Semantic Representation of Physics Research Data

Improvements in web technologies and artificial intelligence enable novel, more data-driven research practices for scientists. However, scientific knowledge generated from data-intensive research practices is disseminated with unstructured formats, thus hindering the scholarly communication in various respects. The traditional document-based representation of scholarly information hampers the reusability of research contributions. To address this concern, we developed the Physics Ontology (PhySci) to represent physics-related scholarly data in a machine-interpretable format. PhySci facilitates knowledge exploration, comparison, and organization of such data by representing it as knowledge graphs. It establishes a unique conceptualization to increase the visibility and accessibility to the digital content of physics publications. We present the iterative design principles by outlining a methodology for its development and applying three different evaluation approaches: data-driven and criteria-based evaluation, as well as ontology testing

Linguistic relativity from reference to agency

How are language, thought, and reality related? Interdisciplinary research on this question over the past two decades has made significant progress. Most of the work has been Neo-Whorfian in two senses: One, it has been driven by research questions that were articulated most explicitly and most famously by the linguistic anthropologist Benjamin Lee Whorf, and two, it has limited the scope of inquiry to Whorf's narrow interpretations of the key terms “language,” “thought,” and “reality.” This article first reviews some of the ideas and results of Neo-Whorfian work, concentrating on the special role of linguistic categorization in heuristic decision making. It then considers new and potential directions in work on linguistic relativity, taken broadly to mean the ways in which the perspective offered by a given language can affect thought (or mind) and reality. New lines of work must reconsider the idea of linguistic relativity by exploring the range of available interpretations of the key terms: in particular, “language” beyond reference, “thought” beyond nonsocial processing, and “reality” beyond brute, nonsocial facts

PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES TO EVALUATING CRITICAL THINKING AS DIMINISHED EMPATHY: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF NEWS FRAMING OF STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS

Critical thinking has long been recognized across disciplines as being solely rooted in problem-solving and logical argument construction. By using Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice: The Power and Ethics of Knowing as a core theoretical framework, this study aims to deconstruct the ways in how news framing has shaped critical thinking over vast periods of time through an exploration into the ways in which thinking has been socially understood in an otherwise largely technologically immersed world. Using a rhetorical criticism approach, 33 news articles and segments are analyzed from a variety of popular news sources from several platforms that are commonly used mediums for information. Findings indicate that framing bias echoes hermeneutic injustice propagandizing systematic devaluation of individuated experience through use of numeric abstraction. Future research directions include an exploration into methods of cultural shift to reconsider empathy and creativity as an integral part of critical thinking as an extension of mathematics and logic

The language-cognition interface in bilinguals: an evaluation of the conceptual transfer hypothesis

Praca podejmuje temat wpływu języka na kategorie konceptualne u osób dwujęzycznych. Poruszana problematyka omawiana jest na podstawie najnowszych teorii pamięci bilingwalnej oraz stworzonej na ich kanwie hipotezy transferu konceptualnego autorstwa Scotta Jarvisa i Anety Pavlenko. Część teoretyczna przedstawia strukturę pamięci bilingwalnej, zwanej również słownikiem wewnętrznym, modele sfery konceptualnej oraz istniejące pomiędzy poziomem językowym i konceptualnym zależności. Te ostatnie rozpatrywane są przez pryzmat teorii względności językowej i jej zmodyfikowanych wersji: teorii „myślenie dla mowy” (ang. Thinking for Speaking) Dana Slobina, jak również hipotezy Christiane von Stutterheim. Ostatnim elementem dyskusji jest prezentacja hipotezy transferu konceptualnego oraz jej ocena pod kątem merytorycznym i empirycznym. Część badawcza przedstawia dwa projekty zrealizowane zgodnie z zaleceniami autorów hipotezy transferu konceptualnego. Projekt 1. dotyczy kategoryzacji semantycznej oraz niewerbalnej. Badane kategorie semantyczne oparte są na eksplikacjach Anny Wierzbickiej i dotyczą relacji międzyludzkich (przyjaciel, friend, kolega itd.). Projekt 2. to analiza ram konceptualizacyjnych pod kątem wydarzeń przedstawiających ruch ukierunkowany oraz konstrukcji narracji w pisemnych relacjach z obejrzanego filmu animowanego. Uzyskane dane w języku polskim i angielskim stanowią podstawę wniosków, które zaprezentowano w ostatnim rozdziale pracy. Badania przeprowadzono w Polsce i krajach anglojęzycznych (w Anglii i Irlandii). W skład badanych populacji weszli monolingwalni Polacy i rodzimi użytkownicy języka angielskiego (ang. native speakers) oraz Polacy posługujący się językiem angielskim w warunkach naturalnych (emigranci) i szkolnych (studenci filologii angielskiej). Każda z grup monolingwalnych uczestniczyła w sesjach badawczych dotyczących odpowiednio języka polskiego i angielskiego. Osoby dwujęzyczne testowane były w obydwu językach. Dane zebrano za pomocą scenariuszy sytuacyjnych, kwestionariuszy, oceny podobieństwa, a także opisu narracyjnego krótkometrażowego filmu animowanego pt. Katedra w reżyserii Tomasza Bagińskiego

On the Persistence of Homogeneous Matter

Some recent philosophical debate about persistence has focussed on an argument against perdurantism that discusses rotating perfectly homogeneous discs (the `rotating discs argument'; RDA). The argument has been mostly discussed by metaphysicians, though it appeals to ideas from classical mechanics, especially about rotation. In contrast, I assess the RDA from the perspective of the philosophy of physics. After introducing the argument and emphasizing the relevance of physics (Sections 1 to 3), I review some metaphysicians' replies to the argument (Section 4). Thereafter, I argue for three main conclusions. They all arise from the fact, emphasized in Section 2, that classical mechanics (non-relativistic as well as relativistic) is both more subtle, and more problematic, than philosophers generally realize. The main conclusion is that the RDA can be defeated (Section 6 onwards). Namely, by the perdurantist taking objects in classical mechanics (whether point-particles or continuous bodies) to have only temporally extended, i.e. non-instantaneous, temporal parts: which immediately blocks the RDA. Admittedly, this version of perdurantism defines persistence in a weaker sense of `definition' than {\em pointilliste} versions that aim to define persistence assuming only instantaneous temporal parts. But I argue that temporally extended temporal parts are supported by both classical and quantum mechanics.Comment: 100 pages, no figures; an extract of this paper is at: physics/040602

Multiple Texts as a Limiting Factor in Online Learning: Quantifying (Dis-)similarities of Knowledge Networks across Languages

We test the hypothesis that the extent to which one obtains information on a given topic through Wikipedia depends on the language in which it is consulted. Controlling the size factor, we investigate this hypothesis for a number of 25 subject areas. Since Wikipedia is a central part of the web-based information landscape, this indicates a language-related, linguistic bias. The article therefore deals with the question of whether Wikipedia exhibits this kind of linguistic relativity or not. From the perspective of educational science, the article develops a computational model of the information landscape from which multiple texts are drawn as typical input of web-based reading. For this purpose, it develops a hybrid model of intra- and intertextual similarity of different parts of the information landscape and tests this model on the example of 35 languages and corresponding Wikipedias. In this way the article builds a bridge between reading research, educational science, Wikipedia research and computational linguistics.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figures, 5 table