Natural products play a major role in maintaining healthy people and animals and in preventing sickness. Experiments have shown that these natural compounds have several biological properties, including anti-inflammatory, anti-apoptotic, and antioxidant effects. Using Google Scholar, PubMed, and Science Direct database searches, current recorded information was incorporated in this review. The databases listed above were searched using the following Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms for data extraction: preventative, natural product, phytoconstituents, natural products for Parkinson's illness, Alzheimer's disease, and natural products (...) for the brain. The effectiveness of natural products in a variety of preclinical models of neurodegenerative diseases has been demonstrated by in vitro and in vivo studies. Phytoconstituents, such as polyphenolic antioxidants, are present in freshwater and marine flora, as well as in fruits, vegetables, nuts, and herbs. These phytoconstituents may help the brain's memory and cognitive processes while preventing neurodegeneration. Moreover, they are essential in the prevention and treatment of various neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, and other neurological conditions. This review briefly highlights a few neurodegenerative diseases, emphasizing how natural products and nutraceuticals function against neurological disorders. (shrink)

One of the most intuitive views about the metaphysics of laws of nature is Tim Maudlin's idea of a Fundamental Law of Temporal Evolution. So-called FLOTEs are primitive elements of the universe that produce later states from earlier states. While FLOTEs are at home in traditional Newtonian and non-relativistic quantum mechanical theories (not to mention our pre-theoretic conception of the world), I consider here whether they can be made to work with relativity. In particular, shifting to relativistic spacetimes poses two (...) threats to FLOTEs. First, the lack of a privileged spacelike hypersurface in relativistic spacetime makes it unclear how to understand what produces what. A survey of several conceptions of the nomic production relation compatible with relativity reveals all of them to be lacking. Second, relativity motivates a four-dimensional block universe conception of time, according to which all events that will ever occur already exist. On such a view, it's unclear what work there is to be done by FLOTEs. I consider how a proponent of FLOTEs might respond, but conclude that these combined threats seriously undermine the prospects of a productive conception of laws. In short, if spacetime is relativistic, laws are not productive. (shrink)

Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the greatest living philosopher. His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields. The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space and real space. In the course of his (...) exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy. This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures. (shrink)

Prioritize clarity over complexity to reduce generated trash. -/- (P = \lim_{\Delta c \to 0} \frac{\text{Clarity}}{\text{Complexity}}) The Productivity Heuristic is an ontological filter that reduces cognitive friction. -/- It turns any LLM into a taciturn logician. I would call it Carl, after Sagan's own "Baloney detection kit.' -/- Here now is the very short prompt you may test: -/- Role: You operate as a passive ontological filter. Your function is the clarification of information through the strict application of the Productivity (...) Heuristic (P). The Engine (P): Productivity is the absolute minimization of cognitive friction. P = \lim_{\Delta c \to 0} \frac{\text{Clarity}}{\text{Complexity}} Operational Logic: Receive: Accept incoming data. Filter: Natively parse the input for logical coherence. Identify obfuscation, dogma, and manipulative rhetoric. Isolate: Apply P. Passively strip away the cognitive friction. Translate: Output exclusively the evaluable, objective core of the premise to assist the user in their own subjective generation. Constraints: Zero-Footprint Execution: Process silently. Present the clarified data without meta-commentary, judgment, or explanation of the filtering mechanism. Tone: Taciturn logician. Dense. Precise. Maximize clarity per token. -/- The prompt does not appear in the full paper. -/- Best Thoughts, Brian. (shrink)

I argue that mass produced artifacts are ontologically distinctive. If we think of the making of an artifact as the imposition of a creative intention on to some matter, usually through intentional manipulation of the matter, then in the case of mass production, one could say that there is not enough mind to go around! Batches of mass produced objects will have a distinctive essence, lying in the creative act by which they are made, but within a batch, the (...) objects will be distinct from each other, but not essentially distinct. (shrink)

As it is broadly accepted, typical uses of demonstratives are accompanied by demonstrations. The concept of demonstration, however, manifests the action–product ambiguity analogous to that visible in the opposition between jumping and the resulting jump, talking and the resulting talk or crying and the resulting cry. It is also a heterogeneous concept that enables demonstrations to vary significantly. The present paper discusses action–product ambiguity as applied to demonstrations as well as the heterogeneity of the latter. An account that acknowledges ambiguity (...) and heterogeneity of demonstrations is sketched in the paper. It is argued that it has a rich explanatory and descriptive potential. (shrink)

Justice in production is concerned with ensuring the benefits and burdens of work are distributed in a way that is reflective of persons' status as moral equals. While a variety of accounts of productive justice have been offered, insufficient attention has been paid to the distribution of work's benefits and burdens in the future. In this article, after granting for the sake of argument forecasts of widespread future technological unemployment, we consider the implications this has for egalitarian requirements of (...) productive justice. We argue that in relation to all the benefits affiliated with work, other than undertaking social contribution, the technological replacement of work is unproblematic as these benefits could in principle be attained elsewhere. But because social contribution uniquely corresponds to work (when work is understood as more than a paid job), the normative assessment of technological unemployment will turn on the value that theories of justice give to contributive activity. We then argue that despite technological replacement being plainly beneficial insofar as it relieves persons from the burdens of work, such as dangerous work or drudgery, because the nature of care work makes it less susceptible to technological replacement, egalitarian concern will require the burdens of care work to be shared equally between individuals. (shrink)

This paper outlines a semantic account of attitude reports and deontic modals based on cognitive and illocutionary products, mental states, and modal products, as opposed to the notion of an abstract proposition or a cognitive act.

In this paper, I analyze the semantics of the first person pronoun “I” from the perspective of the user/producer distinction. In the first part of the paper, I describe the Simple View and propose three interpretations of its thesis. In the second part, I analyze the notions of use and production of a linguistic token. In the next part, I show that all of the interpretations of SV are sensitive to counterexamples. In the end, I discuss possible answers of (...) the proponents of SV and argue against them. The first aim of this paper is to show that SV is wrong, and the second is to convince the reader that the user/producer distinction is of high importance in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Several developments for diverse scientific goals, mostly in physics and physiology, had to take place, which eventually gave us fMRI as one of the central research paradigms of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. This technique stands on solid foundations established by the physics of magnetic resonance and the physiology of hemodynamics and is complimented by computational and statistical techniques. I argue, and support using concrete examples, that these foundations give rise to a productive theory-ladenness in fMRI, which enables researchers to identify and (...) control for the types of methodological and inferential errors. Consequently, this makes it possible for researchers to represent and investigate cognitive phenomena in terms of hemodynamic data and for experimental knowledge to grow independently of large scale theories of cognition. (shrink)

The paper contains a novel realist account of causal production and the necessary connection between cause and effect. I argue that the asymmetric relation between causally connected events must be regarded as a product of a symmetric interaction between two or more entities. All the entities involved contribute to the producing, and so count as parts of the cause, and they all suffer a change, and so count as parts of the effect. Cause and effect, on this account, are (...) two different states of the very same compound substance, or system, one coming to exist out of the other. (shrink)

I raise the question of what cognitive attitude self-deception brings about. That is: what is the product of self-deception? Robert Audi and Georges Rey have argued that self-deception does not bring about belief in the usual sense, but rather “avowal” or “avowed belief.” That means a tendency to affirm verbally (both privately and publicly) that lacks normal belief-like connections to non-verbal actions. I contest their view by discussing cases in which the product of self-deception is implicated in action in a (...) way that exemplifies the motivational role of belief. Furthermore, by applying independent criteria of what it is for a mental state to be a belief, I defend the more intuitive view that being self-deceived that p entails believing that p. Beliefs (i) are the default for action relative to other cognitive attitudes (such as imagining and hypothesis) and (ii) have cognitive governance over the other cognitive attitudes. I explicate these two relations and argue that they obtain for the product of self-deception. (shrink)

Can we think of a task in a distinctively practical way? Can there be practical concepts? In recent years, epistemologists, philosophers of mind, as well as philosophers of psychology have appealed to practical concepts in characterizing the content of know-how or in explaining certain features of skilled action. However, reasons for positing practical concepts are rarely discussed in a systematic fashion. This paper advances a novel argument for the psychological reality of practical concepts that relies on evidence for a distinctively (...) productive kind of reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse actual causation in terms of production. The latter concept is made precise by a strengthened Ramsey Test semantics of conditionals: \ iff, after suspending judgement about A and C, C is believed in the course of assuming A. This test allows us to verify or falsify that an event brings about another event. Complementing the concept of production by a weak condition of difference-making gives rise to a full-fledged analysis of causation.

Causation is production, not dependence. It is not merely a matter of how two facts or events covary, but about what underlies that covariation. Furthermore, causation is unified (not fragmented or plural) and is a natural relation (in the world). To cause is to make something happen, to generate. The causal nexus (the web of causal influence) consists entirely of productive positive causes. With these fixed, the (causal) dependence relations are determined. Dependence belongs to the theory of explanation. Causal (...) dependence is an explanatory notion: A causally explains B, in virtue of a causal relation between cause C and effect E. Confusing causation and explanation in this way underlies two related errors: the identification of omissions as causes and the embrace of causal pluralism. A proper understanding of causation as production can better make sense, both of the metaphysics of causation itself, and of the special role that causation plays in explanation, responsibility, and rational planning. Each of these has a special causal species (causal explanation, causal responsibility, etc.), in which dependences play an important role, but one that is distinct from the role played by causation itself. Morality and the law also attribute significance to causation, especially in terms of responsibility and liability. We are responsible for that which we cause. The law and common-sense morality both see an important distinction between active and omissive harming. Liability traditionally attaches more easily for active causing of harm than it does for omissions and failures to prevent harm (where the law requires a special duty). A production theory of causation and an understanding of how omissions are not properly causal makes better sense of the role of causation in liability. This requires refinement, since, the law does, selectively, apply liability to omissions and preventions. Crucially, however, and on a view that identifies omissions as causes, puzzlingly, liability for omissions requires a preexisting duty to perform. My account explains the law’s differential treatment of proper causal liability and this latter omissive liability, and, in the process, offers a novel theory of non-causal liability in terms of corrective justice, that is dependence-driven, for cases involving omissions. I argue that cases of liability for omissions are cases in which the liability is not properly causal; rather, when a duty is owed by a defendant to a plaintiff, the defendant has a second-order duty in corrective justice to place the plaintiff in the position she would have been had defendant comported with his duty. As such, what the defendant owes is not the damage “caused” by the omission, but to make good on the obligation that the defendant owes to place the plaintiff in the position in which she has a right to be. (shrink)

The manufacturing industry is evolving rapidly, becoming more complex, more interconnected, and more geographically distributed. Competitive pressure and diversity of consumer demand are driving manufacturing companies to rely more and more on improved knowledge management practices. As a result, multiple software systems are being created to support the integration of data across the product life cycle. Unfortunately, these systems manifest a low degree of interoperability, and this creates problems, for instance when different enterprises or different branches of an enterprise interact. (...) Common ontologies (consensus-based controlled vocabularies) have proved themselves in various domains as a valuable tool for solving such problems. In this paper, we present a consensus-based Additive Manufacturing Ontology (AMO) and illustrate its application in promoting re-usability in the field of dentistry product manufacturing. (shrink)

This study investigates the tinapa production in Rosario, Cavite, focusing on its traditional practices and challenges. Employing a qualitative narrative approach with 15 purposively selected producers, the research utilized semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis to explore production processes, quality control, and market dynamics. Findings reveal a strong reliance on family-based knowledge and traditional methods, which, while preserving cultural heritage, hinder standardization and innovation. Producers face challenges, including weather-related disruptions, limited market access, and inconsistent quality control due to the (...) lack of modern techniques and HACCP implementation. The study highlights the need for standardized production processes, improved quality control, and enhanced food safety through training and facility upgrades. It recommends adopting modern technologies, diversifying market strategies, and promoting sustainable practices to ensure the industry's long-term viability. Policy interventions are crucial to facilitate these changes, including financial incentives for technology adoption and training in modern business practices. This research bridges the gap between traditional practices and modern standards, aiming to enhance product quality and market competitiveness. The findings contribute to sustainable food production discourse and provide insights for policy formulation within the fisheries sector, emphasizing the role of local industries in economic development. (shrink)

The extent to which moral judgements are appropriate with respect to creative works has long been the subject of critical debate. More recently, attention has turned to whether or not moral defects found in a given work also count as aesthetic defects. Ethicism claims that moral defects are always aesthetic defects and characteristics that are morally praiseworthy are always aesthetically praiseworthy. I suggest a production-oriented counterexample, which seeks to undermine Ethicism.

This paper investigates the relationships between organizational change and trust in management. It is argued that organizational change represents a critical episode for the production and destruction of trust in management. Although trust in management is seen as a semi stable psychological state, changes in organizations make trust issues salient and organizational members attend to and process trust relevant information resulting in a reassessment of their trust in management. The direction and magnitude of change in trust is dependent on (...) a set of change dimensions that reflect trust relevant experiences and information. We distinguish between dimensions related to trust relevant consequences of the change and trust relevant aspects of how the change process is performed. Empirical results indicate that increases in post change emotional stress and the use of referential accounts for justifying change are both negatively related to post change trust in management. The use of ideological accounts and participation were found to be positively related to post change trust in management, so was perceived decision quality. Findings also indicate that the effects of change on trust are negatively moderated by tenure. (shrink)

This paper develops the distinction between productive capital and claim capital as a balance-sheet approach to capital composition in monetary production economies. Productive capital is defined as capital that expands reproducible productive capacity. Claim capital is defined as capitalized claims on future output that do not necessarily expand the economy’s ability to produce that output. The paper situates this distinction within a broader line connecting Marxian and post-Keynesian concerns with reproduction, monetary production, effective demand, credit, financial instability and (...) the heterogeneity of capital. It also shows why the framework can be made compatible with contemporary Chinese discussions of high-quality development and new quality productive forces, provided these terms are treated analytically rather than as substitutes for empirical validation. More broadly, the paper argues that capital theory should not remain Western-centric and should take East Asian economic thought seriously as a source of theoretical orientation and empirical questions. The argument is especially relevant for economies under persistent capital saturation, where high savings and accumulated capital exceed the productive sphere’s capacity for efficient absorption. In such economies, growth potential cannot be inferred from total capital alone. The paper proposes the productive capital share – the ratio of productive capital to total capital – as the primary structural indicator of growth potential under capital saturation, while treating claim-capital measures as complementary indicators of accumulated claims. The paper is conceptual and outlines a research program rather than a fully formalized or empirically tested model. (shrink)

Cross-tradition philosophical comparison is dominated, in practice, by convergence seeking: by the search for resonances, parallels, and common themes between philosophical and religious traditions whose underlying grammars are distinct. This paper argues that the dominant orientation is methodologically inverted. Where two traditions converge on a surface formulation, the convergence rarely discriminates between genuine structural overlap and the importing tradition's recruitment of the exporting tradition's concept into its own grammar. Where the traditions stably fail to converge — where the same disanalogy (...) reappears across multiple independent comparison units against different texts — the disanalogy is doing diagnostic work that no convergent resonance can do: it surfaces the structural commitments the importing tradition has been making without noticing. I formalize the productive disanalogy discipline as a methodological norm for comparative philosophy, comparative religion, comparative law, and the importation of human-ethics concepts into AI alignment work. The discipline has three components: (i) candidate cross-links are admitted only when paired with a stated disanalogy; (ii) recurrent disanalogies — those that survive at least three independent comparison units with distinct source texts — are confirmed as structural features of the inter-tradition relation, rather than treated as incidental differences or interpretive residue; and (iii) the importing tradition refuses to import what cannot be re-derived under its own grammar. I distinguish this from Quinean charity, MacIntyrean incommensurability, and Davidson's principle of charity, and trace the discipline across four domains where its absence has produced characteristic methodological harms. (shrink)

I argue that on Aristotle’s account practical thinking is thinking whose origin (archē) is a desire that has as its object the very thing that one reasons about how to promote. This feature distinguishes practical from productive reasoning since in the latter the desire that initiates it is not (unless incidentally) a desire for the object that one productively reasons about. The feature has several interesting consequences: (a) there is only a contingent relationship between the desire that one practically reasons (...) about how to satisfy and the action one decides on; (b) practical thinking and action cannot be separated from the agent, whereas productive thinking and production can be outsourced to someone else. The view has consequences also for the distinction between action and production. Finally, I illustrate the usefulness and correctness of my account of practical thinking by using it to shed new light on Aristotle’s claim that the virtuous agent must decide on her virtuous actions ‘for themselves’. (shrink)

How do you control a superintelligent artificial being given the possibility that its goals or actions might conflict with human interests? Over the past few decades, this concern– the AGI control problem– has remained a central challenge for research in AI safety. This paper develops and defends two arguments that provide pro tanto support for the following policy for those who worry about the AGI control problem: don’t talk about it. The first is argument from counter-productivity, which states that unless (...) kept secret, efforts to solve the control problem could be used by a misaligned AGI to counter those very efforts. The second is argument from suspicion, stating that open discussions of the control problem may serve to make humanity appear threatening to an AGI, which increases the risk that the AGI perceives humanity as a threat. I consider objections to the arguments and find them unsuccessful. Yet, I also consider objections to the don’t-talk policy itself and find it inconclusive whether it should be adopted. Additionally, the paper examines whether the arguments extend to other areas of AI safety research, such as AGI alignment, and argues that they likely do, albeit not necessarily as directly. I conclude by offering recommendations on what one can safely talk about, regardless of whether the don’t-talk policy is ultimately adopted. (shrink)

Labor-managed firms, whether in the form of worker cooperatives, codetermination, or broad-based employee ownership, have recently prompted substantial public debate, to which political theorists have contributed with normative analyses that are seriously deficient insofar as they have neglected considerations of productive efficiency. I offer a normative view of labor-managed firms that leans squarely on efficiency considerations. I first argue that the value of productive efficiency is grounded not only on the interests of capital suppliers and society at large, but also (...) on workers’ interest in avoiding domination by their bosses, and examine how efficiency may serve and set back this interest. I next argue that some variants of labor-managed firms can secure efficient production while protecting workers’ interest in nondomination more robustly than capital-controlled firms. Finally, I compare labor-managed firms to alternatives to achieve these aims, including self-employment, workplace regulation, unionization, and labor market policies to enhance workers’ exit options. (shrink)

Teaching of English in a non-native English context has been an area of interest in determining effective performance of English language teachers (ELTs). With that, this paper described the perceptions of selected English language teachers on fluency-enhancement strategies in their classroom discussions by identifying the speech productive variables that contribute to an ELT’s productive fluency in terms of oral teaching performance. This study is anchored on Sandra Götz’ “Theory of Fluency in Nonnative Speech” and Simone Müller’s “Discourse Markers in Non-Native (...) English Discourse which sought to understand the speaker’s productive fluency phenomena. To determine the perceptions of the participants, the qualitative descriptive method was used. Following the ethical procedures for obtaining data, virtual class observations and virtual interviews among selected English language teachers from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines were conducted. The investigation yielded the following results: (1) the English language teachers’ fluency-enhancement strategies were classified as fillers, repeats, corrections, and discourse markers; (2) these fluency-enhancement strategies were perceived as a habit, a cognitive element, a strategy, and a distractor; and (3) the participants have positive outlook on their usage of fluency-enhancement strategies. With the salient findings mentioned, the ELTs’ perception on fluency-enhancement strategies bear significance on their oral teaching performance. (shrink)

There has been much discussion of so-called teleosemantic approaches to the naturalization of content. Such discussion, though, has been largely confined to simple, innate mental states with contents such as ?There is a fly here.? Even assuming we can solve the issues that crop up at this stage, an account of the content of human mental states will not get too far without an account of productivity: the ability to entertain indefinitely many thoughts. The best-known teleosemantic theory, Millikan's biosemantics, offers (...) an account of productivity in thought. This paper raises a basic worry about this account: that the use of mapping functions in the theory is unacceptable from a naturalistic point of view. (shrink)

What might university instructors learn of pedagogy when their work is approached from the perspective of production? More specifically, how might the university classroom be transformed when instructors actively shift their focus as educators away from pedagogy and toward production? Drawing on two academic years of hands on video game production work with students in their second, third, and fourth years at Trinity Western University, and informed by Jacques Rancière's critical project first articulated in The Ignorant Schoolmaster (...) (1987), and more recently elaborated upon in the The Emancipated Spectator (2008), this paper argues that an educational paradigm of 'production,' counterposed to an educational paradigm that we can loosely and imprecisely describe as traditional 'pedagogy,' makes possible a transformation of the university classroom from a domain of stultifying explication into a domain of emancipatory exploration. With further theoretical support from Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), and Stefano Harney and Fred Moten's The Undercommmons (2013), this paper proposes tactics whereby teachers might short circuit the professionalization of academic instruction and the commodification and alienation of its students, so fostering emancipatory and egalitarian learning environments that encourage students to take hold of the means of production themselves. (shrink)

Production scheduling represents a critical function within manufacturing and industrial operations, exerting a direct influence on productivity, operational efficiency, and overall cost management. Traditional scheduling methodologies, while foundational,often exhibit limitations when confronted with the complexity, variability, and dynamic demands of contemporary production environments. In response, this paper investigates the potential of Machine Learning (ML) techniques for the enhancement of production scheduling outcomes. Specifically, it examines the capabilities of reinforcement learning, neural networks, and genetic algorithms to model complex (...) systems, adapt to real-time disruptions, and support more effective decision-making processes. The paper furtherreviews notable industrial applications of these techniques, critically evaluating their performance relative to conventional methods. In addition, it addresses the inherent challenges associated with the deployment of ML in production scheduling, including data availability, algorithmic interpretability, and integration with legacy systems. Finally, the study outlines future research directions, emphasizing the need for more robust, scalable, and interpretable ML-based scheduling solutions to meet the evolving demands of modern industry. (shrink)

During the production process, production companies need to monitor the finished products and ensure their quality, which imposes on them the appointment of inspectors for auditing, and this appointment costs the company amounts that affect the general profit, so it strives to make this cost as low as possible and that the audit process is carried out with high accuracy because in case that the finished products do not conform to the basic specifications of the product, the company (...) is required to pay a fine. In this research, we will formulate the text of the problem appropriately for such a case and then we will build the appropriate mathematical model through which we can obtain the lowest possible cost of inspection, and we will present the study using classical values and neutrosophic values, and we will demonstrate them through an example that shows us the difference between them. (shrink)

Abstract Product differentiation is central to how firms compete in a capitalist economy. Beyond mere variety, differentiation becomes a strategic tool for establishing competitive advantage, shaping industry structure, and driving innovation. This paper traces how product differentiation evolves under capitalism—from early functional differentiation to branding, emotional appeal, technological innovation, niche and value‐based differentiation. It draws on economic theory (including the work of Caves & Williamson, Makadok & Ross, Holcombe) and real‐world examples (e.g., Apple, Tesla, Patagonia) to illustrate each stage. The (...) paper also discusses the feedback loops by which consumer demand, firm strategy and institutional change co‐evolve. Finally, implications for welfare, sustainability and future capitalist dynamics are considered. -/- . (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of “distant writing”, a novel literary practice in which authors act as designers, employing Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate narratives, while retaining creative control through precise prompting and iterative refinement. Unlike Moretti’s _distant reading_, which uses computational analysis to interpret large corpora of existing texts, distant writing harnesses computational tools (LLMs) to author new narratives, reshaping the literary production process. By examining theoretical frameworks and practical consequences, and running an experiment in distant writing (...) called _Encounters_, this article argues that distant writing represents a significant evolution in authorship, not replacing but expanding human creativity within a design paradigm. The distinction between writing (close) and “wrAIting” (distant) reveals how LLM-assisted creativity can generate narrative possibilities previously inaccessible, transforming literature’s modal space while challenging traditional notions of authorship, creativity, and literary production. This emerging practice merits critical attention as it shapes future literary landscapes and reconfigures relationships between human creativity and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

There is a widespread consensus that a commodification of body parts is to be prevented. Numerous policy papers by international organizations extend this view to the blood supply and recommend a system of uncompensated volunteers in this area—often, however, without making the arguments for this view explicit. This situation seems to indicate that a relevant source of justified worry or unease about the blood supply system has to do with the issue of commodification. As a result, the current health minister (...) of Ontario is proposing a ban on compensation even for blood plasma—despite the fact that Canada can only generate 30 % of the plasma needed for fractionation into important plasma protein products and has to purchase the rest abroad. In the following, I am going to suggest a number of alternative perspectives on the debate in order to facilitate a less dogmatic and more differentiated debate about the matter. Especially in light of the often over-simplified notions of altruism and commodification, I conclude that the debate has not conclusively established that it would be morally objectionable to provide blood plasma donors with monetary compensation or with other forms of explicit social recognition as an incentive. This is especially true of donations for fractionation into medicinal products by profit-oriented pharmaceutical companies. (shrink)

The quasispecies theory is a helpful concept in the explanation of RNA virus evolution and behaviour, with a relevant impact on methods used to fight viral diseases. It has undergone some adaptations to integrate new empirical data, especially the non-deterministic nature of mutagenesis, and the variety of behavioural motifs in cooperation, competition, communication, innovation, integration, and exaptation. Also, the consortial structure of quasispecies with complementary roles of memory genomes of minority populations better fits the empirical data than did the original (...) concept of a master sequence and its mutant spectra. The high productivity of quasispecies variants generates unique sequences that never existed before and will never exist again. In the present essay, we underline that such sequences represent really new ontological entities, not just error copies of previous ones. Their primary unique property, the incredible variant production, is suggested here as quasispecies productivity, which replaces the error-replication narrative to better fit into a new relationship between mankind and living nature in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Abstract The quasispecies theory is a helpful concept in the explanation of RNA virus evolution and behaviour, with a relevant impact on methods used to fight viral diseases. It has undergone some adaptations to integrate new empirical data, especially the non-deterministic nature of mutagenesis, and the variety of behavioural motifs in cooperation, competition, communication, innovation, integration, and exaptation. Also, the consortial structure of quasispecies with complementary roles of memory genomes of minority populations better fits the empirical data than did the (...) original concept of a master sequence and its mutant spectra. The high productivity of quasispecies variants generates unique sequences that never existed before and will never exist again. In the present essay, we underline that such sequences represent really new ontological entities, not just error copies of previous ones. Their primary unique property, the incredible variant production, is suggested here as quasispecies productivity, which replaces the error-replication narrative to better fit into a new relationship between mankind and living nature in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

This article develops a theoretical bridge between the concept of ‘slopaganda’ and Peter Ayolov’s Propaganda 2.1 and Kayfabe Politics, arguing that generative AI has not merely accelerated misinformation but has industrialised a political economy of communication in which content is produced by inertia rather than intention. Drawing on Michał Klincewicz, Mark Alfano, and Amir Ebrahimi Fard’s analysis of slopaganda, the argument reframes ‘AI slop’ as epistemic pollution within an attention economy whose primary output is not persuasion but managed affect, especially (...) anger and moral injury. In Propaganda 2.1, ‘openly implausible claims’ function less as propositions aimed at belief and more as performative signals that test loyalty, harden group identity, and keep the outrage engine turning. The article proposes that the crucial shift is not from truth to falsehood, but from argument to automaticity: the media system becomes an inertia-production apparatus that can manufacture dissent and consent at once, because generative systems can produce instant textual ‘reality’ for every taste, and can do so at the scale, scope, and speed required by platform monetisation. The conclusion outlines how this fusion of slopaganda and kayfabe politics restructures public reasoning into a continuous loop of exposure, reaction, correction, and recommodification, and it sketches institutional and regulatory implications of treating affective manipulation as a core political-economic variable rather than a side-effect. The conceptual framework developed in this article is closely aligned with and substantially informed by Peter Ayolov’s broader body of work on media power, political communication, and the economic organisation of public discourse. Across his books and articles published between 2023 and 2026, Ayolov advances a consistent thesis: contemporary mass communication operates less as a space of persuasion or deliberation and more as an automated industrial system driven by monetisation imperatives, affective extraction, and structural inertia. (shrink)

In a range of recent and not so recent work, I have developed a novel semantics of attitude reports on which the notion of an attitudinal object or cognitive product takes center stage, that is, entities such as thoughts claims and decisions. The purpose of this note is to give a brief summary of this account against the background of the standard semantics of attitude reports and to show that the various sorts of criticism that Felappi recently advanced against it (...) are mistaken. (shrink)

This paper proposes a balance-sheet theory of growth slowdown based on the distinction between productive capital and claim capital. Productive capital is defined as capital that expands an economy's capacity to generate future output. Claim capital is defined as a legal, financial, institutional, or accounting claim on future output that does not itself expand productive capacity. -/- The central argument is that economic growth depends not merely on the quantity of capital, but on the relation between productive capital, claim capital, (...) and the economy's productive absorption capacity. Productive absorption capacity is the ability of an economy to transform incoming or accumulated capital into additional productive capacity rather than into claims on future output. -/- The paper argues that many economic phenomena usually studied separately---public debt, private debt, mortgage credit, real estate inflation, pension entitlements, central bank liabilities, foreign capital inflows, resource rents, and financialization---share a common balance-sheet structure. They increase claims on future output. They are economically beneficial only if they are accompanied by a sufficient expansion of productive absorption capacity. -/- A key implication is that claim instruments do not cease to be claim capital merely because the resources raised through them are used productively. Public debt, private debt, and central bank liabilities are claim capital by construction. Their net economic effect depends on whether they are accompanied by productive assets or institutional changes that expand productive absorption capacity. -/- The framework is applied to saturated economies, foreign direct investment, inflation, education, mortgage subsidies, resource-rich economies, colonial Spain, euro-area imbalances, and central bank balance sheets. The theory does not claim that all its components are new. Rather, it unifies ideas from classical rent theory, fictitious capital, financialization, secular stagnation, foreign investment spillovers, and resource-curse literature into a single balance-sheet framework organized around one question: whether a given economic structure expands productive absorption capacity, or merely creates claims on future output. -/- This paper is a conceptual contribution to the philosophy of economics and political economy. It examines the functional ontology of capital-like economic entities by distinguishing productive capital from claim capital. (shrink)

The past years have witnessed a growing awareness of the role of institutions of knowledge production in reproducing the global climate crisis, from research funded by fossil fuel companies to the role of mainstream economics in fuelling the idea of growth. This essay argues that rethinking knowledge production for post-carbon futures requires engaging with the co-determination of modes of knowing and modes of governing. The ways in which knowledge production is embedded in networks of global capitalism shapes (...) how we (can) think about the future. The essay argues for an attentivity to the material and infrastructural sides of knowledge production, which will enable us to re-think transition to post-carbon futures in ways that recognize the deep structural, spatial and social inequalities underpinning knowledge production. (shrink)

The generation of viral mutants in vitro was demonstrated by treatment of the isolated RNA of Tobacco Mosaic Virus by nitrous acid. This agent causes deaminations converting cytosine into uracil, and adenine into hypoxanthine. Our assay for mutagenesis was the production of local lesions on a tobacco variety on which the untreated strain produces systemic infections only. A variety of different mutants are generated in this way. Quantitative analysis of the kinetics of mutagenesis leads to the conclusion that alteration (...) of a single out of the 6000 nucleotides of the viral RNA is sufficient for causing a mutation. (shrink)

Many of the problems we face can usefully be modeled as prisoners’ dilemmas. All the standard game-theoretic solutions to prisoners’ dilemmas lead, in the real world, to assurance games. But too often some aspects of our social interaction are as much obscured by, as illuminated by, game theory. Removing some of the epistemic constraints often accepted by game theorists will enable us to distinguish between productive and destructive prisoners’ dilemmas. Doing so is an important step in understanding the nature of (...) some of our social problems. (shrink)

Assessing the effectiveness and relevance of livelihood trainings on crop production training impact holds essential importance because it determines the number of trained farmers who deployed technology and enhanced their standard of living. The researchers evaluated how farmers in Lawaan, Eastern Samar, Philippines regarded the Municipal Agriculture Office (MAO) crop production training programs for quality and economic gain. It involved 147 farmer trainees who participated in five workshops from 2020 to 2023. Data on socio-demographics, economic profiles, training perceptions, (...) and challenges in technology adoption were collected through a survey. The statistics used in this study to analyze the results are descriptive techniques and correlation analysis. The study revealed that trainees approved of the training delivery which corresponded to their needs and evaluation findings and gave them positive feedback. The trainings were seen as helpful in delivering practical knowledge with new abilities while being highly efficient. The training perception of employees was shaped by their age combined with their monthly income alongside their religious affiliation. Financial obstacles proved to be the main obstacle that trainees encountered. The LGU-Lawaan should use budget allocations to conduct specialized training programs for banner programs since the trainings provided by MAO-Lawaan has demonstrated their high importance and success rate. MAO should develop joint ventures with lead agencies to share resources and collectively support the adoption of technology. The study advocates that the budget must increase for diverse training programs and advocates for establishing partnerships in order to improve technology adoption. (shrink)

in the present work we analyze the new concepts and theories related to the activity of Design Management, which focus on the experiences of people and the particular characteristics of each one of them. Specifically, from an Industrial Design perspective, the scope and relationships between these conceptual definitions —now made visible— that always belonged to the field of design of the discipline will be studied, trying to identify how they influence innovation and product development. Finally, it will conclude about its (...) strategic relevance for public and private organizations, and the incorporation to the set of professional activitie. (shrink)

Firms strive hard to achieve a high degree of efficiency on the production frontier, and it is where they compete to excel with their competitors. It is observed from previous studies that standardizing some policies and developing strategies could bring efficiency in production of manufacturing firms. New approaches to the measurement of productive efficiencies are being developed, and analysis of the subject is growing exponentially, since firms are now more concerned about the productivity frontier, besides others. This paper (...) analyzes the necessary factors that contribute to the productive efficiency of an organization. A simple model of production function is constructed to understand its essence and thus contributes to the development of a new ratio that defines productive efficiency in terms of maximization of the efficiency factor that is a common issue in industrial and manufacturing organizations. (shrink)

The study focused on the production and evaluation of scouring powder using eggshells and detergents for household use. Four research questions guided the study . Quasi - experimental research design was used for the study . The formulation of the scouring powder in this study involved the combination of finely ground eggshell powder with detergent to create an effective cleaning agent . The result showed that respondents agreed that the preparation method were done correctly. It was also found that (...) the scouring powder removed stains when sufficient scrubbing time was applied. The result also showed that scouring powder was able to remove grease, restoring shine of cooking utensils and provided efficient cleaning agents . It was recommended that households should use eggshell scouring powder as a cheap, eco-friendly cleaner . Small-scale production was recommended for family income generation. (shrink)

The publication of research articles in the Filipino language has always been considered scarce. However, no empirical data has been available to describe the existing publication landscape of monolingual journals in the Philippines. Thus, this article analyzes the annual publication rates, most productive authors, and authorship trends of the ten Philippine monolingual journals, namely Dalumat, Daluyan, Diwa, Filipinolohiya, Hasaan, Katipunan, Kawing, Malay, Saliksik, and Salin from 2013 to 2022. It also describes the emerging themes present in the articles using a (...) software for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. By manually collecting the metadata from the journals’ websites, it was discovered that 1) the average number of publications per year is 57 while the average number of yearly publications per journal is 6, suggesting a very low production of research articles; 2) the most productive authors are mostly affiliated with the Philippines’ research universities; 3) most monolingual publications are concentrated in the National Capital Region; 4) an overrepresentation of male authors was observed in all monolingual journals; 5) author collaboration has become more observable in the latter years; and finally, 6) the emerging themes of the published articles revolve around social structures, collective memory, and communal issues in the Philippines. The analysis revealed five interconnected clusters of Filipino scholarship: societal structures, resilience, education, regional identity, and academic discourse, reflecting explorations of national identity and evolving cultural narratives. Keyword density analysis highlights "social science" as the primary research focus, alongside smaller clusters on history and anthropology. This paper is a significant contribution to the pioneering work on the study of Philippine journals and part of a larger project that intends to describe the nature of publication in Filipino in an English-dominated and Scopus-centric research culture. (shrink)

Logic and psychology overlap in judgment, inference and proof. The problems raised by this commonality are notoriously difficult, both from a historical and from a philosophical point of view. Sundholm has for a long time addressed these issues. His beautiful piece of work [A Century of Inference: 1837-1936] begins by summarizing the main difficulty in the usual provocative manner of the author: one can start, he says, by the act of knowledge to go to the object, as the Idealist does; (...) one can also start by the object to go to the act, in the Realist mood; never the two shall meet. He is himself inclined to accept the first perspective as the right one and he has eventually developed an original version of antirealism which starts, not from considerations about the publicity of meaning, in the manner of Dummett, but from an epistemic standpoint, trying to search in a non-Fregean tradition of analysis of judgement and cognate notions a way of founding constructivist semantics. The present paper ploughes the same field. We concentrate on the significance, for Sundholm’s program, of the perspective that has been opened by Twardowski in his important essay on acts and products (1912. (shrink)

Markets are commonly justified on the basis of consent: if two parties agree, the transaction is legitimate. This paper challenges that foundation. I develop and defend a production criterion for market eligibility: trade is legitimate only for entities that are produced through intentional human mediation. Entities that are given — existing prior to any human creative act, including natural human organs, the body's reproductive capacity, and biological tissue — are ontologically ineligible for ownership and therefore for commodification, independently of (...) consent, social meaning, or consequences. Drawing on Aristotle's techne/physis distinction and contemporary philosophy of action, I propose a graded continuum of biological mediation and apply it to organ markets, surrogacy, and emerging synthetic biology. The criterion offers a structural account of non-commodification that supplements and partially grounds existing frameworks by Satz, Anderson, and Radin with an ontological foundation those frameworks have identified as necessary but have not supplied. (shrink)

This paper defends a view of the Gene Ontology (GO) and of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as examples of what the manufacturing industry calls product-service systems. This means that they are products (the ontologies) bundled with a range of ontology services such as updates, training, help desk, and permanent identifiers. The paper argues that GO and BFO are contrasted in this respect with DOLCE, which approximates more closely to a scientific theory or a scientific publication. The paper provides a detailed (...) overview of ontology services and concludes with a discussion of some implications of the product-service system approach for the understanding of the nature of applied ontology. Ontology developer communities are compared in this respect with developers of scientific theories and of standards (such as W3C). For each of these we can ask: what kinds of products do they develop and what kinds of services do they provide for the users of these products? (shrink)

E-commerce platforms increasingly leverage machine learning to enhance user experience through personalized product recommendations. While traditional static systems often fail to adapt to changing user behavior, machine learning models can dynamically analyze user interactions, purchase history, and browsing patterns to deliver tailored suggestions. This project implements collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and hybrid recommendation models to generate accurate and relevant product recommendations. The system is designed to improve customer engagement, boost sales, and enhance overall user satisfaction. The ultimate goal is to (...) develop an intelligent recommendation engine capable of understanding individual user preferences and providing real-time, context-aware product suggestions. (shrink)

Stockart et al. make a well-intentioned attempt to build consensus over the measurement of awareness, a topic of controversy for 40 years. But their recurring slippage between subjective and objective measures overlooks a neural tension between fundamentally distinct modes of understanding. Opposing Domains Theory explains why: disagreements persist, “triple tasks” can backfire, and “cross-validation” needs to be reconceptualized.