This study focuses on taxonomic and typological methods of innovation policies in the European institutional context. Although many types of policies affect innovation, no universally accepted criteria exist to classify them. As innovation policy in a myriad of thematic areas—systemic model—has become pluralized, this article offers a method for classification. Such policies are grouped and categorized according to biological and neofunctional approaches.

Effective vaccines for COVID‐19 are already available to humankind. In Peru, 86 million doses were administered to cover the demand for 33 million Peruvian people. Hence, vaccination has been prioritized in groups: health personnel, subjects with pre‐existing health conditions and those over 65 years of age. However, given the social problems and the public health situation in Peru, this work defends that the priority of vaccination should be focused on the population living in extreme poverty. The method used was an (...) ethical argumentation on the distribution of scarce antiSARS‐CoV2 vaccine in Peru. This argument is based on the analysis of the Peruvian population living in extreme poverty, which presents different layers of vulnerability, and that, in the face of an eventual SARS‐CoV2 infection, these would be exacerbated one after the other, through a cascade effect. This scenario would give rise to new vulnerabilities to those already existing, causing greater damage. Vaccination efforts on this key population would give them the opportunity to continue to find ways to bring food to their homes, significantly reducing the risk of contagion in their environment and mitigating the devastating effect of the local diseases to which they are already exposed. Four objections related to this argument are raised with their corresponding responses. Priority access to the vaccine would significantly reduce the humanitarian harm to people living in extreme poverty, prevailing the principles of justice and equity. (shrink)

La humanidad ya dispone de vacunas eficaces contra el COVID‐19. En Perú se administraron 86 millones de dosis para cubrir la demanda de 33 millones de peruanos. Para ello, se ha priorizado la vacunación en grupos clave: personal de salud, sujetos con condiciones de salud preexistentes y mayores de 65 años. Sin embargo, dada la problemática social y la situación de la salud pública en Perú, este trabajo defiende que la prioridad de la vacunación debe centrarse en la población que (...) vive en extrema pobreza. El método utilizado fue una argumentación ética sobre la distribución de la vacuna contra el COVID‐19 en Perú. Esta argumentación se basa en el análisis de la población peruana que vive en extrema pobreza, la cual presenta diferentes estratos de vulnerabilidad, y que, ante una eventual infección por SARS‐CoV‐2, se irían agravando uno tras otro, a través de un efecto en cascada. Este escenario daría lugar a nuevas vulnerabilidades de las ya existentes, causando mayores daños. Los esfuerzos de vacunación en esta población clave les brindaría oportunidad de seguir encontrando formas de llevar alimentos a sus hogares, reduciendo significativamente el riesgo de contagio en su entorno y mitigando el efecto devastador de las enfermedades locales a las que ya está expuesta. Se plantean cuatro objeciones relacionadas con este argumento, con sus correspondientes respuestas. El acceso prioritario a la vacuna reduciría significativamente el daño a las personas que viven en la extrema pobreza, haciendo prevalecer los principios de justicia y equidad. (shrink)

Air pollution is a current concern of people and government entities. Therefore, in urban scenarios, its monitoring and subsequent analysis is a remarkable and challenging issue due mainly to the variability of polluting-related factors. For this reason, the present work shows the development of a wireless sensor network that, through machine learning techniques, can be classified into three different types of environments: high pollution levels, medium pollution and no noticeable contamination into the Ibarra City. To achieve this goal, signal smoothing (...) stages, prototype selection, feature analysis and a comparison of classification algorithms are performed. As relevant results, there is a classification performance of 95% with a significant noisy data reduction. (shrink)

We study rigidity properties of linearly ordered sets (chains) under automorphisms, embeddings, epimorphisms, and endomorphisms. We focus on two main cases: dense subchains of the real numbers, and uncountable dense chains of higher regular cardinalities. We also give a Fraenkel‐Mostowski model which illustrates the role of the axiom of choice in one of the key proofs.

Many of the computing systems programmed using Machine Learning are opaque: it is difficult to know why they do what they do or how they work. Explainable Artificial Intelligence aims to develop analytic techniques that render opaque computing systems transparent, but lacks a normative framework with which to evaluate these techniques’ explanatory successes. The aim of the present discussion is to develop such a framework, paying particular attention to different stakeholders’ distinct explanatory requirements. Building on an analysis of “opacity” from (...) philosophy of science, this framework is modeled after accounts of explanation in cognitive science. The framework distinguishes between the explanation-seeking questions that are likely to be asked by different stakeholders, and specifies the general ways in which these questions should be answered so as to allow these stakeholders to perform their roles in the Machine Learning ecosystem. By applying the normative framework to recently developed techniques such as input heatmapping, feature-detector visualization, and diagnostic classification, it is possible to determine whether and to what extent techniques from Explainable Artificial Intelligence can be used to render opaque computing systems transparent and, thus, whether they can be used to solve the Black Box Problem. (shrink)

The received view of dynamical explanation is that dynamical cognitive science seeks to provide covering law explanations of cognitive phenomena. By analyzing three prominent examples of dynamicist research, I show that the received view is misleading: some dynamical explanations are mechanistic explanations, and in this way resemble computational and connectionist explanations. Interestingly, these dynamical explanations invoke the mathematical framework of dynamical systems theory to describe mechanisms far more complex and distributed than the ones typically considered by philosophers. Therefore, contemporary dynamicist (...) research reveals the need for a more sophisticated account of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

El objeto de este artículo es demostrar que la democracia es una norma que cumple las funciones de creación y distribución de riqueza y de promover seguridad y estabilidad al marco político y legal de la sociedad. Estas funciones se desprenden del pensamiento contenido en la ilustración económica, afín a los intereses de las elites al permitirles conservar y propagar el poder económico mediante la preservación de derechos amparados bajo las ficciones del poder compartido e igualdad política de los individuos, (...) quienes vienen determinados por una racionalidad limitada, difusa, errática y volátil, con la que cumple con la norma democrática, la cual se desdobla en dos opuestos: la irrelevancia de la acción de votar para los individuos y la relevancia del resultado para los partidos políticos, que organizados bajo directrices leninistas, compiten como oligopolios en el mercado político. La organización leninista y la conducta de empresa capitalista provocan que en los partidos impere lo que en este ensayo se denomina el principio de insignificancia, desencadenante de la creación de líderes bajo la fórmula del mediano insignificante, promedio representativo de los individuos que forman la burocracia del partido. (shrink)

There is little research on the effectiveness of self-leadership programs (SLPs) in graduate education based on the progress in emotional competences development (ECD), and only a few of the studies incorporate its relationship with personality traits (PTs). This article studies the differentiated impact of an optional SLP, which has eight workshops with a learner-centered and experiential approach, depending on PTs. With a quasi-experimentalex post factodesign, students' scores in EDC were analyzed according to their PT extremes:introversion, antagonism, lack of direction, neuroticism, (...) andclosed to experience. ANCOVA tests, with ECD pretest as a co-variable, were applied for each PT. The results indicated that the SLP presented a differentiated impact in ECD in four of the five PTs: neuroticism, introversion, antagonism, and lack of direction. These findings can be a key element for the participating students in SLPs because self-leadership requires self-knowledge. ECD can contribute to more integral learning in the graduate education experience, enhancing the preparation for the world of work. (shrink)

In an important sense fiscal federalism model can be seen as a normative model whose aim is ideological. Its argument about costs and benefits of decentralization in government is based on the fact that decentralization allows better matching of public good supply and increases social welfare. But this is not true. Fiscal federalism model is a collection of old ideas that suggest that this organizational process generally increases efficiency in the allocation branch of the budget, but the possibility that negative (...) externalities and inter institutional spill-overs, when taken into account, makes this proposition false. It is the opposite process, centralization, which causes positive externalities in the allocation to arise, satisfies the ends of political economy, stabilization and distribution, and decreases the size of government. (shrink)

La perspectiva historiográfica ofrecida por la teoría de las consecuencias involuntarias puede ser reconceptualizada en una concepción del mercado que explique su funcionamiento como una continua interrelación entre individuos que desconocen las consecuencias colectivas de los cursos de acción que emprenden.Asimismo, podrían distinguirse dos versiones de dicha teoria; de un lado, Ia versión débil, que se correspondería con el concepto de mercado de Hayek, y, deI otro, Ia versión fuerte. EI objetivo de este artículo es proponer el concepto al que (...) hemos denominado el principio de ignorancia, que seria una concepción acerca deI desenvolvimiento deI mercado acorde con los rasgos propios de Ia versión fuerte de Ia teoría de las consecuencias involuntarias.The historiographical perspective of the theory of unintended consequences can be reconceptualized into a conception of the market which explains its operation as a continuous interaction among individuals that do not know the collective consequences of their behaviours.Also, two versions of this theory might be distinguished, the weak version, which corresponds to Hayek’s concept of market, and the strong version. The aim of this paper is to propose the concept that we have termed as ignorance principIe, which is a conception of the operation of the market that fits to the characteristics of the strong version of the theory of unintended consequences. (shrink)

El f in de este a r tículo es demostrar que las ficciones cartesianas no son necesarias en el ámbito del conocimiento, en pa r ticular del conocimiento económico, el cual se de r iv a del análisis de la red de intereses y decisiones de los sujetos, decisiones que son f r uto del pensamiento común que determina el pensamiento de cada in d i viduo. La secuencia ca r tesiana "pensarse para pensar", en realidad se realiza de modo (...) i n v e r so: "pensar para pensarse", que da lu g ar a un nu e v o concepto de racionalid a d , reflejo de la razón de los ot r os. Esto tiene trascendentes consecuencias: la primera es la r uptura con la idea de e xistencia de un "pensamiento oculto", con el principio de que cada in d i viduo posee unos pensamientos que no pueden ser conocidos por los ot r os ; la s e gunda es también de n e gación del pensamiento estratégico, afín con la competencia económica, pero i r realiza b le dentro del pensamiento común. F inalmente y como f r uto de la incertidumbre dete r minante de las decisiones se ll e ga a la conclusión de que no e xiste tampoco una racionalidad de los ot r os, sino que actúan i r racionalmente con la "i r razón" que promu e v e el futuro incierto. (shrink)

El objeto de este artículo es analizar la relación existente entre las ideas de Keynes y de Moore; yen particular, el papel desempeñado por el sentido común en el pensamiento de aquél. Fruto de este análisis, cabe afirmar que el sentido común ofrece una posible fundamentación epistemológica para el pensamiento económico, cuya virtud principal es que incrementaría el contenido pragmático de la teorización económica. El argumento se centra, principalmente, en el problema de la formación de expectativas y en el hecho (...) de que, en consonancia con la visión filosófica de Keynes, se precisan normas acordes con el sentido común para paliar la naturaleza irracional e incierta de los hechos económicos. (shrink)

En este complejo futuro que se nos predice, no solo se nos podrá superar en nuestras capacidades intelectuales o físicas, incorporando a nuestro entorno y a nuestro propio cuerpo un ingente aparataje tecnológico, sino que se nos podrá mejorar, y ello, incluso, antes de nacer, interviniendo directamente sobre el embrión. La naturaleza de lo humano se pone en cuestión, sobre todo, cuando la alteramos en su propia esencia, no solo en su entorno, y, además, desde su propio inicio. Se trata, (...) pues, de una disrupción y alteración sustancial ad intra del ser humano, no ad extra, como ocurre con la tecnología, aún cuando esta también tiene, obviamente, muchos efectos en el interior de aquél. Los cambios que se derivan de la Biotecnología y, concretamente, de la edición genómica, por un lado, ofrecen un enorme potencial para desarrollar nuevos conceptos, métodos y novedosas aplicaciones para los urgentes retos y necesidades de la sociedad. Por el otro lado, tales biotecnologías son percibidas como si tuvieran el potencial de desafiar y, a veces, desdibujar las actitudes, valores y modelos culturales de la propia sociedad. A tal reto no puede estar, obviamente, ajeno el Derecho en atención a los valores, intereses y derechos en conflicto. Si la pregunta que debemos nuevamente formularnos es qué es el hombre o qué es la naturaleza humana, el Derecho debe también ofrecer respuestas que permitan dar un sentido jurídico contemporáneo a tal esencia, preguntas que conectan directamente con el propio concepto jurídico de dignidad, no solo en cuanto valor ontológico del ser humano, sino también, recogiendo los términos explícitos del artículo 10.1 de nuestra Constitución, en cuanto fundamento del orden político y de la paz social. (shrink)

As propositions, Anatmavāda and Ātmavāda are simply negations of one another. Thus whatever serves as a criterion for truth of the one must serve as a criterion for the other. When we treat them both as a priori propositions, I claim that we are unable to determine their truth value. But if we treat them both as a posteriori propositions, I argue, we are only able to determine their truth value if we attain unqualified omniscience. Because the Hindu account of (...) knowing is far more conducive to the idea of unqualified omniscience, we might be tempted to assert that the empirical verification of these doctrines taken as propositions is far more likely in the Hindu tradition than the early Buddhist one. However, 'empirical omniscience' carries us very far from received views, thus I conclude that it makes no sense to treat these doctrines as truth-valued propositions. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene como objeto elucidar las relaciones entre religión, mercado y democracia, que finalmente han fraguado en una “democracia de mercado”, concepto que viene a identificar la estructura y funcionamiento del mercado en general con el particular mercado político de la democracia. Para demostrar esta identificación se parte del proceso de transición de la sociedad feudal a la sociedad burguesa, situando como causa determinante el agotamiento del modo de producción feudal, especialmente debido al encarecimiento del coste de la servidumbre, (...) hecho de tan grave trascendencia que obligaba a la necesidad de plantear la sociedad bajo una nueva visión: la del principio autorregulador del mercado o mano invisible, que luego de provocar la independencia de la sociedad civil del Estado, a través del propio mecanismo de mercado iría absorbiendo los valores religiosos, culturales, éticos y políticos para transformarlos en valores de idéntico nombre pero con diferente significado; acorde con el mecanismo cambiario de precios y “productos”, donde los individuos adquieren la identidad que les confiere el mercado y orientan sus conductas siguiendo los principios de racionalidad, libertad e igualdad, que dejan de ser políticos para convertirse en principios económicos de la democracia. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the claim that early Buddhism could be interpreted as an empirical philosophy. Made in a time when verifiable foundations were thought to lend credence to a system of belief, the assertion served to differentiate Buddhism from a “mystical” Hinduism and even to give it a leg up over theistic religions. The position of this paper is that the Buddhist Empiricism Thesis is most certainly false. That position is arrived at via a (...) close examination of Buddhist means to knowledge and doctrinal content, which unfortunately entails taking only the most shallow view of a deep subject matter. This superficiality is no reflection on Buddhist belief, but rather is the necessary effect of refuting empirical claims for beliefs which are much more than merely “verifiable”. (shrink)

Models developed using machine learning are increasingly prevalent in scientific research. At the same time, these models are notoriously opaque. Explainable AI aims to mitigate the impact of opacity by rendering opaque models transparent. More than being just the solution to a problem, however, Explainable AI can also play an invaluable role in scientific exploration. This paper describes how post-hoc analytic techniques from Explainable AI can be used to refine target phenomena in medical science, to identify starting points for future (...) investigations of causal relationships, and to generate possible explanations of target phenomena in cognitive science. In this way, this paper describes how Explainable AI—over and above machine learning itself—contributes to the efficiency and scope of data-driven scientific research. (shrink)

In a context of pervasive digitalization of the social world, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of education has undergone major changes with the development of digital practices and settings. However, the physical presence of the subjects and the body remain something primordial and irreplaceable in traditional educational processes. Thus, it is often assumed that virtuality is opposed to the corporeal reality of the subjects involved in teaching, learning and studying. In this paper we aim to critically (...) challenge this assumption by addressing the phenomenon of virtuality in a more original sense: as a fundamental dimension of corporeality itself. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights, we argue that the experience of the virtual is inherently embodied and fully real. We understand corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena. At the same time, this leads us to rethink the digital as only one possible medium in which virtuality can appear as inherent to embodied experience. We develop our phenomenological approach in three instances. First, we question and bracket two common assumptions about corporeality. From our critical perspective, assumptions about a disembodied digitality and a devirtualized corporeality represent extremes within which educational discourses currently move. Second, we address the inherent virtuality of embodied experience. We outline the heuristic concept of the virtual body to describe corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena that encompass extension, intercorporeality and intermediality. Finally, we make some remarks on the relationships of corporeality and virtuality considering the challenges of digital education. (shrink)

In Western democracies, people harbor feelings of disgust or hatred for politics. Populists and technocrats even seemingly question the value of politics. Populists cry that they are not politicians and that politics is necessarily corrupt. From the opposite side, technocrats view politics as a pointless constraint on enacting the obviously right policies. Are Western democracies facing a rejection of politics? And is politics worth defending? This paper offers a vindicatory genealogy of politics, vindicating the need human beings have for this (...) practice and clarifying the extent of its contemporary rejections. To achieve these contributions, the paper connects the literatures on pragmatic genealogy and on political realism, revealing how they can complement each other. Following pragmatic genealogy, the practice of politics is vindicated, because it meets an inevitable functional need for collectively binding decision‐making. However, and importantly, political realism allows us to see that the functional mechanisms through which politics fulfills this need vary contextually and thus require careful empirical scrutiny. The paper thus dispels confusion about seeming rejections of politics by clarifying what is unavoidable, and what is revisable about politics. (shrink)

"Epistola a Memeceo, Maximas capitales, Sentencias vaticanas, fragmentos y testimonios; texto griego y traduccion": p. [87]-161.

This paper discusses the varieties of capitalism in transitional societies in Latin America and Central / Eastern Europe. The intended purpose of these transitions from semi-closed import-substituting economies in the first case and state socialist ones in the second was to institutionalize open-market economies. Twenty or thirty years later, there is a variety of types of capitalism in these countries, which I classify into three: open-market, neo-mercantilist, and anemic. The question for sociology is whether these quite different variants represent temporary (...) stages or distortions in the same process of transition or whether, on the contrary, they may institutionalize as discrete forms of peripheral capitalism. Neither standard “legacy” argu­ments nor institutionalist theories offer satisfactory answers to this question. The multiple modernities approach, on the other hand, is more appropriate as a theoretical perspective, but it has not produced yet specific propositions applicable to this question. My paper makes two claims. First, the successful transfer of institutions depends on the congruence between these institutions and the broader institutional framework of the recipient economies, a point not developed by institutionalist theories. I offer a hypothesis in this regard: Two critical nodes of congruence are the regulatory and extractive capacity of the state and the strength of civil society. Second, market capitalism (as liberal democracy as well) is a complex institution, and some of its components “travel” more easily across societies and institutional frameworks, and therefore are easier to institutionalize. This is the source of the hybrid variants. (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)

The philosophical conception of mechanistic explanation is grounded on a limited number of canonical examples. These examples provide an overly narrow view of contemporary scientific practice, because they do not reflect the extent to which the heuristic strategies and descriptive practices that contribute to mechanistic explanation have evolved beyond the well-known methods of decomposition, localization, and pictorial representation. Recent examples from evolutionary robotics and network approaches to biology and neuroscience demonstrate the increasingly important role played by computer simulations and mathematical (...) representations in the epistemic practices of mechanism discovery and mechanism description. These examples also indicate that the scope of mechanistic explanation must be re-examined: With new and increasingly powerful methods of discovery and description comes the possibility of describing mechanisms far more complex than traditionally assumed. (shrink)

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)

Whereas most branches of neuroscience are thought to provide mechanistic explanations, systems neuroscience is not. Two reasons are traditionally cited in support of this conclusion. First, systems neuroscientists rarely, if ever, rely on the dual strategies of decomposition and localization. Second, they typically emphasize organizational properties over the properties of individual components. In this paper, I argue that neither reason is conclusive: researchers might rely on alternative strategies for mechanism discovery, and focusing on organization is often appropriate and consistent with (...) the norms of mechanistic explanation. Thus, many explanations in systems neuroscience can also be viewed as mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

This paper considers the way mathematical and computational models are used in network neuroscience to deliver mechanistic explanations. Two case studies are considered: Recent work on klinotaxis by Caenorhabditis elegans, and a longstanding research effort on the network basis of schizophrenia in humans. These case studies illustrate the various ways in which network, simulation and dynamical models contribute to the aim of representing and understanding network mechanisms in the brain, and thus, of delivering mechanistic explanations. After outlining this mechanistic construal (...) of network neuroscience, two concerns are addressed. In response to the concern that functional network models are non-explanatory, it is argued that functional network models are in fact explanatory mechanism sketches. In response to the concern that models which emphasize a network’s organization over its composition do not explain mechanistically, it is argued that this emphasis is both appropriate and consistent with the principles of mechanistic explanation. What emerges is an improved understanding of the ways in which mathematical and computational models are deployed in network neuroscience, as well as an improved conception of mechanistic explanation in general. (shrink)

This article discusses the relation between empirical and normative approaches in bioethics. The issue of dwarf tossing, while admittedly unusual, is chosen as a point of departure because it challenges the reader to look with fresh eyes upon several central bioethical themes, including human dignity, autonomy, and the protection of vulnerable people. After an overview of current approaches to the integration of empirical and normative ethics, we consider five ways that the empirical and normative can be brought together to speak (...) to the problem of dwarf tossing: prescriptive applied ethics, theoretical ethics, critical applied ethics, particularist ethics and integrated empirical ethics. We defend a position of critical applied ethics that allows for a two-way relation between empirical and normative theories. Against efforts fully to integrate the normative and the empirical into one synthesis, we propose that the two should stand in tension and relation to one another. The approach we endorse acknowledges that a social practice can and should be judged both by the gathering of empirical data and by normative ethics. Critical applied ethics uses a five stage process that includes: (a) determination of the problem, (b) description of the problem, (c) empirical study of effects and alternatives, (d) normative weighing and (e) evaluation of the effects of a decision. In each stage, we explore the perspective from both the empirical (sociological) and the normative ethical point of view. We conclude by applying our five-stage critical applied ethics to the example of dwarf tossing. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify the sharp contrast between the “short path” of Heideggerian ontology and the “long path” adopted by Ricoeur as a representation of the many necessary mediations in the constitution of his philosophical anthropology. Heidegger breaks into contemporary thought with the publication of his treatise “Being and Time” (1927) as a kind of direct settlement in the field of ontology. In contrast, Ricoeur is seen - and sees himself - as a thinker of conceptual mediations in his (...) long itinerary, since adherence to Husserlian phenomenology and subsequent hermeneutic inflection, passing through confrontations with Freudian psychoanalysis, structuralism and analytical philosophy, to the creation of the book “Oneself as Another” (1990). However, the two philosophers built their works on the common horizon of hermeneutics; therefore, are there possible points of convergence between them? And how could we interpret the relevance of this possible interlocution? These questions cannot be answered without a thorough comparative reading. This text does not intend to answer them, but only to suggest elements for further investigations. (shrink)