This work proposes a synthesis of the Augustinian Trinitarian conception of Mens with the dual theory of intentional relationships and the genres of the power of the sole that are true to the Aristotelian tradition. To this end, we will analyse the theory of the existential and essential sole of Saint Augustine, the duplex cognitio of Saint Thomas Aquinas, as well as other important aspects of the Jaime Bofill's Thomistic Augustinism which are relative to his theory of «memoria (...) de sí» or «Sentimiento fundamental». (shrink)

En este trabajo se propone una síntesis de la concepción agustiniana trinitaria de la mens con la teoría dual de las relaciones intencionales y de los géneros de potencias del alma que profesa la tradición aristotélica. En este sentido, se analiza el conocimiento existencial y esencial del alma en San Agustín, la "duplex cognitio" en Tomás de Aquino, así como alarmas de las aportaciones y claves interpretativas del agustinismo tomista de Jaime Bofill relativas a su concepto de "memoria (...) de sí" o "sentimiento fundamental". (shrink)

BackgroundMoral distress (MD) is the psychological damage caused when people are forced to witness or carry out actions which go against their fundamental moral values. The main objective was to evaluate the prevalence and predictive factors associated with MD among health professionals during the pandemic and to determine its causes.MethodsA regional, observational and cross-sectional study in a sample of 566 professionals from the Public Health Service of Andalusia (68.7% female; 66.9% physicians) who completed the MMD-HP-SPA scale to determine the level (...) of MD (0-432 points). Five dimensions were used: i) Health care; ii) Therapeutic obstinacy-futility, iii) Interpersonal relations of the Healthcare Team, iv) External pressure; v) Covering up of medical malpractice.ResultsThe mean level of MD was 127.3 (SD=66.7; 95% CI 121.8-132.8), being higher in female (135 vs. 110.3; p<0.01), in nursing professionals (137.8 vs. 122; p<0.01) and in the community setting (136.2 vs. 118.3; p<0.001), with these variables showing statistical significance in the multiple linear regression model (p<0.001; r2=0.052). With similar results, the multiple logistic regression model showed being female was a higher risk factor (OR=2.27; 95% CI 1.5-3.4; p<0.001). 70% of the sources of MD belonged to the dimension "Health Care" and the cause "Having to attend to more patients than I can safely attend to" obtained the highest average value (Mean=9.8; SD=4.9).ConclusionsFemale, nursing professionals, and those from the community setting presented a higher risk of MD. The healthcare model needs to implement an ethical approach to public health issues to alleviate MD among its professionals. (shrink)

The editors of scholarly journals have a duty to uphold and promote the highest standards of ethical conduct of research. They also have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the literature, and to promote transparency and honesty in reporting research findings. In the process of screening manuscripts they receive for possible publication, editors have the obligation to report infractions to the institutions of offending authors, and request an investigation. Since editors can reject a paper on ethical grounds, they can (...) be considered to be the guardians of ethics who should express high ethical standards in conducting and publishing their own research. An examination of several publishers’ websites reveals no such requirement or clear selection criteria for journal editors. Therefore, we aim to discuss the factors that publishers, in a broad sense, should consider when selecting editors for scholarly journals and believe that such criteria should be made public to ensure accountability. This would restore some of the eroding public trust in disseminated research, fortify confidence in the composition and qualification of members of an editorial board, and help to protect the reputations of publishers and editors. (shrink)

Authors endure considerable hardship carrying out biomedical research, from generating ideas to completing their manuscripts and submitting their findings and data to a journal. When researchers submit to journals, they entrust their findings and ideas to editors and peer reviewers who are expected to respect the confidentiality of peer review. Inherent trust in peer review is built on the ethical conduct of authors, editors and reviewers, and on the respect of this confidentiality. If such confidentiality is breached by unethical reviewers (...) who might steal or plagiarize the authors’ ideas, researchers will lose trust in peer review and may resist submitting their findings to that journal. Science loses as a result, scientific and medical advances slow down, knowledge may become scarce, and it is unlikely that increasing bias in the literature will be detected or eliminated. In such a climate, society will ultimately be deprived from scientific and medical advances. Despite a rise in documented cases of abused peer review, there is still a relative lack of qualitative and quantitative studies on reviewer-related misconduct, most likely because evidence is difficult to come by. Our paper presents an assessment of editors’ and reviewers’ responsibilities in preserving the confidentiality of manuscripts during the peer review process, in response to a 2016 case of intellectual property theft by a reviewer. Our main objectives are to propose additional measures that would offer protection of authors’ intellectual ideas from predatory reviewers, and increase researchers’ awareness of the responsible reviewing of journal articles and reporting of biomedical research. (shrink)

The possible integration of genomic sequencing (including whole‐genome and whole‐exome sequencing) into the three contexts addressed in this special report—state‐mandated screening programs, clinical care, and direct‐to‐consumer services—raises related but distinct legal issues. This essay will outline the legal issues surrounding the integration of genomic sequencing into state newborn screening programs, parental rights to refuse and access sequencing for their newborns in clinical and direct‐to‐consumer care, and privacy‐related legal issues attending the use of sequencing in newborns.

Positive Psychology has turned its attention to the study of emotions in a scientific and rigorous way. Particularly, to how emotions influence people’s health, performance, or their overall life satisfaction. Within this trend, Flow theory has established a theoretical framework that helps to promote the Flow experience. Flow state, or optimal experience, is a mental state of high concentration and enjoyment that, due to its characteristics, has been considered desirable for the development of the performing activity of performing musicians. Musicians (...) are a population prone to health problems, both psychological and physical, owing to different stressors of their training and professional activity. One of the most common problems is Musical Performance Anxiety. In this investigation, an electronic intervention program was carried out for the development of psychological self-regulation skills whose main objective was to trigger the Flow response in performing musicians and the coping mechanism for Musical Performance Anxiety. A quasi-experimental design was used with a control group in which pre- and post-measures of Flow State, Musical Performance Anxiety and, also, Social Skills were taken. Sixty-two performing musicians from different music colleges in Spain participated in the program. Results indicated that the intervention significantly improved Flow State, and Sense of Control, and decreased Music Performance Anxiety, and self-consciousness of the participants in the EG but not CG. The changes in the EG after the program showed the inverse relationship between Flow and Anxiety. Two important theoretical factors of both variables, such as worry and the feeling of lack of control, could be involved. The results are under discussion and future lines of research are proposed. (shrink)

The systemic complexity of sustainable development imposes a major cognitive challenge to students’ learning. Faculty can explore new approaches in the classroom to teach the topic successfully, including the use of technology. We conducted an experiment to compare the effectiveness of a simulation vis-à-vis a case-based method to teach sustainable development. We found that both pedagogical methods are effective for teaching this concept, although our results support the idea that simulations are slightly more effective than case studies, particularly to teach (...) its multidimensional and inter-temporal nature. Therefore, our findings suggest the use of both simulations and case studies as pedagogical tools to convey the main ideas associated with sustainable development. (shrink)

The negative impacts of agriculture on the environment and the inequity that limits access to healthy food for the entire population impede sustainable development. This article reflects contributions to food security and alternatives for transitioning to sustainable food systems. It is concluded that food, as a human right, is a complex and transdisciplinary issue, which must be integrated as a transversal axis in the economic, social, environmental, governance, and cultural dimensions to contribute to sustainable development and therefore the convenience of (...) making the transition from the concept of food security to that of food sustainability. (shrink)

The concept of “predatory” publishing, despite many studies of the phenomenon, continues to be unclear. This paper visualizes this topic through an epistemological perspective, claiming that these limitations emerge from an impressionism of idealization, the entrapment of cause and effect induced by a journalology-based perspective, and entrenched fantasized extraction, imagination and divination of what constitutes the truth, in essence, a path never followed by an _epistēmōn_. Reality, proof, verification, recorded observations and their interpretations have been pivoted to fit the theoretical (...) flavor of the day, an entity one day being predatory, the next not. Perhaps ephemeral judgements of predatory have been built on boundless disregard for common sense. Yet, these have led to scientists’ apotheosis, almost oblivious of the intangibility of “valid”, or the infinitesimal continuum of “predatory”. Perhaps their fault-ridden authoritarian argumentative disabilities is at fault. (shrink)

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

En la filosofía y psicología actual existe una discusión actualmente de vital importancia para la comprensión del ser humano, esto es la relación entre las emociones y la vida moral. En este contexto Martha Nussbaum ofrece importantes puntos de reflexión que nos llevan a preguntarnos por aquellas facultades cognitivas que estructuran las emociones morales como la compasión y que diferencian la expresión emocional humana de la de animales no humanos.

The skills of thinking, reading conceptions and reading practice (literacy levels) found in textbook activities for the sixth year of Primary Education in Social Sciences and Spanish Language in Spain are analyzed in this paper. A mixed methodology is used to triangulate the data, integrating the critical analysis of discourse and two types of statistical analysis: descriptive (frequencies and percentages) and inferential (χ 2, ANOVA, and the Mann-Whitney U Test). The results inform us of both the permanence and the strengthening (...) of the design of an activity oriented toward the development of traditional conceptions of linguistic-cognitive reading. In the framework of education for global citizenship, the conclusion is the need for student reading practices that begin with the principles of critical literacy directed at the acquisition of social, critical, and creative thinking skills. (shrink)

Este trabajo analiza los principales argumentos sostenidos en la discusión de las leyes chilenas que han reconocido la participación política de las mujeres y evidencia las barreras históricas que han experimentado para lograr una mayor representación en las instancias de poder como consecuencia de los roles asignados socialmente. El análisis comprende los proyectos de ley sobre municipalidades de 1933, el derecho a voto en las elecciones parlamentarias y presidenciales de 1949, la Ley de cuotas de 2015, y el de paridad (...) de género en la presentación de candidaturas e integración de la Convención Constitucional de 2020. (shrink)

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

This paper seeks to highlight the French philosopher Michel Foucault's contributions regarding his analysis of power. In this sense, the text proposes a conceptual transition around the ideas that could have interested the author within a digital context, integrating some notes and examples from the 2019 Chilean mobilizations.The article has an initial section that exposes genealogy as a way of approaching social reality. Then, it shows the social behaviors anticipation possibilities and their relationship with the information available on the web. (...) Later, it renders an account of the algorithmic governmentality notion as a key to reading it in both normative structure and a political possibility to final state reflections. (shrink)

The global precedence effect, originally referring to processing hierarchical visual stimuli composed of letters, is characterised by both global advantage and global interference. We present herein a study of how this effect is modulated by the variables letter and sex. The Navon task, using the letters “H” and “S,” was administered to 78 males and 168 females. No interaction occurred between the letter and sex variables, but significant main effects arose from each of these. Reaction times revealed that the letter (...) “H” was identified more rapidly in the congruent condition both in the global and the local task, and the letter “S” in the incongruent condition for the local task. Also, although RTs showed a GPE in both males and females, males displayed shorter reaction times in both global and local tasks. Furthermore, luteal women showed higher d’ index in the congruent condition for the local task than both follicular women and hormonal contraceptive users, as well as longer exploration time of the irrelevant level during the global task than males. We conclude that, according to the linear periodicity law, the GPE is enhanced for compound letters with straight vs. curved strokes, whereas it is stronger in males than in females. Relevantly, luteal phase of the menstrual cycle seems to tilt women to rely on finer grained information, thus exhibiting an analytical processing style in global/local visual processing. (shrink)

Las personas dedicadas a otorgar servicios de la salud tienen el compromiso legal, ético, profesional y humano de velar por la salud y el bienestar de la sociedad. Un médico no sólo debe formarse en el ámbito académico y técnico, también debe construir y trabajar en su ética profesional. La actualización médica continua en medicina basada en evidencia y el continuo adiestramiento en el área práctica y clínica, si bien son de suma importancia, deben ir de la mano con la (...) aplicación de los principios éticos tales como el respeto por la autonomía, la beneficencia, no maleficencia al paciente y la justicia. El análisis de casos clínicos reales a la luz de la ética es un ejercicio muy enriquecedor para trascender en nuestra práctica diaria. No solamente es de gran ayuda para detectar y prevenir conductas que pudieran vulnerar o atentar contra la dignidad de los pacientes, sino para reafirmar el valor y la centralidad de la persona humana en el abordaje médico. (shrink)

The modern view of logical reasoning as modeled by a consequence operator has allowed for huge developments in the study of logic as an abstract discipline. Still, it is unable to explain why it is often the case that the same designation is used, in an ambiguous way, to describe several distinct modes of reasoning over the same logical language. A paradigmatic example of such a situation is ‘modal logic’, a terminology which can encompass reasoning over Kripke frames, but also (...) over Kripke models, and in any case either locally or globally . Herein, we adopt a novel abstract notion of logic presented as a lattice-structured hierarchy of consequence operators, and explore some common proof-theoretic and model-theoretic ways of presenting such hierarchies through a collection of meaningful examples. In order to illustrate the usefulness of the notion of hierarchical consequence operators we address a few questions in the theory of combined logics, where a suitable abstract presentation of the logics being combined is absolutely essential. We show how to define the operation, in general, and we achieve a number of interesting preservation results for fibring within the context of 2-hierarchies. (shrink)

La confidencialidad en las historias clínicas digitales y datos personales de los usuarios del sistema de salud en Ecuador, es primordial, debido a que dentro del mismo se presenta con frecuencia problemas, debido al uso indebido de usuarios y contraseñas de los programas internos de manejo de datos, falta de capacitación, el incumplimiento de la normativa legal vigente, pérdida de dispositivos electrónicos, por parte del personal de cada casa de salud; por lo tanto es importante analizar el manejo de la (...) información de los pacientes y proponer mejoras en la gestión de la misma; Realizando una investigación cualitativa con análisis documental, entrevistas a los profesionales de la salud, con la finalidad de proteger y garantizar la privacidad de la información de médica y personal de todos los usuarios mediante la aplicación correcta de las leyes y reglamentos establecidos en el marco legislativo del país. (shrink)

Saint Paul's "thorn in the flesh" has been the subject of much controversy in medical, historical and religious literature. It was crucial for the development of Paul's theology and, therefore, its study is important for a better understanding of early Christianity. The purpose of this article is to review the available evidence on this issue, perform a historical and medical critical analysis and suggest plausible diagnosis that have not been previously published in scientific literature. Our research on primary sources seem (...) to indicate that in 41–42 AD Paul of Tarsus developed a clinical picture with a pain similar to that of a thorn injury and bad physical appearance. It could also have a chronic course with a limited number of relapses and few global. It could remind Job’s illness and provoke humiliation in Paul and repulse in his audience. Multiple diseases could explain some of these data, but fewer explain all of them. Though a definitive diagnosis cannot be achieved, we think that cutaneous disorders are the most obvious candidates for a humiliating and painful disease which, however, would permit long journeys during more than a decade. Disorders with cutaneous involvement like lupus erythematosus, dermatomyositis, urticaria/angioedema, leukocytoclastic vasculitis or nodular vasculitis should be added to other possibilities previously reported. (shrink)

Aunque las emociones se encuentran en el núcleo de quienes somos, su naturaleza y estructura continúa siendo hoy en día un amplio campo de investigación para diferentes disciplinas científicas. No obstante, como muchos otros temas de investigación actual, las emociones tienen unos antecedentes, una historia que conviene tener presente para ubicar los conceptos, los debates y las diversas aproximaciones teóricas en el marco cultural y las tradiciones de pensamiento que les dieron origen. En este artículo, realizaremos un breve recorrido por (...) la historia de las emociones en la época antigua de tal manera que el lector pueda reconocer, a grandes rasgos, las interpretaciones y posturas originales que desencadenaron diversas comprensiones teóricas en torno a estos fenómenos físicos y mentales que conforman nuestra existencia. (shrink)

In “The Political Dilemmas of Mexico’s Transformations: A Philosophical Approach”, Virginia Aspe explores the character of political transformations in Mexico addressing the following questions: a) What does the notion “political transformation of Mexico” entail? b) What are the philosophical arguments behind the three political transformations that Mexico has experienced since the 19th century? c) What are the political arguments with which the so-called “fourth political transformation” of Mexico is being promoted? Our article offers a series of arguments to begin a (...) conversation on some of the most salient contentions of professor Aspe regarding the phenomenon of political transformation lato sensu and the political transformations that Mexico has undergone, asking ourselves, specifically, if the rise of Obradorism to power can really be incorporated into that theoretical field with which Mexcan political history has been articulated. (shrink)

Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es describir la situación actual y las proyecciones de la comparación forense de la voz en Chile, a la luz de los estándares internacionales que se enfocan en la producción de evidencia confiable, que pueda ser utilizada en los tribunales de justicia. Para ello, en principio, se dan a conocer los fundamentos científicos que caracterizan esta rama de las ciencias forenses y, luego, sobre esa base se analiza y comenta la situación de Chile y (...) sus proyecciones, tanto en la práctica como en la investigación forense. Abstract: The objective of this work is to describe the current situation and the projections of forensic voice comparison in Chile, in the light of international standards that focus on the production of reliable evidence that can be used in the courts of justice. To do this, first, the scientific foundations that characterize this branch of forensic sciences are disclosed and, then, on that basis, the situation in Chile and its projections are analyzed and discussed, both in practice and in the forensic research. (shrink)

The American novelist Walker Percy (1916-90) considered himself a "thief of Peirce", because he found in the views of C.S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, an alternative approach to prevailing reductionist theories in order to understand what we human beings are and what the peculiar nature of our linguistic activity is. -/- This paper describes, quoting widely from Percy, how abduction is the spontaneous activity of our reason by which we couple meanings and experience in our linguistic expressions. This coupling (...) of personal creativity and cultural tradition makes it possible to bridge the gaps between persons and cultures. (shrink)

The aim of being able to reason about quantities, time or space has been the main objective of the many efforts on the integration of propositional planning with extensions to handle different theories. Planning modulo theories are an approximation inspired by satisfiability modulo theories that generalize the integration of arbitrary theories with propositional planning. Parallel plans are crucial to reduce plan lengths and hence the time needed to reach a feasible plan in many approaches. Parallelization of actions relies on the (...) notion of interference, which is usually determined syntactically at compile time. In this paper we define a semantic notion of interference between actions in PMT. Apart from being strictly stronger than any syntactic notion of interference, we show how semantic interference can be easily and efficiently checked by calling an off-the-shelf SMT solver at compile time, constituting a technique orthogonal to the solving method. (shrink)