Renal replacement therapy is the indicated treatment for individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD) to survive. However, not all sick people have access to the same treatment. This study compares renal care in two developing countries with different health systems. Specifically, it explores hemodialysis treatment from the perspective of low‐income individuals. A qualitative, comparative study was performed in Brazil and Mexico. Using purposive sampling, the research was based on open‐ended interviews with nineteen participants with kidney failure undergoing hemodialysis treatment in (...) public hospitals and ten relatives. According to our results, Brazilian participants perceived hemodialysis care as satisfactory because of health personnel courtesy as well as free access to dialysis treatment, prescription drugs, hospitalization and transportation. However, they reported deficiencies in the care they were receiving due to shortages of specialists, prescription drugs, laboratory tests and transportation. Mexican participants, in contrast, highlighted the catastrophic costs of medical care because they had no free access to renal therapy, nor adequate financial resources. Our findings suggest that low‐income Brazilian CKD sufferers experience renal care differently, as they are more satisfied and face less obstacles with hemodialysis compared with those of Mexico. More studies on the topic are needed. (shrink)

O'Brien et al. reported that readers generated elaborative inferences only when a text contained characteristics that made it easy to predict the specific inference that a reader would draw, and virtually eliminated the possibility of the inference being discon-firmed. Garrod et al., however, offered two qualifications to these conclusions. First, the two text characteristics manipulated may have produced different types of elaborative inferencing: a biasing context results in a passive form of elaborative inferencing, involving setting up a context of interpretation, (...) whereas the presence of a demand sentence invites the reader to actively predict a subsequent expression. Secondly, clear evidence for either type of inference will be apparent only with truly anaphoric materials. This work describes how a passive form of elaborative inferencing, reported by Garrod et al, may be implemented in a connectionist manner. We take the connectionist model proposed by Shastri and Ajjanagadde in order to represent a text in the form of a network. Next we analyze and discuss how an attentional focus could operate with the proposed reasoner system in order to deal with inference control and anaphora resolution, during text understanding. Our own suggestion is that the system proposed by Shastri and Ajjanagadde could be extended by incorporating focus in order to apply it to some open problems related to text processing. However, this extension presents implementational problems due to its local character. Distributed models seem to be in a better position to deal with the shift of the attentional states, given that these systems can learn. Particularly, the model proposed by Sun is close to our aims, and so we will discuss its implications in order to design a cognitive architecture for text comprehension. (shrink)

It is not yet clear which response behavior requires self-regulatory effort in the moral dilemma task. Previous research has proposed that utilitarian responses require cognitive control, but subsequent studies have found inconsistencies with the empirical predictions of that hypothesis. In this paper we treat participants’ sensitivity to utilitarian gradients as a measure of performance. We confronted participants (N = 82) with a set of five dilemmas evoking a gradient of mean utilitarian responses in a 4-point scale and collected data on (...) heart rate variability and on utilitarian responses. We found positive correlations between tonic and phasic HRV and sensitivity to the utilitarian gradient in the high tonic group, but not in the low tonic group. Moreover, the low tonic group misplaced a scenario with a selfish incentive at the high end of the gradient. Results suggest that performance is represented by sensitivity correlated with HRV and accompanied with a reasonable placement of individual scenarios within the gradient. (shrink)

Resumen. En México, la mercadotecnia promocional se ha erigido como la segunda más grande inversión demercadotecnia, principalmente debido a que las compañías tienden con más frecuencia a subcontratar laresponsabilidad de los aspectos operativos de la mercadotecnia. Las empresas contratantes exigen cada vezmás la garantía de seguridad y certidumbre en la prestación de los servicios, por lo que la calidad de éste seha convertido en un factor determinante en la elección de una agencia de promociones. El presentedocumento técnico busca compartir un (...) caso de estudio relacionado a una empresa de promoción de ventasque enfrenta una alta tasa de deserción de clientes con su consecuente contracción en las ventas, pero quecontradictoriamente está inmersa en un mercado que tiene un crecimiento sostenido del 15 por ciento en losúltimos años. El problema fue abordado desde la perspectiva de la calidad en el servicio y la satisfacción delcliente a través de la aplicación de encuestas Servqual a algunos clientes de la compañía. Dichas encuestaspermitieron: identificar las dimensiones de calidad relevantes en el servicio, detectar las áreas de oportunidadentre el servicio esperado y el servicio real, y la elaboración de un plan de acción que posteriormente fuesistematizado e implementado. Los resultados muestran que la implementación del sistema de calidad redujola deserción de los clientes; además, se descubrió que las dimensiones de calidad del Servqual afectan enproporciones diferentes a la satisfacción del cliente.Palabras Claves. Calidad en el servicio, deserción de clientes, mercadotecnia promocional, promoción deventas, QFD, satisfacción del cliente, Servqual, sistema de calidad.. In Mexico, the promotional marketing has emerged as the second largest marketing investment,mainly because companies tend to outsource most often the operational aspects of marketing. Thosecompanies are increasingly demanding security and certainty in the delivery of services. As a consequence,service quality has become a determining factor in the election of a sales promotion agency. This technicalpaperwork shares a case study related to a sales promotion company facing high customer defection rate withits consequent contraction in sales, but ironically immersed in a market that has a sustained growth of 15 per cent in recent years. Approach of the problem was from quality service and customer satisfaction perspectivethrough the use of Servqual surveys applied to some customers. These surveys allowed: to identify relevantdimensions of quality service, to identify opportunities between the expected service and the actual service,and the development of an action plan which was later systematized and implemented. Results show that theimplementation of the quality system reduced customer desertion. Also, found that the quality dimensions of SERVQUAL affect customer satisfaction in different ways.Keywords. Customer defection, customer satisfaction, quality service, quality system, QFD, sales promotion,Servqual. (shrink)

Este trabalho discute as possíveis relações entre a histeria e os chamados distúrbios alimentares que, na atualidade, ganharam um caráter epidêmico. Os discursos dos autores sobre a anorexia e a bulimia são apresentados e organizados em categorias temáticas que abordam as definições de anorexia e bu..

The article seeks to investigate the role that censorship had in the history of modern Colombian theater during the decades from 1950 to 1980, on the basis of a journey through the trajectory of groups such as Candelaria, TEC and Escuela Municipal de Teatro, as well as its directors Santiago García, Enrique Buenaventura and Gilberto Martínez. The censorship usually came from government institutions, Church ministers, or educational institutions such as universities and colleges. In addition to the analysis of direct (...) censorship phenomena such as the prohibition of performances and the expulsion of members of theater formations, or more indirect ones such as red tape or excessive tax collection, we are interested in highlighting the strategies and practices of resistance and opposition generated by playwrights and theater groups during this time before the censorial actions and speeches. Among these strategies to fight censorship, we highlight the collectivization of structured cultural formations or guilds that brought together various theater groups at the national level, as was the case with the formation of the Colombian Theater Corporation. Collectivization was the strategy against power through which the theater guild fought to resist the repressive effects of censorship. It is necessary to shed light on the role that censorship played in the life of Colombian groups and theater in general. This approach will allow us to see the history of modern theater in Colombia as the history of resistance strategies against censorship and power. (shrink)

1Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TB, UKScience Without Laws Ronald Giere Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press 1999 x + 285 Hardback£17.50.

This paper defends an inferential conception of scientific representation. It approaches the notion of representation in a deflationary spirit, and minimally characterizes the concept as it appears in science by means of two necessary conditions: its essential directionality and its capacity to allow surrogate reasoning and inference. The conception is defended by showing that it successfully meets the objections that make its competitors, such as isomorphism and similarity, untenable. In addition the inferential conception captures the objectivity of the cognitive representations (...) used by science, it sheds light on their truth and completeness, and it explains the source of the analogy between scientific and artistic modes of representation. (shrink)

Depersonalization is characterised by a profound disruption of self-awareness mainly characterised by feelings of disembodiment and subjective emotional numbing.It has been proposed that depersonalization is caused by a fronto-limbic suppressive mechanism – presumably mediated via attention – which manifests subjectively as emotional numbing, and disables the process by which perception and cognition normally become emotionally coloured, giving rise to a subjective feeling of ‘unreality’.Our functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies support the above model and indicate that, compared with normal and clinical (...) controls, DPD patients show increased prefrontal activation as well as reduced activation in insula/limbic-related areas to aversive, arousing emotional stimuli.Although a putative inhibitory mechanism on emotional processing might account for the emotional numbing and characteristic perceptual detachment, it is likely, as suggested by some studies, that parietal mechanisms underpin feelings of disembodiment and lack of agency feelings. (shrink)

El modelo de ser humano: homo oeconomicus, impuesto por la racionalidad económica capitalista, ha tenido en las dos últimas décadas una metamorfosis compleja, a saber, la formación de un tipo de subjetividad representada en la figura del “emprendedor” o “su propio jefe” que, desde una nueva gramática teológica, encarna un proyecto mercantil solapado y subrepticio que condiciona las relaciones entre sujetos. En razón a esto, el propósito de este texto es pensar dicha problemática desde el ejercicio hermenéutico-crítico que lleva a (...) cabo el joven Marx, para someter al análisis las categorías de culpa, deuda, sacrificio y expiación destacadas por Walter Benjamin, a la luz de la categoría esencia subjetiva de la propiedad privada que permita entender cómo el capitalismo se vale hoy de la teología y su lenguaje para continuar responsabilizando al ser humano de su pobreza, de su riqueza o su fracaso económico. (shrink)

This paper defends the deflationary character of two recent views regarding scientific representation, namely RIG Hughes’ DDI model and the inferential conception. It is first argued that these views’ deflationism is akin to the homonymous position in discussions regarding the nature of truth. There, we are invited to consider the platitudes that the predicate “true” obeys at the level of practice, disregarding any deeper, or more substantive, account of its nature. More generally, for any concept X, a deflationary approach is (...) then defined in opposition to a substantive approach, where a substantive approach to X is an analysis of X in terms of some property P, or relation R, accounting for and explaining the standard use of X. It then becomes possible to characterize a deflationary view of scientific representation in three distinct senses, namely: a “no-theory” view, a “minimalist” view, and a “use-based” view – in line with three standard deflationary responses in the philosophical literature on truth. It is then argued that both the DDI model and the inferential conception may be suitably understood in any of these three different senses. The application of these deflationary ‘hermeneutics’ moreover yields significant improvements on the DDI model, which bring it closer to the inferential conception. It is finally argued that what these approaches have in common – the key to any deflationary account of scientific representation – is the denial that scientific representation may be ultimately reduced to any substantive explanatory property of sources, or targets, or their relations. (shrink)

IntroductionThe idea of video recording in the operating room with panoramic cameras and microphones is a new concept that is changing the approach to medical activities in the OR. However, VR in the OR has brought up many concerns regarding patient privacy and has highlighted legal and ethical issues that were never previously exposed.AimTo review the literature concerning these aspects and provide a better ethical and legal understanding of the new challenges concerning VR in the OR.ConclusionsThere is a disparity between (...) the two main legal models concerning VR in the OR, namely the European legal system ) and the American legal framework ). This difference mainly deals with two distinct bioethical paradigms: GDPR places a strong emphasis on protecting patients’ privacy to improve the public health system, whereas HIPAA indicates the need to generate protocols to safeguard the risks connected to medical activity and patient privacy. Following from this point, we may argue that, at the ethical and bioethical level, GDPR and HIPAA depend mainly on two different ethical models: a perspective based on moral acquaintances and weak proceduralism, respectively. It is worth noting the importance of developing additional guidelines concerning different world regions to avoid the ethical problems that may emerge when simply applying a foreign paradigm to a very different culture. (shrink)

El presente texto desea dar cuenta, a partir de aquellos aspectos fenomenológicos de la teoría del conocimiento de Thomas Hobbes, el fundamentoy justificación de la génesis del Estado civil. Sin lugar a dudas, serán la percepción o la intuición, lo sensible, la imaginación o la memoria, el lenguaje, el movimiento, el cómputo, el deseo, el miedo, entre otros, lo que lleva al sujeto a comprender su propia naturaleza y a partir de ella, a pactar con otros sujetos cediendo sus derechos (...) naturales a un tercero para dar fin al estado de naturaleza y poder conservar su vida y vivir en paz. (shrink)

This paper argues for a broadly dispositionalist approach to the ontology of Bohmian mechanics . It first distinguishes the ‘minimal’ and the ‘causal’ versions of Bohm’s theory, and then briefly reviews some of the claims advanced on behalf of the ‘causal’ version by its proponents. A number of ontological or interpretive accounts of the wave function in BM are then addressed in detail, including configuration space, multi-field, nomological, and dispositional approaches. The main objection to each account is reviewed, namely the (...) ‘problem of perception’, the ‘problem of communication’, the ‘problem of temporal laws’, and the ‘problem of under-determination’. It is then shown that a version of dispositionalism overcomes the under-determination problem while providing neat solutions to the other three problems. A pragmatic argument is thus furnished for the use of dispositions in the interpretation of the theory more generally. The paper ends in a more speculative note by suggesting ways in which a dispositionalist interpretation of the wave function is in addition able to shed light upon some of the claims of the proponents of the causal version of BM. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es presentar el problema triple (trilema) de Agripa que cuestiona la posibilidad de alcanzar una justificación epistemológica del conocimiento empírico. Una posible reconstrucción del problema es la que se apoya en el problema del regreso al infinito -uno de los modos de..

In this paper I introduce the theory of gift giving as a possible means to reconcile the contradictions inherent in accountability measures of ‘faculty productivity’ in the American university. In this paper I sketch the theory of gift economies to show how, given the historical ideals that characterize the faculty‐student relationship, a theory of gift giving could help us better judge the labor of the faculty. I suggest that it is the relational character of teaching that frustrates accountability measures and (...) that perhaps if viewed as a gift economy—and in particular an economy with ‘reproductive’ ends—we could better grasp the effectiveness of these relationships. (shrink)

Este artigo problematiza o antropocentrismo na “esferologia” de Peter Sloterdijk, com sua narrativa da antropogênese como construção imunológica da “casa do ser”, na qual o humano, rompendo a “jaula” animal, constrói esferas, ilhas imunológicas de coexistência humana. O mito de Orfeu simboliza para Sloterdijk a imunologia: ao perder a amada, Orfeu reconstrói imunologicamente o complemento, neutralizando o espectro ausente como linguagem. Propomos um experimento filosófico, o “Anti-Orfeu”, no qual o perspectivismo cosmológico de Viveiros de Castro e Tânia Stolze Lima, pensado (...) de um ponto de vista topológico, serviria de contraponto para pôr em perspectiva a imunologia, apontando para a variação da diferença entre dentro e fora e para a “antropofagia”, como outra distribuição topológica que permite outra relação com a alteridade que não a imunologia. Com isso, apontamos para uma “esferologia do ponto de vista do inimigo”, da alteridade, permitindo modular a esferologia, evidenciando-a como diagnóstico da “autoimunidade” de esferas imunológicas. (shrink)

Consideraciones introductorias Presentamos aquí un avance de análisis de un proyecto de investigación sobre enseñanza y aprendizaje de la argumentación que realizamos observando clases de filosofía y de biología de seis profesores de cada disciplina en cuatro Liceos públicos y dos privados. Además organizamos actividades argumentativas de aula a comienzos y finales de los cursos en el año 2012, con el fin de observar los eventuales avances en lo argumentativo. Presentamos en este trabajo los (...) - Sciences de l'éducation et (...) de la formation – Nouvel article. (shrink)

This article introduces Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, an emerging field that seeks to connect the linguistic system with speaker-meaning. The stated purpose is thus to tackle a pervasive disconnect in both cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, whereby the linguistic system and speaker selections are separated in the belief that language is essentially a mental process associated with the brain, and hence, separated from bodily experience. I contend this view by introducing a triadic model of construction in which form and function (...) are inextricably bound up with agency. This is possible because language is tethered to senses of movement and balance that connect experiences with the physical world with the mental. A major insight of the paper is that argument structure constructions partake of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs, which provides speakers with a means to verbalize their thoughts and distribute agency in specific events. (shrink)

The article turns to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of state capitalism and their theorization of money and debt in their critique of capitalism to develop an analysis of the governmental management of the current crisis determined by ordo- and neoliberalism. The paper argues that analyses which fail to properly recognize the power of capital to determine both state apparatuses and economic policy thereby fail to grasp the real functioning of money, debt and the Euro in the crisis and end up (...) unwittingly supporting liberalism. This is true of positions such as heterodox theory that, though critical of conventional and neoliberal political economy, nevertheless continue to uphold the state as an independent or mediating mechanism in relation to the power of capital. The neglect of the role which money plays in the strategies of capital to control both the creation of value and the functioning of the state is to be found even in Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism, a neglect which undermines his analysis of power. The paper highlights the implications of the standpoint of state capitalism for a more incisive analysis of the current crisis that reveals what is at stake for political struggles. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es estudiar la actualidad del binomio persona-naturaleza para fundamentar la unión hipostática de acuerdo con el pensamiento de Tomás de Aquino. Ambos conceptos se necesitan mutuamente no sólo como la parte y el todo para fundar una Metafísica de la Encarnación, sino también para poder predicar las naturalezas del único supuesto de modo de no destruir la unidad personal de Cristo. De este modo, para el Aquinate, persona y naturaleza no sólo expresan nociones metafísicas, sino (...) también conceptos que se predican del único supuesto subsistente. (shrink)

In the logic of theory change, the standard model is AGM, proposed by Alchourrón et al. (J Symb Log 50:510–530, 1985 ). This paper focuses on the extension of AGM that accounts for contractions of a theory by a set of sentences instead of only by a single sentence. Hansson (Theoria 55:114–132, 1989 ), Fuhrmann and Hansson (J Logic Lang Inf 3:39–74, 1994 ) generalized Partial Meet Contraction to the case of contractions by (possibly non-singleton) sets of sentences. In this (...) paper we present the possible worlds semantics for partial meet multiple contractions. (shrink)

Social commerce as a subset of e-commerce has been emerged in part due to the popularity of social networking sites. Social commerce brings new challenges to marketing activities. And social commerce transactions like e-commerce transactions can be dangerous and cause harmful losses to personal finances, time, and information privacy. This article examines ethical issues and consumer assessments of the risks of using an e-service and how risk affects consumer evaluations and usage of Internet-based services and self-service technologies. Results from two (...) surveys totaling 1024 consumers indicated that as usage risk concerns increased, the perceived usefulness of an e-service and intention to use it decreased. Additionally as usage risk concerns increased the effect of subjective norm on PU and intention to use an e-service strengthened, and the effect of perceived ease of use on PU and intention to use an e-service weakened. These findings advance theory and contribute to the foundation for future research aimed at improving our understanding of how consumers evaluate new e-services, new commerce systems and settings, and self-service technologies in the social commerce era. (shrink)

El concepto de holismo ha adquirido una gran importancia en losúltimos análisis semánticos y epistémicos. Sin embargo, muchosde los filósofos que han utilizado este concepto no lo han definidocon claridad. El objeto de este artículo es intentar aclarar uno delos sentidos en los que este concepto puede ser entendido. Paraello me concentraré en las relaciones entre holismo y teorías empíricas. Haré uso de algunos de los elementos de la teoría estructuralistapropuesta por Moulines, Sneed y Balzer para dar cabalcuenta de cómo (...) se podría conciliar las tesis del holismo con lavisión estructuralista de las teorías científicas. (shrink)

La normativa sobre agricultura orgánica de los principales mercados está diseñada conforme al entendimiento de que la distancia entre el productor y el consumidor de alimentos orgánicos es considerable, lo cual no tiene que ser necesariamente cierto. En consecuencia se han desarrollado iniciativas orientadas a la utilización de canales comerciales cortos para la producción orgánica, basados asimismo en la participación de los agentes que los integran en los procesos de certificación. Dentro de este contexto destacan los Sistemas Participativos de Garantía (...) como modelos de certificación participativa en red, los cuales buscan potenciar la generación de confianza y el aprendizaje mutuo. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo describir los principios en los cuales se fundamentan, así como el funcionamiento, de los Sistemas Participativos de Garantía acorde con una estrategia de fomento de la participación comunitaria, la agricultura tradicional y el desarrollo rural endógeno. (shrink)

Research on grammatical gender processing has generally assumed that grammatical gender can be treated as a uniform construct, resulting in a body of literature in which different gender classes are collapsed into single analyses. The present work reviews linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic research on grammatical gender from different methodologies and across different profiles of Spanish speakers. Specifically, we examine distributional asymmetries between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, the resulting biases in gender assignment, and the consequences of these assignment strategies on (...) gender expectancy and processing. We discuss the implications of the findings for the design of future gender processing studies and, more broadly, for our understanding of the potential differences in the processing reflexes of grammatical gender classes within and across languages. (shrink)

Mauricio Suárez and Agnes Bolinska apply the tools of communication theory to scientific modeling in order to characterize the informational content of a scientific model. They argue that when represented as a communication channel, a model source conveys information about its target, and that such representations are therefore appropriate whenever modeling is employed for informational gain. They then extract two consequences. First, the introduction of idealizations is akin in informational terms to the introduction of noise in a signal; for (...) in an idealization we introduce ‘extraneous’ elements into the model that have no correlate in the target. Second, abstraction in a model is informationally equivalent to equivocation in the signal; for in an abstraction we “neglect” in the model certain features that obtain in the target. They conclude that it becomes possible in principle to quantify idealization and abstraction in informative models, although precise absolute quantification will be difficult to achieve in practice. (shrink)

RESUMO: Ao procurar promover a reconciliação do homem com a natureza, ensejando recompor a ordem da criação fraturada com o advento da modernidade, o movimento dominante do pensamento de Hans Jonas consiste em buscar restaurar a dignidade da natureza animal, nela reconhecendo atributos humanos, como o âmbito da interioridade. Embora louvável, a visão joniana da animalidade insiste em definir claramente o próprio do homem, o que termina por comprometer o efetivo acolhimento de direitos morais específicos à natureza animal. Além disso, (...) sua obra falha em reconhecer com a necessária radicalidade a participação, no sentido contrário, do homem na animalidade, que ela mesma advoga. São faltas que julgamos preciso acusar nesse pensamento: 1) não deslindar o outro natural/animal como o esquecido por excelência na insistente afirmação da diferença específica do homem; 2) não privilegiar uma experiência de teor estético-moral capaz de propiciar a abertura à alteridade natural/animal, que o homem expurga de si mesmo na afirmação de seu caráter transanimal. ABSTRACT: Seeking to promote the reconciliation of man with nature and restore the order of creation fractured with the advent of modernity, the dominant movement of thought of Hans Jonas is to search for restore the dignity of animality, recognizing human attributes in animality, as the realm of inwardness. Although praiseworthy, the joniana vision of animality insists clearly define what is proper to man, which ends up hindering effective reception of moral rights specific to animal nature. In addition, it fails to recognize the participation in the opposite direction, the man in animality, which itself advocates. The faults we think is necessary to point out that thought are: 1) not unravel the other natural/animal as the forgotten for excellence in insistent affirmation of the specific difference of man; 2) does not favor an aesthetic-moral content of experience able to provide openness to otherness that the very man purges himself in affirmation of its transanimal character. (shrink)

Agrippa’s Problem: The purpose of this paper is to present the triple problem of Agrippa that questions the possibility of reaching an epistemological justification of empirical knowledge. A possible reconstruction of such problem is one that is based on the problem of the regresum ad infinitum –one of Agripa’s modes. In this paper, a reconstruction of this problem will be presented by means of a reduction ad absurdum argument. The attempts of solving the absurd lead to the remaining two modes (...) of Agrippa’s triple problem. (shrink)

I argue against theories that attempt to reduce scientific representation to similarity or isomorphism. These reductive theories aim to radically naturalize the notion of representation, since they treat scientist's purposes and intentions as non-essential to representation. I distinguish between the means and the constituents of representation, and I argue that similarity and isomorphism are common but not universal means of representation. I then present four other arguments to show that similarity and isomorphism are not the constituents of scientific representation. I (...) finish by looking at the prospects for weakened versions of these theories, and I argue that only those that abandon the aim to radically naturalize scientific representation are likely to be successful. (shrink)

I analyse critically what I regard as the most accomplished empiricist account of propensities, namely the long run propensity theory developed by Donald Gillies . Empiricist accounts are distinguished by their commitment to the ‘identity thesis’: the identification of propensities and objective probabilities. These theories are intended, in the tradition of Karl Popper’s influential proposal, to provide an interpretation of probability that renders probability statements directly testable by experiment. I argue that the commitment to the identity thesis leaves empiricist theories, (...) including Gillies’ version, vulnerable to a variant of what is known as Humphreys’ paradox. I suggest that the tension may be resolved only by abandoning the identity thesis, and by adopting instead an understanding of propensities as explanatory properties of chancy objects. (shrink)

Francisco Suárez claims that forms may be efficient causes. There is an action whose proximate efficient cause is a substantial form, namely, the natural resulting. Also a substantial form is the principal efficient cause of the eduction of other forms, although it causes this through the substance’s own accidents. The souls insofar as substantial forms participate of both features. However, they pose a new complexity because of the actions they are exclusively principles of, namely vital actions. This kind of actions (...) may seem no different from natural resulting, if vitality is mainly described as some sort of immanence. However, there is a Suarezian approach to vital actions that does not rely completely on the immanence and therefore allows to consider souls as efficient causes without turning their actions into natural. (shrink)