This textual analysis examines computer simulations as rhetorical objects and acts. In particular, this work examines scientific simulations from organic chemistry and astrophysics in order to expose how rhetorical and social aspects influence the ad hoc decisions (e.g., setting initial parameters, excluding and adding arbitrary elements, and making other choices) that comprise simulations. Prior works in philosophy, critical theory and technical communication underscore fictional and formal features of simulation. In contrast, this dissertation dissects multiple levels of documents surrounding actual simulations—not only drafts of published articles but also software and code interiors, e-mail and letter correspondence, newsletters and white paper reports—in order to discuss the relational (rather than purely formal) meaning of the simulations. This work also compares simulation to other modes of the scientific imagination—paradox, thought experiments and metaphor, in particular. My findings suggest that simulations hinge upon abductive (rather than deductive or inductive) reasoning and qualify as virtual evidence. Also, while published drafts of simulation articles tidy the ad hoc twists and turns necessary for creating simulations, prior drafts and peripheral documents attest to the fact that organizational affiliations, earlier projects, and rhetorical strategies help establish the scope and meaning of simulation projects. Further, meaning-making takes place well before and long after the article drafting process—in prior incarnations of the work for presentation, in correspondence between article writers and reviewers, and in citations in others’ writing. / text

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2008-10-23Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:53:23Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 cocchieri_t_me_mar.pdf: 416905 bytes, checksum: 14bb78803d1bdc1da924acbe9d5ce33b (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O objetivo desta Dissertação é realizar uma pesquisa sobre a natureza da criatividade como processo, com possibilidade de ser explicado de modo sistematizado. Buscamos refutar uma hipótese contrária que compartimenta o processo de criação em uma aura subjetivada e inefável. Com intuito de fundamentar nossa argumentação, procuramos reconstruir os argumentos desenvolvidos por C. S. Peirce referentes a um tipo específico de raciocínio lógico que está associado ao conceito de criatividade, por ser de natureza gerativa de idéias novas chamado pelo filósofo de raciocínio abdutivo. Investigamos aspectos da filosofia de Peirce que estruturam e permeiam a análise desta inferência lógica. Ao longo do desenvolvimento de nossas argumentações, apresentamos o pensamento de filósofos contemporâneos que se debruçaram à análise deste tema. / This dissertation aims at realizing a research on the nature of creativity understood as a process, with the possibility of explaining it in a systematic manner. We refute the hypothesis which ascribes to creative process a subjective and ineffable aura. In order to settle our argumentation we reconstruct that hypotheses of C. S. Peirce referring to a specific sort of logical reasoning associated with the concept of creativity, called abductive reasoning. As we also consider aspects of Peirce's philosophy which organize and integrate the analysis of such logical inference. As our argumentation is developed, we present the theses of contemporary philosophers that have worked on the analysis of this subject.

abstract: This is a study of scientific realism, and of the extent to which it is undermined by objections that have been raised by advocates of various forms of antirealism. I seek to develop and present a version of scientific realism that improves on past formulations, and then to show that standard antirealist arguments against it do not succeed. In this paper, I will first present my formulation of scientific realism, which conceives of theories as model-based and as fundamentally non-linguistic. I advocate an epistemic position that accords with indirect realism, and I review and assess the threat posed by theses of underdetermination. Next, I review and discuss three important views: the antirealist constructivist view of Thomas Kuhn, the realist view of Norwood Hanson, and the antirealist constructive empiricist view of Bas van Fraassen. I find merits and flaws in all three views. In the course of those discussions, I develop the theme that antirealists' arguments generally depend on assumptions that are open to question, especially from the perspective of the version of realism I advocate. I further argue that these antirealist views are undermined by their own tacit appeals to realism. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Philosophy 2013

This dissertation explores how urban leaders and stakeholders can leverage urban innovation to address complex challenges and the uncertainties come with them at the local level, specifically for marginalized communities. Through a series of three standalone articles, including a pilot study on tactical urbanism and two systematic reviews on urban innovation governance and just city implications, the research employs an abductive approach to reconceptualize urban innovation as a platform for collective action and self-governance. The pilot study examines tactical urbanism as a promising trend for addressing uncertainties at the hyper-local level during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a qualitative analysis of academic and grey literature, as well as case studies of tactical urbanism interventions. Building upon these findings, the first systematic review delves into the concept of "urban innovation governance," proposing a participatory, community-based governance conceptualization. This review employs a mixed method meta-synthesis research strategy and an umbrella review methodology to assess the available evidence on urban innovation governance from a multidisciplinary perspective. Through triangulating my theoretical lens, the second review explores urban innovation as a platform for active and inclusive citizenship, utilizing a scoping review methodology to synthesize the practical implications of just city research, and identifying strategies for promoting equitable and inclusive urban transformations. By synthesizing insights from these studies, this dissertation challenges technocratic and top-down perspectives, arguing that community-driven urban innovation is key to locally attuned, inclusive action. The findings contribute to debates on public governance, community development, and innovation, offering evidence-based principles to guide localized innovation governance regimes tailored to unique urban contexts. This research highlights the transformative potential of urban innovation when approached through a self-governing, community-level lens.

Several real world tasks involve data that is uncertain and relational in nature. Traditional approaches like first-order logic and probabilistic models either deal with structured data or uncertainty, but not both. To address these limitations, statistical relational learning (SRL), a new area in machine learning integrating both first-order logic and probabilistic graphical models, has emerged in the recent past. The advantage of SRL models is that they can handle both uncertainty and structured/relational data. As a result, they are widely used in domains like social network analysis, biological data analysis, and natural language processing. Bayesian Logic Programs (BLPs), which integrate both first-order logic and Bayesian net- works are a powerful SRL formalism developed in the recent past. In this dissertation, we develop approaches using BLPs to solve two real world tasks – plan recognition and machine reading. Plan recognition is the task of predicting an agent’s top-level plans based on its observed actions. It is an abductive reasoning task that involves inferring cause from effect. In the first part of the dissertation, we develop an approach to abductive plan recognition using BLPs. Since BLPs employ logical deduction to construct the networks, they cannot be used effectively for abductive plan recognition as is. Therefore, we extend BLPs to use logical abduction to construct Bayesian networks and call the resulting model Bayesian Abductive Logic Programs (BALPs). In the second part of the dissertation, we apply BLPs to the task of machine reading, which involves automatic extraction of knowledge from natural language text. Most information extraction (IE) systems identify facts that are explicitly stated in text. However, much of the information conveyed in text must be inferred from what is explicitly stated since easily inferable facts are rarely mentioned. Human readers naturally use common sense knowledge and “read between the lines” to infer such implicit information from the explicitly stated facts. Since IE systems do not have access to common sense knowledge, they cannot perform deeper reasoning to infer implicitly stated facts. Here, we first develop an approach using BLPs to infer implicitly stated facts from natural language text. It involves learning uncertain common sense knowledge in the form of probabilistic first-order rules by mining a large corpus of automatically extracted facts using an existing rule learner. These rules are then used to derive additional facts from extracted information using BLP inference. We then develop an online rule learner that handles the concise, incomplete nature of natural-language text and learns first-order rules from noisy IE extractions. Finally, we develop a novel approach to calculate the weights of the rules using a curated lexical ontology like WordNet. Both tasks described above involve inference and learning from partially observed or incomplete data. In plan recognition, the underlying cause or the top-level plan that resulted in the observed actions is not known or observed. Further, only a subset of the executed actions can be observed by the plan recognition system resulting in partially observed data. Similarly, in machine reading, since some information is implicitly stated, they are rarely observed in the data. In this dissertation, we demonstrate the efficacy of BLPs for inference and learning from incomplete data. Experimental comparison on various benchmark data sets on both tasks demonstrate the superior performance of BLPs over state-of-the-art methods. / text

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This thesis uses an abductive research strategy to discover how individuals in a UK contact centre became first-line managers. Managers play a significant role in organisations as supervisors of staff, yet there is no general agreement as to what they do or how. Adopting an idealist ontology and a constructionist epistemology, this ethnographic project uncovered stories of becoming by using questionnaires, observations and interviews with twelve participants. The context was a private / public sector partnership to provide advice and guidance to a local community. The use by organisations of contact centres is maturing in the private sector and growing in the public sector. It is an especially important arena to explore in the UK economy as currently many contact centres that were outsourced to cheaper, high quality labour markets are returning to the UK. Analysis of data showed clearly that learning to become a first-line manager occurred throughout the life course in three distinct stages; formative development, and reflecting the values and behaviours of parents and teachers; pre-management occupational development, and the experience of being managed; and development actually in the role of a first-line manager. The thesis makes four contributions to the extant literature. Firstly, these three stages were shown to be the route in the transition from legitimate peripheral participation to mastery. Situated learning theory provides no such clarification. Secondly, learning to become a first-line manager did not necessarily change identity as many writers claim. Identities of first-line manager evolved by building on personal and occupational identities that had been developed earlier. Thirdly, teachers made a vital contribution to developing future first-line managers by affirming and strengthening family values. They also encouraged their pupils to recognise the connection between effort and gaining reward for achievement. Finally, the messy terrain of learning theory has been clarified, not as grand theory, but as mid-range theorising through a new conceptual framework. This schema synthesizes learning orientations with learning metaphors and learning viewed as a noun or a verb, and the various influences on learning from structure and agency. The four learning modes are adapt, assimilation, accommodation and aspire.

Resumo: O objetivo desta Dissertação é realizar uma pesquisa sobre a natureza da criatividade como processo, com possibilidade de ser explicado de modo sistematizado. Buscamos refutar uma hipótese contrária que compartimenta o processo de criação em uma aura subjetivada e inefável. Com intuito de fundamentar nossa argumentação, procuramos reconstruir os argumentos desenvolvidos por C. S. Peirce referentes a um tipo específico de raciocínio lógico que está associado ao conceito de criatividade, por ser de natureza gerativa de idéias novas chamado pelo filósofo de raciocínio abdutivo. Investigamos aspectos da filosofia de Peirce que estruturam e permeiam a análise desta inferência lógica. Ao longo do desenvolvimento de nossas argumentações, apresentamos o pensamento de filósofos contemporâneos que se debruçaram à análise deste tema. / Abstract: This dissertation aims at realizing a research on the nature of creativity understood as a process, with the possibility of explaining it in a systematic manner. We refute the hypothesis which ascribes to creative process a subjective and ineffable aura. In order to settle our argumentation we reconstruct that hypotheses of C. S. Peirce referring to a specific sort of logical reasoning associated with the concept of creativity, called abductive reasoning. As we also consider aspects of Peirce's philosophy which organize and integrate the analysis of such logical inference. As our argumentation is developed, we present the theses of contemporary philosophers that have worked on the analysis of this subject. / Orientador: Maria Eunice Quílici Gonzales / Coorientador: Lauro Frederico Barbosa da Silveira / Banca: Mariana Claudia Broens / Banca: Ivo Assad Ibri / Mestre

While there are efforts to establish a single international accounting standard, there are strong current and future needs to handle heterogeneous accounting methods and systems. We advocate a context-based approach to dealing with multiple accounting standards and equational ontological conflicts. In this paper we first define what we mean by equational ontological conflicts and then describe a new approach, using Constraint Logic Programming and abductive reasoning, to reconcile such conflicts among disparate information systems. In particular, we focus on the use of Constraint Handling Rules as a simultaneous symbolic equation solver, which is a powerful way to combine, invert and simplify multiple conversion functions that translate between different contexts. Finally, we demonstrate a sample application using our prototype implementation that demonstrates the viability of our approach. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Relatively little is known about how concepts of human values and value interact during the construction design process. Whilst researchers of value management have expounded in this context upon the complexity of the design process, problem-solving and sense-making, little is said about the alignment and reconciliation of multiple-stakeholder values and value judgements. An abductive reasoning and a grounded theory approach was adopted that iterated between literature and empirical observation to obtain new insights. The initial phase created a values and value framework and Value in Design (VALiD) approach through seven unstructured interviews, a design workshop, four Schwartz Values Surveys (with 545 participants) and 55 semi-structured interviews. The values and value parts were then separately implemented, developed and validated through action research on five live education capital projects, involving over 250 participants. Subsequently, a middle-range theory of values and value is proposed through theoretical triangulation. This draws on seven related theories to provide greater explanatory pluralism, uncover hidden phenomena and enable convergence. The research findings are significant in focusing soft value management on underlying stakeholder values and subjective value judgements. A more nuanced and intertwined relationship between stakeholder values, attitudes, behaviours and qualities during the design process is offered that promotes compromise and sense-making.