Daddy,daddy cool: stallion–foal relationships in a socially-natural herd of Exmoor ponies

Animal Cognition - Different forms of direct paternal investment have been described in mammals. One such species where paternal care was noticed, but remains poorly understood, is the horse (Equus...     

Difficulties,uncertainty, and opportunity: The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic by early to late adolescence in the Czech Republic

The pandemic created an unfamiliar situation for adolescents, especially within the school context. Drawing on the theory of cognitive appraisal, according to which people evaluate the benefit, harm, and threat of a certain event, this study explored Czech adolescents' experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted six focus groups with early (11–12 years), middle (14–15 years), and late (18–19 years) adolescents. Using thematic analysis, we identified three themes—pandemic as difficulties, uncertainty, and a (un)seized opportunity. While some younger participants initially perceived the pandemic as exciting, others struggled immediately with isolation, online learning, and disrupted daily activities. The feelings of distressing uncertainty, but also the appraisal of the pandemic as an opportunity to utilize free time differently, which in some cases faded over time, prevailed among late adolescents. This study captured the effects of the pandemic and its appraisals on adolescents' subjective well-being and the shift in the thinking of early and late adolescents.     

Phenomenology in Lithuania

The article deals with phenomenology in Lithuania. The main thesis of the article is this: phenomenology is a living tradition in need of both development and interpretation. The minor thesis follows from the main one: the Western phenomenological tradition and Lithuanian philosophy interact and develop in tandem with one another. According to the authors, the contact between poetics and philosophy is the dominant form of phenomenology in Lithuania. The phenomenological tradition is treated as creative and living philosophical thought.

The logic and language of Nirvāna: A contemporary interpretation

In contrast to historically orientedapproaches, this paper tackles the concept ofNirvna from the perspective ofcontemporary philosophy of language. It focuseson four propositions: Nirvna exists;Nirvna does not exist; Nirvna existsand does not exist; Nirvna neither exists nordoes not exist. The Buddha's rejectionof these propositions is interpreted by meansof explicit and conditionaldefinitions of existence. Stalnaker's notion ofpragmatic presupposition providesan explanation why the propositions are withoutmeaning. After comparing theword ``Nirvna' with indexicals, propernames and theoretical terms, it is finallyasked what linguistic function the word has.     

Confinement has no effect on visual space perception: The results of the Mars-500 experiment

People confined to a closed space live in a visual environment that differs from a natural open-space environment in several respects. The view is restricted to no more than a few meters, and nearby objects cannot be perceived relative to the position of a horizon. Thus, one might expect to find changes in visual space perception as a consequence of the prolonged experience of confinement. The subjects in our experimental study were participants of the Mars-500 project and spent nearly a year and a half isolated from the outside world during a simulated mission to Mars. The participants were presented with a battery of computer-based psychophysical tests examining their performance on various 3-D perception tasks, and we monitored changes in their perceptual performance throughout their confinement. Contrary to our expectations, no serious effect of the confinement on the crewmembers’ 3-D perception was observed in any experiment. Several interpretations of these findings are discussed, including the possibilities that (1) the crewmembers’ 3-D perception really did not change significantly, (2) changes in 3-D perception were manifested in the precision rather than the accuracy of perceptual judgments, and/or (3) the experimental conditions and the group sample were problematic.     

The function debate: between “cheap tricks” and evolutionary neutrality

We examine the use of the notion of natural selection in the philosophical debate on functions in biology. This debate has been largely shaped by the way in which different accounts assess various selective pressures in justifying claims about biological functions. Cummins (Functions: new essays in the philosophy of psychology and biology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 157–172, 2002), one of the main proponents of the causal role account of biological functions, argues that a correctly understood neo-Darwinian notion of natural selection has nothing to do with functional talk in biology. In this paper, we counter Cummins’ account by showing that progress in the molecular approaches to evolutionary biology—specifically scientific data available in neo-functionalization research—offers valuable support to the etiological selectionist approach to functions in biological and biologically-related sciences. Finally, we use the presented data to build our own account of biological functions, which tries to avoid the wrong turns taken by both major strands in the biological function debate, namely causal role and etiological accounts. According to our account, the function of a certain gene or a protein in the biological system that contains it is a particular causal activity, or a group of causal activities whose manifestation is in a specific way determined by corresponding mechanisms of genetic expression. Also, we argue that in many important cases this particular expression of genetic activity was positively selected at a certain point in evolutionary history. Since we take selection as an important but not the only factor that grounds biological functions, we are committed to a weak etiological account.     

Epistemic justification in the context of pursuit: a coherentist approach

The aim of this paper is to offer an account of epistemic justification suitable for the context of theory pursuit, that is, for the context in which new scientific ideas, possibly incompatible with the already established theories, emerge and are pursued by scientists. We will frame our account paradigmatically on the basis of one of the influential systems of epistemic justification: Laurence Bonjour’s coherence theory of justification. The idea underlying our approach is to develop a set of criteria which indicate that the pursued system is promising of contributing to the epistemic goal of robustness of scientific knowledge and of developing into a candidate for acceptance. In order to realize this we will (a) adjust the scope of Bonjour’s standards—consistency, inferential density, and explanatory power, and (b) complement them by the requirement of a programmatic character. In this way we allow for the evaluation of the “potential coherence” of the given epistemic system.