Philosophy of Science Commons^™

Conditions Of Ensuring The Information-Psychological Security Of The Person, Baxriddin Umarov

The Light of Islam

The aim of the article is to reveal some of the socio-psychological capabilities of protecting a person from informationalpsychological threats. The article discusses the psychological possibilities of information and psychological security of a person. Humanity lives in the era of information technology, which accelerated the flow of information, which can change the mood, goals and aspirations of the people of the world, as well as the whole way of thinking. The article also notes that with the transition of mankind to the 21st century, it has been noted with unprecedented growth and quality of information, and today the impact, as …

Non-Empirical Modelling And Theorizing: Scientific Progress In Particle Physics, Cristin Cain Chall

Theses and Dissertations

Particle physics (and other fundamental physics research, including searches for a theory of quantum gravity) faces a problem when it comes to acquiring experimental evidence. Many theories and models make predictions that cannot be tested with current, or even prospective technology. Yet these fields continue to develop, with new models and theories regularly being introduced, scrutinized, changed, and discarded. My project aims at examining the way theories and models are constructed, adapted, and assessed in fields that lack the empirical evidence that usually grounds such tasks. I will focus on two prominent examples: string theory and attempts to explain electroweak …

The Reliable Revisionist, Caitlyn Schaffer

Philosophy: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The present text explores how the topic of head and heart is much more complicated than one would expect, according to Paul Henne and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, contributors of Neuroexistentialism. “Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality” aims at figuring out the problem of which moral judgments we can trust, judgments from one’s head (revisionism) or judgments from one’s heart (conservatism). My hypothesis suggests the opposite of the authors, I believe that if you are a revisionist, your first order intuitions are reliable. After setting the framework, I make three main arguments. (A.) If you are able to self-correct then you can identify errors …

Some Non-Human Languages Of Thought, Nicolas J. Porot

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What might we learn if we take seriously the possibility of non-human Languages of Thought (LoT)? A LoT is a combinatorial set of mental representations. And, since mental representations and rules of combination vary in kind, there are many possible LoTs. Simple LoTs might lack familiar features of the putative human LoT, such as object representations, recursively defined rules of combination, sentential connectives, or predicate-argument structure. The most familiar arguments for the existence of LoTs, such as those from productivity, systematicity, concept learning, and perceptual computation, all fail when applied to non-human animals. But recent empirical evidence motivates attributing LoTs …

Is Ai Intelligent, Really?, Bruce D. Baker

SPU Works

The question of intelligence opens up a bouquet of interrelated questions:

Suppose that some future AGI systems (on-screen or robots) equaled human performance. Would they have real intelligence, real understanding, real creativity? Would they have selves, moral standing, free choice? Would they be conscious? And without consciousness, could they have any of those other properties?[1]

The only way out of the morass is to recognize that truth claims do not stand on their own, aloof and cut off from the sea of meaning which grants epistemic access. In other words, truth presumes access to: (1) a way of knowing, …

Post–Modern Epidemiology: When Methods Meet Matter, George Davey Smith

United States Public Health Resources

In the last third of the 20th century, etiological epidemiology within academia in high-income countries shifted its primary concern from attempting to tackle the apparent epidemic of noncommunicable diseases to an increasing focus on developing statistical and causal inference methodologies. This move was mutually constitutive with the failure of applied epidemiology to make major progress, with many of the advances in understanding the causes of noncommunicable diseases coming from outside the discipline, while ironically revealing the infectious origins of several major conditions. Conversely, there were many examples of epidemiologic studies promoting ineffective interventions and little evident attempt to account for …

Maths Living In Social Arenas, From Practice To Foundations, Nigel Vinckier

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Maths comes to life in human interaction. This has consequences for the mathematics itself. This paper discusses how this ``coming to life'' of mathematics in different social arenas influences the foundations of maths. We will argue that this influence is profound, to the extent that it is hard to upkeep the idea that there is or should be one foundation on which all mathematics can be built.

Millennial Moms : Social Media As The Preferred Source Of Information About Parenting In Indonesia, Yuanita Setyastuti, Jenny Ratna Suminar, Purwanti Hadisiwi, Feliza Zubair

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study aims to know about how social media is the preferred source of information about parenting on millennial moms or young mothers in Indonesia. This research was conducted using a quantitative approach through survey. The survey was conducted by using a questionnaire distributed online to the respondents via Facebook. The measuring is clarified by six dimensions: rejection, punishment, support, responsiveness, autonomy, and warmth. The sampling technique is done by accidental sampling techniques with strict criteria. The sample size were 443 social media users that meet the research criteria. Research criteria are a mother that born in 1980-2000s and actively …

The ‘Law Of Environmental Dependence’ - Biology And Ethics In The Work Of Ernest Everett Just: + Found – Some 251 Mostly Typed Pages, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Abstract-

“The Origin of Man’s Ethical Behavior” (circa October 1941) by Ernest Everett Just and Hedwig A. Schnetzler Just - is an unpublished book manuscript about the biological origins and evolution of ethical behavior, and about “the law of environmental dependence.” Missing since Just’s death in October 1941, it was found and identified in May 2018 among the collected papers of Ernest Everett Just preserved at the Howard University Moorland-Spingarn Research Center in Washington, DC. In addition to the 1996 US postage with the caption “Ernest E. Just, Biologist,” we now have reason to add two new postage stamps with …

Natural Kinds And Ceteris Paratis Generalizations: In Praise Of Hunches, W. Christropher Boyd, Richard N. Boyd

Chemistry Faculty Publications

According to stereotypical logical empiricist conceptions, scientific findings are approximately true (or perhaps true ceteris paribus) law-like generalizations used to predict natural phenomena. They are deployed using topic-neutral, generally reliable inferential principles like deductive or statistical inferences. Natural kinds are the kinds in such generalizations. Chemical examples show that such conceptions are seriously incomplete. Some important chemical generalizations are true often enough, even though not usually true, and they are applied using esoteric topic- and discipline-specific inference rules. Their important methodological role is to underwrite often-enough reliable, often socially implemented, scientifically informed guessing about chemical phenomena. Some chemical natural …

A Metacognitive Approach To Trust And A Case Study: Artificial Agency, Ioan Muntean

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Trust is defined as a belief of a human H (`the trustor') about the ability of an agent A (the `trustee') to perform future action(s). We adopt here dispositionalism and internalism about trust: H trusts A iff A has some internal dispositions as competences. The dispositional competences of A are high-level metacognitive requirements, in the line of a naturalized virtue epistemology. (Sosa, Carter) We advance a Bayesian model of two (i) confidence in the decision and (ii) model uncertainty. To trust A, H demands A to be self-assertive about confidence and able to self-correct its own models. In the Bayesian …

Phantoms In Science: Nietzsche's Nonobjectivity On Planck's Quanta, Donald Richard Dickerson Iii

Undergraduate Theses

What does Maxwell Planck's concept of phantomness suggest about the epistemological basis of science and how might a Nietzschean critique reveal solution to the weaknesses revealed? With his solution to Kirchoff's equation, Maxwell Planck launched the paradigm of quantum physics. This same solution undermined much of current understandings of science versus pseudoscience. Using Nietzsche's perspectivism and other philosophical critiques, Planck's answer to blackbody radiation is used to highlight the troubles with phantom problems in science and how to try to direct science towards a more holistic and complete scientific approach.

Imagined Futures: Feminist Science Studies In An Era Of Climate Change Denial, Emily K. Crandall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What space is there for critical approaches to science in a context where the authority of science to say anything meaningful, or to prescribe, appears to be somewhat tenuous—in other words, in a moment of rampant climate change denial? To answer this question against the backdrop of the common refrain that the problem is one of capitalism vs. the climate (e.g. Naomi Klein 2014), I examine cases where debates about science, economistic organizational arrangements, and political clashes between neoliberals and environmentalists come together, while insisting on the view, following critical engagements with the sciences, that the sciences and their societies …

Three Coins In The Fountain: The Mueller Report And Russian Active Measures, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article identifies non-political elements of Russian Federation political warfare as inferred from the Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.

Fatal Attractions, Elective Affinities, And Deadly Epistemologies, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article cites film, the novel, and news report to underline the deadly seriousness of the quest for knowledge.

Espionage: Why Did Hanssen Do It?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes speculative elements of a post-dictive profile on Robert P. Hanssen’s convictions for espionage and conspiracy.

Reasoning Of The Highest Leibniz And The Moral Quality Of Reason, Ryan Quandt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Loving God is our highest perfection for Leibniz. It secures our belief and trust in the Creator, which is integral to the sciences as well as faith. Those who love God have justification for reasoning, that is, they can rationally expect to arrive at truth. This is because love is a receptivity to the perfection all of things; loving God, then, is a disposition and tendency toward the most perfect being, the ens perfectissimum. Individuals who perceive the divine nature “do not merely fear the power of the supreme and all-seeing monarch,” Leibniz writes, “but are assured of his beneficence, …

Course Syllabus (Sp19) Coli 214b--Literature & Society: "A.I. And Other Radical Humanisms In Cyberpunk And Science Fiction", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

As that which we call “technology” continues to evolve as both concept and practice, we discover ever more inventive ways to answer its call, and science fiction seems to serve as a universal standpoint from which global societies manage to confront, question, and reimagine the nature of our shared humanity as a radically technical relation. While the growing social pervasiveness of artificial intelligence and the attendant encoded transformations of “the human” appear, together, to form a relatively absolute horizon of political thinking, social agency, and aesthetic experience, it seems certain that our current crisis also offers us …

Thinking Algorithmically: From Cold War Computer Science To The Socialist Information Culture, Ksenia Tatarchenko

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Cold War competition shaped the process of computerization in both East and West during the second half of the twentieth century. This article combines insights from Science and Technology Studies, which brought the analysis of Cold War technopolitics beyond the context of the nation-state, with approaches from Critical Algorithm Studies, to question the algorithm's role in the global "computer revolution." It traces the algorithm's trajectory across several geographical, political, and discursive spaces to argue that its mutable cultural valences made the algorithm a universalizing attribute for representing human-machine interactions across the ideological divide. It shows that discourses about the human …

The Political Psychology Of Crossroads, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article elaborates on how the construct of crossroads has situated within political psychological discourse.

A Political Psychology Of Obituary, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article ascribes political psychological relevance to the recent death of Russian critic and documentarian Maya Turovskaya.

Painting Intimacy: Art-Based Research Of Intimacy, Michal Lev

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

This art-based research explores whether — and, if so, how — the process of painting, together with witnessing and reflection on the process and imagery, further an understanding of intimacy. The research also examines the conditions that favor intimacy, the obstacles to intimacy, and the particular features of artistic media, processes and reflection, through the editing of video footage, that can further the intimate experience. The participants in the study were five adults (including the researcher) between the ages of thirty and eighty who were familiar with the creation of visual art. Among them were three women and two men …

Answers To Questions - Martin Wieser’S “Psychology In National Socialism [Psychologie Im Nationalsozialismus] At Sigmund Freud Private University Berlin, July 27–28, 2018”, Martin Wieser, Richard W. Bloom

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This Scholarly Commons record provides the transcript of the interview IBPP editor Dr. Richard Bloom conducted with Dr. Martin Wieser of Sigmund Freud Private University Berlin on March 2, 2019.

With the publication of Dr. Wieser’s “Psychology in National Socialism [Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus] at Sigmund Freud Private University Berlin, July 27–28, 2018” in History of Psychology, 22(1), 107-109., the IBPP Editor requested that the author provide responses to questions…and Dr. Wieser graciously accepted.

Popular Culture And The Psychology Of The Insider Threat, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article illustrates an identification between pop culture and an important intelligence, law enforcement, and security issue.

A Very Glabrate Form!: How A Diminutive Plant Enthralled Botanists On Both Sides Of The Atlantic, Douglas Tuers

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

Spanning over the 19^th and 20^th centuries the great botanists of America and Europe fought to resolve the taxonomy of Clematis ovata Pursh. The taxonomic moves that took place in the debate between the early 1800’s and the 1960’s support six meta-statements. 1. The botany practiced throughout this story eventually required an attention to the geology of shale-barrens from botanists beginning with Edward Steele. 2. This story requires a few amendments to Weldon Boone’s three causes for the botanical celebrity of Kate’s Mountain. 3. Kate’s Mountain acted as a proto-repository for shale barren endemics. 4. The botanists in …

The Political Psychology Of Death: Until It Do Us Part, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes interwoven complexities and psychologies of life and death in the lives of political actors.

“I’Ll Be Your Mirror”, The Soul, And Intelligence And Counterintelligence Applications, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes how the psychological trope of mirroring can explicate mass leadership and betrayals of trust.

When Is Terrorism All In The Family?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes putative linkages between family relationships and kinds of terrorism.

Psychologies Of Going Nuclear, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article identifies multiple psychologies affecting joining and withdrawing from nuclear weapons agreements.

The Us Government Shutdown: When Is Personality Shut Out?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article identifies factors influencing how significant a leader’s personality affects political decision making and behavior.