This paper aims to analyze the idea of randomness in Greek philo-sophy since Empedocle to Plato to show determinism as unavoidable companion of most deterministic doctrines. Despite their adherence to determinism, even Plato and Aristotle introduce randomness to account for the various forms of reality, following so Empedocle and the atomists. There are as many contentions for randomness as for necessity in Greek and Latin thought.

We discuss the axiomatization of generalized consequence relations determined by non-deterministic matrices. We show that, under reasonable expressiveness requirements, simple axiomatizations can always be obtained, using inference rules which can have more than one conclusion. Further, when the non-deterministic matrices are finite we obtain finite axiomatizations with a suitable generalized subformula property.

O presente trabalho retrata os resultados de uma pesquisa realizada nos moldes da observação participante e da etnobiografia com o objetivo de compreender a dinâmica existente entre o ensino e aprendizagem e os valores civilizatórios inerentes às práticas cotidianas de uma comunidade tradicional afro-brasileira. O estudo foi realizado por meio da observação e participação de atividades litúrgicas de um terreiro de Umbanda e Candomblé – o “Ilè Asè Tobi Babá Olòrigbìn” - localizado na cidade de Ituiutaba, MG. O ensinar como (...) uma responsabilidade partilhada, a reafirmação de princípios éticos/civilizatórios (como a circularidade, a ancestralidade, a corporalidade, a conduta), a centralidade da oralidade e as relações entre a vida comunitária e uma singularidade que se funda no coletivo foram aspectos percebidos como características de uma dimensão formativa que orienta os aprendizados no interior desse grupo. Considerando que o modelo praticado por essas comunidades seja um modelo de sucesso (que tem resistido ao tempo e a um histórico de opressão), destacamos o grande desafio de aprender com os ensinamentos dos territórios afro-brasileiros e encontrar maneiras de incorporá-los às nossas práticas educativas, para que assim, vislumbremos uma escola mais diversa e humanizada. (shrink)

This original article outlines a theoretical path and posterior critical analysis regarding two relevant matters in modern nursing: patterns of knowing in nursing and commodification contexts in contemporary health systems. The aim of our manuscript is to examine the development of basic and contextual nursing knowledge in commodified contexts. For this purpose, we outline a discussion and reflexive dialogue based on a literature search and our clinical experience. To lay the foundation for an informed discussion, we conducted a literature search (...) and selected relevant articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese that included contents on patterns of knowing, commodification, and nursing published from 1978 to 2017. Globalization, commodification, and austerity measures seem to have negative effects on nursing. Work conditions are worsening, deteriorating nurse–patient relationships, and limiting reflection on practice. Nurses must develop knowledge to challenge and participate in institutional organization and public health policies. Development of nursing knowledge may be difficult to achieve in commodified environments. Consequently, therapeutic care relationships, healthcare services, and nurses' own health are compromised. However, by obtaining organizational, sociopolitical, and emancipatory knowledge, nurses can use strategies to adapt to or resist commodified contexts while constructing basic knowledge. (shrink)

The commodification of health care, particularly primary care, presents challenges to care and knowledge development. The purpose of this study is to examine how nurses perceive and develop their knowledge in a commodified context. A mixed‐methods study was conducted that included a closed‐question survey and in‐depth interviews with nurses in public primary care in Catalonia. There were 104 valid responses to the questionnaire and 10 in‐depth interviews. The main findings of the survey were related to workload and limited time for (...) nursing care. Six themes emerged from the in‐depth interviews: (1) limited time for nursing, (2) feelings of burnout, (3) awareness of patient and family satisfaction, (4) organizational factors that favor nurses' needs, (5) organizational factors that hinder nurses' needs, and finally (6) public administration requirements. Participants perceive excessive workload and time constraints and feel that this affects their nursing care and their physical and mental health. However, nurses purposefully use knowledge patterns to cope with the problems associated with commodification. Nurses have multidimensional, contextualized, and integrated knowledge that allows them to optimize their care based on the needs of their patients. This research examines many challenges related to nursing practice and the nursing discipline and opens the door for further research that encompasses all areas of nursing. (shrink)

Este trabajo ha sido seleccionado para la V Olimpiada de Filosofía queorganiza FICUM en la modalidad de secundaria y bachillerato, para promocionar la filosofía entre los jóvenes.

A la hora de plantearse la realización de actividades relacionadas con la enseñanza de los aspectos astronómicos, se presentan problemas prácticos evidentes que no ayudan a desarrollar una adecuada actividad científica escolar. Las TIC son un instrumento de gran utilidad para sortear estas dificultades, dado que permiten reproducir los fenómenos celestes y experimentar con ellos. El objetivo de este artículo es, en concreto, reflexionar sobre la utilidad de las simulaciones informáticas para la enseñanza de los aspectos histórico-astronómicos. Como muestra de (...) sus posibilidades se presentan simulaciones que pueden realizarse para visualizar diversos fenómenos astronómicos descubiertos por Galileo Galilei. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl intentó excluir supuestos metafísicos y ajustarse a lo dado en la experiencia inmediata, con el fin de buscar una verdad primera e indubitable sobre la cual basar verdades ulteriores, teóricas. Pero, en la segunda etapa de su pensamiento, él abandonó ese camino para usar, sin tematizarlo, el supuesto subjetivista de René Descartes. Para reconducir la fenomenología al proyecto original de ir a las cosas mismas, eliminando supuestos y ateniéndose a la experiencia inmediata, el lósofo español Antonio González Fernández (...) propone la praxeología. Esta aproximación reemplaza el concepto de sujeto, que considera al ser humano como una cosa pensante, por el de persona, entendida como acto encarnado. Esta definición antropológica, coherente con la visión teológica del ser humano como imagen y semejanza de Dios, posibilita orientaciones éticas de las acciones en pro de la descosificación y dignificación del ser humano y el cuidado de la naturaleza. (shrink)

Regarding the epistemological borderlines between science and philosophy, this article approaches the human mind and ethics from biological and philosophical theories. For this purpose, the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection provides a scientific foundation to understand the human mind and ethics. However, not only Charles Darwin has studied mental faculties and ethics, this is also a topic researched by eminent contemporary paleontologists and biologists. Prior to modern biology, going back to Greek philosophy, philosophers have traditionally studied the human (...) mind and ethics, separating human beings and the rest of nature ontologically. Following modern biology, the philosopher Hans Jonas has developed a philosophical biology from the perspective of hermeneutical phenomenology to understand life. With the help of his hermeneutical phenomenology, Jonas has presented an ontological theory of organism-metabolism to understand the phenomenon of life from simple living beings to the human mind in relation to nature, based on the body. Recently, the evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala has proposed a coherent scientific and philosophical theory about biological and cultural roots for ethics, considering the evolution of human mental and intellectual capacities and the three conditions for ethical behavior as a part of human intellectual capacity, which scientifically complements and informs Hans Jonas’s philosophical biology and ethics of responsibility. (shrink)

Children with complex communication needs (CCN) regularly have barriers to express and discuss emotions, and have fewer opportunities to participate in emotional conversations. The study explores and analyzes the changes after a training program focused on offering an interactive home learning environment that encouraged and modeled emotion-related conversations between a parent and a child with CCN within storybook-reading contexts. An observational design (nomothetic/follow-up/multidimensional) was used to explore and analyze the changes in the communicative interaction around emotions between mother-child. Augmentative and (...) alternative communication (AAC) technologies were used to provide the child access to emotion-related vocabulary. The training program resulted in the mother providing more opportunities to engage her child in emotional conversations, suggesting that when opportunities and resources to talk about emotions were promoted, the child showed more engagement in emotion-related conversations using his AAC system. The mother–child communicative patterns and behavioral relationships observed during the phases are also presented. This case study illustrates the importance of a primary communication partners’ role in facilitating emotional conversations, and the promising efficacy of a training program implemented in a storybook interactive learning environment to promote conversations about emotion-related events while encouraging children with CCN to learn, explore, express, and discuss emotions. (shrink)

Jamin Asay’s A Theory of Truthmaking is one of the most important books on truthmaking, full of important ideas from beginning to end. One of the most interesting parts of the book is Asay's attack on the explanation-first truthmaking. Explanation-first truthmaking is the explanatory project of explaining why truths are true. This is in contrast with ontology-first truthmaking, the project defended by Asay, and which is the project of answering the fundamental ontological question “What is there?”. Asay thinks explanation-first truthmaking (...) should be abandoned because it is problematic and it offers no benefits over those of ontology-first truthmaking. In this brief paper, I argue that he has not established the problematicity of explanation-first truthmaking, and that explanation-first truthmaking offers benefits over ontology-first truthmaking. (shrink)

how does one inquire into the truth of first principles? Where does one begin when deciding where to begin? Aristotle recognizes a series of difficulties when it comes to understanding the starting points of a scientific or philosophical system, and contemporary scholars have encountered their own difficulties in understanding his response. I will argue that Aristotle was aware of a Platonic solution that can help us uncover his own attitude toward the problem.Aristotle's central problem with first principles arises from the (...) fact that they cannot be demonstrated in the same way as other propositions. Since demonstrations proceed from prior and better-known principles, if the principles themselves were in need of... (shrink)

In the context of the end of life, many authors point out how the experience of identity is crucial for the well-being of patients with advanced disease. They define this identity in terms of autonomy, control, or dependence, associating these concepts with the sense of personal dignity. From the perspective of the phenomenology of embodiment, Kay Toombs and other authors have investigated the ways disease can impact on the subjective world of patients and have stressed that a consideration of this (...) personal world can promote understanding and recognition of their experience. Based on the findings of qualitative studies of the perception of dignity and autonomy in patients at the end of life, this analysis assesses concepts such as being-in-the-world in illness, embodiment, lived body versus objective body or the gaze of the other from a Toombsian phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

Antonio Caso, “La existencia como economía y como caridad” (1916). Translated with Jose G. Rodriguez Jr. as “Existence as Economy and as Charity,” in 20th Century Mexican Philosophy: Essential Readings, eds. Carlos Alberto Sánchez and Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has produced high stress in nurses, affecting their professional quality of life. Different variables affect psychological stress response and professional quality of life. In this context, the role of professional values represents an interesting object of research. Objectives: To analyze the relationship between professional values, perceived stress, and professional quality of life among nurses during the COVID-19 crisis. Research design, participants, and research context: Descriptive cross-sectional study. Participants were 439 registered nurses from the public health system. (...) Perceived stress, professional quality of life, and professional values were evaluated by using measuring instruments adapted and validated in the geographic context of research. Data were collected online in December 2020 during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee on Clinical Research of the Principality of Asturias. Findings: Within professional values, ethics obtained higher scores showing the primacy of ethical values among nurses. Moderate correlations between ethics, mastery, expertise, and compassion satisfaction were found. Frontline nurses informed high perceived stress. The correlations between professional values and compassion satisfaction were higher in non-frontline nurses. A moderate negative correlation between perceived stress and compassion satisfaction was found in both groups, which implies that the higher the stress, the lower the satisfaction in the helping relationship. Conclusion: Professional values positively influence compassion satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Compassion satisfaction presents a negative correlation with fatigue compassion and burnout in frontline and non-frontline nurses. Given the functionality of values both to guide clinical practice professionally and ethically, and prevent dissatisfaction with one’s professional quality of life by reinforcing compassion satisfaction, it is necessary to reinforce them with an intensive and cross-sectional learning during the university training. (shrink)

Our concern is the axiomatisation problem for modal and algebraic logics that correspond to various fragments of two-variable first-order logic with counting quantifiers. In particular, we consider modal products with Diff, the propositional unimodal logic of the difference operator. We show that the two-dimensional product logic $Diff \times Diff$ is non-finitely axiomatisable, but can be axiomatised by infinitely many Sahlqvist axioms. We also show that its ‘square’ version (the modal counterpart of the substitution and equality free fragment of two-variable first-order (...) logic with counting to two) is non-finitely axiomatisable over $Diff \times Diff$ , but can be axiomatised by adding infinitely many Sahlqvist axioms. These are the first examples of products of finitely axiomatisable modal logics that are not finitely axiomatisable, but axiomatisable by explicit infinite sets of canonical axioms. (shrink)

In the context of solving large distributed constraint optimization problems, belief-propagation and incomplete inference algorithms are candidates of choice. However, in general, when the problem structure is very cyclic, these solution methods suffer from bad performance, due to non-convergence and many exchanged messages. As to improve performances of the MaxSum inference algorithm when solving cyclic constraint optimization problems, we propose here to take inspiration from the belief-propagation-guided decimation used to solve sparse random graphs. We propose the novel DeciMaxSum method, which (...) is parameterized in terms of policies to decide when to trigger decimation, which variables to decimate and which values to assign to decimated variables. Based on an empirical evaluation on a classical constraint optimization benchmarks, some of these combinations of policies, using periodic decimation, cycle detection-based decimation, parallel and non parallel decimation, random or deterministic variable selection and deterministic or random sampling for value selection, outperform state-of-the-art competitors in many settings. (shrink)

_Real Metaphysics_ brings together new articles by leading metaphysicians to honour Hugh Mellor's outstanding contribution to metaphysics. Some of the most outstanding minds of current times shed new light on all the main topics in metaphysics: truth, causation, dispositions and properties, explanation, and time. At the end of the book, Hugh Mellor responds to the issues raised by each of the thirteen contributors and gives us new insight into his own highly influential work on metaphysics.

According to Ramsey (Representation reconsidered, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007 ), only classical cognitive science, with the related notions of input–output and structural representations, meets the job description challenge (the challenge to show that a certain structure or process serves a representational role at the subpersonal level). By contrast, connectionism and other nonclassical models, insofar as they exploit receptor and tacit notions of representation, are not genuinely representational. As a result, Ramsey submits, cognitive science is taking a U-turn from (...) representationalism back to behaviourism, thus presupposing that (1) the emergence of cognitivism capitalized on the concept of representation, and that (2) the materialization of nonclassical cognitive science involves a return to some form of pre-cognitivist behaviourism. We argue against both (1) and (2), by questioning Ramsey’s divide between classical and representational, versus nonclassical and nonrepresentational, cognitive models. For, firstly, connectionist and other nonclassical accounts have the resources to exploit the notion of a structural isomorphism, like classical accounts (the beefing-up strategy); and, secondly, insofar as input–output and structural representations refer to a cognitive agent, classical explanations fail to meet the job description challenge (the deflationary strategy). Both strategies work independently of each other: if the deflationary strategy succeeds, contra (1), cognitivism has failed to capitalize on the relevant concept of representation; if the beefing-up strategy is sound, contra (2), the return to a pre-cognitivist era cancels out. (shrink)

Different theoretical models have proposed cognitive and affective components in empathy and moral judgments encompassing compassion. Furthermore, gender differences in psychological and neural functions involving empathic and moral processing, as well as compassionate experiences, have been reported. However, the neurobiological function regarding affective and cognitive integration underlying compassion and gender-associated differences has not been investigated. In this study, we aimed to examine the interaction between cognitive and emotional components through functional connectivity analyzes and to explore gender differences for the recruitment (...) and interaction of these components. Thirty-six healthy participants were exposed to social images in an fMRI session to judge whether the stimuli elicited compassion. The results showed a different connectivity pattern for women and men of the insular cortex, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the cingulate cortex. The integration of affective and cognitive components follows a complex functional connectivity pattern that is different for both genders. These differences may indicate that men largely make compassionate judgments based on contextual information, while women tend to notably take internal and introspective processes into account. Women and men can use different affective and cognitive routes that could converge in similar learning of moral values, empathic experiences and compassionate acts. (shrink)

The goal of this piece is to put some pressure on Brian O’Shaughnessy’s claim that perceptual experiences are necessarily mental processes. The author targets two motivations behind the development of that view. First, O’Shaughnessy resorts to pure conceptual analysis to argue that perceptual experiences are processes. The author argues that this line of reasoning is inconclusive. Secondly, he repeatedly invokes a thought experiment concerning the total freeze of a subject’s experiential life. Even if this case is coherent, however, it does (...) not show that perceptual experiences are processes. (shrink)

Critical thinking is a complex, dynamic process formed by attitudes and strategic skills, with the aim of achieving a specific goal or objective. The attitudes, including the critical thinking attitudes, constitute an important part of the idea of good care, of the good professional. It could be said that they become a virtue of the nursing profession. In this context, the ethics of virtue is a theoretical framework that becomes essential for analyse the critical thinking concept in nursing care and (...) nursing science. Because the ethics of virtue consider how cultivating virtues are necessary to understand and justify the decisions and guide the actions. Based on selective analysis of the descriptive and empirical literature that addresses conceptual review of critical thinking, we conducted an analysis of this topic in the settings of clinical practice, training and research from the virtue ethical framework. Following JBI critical appraisal checklist for text and opinion papers, we argue the need for critical thinking as an essential element for true excellence in care and that it should be encouraged among professionals. The importance of developing critical thinking skills in education is well substantiated; however, greater efforts are required to implement educational strategies directed at developing critical thinking in students and professionals undergoing training, along with measures that demonstrate their success. Lastly, we show that critical thinking constitutes a fundamental component in the research process, and can improve research competencies in nursing. We conclude that future research and actions must go further in the search for new evidence and open new horizons, to ensure a positive effect on clinical practice, patient health, student education and the growth of nursing science. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for patients with advanced disease to express a wish to hasten death. Qualitative studies of the WTHD have found that such a wish may have different meanings, none of which can be understood outside of the patient’s personal and sociocultural background, or which necessarily imply taking concrete steps to ending one’s life. The starting point for the present study was a previous systematic review of qualitative studies of the WTHD in advanced patients. Here we analyse in (...) greater detail the statements made by patients included in that review in order to examine their moral understandings and representations of illness, the dying process and death. We identify and discuss four classes of assumptions: assumptions related to patients’ moral understandings in terms of dignity, autonomy and authenticity; assumptions related to social interactions; assumptions related to the value of life; and assumptions related to medicalisation as an overarching context within which the WTHD is expressed. Our analysis shows how a philosophical perspective can add to an understanding of the WTHD by taking into account cultural and anthropological aspects of the phenomenon. We conclude that the knowledge gained through exploring patients’ experience and moral understandings in the end-of-life context may serve as the basis for care plans and interventions that can help them experience their final days as a meaningful period of life, restoring some sense of personal dignity in those patients who feel this has been lost. (shrink)

El punto de partida de este trabajo es que la idea de autoconservación es constitutiva para la comprensión y el desarrollo histórico de la subjetividad moderna. El análisis kierkegaardiano de la psicología del individuo moderno en La enfermedad mortal retoma y reelabora el tópico de la autoconservación. Anti-Climacus (el pseudónimo kierkegaardiano) sostiene que los seres humanos no están ocupados con el mantenimiento de un yo ya determinado y concluido; sino, más bien, con la constitución misma de ese yo. En su (...) exposición, él considera que la potenciación de la auto-constitución puede conducir a la autodestrucción. Este artículo procura interpretar la desesperación como autodestrucción y ofrecer, desde dicha interpretación, una comprensión consistente de sus dos modalidades principales: no querer ser sí mismo y querer ser sí mismo. Por último, el artículo considera la posibilidad de superación de la desesperación y concluye reflexionando en torno al desarrollo moderno del concepto de autoconservación. (shrink)

Within cognitive and developmental psychology, it is commonly argued that perception is the basis for object concepts. According to this view, sensory experiences would translate into concepts thanks to the recognition, correlation and integration of physical attributes. Once attributes are integrated into general patterns, subjects would become able to parse objects into categories. In this article, we critically review the three epistemological perspectives according to which it can be claimed that object concepts depend on perception: state non-conceptualism, content non-conceptualism, and (...) content conceptualism. We show that the three perspectives have problems that make perception inadequate as a conceptual basis. We suggest that the inquiry about the origin and development of object concepts can benefit from a pragmatic perspective that considers objects’ cultural functions as a conceptual foundation. We address this possibility from the theoretical framework of the pragmatics of the object, considering the importance of objects’ functional permanence. (shrink)