En este trabajo reportamos algunos de los hallazgos preliminares del proyecto de investigación _Concepciones ideológicas acerca del proceso constitucional chileno _(2021). Presentamos resultados del análisis lingüístico valorativo de textos de ciberprensa y de sus efectos retóricos, referidos al hito fundante del proceso constitucional: el “Estallido Social”. Los principales resultados indican que _El Mostrador_ se posiciona críticamente respecto al gobierno a través de los ejes temáticos “el gobierno doblegado”, “la denuncia de la oposición” y “gobierno como la dictadura”. El cibermedio _Emol_ (...) adopta una mirada crítica de la violencia y sus consecuencias en el Metro de Santiago por medio de los temas “el caos de la evasión”, “la relevancia del metro” y “la repartición de culpas”. Mientras que _La Tercera_ tematiza la violencia y releva las obligaciones asumidas por el gobierno frente a ella. Las polaridades semánticas y los actores sociales representados constituyen un territorio discursivo de tensiones y alineaciones ideológicas. (shrink)

Este artículo muestra evidencia lingüístico-discursiva del intento del Presidente Piñera por acallar las influencias sociales del movimiento estudiantil chileno del año 2011. Desde una mirada crítica se da cuenta del comportamiento discursivo de este hablante en el marco del primer conflicto social que enfrentó el nuevo gobierno de derecha en Chile. El valor teórico-metodológico de este estudio radica en la mirada triangular a las intervenciones discursivas. A través del análisis de un corpus de cuatro intervenciones presidenciales desde las perspectivas de (...) las funciones estratégicas del discurso político, la teoría de la valoración y la lingüística de corpus se observa cómo Piñera deslegitima al movimiento social asociando las demandas referidas a educación con la violencia y el desorden público generado en el contexto de las crecientes marchas a lo largo del país. (shrink)

Although religious belief is often claimed to help with physical ailments including pain, it is unclear what psychological and neural mechanisms underlie the influence of religious belief on pain. By analogy to other top-down processes of pain modulation we hypothesized that religious belief helps believers reinterpret the emotional significance of pain, leading to emotional detachment from it. Recent findings on emotion regulation support a role for the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a region also important for driving top-down pain inhibitory circuits. (...) Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in practicing Catholics and avowed atheists and agnostics during painful stimulation, here we show the existence of a context-dependent form of analgesia that was triggered by the presentation of an image with a religious content but not by the presentation of a non-religious image. As confirmed by behavioral data, contemplation of the religious image eneabled the religious group to detach themselves from the experience of pain. Critically, this context-dependent modulation of pain specifically engaged the right VLPFC, whereas group-specific preferential liking of one of the pictures was associated with activation in the ventral midbrain. We suggest that religious belief might provide a framework that allows individuals to engage known pain-regulatory brain processes. (shrink)

This essay suggests that atheists endorse a range of naturalistic beliefs, such as belief in progress and in science. Social-psychological evidence for this belief replacement hypothesis, where naturalistic beliefs take the place of supernatural ones, is reviewed. Atheists seem to implicitly use their naturalistic beliefs to alleviate feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and stress, a psychological function which, until recently, had only been reported for religious beliefs. The second part of the essay focuses on motivational implications of being an atheist. Here, (...) it is argued that atheists are particularly driven by a desire for self-mastery and, secondarily, by a sensation seeking need to engage in intense and pleasurable activities. A number of sociological, social-psychological, narrative, and sexual-behavioural studies are reviewed to support this idea. The essay concludes by highlighting the human need to believe and the importance of studying the process, rather than the content, of beliefs. (shrink)

Despite their growing popularity, little is known about the psychological effects of participating in past-life meditation groups in contemporary western contexts. We conducted a study to re-create some of the conditions observed in the field by facilitating a group of adults interested in exploring past life meditation. Before the session, participants completed a survey about their afterlife beliefs and associated experiences. Participants also completed questionnaires measuring meaningfulness in life and fear of death before and after the session. In the sample (...) (n = 125), just over half of the participants (52%) reported having a past life memory or vision during the session. Higher paranormal beliefs predicted reporting a past life memory or vision. We also found that having prior memories or visions of having lived before, but not the general belief in having a past life, predicted reporting having past life experiences during the session. Consistent with our predictions, participants who reported having a past life memory or vision also reported reduced existential death distress and increased meaningfulness in life following the session, compared to those who did not report these experiences. (shrink)

We examine conceptual and methodological problems that arise in the course of the scientific study of possible influences of religious belief on the experience of physical pain. We start by attempting to identify a notion of religious belief that might enter into interesting psychological generalizations involving both religious belief and pain. We argue that it may be useful to think of religious belief as a complex dispositional property that relates believers to a sufficiently thick belief system that encompasses both cognitive (...) and non-cognitive elements. Such a conception of religious belief is more likely to correlate with psychological properties of believers that are both sufficiently shared and sufficiently unique to distinguish their psychology from believers in another religion or from non-believers. If the dispositional psychological property that constitutes religious belief does influence pain, then our analysis suggests that it doesn’t do so directly but rather through one of its occurrent manifestations. We offer a taxonomy of the different ways in which occurrent states of belief or experience may interact with physical pain, and we try to identify those that are more interesting or promising. We then proceed to employ the conceptual framework we developed to some of the existing evidence about the neural and psychological correlates of religious belief and experience, and about the cognitive modulation of physical pain. Finally we turn to analyse two experiments that directly investigated the relation between religious belief and pain. We draw attention to the limitations of existing evidence and end by suggesting directions for future conceptual and empirical inquiry. (shrink)

The religiosity of academics has been studied for over a decade. With few exceptions, this research has been conducted on American “elite” scientists, and data from non-Western countries is lacking. Drawing from psychological and sociological literature, the present exploratory study investigates the religiosity of Turkish academics and their perceptions on the relationship between religion and science, and associated variables such as interpretation of the Quran, and belief in evolution and creationism. Moreover, we address criticism directed at previous research by probing (...) for different God concepts among believing academics. Although cultural differences can be identified, the results generally support the idea that academics are less religious with 54% identifying as “less religious” or “not religious,” compared to 24.2% self-identifying as “religious” or “extremely religious.”. (shrink)

Neuroimaging studies on moral decision-making have thus far largely focused on differences between moral judgments with opposing utilitarian (well-being maximizing) and deontological (duty-based) content. However, these studies have investigated moral dilemmas involving extreme situations, and did not control for two distinct dimensions of moral judgment: whether or not it is intuitive (immediately compelling to most people) and whether it is utilitarian or deontological in content. By contrasting dilemmas where utilitarian judgments are counterintuitive with dilemmas in which they are intuitive, we (...) were able to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural correlates of intuitive and counterintuitive judgments across a range of moral situations. Irrespective of content (utilitarian/deontological), counterintuitive moral judgments were associated with greater difficulty and with activation in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, suggesting that such judgments may involve emotional conflict; intuitive judgments were linked to activation in the visual and premotor cortex. In addition, we obtained evidence that neural differences in moral judgment in such dilemmas are largely due to whether they are intuitive and not, as previously assumed, to differences between utilitarian and deontological judgments. Our findings therefore do not support theories that have generally associated utilitarian and deontological judgments with distinct neural systems. (shrink)

Recent research on moral decision-making has suggested that many common moral judgments are based on immediate intuitions. However, some individuals arrive at highly counterintuitive utilitarian conclusions about when it is permissible to harm other individuals. Such utilitarian judgments have been attributed to effortful reasoning that has overcome our natural emotional aversion to harming others. Recent studies, however, suggest that such utilitarian judgments might also result from a decreased aversion to harming others, due to a deficit in empathic concern and social (...) emotion. The present study investigated the neural basis of such indifference to harming using functional neuroimaging during engagement in moral dilemmas. A tendency to counterintuitive utilitarian judgment was associated both with ‘psychoticism’, a trait associated with a lack of empathic concern and antisocial tendencies, and with ‘need for cognition’, a trait reflecting preference for effortful cognition. Importantly, only psychoticism was also negatively correlated with activation in the subgenual cingulate cortex (SCC), a brain area implicated in empathic concern and social emotions such as guilt, during counterintuitive utilitarian judgments. Our findings suggest that when individuals reach highly counterintuitive utilitarian conclusions, this need not reflect greater engagement in explicit moral deliberation. It may rather reflect a lack of empathic concern, and diminished aversion to harming others. (shrink)

Through a convenience sample of 260 employees, the study shows how employees’ perceptions about corporate citizenship (CC) predict their affective commitment. The study was carried out in Portugal, a high in-group and low societal collectivistic culture. Maignan et al.’s (1999, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science27(4), 455–469) construct, including economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary responsibilities was used. The main findings are: (a) contrary to what has been presumed in the literature, the discretionary dimension includes two factors: CC toward employees (...) and toward community; (b) perceptions of CC explain 35% of unique variance of affective commitment; (c) the best predictors are perceptions of economic and legal CC and, mainly, perceptions of discretionary CC toward employees; (d) the perceptions of discretionary CC toward employees are significantly better predictors of affective commitment than are perceptions of economic, ethical, and discretionary CC toward the community; (e) perceived inconsistency of the several CC dimensions is detrimental to employees’ affective commitment. The study questions the four-dimensional model of the CC construct as operationalized by Maignan et al., suggests that culture should be included as a moderating variable in future research, and stresses that affective commitment may decrease when employees perceive that their organizations act upon the several areas of CC inconsistently. (shrink)

Religion is often understood to play a positive role in shaping moral attitudes among believers. We assessed the relationship between church members’ levels of felt connectedness to their respective congregations and perceived similarity in personal and congregational moral values, and whether there was a relationship between these and the amount of time spent in synchronous movement or singing during worship. The similarity between personal and perceived congregational moral importance was correlated with feelings of closeness to one’s congregation but not by (...) the amount of time spent in synchronous movement or singing. Differences in moral foundations scores and in moral importance of specific issues were found between different theological traditions. These findings demonstrate that, for churchgoers, there is a relationship between the use of music or synchronous movement in a church service and feelings of social bonding and there is also a relationship between the degree to which churchgoers identify with their church community and the degree to which they believe their priorities match those of their church. Furthermore, differences in theological tradition appear to be reflected in differences in moral values. (shrink)

A etnia Tabajara da Paraíba está passando por um processo de etnogênese e luta para a sua autoafirmação e reconhecimento como povo indígena, bem como lutam pela retomada das suas terras que foram retiradas pelo processo de colonização e devido a ambição dos grandes proprietários de terras. Nesse processo, surge a profecia Tabajara, que traz um avivamento da sua espiritualidade, cultura e ritualística, reagrupando assim, um povo que estava espalhado e afastado das suas origens. O ritual do Toré ganha grande (...) importância, tornando-se imprescindível para os indígenas. O presente trabalho tem como base os autores Eliane Farias e Lusival Barcellos, pesquisadores das etnias indígenas paraibanas. Como objetivo da pesquisa, foi realizada uma breve análise da ritualística Tabajara, entre ela, o ritual do Toré, tendo como base a pesquisa bibliográfica. (shrink)

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

Transcripts of court judgments are rich repositories of legal knowledge, detailing the intricacies of cases and the rationale behind judicial decisions. Key information extracted from these documents provides a concise overview of a case, crucial for both legal experts and the public. With the advent of large language models (LLMs), automatic information extraction has become increasingly feasible and efficient. This paper presents a comprehensive study on the application of GPT-4, a large language model, for information extraction from judgments of the (...) UK Employment Tribunal (UKET). Through a manual verification process, we meticulously evaluated GPT-4’s performance in extracting critical information from these judgments to ensure the accuracy and relevance of the extracted data. Our research is structured around two primary extraction tasks: the first involves a general extraction of eight key aspects that hold significance for both legal specialists and the general public, namely, the facts of the case, the claims made, references to legal statutes, references to precedents, general case outcome and corresponding labels, detailed order and remedies and, finally, reasons for the decision. The second task is more focused, aimed at analysing three of those extracted features, i.e., facts, claims and outcomes, in order to facilitate the development of a tool capable of predicting the outcome of employment law disputes. Through our analysis, we demonstrate that LLMs like GPT-4 can obtain high accuracy in legal information extraction, highlighting the potential of LLMs in revolutionising the way legal information is processed and utilised, offering significant implications for legal research and practice. (shrink)

This article outlines the theoretical developments experienced in historical studies over the last two decades. As a consequence of the growing critical reconsideration of some of the main theoretical assumptions underlying historical explanation of individuals' meaningful actions, a new theory of society has taken shape among historians during this time. By emphasizing the empirical and analytical distinction between language as a pattern of meanings and language as a means of communication, a significant group of historians has thoroughly recast the conventional (...) notions of society, experience, interests, culture, and identity, and has developed a new concept of social action. Thus, historiographical debate seems to have started to transcend, for the first time, the longstanding and increasingly futile contest or dilemma between objectivism and subjectivism, between materialism and culturalism, between social and intentional explanation, or between social constraints and human agency. The groundwork has now been laid for an alternative to the declining paradigm of social history that does not entail a revisionist return to idealist history but opens a quite different path. (shrink)

Admitting the juridical postpositivism as the theory that aims to reconcile the law, morality and politics in a complex and plural society it was identified that the legality alone could no longer sustain the legitimacy of state actions, it is necessary to investigate what the element structural grants validity to State acts. Using the hypothetical-deductive method, started withthe following hypotheses: the law does not cover by itself the structural element of the validity of the acts; and the participation of the (...) rule of recipients in its formation is thestructuring element of State decisions. The hypotheses were confirmed. (shrink)

El libro de María González Navarro se presenta a sí mismo como una “nueva hermenéutica” (23). La novedad involucra dos aspectos: uno que llamaremos metateórico y otro hermenéutico en propiedad. Hablando metateóricamente, el libro presenta una hermenéutica gadameriana vigorizada y robustecida por las teorías pragma-dialécticas de la argumentación. Desde el punto de vista hermenéutico propiamente dicho, la novedad reposa en que se considera que la interpretación correcta está indesligablemente vinculada a la argumentación abductiva.

Freud, em 1891, ao estudar a afasia, vai contra a concepção dominante na época, que era anatômica. Mais tarde, em 1893, começa a pensar a histeria como um tipo de afasia. O que mostra a estreita vinculação entre a teoria freudiana sobre o aparelho psíquico e a linguagem entendida como fala.

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) daily practice reveals that couples are willing to take greater risks than doctors if there is a higher chance of pregnancy. Arising from this is a frequently addressed issue regarding the embryo transfer strategy: single or double embryo transfer? The dilemma is faced by patients, as well as physicians, who are caught between the possibility of no pregnancies at all and facing the prospect of iatrogenic twin gestation. How could the couple's preferences concerning how many children (...) they would like be taken into account in determining the number of embryos transferred? How should the physician exercise his medical responsibility towards his patients and the unborn child? An effective approach could be to enhance a couple’s autonomy by advocating a medical beneficence that incorporates patients’ values. This can be achieved through a case-by-case approach in a deliberative process of decision-making which includes real patient-centred communication. (shrink)

En su obra La Estructura de las Revoluciones Científicas, Kuhn hace una distinción entre ciencia revolucionaria -la que origina nuevos paradigmas- y ciencia normal -aquella que contribuye a aumentar el alcance y la precisión con la que puede aplicarse un paradigma. De esta manera es posible ent..

La teoría de los contratos sociales es un enfoque cognitivo que apareció décadas atrás y que defiende que la mente humana se encuentra dotada con sistemas neurocognitivos evolutivos. Estos sistemas regulan diferentes situaciones sociales, por ejemplo, los intercambios y las negociaciones, y nos permiten detectar infractores de reglas o individuos que no cumplen acuerdos. En este trabajo, revisamos críticamente las tesis de este enfoque a partir de los argumentos lingüísticos de Moldovan sobre la perfección del condicional. Nuestra conclusión apunta a (...) que, si trasladamos los planteamientos de Moldovan a un plano más psicológico, podemos explicar los resultados de los experimentos que apoyan la teoría de los contratos sociales a partir del procesamiento de la información realizado por los participantes, sin necesidad de suponer sistema neurocognitivo evolutivo alguno.Social contracts theory is a cognitive approach that emerged decades ago and holds that human mind has evolved neurocognitive systems. These systems regulate different social situations, for example, exchanges and contracts, and allow detecting offenders and individuals that do not fulfill agreements. In this paper, I check critically the theses of this approach by means of the Moldovan’s linguistic arguments about conditional perfection. In this way, I conclude that, if we apply the Moldovan’s approach in a more psychological level, we can explain the outcomes of the experiments that support social contracts theory by means of the information processing made by the participants and we do not need to suppose that there are evolved neurocognitive systems. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed reconstruction of the process of formation of the modern concept of society as an objective entity from the 1820s onwards, thus helping to better understand the shaping of the modern world and the nature of the current crisis of modernity. The concept has exerted considerable influence over the last two centuries, during which time many people have conceived themselves and behave as members of a society, and social scientists have explained human subjectivities and conducts as (...) social effects. For both groups, society exists as a very real phenomenon. Historical inquiry shows, however, that the modern concept of society is no more than a historically contingent way of imagining and making sense of the human world.. (shrink)

My main concern in this article is to arrive at a clear view of the nature, extent, and value of Descartes’ universal doubt, not to determine whether Hume’s critique of Cartesian doubt is compellin...

In Aesthetics in Arabic Thought from Pre-Islamic Arabia through al-Andalus José Miguel Puerta Vílchez analyzes the discourses about beauty, the arts, and sense perception that arose within classical Arab culture from pre-Islamic poetry and the Quran (sixth-seventh centuries CE) to the Alhambra palace in Granada (fourteenth century CE). He focuses on the contributions of such great thinkers as Ibn Ḥazm, Avempace, Ibn Ṭufayl, Averroes, Ibn ʻArabī, and Ibn Khaldūn in al-Andalus, and the Brethren of Purity, al-Tawḥīdī, al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Alhazen, (...) and al-Ghazālī in the East. The work also explores literary criticism, calligraphy, music, belles-lettres (adab), and erotic literature, and highlights the contribution of Arab humanism to shaping the field of Aesthetics in the West. (shrink)

A sample of students from a private, multicampus, midsize university completed 2 copies of Gardner and Melvin's (1988) Attitudes Toward Cheating Scale a semester before the implementation of a modified honor code. The authors instructed students to complete 1 copy of the scale according to their own opinions and the other copy according to what they thought would be the opinion of a "typical college professor." During the following semester when the honor code went into effect, the authors recruited a (...) second sample of 1st-year students and asked them to complete the 2 scales in the same manner. Although both samples of students reported attitudes toward cheating that were significantly more tolerant than the attitudes they ascribed to professors, scores were virtually identical for both samples. The authors speculate that variables associated with how the honor code was implemented, together with certain demographic characteristics of the institution, mediated the results obtained. (shrink)

The traditional perspective on emotions, anchored in the Western philosophical tradition, assumes an irretrievable dualism between emotions and reason. Emotions are assumed as forces, which can blind a person’s view and lead them to do terrible things. For this reason, emotions must be put aside during rational deliberation. For common sense, including legal common sense, emotions are dangerous and are unrelated to rational decision-making. Nevertheless, Aristotelian’s perspective on the relationship between emotions, reason and practical deliberation is enlightening. Emotions are not (...) blind forces completely divorced from reason. Aristotle did not develop a complete theory of emotions but recognized a strong covariance between emotions/passions/sentiments and thoughts. This research is based on three theoretical pillars: Aristotle’s perspective on the relationship between reason and emotions drawn on Nicomachean Ethics and Rethoric, the jurisprudencialism, a jurisphilosophical approach elaborated by António Castanheira Neves, and Terry Maroney’s model for judicial emotion regulation. The power of judgement is assumed mainly as a practical task, which involves the excellence of phronesis, virtues and emotions/sentiments/passions. (shrink)

Ultimamente bastante atençáo vem sendo dispensada ao estudo do ceticismo moderado na modernidade. O famoso historiador da filosofia Richard Popkin, em sua História do Ceticismo de Erasmo a Espinosa , cunhou a denominaçáo de ceticismo epistemológico para qualificar os membros desta corrente e nela inseriu os filósofos setecentistas Gassendi e Mersenne, considerando-os seus principais representantes. Além disso, no século XVIII temos o denominado ceticismo mitigado de Hume, que chamou a atençáo dos filósofos modernos para definir os limites do ceticismo. Este (...) artigo procura contribuir para o estudo do ceticismo moderado na modernidade, mostrando náo só que Hume, Mersenne e Gassendi podem fazer parte do assim chamado ceticismo epistemológico ou mitigado, mas também que há certos elementos comuns em suas filosofias destinados a mitigar os argumentos dos céticos de seu tempo. (shrink)

En el Museo Arqueológico y Etnológico de Córdoba se conserva un copioso tesorillo de monedas almohades de plata compuesto por varios millares de piezas, hallado en Priego de Córdoba en 1959. Algunas de ellas permiten la lectura de dos nuevas cecas: las de Qart.ay^anna y Ba-guh, que pueden identificarse con las localidades españolas actuales de Cartagena y Priego. La multiplicidad de cecas almohades recibe aquí una explicación hipotética: se trataría de acuñaciones conmemorativas de acontecimientos políticos o religiosos.

En su última obra, Political Liberulism, John Rawls modifica el estatuto epistemológico de su teoría de la justicia, de forma tal que ésta ha de considerarse ahora como una teoría política y ya no como una teoría moral O metafísica. El giro se lleva a cabo con la finalidad de asegurar la «estahilidad » de la teoria, es decir, su capacidad de generar un overiapping consensos con todas las doctrinas morales actualmente en conflicto. El tema de nuestro trabajo es el (...) análisis del rol central que ahora desempeña en la teoría este overlapping consensos. De él habla Rawls como una meta por alcanzar, cuando la teoría entra en contacto con las doctrinas rivales; se puede decir, en tal sentido, que andamos tras el consenso. Pero este consenso perseguido reposa, en realidad -ésta es nuestra tesis-, sobre un acuerdo o consenso previo, cuya validez debe ser asumida por la teoría en el nuevo marco epistemológico; el consenso nos precede, nos hallamos tras él. El análisis de esta ambivalencia del overlapping consensos permite mostrar las debilidades epistcmólogicas del giro anunciado por Rawls. (shrink)