In aiming to frame plagiarism as an academic literacy issue, this paper focuses on the strategies used by firsts years Portuguese university students, when writing from sources, along with the relationship between these strategies and the way students view themselves as readers, writers and users of sources. The study was based on 44 short summary essays written by students as well as their responses to a questionnaire and checklist on citation rules. The evaluation of the essays revealed that students often (...) use copying and patchwriting. In addition, we found that much of the time students changed the meaning of the content expressed in the source. In relation to the way students evaluated themselves, generally their view was they used appropriate strategies. The study did not reveal a relationship between perceptions of using appropriate strategies and the use of those same strategies. Nonetheless, we found an association between performance and perceptions of using copying. Perceived use of a ‘think-then-do’ strategy was also related to changing the meaning when writing from sources. Concerning school achievement, stronger students evaluated themselves as using more appropriate strategies, and those who had not previously failed school year also displayed a better knowledge of citation rules. However, we failed to find any relationship between school achievement and the use of strategies for writing from sources. The main findings of the current research point to the existence of issues concerning how to address academic literacy, findings that go beyond plagiarism and, consequently, indicate the need for pedagogical responses. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that qualitative theories (Q-theories) can be used to describe the statistical structure of cross classified populations and that the notion of verisimilitude provides an appropriate tool for measuring the statistical adequacy of Q-theories. First of all, a short outline of the post-Popperian approaches to verisimilitude and of the related verisimilitudinarian non-falsificationist methodologies (VNF-methodologies) is given. Secondly, the notion of Q-theory is explicated, and the qualitative verisimilitude of Q-theories is defined. Afterwards, appropriate measures for the (...) statistical verisimilitude of Q-theories are introduced, so to obtain a clear formulation of the intuitive idea that the statistical truth about cross classified populations can be approached by falsified Q-theories. Finally, it is argued that some basic intuitions underlying VNF-methodologies are shared by the so-called prediction logic, developed by the statisticians and social scientists David K. Hildebrand, James D. Laing and Howard Rosenthal. (shrink)

Confirmation of a hypothesis by evidence can be measured by one of the so far known incremental measures of confirmation. As we show, incremental measures can be formally defined as the measures of confirmation satisfying a certain small set of basic conditions. Moreover, several kinds of incremental measure may be characterized on the basis of appropriate structural properties. In particular, we focus on the so-called Matthew properties: we introduce a family of six Matthew properties including the reverse Matthew effect; we (...) further prove that incremental measures endowed with reverse Matthew effect are possible; finally, we shortly consider the problem of the plausibility of Matthew properties. (shrink)

We explore the grammar of Bayesian confirmation by focusing on some likelihood principles, including the Weak Law of Likelihood. We show that none of the likelihood principles proposed so far is satisfied by all incremental measures of confirmation, and we argue that some of these measures indeed obey new, prima facie strange, antilikelihood principles. To prove this, we introduce a new measure that violates the Weak Law of Likelihood while satisfying a strong antilikelihood condition. We conclude by hinting at some (...) relevant links between the likelihood principles considered here and other properties of Bayesian confirmation recently explored in the literature. (shrink)

As intergenerational interactions increase due to an ageing population, the study of emotion-related responses to the elderly is increasingly relevant. Previous research found mixed results regarding affective mimicry – a measure related to liking and affiliation. In the current study, we investigated emotional mimicry to younger and older actors following an encounter with a younger and older player in a Cyberball game. In a complete exclusion condition, in which both younger and older players excluded the participant, we expected emotional mimicry (...) to be stronger for younger vs. older actors. In a partial inclusion condition, in which the younger player excluded while the older player included the participant, we predicted that the difference in player behaviour would lead to a difference in liking. This increased liking of the older interaction partner should reduce the difference in emotional mimicry towards the two different age groups. Results revealed more mimicry for older actors following partial inclusion especially for negative emotions, suggesting inclusive behaviour by an older person in an interaction as a possible means to increase mimicry and affiliation to the elderly. (shrink)

An important problem in inductive probability theory is the design of exchangeable analogical methods, i.e., of exchangeable inductive methods that take into account certain considerations of analogy by similarity for predictive inferences. Here a precise reformulation of the problem of predictive analogy is given and a new family of exchangeable analogical methods is introduced.Firstly, it is proved that the exchangeable analogical method introduced by Skyrms (1993) does not satisfy the best known general principles of predictive analogy. Secondly, Skyrms's approach — (...) consisting of the usage of particular hyper-Carnapian methods, i.e., mixtures of Carnapian inductive methods — is adopted in the design of a new family of exchangeable analogical methods. Lastly, it is proved that such methods satisfy an interesting general principle of predictive analogy. (shrink)

Biobanks correspond to different situations: research and technological development, medical diagnosis or therapeutic activities. Their status is not clearly defined. We aimed to investigate human biobanking in Europe, particularly in relation to organisational, economic and ethical issues in various national contexts. Data from a survey in six EU countries were collected as part of a European Research Project examining human and non-human biobanking. A total of 147 institutions concerned with biobanking of human samples and data were investigated by questionnaires and (...) interviews. Most institutions surveyed belong to the public or private non-profit-making sectors, which have a key role in biobanking. This activity is increasing in all countries because few samples are discarded and genetic research is proliferating. Collections vary in size, many being small and only a few very large. Their purpose is often research, or research and healthcare, mostly in the context of disease studies. A specific budget is very rarely allocated to biobanking and costs are not often evaluated. Samples are usually provided free of charge and gifts and exchanges are the common rule. Good practice guidelines are generally followed and quality controls are performed but quality procedures are not always clearly explained. Associated data are usually computerised. Biobankers generally favour centralisation of data rather than of samples. Legal and ethical harmonisation within Europe is considered likely to facilitate international collaboration. We propose a series of recommendations and suggestions arising from the EUROGENBANK project. (shrink)

The problem of distance from the truth, and more generally distance between hypotheses, is considered here with respect to the case of quantitative hypotheses concerning the value of a given scientific quantity.Our main goal consists in the explication of the concept of distance D(I, ) between an interval hypothesis I and a point hypothesis . In particular, we attempt to give an axiomatic foundation of this notion on the basis of a small number of adequacy conditions.

Based on an extensive review of the literature and field surveys, the paper proposes a conceptualization and operationalization of corporate citizenship meaningful in two countries: the United States and France. A survey of 210 American and 120 French managers provides support for the proposed definition of corporate citizenship as a construct including the four correlated factors of economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary citizenship. The managerial implications of the research and directions for future research are discussed.

According to the Bayesian view, scientific hypotheses must be appraised in terms of their posterior probabilities relative to the available experimental data. Such posterior probabilities are derived from the prior probabilities of the hypotheses by applying Bayes'theorem. One of the most important problems arising within the Bayesian approach to scientific methodology is the choice of prior probabilities. Here this problem is considered in detail w.r.t. two applications of the Bayesian approach: (1) the theory of inductive probabilities (TIP) developed by Rudolf (...) Carnap and other epistomologists and (2) the analysis of the multinational inferences provided by Bayesian statstics (BS). ... Zie: Summary. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengersâe"one of todayâe(tm)s leading philosophers of scienceâe"goes straight to the beating heart of Whiteheadâe(tm)s thought. The product of thirty yearsâe(tm) engagement with the mathematician-philosopherâe(tm)s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. Reading (...) the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whiteheadâe(tm)s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whiteheadâe(tm)s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whiteheadâe(tm)s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. âeoeTo think with Whitehead today,âe Stengers writes, âeoemeans to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.âe. (shrink)

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To (...) the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: the objection from a difference in ends, the objection from shareholders’ property rights, the objection from worker’s consent, the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, the objection from workers’ expertise, and the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms. (shrink)

An innovative, multifaceted approach to scientific experiments as designed by and shaped through interaction with the modeling process The role of scientific modeling in mediation between theories and phenomena is a critical topic within the philosophy of science, touching on issues from climate modeling to synthetic models in biology, high energy particle physics, and cognitive sciences. Offering a radically new conception of the role of data in the scientific modeling process as well as a new awareness of the problematic aspects (...) of data, this cutting-edge volume offers a multifaceted view on experiments as designed and shaped in interaction with the modeling process. Contributors address such issues as the construction of models in conjunction with scientific experimentation; the status of measurement and the function of experiment in the identification of relevant parameters; how the phenomena under study are reconceived when accounted for by a model; and the interplay between experimenting, modeling, and simulation when results do not mesh. Highlighting the mediating role of models and the model-dependence of data measurement, this volume proposes a normative and conceptual innovation in scientific modeling--that the phenomena to be investigated and modeled must not be precisely identified at the start but specified during the course of the interactions arising between experimental and modeling activities. Contributors: Nancy D. Cartwright, U of California, San Diego; Anthony Chemero, U of Cincinnati; Ronald N. Giere, U of Minnesota; Jenann Ismael, U of Arizona; Tarja Knuuttila, U of South Carolina; Andrea Loettgers, U of Bern, Switzerland; Deborah Mayo, Virginia Tech; Joseph Rouse, Wesleyan U; Paul Teller, U of California, Davis; Michael Weisberg, U of Pennsylvania; Eric Winsberg, U of South Florida. (shrink)

Concerned with the interplay between science, society, and power, Isabelle Stengers offers a unique perspective on the power of scientific theories to modify society, and vice versa. 9 diagrams.

"Isabelle Stengers presents us with a new way of understanding a remarkably diverse range of sciences and their relation to a material and living world. Playing with a position both inside the practices that constitute and transform science and outside the sciences as their mode of conceptualization, Stengers explores the limits, constraints, and inventions that fuse modern science and contemporary society." Elizabeth Grosz --.

This paper demonstrates how argumentation schemes can be used in decision support systems that help clinicians in making treatment decisions. The work builds on the use of computational argumentation, a rigorous approach to reasoning with complex data that places strong emphasis on being able to justify and explain the decisions that are recommended. The main contribution of the paper is to present a novel set of specialised argumentation schemes that can be used in the context of a clinical decision support (...) system to assist in reasoning about what treatments to offer. These schemes provide a mechanism for capturing clinical reasoning in such a way that it can be handled by the formal reasoning mechanisms of formal argumentation. The paper describes how the integration between argumentation schemes and formal argumentation may be carried out, sketches how this is achieved by an implementation that we have created and illustrates the overall process on a small set of case studies. (shrink)

The God of the Machine presents an original theory of history and a bold defense of individualism as the source of moral and political progress.

This study brings together the analysis of a magazine for children published in a mass-circulation newspaper in a poor industrialized country. Based on a comprehensive survey of articles popularizing science, technology and health topics printed in Notícias Miudinho between 1924 and 1933, this paper intends to show how this publication tuned in with the on-going Portuguese political and educational agenda, while highlighting the idiosyncrasies of the networks involved in the publication of the magazine. In addition, and based on the analysis (...) of the magazine’s mail section, this paper questions historiographic claims about the reduced impact of the Republican education programme. At the same time, this essay intends to contribute to the discussion on the historicity of ‘popular science’ while putting in evidence the importance of understanding the particularities of the actors and networks involved locally to grasp the full extent to which science culturally permeates, mirrors and models society worldwide. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive presentation of the Pratyabhij philosophy (elaborated in the 10th and 11th centuries by Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta) by showing how its main concepts arose from the confrontation of aiva religious dogmas ...

Nel suo celebre Principio speranza, Ernst Bloch interpreta il tema della speranza, autentico crocevia della modernitÀ, in una prospettiva di continuitÀ fra il cristianesimo ‘eretico' e il materialismo storico, nella quale il primo, per cosě dire, trae legittimitÀ dal secondo, come religione in ereditÀ. Prendendo in considerazione le teorie di Metz e Moltmann, che disegnano una ‘nuova teologia politica', si puň rintracciare in Bloch un'atipica ‘teologia politica'della speranza volta al futuro, in evidente contrasto con la ‘teologia politica' di Carl Schmitt (...) e con tutte le altre formulazioni politiche della Konservative Revolution, ‘religiosamente' volte al passato? (shrink)

Festa, E., Roux, S. (2008). The Enigma of the Inclined Plane from Heron to Galileo. In: Laird, W.R., Roux, S. (eds) Mechanics and Natural Philosophy Before the Scientific Revolution. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 254. Springer, Dordrecht.

Originally published in French in seven volumes, Cosmopolitics investigates the role and authority of the sciences in modern societies and challenges their claims to objectivity, rationality, and truth. Cosmopolitics II includes the first English-language translations of the last four books: Quantum Mechanics: The End of the Dream, In the Name of the Arrow of Time: Prigogine’s Challenge, Life and Artifice: The Faces of Emergence, and The Curse of Tolerance. Arguing for an “ecology of practices” in the sciences, Isabelle Stengers explores (...) the discordant landscape of knowledge derived from modern science, seeking intellectual consistency among contradictory, confrontational, and mutually exclusive philosophical ambitions and approaches. For Stengers, science is a constructive enterprise, a diverse, interdependent, and highly contingent system that does not simply discover preexisting truths but, through specific practices and processes, helps shape them.Stengers concludes this philosophical inquiry with a forceful critique of tolerance; it is a fundamentally condescending attitude, she contends, that prevents those worldviews that challenge dominant explanatory systems from being taken seriously. Instead of tolerance, she proposes a “cosmopolitics” that rejects politics as a universal category and allows modern scientific practices to peacefully coexist with other forms of knowledge. (shrink)

After years of the welfare state, the rise of technology, combined with neoliberal governmental apparatuses, has established a new society of the precarious. In this new way of the world, productivity is not just connected to labor in the traditional sense of work hours, but more totally, to the formation of the self: work becomes performative and affective, and personal identities seep more and more into working ones. This new mode of being has another side, however: it can lead to (...) new forms of self-organization, resistance and exodus. In it we see the emergence of a new and disobedient self-government of the precarious. (shrink)

The Occupy movements in 2011 – this essay focuses mainly on Spain and the United States – have been more than moments of grassroots or direct democracy: they have been collective political practices testing forms of non-representationist democracy in the Europe of representative democracy to an unusually great extent. The precarious subjects of post-Fordism rejected political representation, and at the same time they struggled for a ‘real’ democracy. This oxymoron between representation and democracy structures the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière (...) and corresponds with his well-known distinction between police and politics. This is one of the reasons why his thinking is helpful to understand them as decidedly political ones. However, the assembly as one of the central topoi of theories of democracy plays no prominent role in Rancière’s political philosophy. In contrast to this, I focus on the central practice of the assemblies in the Occupy movements and develop a concept of presentist democracy. (shrink)