Search results for "Causa"
showing 10 items of 661 documents
Modeling Radicalization and Violent Extremism
2020
Given public anxiety about radicalization and violent extremism, it is not surprising that these topics have grabbed the attention of so many scholars in recent years. However, some have expressed concern over the fact that only a few studies in this relatively new field contain empirical data or systematic data analysis or develop causal models of the mechanisms generating these phenomena. We believe that computational modeling and simulation techniques can make a significant contribution to this scientific literature and eventually provide new tools for improving policy analysis. Here we briefly describe (1) an integrative theory of violent extremism proposed by Kruglanski and colleagues …
Integrating Personality Structure, Personality Process, and Personality Development
2017
In this target article, we argue that personality processes, personality structure, and personality development have to be understood and investigated in integrated ways in order to provide comprehensive responses to the key questions of personality psychology. The psychological processes and mechanisms that explain concrete behaviour in concrete situations should provide explanation for patterns of variation across situations and individuals, for development over time as well as for structures observed in intra–individual and inter–individual differences. Personality structures, defined as patterns of covariation in behaviour, including thoughts and feelings, are results of those processe…
THE CAUSAL ROOTS OF INTEGRATION AND THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
2016
A fundamental feature of consciousness is unity. The problem is whether unity is compatible both with the physical underpinnings of conscious experience and with the fabric of the physical world in general.
Free Action and Interventionist Theory of Causality
2019
Intendo discutere il rapporto tra la teoria interventista della causalità e l’azione libera. Gli approcci interventisti alla causalità definiscono la causazione sulla base dell’“intervento”. Queste teorie possono essere riduttive, se spiegano le cause in base all’intervento umano come libero intervento umano, oppure non-riduttive, se considerano cause e interventi come due concetti inter-definiti, dove gli interventi sono considerati come esplicitamente non umani. Intendo mostrare che il dilemma tra teorie interventista della causalità di tipo riduttivo e non-riduttivo può essere superato in favore degli approcci riduttivi, con riferimento a ciò che la causazione è in senso antropologico e …
Estimation of Granger causality through Artificial Neural Networks: applications to physiological systems and chaotic electronic oscillators
2021
One of the most challenging problems in the study of complex dynamical systems is to find the statistical interdependencies among the system components. Granger causality (GC) represents one of the most employed approaches, based on modeling the system dynamics with a linear vector autoregressive (VAR) model and on evaluating the information flow between two processes in terms of prediction error variances. In its most advanced setting, GC analysis is performed through a state-space (SS) representation of the VAR model that allows to compute both conditional and unconditional forms of GC by solving only one regression problem. While this problem is typically solved through Ordinary Least Sq…
GW170817, General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations, and the Neutron Star Maximum Mass
2017
Recent numerical simulations in general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) provide useful constraints for the interpretation of the GW170817 discovery. Combining the observed data with these simulations leads to a bound on the maximum mass of a cold, spherical neutron star (the TOV limit): ${M_{\rm max}^{\rm sph}}\lesssim 2.74/\beta$, where $\beta$ is the ratio of the maximum mass of a uniformly rotating neutron star (the supramassive limit) over the maximum mass of a nonrotating star. Causality arguments allow $\beta$ to be as high as $1.27$, while most realistic candidate equations of state predict $\beta$ to be closer to $1.2$, yielding ${M_{\rm max}^{\rm sph}}$ in the range $2.16…
Atmospheric aging of small-scale wood combustion emissions (model MECHA 1.0) – is it possible to distinguish causal effects from non-causal ass…
2020
Abstract. Primary emissions of wood combustion are complex mixtures of hundreds or even over a thousand compounds, which pass through a series of chemical reactions and physical transformation processes in the atmosphere (aging). This aging process depends on atmospheric conditions, such as concentration of atmospheric oxidizing agents (OH radical, ozone and nitrate radicals), humidity and solar radiation, and is known to strongly affect the characteristics of atmospheric aerosols. However, there are only few models that are able to represent the aging of emissions during its lifetime in the atmosphere. In this work, we implemented a model (Model for aging of Emissions in environmental CHAm…
Predictability decomposition detects the impairment of brain-heart dynamical networks during sleep disorders and their recovery with treatment
2016
This work introduces a framework to study the network formed by the autonomic component of heart rate variability (cardiac process η ) and the amplitude of the different electroencephalographic waves (brain processes δ , θ , α , σ , β ) during sleep. The framework exploits multivariate linear models to decompose the predictability of any given target process into measures of self-, causal and interaction predictability reflecting respectively the information retained in the process and related to its physiological complexity, the information transferred from the other source processes, and the information modified during the transfer according to redundant or synergistic interaction betwee…
Is our brain hardwired to produce God, or is our brain hardwired to perceive God? A systematic review on the role of the brain in mediating religious…
2009
To figure out whether the main empirical question "Is our brain hardwired to believe in and produce God, or is our brain hardwired to perceive and experience God?" is answered, this paper presents systematic critical review of the positions, arguments and controversies of each side of the neuroscientific–theological debate and puts forward an integral view where the human is seen as a psycho-somatic entity consisting of the multiple levels and dimensions of human existence (physical, biological, psychological, and spiritual reality), allowing consciousness/ mind/spirit and brain/body/matter to be seen as different sides of the same phenomenon, neither reducible to each other. The emergence …
On Big Data: How should we make sense of them?
2020
The topic of Big Data is today extensively discussed, not only on the technical ground. This also depends on the fact that Big Data are frequently presented as allowing an epistemological paradigm shift in scientific research, which would be able to supersede the traditional hypothesis-driven method. In this piece, I critically scrutinize two key claims that are usually associated with this approach, namely, the fact that data speak for themselves, deflating the role of theories and models, and the primacy of correlation over causation. In so doing, I will also refer to a recent case history of data mining projects in the field of biomedicine, i.e. EXPOsOMICS. My intention is both to acknow…