Search results for "description"
showing 10 items of 250 documents
THE RELEVANCE OF MORAL DISAGREEMENT. SOME WORRIES ABOUT NONDESCRIPTIVIST COGNITIVISM
2002
Nondescriptivist Cognitivism vindicates the cognitive value of moral judgements despite their lack of descriptive content. In this paper, I raise a few worries about the proclaimed virtues of this new metaethical framework Firstly, I argue that Nondescriptivist Cognitivism tends to beg the question against descriptivism and, secondly, discuss Horgan and Timmons' case against Michael Smith's metaethical rationalism. Although I sympathise with their main critical claims against the latter, I am less enthusiastic about the arguments that they provide to support them.
Topological linguistics and the study of linguistic variation
1994
Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on topological linguistics and the study of linguistic variation. It discusses the problem of linguistic variation. A topological model has been developed for internal linguistics, starting from the epistemological problem that all linguists must deal with. A topological space could be conceived of as a set of elements where some elements limit the others and are said to be open-sets, and the former and the latter together constitute the closed-sets. Linguistics, when approaching its object of study, is faced with a very similar situation: a language is a set of elements—from utterances to minimal phonic items—where each is described by other surroundi…
AER Filtering Using GLIDER: VHDL Cellular Automata Description
2008
Cellular Automata (CA) is a bio-inspired processing model for problem solving, initially proposed by Von Neumann. This approach modularizes the processing by dividing the solution into synchronous cells that change their states at the same time in order to get the solution. The communication between them is crucial to achieve the correct solution. On the other hand, the Address-Event-Representation (AER) is a neuromorphic communication protocol for transferring asynchronous events between VLSI chips. These neuro-inspired implementations have been used to design sensor chips (retina, cochleas), processing chips (convolutions, filters) and learning chips, which makes it possible to develop co…
La ‘svolta ontologica’ e le questioni epistemologiche in antropologia
2020
In the first part of this article I propose to approach the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology by focusing on how Martin Holbraad and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro link epistemological, ontological and political issues. Focusing on their new epistemological views to others’ forms of thought and their intrinsic conceptual and ontological presuppositions, inexplicable through the recourse to external determinants, these scholars aim at a radical epistemological and political questioning of the bipartitions of Western modern ontology (such as nature vs culture) in line with Bruno Latour’s ideas on ‘modern constitution’ and its distinction between ‘matters of fact’ and ‘matters of concern’. The ar…
Nad kartami prac profesora Witolda Mańczaka. Notatki z marginesów
2017
In the works written in the last period of his life, Professor Witold Mańczak often emphasized the need to formulate a criterion of truth in linguistics. He pursued it in textual reality (in “what is written and what is said”) and in statistical, frequentative and quantitative data which describe it. On the margin of this search, this author shares his own experiences in the field of ethnolinguistics, related to attempts to determine the actual (and, in this sense, true) ontological status of analyzed objects. He postulates that the diversification of the objects of analysis should be complemented by an adequate diversification of how their names are recorded in the narration, i.e. by a pre…
Job Characteristics, Recovery Experiences and Occupational Well-being: Testing Cross-lagged Relationships across 1 Year
2013
The aim of the present study conducted among 274 Finnish employees was to examine the relationships between job characteristics, recovery experiences and occupational well-being across 1 year. We hypothesized that these relationships would follow normal causation, that is, job characteristics at T1 predict recovery experiences (detachment, relaxation, mastery and control at off-job time) and well-being (fatigue at work and work engagement) at T2, and recovery experiences at T1 predict well-being at T2. The structural equation modelling analyses lent support to the hypothesized normal causation model compared with the reversed causation and reciprocal models. However, only the longitudinal r…
A structural comparison of halloysite nanotubes of different origin by Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) and Electric Birefringence
2018
The structure of halloysite nanotubes (Hal) from different mines was investigated by Small-Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS) and Electric Birefringence (EBR) experiments. The analysis of the SANS curves allowed us to correlate the sizes and polydispersity and the specific surfaces (obtained by a Porod analysis of the SANS data) of the nanotubes with their specific geological setting. Contrast matching measurements were performed on patch Hal (from Western Australia) in order to determine their experimental scattering length density for a more precise analysis. Further characterization of the mesoscopic structure of Hal was carried out by Electric Birefringence (EBR), which allowed to study th…
Reasoning with Vague Spatial Information from Upper Mesopotamia (2000BC)
2015
International audience; Concepts such as near, far, south of, etc., are by its own nature vague. However, they are quite common in human language. In the case of historical records, these concepts are often the only source of information regarding the position of ancient places whose exact location has been lost. In our research, we use digitized written records from Upper Mesopotamia (2000BC) from the HIGEOMES project. Our goal is to provide better understanding of the location of places, based on the analysis of spatial statements. In our approach, we analyse cardinal statements between places with known location. Using this information we construct a probabilistic function representing t…
How to Enrich Description Logics with Fuzziness
2017
International audience; The paper describes the relation between fuzzy and non-fuzzy description logics. It gives an overview about current research in these areas and describes the difference between tasks for description logics and fuzzy logics. The paper also deals with the transformation properties of description logics to fuzzy logics and backwards. While the process of transformation from a description logic to a fuzzy logic is a trivial inclusion, the other way of reducing information from fuzzy logic to description logic is a difficult task, that will be topic of future work.
Multidimensional Land Cover Change Analysis using Vector Change and Land Cover Taxonomies
2015
International audience; Around the world, land cover changes occur due to natural and anthropogenic factors. In many cases, the consequences of anthropogenic interventions are unexpected. In order for scientists and policy makers to identify land cover change processes of interest, it is necessary suitable tools for early and efficient analysis of land cover data. In our research, we present a data model that makes use of semantic web technologies to manage a hierarchical structure of land cover types. Using this approach, it is possible to manage the land cover information at different levels of abstraction. In our research, we use a Change Vector Analysis approach to represent the land co…