Expanding Our Grasp: Causal Knowledge and the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives

I argue that scientific realism, insofar as it is only committed to those scientific posits of which we have causal knowledge, is immune to Kyle Stanford’s argument from unconceived alternatives. This causal strategy (previously introduced, but not worked out in detail, by Anjan Chakravartty) is shown not to repeat the shortcomings of previous realist responses to Stanford’s argument. Furthermore, I show that the notion of causal knowledge underlying it can be made sufficiently precise by means of conceptual tools recently introduced into the debate on scientific realism. Finally, I apply this strategy to the case of Jean Perrin’s experimental work on the atomic hypothesis, disputing Stanford’s claim that the problem of unconceived alternatives invalidates a realist interpretation of this historical episode.

Enhanced Knowledge Management by Synchronizing Mind Maps and Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

This paper presents a conceptual approach to enhance knowledge management by synchronizing mind maps and fuzzy cognitive maps. The use of mind maps allows taking advantage of human creativity, while the application of fuzzy cognitive maps enables to store information expressed in natural language. By applying cognitive computing, it makes possible to gather and extract relevant information out of a data pool. Therefore, this approach is supposed to give a framework that enhances knowledge management. To demonstrate the potential of this framework, a use case concerning the development of a smart city app is presented.

The illness narratives of Hispanic American women with coronary heart disease (CHD): An ethnographic approach

Purpose. To provide a descriptive representation of the illness narratives described by Hispanic American women with CHD. ^ Design. Focused ethnographic design. ^ Setting. One outpatient general medicine clinic, one nurse-managed health promotion clinic, and informants' homes in a large metropolitan city located in southeast Texas. ^ Sample. Purposeful sampling from two different sites resulted in 17 interviews being conducted with 14 informants. ^ Method. Focused ethnographic techniques were employed in the designation of participants for the study, data collection, analysis and re-presentation. Audiotaped interviews and fieldwork were transcribed verbatim and analyzed through an iterative process of data reduction, data display, drawing conclusions and verification. ^ Findings. The developing conceptual framework that emerged from the data is labeled after the overarching experience described by informants, the experience of Embodied Exhaustion. Embodied Exhaustion, as described in this study, refers to an ongoing, dynamic, indeterminate experience of mind-body exhaustion resulting from a complex constellation of biologic, psychological and social distresses occurring over the life course. The experience consists of three categories: Taking Care of Others, Wearing Down and Hurting Hearts. Two stabilizing forces were identified: Collective Self and Believing in God. ^ Conclusions. The findings of this study emphasize the importance of framing all research, theory and practice targeting Hispanic women with CHD within a sociocentric paradigm. Nursing is challenged to provide care that extends beyond the physical body of the patient to include the social context of illness, especially the family. ^

Na 1 Nachlass Max Horkheimer, 697 - Cultural Aspects of National Socialism. A Research Project (p. IX 170.6 - 170.10)

"Bureaucracy" verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, circa 51 Blatt; Handschriftliche Notizen, 4 Blatt; "Mass Culture" verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, circa 40 Blatt ; zwei Manuskripte, eins von Max Horkheimer, 3 Blatt; "Anti-Christianity" verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, circa 51 Blatt; Eigenhändige Notizen von Max Horkheimer, 1 Blatt; "The War and Post-War Generation" verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, darunter ein Typoskript auf deutsch, mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen von Max Horkheimer, circa 67 Blatt; "Ideological Permeation of Labor and New Middle Classes" [enthält unter anderem den Titel "The German Masses and the Philosophy of National Socialism"] verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, circa 36 Blatt; Notizem, 2 Blatt;

Mind-body therapy use among U.S. children and adolescents

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has increased dramatically in the United States in the past several decades. While botanicals and dietary supplements have received the majority of attention in the popular and scholarly literature on alternative therapies, mind-body therapies, such as biofeedback, meditation, hypnosis, massage and chiropractic care presently constitute a large portion of the American public's use of CAM. The present study explores the patterns and prevalence of such therapy use among an under-studied population of CAM users: children and adolescents. Using data from the 2007 National Health Interview Survey, this paper describes the prevalence, patterns, and predictors of mind-body therapy use among a nationally representative sample of children (n=9,417) using a multidimensional model of health care behavior. The contribution of predisposing, enabling, and medical factors to mind-body therapy use among children will be also examined. Results provide additional evidence to a growing body of literature documenting that children and adolescents increasingly turn to mind-body therapies to alleviate symptoms, cope with chronic or life-threatening diseases, and to promote overall well-being. ^

El concepto deleuziano de “functor"

El artículo repasa la concepción deleuziana de la filosofía de la ciencia con el objeto de intentar explicitar el rol determinante que su proyecto ontológico (i.e., la concepción del ser en términos de “repetición de la diferencia") pareciera desempeñar en su doble caracterización del producto de la actividad científica: por una parte, en lo que respecta a la cognición científica y a partir de la crítica de la representación, su revisión de la noción de “función"; por otra, en lo que se refiere al pensamiento científico y en virtud de su crítica de la identidad, la elaboración de la noción de “functor".

Walter Chatton y Adam of Wodeham : dos perspectivas medievales funcionalistas sobre la naturaleza de algunos estados mentales

En este artículo tenemos como objetivo mostrar que, por una parte, en oposición a la teoría de William of Ockham, las teorías de Walter Chatton y Adam of Wodeham convienen con la doctrina contemporánea según la cual los estados mentales son estados funcionales de un cierto tipo. Por otra parte, en este artículo queremos revelar que aquellas teorías medievales que podemos llamar funcionalistas fundamentan una perspectiva económica medieval respecto a la composición de un ser humano.

Where does Philippine education go? : the "K to 12" program and reform of Philippine basic education

In 2012 the Philippines launched its "K to 12" Program, a comprehensive reform of its basic education. Through this reform, the Philippines is catching up with global standards in secondary education and is attaching a high value to kindergarten. The structure, curricula, and philosophy of the education system are undergoing reform and improvement. The key points of the new policy are "preparation" for higher education, "eligibility" for entering domestic and overseas higher educational institutions, and immediate "employability" on graduating, all leading toward a "holistically developed Filipino". This policy appears admirable and timely, but it faces some pedagogical and socioeconomic problems. The author wants to point out in particular that the policy needs to address gender problems and should be combined with demand-side approaches in order to promote poverty alleviation and human development in the Philippines.

Secure access control by means of human stress detection

This paper proposes a stress detection system based on fuzzy logic and the physiological signals heart rate and galvanic skin response. The main contribution of this method relies on the creation of a stress template, collecting the behaviour of previous signals under situations with a different level of stress in each individual. The creation of this template provides an accuracy of 99.5% in stress detection, improving the results obtained by current pattern recognition techniques like GMM, k-NN, SVM or Fisher Linear Discriminant. In addition, this system can be embedded in security systems to detect critical situations in accesses as cross-border control. Furthermore, its applications can be extended to other fields as vehicle driver state-of-mind management, medicine or sport training.

Open Technologies for prototyping the Internet of Things

The worldwide "hyper-connection" of any object around us is the challenge that promises to cover the paradigm of the Internet of Things. If the Internet has colonized the daily life of more than 2000 million1 people around the globe, the Internet of Things faces of connecting more than 100000 million2 "things" by 2020. The underlying Internet of Things’ technologies are the cornerstone that promises to solve interrelated global problems such as exponential population growth, energy management in cities, and environmental sustainability in the average and long term. On the one hand, this Project has the goal of knowledge acquisition about prototyping technologies available in the market for the Internet of Things. On the other hand, the Project focuses on the development of a system for devices management within a Wireless Sensor and Actuator Network to offer some services accessible from the Internet. To accomplish the objectives, the Project will begin with a detailed analysis of various “open source” hardware platforms to encourage creative development of applications, and automatically extract information from the environment around them for transmission to external systems. In addition, web platforms that enable mass storage with the philosophy of the Internet of Things will be studied. The project will culminate in the proposal and specification of a service-oriented software architecture for embedded systems that allows communication between devices on the network, and the data transmission to external systems. Furthermore, it abstracts the complexities of hardware to application developers. RESUMEN. La “hiper-conexión” a nivel mundial de cualquier objeto que nos rodea es el desafío al que promete dar cobertura el paradigma de la Internet de las Cosas. Si la Internet ha colonizado el día a día de más de 2000 millones1 de personas en todo el planeta, la Internet de las Cosas plantea el reto de conectar a más de 100000 millones2 de “cosas” para el año 2020. Las tecnologías subyacentes de la Internet de las Cosas son la piedra angular que prometen dar solución a problemas globales interrelacionados como el crecimiento exponencial de la población, la gestión de la energía en las ciudades o la sostenibilidad del medioambiente a largo plazo. Este Proyecto Fin de Carrera tiene como principales objetivos por un lado, la adquisición de conocimientos acerca de las tecnologías para prototipos disponibles en el mercado para la Internet de las Cosas, y por otro lado el desarrollo de un sistema para la gestión de dispositivos de una red inalámbrica de sensores que ofrezcan unos servicios accesibles desde la Internet. Con el fin de abordar los objetivos marcados, el proyecto comenzará con un análisis detallado de varias plataformas hardware de tipo “open source” que estimulen el desarrollo creativo de aplicaciones y que permitan extraer de forma automática información del medio que les rodea para transmitirlo a sistemas externos para su posterior procesamiento. Por otro lado, se estudiarán plataformas web identificadas con la filosofía de la Internet de las Cosas que permitan el almacenamiento masivo de datos que diferentes plataformas hardware transfieren a través de la Internet. El Proyecto culminará con la propuesta y la especificación una arquitectura software orientada a servicios para sistemas empotrados que permita la comunicación entre los dispositivos de la red y la transmisión de datos a sistemas externos, así como facilitar el desarrollo de aplicaciones a los programadores mediante la abstracción de la complejidad del hardware.

Wendell Berry's Critique of E. O. Wilson on Science

Drawing on the work of Wendell Berry, among others, allows us to see through claims that science has on limits (scientism). Berry shows what follies scientism generates and provides his own guidelines to what the limits of science are or ought to be.

Embodied Religion and Liberal Society: The Obstacle of De Facto Established Religion

Recent scholarship suggests that religion should be conceived in terms of embodied social practices as much as (if not more than) a set of systematic beliefs. Such accounts of religion, I will argue, raise problems that have not been adequately treated in current discussion of the role of religion in liberal society.

Reformed Epistemology, Clairvoyance, and the Role of Evidence

Reformed epidemiologists like Alvin Plantinga and William Alston are well known for their view that one can rationally believe that God exists without believing on the basis of any evidence - scientific, philosophical, or otherwise. I defend reformed epistemology from objections (including one having to do with clairvoyance), and I develop a view about the role that evidence should play in the rationality of theistic belief.