Explanatory Principle Research Articles

Religious and Philosophical Motives in the Works of S.A. Yesenin: From Paradise Lost to Rediscovery through Poetic Language

This article undertakes a rational reconstruction of the religious aspect of Yesenin’s work to destroy some stereotypes of the daily and creative life of the poet. It first shows the external religious and metaphorical structure of Yesenin’s poetry. Central to that poetry is the concept of salvation or the image of the Christian idea of the fall, redemption, and salvation. The creation of images of Russia as a lost paradise, sacrificial way, holy foolishness, and redemption through the resurrection of the world, and of the world tree as paradise regained, are tropes making up the system of Yesenin’s poetics. The idea of art as a double vision is introduced as an explanatory principle of the poet’s world view. It is shown that Yesenin’s religious and poetic outlook is a promising object of phenomenological analysis.

The Inference to the Best Legal Explanation

Abstract Courts use inferences to the best explanation in many contexts and for a variety of purposes. Yet our understanding of lawyers’ uses of this inferential form is insufficient. In this article, after briefly introducing this inferential form, I set out to: (i) explain the structure of such arguments by reference to an argument scheme; (ii) clarify the types of claims courts support by deploying such inferences while attempting to justify acting in accordance with explanatory principles (inferences to the best explanation—principles, or IBE-Ps); (iii) offer an account of the ‘explanatory’ relationship on which IBE-P is predicated; (iv) explain what precisely can count as part of the explanandum in an IBE-P; and (v) discuss criteria that might be used to adjudicate which is the best among rival explanations.

Comparing explanatory principles of complement selection statistically: a case study based on Canadian English

ABSTRACTSeveral factors have been identified in the recent literature to explain variation in the selection of sentential complements in recent English, and the article begins with a survey of such factors. The article then offers a case study of the impact of such factors on non-finite complements of the adjective afraid on the basis of the Strathy Corpus of Canadian English. Attention is paid for instance to the Extraction and Choice Principles, passive lower predicates, and text type. Multivariate analysis is applied to compare and to shed light on such different explanatory principles. The Choice Principle proves to be by far the most significant predictor of the alternation, while the heavily correlated syntactic feature of Voice appears non-significant. Fiction, as opposed to the informative registers, shows a notable preference for to infinitives, though this finding needs to be replicated in datasets where controlling for author idiolect is possible. Theoretically plausible odds ratios are observed on the Extraction Principle and negation of the predicate, but they are not statistically significant. In the former case, this may well be due to the variable’s collinearity with the Choice Principle and its low overall frequency, resulting in a low effective sample size.

Historical consciousness and textbooks. An analysis from the conceptions about the period of “La Violencia” in Colombia

The final results of a research that aimed at analyzing the conceptions and ideas on the historical period of “La Violencia” portrayed in ninth grade social studies textbooks published in Colombia since 1989 to 2016 are socialized. The research was methodologically grounded on the analysis of qualitative content and, theoretically, on the general principles of the historical consciousness development. From these referents, it is established that the studied textbooks have not been able to consolidate critical explanatory principles of analysis around this historical phenomenon. The aforementioned problem generates, in these pedagogical devices, a series of argumentative absences around the historical processes and agencies, which are key to understand the connections of that past with a present time marked by violent internal struggles associated with a social, political and economic conflict that has not been completely overcome in Colombia

The Problems on Your Desk: A Research Study to Define and Describe Paramedic Practice in Canada

Introduction:Paramedicine is a rapidly evolving profession, growing from its initial role of providing emergency care and transportation of the sick and injured into a broad discipline providing a wide range of care in multiple practice settings, yet the field is relatively unexplored. Much of the research in the field centers on patient care, often from the perspective of emergency medicine. A growing body of literature describing the discipline itself is largely descriptive.Aim:This interactive presentation describes and contributes to an applied research project that will define and describe Canadian paramedic practice. The research will develop frameworks, common taxonomy and designs, and evidence to support development of a national Canadian Paramedic Information System.Methods:This two-year mixed methods study is gathering data from a literature review, stakeholder workshops, and key informant interviews. The project will develop “user cases” that explore the issues and challenges facing Canadian paramedic stakeholders and identify the information and data required to address those issues.Results:The presentation will present initial findings that describe core concepts, data/knowledge structures, and models that are foundational to understanding and informing current and emerging paramedic practice. It will explore this data in relation to operational needs of practitioners, operations, communities, and stakeholders to inform decision-making, guiding policy and direction, and advancing the profession. Lastly, it will develop explanatory principles, models, and relationships in a conceptual framework that describes paramedic practice.Discussion:The study will develop models and core data sets that guide research and support policy development at local and national levels, and inform operational and strategic decision-making. The presentation will provide an overview of the research and findings to date. Participants will engage in activities that explore the user-cases and selected findings, applying the results of the study through the lens of their own backgrounds and operational contexts.

Representaciones sociales sobre prácticas investigativas. Condiciones en la universidad

El objetivo es identificar las Representaciones Sociales sobre prácticas investigativas de los estudiantes y profesores de una Institución Universitaria. Es un estudio descriptivo y explicativo. Las unidades de observación fueron los seis profesores y nueve estudiantes del último semestre del programa académico de Lengua Castellana y Literatura. Las técnicas de investigación aplicadas fueron: entrevista-semiestructurada, grupo focal, tris jerárquico y análisis de contenido. En los resultados, el núcleo central de las representaciones fueron los términos: desarrollo de la investigación y proceso reflexivo. Los elementos periféricos portadores de mayor significado fueron: la relación entre teoría y práctica, la comunidad y experiencia. Se evidenciaron diferencias, para los estudiantes, las prácticas se comprenden como: estrategias, metodología y proyectos; para los maestros, están asociadas a un proceso reflexivo, pero no transformativo. El contenido, otro elemento de las representaciones, está expresado como condiciones institucionales, curriculares, de enseñanza y aprendizaje, y personales. En el aspecto valorativo se consideran como un reto con exigencia ética. Se concluyó que, la educación universitaria tiene la presión social de centrar su accionar en la investigación para formar profesionales competentes en la solución de problemas del contexto. De ahí, la importancia de facilitar un escenario propicio para realizar y analizar sus prácticas.

Sobre la implementación de la Justicia Especial para la Paz en Colombia

Objetivo: este artículo es una invitación a reflexionar sobre las estratagemas que pretenden limitar o anular el accionar de la Justicia Especial para la Paz (jep). Asimismo, sobre las consecuencias nefastas de estas prácticas no solo para la sociedad, sino, incluso, para quienes las promueven.
 Metodología: con el ánimo de reflexionar sobre estas posturas es importante considerar los diferentes modelos de justicia transicional.
 Resultados: en un conflicto interno como el colombiano, el cual inundó de violencia a todo un país por más de 50 años, son muchos los actores que intervienen. Entre estos, algunos han sido reconocidos plenamente, mientras otros aún permanecen en el anonimato. Por una parte, dentro del primer conjunto, existen muchos exmilitantes (tanto de las Fuerzas Militares estatales como de la insurgencia y de grupos paramilitares) interesados en resolver su situación jurídica por medio del Tribunal de Justicia Especial para la Paz (jep). Por otra, quienes no han sido procesados, condenados o siquiera expuestos públicamente como responsables de actos de violencia en el marco del conflicto, despliegan toda una serie de estrategias con el fin de evitar que el proceso de transición sea efectivo.
 Conclusiones: la ceguera política, en un contubernio perverso con la ignorancia sobre los principios y modelos explicativos que orientan la justicia transicional, nubla toda racionalidad que permita el tránsito efectivo de una sociedad con un conflicto interno a una con una paz estable y duradera.

Интегративный подход и принципы психологии развития человека

The traditions of the Leningrad — Saint Petersburg psychological school, based on the principles of the integrative approach to the study of human psychology, formulated by Boris Ananiev, are currently being further developed by Vladimir N. Panferov, Doctor of Psychological Sciences, Full Professor, and Professor Emeritus of Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. Vladimir Panferov formulated the main provisions of the integrative approach to human psychology and social interaction and developed the methodological principles of integral synthesis, allowing researchers to approach the holistic representation of human psychology. At the same time, it seems that an equally important task is the development of methodological principles that will explain the patterns of an individual’s mental potential development in its integrity. This is particularly in demand due to the existing “polyparadigmism” of the methodological principles in modern psychology, the openness of the methodological principles system to further development and improvement. On the basis of previously conducted theoretical and empirical studies, we formulated a number of system-wide explanatory principles of human mental development (the principle of stable dynamic imbalance, the principle of interaction between the tendencies towards preservation and change, the principle of differentiation — integration, the principle of wholeness), which allow us to characterise the sources and conditions of human development, as well as its structural and functional criteria. The principle of sustainable dynamic disequilibrium reveals the reasons for the development of the system. The principle of the interaction between the tendencies towards preservation and change (heredity — variability) is defined as a prerequisite for the analysis of the conditions necessary for the system’s development. The principle of differentiation — integration is a criterion for the development of a structure. The principle of integrity serves as a criterion for the development of system functions. On the basis of these principles, we described the phenomenon of interaction between the orientation of the individual, and the individual style of activity in the structure of individuality, considered as the central, system-forming factor of the development of an individual. We suggest that the principles described above can be employed to explain a wide range of manifestations of intellectual potential, the effects of its development and manifestation in social interaction. In their integrity, the proposed principles can be considered as a further development of Boris Ananyev’s ideas and their consistent application to the problems of developmental psychology.

La forma en acto: morfogénesis y ciencias de lo viviente en Paul Valéry

En esta contribución se exploran las relaciones entre estética y biología en dos textos de Paul Valéry: La introducción al método de Leonardo da Vinci (1894) y El hombre y la concha (1937). En estos ensayos, Valéry desarrolla una teoría morfogenética que atribuye al arte la función de reapropiarse de las fuerzas formativas que obran en la naturaleza con el fin de producir a su vez la misma variedad de formas, y restaura de este modo el lazo entre estética y ciencias de lo viviente que Goethe había sido el primero en establecer. La morfogenética valeryana es esencialmente dinámica, pues otorga privilegio al devenir de la forma, al movimiento de la producción que desembocará en la forma acabada. Pero ni la física ni la biología de esa época disponían de principios explicativos capaces de dar cuenta a la vez de la espontaneidad y de la organización de los procesos morfogenéticos en la naturaleza. Como se tratará de mostrar, los obstáculos epistemólogicos detectados por Valéry le llevarán a esbozar una morfología dinámica que anticipa las teorías de la complejidad desarrolladas a partir de los años 80.

ПРОБЛЕМНЫЕ И РЕСУРСНЫЕ ЗОНЫ ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ ДЕТЕРМИНАНТ ЖИЗНЕДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ СОВРЕМЕННЫХ ОСЕТИН

Цель исследования: выявить проблемные и ресурсные зоны детерминант жизнедеятельности современных осетин, проживающих в Северной и Южной Осетии, и предложить объяснительные принципы выявленных особенностей.Методы. Опрос, с использованием следующих психологических методик: «Опросник жизненных ориентаций» Е.Ю. Коржовой; «Методика исследования жизненных смыслов» В.Ю. Котлякова; Методика «Уровень соотношения “ценности” и “доступности” в различных жизненных сферах» Е.Б. Фанталовой; Методика «Духовный кризис» Л.В. Шутовой, А.В. Ляшук; Опросник «Дифференциальный тип рефлексии» Д.А. Леонтьева, Е.М. Лаптевой, Е.Н. Осина, А.Ж. Салиховой. Интерпретация полученных результатов осуществлялась путем анализа этнопсихологической, социологической, этнографической, исторической литературы по данной проблематике.Результаты. Высокий уровень материальных потребностей, низкая мотивация в приобщении к духовным ценностям являются причинами духовного кризиса осетин. Эта проблема обусловлена не этнокультурными или ментальными особенностями осетин, а сменой системы общественных отношений и процессом формирования потребительского общества. Рефлексия, поиск групп самоидентификации и институтов социальной защищенности могут стать ресурсной зоной выхода из духовного кризиса. Высокая значимость семьи, как адаптивного и защитного института определяет то, что «Счастливая семейная жизнь» для осетин является ведущей потребностью и одновременно наиболее конфликтной ценностью в силу ее труднодостижимости.Область применения результатов. Полученные результаты могут быть применятся при реализации мероприятий, способствующих повышению активности и качества жизнеосуществления представителей различных этнических групп в конкретных регионах современного общества.

Affect regulation and consumer behavior

AbstractThis article provides a critical review of what is known about affect regulation in relation to consumption behavior. Based on numerous findings from psychology, communication research, and consumer research, we identify a core set of general principles of affect regulation in consumer behavior. First, we define affect regulation, clarify its relations to the concepts of coping and compensatory consumption, and refine the emerging concept of “displaced coping.” We then review the generic strategies used in the regulation of general negative affective states. Next, we synthesize evidence that distinct negative emotions are regulated by emotion‐specific strategies, and propose an overarching explanatory principle: the “part‐regulation principle.” We then review the main strategies used in the regulation of positive affective states. Finally, important contingencies in affect regulation are identified, including the asymmetric regulation of positive versus negative affective states, triggers of downward affect regulation, and key moderators of affect regulation.

Paradigmal Foundations for Overcoming the Crisis of Economic Theory

The article examines the state of modern economic theory, characterized as experiencing a paradigm crisis, and describes a variety of scientific views aimed at understanding the causes of the crisis. Besides, it gives an analysis of economic paradigms that helped to get out of crises at different historical periods, as well as possible ways and prospects for overcoming the crises, which are proposed by scholars of different schools of economic thought. Attention is paid to the description of different stages of modern science - classical, neoclassical and post-non-classical – and to the evidence that proves the close correlation between the periods of economic theory development and stages of general scientific studies. The need for formation of a new economic paradigm is reasoned, the one that will have the status of meta-theory for all economic knowledge and will be based on new philosophical and methodological foundations: ontological, epistemological and axiological ones. The emphasis is on the need for an interdisciplinary approach which will help to overcome the paradigm crisis, an approach that includes methods of various sciences, but does not allow the economy to be reduced to any of these sciences. The conclusion is made about the need to apply the methodology of social philosophy to make it possible to view the science of economics through the prism of the universal, and the possibility of using an activity-based social-philosophical method as an explanatory principle.

Ценность справедливости в современном российском обществе: социологический анализ

The research analyzes one of the fundamental values of any society that is social justice. The study substantiates the thesis that the value of justice can act as an incentive for civil actions primarily due to specific social and cultural nature of Russia. Justice in modern sociology is not only the value and an ideal but also the cognitive category serving as the explanatory principle. The study notes that the idea of justice still remains the key one in the value system of the Russian society and belongs to top three values (after trust and responsibility) that are essential for society from the citizens’ perspective. At the same time, despite the fact that there is a high demand for social justice, people are not ready to fight for it. They prefer to be bystanders and hold state or municipal authority and various institutions of civil society responsible for promoting justice.

Hylomorphism and the Construct of Consciousness

The hard problem of consciousness has held center stage in the philosophy of mind for the past two decades. It claims that the phenomenal character of conscious experiences—what it’s like to be in them—cannot be explained by appeal to the operation of physiological subsystems. The hard problem arises, however, only given the assumption that hylomorphism is false. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. A human is not a random collection of physical materials, but an individual composed of physical materials with a structure that accounts for what it is and what it can do—the powers it has. What is true of humans is true of their activities as well. The latter are not random physiological changes, but structured ones: we engage in them by coordinating the ways our parts manifest their powers. Structured activities include perceptual experiences. Consequently, everything about a perceptual experience, including its phenomenal character, can be explained by describing the perceiver’s perceptual subsystems, the powers of those subsystems, and the coordination that unifies their activities into the activity of the perceiver as a whole. Conscious experiences thus fit unproblematically into the natural world—just as unproblematically as the phenomenon of life. Even exponents of the hard problem of consciousness agree that there is no hard problem of life. Consequently, if hylomorphism is true, there can be no hard problem of consciousness. To insist that there is such a problem, then, is implicitly to reject hylomorphism. The concept of consciousness that motivates the hard problem is as much a theoretical construct, therefore, as the concept of life that motivates an obstinate vitalist.

Vistas del pasado. Las series televisivas después del 11-S

The article tries to evaluate the memory operations in massive narratives such as television series. We will discuss stories that, as The Leftovers (HBO, 2014-2017), work events of great cultural impact as their raw material. In this context, September 11 attacks and the reminiscences of a Culture of Fear emerge through what we define as "views of the past": narrative schemes that, directly or alusively, process the collective and individual experience as their places of enunciation. To account for this, we propose a dialogue between Yuri Lotman's semiotics and reflections on the memory of the essayist Beatriz Sarlo. Both thinkers collaborate in the construction of a relevant framework to understand how art becomes an explanatory principle of tensions, disputes or erasures in the culture.

Cold-War Commons: Tragedy, Critique, and the Future of the Illiberal Problem Space

Abstract Major twentieth-century social theories like socialism and liberalism depended on property as an explanatory principle, prefiguring a geopolitical rivalry grounded in differing property regimes. This article examines the Cold War as an under-analyzed context for the idea of “the tragedy of the commons.” In Soviet practice, collectivization was meant to provide the material basis for cultivating particular forms of sociability and an antidote to the ills of private property. Outsiders came to conceptualize it as tragic in both economic and political dimensions. Understanding the commons as a site of tragedy informed Western “answers” to the “problem” of Soviet collective ownership when the Cold War ended. Privatization became a mechanism for defusing old tragedies, central to a post-Cold War project of advancing “market democracy.” Meanwhile, the notion of an “illiberal commons” stands ready for redeployment in future situations conceived as tragically problematic.

SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATIONS TO SELECTIONISM: SKINNER’S FRAMEWORK FOR BEHAVIOR IN THE 1930S AND 1940S

Despite the centrality of selection by consequences in Skinnerian work, the adoption or not of a selectionist perspective in the first decades of Skinner’s career is a controversial theme. Inconsistencies with respect to his affiliation or not with a selectionist epistemology in this period seem to reflect a lack of consensual definition of that proposal. Therefore, from three previously defined aspects of Skinner’s selectionist explanatory principle, the aim of this review is to assess, through the texts produced in the 1930s and 1940s, whether selection by consequences was used as an explanatory mode for behavior or whether there were traces of an epistemology that would lead to selectionism. It has been noted that, although at this early stage the idea of a selective process is already implicit, there are still remnants of a traditional notion of causality that is incompatible with an explanatory principle based on a relation of probabilistic interdependence between events, which explains the origin and evolution of behavior as being the product of three histories of variation and selection.

Evolution, lineages and human language

In life as in language, living beings act in ways that are multiply constrained as history works through them both directly and as mediated by what we identify as structures (e.g. genes or words). Emphasising direct effects, we replace the ‘language metaphor of life’ with the view that language extends the domain of the living. Just as a living proteome system manages without central control, so does language. Both life and language enable living beings to expand into –and create – new domains or Umwelten. Pursuing the parallel, we link emphasis on fitness with Berthoz's notion of simplexity and the distributed view of life/language/cognition. The semiosphere evolved, we suggest, as systems found novel ways of tapping into the bio-ecology's energetics. Accordingly, there are striking parallels between how regulatory genes influence body structures and how, in humans, community histories re-echo during conversation. In both cases, cross-talk prompts living systems to re-enact a lineage/community's music (or ‘worldviews’). While rejecting Berthoz's residual neuro-centrism, we find ‘simplexity’ to be a powerful heuristic. Instead of proposing a single explanatory principle (e.g. computation, autonomy), lineages and communities build on meaning by altering ways of coordinating/cooperating. In all cases, life and language co-operate to bring forth new possibilities.

THE CONTRADICTORY NATURE OF TEACHER EDUCATION IN THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN UNIVERSITY AND SCHOOL

There is a growing understanding that teacher education should not be handled either exclusively by the University or in School settings. Nevertheless, the issues on how to foster a fruitful partnership between these two different institutions remains an open and challenging point. The practicum is a critical point in the pre-service teacher’s development, usually because it is the first time they have to face the concrete professional issues, which they only had a partial view of as students. This research is a year-long inquiry on practicum in the Physics teaching program developed in the Institute of Physics at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Drawing on cultural-historical activity theory, contradiction is used as an explanatory principle to examine change and development in the practitioners’ activity. Therefore, the research includes in the analytical framework the contradictions and the processes of overcoming it. Examples are provided in which there is little control therefore demanding extra efforts but makes room for active participation. The data analysis indicates that the source of agency and activities transformation is precisely a contradictory process, which might be overlooked. The pre-service teachers’ agency is shaped by contradictory process within the activity – practicum - rather than aligned forces pushing it toward autonomy, student sensitiveness or professional identity. Keywords: initial teacher education, practicum, university-school partnership, qualitative research.

Samuela Duclosa krytyka filozofii korpuskularnej Roberta Boyle’a. Spór o koncepcję ‘chemii'

W XVII wieku rozpoczął się proces przechodzenia od nauki uprawianej w aspekcie jakościowym do nauki uprawianej w aspekcie ilościowym. Był on złożony i pociągał za sobą dyskusje na wielu polach. Jedna z nich odnosiła się do natury rodzącej się nowoczesnej chemii. Główna linia sporu dotyczyła rodzaju zasad wyjaśniających (jakościowych czy ilościowych), do których należy się odwołać przy wyjaśnianiu wyników eksperymentów. Obecny artykuł opisuje szczegóły (pośredniej) dyskusji między R. Boyle’em, jednym z głównych zwolenników zasad korpuskularnych, ilościowych, i S. Duclosem, al-‘chemikiem’ i zwolennikiem teorii paracelsjańskich i zasad jakościowych. Co ciekawe, Duclos znał The Sceptical Chymist, główne dzieło Boyle’a, w którym zawarł on surową krytykę ‘chemii’ paracelsjańskiej, i podjął próbę wskazania słabych punktów stanowiska Boyle’owskiego. Duclos zanalizował eksperymenty, jakie Boyle opisał w "Certain Physiological Essays" i innych dziełach i wskazał na popełnione błędy – jego zdaniem Boyle nie zna dobrze praktyki laboratoryjnej; pomija źródła, z jakich korzysta opisując niektóre eksperymenty; przede wszystkim jednak nie potrafi przekonująco argumentować na rzecz tezy korpuskularnej. Zdaniem Duclosa, Boyle nie przestrzega procedur, które sam zaleca – posługuje się niejasnym językiem i arbitralnie odwołuje się do wyjaśnień korpuskularnych. Co więcej, Duclos argumentuje na rzecz paracelsjańskiej koncepcji ‘chemii’, przedstawiając jakościowe wyjaśnienia w eksperymentach, w których Boyle nie zdołał podać wyjaśnień ilościowych. Przedstawiona krytyka poglądów Boyle’a pokazuje jak złożony był proces wyłaniania się ilościowego podejścia do filozofii naturalnej, pokazuje również istotną rolę, jaką w badaniach naukowych odgrywa składnik teoretyczny.