Search results for "Philosophy of Science"

On the relation of irony, understatement, and litotes

2016

The aim of this paper is to clarify the distinctive and the shared features of the three phenomena: irony, understatement, and litotes. These rhetorical figures have been defined as synonymous, distinct or overlapping in various accounts. This indicates an interrelation but also a need for clearer definitions. Here, each of these rhetorical figures is defined via two jointly necessary conditions. This approach sharpens the categories, enables clear-cut distinctions and helps to explain cases of overlap. German corpus data and examples from the literature as a basis, allow differentiating between cases of understatement as a means of irony, and cases of litotes as a means of understatement. …

Aspects of a theory of bullshit

2016

This paper addresses the question whetherbullshitis a reasonable pragmatic category. In the first part of the paper, drawing on the insights of Harry Frankfurt’s seminal essay, bullshit is defined as an act of insincere asserting where the speaker shows (a) a loose concern for the truth, and (b) does not want the addressee to become aware of condition (a). The author adds to this definition the condition (c) requiring that the bullshitter expresses morecertaintythan is adequate with respect to condition (a). In the second part of the paper, it is discussed whether the above definition can cope with special types of bullshit considered to be a challenge to Frankfurt’s definition. These areev…

Vida fabricada

2019

Des que la biologia es va secularitzar i inicia l’escrutini molecular de la vida, la possibilitat de la sintesi artificial de cel·lules vivents en un laboratori fou palpable. La biologia sintetica contemporania aspira a dissenyar i fabricar noves formes de vida amb la intencio d’obtenir beneficis socials i economics, tot i que no s’ha de descartar que tambe obtindrem, per la via sintetica, recompenses cientifiques en termes d’una major comprensio de la complexitat biologica a les quals no podriem accedir per la via analitica. Es clar, per tant, que biologia sintetica es un terme que desperta expectatives, pero no es menys cert que tambe provoca inquietud. El Forum Economic Mundial ha situat…

Aquinas, education and the theory of illumination

2020

The CoVid-19 pandemic has profoundly disrupted schooling and education more generally through the shift from face to face teaching in classrooms and lecture theatres to an online mode of teaching a...

What do we mean by diversity? : the path towards quantification

2018

The concept of biological diversity has evolved from a simple count of species to more sophisticated measures that are sensitive to relative abundances and even to evolutionary divergence times between species. In the course of this evolution, diversity measures have often been borrowed from other disciplines. Biological reasoning about diversity often implicitly assumed that measures of diversity had certain mathematical properties, but most of biologys traditional diversity measures did not actually possess these properties, a situation which often led to mathematically and biologically invalid inferences. Biologists now usually transform the traditional measures to the «effective number …

Modelēšanas robežas: ielāpu sega kā vienīgā iespējamā pasaules aina

2014

Referāts Latvijas Universitātes 72.zinātniskajā konferencē 2014.gada 7.februārī.

Descripción de interfaces hombre-ordenador por medio de métodos formales : aplicación de métodos para la evaluación de un interfaz simulado

1996

Biological parameters in breast cancer.

1996

Aging, longevity, inflammation, and cancer.

2005

Cancer rates increase sharply with age in both sexes, and the majority of cases of cancer occur in patients over the age of 65 years. However, the incidence and mortality for cancer level off around 85-90 years of age, followed by a plateau, or even a decline in the last decades of life. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that centenarians are endowed with a peculiar resistance to cancer. Tumor progression is a complex process that depends on interactions between tumor and host cells. One aspect of the host response, the inflammatory response, is of particular interest because it includes the release of proinflammatory cytokines, some of which may promote tumor growth and hence infl…

Visual-motion suppression in congenital pendular nystagmus.

2009

Patients with a congenital pendular nystagmus are known not to experience oscillopsia in a normal visual environment. The data of a 31-year-old female patient suffering from a congenital pendular nystagmus are presented. The aim of the fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) experiment was to analyze the regional cerebral glucose metabolism (rCGM) during minimal as well as maximal nystagmus. Video-oculography showed a maximum in frequency of the horizontal pendular nystagmus during gaze to the left, whereas the zone of minimal nystagmus was 10 degrees to the right. Two sessions with an 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose tracer were performed to analyze cerebral blood-glucose utilizati…