Chater & Loewenstein criticize behavioral scientists' reliance on individual-level (“i-frame”) analysis, observing that this impoverishes policy interventions and stymies scientific progress. We extend their analysis to argue that structural factors bias and perpetuate behavioral science toward the i-frame. Addressing this problem fully will require structural changes to the training, peer review, and granting structures that confront research scientists.

The Trilema of Agripa is most commonly seen in its contemporary discussion as the Regress Problem. However, I argue that this perspective is in need of revision given certain recent developments in the debate concerning the problem in the analytic tradition. I began with an intuitive description of the problem, followed by the traditional reconstruction of the Trilem as the Regress Problem. The passage from an intuitive view of the problem to a theoretical one is delicate. And the details involved (...) in this passage should not be ignored, as they illustrate how the prevailed perspective of the problem in the debate issues from important assumptions. However, recent authors decided to return to the Pyrrhonian skepticism behind the problem and managed to defend that the regress is not the problem actually. I argue that this strategy became a point of no return for the debate where we no longer should consider the Trilema as establishing the regress as a problem. I end with a suggestion concerning which way the debate should go if we are to address its skepticism properly. (shrink)

Many artificial intelligence tools replace or stand to replace human activity, via automated decision-making, recommender systems and content generation. The more artificial intelligence (AI) replaces valuable human activity, the more it risks deskilling humans of their human capacities. This paper argues for applying a structural perspective to this phenomenon. It introduces the concept of ‘capacity-hostile environments’ to identify instances where AI mediation impedes human capacity cultivation. The analysis moves beyond individual responsibility that agents have to cultivate their human capacities, (...) demonstrating how AI’s influence creates systemic conditions that could inhibit the development and exercise of human capacities by undermining the process of capacity cultivation. Drawing on the philosophy of skill as well as social epistemology, this paper argues that capacity cultivation (skilling) includes acquiring agential control over the capacities, inculcated through a long, gradual process of habituation. Habituation, in turn, depends on learning from others: the ‘know how’ of the skill, as well as a shared understanding of the value of the skill. AI mediation risks undermining the quality of the conditions for capacity habituation, leading to capacity impoverishment. By exploring the role of AI in mediating human activity, the paper highlights the need to evaluate AI applications based on their conduciveness or hostility to capacity cultivation. Ultimately, it calls for a critical reflection on the values inherent in AI socio-technical systems and emphasizes the societal obligation to foster capacity-conducive environments in the age of AI. (shrink)

Universal reductionism—the sort of project pursued by Carnap in the Aufbau, Lewis in his campaign on behalf of Humean supervenience, Jackson in From Metaphysics to Ethics, and Chalmers in Constructing the World—aims to reduce everything to some specified base, more or less austere as it may be. In this paper, I identify two constraints that a promising strategy to argue for universal reductionism needs to satisfy: the exhaustion constraint and the chaining constraint. As a case study, I then consider Chalmers’ (...) Constructing the World, in which a priori implication, or “scrutability”, plays the role of reduction. Chalmers first divides up the total vocabulary of our language into different families, and then argues, for each family separately, that truths involving expressions in that family are scrutable from the putative base. He does not systematically address the question whether “cross-family sentences”—sentences involving expressions from more than one family—are scrutable. I shall argue that this lacuna cannot be filled, since scrutability does not allow for the exhaustion constraint and the chaining constraint to be jointly satisfied. I further suggest that Carnap’s account, in which definability plays the role of reduction, has better prospects of meeting these constraints. (shrink)

본 논문은 캇사파나스의 니체식 구성주의를 면밀히 검토하고, 해당 견해가 성공하기 힘든 견해임을 보인다. 이를 보이기 위해, 필자는 니체식 구성주의가 갖고 있는 다음의 두 특징에 주목한다. 첫째, 니체식 구성주의는 내재적이고 정언적인 의미에서의 규범성을 추구하지만 이를 형이상학적 탐구에 기대어 논증하려고 시도한다. 둘째, 니체식 구성주의는 개별 행위 사례를 통해 행위성에 대한 구성적 목적이 무엇인지를 설명하려고 시도한다. 이 논문에서 필자는 니체식 구성주의가 지니는 두 특징이 해당 견해를 받아들이기 어려운 견해로 만든다고 주장한다. 더 나아가 이를 논증하는 과정에 있어서 니체식 구성주의뿐만 아니라 해당 견해와 동일한 접근 (...) 방식을 갖는 구성주의는 전부 동일한 결함에 직면하게 될 것이라는 주장 역시 논증될 것이다. 이로부터 논문은 구성주의가 형이상학적 탐구에 기대서는 안 되며, 나아가 구성적 목적을 이끌어내는데 있어 개별적인 행위 사례에만 집중하기보다는 행위자나 행위성에 더 주목해야 한다는 교훈을 이끌어낸다. (shrink)

Toulmin’s (1958) model of argument was employed in the analysis of verbal protocols obtained during the solving of ill-structured problems. The participants were experts in the domain under study. For the analysis the Toulmin model was extended in order to enable description of lines of argument found in protocols as long as 10 paragraphs. Results included: (1) That while the protocol was comprised of a large number of specific arguments, the analysis provided for tracing a solver’s line of argument. (...) (2) On occasion datum and backing were difficult to distinguish. (3) Warrants essentially were not stated, although substantial backing was provided. However, as perhaps would be expected, the Toulmin model did not provide for delineation of components of the problem-solving process. A second analysis assuming a “higher level” problem-solving structure and a “lower level” argument structure produced an integrated problem-solving – argumentation structure depicting how reasoning is used in relation to particular task goals. Finally, at a more general level, problem solving was considered as a classical rhetorical structure. (shrink)

The chapter develops the thesis of the co-evolution of national and transnational (or international) statehood further, which was introduced by a couple of earlier essays of Chris Thornhill, Matthias Albert and the author. The particular concern of the chapter is democracy. It is assumed that democracy is not just an invention of the national state but has deep roots in both national and international public law and its evolution. However, evolution must not support democracy; it can also turn against it. (...) This is discussed with respect to the project of cosmopolitanism. As it has been realised during the process of globalisation, it is not yet democratic, and turns out to be in ever greater tension to democratic principles and hopes. A good example is the EU. However, the game is not yet over because technocratic cosmopolitanism without democracy has to face serious problems of legitimisation. (shrink)

Consciousness supervenes on activity; computation supervenes on structure. Because of this, some argue, conscious states cannot supervene on computational ones. If true, this would present serious difficulties for computationalist analyses of consciousness (or, indeed, of any domain with properties that supervene on actual activity). I argue that the computationalist can avoid the Superfluous Structure Problem (SSP) by moving to a dispositional theory of implementation. On a dispositional theory, the activity of computation depends entirely on changes in the intrinsic properties of (...) implementing material. As extraneous structure is not required for computation, a system can implement a program running on some but not all possible inputs. Dispositional computationalism thus permits episodes of computational activity that correspond to potential episodes of conscious awareness. The SSP cannot be motivated against this account, and so computationalism may be preserved. (shrink)

In ''''A Defense of Evolutionary Ethics'''' (1986), Robert J. Richardsendeavors to explain how moral ''oughts'' can be derived from thescience of evolutionary biology without committing the dreadednaturalistic fallacy. First, Richards assumes that ''ought'' as usedin ethical discourse bears the same meaning as ''ought'' used anywherein science, indicating merely that certain results or behaviors arepredicted based on prior structured contexts. To this extent, themoral behavior of animals, what they ''ought'' to do, could arguablybe predicted by evolutionary biology as effectively as, say,molecular (...) behavior may be predicted by chemistry. But afteracknowledging that biological inferences to this limited senseof ''ought'' were never contested by Moore''s naturalistic fallacy,Richard proposes to add to evolutionary ethics a decision procedureto determine which members of a set of predicted behaviors arethose which truly ought to occur – in the genuinelyprescriptive sense intended by ethical discourse. But theprocedure which Richards fabricates for this purpose appealsto such alleged ''facts'' as cultural conventions and moral opinionpolling, hardly a secure foundation for the sort of scientific ethics promised by Richards at the outset. (shrink)

Typical structural universals are not just the mereological sum of their constituents. Hence, there is the Structure Problem of explaining this non-mereological structure. The Instantiation Problem is that the predicate "U is instantiated by x, y, etc., in that order" is ill-suited to be a primitive, unanalyzed predicate. The proposed solution to these problems is based on the observation that if universal U is said to supervene upon universals V, W, etc., then it is the instantiation of U (...) that supervenes on the instantiation of V, W, etc. Assuming there are few subvenient universals, which is admittedly a speculation, their instantiation may be explained in ways that would be uneconomic if there were too many. (shrink)

This chapter explains in greater detail why accepting the success condition means accepting the presumption against intervention. It identifies three structural problems that interventions must in general deal with: the problem of conflicting aims of intervention, the problem of severe lack of information, and the problem of perverse (democratic) incentives. These problems help explain the empirical finding that success rates for interventions have historically been extremely low.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Masafumi Ogawa, “Music Teacher Education in Japan: Structure, Problems, and Perspectives”Christina HornbachMasafumi Ogawa cares deeply about improving music teacher education and has grave concerns about Japan's current music education and teacher training system. He notes reduced instructional time, cuts in teaching positions, and classroom [End Page 201] management issues resulting in the devaluing of music education by administrators, students, and the general public. He proposes that (...) one solution to these problems involves changing curriculum requirements for music education and student teaching.Ogawa notes that in the Japanese teacher preparation system, performance requirements significantly outnumber music education class requirements, something he regards as a weakness in the system. According to his data, a similar survey of the American university system revealed that music education classes receive high priority in course requirements. Though the data sample was rather small in this instance (five major state universities) and may not truly reflect course requirements for the majority of music education majors nationwide, in my experience most of the undergraduate coursework does divide fairly equally between music education methods courses, history/theory, and performance requirements. Though the National Association of Schools of Music does have guidelines for professional and teaching competencies, the actual percentages for course requirements (basic musicianship and methods courses, 50%; general studies, 30% to 35%; professional education and student teaching, 15% to 20%) provide each individual school with discretion and leeway.1 Although the American music education system may be stronger in certain areas than the Japanese system, as Ogawa presents it, it is by no means perfect. Thus, the American system needs examination too, not necessarily for the quantity of courses, but rather to determine course content and quality. Due to time limitations, I will focus on only one aspect, but one that is of the utmost importance: classroom management.It can be argued that undergraduate music education majors in America just as in Japan need more time to discuss and experience the "real" world before they teach. Though some programs incorporate pre-student teaching practica into elementary and secondary methods courses, more instructional time should be devoted to discussing classroom management and behavior issues. Classroom management is usually touched upon briefly in methods courses, and perhaps even in philosophy or psychology classes, but not to the depth it should be. There are a myriad stressful conditions that may be associated with teacher attrition and burnout, including budgets, salaries, lack of administrative and parental support, and classroom discipline, to name a few.2 However, one of the leading causes of stress is student attitudes and behavior.3Some educators believe that teaching is a natural ability and a person either possesses the innate qualities to succeed or does not; others believe that anyone can be taught to teach. Perhaps it is a little bit of both. Bright, young teachers who have a drive to teach and care about the future of their students will be more successful if armed with classroom management skills and experience in a variety of teaching contexts; for instance, urban and rural. Without guidance and increased knowledge, most young teachers emulate mentors; they teach how they [End Page 202] were taught. Depending on the personality and/or skills of the novice teacher, these techniques may or may not work when he/she is faced with teaching in an unfamiliar context. Regardless, young educators need to be taught how to teach, not just what to teach.It is necessary for a course or courses to be added to college and university music education curricula that address classroom management, emotional concerns of students, and the teaching of special student populations. At best, these topics are covered in a cursory manner in methods courses, and a cooperating teacher may model and discuss classroom management during student teaching. Providing instructional strategies for dealing with emotionally volatile adolescents and discussing available resources, responsibilities, and rights of teachers are important for new teachers' professional growth. Music educators should have the skills to recognize and deal with inappropriate classroom behaviors in a manner that focuses the student and the class back on learning.Managing anger and resistance in the classroom can be a daunting task if one is... (shrink)

Classical models of decision making deal fairly well with uncertainty, where settings are well-structured in terms of goals, alternatives, and consequences. Conversely, the typical ill-structured nature of strategy choices remains a challenge for extant models. Such cases can hardly build on the past, and their novelty makes the prediction of consequences a very difficult and poorly robust task. The weakness of the classical expected utility model in representing such problems has not been adequately solved by recent extensions. In this (...) paper we offer an explanatory coherence model for decision making in ill-structured problems. We model alternatives as sets of concurrent causal explanations of reality that act as justifications for action. According to these premises, choice is based on an evaluation of the internal coherence and the consistency of competing explanations of the available evidence. This model is psychologically grounded on causal inference and builds on the connectionist tradition of explanatory coherence. To illustrate the model, we consider the decision of investing in a new technology and we discuss how changes in the structure of alternatives may impact on the solution. We show how the final choice depends on collecting the relevant evidence, making the suitable hypotheses, and drawing the consistent causal explanations linking the two. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Music Teacher Education in Japan:Structure, Problems, and PerspectivesMasafumi OgawaSchool music education in Japan is in a less than ideal situation. In April 2002, the new course of study was implemented by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).1 The total number of music classes in the new curriculum was reduced to 33% of what it had been by the end of 2002. The reduction went (...) from two hours of music classes every week in grades one through nine to one hour in grades five through nine. This inevitably caused many problems. First, it became very difficult to teach music sequentially and instead music classes tended to be fragments of introductory experiences taught as disconnected activities. In this situation, it has been difficult for students to develop musical knowledge and skills. Second, the number of full-time music teachers was reduced greatly. It became common for a music teacher to teach at more than two schools in order to fill a full-time assignment. In some scenarios, many full-time music teachers were replaced with part-time teachers or teachers of other subjects. Music teachers have become disposable.Many music teachers are losing their effectiveness in the classroom. Students consider school music classes as a time to relax compared with other "intellectual subjects."2 They sometimes question music as an essential subject because they [End Page 139] do not value the developing skills that music requires or studying the theory of music. They believe that they can enjoy music outside of school anyway. Consequently, they are quite reluctant to participate in music classes and so behavioral problems arise and classroom management becomes more difficult. Some teachers attempt to force students to obey and force them to order; other teachers totally give up and let students behave as they like in class.3 In either case, teachers and students do not relate well to each other. It is not an exaggeration to say that school music in Japan is at risk of collapsing altogether and disappearing from the curriculum.One of the reasons for this, I believe, is that we have not wrestled with the fundamental problems of school music education until today. We might have intentionally avoided reviewing and criticizing the curriculum, expectations, and purposes of music education because it has been taboo to discuss the national standards, particularly for public school teachers to do so. Social and environmental conditions have changed greatly since the current system of Japanese education was established in 1947. It is obvious that the existing system does not match the new conditions.I strongly feel that it is time to review and reexamine what our pioneers of music education and the government had achieved in the field of music education. If we continue to avoid doing so, music in the schools will face serious consequences. In this paper, I discuss some of the fundamental issues of music teacher education in Japan. There are two reasons for focusing on music teacher education. First, starting with music teacher education is most important because music teachers have the most significant roles in school music education. Second, I have been engaged in music teacher education for seventeen years, and this is not only my research area but also an area in which, as an insider, I can offer direct insights. I will limit this essay to looking at the preparation of teachers in music for elementary and middle schools (grades 7 to 9).StructureThe course of study (COS) is a set of national curriculum standards for kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school, and schools for the handicapped and is issued by the MEXT.4 All schools, public or private, are required to follow these standards. No other curriculum is allowed. Therefore, in Japan, the COS is law through which the government controls all educational actions. The COS was first issued in 1947 and has been revised seven times.5 The most recent revision was announced in December 1998 for kindergarten, elementary, and middle schools, and in March 1999 for the other levels. All schools in Japan were required to implement the revised COS by April 2002. [End Page 140]The COS of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Masafumi Ogawa, “Music Teacher Education in Japan: Structure, Problems, and Perspectives”Peggy WheelerMasafumi Ogawa's paper presents challenge after challenge facing the teacher and the teacher educator in Japan. One has the sense that a lifetime of frustrations with the national curriculum, the set-up of student teaching, and the definition of music as a school subject each made its way into the paper. Even choosing to focus on (...) teacher training still leaves a very broad topic for a relatively short paper. The central challenge seems to be the curriculum. How does the curriculum impact the teacher and the teacher training process? How does the underlying definition of music as well as the purpose that definition implies affect the curriculum? His paper also identifies a series of dualities or tensions that exist between two important components: the curriculum or teacher education. The fact that Japanese and American music education systems seem to be at opposite ends of some of these dualities is a compelling reason for exploring and discussing them.In the arena of teacher preparation, the dualities as they appear in their relative proportion of the teacher education curriculum are (1) performance versus academic music courses, such as history, theory, and composition, and (2) education versus music courses—a familiar lament among music education students. In student teaching, modeling in the classroom by the cooperating teacher is contrasted with providing opportunities for the student teacher to experiment with the teaching process. Evaluation of student teaching is a three-way tension involving the student teacher, the cooperating teacher, and the university professor.In his discussion of the school curriculum, Ogawa deplores the triumph of attitude over skill, and pleads for discernment in the application of national standards to meet the needs of the community and students. He returns to the nature of music and music education at several points in his paper, expanding the meaning and function of music beyond music as art. His dissatisfaction with the seemingly teacher-proof curriculum peaks when he advocates for the autonomy of the teacher in the classroom. Giving teachers the opportunity to devise their own curriculum seems to go to the other extreme. Having taught with colleagues who had virtually no training in music, a standard curriculum at the district or national level provides some essential boundaries.Ogawa's discussion of the impact of the national Course of Study on Japanese music education was particularly intriguing. As teacher certification in the United [End Page 205] States has begun to promote and reward National Board Certification, it is striking to consider the restrictions and disempowerment that Ogawa describes and credits to the omnipresent Course of Study. For someone unfamiliar with the Japanese system of education, some of the descriptions were enticing but brief. Other descriptions were a bit confusing, but after visiting the MEXT website, I think most of this confusion is due to translation. It is difficult to take any phrase that is packed with meaning in one culture and find a suitable phrase in another culture that will convey the associations that are connected with it. I would recommend quoting complete descriptions or including an appendix. A reference to the history of Japanese music education on Kensho Takeshi's website would also provide more context, particularly for the connection between emotion, music, and ethics.I want to thank Ogawa for stimulating me to consider issues of curriculum including how I have changed my views of curriculum since I returned to school teaching. First, I will describe my change of perspective. Then I would like to close by describing an aspect of curriculum and teacher education that has surfaced this past year. I would call this the meta-curriculum, and I wonder how we can prepare new teachers for this part of teaching. It seems to me that the world of philosophy is the quintessential and perhaps the only appropriate arena for this preparation.Beyond Curriculum in the ClassroomLike the first spring rain on newly cut grass, music education has a fresh and vital look to me. I returned to public school teaching this year after a hiatus of seventeen years. After focusing on viola performance and liberal arts... (shrink)

Whether or not quantum physics can account for molecular structure is a matter of considerable controversy. Three of the problems raised in this regard are the problems of molecular structure. We argue that these problems are just special cases of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics: insofar as the measurement problem is solved, the problems of molecular structure are resolved as well. In addition, we explore one consequence of our argument: that claims about the reduction or (...) emergence of molecular structure cannot be settled independently of the choice of a particular resolution to the measurement problem. Specifically, we consider how three standard putative solutions to the measurement problem inform our under- standing of a molecule in isolation, as well as of chemistry’s relation to quantum physics. (shrink)

William Jaworski shows how hylomorphism can be used to solve mind-body problems--the question of how thought, feeling, perception, and other mental phenomena fit into the physical world. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle, and is responsible for individuals being the kinds of things they are, and having the powers or capacities they have. From a hylomorphic perspective, mind-body problems are byproducts of a worldview that rejects structure, and which lacks a basic principle which (...) distinguishes the parts of the physical universe that can think, feel, and perceive from those that can't. Without such a principle, the existence of those powers in the physical world can start to look inexplicable and mysterious. But if mental phenomena are structural phenomena then they are uncontroversially part of the physical world. Hylomorphism thus provides an elegant way of solving mind-body problems. (shrink)

The brain is an operationally closed system. At it’s boundary, every incoming signal gets translated into neural activity. The intrinsic nature of the distal causes perturbing the brain at its sensory surfaces cannot be grasped from the inside. Moreover, the brain exploits change detection and relational coding. Hence, the external relations between any distal causes are transformed into internal relations between neural activities. The picture of a thoroughgoing structuralism about the mind emerges: all mental states are relationally individuated and thereby (...) provide structural representations. But structuralism is vulnerable to a rather generic logico-mathematical problem: the Newman problem. The specific “Newman problem of the brain” is the concern that the brain’s operational closure is accompanied by a representational closure, where neither the intrinsic nature of the distal causes nor the nature of the external relations can be grasped from the inside. Potentially, this applies to any operationally closed structural representation system, including brains and AI systems. If the Newman problem persists, then such systems “know” nothing, the outside world remains completely hidden. This is nothing less than a skeptical scenario of the most extreme form. However, I will present a solution to this conundrum. It works by “spatio-temporal grounding”: spatial and temporal relations are unalteredly transferred from the external world to systems of structural representation. (shrink)

The Russian Orthodox Church, the biggest centralized religious institution in the post-Soviet space, has been going through major changes in the 2000s. These are connected to qualitative changes in the composition of believers and clergy as well as legal registration of rights on church property obtained from the government in the 1990s. This has led to substantial changes in internal policies, particularly a sharp decrease in the influence of fundamentalists, which had been rising over the previous decade. Moreover, the years (...) of Putin's rule were years of failure in the church's relations with the government, which consistently denied the ROC's most important requests. In this paper we will examine the principal social developments that have been taking place within the Church in the first years of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In this book, the author develops a new form of structural realism and deals with the problem of representation. The work combines two distinguished developments of the Semantic View of Theories, namely Structural Realism, a flourishing theory from contemporary philosophy of science, and Ronald Giere and colleagues’ Cognitive Models of Science approach. Readers will see how replacing the model-theoretic structures that are at issue in SR with connectionist networks and activations patterns helps us to deal with the problem (...) of representation. The author suggests that cognitive structures are not only the precise formal tools for regimenting the structure of scientific theories but also the tools that the biological brain uses to capture the essential features of its environment. Therefore, replacing model-theoretic structures with cognitive structures allows us to account for the theories-reality relationship on the basis of the most reliable theories of neurology. This is how a new form of SR, called Cognitive Structural Realism is introduced through this book, which articulates and defends CSR, and shows how two diverging branches of SVT can be reconciled. This ground-breaking work will particularly appeal to people who work in the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The concept of ‘problem’ has been recently promoted by the official academic institutions and put at the centre of a new field of research, self-styled ‘transdisciplinary studies’, in order to provide a foundation to a resolutely transdisciplinary approach to research and thought in general. The paper notes that the same move (i.e. connecting a problem-centred approach to thought with transdisciplinary method) can be found in Deleuze’s philosophy, which provides us with what the technocratic image of thought advocated by transdisciplinary studies (...) ultimately cannot provide: a positive concept of problems where those are not negative moments but originary and active matrices of thought. It then argues that Deleuze owes this concept to the French epistemological tradition, and more specifically to Bachelard, where it is nothing other than the concept of structure. It ends by explicating what particular version of structuralism Deleuze was thus led to construct in order to account for the role of problems in a radically transdisciplinary account of thought: it is the fact that all structures are multi-structured that grounds the essentially transdisciplinary nature of thought. The fact that we could think differently is precisely what makes us think. (shrink)

A promising strategy for defending the role that representation plays in explanations of cognition frames the concept in terms of internal models or map‐like mechanisms. “Structural representation” offers an account of representation that is grounded in well‐specified, empirical criteria. However, anti‐representationalists continue to press the issue of how to account for the paradigmatic semantic properties of representation at the subpersonal level. In this paper, I offer an account of how the proponent of structural representation should think about content. (...) There are really two problems of content any account of representation must overcome: the “hard problem of content” and the “content determination problem.” I argue that the structural representation account has the resources to provide a naturalistically respectable notion of content that overcomes both problems. (shrink)

Introduction: Science and Common Sense Long before the beginnings of modern civilization, men ac- quired vast funds of information about their environment. ...

Structure and organization seems to be at the root of many of the questions raised about institutional behaviour; however, with respect to research on university capacity building, few studies have examined research organizational problems, particularly in developing countries. This study investigates academic reactions to the structure and organization of research at four leading Vietnamese universities. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 55 participants, the study finds that the four case-study Vietnamese universities have accomplished a number of the more (...) visible tasks of research management such as creating research and research management positions; deciding primary organizational units for research delivery; creating a research office; and creating research oversight committees. However, they seem to neglect the other less visible tasks of organizing and structuring research such as developing rules for research integrity; developing a mechanism for evaluating the quality of research outcomes; preparing researchers and research managers for the necessary skills and knowledge; and deciding vertical and horizontal decentralization. The study concludes that even though research has been formally structured and organized, the management of research has not yet been professionalized. The key problem in organizing and structuring research is the lack of an effective system for research behaviour formalization. A more effective system for better formalizing research behaviours should be developed so that Vietnamese universities can integrate more successfully into the global research. (shrink)

What is structural rationality? Specifically, what is the distinctive feature of structural requirements of rationality? Some philosophers have argued, roughly, that the distinctive feature of structural requirements is coherence. But what does coherence mean, exactly? Or, at least, what do structuralists about rationality have in mind when they claim that structural rationality is coherence? This issue matters for making progress in various active debates concerning rationality. In this paper, I analyze three strategies for figuring out what (...) coherence means in the debates on structural rationality. I argue that these strategies face problems. (shrink)

According to realist structuralism, mathematical objects are places in abstract structures. We argue that in spite of its many attractions, realist structuralism must be rejected. For, first, mathematical structures typically contain intra-structurally indiscernible places. Second, any account of place-identity available to the realist structuralist entails that intra-structurally indiscernible places are identical. Since for her mathematical singular terms denote places in structures, she would have to say, for example, that 1 = − 1 in the group (Z, +). We call this (...) the identity problem and conclude that nominalism is presently the safest route for the structuralist. (shrink)

The concept of solidarity has recently come to prominence in the healthcare literature, addressing the motivation for taking seriously the shared vulnerabilities and medical needs of compatriots and for acting to help them meet these needs. In a recent book, Prainsack and Buyx take solidarity as a commitment to bear costs to assist others regarded as similar, with implications for governing health databases, personalized medicine, and organ donation. More broadly, solidarity has been understood normatively to call for ‘standing with’ or (...) assisting fellow community members and possibly also distant others in regard to their needs, whether for its own sake or in order to realize the demands of justice. I argue here that the understanding of solidarity in the existing bioethics literature is unduly restricted by not sufficiently theorizing the notion of structural (or systemic) injustice and its import for understanding solidarity. Extending traditional conceptions of labor and social movement solidarity, I contrast unitary solidarity within a given group with ‘networking solidarities’ across groups. I analyze the meaning of structural injustice and its significance for solidarity, including countering institutionally entrenched inequalities and economic exploitation. I then apply this broadened conception to healthcare, discussing structural problems with the U.S. insurance system and the solidarity movements addressing its deficiencies. I analyze some natural disasters and global health challenges that were aggravated by structural injustices, along with the solidarity movements they engendered. Finally, I revisit the questions of governing health databases and of personalized medicine with the enlarged conception of solidarity in view. (shrink)

As a committee of the National Academy of Engineering recognized, ethics education should foster the ability of students to analyze complex decision situations and ill-structured problems. Building on the NAE’s insights, we report about an innovative teaching approach that has two main features: first, it places the emphasis on deliberation and on self-directed, problem-based learning in small groups of students; and second, it focuses on understanding ill-structured problems. The first innovation is motivated by an abundance of scholarly research (...) that supports the value of deliberative learning practices. The second results from a critique of the traditional case-study approach in engineering ethics. A key problem with standard cases is that they are usually described in such a fashion that renders the ethical problem as being too obvious and simplistic. The practitioner, by contrast, may face problems that are ill-structured. In the collaborative learning environment described here, groups of students use interactive and web-based argument visualization software called “AGORA-net: Participate – Deliberate!”. The function of the software is to structure communication and problem solving in small groups. Students are confronted with the task of identifying possible stakeholder positions and reconstructing their legitimacy by constructing justifications for these positions in the form of graphically represented argument maps. The argument maps are then presented in class so that these stakeholder positions and their respective justifications become visible and can be brought into a reasoned dialogue. Argument mapping provides an opportunity for students to collaborate in teams and to develop critical thinking and argumentation skills. (shrink)

It is proposed that there are important generalizations about problem solving in design activity that reach across specific disciplines. A framework for the study of design is presented that (a) characterizes design as a radial category and fleshes out the task environment of the prototypical cases; (b) takes the task environment seriously; (c) shows that this task environment occurs in design tasks, but does not occur in every nondesign task; (d) explicates the impact of this task environment on the design (...) problem space; and (e) demonstrates that, given the structure of the information-processing system, the features noted in the problem spaces of design tasks will not all occur in problem spaces where the task environment is vastly different. This analysis leads to the claim that there are a set of invariant features in the problem spaces of design situations that collectively constitute a design problem space. Protocol studies are reported in which the problem spaces of three design tasks in architecture, mechanical engineering, and instructional design are explored and compared with several protocols from nondesign problem-solving tasks. (shrink)

The concept of social structure is crucial in social analysis, yet sociologists' use of the term is often ambiguous and misleading. Contributing to the ambiguity is a tendency to imply the meaning of "social structure" either by opposing it to agency or by contrasting it to culture, thus reducing "structure" to pure constraint and suggesting that "culture" is not structured. Even more damaging is the tendency to conflate these two contrasts. To add to the confusion, these contrasts are often mapped (...) inappropriately onto other dichotomies prevalent in social theorizing, including material versus ideal, external versus internal, static versus active, and objective versus subjective, to produce a conceptual prism in which structure, agency, and culture are all poorly understood. This article attempts to disentangle these concepts from the aforementioned system of contrasts, to specify the connections between structure and agency, and to make a case for the inclusion of culture in the sociological conception of social structure. (shrink)

It is argued that a number of important, and seemingly disparate, types of representation are species of a single relation, here called structural representation, that can be described in detail and studied in a way that is of considerable philosophical interest. A structural representation depends on the existence of a common structure between a representation and that which it represents, and it is important because it allows us to reason directly about the representation in order to draw conclusions (...) about the phenomenon that it depicts. The present goal is to give a general and precise account of structural representation, then to use that account to illuminate several problems of current philosophical interest — including some that do not initially seem to involve representation at all. In particular, it is argued that ontological reductions (like that of the natural numbers to sets), compositional accounts of semantics, several important sorts of mental representation, and (perhaps) possible worlds semantics for intensional logics are all species of structural representation and are fruitfully studied in the framework developed here. (shrink)

Recent work by Frigg et. al. and Mayo-Wilson have called attention to a particular sort of error associated with attempts to model certain complex systems: structural modeling error. The assessment of the degree of SME in a model presupposes agreement between modelers about the best way to individuate natural systems, an agreement which can be more problematic than it appears. This problem, which we dub “the system individuation problem” arises in many of the same contexts as SME, and the (...) two often compound one another. This paper explores the common roots of the two problems in concerns about the precision of predictions generated by scientific models, and discusses how both concerns bear on the study of complex natural systems, particularly the global climate. (shrink)

"Ernest Nagel's work, _The Structure of Science_, has earned for itself the status of an outstanding standard work in its field. It offers an exceptionally thorough and comprehensive methodological and philosophical exploration encountered in those diverse fields. Nagel's discussion is distinguished by the lucidity of its style, the incisiveness of its reasoning, and the solidity of its grounding in all the major branches of scientific inquiry. _The Structure of Science_ has become a highly influential work that is widely invoked in (...) the methodological and philosophical literature. Recent controversies between analytics and historic-sociological approaches to the philosophy of science have not diminished its significance; in fact, it seems to me that the pragmatist component in Nagel's thinking may be helpful for efforts to develop a rapprochement between the contending schools." --Carl G. Hempel. (shrink)

Social problems such as racism, sexism, and inequality are often cited as structural rather than individual in nature. What does it mean to invoke a social structural explanation, and how do such explanations relate to individualistic ones? This article explores recent philosophical debates concerning the nature and usages of social structural explanation. I distinguish between two central kinds of social structural explanation: those that are autonomous from psychology, and those that are not. This distinction will (...) help clarify the explanatory power that each type of SSE has, points of convergence with methodological traditions such as critical theory and rational choice theory, and the difficulties that each type of SSE faces. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the problem of structure and agency. Structure and agency inescapably contradict each other so that sociological analysis perpetually undermines itself. Ironically, this situation arose out of the development of sociology as a discipline. This chapter shows a way out of this problem by presenting the picture given by the concepts of structure and agency as a case of forced perspective inducing of a loss of depth in sociological imagination. We can correct this optical illusion by adopting metric/nonmetric (...) in place of structure/agency as guiding distinction. To assemble the metric/nonmetric distinction, we have to operationalize the structure/agency distinction as well as the micro/macro distinction and the individual/society distinction: none of these distinctions applies universally; they all vary from context to context. The metric/nonmetric distinction offers the means for reconstituting these variations and for restoring the perception of depth as the difference in modalities between cases. (shrink)

Structuralism is one of the most popular contemporary accounts of mathematics. Despite its popularity, it has been challenged on the grounds of consistency. In this paper, I show that existing arguments purporting to establish an inconsistency miss the mark. I then proceed to develop a new argument against realist structuralism, to show that the commitment to mathematical pluralism and the structural identity criterion embraced by the realist structuralist jointly entail a contradiction.

Recent philosophical work has praised the reward structure of science, while recent empirical work has shown that many scientific results may not be reproducible. I argue that the reward structure of science incentivizes scientists to focus on speed and impact at the expense of the reproducibility of their work, thus contributing to the so-called reproducibility crisis. I use a rational choice model to identify a set of sufficient conditions for this problem to arise, and I argue that these conditions plausibly (...) apply to a wide range of research situations. Currently proposed solutions will not fully address this problem. Philosophical commentators should temper their optimism about the reward structure of science. (shrink)

Multiple criteria decision problems with one decision maker have been recognized and discussed in the recent literature in optimization theory, operations research and management science. The corresponding concept with n-decision makers, namely multicriteria n-person games, has not yet been extensively explored.In this paper we first demonstrate that existing solution concepts for single criterion n-person games in both normal form and characteristic function form induce domination structures (similar to those defined and studied by Yu [39] for multicriteria single decision maker (...) problems) in various spaces, including the payoff space, the imputation space and the coalition space. This discussion provides an understanding of some underlying assumptions of the solution concepts and provides a basis for generalizing and generating new solution concepts not yet defined. Also we illustrate that domination structures may be regarded as a measure of power held by the players.We then illustrate that a multicriteria problem can naturally arise in decision situations involving (partial) conflict among n-persons. Using our discussion of solution concepts for single criterion games as a basis, various approaches for resolving both normal form and characteristic function form multicriteria n-person games are proposed. For multicriteria games in characteristic function form, we define a multicriteria core and show that there exists a single ‘game point’ whose core is equal to the multicriteria core. If we reduce a multicriteria game to a single criterion game, domination structures which are more general than ‘classical’ ones must be considered, otherwise some crucial information in the game may be lost. Finally, we discuss a parametrization process which, for a given multicriteria game, associates a single criterion game to each point in a parametric space. This parametrization provides a basis for the discussion of solution concepts in multicriteria n-person games. (shrink)

The study of MOD Structures is new and innovative. The authors in this book propose several problems on MOD Structures, some of which are at the research level.

Structural universals are a kind of complex universal. They have been put to work in a variety of philosophical theories but are plagued with problems concerning their compositional nature. In this article, we will discuss the following questions. What are structural universals? Why believe in them? Can we give a consistent account of their compositional nature? What are the costs of doing so?

There are two general questions which many views in the philosophy of mathematics can be seen as addressing: what are mathematical objects, and how do we have knowledge of them? Naturally, the answers given to these questions are linked, since whatever account we give of how we have knowledge of mathematical objects surely has to take into account what sorts of things we claim they are; conversely, whatever account we give of the nature of mathematical objects must be accompanied by (...) a corresponding account of how it is that we acquire knowledge of those objects. The connection between these problems results in what is often called "Benacerraf's Problem", which is a dilemma that many philosophical views about mathematical objects face. It will be my goal here to present a view, attributed to Richard Dedekind, which approaches the initial questions in a different way than many other philosophical views do, and in doing so, avoids the dilemma given by Benacerraf's problem. (shrink)