Concepts and Reference. Defending a Dual Theory of Natural Kind Concepts

In this thesis I argue that the psychological study of concepts and categorisation, and the philosophical study of reference are deeply intertwined. I propose that semantic intuitions are a variety of categorisation judgements, determined by concepts, and that because of this, concepts determine reference. I defend a dual theory of natural kind concepts, according to which natural kind concepts have distinct semantic cores and non-semantic identification procedures. Drawing on psychological essentialism, I suggest that the cores consist of externalistic placeholder essence beliefs. The identification procedures, in turn, consist of prototypes, sets of exemplars, or possibly also theory-structured beliefs. I argue that the dual theory is motivated both by experimental data and theoretical considerations. The thesis consists of three interrelated articles. Article I examines philosophical causal and description theories of natural kind term reference, and argues that they involve, or need to involve, certain psychological elements. I propose a unified theory of natural kind term reference, built on the psychology of concepts. Article II presents two semantic adaptations of psychological essentialism, one of which is a strict externalistic Kripkean-Putnamian theory, while the other is a hybrid account, according to which natural kind terms are ambiguous between internalistic and externalistic senses. We present two experiments, the results of which support the strict externalistic theory. Article III examines Fodor’s influential atomistic theory of concepts, according to which no psychological capacities associated with concepts constitute them, or are necessary for reference. I argue, contra Fodor, that the psychological mechanisms are necessary for reference.

Category structure affects the developmental trajectory of children’s inductive inferences for both natural kinds and artefacts

Inductive reasoning is fundamental to human cognition, yet it remains unclear how we develop this ability and what might influence our inductive choices. We created novel categories in which crucial factors such as domain and category structure were manipulated orthogonally. We trained 403 4-9-year-old children to categorise well-matched natural kind and artefact stimuli with either featural or relational category structure, followed by induction tasks. This wide age range allowed for the first full exploration of the developmental trajectory of inductive reasoning in both domains. We found a gradual transition from perceptual to categorical induction with age. This pattern was stable across domains, but interestingly, children showed a category bias one year later for relational categories. We hypothesise that the ability to use category information in inductive reasoning develops gradually, but is delayed when children need to process and apply more complex category structures. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

Un aspecte semàntic dels termes generals : la rigidesa

L'objectiu de la recerca és determinar quina és la noció de rigidesa més adient per als termes generals. Els termes generals són els que, per oposició als termes singulars, es poden aplicar a més d'un individu o exemplar, com per exemple 'tigre', 'aigua', 'bolígraf'. Des de Kripke es considera que alguns termes singulars, com els noms propis, són rígids. Un terme singular és rígid quan designa el mateix individu o objecte en tot món possible. Així 'Sòcrates' és un terme rígid perquè designa el mateix individu, Sòcrates, en tota circumstància contrafàctica. Kripke va proposar que alguns termes generals, com els termes de gènere natural, tals com 'aigua', 'calor' o 'tigre' també són rígids, però no va donar cap formulació precisa de la rigidesa per a termes generals. Des de llavors s'han proposat bàsicament dues concepcions de la rigidesa per a aquests termes: la que els considera designadors rígids i la que els considera aplicadors rígids. L'anàlisi de les dues concepcions pretén determinar quina és la millor comprensió de la rigidesa per a aquests termes, resultant la concepció dels aplicadors rígids indesitjable fonamentalment pels seus compromisos metafísics i allunyats de la semàntica.

Experimental philosophy of language

Experimental philosophy of language uses experimental methods developed in the cognitive sciences to investigate topics of interest to philosophers of language. This article describes the methodological background for the development of experimental approaches to topics in philosophy of language, distinguishes negative and positive projects in experimental philosophy of language, and evaluates experimental work on the reference of proper names and natural kind terms. The reliability of expert judgments vs. the judgments of ordinary speakers, the role that ambiguity plays in influencing responses to experiments, and the reliability of meta-linguistic judgments are also assessed.

An investigation into children’s inductive reasoning strategies:What drives the development of category induction?

In a series of studies, I investigated the developmental changes in children’s inductive reasoning strategy, methodological manipulations affecting the trajectory, and driving mechanisms behind the development of category induction. I systematically controlled the nature of the stimuli used, and employed a triad paradigm in which perceptual cues were directly pitted against category membership, to explore under which circumstances children used perceptual or category induction. My induction tasks were designed for children aged 3-9 years old using biologically plausible novel items. In Study 1, I tested 264 children. Using a wide age range allowed me to systematically investigate the developmental trajectory of induction. I also created two degrees of perceptual distractor – high and low – and explored whether the degree of perceptual similarity between target and test items altered children’s strategy preference. A further 52 children were tested in Study 2, to examine whether children showing a perceptual-bias were in fact basing their choice on maturation categories. A gradual transition was observed from perceptual to category induction. However, this transition could not be due to the inability to inhibit high perceptual distractors as children of all ages were equally distracted. Children were also not basing their strategy choices on maturation categories. In Study 3, I investigated category structure (featural vs. relational category rules) and domain (natural vs. artefact) on inductive preference. I tested 403 children. Each child was assigned to either the featural or relational condition, and completed both a natural kind and an artefact task. A further 98 children were tested in Study 4, on the effect of using stimuli labels during the tasks. I observed the same gradual transition from perceptual to category induction preference in Studies 3 and 4. This pattern was stable across domains, but children developed a category-bias one year later for relational categories, arguably due to the greater demands on executive function (EF) posed by these stimuli. Children who received labels during the task made significantly more category choices than those who did not receive labels, possibly due to priming effects. Having investigated influences affecting the developmental trajectory, I continued by exploring the driving mechanism behind the development of category induction. In Study 5, I tested 60 children on a battery of EF tasks as well as my induction task. None of the EF tasks were able to predict inductive variance, therefore EF development is unlikely to be the driving factor behind the transition. Finally in Study 6, I divided 252 children into either a comparison group or an intervention group. The intervention group took part in an interactive educational session at Twycross Zoo about animal adaptations. Both groups took part in four induction tasks, two before and two a week after the zoo visits. There was a significant increase in the number of category choices made in the intervention condition after the zoo visit, a result not observed in the comparison condition. This highlights the role of knowledge in supporting the transition from perceptual to category induction. I suggest that EF development may support induction development, but the driving mechanism behind the transition is an accumulation of knowledge, and an appreciation for the importance of category membership.

Persons : their identity and individuation

This study is about the nature of persons and personal identity. It belongs to a tradition that maintains that in order to understand what it is to be a person we must clarify what personal identity consists in. In this pursuit, I differentiate between the problems (i) How do persons persist? and (ii) What facts, if any, does personal identity consist in? Concerning the first question, I argue that persons persist three-dimensionally (the endurance view), and not four-dimensionally (the perdurarne view), on the ground that objects must always fall under some substance sortal concept S (the sortal dependency of individuation), and that the concept person entails that objects falling under it are three-dimensional. Concerning the second question, I differentiate between Criterianists, who maintain that it is possible to specify a non-circular and informative criterion for personal identity, and Non-Criterianists, who deny that such a specification is possible. I argue against Criterianist accounts of personal identity on the ground that they are either (i) circular, (ii) violate the intrinsicality of identity or (iii) do not adequately represent what we are essentially. I further criticise three Psychological Non-Criterianist accounts of personal identity on the ground that they wrongly assume that 'person' refers to mental entities. Instead I formulate the Revised Animal Attribute View where person is understood as a basic sortal concept which picks out a biological sort of enduring animals. In this, I claim that the real essence of a person is determined by the real essence of the kind of animal he is, without thereby denying that persons have a real essence as persons.

ENERGÍA EÓLICA Y PAISAJES PROTEGIDOS: CONTROVERSIAS EN EL PARQUE NATURAL DE MONTESINHO

As one of the case studies developed under the international project “Eoliennes et paysage” we could follow the controversial issue of wind power and protected areas in the Montesinho Natural Park, Northeast Portugal, where the local populations demand the setting up of a wind farm in unproductive communal lands, aspiring to benefi t economically from it, while the preservationist claims against wind power within the protected area are sensed by them as an external and illegitimate interference in the communitarian management of a local heritage. Although wind power installation in Montesinho mountains is yet only a virtual possibility (facing hard administrative and technical barriers), this case study contributed to shed light into the kind of negotiations that are being promoted at local and regional levels, and how the present banning of wind power in the region due to conservation restrictions is reactivating ancient antagonisms.

Multiscaling and information content of natural color images

Naive scale invariance is not a true property of natural images. Natural monochrome images possess a much richer geometrical structure, which is particularly well described in terms of multiscaling relations. This means that the pixels of a given image can be decomposed into sets, the fractal components of the image, with well-defined scaling exponents [Turiel and Parga, Neural Comput. 12, 763 (2000)]. Here it is shown that hyperspectral representations of natural scenes also exhibit multiscaling properties, observing the same kind of behavior. A precise measure of the informational relevance of the fractal components is also given, and it is shown that there are important differences between the intrinsically redundant red-green-blue system and the decorrelated one defined in Ruderman, Cronin, and Chiao [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 15, 2036 (1998)].

Natural and synthetic fibres improving tensile strength and elongation of paper products

The theory part of the Master’s thesis introduces fibres with high tensile strength and elongation used in the production of paper or board. Strong speciality papers are made of bleached softwood long fibre pulp. The aim of the thesis is to find new fibres suitable for paper making to increase either tensile strength, elongation or both properties. The study introduces how fibres bond and what kind of fibres give the strongest bonds into fibre matrix. The fibres that are used the in manufacturing of non-wovens are long and elastic. They are longer than softwood cellulose fibres. The end applications of non-wovens and speciality papers are often the same, for instance, wet napkins or filter media. The study finds out which fibres are used in non-wovens and whether the same fibres could be added to cellulose pulp as armature fibres, what it would require for these fibres to be blended in cellulose, how they would bind with cellulose and whether some binding agents or thermal bonding, such as hot calendaring would be necessary. The following fibres are presented: viscose, polyester, nylon, polyethylene, polypropylene and bicomponent fibres. In the empiric part of the study the most suitable new fibres are selected for making hand sheets in laboratory. Test fibres are blended with long fibre cellulose. The test fibres are viscose (Tencel), polypropylene and polyethylene. Based on the technical values measured in the sheets, the study proposes how to continue trials on paper machine with viscose, polyester, bicomponent and polypropylene fibres.

Natural air conditioning, traditions and trends : high performance of sustainable indoor ventilation in a hot and dry climate

De nos jours, l'utilisation accrue de combustibles à base de fossiles et l'électricité met en péril l'environnement naturel à cause des niveaux élevés de pollution. Il est donc plausible de prévoir des économies d'énergie significatives grâce à la climatisation dite «naturelle»». En accord avec les objectifs acceptés à l'échelle internationale d'une architecture «verte» et durable, l'utilisation de cours intérieures associées aux capteurs de vent, aux murs-Trombe et à d'autres systèmes de climatisation naturelle (aussi bien traditionnels que nouveaux), paraît prometteuse. Ce mémoire propose une analyse de nouvelles approches à la climatisation naturelle et à la production d'air frais avec une consommation minimale d'énergie, eu égard aux traditions et aux tendances, en particulier dans les zones climatiques chaudes et sèches comme l'Iran. Dans ce contexte, regarder l'architecture de l'Islam et la discipline du Qur'an paraissent offrir un guide pour comprendre l'approche musulmane aux processus de décision en design. Nous regardons donc les traditions et les tendances en ce qui concerne la climatisation naturelle à travers l'élément le plus important du contexte islamique, à savoir le Qur'an. C'est pourquoi, à l'intérieur du thème de la tradition, nous avons pris en compte quelques considérations concernant l'influence de l'Islam, et en particulier le respect de la nature associé à un équilibre entre l'harmonie et l'individualité. Ce sont autant de facteurs qui influencent la prise de décisions visant à résoudre des problèmes scientifiques majeurs selon la philosophie et les méthodes islamiques ; ils nous permettent de faire quelques recommandations. La description des principes sous-jacents aux capteurs à vent et des antécédents trouvés dans la nature tels que les colonies de termites, est présentée également. Sous la rubrique tendances, nous avons introduit l'utilisation de matériaux et de principes de design nouveaux. Regarder simultanément ces matériaux nouveaux et l'analogie des colonies de termites suggère de bonnes approches à la conception d'abris pour les victimes de tremblements de terre dans les régions sisimques. Bam, une ville iranienne, peut être considérée comme un exemple spécifique illustrant où les principes exposés dans ce mémoire peuvent s'appliquer le plus adéquatement.

Immobilization of Diastase α-amylase on to synthetic and natural polymers

Several natural and synthetic supports have been assessed for their efficiency for enzyme immobilization. Synthetic polymer materials are prepared by chemical polymerization using various monomers. As a kind of important carrier, synthetic polymer materials exhibit the advantages of good mechanical rigidity, high specific surface area, inertness to microbial attack, easy to change their surface characteristics, and their potential for bringing specific functional group according to actual needs. Hence, they have been widely investigated and used for enzyme immobilization. When it comes to the natural polymer materials, much attention has been paid to cellulose and other natural polymer materials owing to their wide range of sources, easy modification, nontoxic, and pollution-free, with a possibility of introducing wide variety of functional groups and good biocompatible properties. In this work report the use of synthetic polymer, polypyrrole and its derivatives and natural polymers coconut fiber and sugarcane bagasse as supports for Diastase α- amylase immobilization. An attempt was also made to functionalize both synthetic and natural polymers using Amino-propyl triethoxysilane. Supports and their immobilized forms were characterized via FT-IR, TG, SEM, XRD, BET and EDS techniques. Immobilization parameters were also optimized so as to prepare stable immobilized biocatalyst for starch hydrolysis.

Influencia de la exploración y el almacenamiento de petróleo y gas natural en la relación de las organizaciones con las comunidades

El presente trabajo pretendía investigar y analizar el funcionamiento del mercado de hidrocarburos y gas natural, en busca de determinar la Influencia de la exploración y el almacenamiento de petróleo y gas natural en la relación de las organizaciones con las comunidades. Teniendo en cuenta el concepto de comunidad a partir del marketing relacional donde la comunidad se refiere a los consumidores y el entorno en el cual están inmersos. En este contexto se definieron los principales actores que participan en la relación comercial, el tipo de relación presente entre ellos y todos los factores que intervienen en desarrollo de esta relación que cada vez es más inestable y de corto plazo. Al finalizar esta investigación se reunió información acerca de las relaciones comerciales en el mercado de hidrocarburos, que servirán de fundamento para investigaciones futuras que permitirán plantear alternativas para sobrellevar la incertidumbre de este mercado y de esa manera lograr desarrollar una relación más confiable y duradera entre las organizaciones y las comunidades que intervienen en el proceso comercial. Debido a que aunque existe gran diversidad estrategias que pueden ser implementadas para mantener una relación estable, estas en la mayor parte de los casos no son utilizadas.

Qualidade do café natural e despolpado após secagem em terreiro e com altas temperaturas

Objetivou-se no presente trabalho verificar a qualidade do café natural e despolpado durante a secagem em terreiro e secagem com ar aquecido a 40º e 60ºC. O trabalho foi realizado no Departamento de Engenharia e no Pólo de Tecnologia em Pós-Colheita do Café da Universidade Federal de Lavras (UFLA). A colheita do café, cultivar Topázio, foi seletiva. Parte do café foi despolpado e outra parte processado de forma natural. Uma parcela de cada tipo de café foi conduzida para a secagem em terreiro e outra parcela para secagem com temperaturas de 40ºC e 60ºC. Para avaliação da qualidade, foram feitos teste de condutividade elétrica e lixiviação de potássio; determinação de acidez titulável total; teste de acidez graxa; açúcares totais e redutores. Os resultados obtidos permitem concluir que: o tempo para secagem é afetado pelos diferentes tipos de secagem e processamentos; a condutividade elétrica, a lixiviação de potássio, a acidez titulável total e a acidez graxa aumentam com a elevação da temperatura de secagem, independente do tipo de processamento; os açúcares redutores e os açúcares totais diminuem com o aumento da tem peratura de secagem independente do tipo de processamento; a secagem com temperatura de 60ºC afetou negativamente a qualidade do café.

TL, EPR and optical absorption studies on natural alexandrite compared to natural chrysoberyl

The TL, optical absorption (OA) and EPR properties of natural Brazilian alexandrite and chrysoberyl have been investigated. The TL measurements for natural alexandrite show five peaks between 100 and 450°C, with their emission spectrum having 370 and/or 570 nm components. The intensity of the 320°C TL peak was found to be enhanced with pre-annealing treatment, more prominently above 600°C. The OA and EPR measurements showed that this kind of heat treatment induces the Fe2→ Fe3+ conversion in the natural sample. Chrysoberyl samples exhibited the TL peaks at the same temperatures as alexandrite samples, but the glow curves were more than 200 times less intense than alexandrite ones.

Diversity, natural history, and geographic distribution of snakes in the Caatinga, Northeastern Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)