Exploding Individuals: Engaging Indigenous Logic and Decolonizing Science

Hypatia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-74
Author(s):  
Rebekah Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Classical Logic ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Biological Individual ◽  
The World

AbstractDespite emerging attention to Indigenous philosophies both within and outside of feminism, Indigenous logics remain relatively underexplored and underappreciated. By amplifying the voices of recent Indigenous philosophies and literatures, I seek to demonstrate that Indigenous logic is a crucial aspect of Indigenous resurgence as well as political and ethical resistance. Indigenous philosophies provide alternatives to the colonial, masculinist tendencies of classical logic in the form of paraconsistent—many-valued—logics. Specifically, when Indigenous logics embrace the possibility of true contradictions, they highlight aspects of the world rejected and ignored by classical logic and inspire a relational, decolonial imaginary. To demonstrate this, I look to biology, from which Indigenous logics are often explicitly excluded, and consider one problem that would benefit from an Indigenous, paraconsistent analysis: that of the biological individual. This article is an effort to expand the arenas in which allied feminists can responsibly take up and deploy these decolonial logics.

Invariant Recognition Shapes Neural Representations of Visual Input

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 403-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Tacchetti ◽  
Leyla Isik ◽  
Tomaso A. Poggio
Keyword(s):  
Computational Neuroscience ◽  
Sensory Input ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Visual Input ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Human Visual Perception ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
The People ◽  
The World

Recognizing the people, objects, and actions in the world around us is a crucial aspect of human perception that allows us to plan and act in our environment. Remarkably, our proficiency in recognizing semantic categories from visual input is unhindered by transformations that substantially alter their appearance (e.g., changes in lighting or position). The ability to generalize across these complex transformations is a hallmark of human visual intelligence, which has been the focus of wide-ranging investigation in systems and computational neuroscience. However, while the neural machinery of human visual perception has been thoroughly described, the computational principles dictating its functioning remain unknown. Here, we review recent results in brain imaging, neurophysiology, and computational neuroscience in support of the hypothesis that the ability to support the invariant recognition of semantic entities in the visual world shapes which neural representations of sensory input are computed by human visual cortex.

What Does the Study of Religion Study?

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Schilbrack
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial Studies ◽  
Social Inquiry ◽  
The World ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Academic Study

At the end of the twentieth century, scholars in the academic study of religion made what we might call “the reflexive turn,” in that they picked up the tools of genealogy, deconstruction, and post-colonial studies and they began in earnest to reflect critically on their own conceptual categories. Where did the very concept of “religion” come from? Whose interests are served by this apparently modern, European, and Christian way of categorizing practices? One way to think about the effect of the reflexive turn is to think of the conceptual vocabulary in religious studies as a window or lens through which scholars had previously been examining the world. What had been taken as natural and transparent now becomes itself the object of study. Richard King calls this “the Copernican turn,” that is, as he nicely puts it, a turn to focus on the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible. The goal of this turn is to “denaturalize” the concept of religion (King, 1). The reflexive or Copernican turn, in my judgment, is a crucial aspect of social inquiry that scholars of religion should not ignore. But it clearly leads to the question: once one denaturalizes the concept of “religion,” what does the academic study of religion study?

scholarly journals Biological management of allelopathic plant Parthenium sp.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-261
Author(s):  
Rinzim Dukpa ◽  
Anupam Tiwari ◽  
Dhriti Kapoor
Keyword(s):  
Health Risks ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Successful Management ◽  
Major Threat ◽  
The World ◽  
Biological Management ◽  
Biological Methods

AbstractGlobally, weeds have been considered as a major threat and act as a hindrance to crop production, even though the farmers put tremendous efforts to eliminate the weeds to get a better yield. Weeds stayed a steady threat to productivity and manageability of soil and environment, regardless of many years of research and advances in management practices. Parthenium hysterophorus is widely studied all around the world including India as a noxious and an unsafe weed responsible for many health risks in humans and animals. Many experts employed different biological methods using insects, beetle, microorganisms, and certain pathogens, which caused a broad dispersal damage to P. hysterophorus. Biorational weed control is also offered by allelopathy through the production of allelochemicals from the leaf, blossoms, grains, nuts, bud, berry, trunk, and organization of living or decaying plant substance. Allelopathy is the most realistic method to control the weeds as well as different plants. Lately, there has been a proliferation of curiosity to research on plant allelopathy to control weeds in agro-ecosystems. The successful management of this weed can only be achieved by an integrated approach with allelochemicals as a crucial aspect.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Lauria ◽  
Julien A. Deonna
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Reward System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Guise Of The Good ◽  
Motivational States ◽  
Direction Of Fit ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Positive Evaluation

Desire has not been at the center of recent preoccupations in the philosophy of mind. Consequently, the literature settled into several dogmas. The first part of this introduction presents these dogmas and invites readers to scrutinize them. The main dogma is that desires are motivational states. This approach contrasts with the other dominant conception: desires are positive evaluations. But there are at least four other dogmas: the world should conform to our desires (world-to-mind direction of fit), desires involve a positive evaluation (the “guise of the good”), we cannot desire what we think is actual (the “death of desire” principle), and, in neuroscience, the idea that the reward system is the key to understanding desire. The second part of the introduction summarizes the contributions to this volume. The hope is to contribute to the emergence of a fruitful debate on this neglected, albeit crucial, aspect of the mind.

scholarly journals Metal-Promoted Heterocyclization: A Heterosynthetic Approach to Face a Pandemic Crisis

Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (9) ◽  
pp. 2620
Author(s):  
Federico Vittorio Rossi ◽  
Dario Gentili ◽  
Enrico Marcantoni
Keyword(s):  
Pharmaceutical Industry ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Effective Response ◽  
Heterocyclic Molecules ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Approved Drugs ◽  
Recent Formulation

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has drastically changed our everyday life and the life of scientists from all over the world. In the last year, the scientific community has faced this worldwide threat using any tool available in order to find an effective response. The recent formulation, production, and ongoing administration of vaccines represent a starting point in the battle against SARS-CoV-2, but they cannot be the only aid available. In this regard, the use of drugs capable to mitigate and fight the virus is a crucial aspect of the pharmacological strategy. Among the plethora of approved drugs, a consistent element is a heterocyclic framework inside its skeleton. Heterocycles have played a pivotal role for decades in the pharmaceutical industry due to their high bioactivity derived from anticancer, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory capabilities. In this context, the development of new performing and sustainable synthetic strategies to obtain heterocyclic molecules has become a key focus of scientists. In this review, we present the recent trends in metal-promoted heterocyclization, and we focus our attention on the construction of heterocycles associated with the skeleton of drugs targeting SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

Dialectical logic, classical logic, and the consistency of the world

1976 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Routley ◽  
Robert K. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Classical Logic ◽  
Dialectical Logic ◽  
The World

scholarly journals In search of identity: trauma and irony in the cognitive light

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Frequent Occurrence ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Scottish Literature ◽  
Cognitive Metaphor ◽  
The World ◽  
Cognitive Study

For many decades Scottish Literature has produced characters that fitted well within the atmosphere of despair and inferiority undergone by the Scottish nation in the course of its history. The question of identity being at its heart, Scottish Literature has revealed a specific feature consisting in the frequent occurrence of traumatized, dual and split personalities. These are protagonists who in the force of Scotland’s history are traumatized and symbolize Scotland’s remarkable tradition of despair and the feeling of inferiority and powerlessness. However, a closer look at the contemporary Scottish female writing permits to take a new angle for exploring identity. Our approach accounts for the role of irony and humor that the characters provide. The fact of incongruity / trauma vs. irony/ creates a basis for insightful explorations of the dual essence of identity in A.L. Kennedy’s and J. Galloway’s writing in the light of such counter-concepts as emotional fulfillment vs. isolation, feminist vs. domestic expectations. Thus, our research within the frames of “Caledonian polysyzygy” aims at showcasing how and in what ways the cognitive study of the ironic component can contribute to the revelation of different aspects of identity crisis and survival. The features of the expression of irony are brought out with the help of cognitive metaphor, hyperbole, comparison, etc. It is argued that irony is based on the author's vision of the world and is characterized by the presence of explicit and hidden meanings which accounts for the clash between the vision and the reality. It is established that irony, a crucial aspect in the works of the mentioned authors, is a multi-layered cognitive and discursive phenomenon that aims to highlight the collision between thinking and reality.

The World of Truth-Making

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kit Fine
Keyword(s):  
Classical Logic ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
The World ◽  
Exact Version

This chapter considers a number of different ways to develop a semantics in which statements are evaluated at partial possibilities rather than possible worlds. These include the exact version of truth-maker semantics in which truth-makers are wholly relevant to the statements they make true, the inexact version in which they are relevant, but not necessarily wholly relevant, to the statements they make true, and the loose version, in which they need only necessitate the statements they make true, regardless of relevance. The chapter explores the question of how these different semantical schemes are related; and it argues for the surprising conclusion that classical logic can only be properly accommodated within the ‘relevantist’ version of these approaches by allowing possible worlds to be among the partial possibilities. Thus, whatever reasons there might be for adopting such a semantics, they should not include a distaste for possible worlds.

The CADE ATP System Competition — CASC

AI Magazine ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Sutcliffe
Keyword(s):  
Theorem Proving ◽  
Classical Logic ◽  
Automated Theorem Proving ◽  
World Championship ◽  
Public Evaluation ◽  
The World ◽  
Fully Automatic

The CADE ATP System Competition (CASC) is an annual evaluation of fully automatic automated theorem proving (ATP) systems for classical logic — the world championship for such systems. CASC provides a public evaluation of the relative capabilities of ATP systems, and aims stimulate ATP research towards the development of more powerful ATP systems. Over the years CASC has been a catalyst for impressive improvements in ATP.

The Machine in the Garden in the 21st Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99
Author(s):  
Stephen Dougherty
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Short Circuit ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Technological Condition ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
The World ◽  
Liberal Humanism ◽  
The One

In this essay I will suggest Leo Marx’s debt to a style of thinking about technology which cuts against the grain of the liberal humanism and liberal progressive ideology that informs his writing. This style of thinking, associated with the word technicity, underscores the intimacy of our relation to technology. The Machine in the Garden insists that technology is a crucial aspect of our human nature—it encourages us to see that nature is inseparable from our technological condition. In this sense, the machine and the garden are confounded in Marx’s book. The book’s key themes and conflicts short-circuit the mission to promote the liberal individualist illusion of escape from the shaping forces of history. What we can begin to glean in The Machine in the Garden is that there is no place for a transcendence that guarantees the “naturalness” of nature, or the romantic integrity of the self. There is only the world—an increasingly technologically mediated world—which on the one hand creates the very means for our access to nature, and on the other hand, dispels the very ‘Nature’ it reveals through an inevitable process of contamination across the nature/culture divide.

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