The origins of the shape bias: Evidence from the Tsimane'

In the US, children often generalize the meaning of new words by assuming that objects with the same shape have the same name. We propose that this shape bias is influenced by children’s exposure to objects of different categories (artifacts and natural kinds), and language to talk about them. We present a cross-cultural study between English speakers in the US and Tsimane’ speakers in the Bolivian Amazon. We found that US children and adults were more likely to generalize novel labels by shape rather than by material or color, relative to Tsimane’ participants. Critically, Tsimane’ children and adults systematically avoided generalizing labels to objects that shared no common features with the novel referent. Our results provide initial evidence that the relative exposure to objects of different kinds and language to talk about them can lead to cross-cultural differences on object name learning.

Abuso de substâncias gêmeas: Pap e Kuhn contra a distinção entre propriedades essenciais e acidentais de espécies científicas

Neste artigo analiso criticamente o essencialismo acerca de espécies naturais [natural kinds] a partir da teoria funcional do a priori de Arthur Pap (1943, 1944 e 1946). De maneira similar a outros autores que privilegiam a prática científica, mostra-se que há razões para rejeitar a legitimidade da distinção entre propriedades essenciais e propriedades acidentais no interior de uma teoria científica. Buscamos mostrar como uma resposta muito similar àquela de Thomas Kuhn ao célebre experimento de pensamento da Terra Gêmea pode ser formulada a partir da teoria funcional de Pap. Tanto Kuhn quanto Pap apresentam razões pelas quais devemos rejeitar a aplicação da teoria causal da referência ao léxico científico. Com base em uma análise da prática científica da primeira metade do século XX mostramos que a distinção entre propriedades acidentais e essenciais de espécies científicas é inadequada (o caso do “Fósforo Gêmeo”). Isso nos permite aproximar a teoria funcional do a priori da “virada histórica” em filosofia da ciência encontrada em autores como Kuhn, mostrando como essa virada foi um processo mais contínuo do que pensado inicialmente.

Division, Syllogistic, and Science in Prior Analytics I.31

In the first book of the Prior Analytics, Aristotle sets out, for the first time in Greek philosophy, a logical system. After this, Aristotle compares this method with Plato’s method of division, a procedure designed to find essences of natural kinds through systematic classification. This critical comparison in APr I.31 raises an interpretive puzzle: how can Aristotle reasonably juxtapose two methods that differ so much in their aims and approach? What can be gained by doing so? Previous interpreters have failed to show how this comparison is legitimate or what important point Aristotle is making. The goal of this paper is to resolve the puzzle. In resolving this puzzle we not only learn more about the relationship between division and the syllogistic in Aristotle. We will also learn something about the motivation for the syllogistic itself, by seeing the role that it plays in his philosophy of science.

Newton’s Matter Theory

This chapter focuses on Newton’s ideas about matter and bodies in connection with traditional questions about nature and structure, also examining an important crossover into his quantitative approach. It begins with his early proclivity for ontologically prior parts and atomism itself, then considering their effect upon his ideas about natural kinds; his composition theory; and his explanatory shift from the aether to forces. His most metaphysical account of body, articulated in De gravitatione and belonging to a broader account of substance, is then examined. Rather than employing a substratum, the account reduces bodies solely to powers and attributes, which themselves establish material dimensionality. The penultimate section examines a crossover of some matter-theoretic ideas into the Principia’s very different theoretical context, where they threaten his argument for universal gravitation. It shows that his unjustified assumption of matter’s inertial homogeneity derives from his old atomist commitments.

Antimicrobial effect of natural kinds of toothpaste on oral pathogenic bacteria

Introduction: Because of the adverse effects on human health of some antimicrobial ingredients in traditional toothpaste, consumers are increasingly turning to toothpastes with natural ingredients. This study evaluates the antimicrobial effect of toothpastes containing different natural active agents against three oral pathogens: Streptococcus mutans, Streptococcus sanguinis, and Enterococcus faecalis. Methodology: This study tested one traditional toothpaste and seven different natural toothpastes containing theobromine, aloe vera, miswak, propolis, chitosan, enzymes and probiotics. The agar-well diffusion method was used to test the antimicrobial effect. Inhibition zones formed around toothpastes after 24 hours of incubation were measured and the data collected were statistically analyzed. Results: Toothpastes containing theobromine and chitosan and the traditional toothpaste showed antimicrobial efficacy for all tested bacteria. Toothpastes containing aloe vera, miswak, and propolis were only effective on S. mutans, while toothpastes containing probiotics and enzymes did not show any antimicrobial effect on the bacteria. Among toothpastes with natural ingredients, the theobromine-containing toothpaste showed the highest efficacy on S. mutans, while the aloe vera- and propolis-containing toothpastes had the lowest efficacy (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Theobromine- and chitosan-containing toothpastes, which showed antimicrobial activity against all bacteria, can be recommended as alternatives to traditional toothpastes.

The Right Variables and Natural Kinds

This chapter argues that mesoscale parameters (order parameters and material parameters) are the natural variables by which we can characterize and understand lawful behaviors of many-body systems. It engages in a debate about whether the determination of natural kinds flows from metaphysical considerations about fundamentality and carving nature at its joins or from goal oriented aims of ones scientific methodology. The chapter argues for a scientific determination of the natural variables (at least in the case of many-body systems) based on the previous discussions of the hydrodynamic, correlation function approach. The Fluctuation-Dissipation theorem provides a justification for taking the mesoscale variables and parameters to be natural kinds.

Conclusions

This concluding chapter focuses on the philosophical lessons to be had from the discussions in the previous chapters. Specifically, it suggests that one interesting and fruitful way to understand the relation “theory X is more fundamental than theory Y” is through mediated mesoscale modeling. This is in contrast to the kind of direction derivational connections often invoked in the debates about reduction that depend on “in principle” mathematical claims. The hierarchical ordering in terms of this relation of relative fundamentality can be understood in terms of the conception of relative autonomy discussed throughout the book. It highlights the fact that this point of view has its genesis in Einstein’s work on Brownian Motion and specifically in his determination of an effective material parameter and the first expression of the Fluctuation-Dissipation theorem. Finally, it recaps the conception of an engineering, middle-out approach to many-body physics and the physical arguments that certain mesoscale variables should be considered to be natural kinds.

Shared understanding of color among sighted and blind adults

Empiricist philosophers such as Locke famously argued that people born blind might learn arbitrary color facts (e.g., marigolds are yellow) but would lack color understanding. Contrary to this intuition, we find that blind and sighted adults share causal understanding of color, despite not always agreeing about arbitrary color facts. Relative to sighted people, blind individuals are less likely to generate “yellow” for banana and “red” for stop sign but make similar generative inferences about real and novel objects’ colors, and provide similar causal explanations. For example, people infer that two natural kinds (e.g., bananas) and two artifacts with functional colors (e.g., stop signs) are more likely to have the same color than two artifacts with nonfunctional colors (e.g., cars). People develop intuitive and inferentially rich “theories” of color regardless of visual experience. Linguistic communication is more effective at aligning intuitive theories than knowledge of arbitrary facts.

A new epistemology for mental disorders

Psychopathology has been criticized for decades for its reliance on a over-reductionist approach which views mental disorders as disease-like natural kinds that result from pathological changes in brain structure and function. The lack of progress in developing better treatments for mental disorders happened in spite of a great deal of research trying to uncover its neural bases. A new ontoepistemology for mental disorders is proposed, focusing on a biocultural model, in which brains are understood as embodied and embedded in ecosocial niches - zones of living within a milieu that can be occupied by a particular individual with its form of life, and with which brains enact particular transactions characterized by circular causality. In this approach, neurobiological bases are always-already associated with interpersonal, social, and cultural factors, and therefore are inseparable from these factors. As an ontoepistemology, this approach leads to methodological changes in how mental disorders are studied, as well as to consequences to interventions.