by selective attention to highly allergenic cues. This has implications for theories of causal learning as well as the way causal learning tasks are designed. (shrink)

This paper presents a case study of Gardens and Green Spaces (GGS), a resident-driven, grant-funded project in Cleveland, Ohio working toward community change. Through both placemaking and entrepreneurial strategies, the main grant objectives are to effect change at the intersection of food (and agriculture), arts, and culture in Kinsman, a 96% Black Neighborhood on Cleveland’s east side. While community development (CD) projects are often designed by outside ‘experts’ who inform the scope and focus of grant-funded projects, this project is rooted (...) in the hypothesis that a resident-driven approach to CD will lead to increased community buy-in and participation, resulting in more lasting and substantive community change. GGS works across sectors, integrating arts, culture, and food to promote placemaking and community-based entrepreneurial engagement as a path towards greater health, equity, and economic resilience. This paper argues that community-based and resident-driven development—although not without its own challenges—can result in more holistic community transformation across sectors, with the potential for greater resident participation, sustainability, and equity. The case study presented in this paper, including in-depth interviews and neighborhood surveys, is an examination of the pilot phase of GGS, and argues that both placemaking and entrepreneurialism represent a negotiation between market driven community development and a solely philanthropic model. It provides insight into more equitable and sustainable change that has the potential to shift the traditional paradigm of expert driven, or “outside-in” community development. (shrink)

This paper responds to an invitation by the editors to consider whether the intellectual property regime suggests an appropriate model for protecting interests in detached human body parts. It begins by outlining the extent of existing IP protection for body parts in Europe, and the relevant strengths and weaknesses of the patent system in that regard. It then considers two further species of IP right of less obvious relevance. The first are the statutory rights of ownership conferred by domestic UK (...) law in respect of employee inventions, and the second are the economic and moral rights recognised by European and international law in respect of authorial works. In the argument made, both of these species of IP right may suggest more appropriate models of sui generis protection for detached human body parts than patent rights because of their capacity better to accommodate the relevant public and private interests in respect of the same. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the prospects for an account of good argument that takes the character of the arguer into consideration. We conclude that although there is much to be gained by identifying the virtues of the good arguer and by considering the ways in which these virtues can be developed in ourselves and in others, virtue argumentation theory does not offer a plausible alternative definition of good argument.