El secreto en todas sus vertientes, en todas sus facetas, vericuetos, senderos. Pero sobre todo el Secreto en la literatura, pues como dice Luisa Valenzuela, en su estilo mordaz, agudo, siempre entre guinos y complicidades: "No hay literatura sin secreto."Detras de cada palabra se esconde el misterio, un laberinto en el que todo puede suceder: de la pasion a la ternura; del crimen a la sublimacion. Encontrar el hilo conductor, salvador, descifrador, o ahondar sus diversidades, es papel de quien (...) aspira a lo literario, bien como escritor, bien como lector.Precisas, directas, divertidas, las palabras de Luisa Valenzuela se deslizan sobre las paginas de un libro lleno de humor del mas fino, de ironia inteligente, como sucede en sus novelas, en sus cuentos, pero ahora provenientes del ciclo de conferencias y el dinamico taller de escritura breve que impartio en el marco de la Catedra Alfonso Reyes del Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico. (shrink)

An interaction between the ways morality and society develop in the face of the challenges they are exposed to seems consistent with empirical evidence. However, within this frame man's instinct of self preservation and his individualism seem to play an important part. The former by its influence on the evolution of what I refer to as 'our social morality'. The latter by finding its expression in conservative and radical ideologies whose political confrontation appears to give rise to an evolutionary develop (...) ment. The paper draws attention to the fact that in the face of contemporary challenges the evolutionary development of our morals may determine whether the corresponding evolutionary development of our societies will approach the patterns of those of insects, or whether our highly developed individual istic traits will result in new moral trends creating a society which is better suited to the present characteristics of humankind. It is also argued that the present growth of international organizations for cooperation and peaceful co-existence should make it possible to build a society worthy of the human race, but that it could be done only if we are able to develop a sufficient sense of responsibility to deliberately keep over-consumption and human population within a natural balance. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to discuss the relationship between the functional properties and information-processing modes of the human brain and the evolution of scientific thought. Science has emerged as a tool to carry out predictive operations that exceed the accuracy, temporal scale, and intrinsic operational limitations of the human brain. Yet the scientific method unavoidably reflects some fundamental characteristics of the information-acquisition and -analysis modes of the brain, which impose a priori boundary conditions upon how science can develop (...) and how the physical universe can be “understood.” A brief description of physical and biological interactions is given, with emphasis on the defining role played by the concept of information. Current views on the information-processing and information-generating mechanisms of the human brain are briefly reviewed. It is shown how some particular features of superstition, natural philosophy, physical thought, and intuition can be linked to certain characteristic information-processing modes of the brain. A discussion is given of how greatly expanded knowledge of brain functions might affect the future of science and technology. (shrink)

"Cover " -- "Title Page " -- "Copyright " -- "Contents " -- "Preface to the English Edition" -- "Introduction" -- "1. The Substitute" -- "2. Animals, Machines, Cyborgs, and the Taxi " -- "3. Mind, Emotions, and Artificial Empathy " -- "4. The Other Otherwise " -- "5. From Moral and Lethal Machines to Synthetic Ethics " -- "Notes" -- "Works Cited" -- "Acknowledgments" -- "Credits.

In this article we tackle the core question of machine emotion research – “Can machines have emotions?” – in the context of “social robots”, a new class of machines designed to function as “social partners” for humans. Our aim, however, is not to provide an answer to the question “Can robots have emotions?” Rather we argue that the “robotics of emotion” moves us to reformulate it into a different one – “Can robots affectively coordinate with humans?” Developing a series of (...) arguments relevant to theory of emotion, philosophy of AI, and the epistemology of synthetic models, we argue that the answer to this different question is positive, and that it lays grounds for an innovative ethical approach to emotional robots. This ethical project, which we introduced elsewhere as “synthetic ethics”, rejects the diffused ethical condemnation of emotional robots as “cheating” technology. Synthetic ethics focuses not on an ideological refusal, but on the concrete sustainability of the emerging mixed human-robot social ecologies. On this basis, in contrast to a purely negative ethical approach to social robotics it promotes an analytical case by case ethical inquiry into the type of human flourishing that can result from human-robot affective coordination. (shrink)

Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees as a cognitive error, nor as a sign of immaturity. Rather it considers that this common human tendency, which is hypothesized to have evolved because it favored cooperation among early humans, can be used today to facilitate social interactions between humans and a new type of cooperative and interactive agents - social robots. This approach leads social robotics to focus research on the engineering of robots that activate anthropomorphic (...) projections in users. The objective is to give robots "social presence" and "social behaviors" that are sufficiently credible for human users to engage in comfortable and potentially long-lasting relations with these machines. This choice of ’applied anthropomorphism’ as a research methodology exposes the artifacts produced by social robotics to ethical condemnation: social robots are judged to be a "cheating" technology, as they generate in users the illusion of reciprocal social and affective relations. This article takes position in this debate, not only developing a series of arguments relevant to philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, and robotic AI, but also asking what social robotics can teach us about anthropomorphism. On this basis, we propose a theoretical perspective that characterizes anthropomorphism as a basic mechanism of interaction, and rebuts the ethical reflections that a priori condemns "anthropomorphism-based" social robots. To address the relevant ethical issues, we promote a critical experimentally based ethical approach to social robotics, "synthetic ethics," which aims at allowing humans to use social robots for two main goals: self-knowledge and moral growth. (shrink)

How a human observer perceives duration depends on the amount of events taking place during the timed interval, but also on psychological dimensions, such as emotional-wellbeing, mindfulness, impulsivity, and rumination. Here we aimed at exploring these influences on duration estimation and passage of time judgments. One hundred and seventeen healthy individuals filled out mindfulness (FFMQ), impulsivity (BIS-11), rumination (RRS), and depression (BDI-sf) questionnaires. Participants also conducted verbal estimation and production tasks in the multiple seconds range. During these timing tasks, subjects (...) were asked to read digits aloud that were presented on a computer screen. Each condition of the timing tasks differed in terms of the interval between the presentation of the digits, i.e., either short (4-s) or long (16-s). Our findings suggest that long empty intervals (16-s) are associated with a relative underestimation of duration, and to a feeling that the time passes slowly, a seemingly paradoxical result. Also, regarding more mindful individuals, such a dissociation between duration estimation and passage of time judgments was found, but only when empty intervals were short (4-s). Relatively speaking, more mindful subjects showed an increased overestimation of durations, but felt that time passed more quickly. These results provide further evidence for the dissociation between duration estimation and the feeling of the passage of time. We discuss these results in terms of an alerting effect when empty intervals are short and events are more numerous, which could mediate the effect of dispositional mindfulness. (shrink)

Les dictionnaires et documents, tirés de la littérature ou des archives, qui sont examinés dans cet ouvrage disent plus de mal que de bien de la séduction. La séduction c'est « l'élan qui porte l'un vers l'autre », mais cet élan est dévié par la tromperie. La séduction peut être située dans la polémique de longue durée contre le maquillage et la vanité des femmes. Leon Battista Alberti compare la femme, qui a la déplorable habitude de se maquiller, à l'artiste (...) qui aurait l'habitude, to... (shrink)

An important debate in the current literature is whether “all truth-conditional effects of extra-linguistic context can be traced to [a variable at; LM] logical form” (Stanley, ‘Context and Logical Form’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 23 (2000) 391). That is, according to Stanley, the only truth-conditional effects that extra-linguistic context has are localizable in (potentially silent) variable-denoting pronouns or pronoun-like items, which are represented in the syntax/at logical form (pure indexicals like I or today are put aside in this discussion). According to (...) Recanati (‘Unarticulated Constituents’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 25 (2002) 299), extra-linguistic context can have additional truth-conditional effects, in the form of optional pragmatic processes like ‘free enrichment’. This paper shows that Recanati’s position is not warranted, since there is an alternative line of analysis that obviates the need to assume free enrichment. In the alternative analysis, we need Stanley’s variables, but we need to give them the freedom to be or not to be generated in the syntax/present at logical form, a kind of optionality that has nothing to do with the pragmatics-related optionality of free enrichment. (shrink)

According to rule-consequentialism’s moral criterion, a given action is morally right if and only if it complies with an ideal code of rules, regardless of the consequences of that action. Rules are to be assessed by their consequences, not actions. This being so, one of the many accusations that have been made against rule-consequentialism is that it can turn suboptimal decisions into morally right decisions and optimal decisions into morally wrong decisions. After all, in certain circumstances, a rule that has (...) the best consequences overall can require an action that does less good or forbid an action that does more good. This is the core of the original rule-worship objection. However, recently, different versions of rule-consequentialism have been developed in order to address that challenge. This paper focuses on three of them, those offered by Brad Hooker, Susan Wolf, and David Copp. My claim is that their arguments, however ingenious, are unsuccessful, because they are innocuous if the charge is reformulated as it should be. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of communicative intention on action. In Experiment 1 participants were requested to reach towards an object, grasp it, and either simply lift it or lift it with the intent to communicate a meaning to a partner . Movement kinematics were recorded using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The results indicate that kinematics was sensitive to communicative intention. Although the to-be-grasped object remained the same, movements performed for the ‘communicative’ condition (...) were characterized by a kinematic pattern which differed from those obtained for the ‘individual’ condition. These findings were confirmed in a subsequent experiment in which the communicative condition was compared to a control condition, in which the communicative exchange was prevented. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive pragmatics and current knowledge on how social behavior shapes action kinematics. (shrink)

En su infancia Mohamed Chukri se ve arrastrado por la miseria, la violencia intrafamiliar, consume prostitución y se prostituye, fuma kif, trasnocha en los bares, roba y trabaja con contrabandistas. Todo ello lo narra en la novela El pan a secas (1973). En este artículo se analiza la novela en clave de esperanza/desesperanza. La novela se divide en dos: episodios de infancia (negativos, desesperanza) y de adolescencia (positivos, esperanza recuperada). Resiliencia, libertad y esperanza están íntimamente ligadas.

This paper investigates young children's knowledge of scalar implicatures and downward entailment. In previous experimental work, we have shown that young children access the full range of truth-conditions associated with logical words in classical logic, including the disjunction operator, as well as the indefinite article. The present study extends this research in three ways, taking disjunction as a case study. Experiment 1 draws upon the observation that scalar implicatures (SIs) are cancelled (or reversed) in downward entailing (DE) linguistic environments, e.g., (...) in the scope of negation (Chierchia, 2000). Experiment 2 was designed to determine if scalar implicatures are used by children, like adults, to influence the interpretation of disjunction in non-DE contexts, yielding an implicature of exclusivity for disjunction. Whereas adult controls always rejected assertions of the form A or B in positive (non-DE) contexts in which assertions of the form A and B were also true, many children accepted assertions with disjunction in such contexts. To provide an interpretation to the findings from Experiment 2, a new experimental technique was devised and used in Experiment 3. The new technique presents pairs of assertions to children, who are asked to judge which assertion is a ‘better’ description of the context. The findings from Experiment 3 demonstrated children's awareness that A and B is more informative than A or B in positive contexts, where both statements are true. Taken together, the findings of Experiments 2 and 3 are compatible with the view that some children lack the computational resources to apply scalar implicatures when a single assertion is presented alone (see Reinhart, 1999). (shrink)

Rationale: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the hippocampus is proposed for enhancement of memory impaired by injury or disease. Many pre-clinical DBS paradigms can be addressed in epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring for seizure localization, since they already have electrodes implanted in brain areas of interest. Even though epilepsy is usually not a memory disorder targeted by DBS, the studies can nevertheless model other memory-impacting disorders, such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Methods: Human patients undergoing Phase II invasive monitoring for (...) intractable epilepsy were implanted with depth electrodes capable of recording neurophysiological signals. Subjects performed a delayed-match-to-sample (DMS) memory task while hippocampal ensembles from CA1 and CA3 cell layers were recorded to estimate a multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) model of CA3-to-CA1 neural encoding and a memory decoding model (MDM) to decode memory information from CA3 and CA1 neuronal signals. After model estimation, subjects again performed the DMS task while either MIMO-based or MDM-based patterned stimulation was delivered to CA1 electrode sites during the encoding phase of the DMS trials. Each subject was sorted (post hoc) by prior experience of repeated and/or mild-to-moderate brain injury (RMBI), TBI, or no history (control) and scored for percentage successful delayed recognition (DR) recall on stimulated vs. non-stimulated DMS trials. The subject’s medical history was unknown to the experimenters until after individual subject memory retention results were scored. Results: When examined compared to control subjects, both TBI and RMBI subjects showed increased memory retention in response to both MIMO and MDM-based hippocampal stimulation. Furthermore, effects of stimulation were also greater in subjects who were evaluated as having pre-existing mild-to-moderate memory impairment. Conclusion: These results show that hippocampal stimulation for memory facilitation was more beneficial for subjects who had previously suffered a brain injury (other than epilepsy), compared to control (epilepsy) subjects who had not suffered a brain injury. This study demonstrates that the epilepsy/intracranial recording model can be extended to test the ability of DBS to restore memory function in subjects who previously suffered a brain injury other than epilepsy, and support further investigation into the beneficial effect of DBS in TBI patients. (shrink)

This paper examines the modes of imperial interactions with Church councils, focusing on the emperor’s participation in episcopal meetings and its representation in late antique sources, both literary and documentary. The author argues that the availability and strategic dissemination of conciliar records could affect, for better or worse, the understanding of the imperial religious policy and attitude towards Church institutions. This is most clearly illustrated by Marcian’s behaviour at Chalcedon, and by the active steps he took to produce an official (...) and imperially endorsed edition of the conciliar acts. The significance of Marcian’s initiatives emerges more clearly when placed in the context of developing practices with respect to conciliar procedure and the circulation of conciliar information. After considering possible precedents in both these fields, the article reconstructs the early circulation and reception of the Chalcedonian acts, focusing particularly on the records of the sixth session, which was presided by the emperor himself. The author discusses the role played by the imperial initiative at the council and in its aftermath, and how it contributed to shape the reception of Marcian’s image as a Christian ruler. (shrink)

Depressive mood can be involved in the moral judgments made by people with depression. Here, we focus on the negative judgments depressed patients have of themselves and the world. Possibly, the alterations in moral judgment in subjects with depression can be understood by taking into account the neural basis of depression.

Chris Roederer, Darrel Moellendorf. last two hundred years or more under the notion of stare decisis and the rule of law. The matrix of legal rules is no longer the seat of the law in South Africa, if it ever was. One can disagree with Mohamed J's ...

A sample of college women and men responded to a survey assessing attitudes, beliefs, experiences, and behaviors relevant to sexual harassment and assault. Men were more tolerant of sexual harassment, more likely to believe that heterosexual relationships were adversarial, more likely to subscribe to rape myths, and more likely to admit that they might sexually assault someone under some circumstances. Data from the present study support the proposition that relevant affective, cognitive, and behavioral indices of hostile sexuality directed against women (...) are linked, supporting the assumption of a continuum of misogyny. Significant positive correlations were predicted and found among men's self-reported tolerance for sexual harassment, adversarial sexual beliefs, rape-myth acceptance, likelihood to rape, and experience as a sexual victimizer. Among women, belief and attitude measures were positively correlated but, as predicted, experience of sexual victimization was not reliably related to any other measure, supporting the conclusion that personal characteristics are not relevant to college women's sexual victimization. (shrink)

Diplomatic theory and practice -- International funding for animal protection -- International conferences and delegation management -- The media as a tool for diplomacy -- Important associations and international organizations -- Epilogue.

In this article I address a number of central problems in modern and/or postmodern political and ethical life. I do so largely through an explication and comparison of John Dewey’s and Max Weber’s theoretical approaches and prescriptions for ethics and political participation. According to both Dewey and Weber, the modern world fragments both the ‘individual’ and ‘community’. This fragmentation impairs meaningful political action. Thus, the question becomes, how is the fragmentation on the individual and community level to be reconciled, coherence (...) regained and meaningful action restored? Dewey and Weber have conflicting answers to this set of questions. I argue that however wanting one might find Dewey and Weber’s insights, the questions and their insights are still relevant to this day. I argue that the problems brought on by modernity still flourish under ‘postmodern’ conditions. Further, I propose that given contemporary conditions (at least for some) a supplemented combination of Weber and Dewey’s views is the most suitable and politically efficient response to the demands of the day and would best serve our need for coherence and allow for meaningful political action. The article ends by proposing a blend of their views that is supplemented by the work of Judith Butler. (shrink)

Thirty years ago, the Arab Oil Embargo caused us to stop taking gasoline for granted and caused the author to start teaching students about the importance of energy in our lives. This retrospective shows the same general patterns discerned from a 20-year retrospective a decade ago: a sharp decrease in energy use following each of the two energy crises of the 1970s and a decline in the rate at which energy use increased in the years following. Yet the United States (...) has made little progress to wean itself from its fossil fuels energy diet, and there is little expectation that this will change in the next 50 years. (shrink)

Living with the Robots. A Conversation about social Robotics This interview aims at focusing some aspects of an intriguing discipline known as social Robotics. In particular, we try to get familiar with concepts and philosophical frameworks which deal with this new human enterprise. Paul Dumouchel and Luisa Damiano will help us to get in contact with a scenario in which emotions, reason and ethics will be partially revised by a somehow different perspective about human-robot interaction and sociality.

This paper investigates scalar implicatures and downward entailment in child English. In previous experimental work we have shown that adults’ computation of scalar implicatures is sensitive to entailment relations. For instance, when the disjunction operator or occurs in positive contexts, an implicature of exclusivity arises. By contrast when the disjunction operator occurs within the scope of a downward entailing linguistic expression, no implicature of exclusivity is computed. Investigations on children’s computation of scalar implicatures in the same contexts have led to (...) a slightly different picture. In particular it has proven difficult to demonstrate that children compute scalar implicatures (in non- downward entailing contexts) using the Truth Value Judgment task, a technique that has been used successfully in showing children’s sensitivity to other semantic phenomena. Adopting a different experimental technique called the Felicity Judgment task, however, we demonstrated children’s knowledge of the prerequisites to the computation of scalar implicatures (Chierchia, Crain, Guasti, Gualmini and Meroni, 2001). (shrink)

This article takes a linguistic perspective of argumentation, as proposed by Marion Carel and Oswald Ducrot with the “Théorie des blocs sémantiques” (SBT: Semantic Block Theory). This theory argues that the meaning of a linguistic entity is determined by a collection of discourses that this entity calls to mind. Describing the meaning of a word, a syntagm or an utterance amounts to specifying the argumentative linkages (“enchaînements argumentatifs”) allowed by these entities. We propose a semantic and argumentative analysis of syntagms (...) mujer fácil , femme facile [easy woman] and hombre fácil , homme facile [easy man] that, in Romance languages in particular, hold different meanings: both hombre fácil/homme facile describe a man’s character or nature, whereas mujer fácil/femme facile, in their most common usage, imply a certain sexual behavior. We will compare the argumentative linkages that make up the meaning of mujer fácil/femme facile with those of other expressions that are part of the same semantic block. Also, this analysis will connect the proposed description to certain proverbial discourse about women, and it will call attention to the role that these expressions can play in a persuasive strategy. (shrink)