Circular Reasoning Research Articles

Traumatic macular retinoschisis in infants and children

To provide detailed description of pediatric traumatic retinoschisis. The medical records of children with either abusive head trauma and traumatic macular retinoschisis seen at a single center from 1993 to 2006 were reviewed retrospectively. Clinical details were extracted from the record and photographic documentation. Evaluation regarding abuse excluded ophthalmology findings to avoid circular reasoning. Of 134 patients with suspected abusive head trauma, 31 had retinoschisis. Mean age was 9months. Of the 31, 22 (71%) offered a history of injury, and 9 (29%) were found unresponsive without history of injury; 6 were reportedly shaken. All patients had seizures, vomiting, and/or altered responsiveness. All had subdural hemorrhage, with cerebral edema in 17 (55%). In 10 (32%), there were findings of blunt force head injuries; in 4 of these there was no impact history. Retinal hemorrhages were present in all cases. Agreement between sidedness of retinoschisis and subdural hemorrhage was poor. Eleven patients had retinal folds, 3 of which had a hemorrhagic edge to the schisis. Nine patients had extracranial manifestations of abuse. Multidisciplinary team adjudications were as follows: of the 31 cases, 18 were suspicious for abuse, 11 were indeterminate, and 2 were possibly accounted for by accidental severe crush injury. Three children died, and 11 suffered neurological sequelae. Traumatic retinoschisis in children is highly associated with subdural hemorrhage, neurologic symptoms, and poor outcomes. Even with a conservative approach toopinion formulation, traumatic retinoschisis was associated with likely abuse.

A diagnostic test can prove anything if you use incorrect assumptions and circular reasoning.

A diagnostic test can prove anything if you use incorrect assumptions and circular reasoning

‘So called caste’: S. N. Balagangadhara, the Ghent School and the Politics of grievance

This article is concerned with the small but coherent lobby of political scholarship that has emerged from a lineage of research supervision which centres on the charisma and ideas of S. N. Balagangadhara, a philosopher from the Centre for the Comparative Science of Cultures (Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap) at the University of Ghent. In particular, it examines the deployment of his ideas in a spate of recent scholarly and social media declarations that reject the existence of caste and, by extension, caste discrimination. This scholarship – characterised by circular reasoning, self-referencing and a poverty of rigour – has established a modest, if contentious and poorly reviewed, presence in academic spheres of dissemination. The ‘Ghent School’ describes a group of scholars who rely conspicuously on Balagangadhara’s concept of ‘colonial consciousness’, a crude derivative of Said’s thesis of Orientalism. The Ghent School maintain that all extant scholarship on Hinduism, secularism and caste represents an endurance of colonial distortions that act to defame India as a nation. This politics of affront finds considerable traction in diasporic contexts but has little, if any, resonance when mapped against the far more complex politics of caste in India.

Learners\u2019 use of domain-specific computer-based feedback to overcome logical circularity in deductive proving in geometry

Much remains under-researched in how learners make use of domain-specific feedback. In this paper, we report on how learners’ can be supported to overcome logical circularity during their proof construction processes, and how feedback supports the processes. We present an analysis of three selected episodes from five learners who were using a web-based proof learning support system. Through this analysis we illustrate the various errors they made, including using circular reasoning, which were related to their understanding of hypothetical syllogism as an element of the structure of mathematical proof. We found that, by using the computer-based feedback and, for some, teacher intervention, the learners started considering possible combinations of assumptions and conclusion, and began realising when their proof fell into logical circularity. Our findings raise important issues about the nature and role of computer-based feedback such as how feedback is used by learners, and the importance of teacher intervention in computer-based learning environments.

타공 (他空) 철학에 있어서 순환 논증과 역설 - 권위는 제시된 논증만큼만 유효하다

타공 (他空) 철학에 있어서 순환 논증과 역설 - 권위는 제시된 논증만큼만 유효하다

Epistemology as the Locus of Teacher Competence

The school is viewed as an element in a larger system of circular reasoning and circular causality which mitigates against genuine growth. Teacher education institutions have the potential to adaptively break into these circles by stressing those skills and attitudes from which innovation and growth have always sprung. Teacher competence should be defined as the extent to which a teacher can intellectually defend his practices and beliefs rather than as his conformity to current practices.

Ideja deskriptivne epistemologije

The failure of logical empiricism initiated a new path in epistemology. The first turn was made by Willard Quine who suggested to reject the foundational epistemology and to describe the knowing subject for the purpose of undestanding knowledge. The description is to be looked for in psychology, thus making epistemology a pant of psychology, i. e. part of natural science. The objection about circular reasoning is rejected because descriptive epistemology does not attempt to found science by means of science, but only to understand science by means of itself. Donald T. Campbell is of the opinion that in order to describe the knowing subject, the number of relevant sciences has to be increased. First of all, the fact that man has developed in the course of biological evolution shows that knowledge should be seen in the light of evolution. Campbell sees evolution as the process of acquiring knowledge, which means that survival of the individual and of a species is the result of successful knowledge, successful problem-solving. The model of blind variation and selective retention is, therefore, applicable to all forms of knowledge, scientific knowledge included. Science is not contrary to nature; there is no discontinuity between the evolution of life and science. The model which biology has discovered as the model of the evolution of life is at the same time (and first of all) the model of acquiring knowledge. Karl Popper has achieved what is essentially the same result by logical analysis of the growth of scientific knowledge. Scientific theories are conjectures (blind variations) of which some are rejected and other accepted (selective retention) in the scientific struggle for life. The trial-and-error model is applicable to the amoeba and to Einstein.

Circular Reasoning in Climate Change Research

A literature review shows that the circular reasoning fallacy is common in climate change research. It is facilitated by confirmation bias and by activism such that the prior conviction of researchers is subsumed into the methodology. Example research papers on the impact of fossil fuel emissions on tropical cyclones, on sea level rise, and on the carbon cycle demonstrate that the conclusions drawn by researchers about their anthropogenic cause derive from circular reasoning. The validity of the anthropogenic nature of global warming and climate change and that of the effectiveness of proposed measures for climate action may therefore be questioned solely on this basis.

Beyond Liberal and Conservative

AbstractA significant undiscussed problem with the leading conceptualization of ideologically based judicial behavior, Jeffrey Segal and Harold Spaeth’s attitudinal model, is its lack of theory. This problem leads to circular reasoning, ad hoc coding adjustments, and inaccurate characterizations and explanations of case outcomes, judicial votes and ideologies, and trends in judicial behavior. A values-based theory of ideology, such as the cultural theory pioneered by Mary Douglas, Michael Thompson, Aaron Wildavsky, and others, can help remedy this problem. Applying this cultural theory to First Amendment cases, we find that political cultures valuing equality, order, and liberty provide a more accurate account of judicial decisions than labeling them liberal or conservative.

Drivers of terrestrial plant production across broad geographical gradients

AbstractTerrestrial net primary production (NPP) varies across global climate gradients, but the mechanisms through which climate drives this variation remain subject to debate. Specifically, it is debatable whether NPP is primarily influenced by ‘direct’ effects of climate on the kinetics of plant metabolism or ‘indirect’ effects of climate on plant size, stand biomass, stand age structure and growing season length. We clarify several issues in this debate by presenting multiple lines of evidence that support a primarily indirect influence of climate on global variation in NPP across broad geographical gradients. First, we highlight > 60 years of research that suggests leaf area, growing season length, plant biomass and/or plant age are better predictors of NPP than climate or latitude. Second, we refute recent claims that using biomass and age as predictors of NPP represents circular reasoning. Third, we illustrate why effects of climate on the kinetics of plant production must be evaluated using instantaneous (not annualized) rates of productivity. Fourth, we review recent analyses showing that the effects of biomass and age on NPP are much stronger than the effects of climate. Fifth, we present new analyses of a high‐quality NPP dataset that demonstrate further that biomass, age and growing season length are better predictors of global variation in NPP than climate variables. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that variation in NPP across global climate gradients primarily reflects the influence of climate on growing season length and stand biomass, as well as stand age, rather than the effects of temperature and precipitation on the kinetics of metabolism. However, this hypothesis should be evaluated further using larger, high‐quality observational and experimental datasets spanning multiple geographical scales.

Paleoanthropology's uses of the bipedal criterion.

Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases (such as underdetermined inferences and circular reasoning) are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin's hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that "man alone has become a biped" (Darwin in The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, John Murray, London, 1871) is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of "man", i.e. "human", the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a "biped". Then, I highlight some of Darwin's remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support.

Automated circular assume-guarantee reasoning

Abstract Model checking is a successful approach for verifying hardware and software systems. Despite its success, the technique suffers from the state explosion problem which arises due to the large state space of real-life systems. One solution to the state explosion problem is compositional verification, that aims to decompose the verification of a large system into the more manageable verification of its components. To account for dependencies between components, assume-guarantee reasoning defines rules that break-up the global verification of a system into local verification of individual components, using assumptions about the rest of the system. In recent years, compositional techniques have gained significant successes following a breakthrough in the ability to automate assume-guarantee reasoning. However, automation has been restricted to simple acyclic assume-guarantee rules. In this work, we focus on automating circular assume-guarantee reasoning in which the verification of individual components mutually depends on each other. We use a sound and complete circular assume-guarantee rule and we describe how to automatically build the assumptions needed for using the rule. Our algorithm accumulates joint constraints on the assumptions based on (spurious) counterexamples obtained from checking the premises of the rule, and uses a SAT solver to synthesize minimal assumptions that satisfy these constraints. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to fully automate circular assume-guarantee reasoning. We implemented our approach and compared it with established non-circular compositional methods that use learning or SAT-based techniques. The experiments show that the assumptions generated for the circular rule are generally smaller, and on the larger examples, we obtain a significant speedup.

Overcoming Scarcities Through Innovation: What Do Technologists Do When Faced With Constraints?

The question that still divides many debates about sustainability is the possibility of technological substitution of scarce natural resources. While there is considerable debate among economists whether technology can mitigate scarcities through development of substitutes, there is little actual research on the mechanisms and limitations of this substitution process. In this study, I seek to build a bridge between scarcity and innovation literatures to study when technologists decide to develop technological substitutes. My starting point is the theory of technology as a recombination of existing mental and physical components. Combining this theory with modern scarcity literature that differentiates between absolute, relative, and quasi-scarcities yields a more nuanced framework for understanding both different types of scarcities, and how technologists decide whether or not to develop or adopt technological substitutes. This improves our understanding of the possibilities — and limitations — of scarcity-induced innovation. I then illustrate the use of this framework with two brief historical case studies about constraint-induced innovation. I conclude that the mainstream economic practice of assuming that substitution will occur automatically, even in cases of absolute scarcity, may hide extremely important phenomena from discussion and debate behind a veil of circular reasoning.

Circular Reasoning Is Not the Uroboros: Rejecting Perennialism as a Psychological Theory

Circular Reasoning Is Not the Uroboros: Rejecting Perennialism as a Psychological Theory

Scholarly Knowledge in the Physical Sciences

Scholarly Knowledge in the Physical Sciences Jeremiah P. Ostriker (bio) the paradigm of the physical sciences, embodying the "scientific method" and self-consciously promoted by Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), has been, to a greater or lesser extent, followed in other areas of scholarship. It has three essential elements: 1. Quantitative experimental input. 2. Regularities observed or implied are expressed with simple mathematical models, and both input data and output theory are openly published to the general scientific community. 3. Theories explaining the phenomena in question can be tested and falsified—this last piece emphasized especially by Karl Popper (1902–1994)—i.e., they can be proved wrong. Socially, scholarship has been the province of individual investigators or small teams led by individuals, and this mode was well suited to the established method. Support for major projects (starting with Galileo and lasting until the second World War) was often provided by wealthy individuals. The overall enterprise has been phenomenally successful. Now, to a rapidly increasing degree, funding is diffused among government, university, and private sources; and big data, often gleaned from commercial databases, is analyzed by large teams of scientists using very complicated computer models. In most cases, the [End Page 729] complex mathematical elements of these models were designed and tested by specific noninteracting groups, so that even the leaders of large experimental projects, including the academic ones such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), have a detailed understanding of only pieces of the overall program. In addition, large-scale scientific modeling enterprises, such as the "Illustris Simulation" for the cosmological assembly of galaxy growth by merger, have been developed in which responsibility is diffused; the innumerable parameters essential to the modeling are determined by fitting to observations; and the model is judged an accurate or inaccurate representation of nature by the extent to which its output fits extant observations. In such efforts, much of the data on which the theories are based is not publicly available, and many of the computed consequences of the theories are also not published, so the empirical basis and output validity are difficult for the general scientific community to judge. Furthermore, since input parameters are adopted on the basis that the results fit observations, it is logically unsatisfactory to conclude that the theories have satisfied the test of congruence with reality when the results match observations. Still other enterprises, such as the fundamental physics based on string theories, have so many possible representations that no unique tests of validity have been found. Thus, scholarly knowledge in the physical sciences has been increasingly departing from its (perhaps too) simple methodological origins, and, while some practitioners are aware and concerned about the changes, the vast majority of young scientists plow forward in whatever direction their mentors indicate, without much concern for the increasingly unstable foundations of their disciplines. Some aspects of this issue, such as the growing complexity of funding and input tools, are unavoidable. But the practice of science would be improved if greater attention were given in the education of scientists to logic and to methodological issues. There is an increasing amount of attention being given to "reproducibility" of results in the sciences; this is laudable, but it approaches the issues from the [End Page 730] endpoints only. Even if this effort bears success, it will leave the scientific enterprise still on shaky foundations, departing ever further from its enormously successful beginnings, since results can be reproducible but still empty (i.e., tautologically based on circular reasoning) or wrong (based on inconsistent algorithms or unexamined input data). More attention to the logical basis for the scientific method is required. [End Page 731] Jeremiah P. Ostriker jeremiah p. ostriker, a senior research scholar at Princeton University and professor of astronomy at Columbia University, has been very influential in advancing the concept that most of the mass in the universe is not visible and consists of dark matter. His research has also focused on the interstellar medium, galaxy evolution, cosmology, and black holes. Copyright © 2017 The New School

Theory of Mind is Just Behavior

The term Theory of Mind (ToM) has been used to refer to the ability of an individual to make inferences about what others may be thinking or feeling and to predict what they may do in a given situation based on those inferences—in other words, the ability to take another person’s perspective. Unfortunately, most researchers talk about ToM as if it were a cognitive process, which, if true, means that it can never be studied directly. As a result, various tests of behavior have been devised from which ToM (or the lack thereof) is deduced. As with all cognitive processes, inferring ToM based solely on observed behavior is problematic because there is no direct and independent evidence of the ToM. And, because ToM itself is not directly observable, the question remains as to how one might teach it to individuals diagnosed with psychological disorders who have ToM deficits. In the present essay, I argue that it is more parsimonious and ultimately more practical to view ToM as only a label for a set of observed behaviors that are acquired according to relatively straightforward principles of learning and, thus, also capable of being taught to individuals diagnosed with psychological disorders who lack such behaviors. Keywords: Theory of mind, perspective taking, false-belief, behavior, behavior analysis, circular reasoning.

Delirium: a guide for the general physician

Editor – I offer several comments on the interesting article from Todd and Teale.[1][1] Circular reasoning about dementia is the rule rather than the exception in the delirium literature. For example, Todd and Teale state that dementia is the most significant risk factor for delirium. In fact, the

Is accepting circular reasoning in shaken baby studies bad science or misconduct?

Many of the comments on our systematic literature review on shaken baby syndrome (1) have focused on our criticism of how child protection teams’ classification of study cases and controls are used as gold standard and the faulty circular reasoning associated with that (2,3). Some commentators have also questioned how reasonable it is to focus on the triad of retinal hemorrhages, This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Can Reciprocal Presupposition (Circular Reasoning) Be Valid? Drawing Insights from Kant and Locke

Reciprocal presupposition (more commonly known as circular reasoning) is commonly observed in conventional, human argumentation. Running counter to millennia of practical wisdom, it is argued here that there is at least one context in which reciprocal presupposition can be valid and entirely unproblematic since the perceived, problematic nature of reciprocal presupposition stems from predominantly temporal contexts. A brief comparison of Locke’s account of the Unity of Consciousness and Kant’s account of the Transcendental Unity of Apperception (and extrapolated insights from them) are used to help illustrate this.

Interpretation of physiological indicators of motivation: Caveats and recommendations

Motivation scientists employing physiological measures to gather information about motivation-related states are at risk of committing two fundamental errors: overstating the inferences that can be drawn from their physiological measures and circular reasoning. We critically discuss two complementary approaches, Cacioppo and colleagues' model of psychophysiological relations and construct validation theory, to highlight the conditions under which these errors are committed and provide guidance on how to avoid them. In particular, we demonstrate that the direct inference from changes in a physiological measure to changes in a motivation-related state requires the demonstration that the measure is not related to other relevant psychological states. We also point out that circular reasoning can be avoided by separating the definition of the motivation-related state from the hypotheses that are empirically tested.