In March 2016, DeepMind's computer programme AlphaGo surprised the world by defeating the world‐champion Go player, Lee Sedol. AlphaGo exhibits a novel, surprising and valuable style of play and has been recognised as “creative” by the artificial intelligence (AI) and Go communities. This article examines whether AlphaGo engages in creative problem solving according to the standards of comparative psychology. I argue that AlphaGo displays one important aspect of creative problem solving (namely mental scenario building in the form of Monte Carlo (...) tree search), while lacking another (domain generality). This analysis has consequences for how we think about creativity in humans and AI. (shrink)

Plato's Republic VII suggests that if we ask someone to philosophize when they are too young, they can become corrupted (537e–539d). Republic VII also suggests that to avoid this corruption, we must not expose youth to argument (539a–b). This is not a reasonable option outside of Kallipolis, so a question arises: does Plato describe how to correct corruption if we do not manage to prevent it? This paper shows that a parallel between this passage from Republic VII and a passage (...) from Laws X suggests that he does. Laws X describes an impious man who is corrupted in the same way as the youth exposed to philosophy prematurely in Republic VII. While we leave the youth to his corruption in Republic, the impious man is helped to overcome his corruption in Laws with a refutation followed by a myth (also called a charm). This paper analyses these steps in terms of Plato's psychology, showing that both corruption and correction require a destabilization of the soul, which in these passages is brought about through refutation. This destabilization allows for a reconfiguration, which, with something that can restabilize the soul (for example with myth), can be a reconfiguration for the better. (shrink)

Harnecker, M. Política y clases sociales en Poulantzas (estudio crítico) -- Poulantzas, N. Sobre el concepto de política.

Psychiatric disorders like eating disorders might be underpinned by differences in decision making. However, little previous research has investigated this potential relationship using longitudinal data. This study aimed to understand how components of decision making measured by the Cambridge Gambling Task in the United Kingdom’s Millennium Cohort Study at age 11 might explain clusters/types of ED prodrome involving body dissatisfaction, intention to lose weight, dietary restraint, excessive exercise and significant under/overweight measured in the MCS at age 14. Latent class analysis (...) revealed two groups within the cohort: a non-prodromal eating pathology group, who were more likely to be of “average” weight, according to the UK90, with minimal disordered attitudes and behaviors in relation to eating and weight; and a second group with prodromal eating pathology, who had more body dissatisfaction, a desire to lose weight, were using dietary restriction and exercise to influence weight and were more likely to be “overweight” according to the UK90. Logistic regression showed that, after adjustment for confounding, higher risk-taking scores were associated with a 60% greater probability of being in the prodromal eating pathology group, and higher scores on quality of decision making were associated with a 30% lower probability of being in the prodromal eating pathology group. Helping young people to engage in moderate risk taking and improving decision making might reduce the later presence of ED prodromes. (shrink)

The penetration process of structures traditionally assigned to civil law into administrative law, especially administrative law aiming environmental protection, has been more noticeable through recent years. This process resulted in deepening the absence of a clear separation of private law norms from public law norms. It led to the existence of so-called quasi civil solutions, which can be found for example in the Act on prevention from damages in environment and its repair. Their specificity consists in the fact that they (...) cannot be regarded as civil law structures due to the differences between them and the civil law structures. This legal status sets new challenges for legal theorists as well as practition- ers. They concentrate on interpretation of administrative law provisions which were penetrated by civil law structures, taking into account differences between interpretation of administrative and civil law provisions. We should not reject specific character of the civil law provisions’ interpretation and interpret these provisions only by taking into account specificity of administrative law inter- pretation. Civil law institutions are characterized by a larger field for action, which is left for parties or performers, in comparison to the institutions of ad- ministrative law. This specificity of civil law structures should be considered as its advantage that should not be removed in the activities of public authorities. (shrink)

This article reflects on the way the Covid-19 hecatomb has disclosed and unraveled the ongoing crisis of professional philosophy, and suggests some lessons that might be taken from the pandemic, urging academic philosophers to take action regarding the future of their work in philosophy departments and institutions. In the first section of the article, we highlight some lasting criticisms to academic philosophy and explore one particular nasty thorn in the side of philosophers doing the kind of work that might speak (...) to broad audiences facing a crisis of meaning and living: the rush to publish instead of “perishing” without a secure academic position. In the next section, we discuss philosophy as a way of life as an alternative nascent field in academic philosophy that, while garnering respect and recognition within the academy, has regained connections with a broader public desperate for ways to chart their own paths of meaningful living, especially when facing a deeply challenged and fractured world. PWL helps address the crises of meaning many in the academy face and the absence of rich philosophical reflection and communities in the broader public, which otherwise all too easily fall prey to hucksters, con-artists, and authoritarian and conspiratorial forces. We argue that this kind of wholistic critical development of PWL from the ancient world is designed to enact a prefigurative or eutopian politics. We conclude by situating our recommendations into a broader reconstruction of professional philosophy needed at this critical cultural moment. (shrink)

Num espaço acadêmico dominado por formalismos textuales, a arte constitui se numa revolução, assim a presente expressão artística se ergue como uma forma de diálogo entre o que pode ser entendido como fazer ciência e o lugar que as artes cênicas e performáticas podem gerar quando são colocadas em jogo no corpo de uma mulher que faz perguntas incômodas, que faz uso de um discurso que poderia parecer ininteligível e que qual borboleta, faz uma metamorfose que até chega a gerar (...) surpresa e espanto nela mesma e no público. (shrink)

The establishment of a functional vascular system requires multiple complex steps throughout embryogenesis, from endothelial cell (EC) specification to vascular patterning into venous and arterial hierarchies. Following the initial assembly of ECs into a network of cord‐like structures, vascular expansion and remodeling occur rapidly through morphogenetic events including vessel sprouting, fusion, and pruning. In addition, vascular morphogenesis encompasses the process of lumen formation, critical for the transformation of cords into perfusable vascular tubes. Studies in mouse, zebrafish, frog, and human endothelial (...) cells have begun to outline the cellular and molecular requirements underlying lumen formation. Although the lumen can be generated through diverse mechanisms, the coordinated participation of multiple conserved molecules including transcription factors, small GTPases, and adhesion and polarity proteins remains a fundamental principle, leading us closer to a more thorough understanding of this complex event. (shrink)

The main aim of the study was to check: attachment-related differences in alexithymia and the mediating role of mind-mindedness in attachment-alexithymia relationship. Method: Attachment, alexithymia and mind-mindedness were measured in the sample of 128 Polish undergraduates. Results: Positive associations were seen between attachment anxiety and overall alexithymia scores and difficulty identifying emotions. Attachment avoidance was positively associated with overall alexithymia score, difficulty describing feelings and externally oriented thinking. Mind-mindedness was not related to neither attachment or alexithymia. Conclusion: There are attachment-related (...) differences in alexithymia, but mind-mindedness seems not to mediate attachment-alexithymia relationship. (shrink)

Para muchos, el sujeto moderno se origina en la Reforma protestante. Si esto es así, deberíamos encontrar el embrión de estas ideas fundacionales en los textos políticos de Juan Calvino (1509-1564), reformador de Ginebra y padre de una de las corrientes principales del protestantismo. Sin embargo, frente al tópico, el lector encontrará en esta selección de escritos políticos, a un Calvino para quien Dios sigue siendo la fuente de toda autoridad, el pueblo carece de cualquier tipo de legitimidad política y (...) la Biblia ha de ser la fuente de inspiración moral y social. Sin embargo, su influencia es innegable en debates tan centrales para laposteridad como las disputas sobre el derecho de resistencia durante las guerras de religión en Francia, la tolerancia política en la Holanda del siglo XVII, o la vinculación entre libertad política y libertad de conciencia del siglo XVIII americano. Esta edición pretende poner en evidencia la complejidad del legado de Calvino. (shrink)

Neuroimaging and psychophysiological techniques have proved to be useful in comprehending the extent to which the visual modality is pervasive in mental imagery, and in comprehending the specificity of images generated through other sensory modalities. Although further research is needed to understand the nature of mental images, data attained by means of these techniques suggest that mental imagery requires at least two distinct processing components.

Priming and recollection are expressions of human memory mediated by different brain events. These brain events were monitored while people discriminated words from nonwords. Mean response latencies were shorter for words that appeared in an earlier study phase than for new words. This priming effect was reduced when the letters of words in study-phase presentations were presented individually in succession as opposed to together as complete words. Based on this outcome, visual word-form priming was linked to a brain potential recorded (...) from the scalp over the occipital lobe about 450 ms after word onset. This potential differed from another potential previously associated with recollection, suggesting that distinct operations associated with these two types of memory can be monitored at the precise time that they occur in the human brain. (shrink)

Ted T. Aoki, the most prominent curriculum scholar of his generation in Canada, has influenced numerous scholars around the world. Curriculum in a New Key brings together his work, over a 30-year span, gathered here under the themes of reconceptualizing curriculum; language, culture, and curriculum; and narrative. Aoki's oeuvre is utterly unique--a complex interdisciplinary configuration of phenomenology, post-structuralism, and multiculturalism that is both theoretically and pedagogically sophisticated and speaks directly to teachers, practicing and prospective. Curriculum in a New (...) Key: The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki is an invaluable resource for graduate students, professors, and researchers in curriculum studies, and for students, faculty, and scholars of education generally. (shrink)

The central idea behind this paper is that presuppositions of soft triggers arise from the way our attention structures the informational content of a sentence. Some aspects of the information conveyed are such that we pay attention to them by default, even in the absence of contextual information. On the other hand, contextual cues or conversational goals can divert attention to types of information that we would not pay attention to by default. Either way, whatever we do not pay attention (...) to, be it by default, or in context, is what ends up presupposed by soft triggers. This paper attempts to predict what information in the sentence is likely to end up being the main point (i.e. what we pay attention to) and what information is independent from this, and therefore likely presupposed. It is proposed that this can be calculated by making reference to event times. The notion of aboutness used to calculate independence is based on that of Demolombe and Fariñas del Cerro (In: Holdobler S (ed) Intellectics and computational logic: papers in honor of Wolfgang Bibel, 2000). (shrink)

Some presuppositions are easier to cancel than others in embedded contexts. This contrast has been used as evidence for distinguishing two fundamentally different kinds of presuppositions, ‘soft’ and ‘hard’. ‘Soft’ presuppositions are usually assumed to arise in a pragmatic way, while ‘hard’ presuppositions are thought to be genuine semantic presuppositions. This paper argues against such a distinction and proposes to derive the difference in cancellation from inherent differences in how presupposition triggers interact with the context: their focus sensitivity, anaphoricity, and (...) question–answer congruence properties. The paper also aims to derive the presuppositions of additive particles such as too, also, again, and of it-clefts. (shrink)

This book presents a novel interpretation of Aristotle's account of how shame instils virtue, and defends its philosophical import. Shame is shown to provide motivational continuity between the actions of the learners and the virtuous dispositions that they will eventually acquire.

This paper examines a little studied type of perspective shift that I call protagonist projection, following Holton :625–628, 1997). PP is a way of describing the mental state of a protagonist that conveys, to some extent, her perspective. Similarly to its better known cousin free indirect discourse, the shift in perspective is achieved without an overt operator. Unlike FID, PP is not based on a presumed speech-act of a protagonist. Rather, it gives a linguistic form to pre-verbal perceptual content, sensations, (...) feelings or implicit beliefs. I propose to analyse PP in a bi-contextual framework, extending Eckardt’s approach to FID. Under the resulting analysis, FID and PP are two instances of a more general category of perspective shift. (shrink)

The role of government in East Asian economic development has been a contentious issue. Two competing views have shaped enquiries into the source of the rapid growth of the high-performing Asian economies and attempts to derive a general lesson for other developing economies: the market-friendly view, according to which government intervenes little in the market, and the developmental state view, in which it governs the market. What these views share in common is a conception of market and government as alternative (...) mechanisms for resource allocation. They are distinct only in their judgement of the extent to which market failures have been, and ought to be, remedied by direct government intervention. This collection of essays suggests a breakthrough, third view: the market-enhancing view. Instead of viewing government and the market as mutually exclusive substitutes, it examines the capacity of government policy to facilitate or complement private sector co-ordination. The book starts from the premiss that private sector institutions have important comparative advantages over government, in particular in their ability to process information available on site. At the same time, it recognizes that the capabilities of the private sector are more limited in developing economies. The market-enhancing view thus stresses the mechanisms whereby government policy is directed at improving the ability of the private sector to solve co-ordination problems and overcome other market imperfections. In presenting the market-enhancing view, the book recognizes the wide diversity of the roles of government across various East Asian economiesincluding Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and China and its path-dependent and developmental stage nature. (shrink)

This book is not another parable of Japan's economic success; it provides rich and systematic descriptions of Japanese microeconomic institutions and interprets their work in terms familiar to Western economists. A systematic, in-depth analysis of Japanese institutions of this kind has never been available before. In making his comparative analysis of the Japanese system, Professor Aoki critically examines conventional notions about the microstructure of the market economy that have strongly shaped and influenced economists' approach to industrial organization. While these (...) notions may constitute an appropriate foundation for the analysis of the highly market-oriented Western economies, the author has found that a more complete understanding of the Japanese economy requires us to broaden such 'specific' notions. At one level, therefore, this book may be regarded as a provocative exercise in comparative industrial organization and the theory of the firm. To the extent that this approach is convincing, the book suggests a reordering of focus and emphasis in these studies. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 203 Seiten: 39-51.

The aim of the article is to use J.-P. Sartre’s reflections to show the influence of memory and imagination on the formation of an individual’s life history. The first part of the work consist of philosophical analyses. The imaginations are analyzed here compared to the perceptions and memories. The second part is devoted to autobiography, inseparably connected with the first-person perspective. The philosopher's different creative and intellectual activities and the wide range of material his works contain allow us to expose (...) the discussed issues in a diverse and complementary way. (shrink)