Perception of Absence

We are able to see what is not there, such as when a car has been stolen and is not where the owner expected it to be. There is some kind of phenomenological feel to such discoveries but it is uncertain and elusive. There is a distinction between seeing the absence of something and merely inferring its absence from what is seen. Two theories of how it is possible to see what is not there are considered: perceptual theories, which claim absences can be experienced, and cognitive theories that appeal to an inference. Both have problems. Perceptual theories struggle to say how something that is not there can be an object of perception while cognitive theories cannot say how the required inference is drawn. As an alternative, an evolved mechanism is invoked that allows a non-deductive inference to an absence that is then presented in the mind as experiential.

Knowledge Network for Sustainable Local Development

This article aims to build a network for the exchange of knowledge between the government and production, community and university sectors for sustainable local development. To achieve this, the authors relied on the concepts of sustainable local development, social capital, the relationship between sectors or intersectorality, networks and interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge. Regarding the methodology, the abductive method was used. Under a documentary design, the research techniques were a content analysis of theoretical documents and the deductive inference technique. The construction of a knowledge exchange network for sustainable local development stands out as the result. It is concluded that knowledge networks for sustainable local development have positive implications in the establishment of alliances and links between the sectors that make up society.

Theory Exploration Powered by Deductive Synthesis

This paper presents a symbolic method for automatic theorem generation based on deductive inference. Many software verification and reasoning tasks require proving complex logical properties; coping with this complexity is generally done by declaring and proving relevant sub-properties. This gives rise to the challenge of discovering useful sub-properties that can assist the automated proof process. This is known as the theory exploration problem, and so far, predominant solutions that emerged rely on evaluation using concrete values. This limits the applicability of these theory exploration techniques to complex programs and properties.In this work, we introduce a new symbolic technique for theory exploration, capable of (offline) generation of a library of lemmas from a base set of inductive data types and recursive definitions. Our approach introduces a new method for using abstraction to overcome the above limitations, combining it with deductive synthesis to reason about abstract values. Our implementation has shown to find more lemmas than prior art, avoiding redundant lemmas (in terms of provability), while being faster in most cases. This new abstraction-based theory exploration method is a step toward applying theory exploration to software verification and synthesis.

Genuine Logical Consequence

Our pretheoretic sense of the relation of logical consequence arises from our experience of deductive inference. By ignoring the priority of inference and failing to provide an account of the ontological grounds of the conceptual experience and of the modal and truth elements in the statement of our pretheoretical sense, informal and technical accounts are at best partial. This paper proposes an ontological analysis of both elements which accounts for our conceptual experience and differentiates genuine from ersatz logical consequence.

The Role of a Leader in Stimulating Innovation in an Organization

Many organizations seek ways to stimulate and encourage staff innovation. One ofthese is leadership that can boost staff innovation behavior. The aim of thisarticle is to reflect on leadership and its contribution to stimulating innovation. To achieve the aim of the article—and to verify the hypotheses—deductive inference, the analysis of the subject literature and the author’s own questionnaire were used. The research was carried out with an original questionnaire to assess the role of a leader in stimulating innovative activity. The questionnaire consists of 28 statements.The analysis of the results of the empirical research has confirmed the research hypotheses that the role of a leader is to stimulate the creativity of employees and reward their innovative behavior.The analysis of the role of leadership in stimulating organizational innovation showed that the vast majority of statements concerning the role of leadership achieved a mean score above 5.0 (86%)—an average level. The research suggests that leaders should first and foremost play the following roles in stimulating innovation (e.g., a performer/creator of employee creativity and a promoter of rewarding the innovative behavior of employees).