La idea de «naturaleza humana» que Ortega y Gasset defiende es tan novedosa como opuesta a lo que habitualmente se entiende. Estamos en un error si el punto de partida es concebir al hombre como un ser vivo entre otros. Ni la ciencia ni la filosofía, mientras se mantenga en la tradición eleática, pueden dar una explicación clara. La ciencia, porque si contemplamos al hombre, tal y como se nos presenta, es imposible distinguir en él lo material de lo espiritual, (...) su cuerpo y su psique. La filosofía, porque el concepto de «naturaleza humana» es una invención de nuestra razón, una fantasía. No existe tal naturaleza porque el ser del hombre es de tal modo extraño y diferente al resto de seres que su «consistencia» está precisamente en ir siendo lo que nunca acaba de ser. Por tanto, es un acontecer, un camino, una historia que se va ejecutando en una circunstancia. Esto es, mi vida, la de cada cual. (shrink)

It has become almost commonplace to recognise that teaching is an embodied practice. Most analyses of teaching as embodied practice focus on the embodied nature of the teacher as subject. Here, we use Butler's concept of performativity to analyse the reiterated acts that are intelligible as—performatively constitute—teaching, rather of the teacher as subject. We suggest that this simultaneously helps explain the persistence of teaching as a narrow repertoire of actions recognisable as ‘teaching’, and the policing of conformity to teaching thus (...) embodied. However, like performatively accomplished subjectivity, this repertoire is unstable and ambiguous, and thus open to change and disruption. Moreover, teacher subjectivities may lead them to mobilise these possibilities of disruption. (shrink)

La pandemia del Covid-19 provocó un cambio forzoso en la enseñanza universitaria, tanto a nivel metodológico como práctico. La Universidad de Granada ha creado un triple modelo basado en tres escenarios diferentes: virtual (e-learning), semipresencial (b-learning) y presencial. Los objetivos que pretendemos alcanzar consisten en presentar, analizar y difundir este modelo pedagógico creado para hacer frente a los desafíos futuros que puedan surgir. Para el proceso de análisis, se evaluarán la experiencia en el aula y los resultados obtenidos durante los (...) tres cursos académicos en los que se ha implantado este nuevo modelo en uno o varios de sus escenarios. (shrink)

Background Voluntary post-mortem donation to science (PDS) is the most appropriate source for body dissection in medical education and training, and highly useful for biomedical research. In Mexico, unclaimed bodies are no longer a legal source, but PDS is legally possible, although scarcely facilitated, and mostly ignored by the general population. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the attitude and willingness for PDS and to identify a sociodemographic profile of people with willingness toward PDS. Methods A validated on-line survey was distributed (...) by the convenience method via the social networks of a Catholicism-inspired, private university in northern Mexico. Frequency analyses of all variables and coded free comments were complemented with association studies. Results Although the responder cohort (n = 143) was too small and biased to be representative of the university community (n = 13,500), willingness to post-mortem organ donation was 90.7% and to PDS 70.7%. In this cohort, PDS willingness had the strongest association with mature age (> 40 years old; P, 0.0008). Among young adults, willingness to PDS was the lowest among volunteers from technical and business schools and the highest among those from the social sciences (P, 0.009). Respondents from the social sciences were also the most consistent between attitude and behavior with respect to organ donation. A free comment option revealed respondents were interested in the unusual taboo topic. Conclusions A small, but sufficiently large proportion expressed willingness toward PDS. In our university cohort, which was biased in higher education and altruism, mature age and social interest were associated with PDS willingness. (shrink)

En el debate sobre la definición de vida algunos autores consideran que vida ha de entenderse como un género natural. Sin embargo, cuando se afirma que vida es un género natural se asumen también otras ideas vinculadas con la idea de género natural que conviene explicitar, tal y como han mostrado recientemente Bich y Green aunque de manera programática, y ese es precisamente el objetivo planteado aquí; mostrar cuáles son esas implicaciones y señalar las dificultades que surgen al adoptar el (...) discurso sobre los géneros naturales para entender y analizar categorías científicas complejas como, por ejemplo, vida. En este trabajo extendemos esta crítica a las distintas formas de entender los géneros naturales y señalamos cuál es la principal causa de las dificultades que derivan de este planteamiento. In the contemporary philosophy of biology, some authors claim that life is better undertood as a natural kind. This paper questions the metaphysical commitments related to the natural kind approach in relation with the debate of defining life. The goal of this paper is to show how considering life as a natural kind carries out some difficulties and costs. Those difficulties have been partialy shown by Bich and Green concerning the essentialist view of natural kinds. In this paper we extended this criticism to other ways of understanding natural kinds and we argue that such a difficulties are due to the acceptance of an inadequate frame of reference, based on a naïve idea of naturalness and on a natural/conventional dichotomy that is not properly justified. (shrink)

Natural Law is considered by many jurists an ambiguous concept. In this article we offer a concise history of ancient and mediaeval Natural Law as well as how it is present in the modern Bills of Human Rights. In the Natural Law it is convenient to distinguish what is caducous from that still valid.

We study the intersection number of families of tall ideals. We show that the intersection number of the class of analytic P-ideals is equal to the bounding number ${\mathfrak{b}}$ , the intersection number of the class of all meager ideals is equal to ${\mathfrak{h}}$ and the intersection number of the class of all F σ ideals is between ${\mathfrak{h}}$ and ${\mathfrak{b}}$ , consistently different from both.

The aims of this research were twofold: first, to compare the levels of organisational harmony between family and non-family firms and, second, to study the influence of organisational harmony on family firms’ performance (profitability, longevity and group cohesion). Starting from a definition of organisational harmony as a value and considering the importance of the management of organisational values, we use the main topics indicated by the general literature (organisational climate, trust and participation) to analyse organisational harmony, as well as three (...) other topics for performance (profitability, survival and group cohesion). Results indicate that family firms have higher levels of these three qualities than non-family firms, and that the levels of trust, participation and organisational climate have a positive and significant influence on the performance of family firms. These results can be understood as a consequence of the influence of family social capital on organisational social capital and so on the performance of family businesses. From the perspective of institutionalism, the higher levels of harmony existing in family businesses are a reflection of the pressures that the owning family as an institution exercises on the organisational social capital in its companies. (shrink)

Introduction: The Binge Eating Scale (BES) is a widely-used self-report questionnaire to identify compulsive eaters. However, research on the dimensions and psychometric properties of the BES is limited. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the properties of the Spanish version of the BES. Method: Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFAs) were carried out to verify the BES factor structure in a sample of Spanish college students (N = 428, 75.7% women; age range = 18–30). An invariance measurement routine was (...) carried out across sexes, the latent means were compared, and estimates of reliability and convergent and discriminant validity were presented. Results: A one-factor model fit the data best and was also equivalent between sexes. The scalar invariance model showed statistically significant differences across sexes, with a higher prevalence in women. Regarding reliability, the results were excellent. Finally, high statistically significant correlations were obtained with other measures of binge eating (BE), food addiction, impulsivity, binge drinking, and body mass index (BMI). Conclusions: The Spanish 16-item BES is a valid and reliable scale to evaluate BE in the youth population. (shrink)

Coastal wetlands are among the most productive and valuable ecosystems worldwide, although one of the main factors affecting their survival is the coexistence between agriculture and conservation. This paper analyses the complex balance between agriculture and conservation coexistence in El Hondo Natural Park coastal wetland by examining stakeholders’ narratives, perceptions, and interactions. The aim is to highlight the concurrence between socio-economic progress and socio-environmental justice perspectives by identifying those driving factors motivating stakeholders’ conflicts while expanding stakeholders’ behaviour and interaction when (...) discussing the current and future management of this socio-ecological system. Data were collected between April and June 2019 from semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to river basin authorities, regional governments, municipalities, irrigation communities, union farms, regional and local ecologist groups, and social movements; and scrutinized through qualitative data analysis and descriptive statistics. Stakeholders discussed the main driving factors identified through the local newspapers to motivating current conflicts and confronting perspectives in El Hondo Natural Park: the origin and evolution of the coastal wetland, the provision and value of ecosystem services, the management of water scarcity and water quality standards, the guarantee and management of public and private investment, and consequences of a natural park declaration. Likewise, the triple-loop analysis of stakeholders’ representativeness, relevance and collaboration highlighted examples of stakeholders’ underrepresentation and power imbalance, a negative assessment of the stakeholders’ actions, and how agreements are based on both stakeholders’ predisposition to collaborate and affinity. (shrink)

Neuroconstructivism postulates the progressive complexity of mental representation over the course of cognitive development and the role of the graphic representation of movement in the transformation of mental schemas, cognitive flexibility, and representational complexity. This study aims to: understand children’s resources in the drawing of movement ; and verify whether there are differences in the graphic representation of movement as an indicator of cognitive flexibility. The participants were N = 240 children aged 5–8 years; 1,440 drawings were collected representing 2,880 (...) characters from six stories. The analysis consisted: data quality control, using the kappa coefficient, and Generalizability Theory to test the instrument’s validity and reliability; Multivariate General Analysis and Mixed Linear Analysis of the factors ; Multivariate General Analysis of the graphic components: categories and microcategories, as well as the elements that make up the macrocategories: “Static,” “Indication,” and “Movement”; and calculation of the generalizability coefficient. The results show that: age best explains variability, with a high effect size across all components, thus increasing its complexity and at ages 6 and 7, “Indication” appears as a modulator of “Static” toward “Movement”. The generalizability coefficient is optimal. It is concluded that changes in the initial graphic representation of movement may interactively transform mental representation, thus increasing cognitive flexibility and prompting teaching applications to optimize such changes. (shrink)

It has become almost commonplace to recognise that teaching is an embodied practice. Most analyses of teaching as embodied practice focus on the embodied nature of the teacher as subject. Here, we use Butler's concept of performativity to analyse the reiterated acts that are intelligible as—performatively constitute—teaching, rather of the teacher as subject. We suggest that this simultaneously helps explain the persistence of teaching as a narrow repertoire of actions recognisable as ‘teaching’, and the policing of conformity to teaching thus (...) embodied. However, like performatively accomplished subjectivity, this repertoire is unstable and ambiguous, and thus open to change and disruption. Moreover, teacher subjectivities may lead them to mobilise these possibilities of disruption. (shrink)

Quotatives have been studied extensively in the language of teenagers in recent years as they present distinctive features of their own that make them different in part from those used by adults in mainstream English and Spanish. However, zero quoting has not received all the attention it certainly deserves as it has not been fully probed in terms of its discourse and pragmatic functions. This corpus-based study is focused on the strategies used by British and Spanish teenagers to introduce constructed (...) dialogue without the use of a particular marked and an explicit quotative form. The results indicate that the absence of quotatives is not casual; there are some linguistic contexts that favor the existence of this type of quotatives, namely non-lexicalized and sound words, and the dramatic recreation of situations where the speaker perform new voices. The lack of quotatives also serves to involve the interlocutor more directly and in a higher degree in what is being told, and gives more self-assurance to the narrator. These tendencies apply equally to English and Spanish. The study of null/zero quotatives should go then beyond the simple reporting of an absence of a verbal mark, and should address pragmatic and interpersonal factors closely associated with the context where they occur and with the speaker’s attitude and communicative intention and purpose. (shrink)

Very few scientists today question the fact that information, together with matter and energy, is one of the three constructs forming the ontology of the universe. However, there is still a long way to go before in order to establish the interrelations between information and energy and information and matter, as Einstein did between matter and energy. In this paper, after introducing the energy, matter, information model, which covers the three constructs and their relationships, we illustrate real examples—two qualitative and (...) two quantitative—of the interrelations between energy and information. This closes the open question with respect to the interrelationship between energy and information. (shrink)

The problem of knowledge evolution has received considerable attention over the years. Mainly, the study of the dynamics of knowledge has been addressed in the area of Belief Revision, a field emerging as the convergence of the efforts in Philosophy, Logic, and more recently Computer Science, where research efforts usually involve “flat” knowledge bases where there is no additional information about the formulas stored in it. Even when this may be a good fit for particular applications, in many real-world scenarios (...) different information items may be attached to formulas. For instance, when the reliability of the source of the piece of information is attached to it as a measure of some quality (e.g., strength) of the piece of information itself, or when some characteristic informs us on the desirability of the item (e.g., the potential benefit that could be obtained from it). If this type of information is available, we can use it to guide how the belief base is to be modified when new information arrives. In this work, we present a novel approach to the contraction of knowledge bases where formulas have values attached that measure some quality linked to those formulas, exploiting it to define their desirability, and uses such desirability to define which formulas need to be removed to solve conflicts. In this context, we introduce a set of properties for contraction operators by extending classic approaches. We also show how the local treatment of minimal conflicts can induce some counter-intuitive contractions, and we present a way to avoid them by considering optimal resolutions of conflicts using the additional information encoded. We show how the proposed formalization captures any contraction that is optimal under a set of features. Finally, we present a refinement based on the identification of related minimal conflicts that performs contraction in optimal ways without looking into the entire knowledge base. The approach is based on the use of the accrual of beliefs where several formulas collaboratively use their respective values to prevail in the resolution of conflicts. (shrink)

The scientific study of consciousness emerged as an organized field of research only a few decades ago. As empirical results have begun to enhance our understanding of consciousness, it is important to find out whether other factors, such as funding for consciousness research and status of consciousness scientists, provide a suitable environment for the field to grow and develop sustainably. We conducted an online survey on people’s views regarding various aspects of the scientific study of consciousness as a field of (...) research. 249 participants completed the survey, among which 80% were in academia, and around 40% were experts in consciousness research. Topics covered include the progress made by the field, funding for consciousness research, job opportunities for consciousness researchers, and the scientific rigor of the work done by researchers in the field. The majority of respondents (78%) indicated that scientific research on consciousness has been making progress. However, most participants perceived obtaining funding and getting a job in the field of consciousness research as more difficult than in other subfields of neuroscience. Overall, work done in consciousness research was perceived to be less rigorous than other neuroscience subfields, but this perceived lack of rigor was not related to the perceived difficulty in finding jobs and obtaining funding. Lastly, we found that, overall, the global workspace theory was perceived to be the most promising (around 28%), while most non-expert researchers (around 22% of non-experts) found the integrated information theory (IIT) most promising. We believe the survey results provide an interesting picture of current opinions from scientists and researchers about the progresses made and the challenges faced by consciousness research as an independent field. They will inspire collective reflection on the future directions regarding funding and job opportunities for the field. (shrink)

Objective: To measure the stability of life-sustaining treatment preferences amongst older people and analyse the factors that influence stability. Design: Longitudinal cohort study. Setting: Primary care centres, Granada (Spain). Eighty-five persons age 65 years or older. Participants filled out a questionnaire with six contexts of illness (LSPQ-e). They had to decide whether or not to receive treatment. Participants completed the questionnaire at baseline and 18 months later. Results: 86 percent of the patients did not change preferences. Sex, age, marital status, (...) hospitalisation, and self-perception of health and pain did not affect preferences. Morbidity and the death of a relative did. Conclusion: Stability of preferences of older persons in relation to end-of-life decisions seems to be more probable than instability. Some factors, such as the death of a relative or the increase in morbidity, can change preferences. These findings have implications for advance directives (ADs) and advance care planning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe social content of affective stimuli has been proposed as having an influence on cognitive processing and behaviour. This research was aimed, therefore, at studying whether automatic exogenous attention demanded by affective pictures was related to their social value. We hypothesised that affective social pictures would capture attention to a greater extent than non-social affective stimuli. For this purpose, we recorded event-related potentials in a sample of 24 participants engaged in a digit categorisation task. Distracters were affective pictures varying in (...) social content, in addition to affective valence and arousal, which appeared in the background during the task. Our data revealed that pictures depicting high social content captured greater automatic attention than other pictures, as reflected by the greater amplitude and shorter latency of anterior P2, and anterior and posterior N2 components of the ERPs. In addition, social content also provoked greater allocation of processing resour... (shrink)

The numerical study of a glycolytic model formed by a system of three delay differential equations reveals a multiplicity of stable coexisting states: birhythmicity, trirhythmicity, hard excitation and quasiperiodic with chaotic regimes. For different initial functions in the phase space one may observe the coexistence of two different quasiperiodic motions, the existence of a stable steady state with a stable torus, and the existence of a strange attractor with different stable regimes (chaos with torus, chaos with bursting motion, and chaos (...) with different periodic regimes). For a single range of the control parameter values our system may exhibit different bifurcation diagrams: in one case a Feigenbaum route to chaos coexists with a finite number of successive periodic bifurcations, in other conditions it is possible to observe the coexistence of two quasiperiodicity routes to chaos. These studies were obtained both at constant input flux and under forcing conditions. (shrink)