Obesity is characterized by the accumulation of an excessive amount of fat mass in the adipose tissue, subcutaneous, or inside certain organs. The risk does not lie so much in the amount of fat accumulated as in its distribution. Abdominal obesity is an important risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer, having an important role in the so-called metabolic syndrome. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent, detect, and appropriately treat obesity. The diagnosis is based on anthropometric indices that have (...) been associated with adiposity and its distribution. Indices themselves, or a combination of some of them, conform to a big picture with different values to establish risk. Anthropometric indices can be used for risk identification, intervention, or impact evaluation on nutritional status or health; therefore, they will be called anthropometric health indicators. We have found 17 AHIs that can be obtained or estimated from 3D human shapes, being a noninvasive alternative compared to X-ray-based systems, and more accessible than high-cost equipment. A literature review has been conducted to analyze the following information for each indicator: definition; main calculation or obtaining methods used; health aspects associated with the indicator ; criteria to classify the population by means of percentiles or cutoff points, and based on variables such as sex, age, ethnicity, or geographic area, and limitations. (shrink)

In previous works, we presented a modification of the usual possible world semantics by introducing an independent temporal structure in each world and using accessibility functions to represent the relation among them. Different properties ofthe accessibility functions have been considered and axiomatic systems which define these properties have been given. Only a few ofthese systems have been proved tobe complete. The aim ofthis paper is to make a progress in the study ofcompleteness for functional systems. For this end, we use (...) indexes as names for temporal flows and give new proofs of completeness. Specifically, we focus our attention on the system which defines injectivity, because the system which defines this property without using indexes was proved to be incomplete in previous works. The only system considered which remains incomplete is the one which defines surjectivity, even ifwe consider a sequence ofnatural extensions ofthe previous one. (shrink)

A theory T is tight if different deductively closed extensions of T (in the same language) cannot be bi-interpretable. Many well-studied foundational theories are tight, including $\mathsf {PA}$ [39], $\mathsf {ZF}$, $\mathsf {Z}_2$, and $\mathsf {KM}$ [6]. In this article we extend Enayat’s investigations to subsystems of these latter two theories. We prove that restricting the Comprehension schema of $\mathsf {Z}_2$ and $\mathsf {KM}$ gives non-tight theories. Specifically, we show that $\mathsf {GB}$ and $\mathsf {ACA}_0$ each admit different bi-interpretable extensions, (...) and the same holds for their extensions by adding $\Sigma ^1_k$ -Comprehension, for $k \ge 1$. These results provide evidence that tightness characterizes $\mathsf {Z}_2$ and $\mathsf {KM}$ in a minimal way. (shrink)

Images of animals are all around us. Yet the visibility offered by wildlife photography can't help but contribute to an image of the animal as fundamentally separate from the human. But how can we get closer to animals without making them aware of us or changing their relationship to their environment? The Blind might be the answer. Developed for naturalists by the Institute of Critical Zoologists, the Blind is a camouflage cloak that works on the principle that an object vanishes (...) from sight if light rays striking it are not reflected, but are instead forced to flow around as if it were not there. In fifty stunning color photographs, this volumeshows the cloak tested in nature reserves, grasslands, and urban environments. By taking the human out of the picture,The Blind offers an opportunity to explore how we see animals in photography. (shrink)

Cette méditation indissociablement philosophique, esthétique, anthropologique, poétique et photographique essaie de décentrer nos manières de voir. Qu’y a-t-il à voir dans ce qui s’offre au regard? Comment certaines attitudes et pratiques observées chez les populations amérindiennes Wai-wai peuvent-elles inspirer une autre poétique du regard? Comment quelques photographies peuvent-elles documenter cette poétique? Comment les mots, et parmi eux surtout les intraduisibles, peuvent-ils nourrir une écriture de cette poétique? Cette méditation pose plus de questions qu’elle ne vise à en résoudre.

La recepción europea de Gómez Dávila comenzó a desplegarse de manera más amplia a partir de la lectura y difusión realizada por Franco Volpi. Este artículo alude a la manera como dicha lectura concretó las interpretaciones del colombiano, principalmente a la luz de una filosofía práctica y una perspectiva crítica. De dichas posturas, el italiano destaca la vocación vital y el carácter provocador del pensamiento de Gómez Dávila.

Philosophers of perception frequently assume that we see actual states of affairs, or facts. Call this claim factualism. In his book, William Fish suggests that factualism is supported by phenomenological observation as well as by experimental studies on multiple object tracking and dynamic feature-object integration. In this paper, I examine the alleged evidence for factualism, focusing mainly on object detection and tracking. I argue that there is no scientific evidence for factualism. This conclusion has implications for studies on the phenomenology (...) and epistemology of visual perception. (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory of vision and visual consciousness is often described as a radical alternative to the computational and connectionist orthodoxy in the study of visual perception. However, it is far from clear whether the theory represents a significant departure from orthodox approaches or whether it is an enrichment of it. In this study, I tackle this issue by focusing on the explanatory structure of the sensorimotor theory. I argue that the standard formulation of the theory subscribes to the same (...) theses of the dynamical hypothesis and that it affords covering-law explanations. This however exposes the theory to the mere description worry and generates a puzzle about the role of representations. I then argue that the sensorimotor theory is compatible with a mechanistic framework, and show how this can overcome the mere description worry and solve the problem of the explanatory role of representations. By doing so, it will be shown that the theory should be understood as an enrichment of the orthodoxy, rather than an alternative. (shrink)

Cognitive representations are typically analysed in terms of content, vehicle and format. While current work on formats appeals to intuitions about external representations, such as words and maps, in this paper we develop a computational view of formats that does not rely on intuitions. In our view, formats are individuated by the computational profiles of vehicles, i.e., the set of constraints that fix the computational transformations vehicles can undergo. The resulting picture is strongly pluralistic, it makes space for a variety (...) of different formats, and is intimately tied to the computational approach to cognition in cognitive science and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza en primera instancia la lectura y consideración hermenéutica que Ernesto Volkening realiza de la obra de Nicolás Gómez Dávila. Tras una presentación de las pautas interpretativas que se dan en el Diario de lectura de Volkening, se considera luego el interés de losautores por la arquitectura y el urbanismo modernos, como claves para la crítica del modo de vida reificante del hombre actual. Posteriormente, se ilustran las pautas que abordan la historia y la historicidad, bajo la idea (...) de una comprensión hermenéutica gestada en los contextos, opuesta a cualquier determinismo y puesta en marcha bajo la impronta de la singularidad e individualidad. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to understand the role of imagination and practical judgment in Kant's moral philosophy. After a comparison of Kant with Rousseau, I explore Kant's moral philosophy itself — unlike Hannah Arendt, who finds in the enlarged mentality of the third Critique the ground for the activity of imagination in a shared world. Instead, I place the concept of moral legislation in its background, the reflection on particulars relevant to deliberation, and discuss the mutual relation of (...) reflection and determination. Not only reflection and determination work together; imagination and judgment imply one another essentially, as interpretation of what is relevant, and as a principle of orientation in the choice of the maxim against the backdrop of a uniform and ordered world. The concepts of analogy and symbolic exhibition turn out to be crucial for how reason represents to itself the reality of ideas in the world. (shrink)

The activism of institutional investors tends more and more toward the supervision and control of the behavior of the managers of big companies. In this article, we present a model based on the creation of an activism index that lets us evaluate such activism's effect on the sensitivity of the investment policies of a company in the face of financial variables and market variables . To test our assertions, we analyze firm-level data for United Kingdom , Germany, France, Denmark, and (...) Spain during the period 1995-2004. Our results point to a significant reduction in the sensitivity of company investment decisions in the face of these variables, especially relative to intangible capital, as a result of the neutralizing effect of activism on the high agency costs of free cash flow and on the information asymmetries of the market. (shrink)

The activism of institutional investors tends more and more toward the supervision and control of the behavior of the managers of big companies. In this article, we present a model based on the creation of an activism index that lets us evaluate such activism’s effect on the sensitivity of the investment policies of a company in the face of financial variables (such as cash flow and liquidity ratio) and market variables (ownership concentration and value creation index). To test our assertions, (...) we analyze firm-level data for United Kingdom (U.K.), Germany, France, Denmark, and Spain during the period 1995–2004. Our results point to a significant reduction in the sensitivity of company investment decisions in the face of these variables, especially relative to intangible capital, as a result of the neutralizing effect of activism on the high agency costs of free cash flow and on the information asymmetries of the market. (shrink)

The Critique of Pure Reason—Kant’s First Critique—is one of the most studied texts in intellectual history, but as Alfredo Ferrarin points out in this radically original book, most of that study has focused only on very select parts. Likewise, Kant’s oeuvre as a whole has been compartmentalized, the three Critiques held in rigid isolation from one another. Working against the standard reading of Kant that such compartmentalization has produced, The Powers of Pure Reason explores forgotten parts of the First (...) Critique in order to find an exciting, new, and ultimately central set of concerns by which to read all of Kant’s works. Ferrarin blows the dust off of two egregiously overlooked sections of the First Critique—the Transcendental Dialectic and the Doctrine of Method. There he discovers what he argues is the Critique’s greatest achievement: a conception of the unity of reason and an exploration of the powers it has to reach beyond itself and legislate over the world. With this in mind, Ferrarin dismantles the common vision of Kant as a philosopher writing separately on epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics and natural teleology, showing that the three Critiques are united by this underlying theme: the autonomy and teleology of reason, its power and ends. The result is a refreshing new view of Kant, and of reason itself. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that there is philosophy of science since philosophy existed. Thus, the idea that the philosophy of science was born with neopositivism is historically wrong and detrimental to the development of the philosophy of science itself. Neopositivism tried to found the philosophy of science as an anti-philosophical discipline, as a field of study that came to replace simple philosophy. The attempt was maintained for thirty years, but failed. Now, this does not mean that we cannot make (...) good philosophy of science today, but that the philosophy of science has returned to the common house of philosophy, it is gradually recovering the connection that it should never have lost with the main philosophical traditions and disciplines. (shrink)

Many artists, art critics, and poets suggest that an aesthetic appreciation of artworks may modify our perception of the world, including quotidian things and scenes. I call this Art-to-World, AtW. Focusing on visual artworks, in this paper I articulate an empirically-informed account of AtW that is based on content-related views of aesthetic experience, and on Goodman’s and Elgin’s concept of exemplification. An aesthetic encounter with artworks demands paying attention to its aesthetic, expressive, or design properties that realize its purpose. Attention (...) to these properties make percipients better able to spot them in other entities and scenes as well. The upshot is that an aesthetic commerce with artworks enlarges the scope of what we are able to see and has therefore momentous epistemic consequences. (shrink)

A method for the recursive identification of physiological models of the cardiovascular baroreflex is proposed and applied to the time-varying analysis of vagal and sympathetic activities. The proposed method was evaluated with data from five newborn lambs, which were acquired during injection of vasodilator and vasoconstrictors and the results show a close match between experimental and simulated signals. The model-based estimation of vagal and sympathetic contributions were consistent with physiological knowledge and the obtained estimators of vagal and sympathetic activities were (...) compared to traditional markers associated with baroreflex sensitivity. High correlations were observed between traditional markers and model-based indices. (shrink)

The objective of this study is to provide insight into culinary systems. Each culture expresses its own identity through the way in which it transforms food into an elaborated cuisine. The phases of a cooking process start with the choice of ingredients, their preparation, their processing, how they are served, and how they are eaten. Each of these phases makes it possible to understand the semiotic and social behavior of a human group in the moment they choose to prepare and (...) eat a particular food. Therefore, this article contains a contrastive analysis of how Mexican, Texan, and Italian cuisines show how spicy and hot food is interpreted depending on the values that ​​are given to it in regards to being considered a dish, a spice or a vegetable. It bases its analysis on the mechanisms built around the meaning of chile in order to express cultural characteristics and differences. The recipes and their narrative processes, in addition to the use of color, allow the identification of parameters to describe the various cuisines through recipes books. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente texto es llegar a una descripción clara y comprensiva de la forma budista de abordar la cuestión cognitiva. La palabra cognición se refiere aquí al proceso por el cual se desenvuelve la convicción de que algo es "verdadero". El examen budista de la cognición puede, a su vez, ser encarado como una forma de buscar mayor libertad y distanciamiento frente a los pensamientos, opiniones y tendencias propios.

Timothy Williamson supports the thesis that every possible entity necessarily exists and so he needs to explain how a possible son of Wittgenstein’s, for example, exists in our world:he exists as a merely possible object, a pure locus of potential. Williamson presents a short argument for the existence of MPOs: how many knives can be made by fitting together two blades and two handles? Four: at the most two are concrete objects, the others being merely possible knives and merely possible (...) objects. This paper defends the idea that one can avoid reference and ontological commitment to MPOs. My proposal is that MPOs can be dispensed with by using the notion of rules of knife-making. I first present a solution according to which we count lists of instructions - selected by the rules - describing physical combinations between components. This account, however, has its own difficulties and I eventually suggest that one can find a way out by admitting possible worlds, entities which are more commonly accepted - at least by philosophers - than MPOs. I maintain that, in answering Williamson’s questions, we count classes of physically possible worlds in which the same instance of a general rule is applied. (shrink)

Introduction to the topical collection "The Structure of Perceptual Objects"—with contributions by Mohan Matthen, EJ Green, Alisa Mandrigin, Blazej Skrzypulec, and Anna Drożdżowicz.

Although Hume seems to suppose that natural processes occur in a deterministic way, his conception of causality prohibits us from knowing them as deterministic. The reason is that for him the idea of a necessary connection between events is purely psychological. In our analysis of this question, we argue that: a) in his main references about causality, Hume does not assume a strong ontological commitment with determinism; b) certain parts of his texts suggest that indeterminism is non eliminable, in the (...) knowledge of nature; and c) his causal conception of freedom supposes indeterminism in natural processes, and not in our knowledge of them only.Embora Hume eventualmente pareça supor que os processos naturais ocorrem de modo determinístico, sua concepção da causalidade proíbe que os conheçamos enquanto tais, pois, para ele, toda idéia de conexão necessária entre eventos é de natureza psicológica. Em nossa análise dessa questão, argumentamos que: a) nas suas principais passagens sobre a causalidade, Hume não assume um compromisso forte com o determinismo; b) certas partes de seus textos sugerem que o indeterminismo é ineliminável, no conhecimento da natureza; e c) sua concepção causal da liberdade supõe o indeterminismo dos processos naturais, e não apenas o indeterminismo em nível de seu conhecimento. (shrink)

The nature of mental information-processing is studied in the context of the neo-mechanicist program for Biology, from the general form of information-processing in living systems, allosteric interactions, to information-processing in human brain. An instantiation of the self-organizing systems model is suggested, which leads to the hypothesis of the "supercode". This is a mental program, molecularly codified, responsable for, inter alia, linguistic competence. A comparison is done between this hypothesis and Jerry Fodor's "language of thought".Raciocinando no contexto do programa neomecanicista para (...) a Biologia, estudamos a natureza do processamento de informação no sistema vivo em geral, e no cérebro humano em particular, onde uma aplicação do modelo da Auto-Organização nos conduz à hipótese do "Supercódigo". Este seria um programa mental, molecularmente codificado, responsável pelas competências inatas, como a competência lingüística. Fazemos também uma comparação entre nossa hipótese e a da Linguagem do Pensamento, proposta por Jerry Fodor. (shrink)

Hegel is, arguably, the most difficult of all philosophers. To find a way into his thought interpreters have usually approached him as though he were developing Kantian and Fichtean themes. This book demonstrates in a systematic way that it makes much more sense to view Hegel's idealism in relation to the metaphysical and epistemological tradition stemming from Aristotle. The book offers an account of Hegel's idealism in light of his interpretation, discussion, assimilation and critique of Aristotle's philosophy. There are explorations (...) of Hegelian and Aristotelian views of system and history; being, metaphysics, logic, and truth; nature and subjectivity; spirit, knowledge, and self-knowledge; ethics and politics. No serious student of Hegel can afford to ignore this major interpretation. It will also be of interest in such fields as political science and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Many artists, art critics, and poets suggest that an aesthetic appreciation of artworks may modify our perception of the world, including quotidian things and scenes. I call this Art-to-World, AtW. Focusing on visual artworks, in this paper I articulate an empirically-informed account of AtW that is based on content related views of aesthetic experience, and on Goodman’s and Elgin’s concept of exemplification. An aesthetic encounter with artworks demands paying attention to its aesthetic, expressive, or design properties that realize its purpose. (...) Attention to these properties make percipients better able to spot them in other entities and scenes as well. The upshot is that an aesthetic commerce with artworks enlarges the scope of what we are able to see and has therefore momentous epistemic consequences. (shrink)

L'analyste des discours qui surgissent au sein de conflits sociaux, de controverses, de débats publics, a souvent le sentiment qu'il n'observe pas des 'camps' correspondant à des groupes d'individus, mais des agencements qui doivent être considérés indépendamment des intentions, des stratégies ou des opinions de ceux qui y sont impliqués. Pour décrire les processus dans lesquels se constituent ces configurations conflictuelles, on fait alors appel à des combinaisons conceptuelles plus ou moins heureuses. À partir de l'hypothèse selon laquelle les conflits (...) sociaux évoluent par le renforcement/affaiblissement de la disponibilité de types d'actions, ce livre se propose de construire une théorie sémantique qui permette d'éclairer les mécanismes à l'œuvre dans les dynamiques sociales structurées par des tensions, d'interroger les liens entre discours et actions humaines, et d'explorer les conditionnements de la formation sociale du politique"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)