In the present meta-analysis, we examined the effect of cognitive training on the Executive Function (EF) of preschool children (age range: 3-6 years). We selected a final set of 32 studies from 27 papers with a total sample of 123 effect sizes. We found an overall effect of cognitive training for improving EF (g =.352; k = 123; p <.001), without significant difference between near and far transfer effects on executive domains. No significant additional outcome effects were found for behavioral- (...) and learning-related outcomes. Cognitive training programs for preschoolers are significantly more effective for developmentally at-risk children (ADHD or low socio-economic status) than for children with typical development and without risks. Other significant moderators were computerized versus non-computerized training, individual versus group sessions, and length of training. The number of sessions was not a significant moderator. This is the first demonstration of cognitive training far transfer effects among different executive processes. We discuss this result in relationship with the lower level of modularization of EFs in younger children. (shrink)

An important epistemic issue in climate modelling concerns structural uncertainty: uncertainty about whether the mathematical structure of a model accurately represents its target. How does structural uncertainty affect our knowledge and predictions about the climate? How can we identify sources of structural uncertainty? Can we manage the effect of structural uncertainty on our knowledge claims? These are some of the questions that an epistemology of structural uncertainty faces, and these questions are also important for climate scientists and policymakers. I develop (...) three desiderata for an epistemological account of structural uncertainty. In my view, an account of structural uncertainty should identify sources of structural uncertainty, explain how these sources limit the applicability of a model, and show how the severity of structural uncertainty depends on the questions that can be asked of a model. I argue that analyzing structural uncertainty by paying attention to the details of model building can satisfy these desiderata. I focus on parametrizations, which are representations of important processes occurring at scales that are not resolved by climate models. Parametrizations are often thought to be ad-hoc, but I show that some important parametrizations are theoretically justified by explicit or implicit scale separation assumptions. These assumptions can also be supported empirically. Analyzing these theoretical and empirical justificatory roles of the scale separation assumptions can provide insights into how parametrizations contribute to structural uncertainty. I conclude by sketching how my approach can satisfy the desiderata I set out at the beginning, highlighting its importance for policy-relevant scientific statements about the climate. (shrink)

Emotional self-regulation in childhood and adolescence constitutes a growing interest in the scientific community, highlighting in recent years the need to observe its development in their daily life. Therefore, the objective of this systematic review is to characterize publications referring to the development of emotional self-regulation of people under 18 years-old, in natural contexts. Based on the PRISMA guidelines, searches are carried out in the Web of Science, Scopus and PsycINFO databases, and in Google Scholar until May 2020. After reviewing (...) the full text of 376 publications, 14 works are selected that are observed in their extrinsic, substantive and methodological characteristics based on the GREOM and MQCOM guidelines, by two independent evaluators. Most of the studies correspond to the last 20 years, increasing the interest in observing older children, in interaction with adults and/or in different cultures. They apply mixed methodologies, not always ascribing to a low intensity design. Strengths are observed regarding the collection and analysis of the quality of the data; and weaknesses related to the failure to record the duration and sequence of behaviors, highlighting the use of guidelines as guides for future research. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The global environmental and social-economic crises of industrialized agriculture have led to the emergence of agroecology as an alternative approach aiming to increase the ecological, social and economic sustainability of agri–food systems. The ‘multi-level perspective’ is now a widely used framework to understand and promote the upscaling of local innovation niches, such as agroecology, to broader scales (e.g., regional, national, international), thus reconfiguring the dominant socio-technical regimes. Additionally, emergent ‘hybrid forums’ can provide a space between niche and regime where niche (...) innovators can become important actors in scaling up and out emergent innovations. In this paper, we examine a university training program (Postgraduate Diploma in Local Agroecological Dynamization at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), to better understand its role as a ‘hybrid forum’. Our analysis focuses especially on how the program, as an example of a hybrid forum, worked to reconfigure practices, concepts, and tools of local development practitioners. We also assess to what extent the program contributed to transitioning local development institutions toward agroecology. An online survey (n = 46) and in-depth interviews (n = 16) were carried out to determine how the training program has impacted the student’s opinions and their respective institutions. The results show that most of the students consider that they have acquired new theoretical frameworks and useful methods to re-framing their local development projects, that new alliances with multi-actor networks have been perceived, and that some internal changes of the local development practices have taken place. We conclude that the training program, as a hybrid forum, is capable of outscaling niche innovations through linkages with different kind of actors both from the niche and the regime. Political changes in the socio-technical landscape level offer an opportunity to amplify the impact of the innovations which are being generated by those multi-actor networks, but with a limited multi-level impact as far as institutional regime-actors not aligned with agroecological transition keep the most of the competencies on agri–food systems. (shrink)

The article discusses the problems of philosophical geography, philosophical multipolarity, georationality. The debates on these issues are becoming interdisciplinary. Specialists in Eastern philosophies and cross-cultural communications as well as epistemologists, scientific methodologists, cognitive scholars, synergists became participants of the discussion held at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The problem of Eurocentrism in academic philosophy has become the main topic of discussion. The opponents of the “regional” multipolarity argued that the Western European tradition of rationality was (...) an example of the rationality per se. The proponents, who relied heavily on the ad professionem arguments, advocated multipolarity and demonstrated the irreducibility of the world-pictures, languages and ontologies of philosophical systems. A point of view was expressed that Eurocentrism had an ideological background. The disputants noted that there was need to redefine or clarify such fundamental concepts as logic, rationality, scientific rationality, universalism, processuality. The redefinition of the concept of rationality is for the studies of various types of rationality outside European cultures. Methodologists of science drew attention that the cognitive problems of intercultural communications turned out to be similar to the problems faced by theory of complexity. The analysis of philosophical, logical and other cases in various “zones of exchange” reveals a plurality of directions in the global and local socio-cultural spaces. The panelists raised the question of the role of philosophy in the global world and its responsibility in uniting nations. The authors of the article draw attention to many functions that the Western European conceptual system performs in the formation of philosophical language, mentality and communication. The dynamics of philosophical discussions, the dialogue of the West and the East lead to the clarification of philosophical positions, the emergence of new concepts and meanings as well as the formation of discourses of the future. (shrink)

Improvising involves participants adopting attitudes and dispositions that make them welcoming towards what happens, even when it is unforeseen. How is the discourse on improvisation and a disposition to improvise in the community connected to the concept of inquiry? What type of reasoning can be developed? This paper aims to reflect on two different perspectives. On the one hand, we consider the feasibility of improvising inquiry in the community, promoting inquiry as an activity that can be developed extemporaneously when teacher (...) and students form a community with an “improvising” habitus. On the other hand, we underscore the intrinsic improvisational dimension of inquiry that takes shape in philosophical dialogue in the community. To develop these two educational and formative perspectives, participants students and particularly teachers must first acquire a “readiness” for improvisation which is a sort of complex attitude. Some results of previous research on improvisation are presented to explain and emphasize the features of this complex disposition. Teachers who improvise suddenly open a window on events happening in the community, serving as an example for the class which is invited to do the same. Teachers thus become improviser-facilitators within the community, embracing the feature of a new jazz-pedagogy at the same time. (shrink)

Theories of reciprocity have been surprisingly gender-blind. We develop a gendered account of reciprocity using qualitative data from Russia. We focus on gifts of unpaid task assistance, where gender differences are particularly visible. In our data, women’s gifts of labor involve greater time and effort than men’s, but women report nonreciprocation, while men do not. Paradoxically, the most onerous gifts are those least likely to be reciprocated. We show how this puzzling finding relates to the gendering of reciprocity. We define (...) four stages of the gift cycle—giving, recognition, reciprocation, and givers’ responses to reciprocation—detailing how each is gendered. We argue that reciprocity is a socially embedded phenomenon that cannot be considered in isolation from gender norms. This insight has implications for research employing reciprocity as a framework, and for debates in relation to issues such as care work and family relations. (shrink)

This article presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the glamorization of the courtesan image as proposed by Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge. The film sparked the appearance of high-street fashion inspired by the image of the 19th-century Parisian courtesan, which prompted the authors to examine how and why such images might appeal to female consumers. The critical analysis reaches beyond the images themselves to identify and discuss the modes of circulation of such images, and their function in achieving both the material (...) ends of capitalism and the promotion of one of the system’s core values. Moreover, the article hopes to illustrate the possibilities offered by integrating cultural and structural analyses of current social phenomena. (shrink)

En la España de los siglos XVI y XVII se desarrolla la Escolástica española. Un tiempo en el que las Universidades no contaban con programas oficiales de estudios y, por tanto, la enseñanza del Derecho era distinta en cada una de ellas. Asimismo, imperan dos corrientes doctrinales distintas: el humanismo jurídico y el mos italicus tardío. El estado de la ciencia jurídica de ese momento provoca que proliferen tratados didácticos para la enseñanza de Leyes. Uno de ellos, muy desatendido por (...) la historiografía jurídica, es Nueva Filosofía de la natvraleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los grandes filosofos antiguos, que analizamos en este trabajo en aras a contribuir con el estudio del Derecho de la Edad Moderna, pues su autor, Miguel Sabuco, se caracteriza por exponer el estado de la ciencia jurídica en ese momento y formular propuestas de mejora. (shrink)

Organ shortage constitutes an unsolved problem for every country that offers transplantation as a therapeutic option. Besides the largely implemented donation model and the eventually implemented market model, a theorized automatic organ procurement model has raised a rich debate in the legal, medical and bioethical community, since it could show a higher potential to solve organ shortage. In this paper, we study the main arguments for and against this model. We show how, in the light of empirical data extracted from (...) countries with a universal health care system, its implementation could lead to a positive impact on organ procurement rates. Three factors are envisioned as fundamental in the comprehension and a possible regulation of the automatic organ procurement model: the lack of recognition of the conscientious objection, the preservation of the right to choose end of life conditions, and the need to avoid incentives for families or healthcare professionals. (shrink)

This paper examines whether classical extensional mereology is adequate for formalizing the whole–parts relation in quantum chemical systems. Although other philosophers have argued that classical extensional and summative mereology does not adequately formalize whole–parts relation within organic wholes and social wholes, such critiques often assume that summative mereology is appropriate for formalizing the whole–parts relation in inorganic wholes such as atoms and molecules. However, my discussion of atoms and molecules as they are conceptualized in quantum chemistry will establish that standard (...) mereology cannot adequately fulfill this task, since the properties and behavior of such wholes are context-dependent and cannot simply be reduced to the summative properties of their parts. To the extent that philosophers of chemistry have called for the development of an alternative mereology for quantum chemical systems, this paper ends by proposing behavioral mereology as a promising step in that direction. According to behavioral mereology, considerations of what constitutes a part of a whole is dependent upon the observable behavior displayed by these entities. Thus, relationality and context-dependence are stipulated from the outset and this makes behavioral mereology particularly well-suited as a mereology of quantum chemical wholes. The question of which mereology is appropriate for formalizing the whole–parts relation in quantum chemical systems is relevant to contemporary philosophy of chemistry, since this issue is related to the more general questions of the reducibility of chemical wholes to their parts and of the reducibility of chemistry to physics, which have been of central importance within the philosophy of chemistry for several decades. More generally, this paper puts contemporary discussions of mereology within the philosophy of chemistry into a broader historical and philosophical context. In doing so, this paper also bridges the gap between formal mereology, conceived as a branch of formal ontology, and “applied” mereology, conceived as a branch of philosophy of science. (shrink)

El trabajo somete a discusión algunos elementos y argumentos del ensayo Anti-Nietzsche. La crueldad de lo político de Jorge Polo Blanco. La obra es analizada desde la perspectiva del problema de la diversidad de caracterizaciones que obtiene la filosofía de Nietzsche en el pensamiento filosófico contemporáneo y el desafío que supone evaluar la filosofía de Nietzsche a la luz de nuestra sensibilidad democrática. Se examinan los capítulos de la obra apuntando algunas de las incorrecciones y aspectos más problemáticos de su (...) argumentario "anti-nietzscheano", incidiendo en la importancia del estudio de fuentes (Quellenforschung) y de la historia de las ediciones de la obra de Nietzsche. (shrink)

Se propone una lectura de El laberinto de la soledad desde la imagología literaria, línea de trabajo de la literatura comparada contemporánea, que estudia las representaciones del extranjero y la alteridad en los textos literarios. La indagación sobre la alteridad produce imágenes de identidad. Se busca comprender las imágenes de la mexicanidad en la obra de Octavio Paz a partir de los contrastes con la alteridad. Estas imágenes corresponden a un periodo histórico específico. Proponemos un diálogo con los imaginarios representados (...) en obras de Carlos Fuentes y Juan Rulfo, para mostrar de qué manera El laberinto de la soledad proporciona claves para leer la cultura de su época. (shrink)

A model for U(1) gauge theories over a compact Lie group is described usingR×S 3 as background space. A comparison with other results is given. Electrodynamics equations are obtained. Finally, some considerations and observations about gravity onR×S 3 space are presented.

La educación tradicional concebida en compartimientos estancos que coquetean en torno al árbol de la ciencia, ha formado a un individuo descontextualizado, sin capacidad de respuesta para enfrentar la complejidad del mundo actual. La Multiversidad Mundo Real “Edgar Morin” asume la misión de una enseñanza educativa basada en los postulados del Pensamiento Complejo de Edgar Morin; pero aún quedan pendientes nuevas definiciones que rompan con los esquemas de la educación basada en el paradigma simplificador. La meta es emprender el gran (...) viraje que haga posible que la reforma paradigmática implique también una reforma de las mentes y del lenguaje, porque nombrar lo nuevo con la palabra vieja dificulta a nivel inconsciente detonar el cambio. Superar los bloqueos propios y los adquiridos por la educación que nos ha conducido a ser individuos desarticulados del contexto, ese es el gran reto de la Multiversidad. (shrink)

The solution of the Klein-Gordon equation for a complex scalar field in the presence of an electrostatic field orthogonal to a magnetostatic field is analyzed. Considerations concerning the quantum Hall-type evolution are presented also. Using the Hamiltonian with a self-interaction term, we obtain a critical value for the magnetic field in the case of the spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Adults reason by exclusivity to identify the meanings of novel words. However, it is debated whether, like children, they extend this strategy to disambiguate other referential expressions. To further inform this debate, this study tested 41 adults on four conditions of a disambiguation task: label/label, fact/fact, label/fact, and fact/label. Participants also provided a verbal explanation for their referent selections to tease apart the underlying processes. Results indicated that adults successfully discerned the target object in the label/label and label/fact condition, yet (...) not the remaining two conditions. Verbal reports indicated that the strategy utilized to disambiguate differed depending upon communicative context. These findings confirm that the tendency to reason by exclusivity becomes restricted to word-learning situations with growing linguistic and communicative experience. (shrink)

Marina McCoy explores Plato's treatment of the rhetoric of philosophers and sophists through a thematic treatment of six different Platonic dialogues, including Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist, and Phaedras. She argues that Plato presents the philosopher and the sophist as difficult to distinguish, insofar as both use rhetoric as part of their arguments. Plato does not present philosophy as rhetoric-free, but rather shows that rhetoric is an integral part of philosophy. However, the philosopher and the sophist are distinguished by (...) the philosopher's love of the forms as the ultimate objects of desire. It is this love of the forms that informs the philosopher's rhetoric, which he uses to lead his partner to better understand his deepest desires. McCoy's work is of interest to philosophers, classicists, and communications specialists alike in its careful yet comprehensive treatment of philosophy, sophistry, and rhetoric as portrayed through the drama of the dialogues. (shrink)

We present here for the first time an italian translation of Rang’s Vom Weg messianischer Deutung : the introductory essay on the work on Shakespeare’s sonnets. This work remained unfinished and was only partially published posthumously by Rang’s son, Bernhard, in 1954, with the title Shakespeare der Christ. Eine Deutung der Sonette. The translation is accompanied by a comment essay on Rang’s text. This comment essay firstly aims to contextualize both the work on Shakespeare and the very complex and still (...) little researched figure of Florens Christian Rang; secondly, it addresses the most important conceptual issues that the essay presents. With a strongly programmatic nature and, at the same time, with an expressionistic style, which is as obscure as it is visionary, Vom Weg messianischer Deutung presents the method of messianic interpretation in contrast with the classical-romantic one of the pneumatic interpretation. What is at stake is a perspective that challenges the autonomy of art in order to place the Kunstwerk in the series of all the works of divine creation to transform it in faith work. It is the point of view of the Last Judgment that leads the way. The messianic critique of art reveals to be only a particular case of messianic world critique, literally a critique of the world, which redirects itself to the world. It is the movement of conversion which breaks with the false dualism of Romanticism, according to which the spirit is divided in two: on the one hand, there are the experience, the world, the science, on the other hand, there is the art as pure mirroring of forms. Through the messianic interpretation, the spirit returns to be body, flesh. It follows the permanent movement of creation, namely the continuous conversion from God to the world and from the world to God. In this sense, according to Rang, Shakespeare’s sonnets exemplify the faith work: their poetic word names the messianic unity of body and spirit. They are crystals within which all creatural life, the great stages of the divine creation, are concentrated. (shrink)

Introduction Marina Sbisà University of Trieste 1. Pragmatics and philosophy It is well known that pragmatics – like many branches of the social and even ...

Giovanni Giorgini and Elena Irrera, The Roots of Respect. A Historic-Philosophical Itinerary, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 2017. Marina Budić.

Autonomy generally is a valued condition for persons in liberal cultures such as the United States. We uphold autonomous agents as the exemplar of persons who, by their judgment and action, authenticate the social and political principles and policies that advance their interests. But questions about the value of autonomy are often problematic. They are problematic because they concern the kind of value autonomy has and not just how much value autonomy has when weighed against competing goods. The two questions (...) are frequently conflated. For example, in asking what happens when the putative right to autonomy is tested against competing goods, such as personal contentment or political security, we might overlook the fact that we are comparing goods that are valued for different reasons. My aim in this paper is to explore in a very general way some of the issues surrounding these questions about the value of autonomy. I plan to do so by focusing on the phenomenon of being “blinded” by an inarticulate ideal of the value of autonomy. (shrink)

The Extent of the Literal develops a strikingly new approach to metaphor and polysemy in their relation to the conceptual structure. In a straightforward narrative style, the author argues for a reconsideration of standard assumptions concerning the notion of literal meaning and its relation to conceptual structure. She draws on neurophysiological and psychological experimental data in support of a view in which polysemy belongs to the level of words but not to the level of concepts, and thus challenges some seminal (...) work on metaphor and polysemy within cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics and analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Uptake and Conventionality in Illocution The aim of this paper is to put forward a new way of conceiving of the conventionality of illocutionary acts, grounded in a new look at Austin's original ideas. While the indispensability of uptake has correctly been deemed to be a hallmark of illocution, it has also been taken as evidence of the intention-based nature of illocutionary acts as opposed to their alleged conventionality. After discussing the readings of the "securing of uptake" offered by Strawson (...) and Searle and commenting on the consequently established divide between "communicative" and conventional speech acts, I claim that illocutionary acts are conventional, first of all, because they have conventional effects. I show that Austin took such effects to be essential to illocution and argue that the bringing about of conventional effects is bound up with the indispensability of uptake. (shrink)