Our understanding of body ownership largely relies on the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) paradigm where synchronous stroking of the real and fake hands leads to an illusion of ownership of RH provided its physical, anatomical, and spatial plausibility. Self-attribution of a fake hand also occurs during visuomotor synchrony, when the visual feedback of self-initiated movements follows the trajectory of the instantiated motor command. In both cases, the experience of ownership is established through bottom-up integration and top-down prediction of multisensory (proximodistal) (...) cues within the peripersonal space. It seems, however, that depending on whether the signals are externally or self-generated, top-down expectation signals are qualitatively different. On the one hand, in RHI, the sensory correlations are modulated by empirically induced priors about the internal model of the body. On the other hand, in mRHI, body ownership is actively shaped by processes allowing for continuous comparison between the actual and predicted sensory consequences of the actions. Ample research demonstrates that the differential processing of the predicted and the actual reafferent information is addressed by the central nervous system via an internal Forward Model (FM). Indeed, results from mRHI suggest that in action-contexts mechanism underlying body ownership could be similar to the FM. Crucially FMs integrate across all sensory input including not only proximodistal (visuomotor) but also purely distal sensory signals (visuoauditory). Thus if body ownership results from a consistency of FM, it would be affected by the (in)congruency of purely distal signals provided that they inform about the action-consequences relevant to the task. Here we explicitly address this question. To test our hypothesis, we devise an embodied VR-based task where action outcomes were signaled by distinct auditory cues. By manipulating the cues with respect to their spatial, temporal and semantic congruency, we show that purely distal feedback violating predictions about action outcomes compromises both body ownership and performance. These results demonstrate that body ownership is influenced by cues which not only pertain to the body itself but also those arising outside of the body, and suggest that in goal-oriented tasks body ownership might result from the consistency of forward models. (shrink)

The generation of synthetic data is becoming a fundamental task in the daily life of any organization due to the new protection data laws that are emerging. Because of the rise in the use of Artificial Intelligence, one of the most recent proposals to address this problem is the use of Generative Adversarial Networks. These types of networks have demonstrated a great capacity to create synthetic data with very good performance. The goal of synthetic data generation is to create data (...) that will perform similarly to the original dataset for many analysis tasks, such as classification. The problem of GANs is that in a classification problem, GANs do not take class labels into account when generating new data, it is treated as any other attribute. This research work has focused on the creation of new synthetic data from datasets with different characteristics with a Conditional Generative Adversarial Network. CGANs are an extension of GANs where the class label is taken into account when the new data is generated. The performance of our results has been measured in two different ways: firstly, by comparing the results obtained with classification algorithms, both in the original datasets and in the data generated; secondly, by checking that the correlation between the original data and those generated is minimal. (shrink)

Electricity is an indicator that shows the progress of a civilization; it is a product that has greatly changed the way we think about the world. Electricity price forecasting became a fundamental task in all countries due to the deregulation of the electricity market in the 1990s. This work examines the effectiveness of using multiple variables for price prediction given the large number of factors that could influence the price of the electricity market. The tests were carried out over four (...) periods using data from Spain and deep learning models. Two different attribute selection methods based on Pearson’s correlation coefficient have been used to improve the efficiency of the training process. The variables used as input to the different prediction models were chosen, considering those most commonly used previously in the literature. This study attempts to test whether using time series lags improves the non-use of lags. The results obtained have shown that lags improve the results compared to a previous work in which no lags were used. (shrink)

Transhumanism is a challenging movement that invites us to rethink what defines humanity, including what we value and regret the most about our existence. Vulnerability is a key concept that require thorough philosophical scrutiny concerning transhumanist proposals. Vulnerability can refer to a universal condition of human life or, rather, to the specific exposure to certain harms due to particular situations. Even if we are all vulnerable in the first sense, there are also different sources and levels of vulnerability depending on (...) concrete social circumstances. Recently, Michael Hauskeller argued about a fundamental incompatibility between transhumanism and vulnerability. He understands vulnerability as an existential category, linked to woundability and mortality. This idea is akin to ontological vulnerability, but it does not notice some important features of social vulnerability. On the other side, transhumanism is a complex and non-homogeneous movement. Here we distinguish between a strong and a weak version of transhumanism. We will propose that the salience of vulnerability is only diminished in the radical one, while a moderate version can reconcile vulnerability with human enhancement. Thus, vulnerability, a concept that has recently gained much importance as an anthropological category in contemporary ethics, is not necessarily at odds with any transhumanist project. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with moral experimentalism, which I describe as the stance according to which moral inquiry is grounded not in objective foundations nor in our subjective inclinations but in our active encounter with things and events and in our communicative interactions with others. The notion of moral inquiry as grounded in objective foundations and that as based on subjective inclinations have traditionally been conceived of not as two independent possibilities but as the two poles of a dramatic Either/Or (...) that has profoundly conditioned, and still does, our perception of and approach to disagreements and conflicts. When the pragmatists, particularly Dewey, advanced the idea of an experimental approach to moral issues, they put it forward as an alternative to these extreme positions and, therefore, as a way out of what they perceived, I think correctly, as a false and pernicious dichotomy. The paper is divided into three parts: In the first section, I set the theoretical foundation of experimentalism as conceived of by the American pragmatists, in particular Peirce and Dewey. In the second part, and drawing mainly on Dewey’s Logic, I explore the procedural implications derived from the application of experimentalism to practice. In the third section, I consider the particularities of the application of experimentalism to the realm of ethics. As I argue, experimentalism is not only a promising approach to moral problems but perhaps the only effective remedy for the increasingly irrational attitudes with which they are today addressed. (shrink)

Deep learning is a kind of machine learning which happens in a certain type of artificial neural networks called deep networks. Artificial deep networks, which exhibit many similarities with biological ones, have consistently shown human-like performance in many intelligent tasks. This poses the question whether this performance is caused by such similarities. After reviewing the structure and learning processes of artificial and biological neural networks, we outline two important reasons for the success of deep learning, namely the extraction of successively (...) higher level features and the multiple layer structure, which are closely related to each other. Then some indications about the framing of this heated debate are given. After that, an assessment of the value of artificial deep networks as models of the human brain is given from the similarity perspective of model representation. Finally, a new version of computational functionalism is proposed which addresses the specificity of deep neural computation better than classic, program based computational functionalism. (shrink)

El feedback correctivo escrito ha demostrado ser efectivo para el tratamiento de ciertas estructuras gramaticales ; sin embargo, persisten factores que dificultan realizar conclusiones categóricas al respecto. Algunos de estos corresponden al tipo de las formas que se benefician de un tratamiento como este, a los distintos contextos de aprendizaje investigados, a los diversos niveles de competencia lingüística de los participantes, entre otros. La presente investigación estudia dos estrategias de FCE indirecto; a saber, indirecto con indicación y localización e indirecto (...) con indicación, localización y explicación metalingüística, en el tratamiento de la forma comparativa de adjetivos en inglés a nivel escolar. Los objetivos son examinar la efectividad del FCE y robustecer la evidencia empírica en contextos de aprendizaje que han sido insuficientemente indagados. Este primer acercamiento constituye una aproximación inédita que contribuye al fortalecimiento y al aumento de la evidencia empírica existente en el ámbito del FCE. La muestra del estudio correspondió a 24 estudiantes de 8° año de enseñanza primaria con un nivel básico de competencia lingüística en el idioma inglés como lengua extranjera. Los resultados muestran que ambos tipos de feeback promueven el uso preciso de la forma estudiada pero el FCE indirecto con indicación y localización del error es el que consigue mayores logros que se mantienen en el tiempo. Estos antecedentes sugieren una acción facilitadora del FCE en el tratamiento de la forma gramatical apuntada. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to theorize how materials can play an active, constitutive, and causally effective role in the production and sustenance of cultural forms and meanings. It does so through an empirical exploration of the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA). The article describes the museum as an “objectification machine” that endeavors to transform and to stabilize artworks as meaningful “objects” that can be exhibited, classified, and circulated. The article explains how the extent to which (...) the museum succeeds in this process of stabilization ultimately depends on the material properties of artworks and, more specially, on whether these behave as “docile” or “unruly” objects. Drawing on different empirical examples, the article explores how docile and unruly objects shape organizational dynamics within the museum and, through them, the wider processes of institutional and cultural reproduction. The article uses this empirical example to highlight the importance of developing a new “material sensibility” that restores heuristic dignity to the material within cultural sociology. (shrink)

En cada época y en cada civilización existen problemas socialmente importantes que son objeto de especial atención. Son hechos que, por su ámbito de extensión o por su gravedad, tienen una gran resonancia. Es lo que en las últimas décadas ocurre con las adicciones, que constituyen uno de los trastornos emblemáticos de nuestra sociedad.

The ArgumentIn this paper I try to analyze the fate of a new medical model that was developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in European Latin society, particularly in the southern parts of Latin Europe. This model won the approval of the communities in which it was developed as part of an incipient network of medical care and attention. The new healer (Christian and male )that emerged from this model, whether physician or surgeon, based his practice on his knowledge (...) of Aristotelian natural philosophy. He was an intellectual and a social product fashioned and supported by traditional and new urban leader groups, whether civil or ecclesiastic, Christian or Jewish. Health and healers were considered part of the urban social organization both in large cities and in smaller towns.Full social acceptance of this new model was achieved only after heated debate. In practice, the new way of conceiving of medicine did not begin to become socially accepted outside intellectual circles until the new healer was able to offer specific solutions for the maintenance or restoration of health, both at an individual and at a collective level, and according to the criteria and feelings of the leader groups of the society of that time.Progress in research allows us to identify nene factors, at least, that were involed in the construction of these novelties in late medieval Latin society. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is to deep in the way that Guzmán planned to make effective social participation in an authoritarian context like Pinochet's Chile (1973-1990). We will see how Guzmán considered civil participation as an essential requirement in order to get a modern democracy which would be opened in Chile after the military dictatorship. He supported this idea through the concepts of subsidiarity State and liberal economy policy.

The Turing Machine presents itself as the very landmark and initial design of digital automata present in all modern general-purpose digital computers and whose design on computable numbers implies deeply ontological as well as epistemological foundations for today’s computers. These lines of work attempt to briefly analyze the fundamental epistemological problem that rose in the late 19th and early 20th century whereby “machine cognition” emerges. The epistemological roots addressed in the TM and notably in its “Halting Problem” uncovers the tension (...) between determinism and uncertainty, regarded here as the primal and inherent features of machine cognition. Resumen La Máquina de Turing se presenta como el hito y el diseño inicial de un autómata digital presente en todas las computadoras digitales modernas de propósito general y cuyo diseño en números computables establece bases profundamente ontológicas y epistemológicas para las computadoras de hoy. Estas líneas de trabajo intentan analizar brevemente el problema epistemológico fundamental que surgió a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX mediante el cual emerge la “cognición de la máquina”. Las raíces epistemológicas que se abordan en la TM y, en particular, en su “Problema de detención” ponen al descubierto la tensión entre el determinismo y la incertidumbre, consideradas aquí, como las características primordiales e inherentes de la cognición de la máquina. (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg [2014] and Mark Murphy [2017], [2018] have defended a series of arguments for the conclusion that creatures are not good intrinsically. In response, I take two steps. First, I introduce a conception of intrinsic value that makes created intrinsic value unproblematic. Second, I respond to their arguments in turn. The first argument is from the sovereignty-aseity intuition and an analysis of intrinsicality that makes derivative good extrinsic. I challenge the analysis. The second comes from a conception of perfection (...) where God exhausts all possibilities for goodness. I challenge this conception. The third comes from the contingency of creation and the internal logic of intrinsic value. I challenge the assumption that connects the two. I then present an argument from reference magnetism that the only conception of God, God's perfections, and religious language that makes it plausible that the sentence "God is intrinsically good and creatures are not" is true involves a strongly univocalist position. A view that is either unstatable or places strong demands on our conception of God, God's perfections and religious language thereby loses plausibility. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of religion has resurrected Leibniz’s idea that there is a best possible world, perhaps ours. In particular, Klaas Kraay’s [2010] construction of a theistic multiverse and Nevin Climenhaga’s [2018] argument from infinite value theory are novel defenses of a best possible world. I do not think that there is a best world, and show how both Kraay and Climenhaga may be resisted. First, I argue that Kraay’s construction of a theistic multiverse can be resisted from (...) plausible assumptions about set theory. Next, I argue against the value-theoretic assumptions that underlie Climenhaga’s argument and show how to give an infinite value theory where there is no best world. (shrink)

Care ethics has been advanced as a suitable framework for evaluating the ethical significance of assistive robotics. One of the most prominent care ethical contributions to the ethical assessment of assistive robots comes through the work of Aimee Van Wynsberghe, who has developed the Care-Centred Value-Sensitive Design framework (CCVSD) in order to incorporate care values into the design of assistive robots. Building upon the care ethics work of Joan Tronto, CCVSD has been able to highlight a number of ways in (...) which care practices can undergo significant ethical transformations upon the introduction of assistive robots. In this paper, we too build upon the work of Tronto in an effort to enrich the CCVSD framework. Combining insights from Tronto’s work with the sociological concept of _emotional labor_, we argue that CCVSD remains underdeveloped with respect to the impact robots may have on the emotional labor required by paid care workers. Emotional labor consists of the managing of emotions and of emotional bonding, both of which signify a demanding yet potentially fulfilling dimension of paid care work. Because of the conditions in which care labor is performed nowadays, emotional labor is also susceptible to exploitation. While CCVSD can acknowledge some manifestations of unrecognized emotional labor in care delivery, it remains limited in capturing the structural conditions that fuel this vulnerability to exploitation. We propose that the idea of _privileged irresponsibility,_ coined by Tronto, helps to understand how the exploitation of emotional labor can be prone to happen in roboticized care practices. (shrink)

It is now the majority view amongst philosophers and theologians that any world could have been better. This places the choice of which world to create into an especially challenging class of decision problems: those that are discontinuous in the limit. I argue that combining some weak, plausible norms governing this type of problem with a creator who has the attributes of the god of classical theism results in a paradox: no world is possible. After exploring some ways out of (...) the paradox, I conclude that the classical theist should accept Marilyn Adams’s view that no norms apply to gods. (shrink)

In the last few years, biologists and computer scientists have claimed that the introduction of data science techniques in molecular biology has changed the characteristics and the aims of typical outputs (i.e. models) of such a discipline. In this paper we will critically examine this claim. First, we identify the received view on models and their aims in molecular biology. Models in molecular biology are mechanistic and explanatory. Next, we identify the scope and aims of data science (machine learning in (...) particular). These lie mainly in the creation of predictive models which performances increase as data set increases. Next, we will identify a tradeoff between predictive and explanatory performances by comparing the features of mechanistic and predictive models. Finally, we show how this a priori analysis of machine learning and mechanistic research applies to actual biological practice. This will be done by analyzing the publications of a consortium—The Cancer Genome Atlas—which stands at the forefront in integrating data science and molecular biology. The result will be that biologists have to deal with the tradeoff between explaining and predicting that we have identified, and hence the explanatory force of the ‘new’ biology is substantially diminished if compared to the ‘old’ biology. However, this aspect also emphasizes the existence of other research goals which make predictive force independent from explanation. (shrink)

Ensayo sobre la contraposición rostro/máscara, donde por 'rostro' se entiende aquello que singulariza a cada ser humano, aquello que hace visible su ser único y valioso, mientras que por 'máscara' se hace alusión a aquello que oculta esa singularidad, aquello que lo remite a una categoría, a un este..

The first issue this essay examines is the articulation of the cinema of the body, the feminine gestus, and the ‘political cinema’, which begins with the philosophical shout, ‘Give me a body, then!’ and ends with the ‘Third World Cinema’ as a cinema of memory. How is this Deleuzian concept in tension with the one proposed here of ‘missing body’? The second issue concerns the importance of the body for theory and practice within feminist film theory and queer theory. The (...) question of the body is introduced in-between these two lines in the context of a series of Latin American documentaries. The final problem is then how to see and show a body that is missing, like an outside of the body image, and of a certain regime of the visible and the audible that tends to be fixed in topics by the production of technologies of memory. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is to deep in the way that Guzmán planned to make effective social participation in an authoritarian context like Pinochet's Chile (1973-1990). We will see how Guzmán considered civil participation as an essential requirement in order to get a modern democracy which would be opened in Chile after the military dictatorship. He supported this idea through the concepts of subsidiarity State and liberal economy policy.

Following Aristotle, Averroes rejects atomism and the infinite division of geometric lines. Thus, his arguments dealt with the continuity and contiguity of the non-atomic parts of motion. He vindicates the perceptual aspect of physical movement that shows itself like in-progress-path between two edge points A and B, in which there are middle parts where qualitative, local, or quantitative changes occur. Ramon Llull took the lines’ geometrical points as “motion parts.” Points are intermediate divisions that represent physical phenomena by the continuity (...) of geometrical lines, surfaces, and figures. Also, he appeals to relational logic to spot the middle parts between A and B into the in-progress-path of motion. Those middle parts are signified by a dynamic vocabulary, called: correlative language. This contribution focuses on the conceptual environment of Llull’s assumptions, in which Averroes’ Latin readers explored the geometry and the vocabulary of motion intermediate parts. (shrink)

With size, voting discipline, and technical resources superior to those of most Brazilian parties, in the last two decades, the support of the Agrarian Caucus has become crucial for the realization of presidents’ legislative agenda. In a country where 87 percent of the population is urban, how have representatives of the agrarian elites become key players in bargaining on nonagrarian issues? This article argues that Brazilian agrarian elites have been so successful because they have devised an electoral strategy that maximizes (...) their leverage in a fragmented party system with ideologically weak right-wing parties. Empirically, I show how agrarian elites in Brazil finance legislative campaigns, mobilize voters, and subsidize the legislative work of politicians from their ranks, independently of their partisan affiliation. Theoretically, I discuss the advantages of a candidate-centered electoral strategy: self-representation and multipartisanship. While self-representation has granted agrarian elites direct access to agenda-setting positions within Congress, having members in many parties has increased the number of agenda-setting positions they can control and guaranteed their presence in the legislative coalition of right- and left-wing presidents alike. (shrink)

El presente artículo estudiará la utilidad de la Carta Europea de Turismo Sostenible de Sierra Nevada como herramienta para promover el turismo sostenible en espacios protegidos. Se pretende mostrar cómo la adopción de la CETS ha supuesto una implicación real de las empresas con el territorio incrementado el sentimiento de pertenencia y el asociacionismo activo, así como a la puesta en marcha de actuaciones colectivas e individuales que contribuyen a mejorar la sostenibilidad ambiental, económica y social en los territorios, a (...) atraer turistas responsables motivados por el ecoturismo y a la mitigación y adaptación del territorio al Cambio Climático. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta investigación es poner de manifiesto la importancia de las imágenes de vestir marianas y, también, las joyas y accesorios que presentan. Se plantearán las bases y claves de un lenguaje no verbal que actúa como testimonio de la devoción además de las relaciones sociales y económicas del momento que las marcan. Merced a los casos analizados, se comprobará cómo, con gran frecuencia, se une a la piedad popular de pueblos y de las culturas de determinados acontecimientos (...) de la zona. Los resultados demostrarán la importancia dada y valores atribuidos a este tipo de iconografía. (shrink)

This study investigates the effects on organization’s financial performances of, first, the extent to which the organizations are involved in controversial business activities, and second, their level of social performance. These companies can be considered non-socially responsible given the harmful nature of the activities they are involved in. Managers of these companies may still have incentives to pursue socially responsible actions if they believe that engaging on those actions will help them to achieve legitimacy and improve investors’ perception about them. (...) We develop a comprehensive methodology to investigate these corporate social performance (CSP)-related effects in a complex but specific setting. To this end, we analyze a sample of 202 US firms for the period 2005–2008 using a novel method in this area: partial least squares. Our results indicate that, contrary to the general findings in prior literature, companies involved in controversial business activities which engage in CSP do not directly reduce the negative perception that stakeholders have about them. Instead, we found evidence of a positive mediation effect of CSP on financial market-based performance through innovation. (shrink)

Classic conceptions of model simplicity for machine learning are mainly based on the analysis of the structure of the model. Bayesian, Frequentist, information theoretic and expressive power concepts are the best known of them, which are reviewed in this work, along with their underlying assumptions and weaknesses. These approaches were developed before the advent of the Big Data deluge, which has overturned the importance of structural simplicity. The computational simplicity concept is presented, and it is argued that it is more (...) encompassing and closer to actual machine learning practices than the classic ones. In order to process the huge datasets which are commonplace nowadays, the computational complexity of the learning algorithm is the decisive factor to assess the viability of a machine learning strategy, while the classic accounts of simplicity play a surrogate role. Some of the desirable features of computational simplicity derive from its reliance on the learning system concept, which integrates key aspects of machine learning that are ignored by the classic concepts. Moreover, computational simplicity is directly associated with energy efficiency. In particular, the question of whether the maximum possibly achievable predictive accuracy should be attained, no matter the economic cost of the associated energy consumption pattern, is considered. (shrink)

España es el país europeo donde más carne se consume. El consumo de carne y sus efectos es objeto de discusión en distintos ámbitos por su impacto negativo en el medioambiente así como en la salud humana. Por ello, se persigue concienciar a la sociedad para reconsiderar su consumo. En este estudio se explora la actitud de los jóvenes españoles ante el consumo de carne. Los resultados muestran su preocupación por el impacto negativo de la carne pero subrayan barreras como (...) la falta de información por las cuales no están dispuestos a cambiar de hábito en el consumo de carne. (shrink)