Legal rules are often understood in terms of exclusionary reasons, and exclusionary reasons are normally understood as reasons for action according to R az. In this paper, I engage with the literature on the _metaphysics of reasons for action_ and explain how exclusionary reasons can be used in different conceptions of what reasons for action _are_ (and not only by the one defended by J oseph R az ). To do that, I proceed as follows: In the first part, and (...) after differentiating between _factual_ and _psychological_ conceptions of what reasons for action are, I engage with different approaches to reasons for action as facts (such as those claiming that reasons are explanation or evidence of “oughts”, primitive facts, and value-based instrumental and non-instrumental facts) to defend that exclusionary reasons can be accommodated inside all of those _factual_ conceptions of reasons for action. In the second part, I engage with those claiming that reasons for action are grounded in mental states (such as will, desires, beliefs, and intentions) to explore whether exclusionary reasons can work inside those _psychological_ conceptions of what reasons for action are. As a result, by showing how exclusionary reasons can be accommodated inside different factual and psychological conceptions of what reasons for action are, I defend that exclusionary reasons are an open concept that is not conceptually linked to R az’s conception of what reasons for action are. (shrink)

School climate is a multidimensional construct that has been related to a series of psychological, social, and school variables. The dual school climate and school identification measure-student (SCASIM-St) is a measure that has a multidimensional factor structure, with four first-order factors and a second-order factor, plus an independent factor that evaluates school identification. However, the SCASIM-St is long, with 38 items measuring school climate. The first objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of reliability and validity of (...) the abbreviated version of the dual school climate and school identification measure-student (SCASIM-St-15), for use in contexts with time limitations or for explanatory studies that need to apply multiple instruments simultaneously. The second objective was to analyze the degree of invariance for the groups: sex, type of education, and age. The sample was made up of 2,044 students of both sexes (49.1% women and 50.9% men), with a mean age of 14.64 (SD = 0.718), representing 27 secondary schools in Chile. The results indicated that the SCASIM-St15 presents adequate indicators of reliability and construct validity. Evidence of external criterion validity confirmed significant associations with the Attitudes to Institutional Authority in Adolescence Scale measure. The results of the factorial invariance analysis indicate that the SCASIM-St15 remains stable up to the level of metric invariance for the variable sex and the level of scalar invariance for the variables type of education and age. The study concluded that despite the significant decrease in the number of items, the SCASIM-St15 measures school climate in a reliable and valid way, without losing its theoretical and conceptual robustness. (shrink)

A ubiquitous feature of active sleep in mammals and birds is its relative abundance in early development. In rat pups across the first two postnatal weeks, active sleep promotes the expression of synchronized oscillatory activity within and between cortical and subcortical sensorimotor structures. Sensory feedback from self-generated myoclonic twitches – which are produced exclusively during active sleep – also triggers neural oscillations in those structures. We have proposed that one of the functions of active sleep in early infancy is to (...) provide a context for synchronizing developing structures. Specifically, neural oscillations contribute to a variety of neurodevelopmental processes, including synapse formation, neuronal differentiation and migration, apoptosis, and the refinement of topographic maps. In addition, synchronized oscillations promote functional connectivity between distant brain areas. Consequently, any condition or manipulation that restricts active sleep can, in turn, deprive the infant animal of substantial sensory experience, resulting in atypical developmental trajectories. The synchronization of rhythmic neural activity across brain structures provides evidence of communication. In developing sensorimotor networks, such oscillations are triggered most clearly and prominently during REM sleep. We propose that REM sleep provides a context for the emergence and expression of functional connectivity in the developing sensorimotor system. (shrink)

La interpretación heideggeriana de la “muerte de Dios” en Nietzsche entraña la esencial significación de un movimiento según el cual la metafísica llega a ser superada. Dicho movimiento se constata en las más influyentes de las filosofías modernas, sobre todo, en las filosofías de Kant y de Hegel. En palabras de Heidegger, después de Nietzsche “a la filosofía sólo le queda pervertirse y desnaturalizarse, de modo que ya no se divisan otras posibilidades para ella”. Esta superación compromete el conjunto de (...) la historia acontecida del ser y permite descubrir en el seno de la misma metafísica su constitución onto-teológica. El texto examina la “muerte de Dios” a la luz del postulado de la onto-teología en cuanto esencia de la metafísica, y las consecuencias que de ello se derivan para el pensamiento de Dios en la filosofía contemporánea. (shrink)

It is not yet clear which response behavior requires self-regulatory effort in the moral dilemma task. Previous research has proposed that utilitarian responses require cognitive control, but subsequent studies have found inconsistencies with the empirical predictions of that hypothesis. In this paper we treat participants’ sensitivity to utilitarian gradients as a measure of performance. We confronted participants (N = 82) with a set of five dilemmas evoking a gradient of mean utilitarian responses in a 4-point scale and collected data on (...) heart rate variability and on utilitarian responses. We found positive correlations between tonic and phasic HRV and sensitivity to the utilitarian gradient in the high tonic group, but not in the low tonic group. Moreover, the low tonic group misplaced a scenario with a selfish incentive at the high end of the gradient. Results suggest that performance is represented by sensitivity correlated with HRV and accompanied with a reasonable placement of individual scenarios within the gradient. (shrink)

“There’s no need for DNA tests to prove that One Hundred Years of Solitude is Don Quixote’s heir.” G. Rabassa This paper is a personal attempt to relate the concept of language games as portrayed by the Austrian Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein with the literary magic of Gabriel García Márquez. The topic came up to me after reading an essay of the Colombian writer Carlos Patiño Roselli. His exposition on the language games in Wittgenstein triggered a series ofassociations in me (...) that made me see spoken language as the actor that plays the leading role in both authors. In order to address this topic I will first summarize Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games, on one hand, and then I will remind us of what we commonly understand under “magical realism” in GGM; then, I will propose a free interpretation of §103 in PhU relating it to Melquiades’ return from death to live in a story he tells in some papyrus. And now, “Back to the rough ground!”. (shrink)

En este artículo se compara, la posición que tiene el historiador de la filosofía colombiana Carlos Arturo López Jiménez sobre la idea que tenía Cayetano Betancur acerca de la posibilidad de que existiera una Filosofía en Colombia, con lo que el autor mismo decía sobre este aspecto. De este modo, primero, se mostrará la perspectiva de López Jiménez y el uso que hace de las ideas de Cayetano Betancur. Enseguida se describe el recorrido intelectual de Cayetano Betancur con respecto (...) al problema de si existiría o no una Filosofía en Colombia. Así se expondrá cómo, en un momento determinado, Betancur hace un viraje en su pensamiento y pasa de negar una Filosofía en Colombia a asumir su existencia y su posibilidad, asi como también reconoce la necesidad de identificar y leer las fuentes filosóficas locales. (shrink)

The costs of agricultural inputs added to those of labor represent almost a third of the total cost of Brazilian sugarcane production. This study analyzes the behavior of the price per ton of sugarcane in Brazil, relating it to the main production costs of this cultivation. Twelve price indicators from January 2015 to December 2020 were evaluated. First, the data were adjusted to a multiple linear regression model to identify the significant variables on variation in the price per ton of (...) sugarcane. Then, the Monte Carlo simulation was used to measure the level of certainty of occurrence of these variables, and forecasts were obtained from the adjustment of ARIMA models. The results showed the influence of the costs of diesel oil, two agricultural pesticides, and daily laborers on the price of sugarcane, besides an increasing trend of its, providing relevant short-term projections for decision-making about investments in the agribusiness sector. (shrink)

The diversity in agronomic practices being used by sugarcane producers in Brazil determines differences in economic performance and cost structure. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the cost of six systems of agronomic practices using fixed or variable rates for soil amendment, fertilizer, and defensive applications and assess the profitability of these systems at three scales of sugarcane production. We then describe the data sample related to the 2019–2020 harvest season and collected from fifty-five sugarcane producers in the (...) central-south region of Brazil. Thereafter, using a quantitative approach, a cost analysis was performed, and the cumulative frequency of the net revenue for the three scales of production (small, medium, and large), was calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation. The cost analysis indicated that fertilizer had the highest cost considering the agronomic practices adopted at the three scales of production analyzed. The cumulative frequency analysis results from the Monte Carlo simulation showed the highest net revenue per hectare for medium sugarcane producers. In addition, the presence of economies of scale was not confirmed because the lowest cost was found in small-scale sugarcane producers and the highest net revenue was obtained by medium-scale sugarcane producers. (shrink)

Carlos Del Río-Bermúdez (a) y Karl Ægir Karlsson (b) (a) Universidad de Granada, España (b) Reykjavík University, Islandia A pesar … Read More →.

This chapter subsumes David Marr’s levels of analysis account of explanation in cognitive science under the framework of mechanistic explanation: Answering the questions that define each one of Marr’s three levels is tantamount to describing the component parts and operations of mechanisms, as well as their organization, behavior, and environmental context. By explicating these questions and showing how they are answered in several different cognitive science research programs, this chapter resolves some of the ambiguities that remain in Marr’s account, and (...) shows that many different areas and traditions of cognitive scientific research can be unified under the mechanistic framework. (shrink)

Bayesian reverse-engineering is a research strategy for developing three-level explanations of behavior and cognition. Starting from a computational-level analysis of behavior and cognition as optimal probabilistic inference, Bayesian reverse-engineers apply numerous tweaks and heuristics to formulate testable hypotheses at the algorithmic and implementational levels. In so doing, they exploit recent technological advances in Bayesian artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistics, but also consider established principles from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Although these tweaks and heuristics are highly pragmatic in character and (...) are often deployed unsystematically, Bayesian reverse-engineering avoids several important worries that have been raised about the explanatory credentials of Bayesian cognitive science: the worry that the lower levels of analysis are being ignored altogether; the challenge that the mathematical models being developed are unfalsifiable; and the charge that the terms ‘optimal’ and ‘rational’ have lost their customary normative force. But while Bayesian reverse-engineering is therefore a viable and productive research strategy, it is also no fool-proof recipe for explanatory success. (shrink)

A study in the logic of theory change, examining the properties of maxichoice contraction and revision operations.

Investigates the resolution of contradictions and ambiguous derogations in a code, by means of the imposition of partial orderings.

Hybrid languages are expansions of propositional modal languages which can refer to worlds. The use of strong hybrid languages dates back to at least [Pri67], but recent work has focussed on a more constrained system called $\mathscr{H}$. We show in detail that $\mathscr{H}$ is modally natural. We begin by studying its expressivity, and provide model theoretic characterizations and a syntactic characterization. The key result to emerge is that $\mathscr{H}$ corresponds to the fragment of first-order logic which is invariant for generated (...) submodels. We then show that $\mathscr{H}$ enjoys interpolation, provide counterexamples for its finite variable fragments, and show that weak interpolation holds for the sublanguage $\mathscr{H}$. Finally, we provide complexity results for $\mathscr{H}$ and other fragments and variants, and sharpen known undecidability results for $\mathscr{H}$. (shrink)

The mental model theory predicts that reasoners normally represent what is true, but not what is false. One consequence is that reasoners should make "illusory" inferences, which are compelling but invalid. Three experiments confirmed the existence of such illusions based on disjunctions of disjunctions. They also established a successful antidote to them: Reasoners are much less likely to succumb to illusions if the inferences concern disjunctions of physical objects (alternative newspaper advertisements) rather disjunctions of the truth values of assertions. The (...) results shed light both on the cause of the illusions and on the current controversy among different theories of reasoning. (shrink)

According to Marr, explanations of perceptual behavior should address multiple levels of analysis. Rahnev & Denison (R&D) are perhaps overly dismissive of optimality considerations at the computational level. Also, an exclusive reliance on standard observer models may cause neglect of many other plausible hypotheses at the algorithmic level. Therefore, as far as explanation goes, standard observer modeling is no panacea.

Según cierto sector de la posteoría, Ilya Prigogine habría creado una nueva alianza con la naturaleza bajo el signo de una conjunción de ciencia y filosofía, donde los estudios sobre la irreversibilidad, las estructuras disipativas y las estructuras auto-organizativas juegan un rol preponderante ..

Having a “normal” professional job and doing research impose different social and personal connotations. These differences materialize at least in two clear ways. First, it is common that researchers in the making find it very difficult to communicate to their closest social network (e.g., family and old close friends) the content and the importance of their work, as they lose known sources of social comparison. Meanwhile, professional job titles (e.g., brand manager, auditor, lawyer) are self-explanatory, and they provide for the (...) owner an immediate social contextualization and recognition. Second, students normally receive delayed and ambiguous feedback and reinforcement while doing a PhD, contrasting with the continuous flow of assessment that companies give to their employees. In this article, I analyze how young researchers may develop a feeling of social isolation as the communication bridges with family, old friends, and undergraduate colleagues become narrower than before, making it difficult to receive external reinforcement on their social position and comparative achievement. This feeling, combined with the ambiguous feedback during the early stages of a research career, challenges the self-esteem of PhD students, forcing them to develop a self-contained personal security in order to cope with those two social contexts. Some young researchers might even withdraw from PhD programs should they fail to develop such psychological strength. I approach the issue through my own experience, first as a junior consultant in a multinational firm and then as a PhD candidate in economics. Second, I explore the behavioral phenomena that occur beneath those feelings in order to understand how to build such psychological strength. My goal is, through the exploration of my personal experience of becoming a researcher, to offer young researchers a useful narrative to help face the potentially negative feelings that may emerge when learning to balance these conflicting social roles. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the notions of mediational fields and dynamic situated senses as a way to identify the structure of experiences, thoughts and their relations. To reach this purpose I draw some lessons from the debate between Dreyfus and McDowell about the structure of experience, from Cussins’s conception of mediational contents, and from Evans’s account of singular senses. I notice firstly that McDowell’s answer to Dreyfus consists in developing a practical and demonstrative notion of the (...) products of our conceptual capacities. A conception that entails that human experience is not entirely characterised in terms of an abstract specification of truth-conditions. McDowell and Cussins endorse Evans’s conception of singular senses. A specification that takes into account the dynamic and situated abilities involved in making reference. Whereas the first argues in favour of a conceptual conception of experience, the second one argues in favour of a nonconceptual conception. I introduce the notions of mediational fields and dynamic situated senses to argue that both converge in conceiving the contents of experience as mediational and not reducible to an abstract specification of truth-conditions. My proposal is to define a bidimensional space orthogonal to the conceptual/ nonconceptual, experience/thought, know-how/know-that dichotomies. Cognitive contents are ways to disclose the world both as mediational fields and as referential structures. The degree in which those elements are presented determine different varieties of cognition. I use the previous notions to develop the sketch of an account of singular, objective and contextual ways of cognition, and to argue that it is better to begin an enquiry about cognition with notions that do not presuppose a distinction between practical and intellectual capacities. (shrink)

The article elaborates an exegetical study of the figure of “Hell” present in the work of the martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. This trope is thought of as a core element of the narrative of Black Skin, White Masks that is linked to reflections on racist alienation, the epidermis, the gaze, and the zone of non-being. Exploring the different modulations of “Hell”, the article makes a displacement that seeks to argue how the infernal of Fanon’s story, more than a metaphor, accounts (...) for the “real-lived” of the colonial world. Consequently, the racialized body and its lived experience offer a reading about “Hell” in an anaphoric and existential key that strains the modern-hegemonic grammars about the identities. From this starting point, the work discusses the problem of temporality linked to the critical tenor that at various moments in Black Skin... assumes the infernal architecture of colonialism narrated by Fanon. (shrink)

Our understanding of the universe has grown rapidly in recent decades. We’ve discovered evidence of water in nearby planets, discovered planets outside our solar system, mapped the genomes of thousands of organisms, and probed the very origins and limits of life. The scientific perspective of life-as-it-could-be has expanded in part by research in astrobiology, synthetic biology, and artificial life. In the face of such scientific developments, we argue there is an ever-growing need for universal biology, life-as-it-must-be, the multidisciplinary study of (...) non-contingent aspects of life as guided by biological theory and constrained by the universe. We present three distinct but connected ways of universalizing biology—with respect to characterizing aspects of life everywhere, with respect to the explanatory scope of biological theory, and with respect to extending biological insights to the structure of nonbiological entities. For each of these, we sketch the theoretical goals and challenges, as well as give examples of current research that might be labeled universal biology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a reflection on the idea of religiousness or religious sentiment in Benjamin Constant de Rebecque and the importance of this in free societies. For the author, the religious sentiment avoids the evils of selfishness and individualism and, at the same time, the dangers of political despotism and religious. In this sense, religion is seen as necessary to free societies. However, it must be separated from the priestly factions. Constant presents a strategy of (...) fusing a perspective of Enlightenment - with the concepts of progress and civilization - with aspects of the thought of Edmund Burke who advocated a more local interest. Thus, the "Greeks" - an "ideal type" avant la lettre - are presented with real people in history, which can help to think of our civilization. An "intermediate political principle", avoiding the excesses of philosophical abstraction. (shrink)

En el presente artículo intentamos una reconstrucción del significado que presenta para Hegel el fenómeno del deseo en el contexto de la exposición de la figura de la "Autoconciencia" en la Fenomenología del Espíritu. Defendemos la tesis de que el deseo representa propiamente la esencia negativa de la autoconciencia, ya que es en tanto deseante como ella pretende alcanzar la afirmación de sí frente a un mundo -natural y humano- que carece de independencia y sentido propios. Con este fin, nos (...) ocupamos de determinar la naturaleza dialéctica que caracteriza al sujeto deseante frente a la otredad y diferenciamos tres momentos fundamentales en la estructura del deseo: desde las experiencias más inmediatas o naturales hasta las más elaboradas o espiritualizadas, las que se resuelven en el deseo de reconocimiento como deseo ya no de un "objeto" sino de otro "yo". In this paper we attempt a reconstruction of the meaning that presents for Hegel the phenomenon of desire in the context of the exposition of the figure of "self-consciousness" in the Phenomenology of Spirit. We defend the thesis that the desire itself represents the negative essence of self-consciousness, and it is as desirous as it aims to achieve self-assertion in a -natural and human- world lacking of independence and own sense. To this end, we determine the dialectic nature that characterizes the desiring subject against otherness and we differentiate three key moments in the structure of desire, from the most immediate or natural experiences to the most elaborate or spiritualized, which are resolved in the desire for recognition as the desire not of an "object" but another "self". (shrink)

After introducing the paper (§1), I will review the most general and central aspects of the literature on grounding (§2); I believe this task to be valuable since there are no general and updated reviews in Spanish on the subject. I will then argue that grounding is not a measure of physical complexity, and that, without a necessary link to complexity, there is little reason to think that grounding unites the different strata of physical reality, which is one of the (...) most important motivations to introduce dependence relationships (§3). (shrink)

The lack of conceptual analysis within cognitive science results in multiple models of the same phenomena. However, these models incorporate assumptions that contradict basic structural features of the domain they are describing. This is particularly true about the domain of mathematical cognition. In this paper we argue that foundational theoretic aspects of psychological models for language and arithmetic should be clarified before postulating such models. We propose a means to clarify these foundational concepts by analyzing the distinctions between metric and (...) linguistic compositionality, which we use to assess current models of mathematical cognition. Our proposal is consistent with the scientific methodology that determines that careful conceptual analysis should precede theoretical descriptions of data. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Karl Marx’s writings about Spain have been published and studied on several occasions. Among the sources listed by Pedro Ribas, William Walton and his work The Revolutions of Spain, from 1808 to the End of 1836 figures among those mentioned most. Rather surprising, given that Walton sympathised with both Spanish Carlism and Portuguese Miguelism. Though he was born and died in England, Walton lived in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, in America and in the French colony of Santo Domingo at (...) various stages in the course of his career. A Catholic in an Anglican country, he translated Puigblanch’s The Inquisition Unmasked. Neither did his political ideas remain unchanged throughout his life. This paper looks at the influence thatWalton had on Marx’s ideas about Spain, particularly as regards the Carlist political movement. Marx read Walton in the British Library and took detailed notes from his book. He used these notes in his articles regarding the events that occurred in the country. We will also reflect on the place that Walton begins to occupy in Peninsular historiography, through the bibliographical information on his changing political viewpoints and his proximity to contemporary events.For this article we started with the study of the biography and the work of William Walton, which led us to discover a possible connection with the thinking of Karl Marx. Our investigations have led us to consider that Walton’s writings on Spain helped to form the opinions expressed by Marx in his press articles. (shrink)

Este trabajo aborda las diferentes modalidades de la referencia a la teología en la teoría de Hans Kelsen, distinguiendo tres grandes formas: la descripción, el argumento y el problema. Se detiene particularmente en la modalidad denominada aquí “argumento teológico” y su función en el marco de la construcción de la epistemología kelseniana. Busca describir también las razones de su evolución sobre su utilidad, ligada a la relación entre epistemología y política tal como evoluciona en el marco de la guerra fría.

Um aspecto poucas vezes (se é que alguma vez) referido a propósito deste livro de José Gil é o modo como sintetiza tantos aspectos da sua obra anterior. O que é tanto mais interessan­te quanto o faz recorrendo quer a noções centrais dela como a aspectos quase desconhecidos, e isto através de uma reflexão sobre mentalidades que não é muito frequente destacar-se nos seus trabalhos. Mais ainda do que «a intensidade que uma relação com este país supõe» (p. 142), que (...) José Gil refere ao terminar, e... (shrink)

Les variations de Gilles Châtelet Sur une petite phrase de Riemann, montrent que loin de constituer une variante de la « philosophie baroque » telle que la définit Deleuze, son maniérisme épistémologique le rapproche étonnamment de l’attention aux « modes de données » et aux « modes de visée » caractéristique de la phénoménologie transcendantale. Comme Hermann Weyl, il voit à l’œuvre dans la phénoménologie husser-lienne un approfondissement de l’esthétique transcendantale kantienne, en la tenant pour une approche philosophique pertinente et (...) ajustée à la science de son temps.Châtelet’s variation on a note by Riemann, shows that, far from constituting a variant of the “Baroque philosophy” such as Deleuze defines it, his epistemological mannerism pays attention to “modes of givenness” and “modes of constitution”, which is characteristic of transcendental phe-nomenology. This explains why he considers, like Hermann Weyl, phe-nomenology as a deepening of Kant’s transcendental aesthetics and as a philosophical approach, relevant and adapted to the science of his time. It is in this perspective that we should hear their joint statements that transcendental phenomenology is epistemologically contemporary to special and general relativity. Châtelets Variation auf einer kleinen Phrase von Rie-mann zeigt, daß sein erkenntnistheoretischer Manierismus, eine Variante der nach Definition „barocken Philosophie“ von Deleuze weit entfernt zu sein, im Gegenteil in der Nähe von transzendentale Phänomenologie und seine Aufmerksamkeit auf die „Gegebenheitsmodi“ und „Konstitution-sweise“ steht. Überdies betrachtet er, wie Hermann Weyl, die Phänomenol-ogie und die Vertiefung der transzendentalen Ästhetik als philosophischen Ansatz für die Wissenschaft seiner Zeit. Es ist in dieser Perspektive, dass wir ihre gemeinsamen Aussagen hören, dass die Kantische Ästhetik in Husserls vertieft wird, und dass die transzendentale Phänomenologie epistemologisch zeitgenössisch ist für speziell und allgemeine Relativität.This article is in French. (shrink)

This reflection on Ethics in One Hundred Years of Solitude is divided in two main parts and issues. In this, the first one, thanks to the intertextual method, the author makes a journey throughout the structure, the characters and the focus of the novel to argue that ethics described there by Gabriel García Márquez is rooted in biblical myths, and how its use is a tool that gives unity to the work, and allows the author to openly reveal the human (...) condition. (shrink)

Of several distinctions made between people in a society, this article addresses a specific question: when do we have a legal directive that is unfair and therefore discriminatory? The article puts forward a set of criteria that judges might use in order to determine if a distinction made by a legal directive has a rational and objective justification.Resumen:De las muchas diferenciaciones que se presentan entre las personas de una sociedad, este artículo analiza una específica: cuando un trato desigual establecido por (...) una ley constituye un trato discriminatorio. Se consideran los criterios que debe usar el juez para determinar si la distinción hecha por una norma —de los derechos y libertades fundamentales de las personas— descansa en una justificación racional y objetiva. (shrink)