A Proposal for the EI Index for Fuzzy Groups

In this paper, it is proposed a measure that quantifies the relational structure within and between groups that comprehend not only the analysis of disjoint groups or non-disjoint groups but also in fuzzy groups. This measure is based on the existing measure known as the EI index. The current EI index is a measure of homophily applied to networks with the presence of disjoint groups, although disjoint groups on a large scale rarely exist in many empirical networks. The new measure permits the expansion of the analysis of social networks, for several types of attributes, and thus generating previously untapped knowledge. Moreover, it is also proposed combining edges’ and nodes’ weights in the evaluation of the EI index. The new measure is tested in two networks in different contexts. The first one is a co-authorship network, where researchers, actors in the network, are divided according to the time of completion of the doctorate. The second network is formed by trade relations between countries of the American continent, where countries are grouped according to the Human Development Index.

Leaping across the mental canyon: Higher-order long-distance analogical retrieval

Previous experiments have shown that a comparison of two written narratives highlights theirshared relational structure, which in turn facilitates the retrieval of analogous narratives from the past (e.g., Gentner, Loewenstein, Thompson, & Forbus, 2009). However, analogical retrieval occurs across domains that appear more conceptually distant than merely different narratives, and the deepest analogies use matches in higher-order relational structure. The present study investigated whether comparison can facilitate analogical retrieval of higher-order relations across written narratives and abstract symbolic problems. Participants read stories which became retrieval targets after a delay, cued by either analogous stories or letter-strings. In Experiment 1 we replicated Gentner et al. who used narrative retrieval cues, and also found preliminary evidence for retrieval between narrative and symbolic domains. In Experiment 2 we found clear evidence that a comparison of analogous letter-string problems facilitated the retrieval of source stories with analogous higher-order relations. Experiment 3 replicated the retrieval results of Experiment 2 but with a longer delay between encoding and recall, and a greater number of distractor source stories. These experiments offer support for the schema induction account of analogical retrieval (Gentner et al., 2009) and show that the schemas abstracted from comparison of narratives can be transferred to non-semantic symbolic domains.

Asymmetry cannot solve the circularity/regress problem of property structuralism

Strong dispositional monism (SDM), the position that all fundamental physical properties consist in dispositional relations to other properties, is naturally construed as property structuralism. J. Lowe’s circularity/regress objection (CRO) constitutes a serious challenge to SDM that questions the possibility of a purely relational determination of all property essences. The supervenience thesis of A. Bird’s graph-theoretic asymmetry reply to CRO can be rigorously proved. Yet the reply fails metaphysically, because it reveals neither a metaphysical determination of identities on a purely relational basis nor a determination specifically of identities in the sense of essences. Asymmetry is thus not by itself sufficient for a solution to CRO. But it cannot even help to answer CRO when a model for the determination of essences is taken as a basis. Nor is asymmetry necessary for a reply, as property structures may well be symmetric. A metaphysics of dispositional properties as grounded in a purely relational structure faces serious obstacles, and the properties would not be fundamental. Since essence and grounding are notions of metaphysical priority, there can be no essentially dispositional metaphysically fundamental properties, and the prospects of a “coherentist” metaphysics of basic properties are dim. A modal retreat that refrains from a post-modal conception of essence and simply claims that fundamental properties play dispositional roles by metaphysical necessity is unsatisfactory.

Making Visible the Invisible Work of Scientists during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Despite the perceptibility of the effects they impart on their hosts, the most incredible capacity of viruses is in their invisibility. Invisibility is the most frightening side of the current pandemic, and invisible is also the work of the scientists striving to find a solution.This proposal presents a data visualization that aims to give visibility to those scientists working on COVID-19. Their scientific publications have been computationally analyzed and transformed into a relational structure based on lexical similarity. The result is a network of scientists whose proximity is given by their closeness in writing.An innovative visual method that hybridizes network visualizations and word clouds shows the scientists in a deep space, explorable through keywords. In such a space, individuals are situated according to their lexical similarity, and keywords are used to clarify their proximity. By zooming, the visualization reveals more information about scientists and their clusters.While a lot of visualizations during the pandemic focused on showing the spread of infection, causing anxiety among the readers, this visualization reveals the efforts of science in eradicating the virus. Making visible the enormous number of scientists working on COVID-19 research will contribute to coping more positively with the pandemic.

Critical Relations of Crowns in Critical Times of Coronavirus Depression

The critical relations are the building blocks of the relational clone of a relational structure with respect to the relational operations intersection and direct product. In this paper we describe the critical relations of crowns. As a consequence, we obtain that the subpower membership problem for any crown is polynomial-time solvable.

Circularity and Insufficiency Worries

This chapter addresses circularity and insufficiency worries that have been raised against Locke’s same consciousness account of personal identity. The chapter distinguishes different versions of circularity problems and shows that Locke has resources to respond to Joseph Butler’s circularity objection. The more pressing worry concerns the question of whether sameness of consciousness is sufficient for personal identity, which is the so-called insufficiency worry. A response to this question calls for an examination of whether sameness of consciousness can ontologically ground personal identity. The chapter proposes that Locke has resources to accept, on the basis of probable reasoning, that same consciousness that has a metaphysical foundation that most likely has relational structure. The advantage of this reading is that it brings to light that he not merely criticizes substance accounts of identity, but also that he has the resources to develop a plausible—though probable—alternative that avoids circularity and insufficiency.