The inbreeding coefficient of a population, estimated from ecclesiastical Roman Catholic dispensations, results from the relative contribution of different degrees of relationships (uncle–niece, first cousin, etc.). The interpopulation comparisons of consanguinity patterns may be obscured by the fact that in 1918 the Roman Catholic Church norm regulating the closest marriageable kinship was modified, limiting the application for an ecclesiastical dispensation to relatives of third degree (second cousins) or closer. Depending on the length of the period before or after the change (...) of regulation, coefficients and rates may differ. Deviation of frequencies for multiple marriages may also occur. The aim of the present paper is to determine how the chosen procedure based on ecclesiastical dispensations may affect results, regarding the inbreeding coefficient, the consanguinity rate, the structure of consanguinity and the close/remote kinship ratio. As a sample case, information from the Gredos mountain range (central Spain) has been used. (shrink)

Neonatal mortality during the first week of life, corresponding to the years 19750·023 per year. This decline cannot be explained by an increase in the mean birth weight (MBW=23440·835−10·107 g per year). From the most frequent of the causes of death to the least were: congenital anomalies, preterm born or low birth weight, respiratory problems, pregnancy difficulties, hypoxaemia/asphyxia, delivery difficulties and infectious diseases. This sequence changed when the specific age at death was considered. The NMR descended evenly for both sexes (...) for the causes indicated above, except for preterm born or low birth weight, in which the male mortality decrease was greater since its rate was more elevated at the beginning of the period studied. For all the causes listed, NMR was more elevated both in urban areas and for males. Early neonatal mortality (first 24 hours) was higher for pregnancy difficulties, preterm born or low birth weight, congenital anomalies and hypoxaemia/asphyxia. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about the meaning of lexical words, i.e., words that contribute with content to the meaning of sentences. This debate has coincided with a renewal in the study of polysemy, which has taken place in the psycholinguistics camp mainly. There is already a fruitful interbreeding between two lines of research: the theoretical study of lexical word meaning, on the one hand, and the models of polysemy psycholinguists present, on the other. In this paper I aim at (...) deepening on this ongoing interbreeding, examine what is said about polysemy, particularly in the psycholinguistics literature, and then show how what we seem to know about the representation and storage of polysemous senses affects the models that we have about lexical word meaning. (shrink)

Background:Moral courage is defined as courage to act according to one’s own ethical values and principles even at the risk of negative consequences for the individual. In a complex nursing practice, ethical considerations are integral. Moral courage is needed throughout nurses’ career.Aim:To analyse graduating nursing students’ moral courage and the factors associated with it in six European countries.Research design:A cross-sectional design, using a structured questionnaire, as part of a larger international ProCompNurse study. In the questionnaire, moral courage was assessed with (...) a single question (visual analogue scale 0–100), the questionnaire also covered several background variables.Participants and research context:The sample comprised graduating nursing students (n = 1796) from all participating countries. To get a comprehensive view about graduating nursing students’ moral courage, the views of nurse managers (n = 538) and patients (n = 1327) from the same units in which the graduating nursing students practised were also explored, with parallel questionnaires.Ethical considerations:Ethical approvals and research permissions were obtained according to national standards in every country and all participants gave their informed consent.Results:The mean of graduating nursing students’ self-assessed moral courage was 77.8 (standard deviation 17.0; on a 0–100 scale), with statistically significant differences between countries. Higher moral courage was associated with many factors, especially the level of professional competence. The managers assessed the graduating nursing students’ moral courage lower (66.5; standard deviation 18.4) and the patients slightly higher (80.6; standard deviation 19.4) than the graduating nursing students themselves.Discussion and conclusions:In all countries, the graduating nursing students’ moral courage was assessed as rather high, with differences between countries and populations. These differences and associations between moral courage and ethics education require further research. (shrink)

Following some of the main arguments Derrida develops in ‘White Mythology’, in this article I propose an unexplored dialogue between Derrida and Althusser considering the use and the place that each of them gives to metaphor in their philosophical strategies. I give special attention to some rather isolated passages of ‘Elements of Self-Criticism’ and ‘Lenin and Philosophy’, where Althusser, against all evidence, seems to be quite aware of the importance of metaphor and mataphorization in every philosophical practice. As Balibar has (...) argued, contrary to the metaphysical tradition, metaphor would not be the opposite but what anticipates the concept. In this sense, it is possible to observe how Althusser’s work has continuously put into practice – as the singular signature of his theoretical practice – something that I call the ‘detour of metaphor’ as a necessary ‘deviation’ for the production of new concepts. Without any evidence that Althusser may have known Derrida’s essay, I show how Althusser’s own theoretical work, one in which ‘metaphor’ as a philosophical theme appears to be rather anecdotic, is unexpectedly close to Derrida’s own positions concerning the margins of philosophy and its ‘outside’, the relation to the metaphysical tradition, and the importance of strategy in philosophy. (shrink)

Joaquín M. Fuster is an eminent cognitive neuroscientist whose research over the last five decades has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the neural structures underlying cognition and behaviour. This book provides his view on the eternal question of whether we have free will. Based on his seminal work on the functions of the prefrontal cortex in decision-making, planning, creativity, working memory, and language, Professor Fuster argues that the liberty or freedom to choose between alternatives is a function of (...) the cerebral cortex, under prefrontal control, in its reciprocal interaction with the environment. Freedom is therefore inseparable from that circular relationship. The Neuroscience of Freedom and Creativity is a fascinating inquiry into the cerebral foundation of our ability to choose between alternative actions and to freely lead creative plans to their goal. (shrink)

Autistic individuals are commonly said – and also consider themselves – to be excessively literalist, in the sense that they tend to prefer literal interpretations of words and utterances. This literalist bias seems to be fairly specific to autism and still lacks a convincing explanation. In this paper we explore a novel hypothesis that has the potential to account for the literalist bias in autism. We argue that literalism results from an atypical functioning of the predictive system: specifically, an atypical (...) balance between predictions and error signals in language processing may make individuals more uncertain about their own predictions. Such uncertainty is then often resolved by resorting to the safest interpretation, that is, the literal one. We start by reviewing existing explanations of other autistic traits that appeal to predictive processing. We then apply these insights to language, by showing that predictions play a key role in everyday comprehension and that a low level of confidence in one’s own predictions is likely to escalate comprehension difficulties. Finally, we take a deeper look at non-literal uses of language by discussing the case of metaphors, to illustrate how a predictive processing account offers a promising explanation of the literalist bias in autism. (shrink)

Many, including American citizens, and foreigners, are asking whether a convicted felon could be elected and serve as president of the US. The answer to their query is a resounding, yes. In spite of people’s bewilderment, there is nothing in the US Constitution to prevent a convicted felon from occupying the Oval Office if fairly elected. Yet the more pressing question is: Should reasonable and fair-minded citizens vote for a convicted felon based solely on their partisan politics disregarding the general (...) welfare? This is not a factual question, but rather a question about good judgement in politics. Good judgment, however, is not only about virtuous or vicious character but also about who can deliver better outcomes for those affected by policies. (shrink)

Objections to child labour range from its creating unfair trade advantage to its infringing children’s human rights. Analysis of the responsibilities of various parties implicated in the use of child labour can lead to identifying stages in a cumulative ethical approach which is not self‐defeating. The author is an economist who has recently completed his MBA at London Business School.

The renewed interest in concepts and their role in psychological theorizing is partially motivated by Machery’s claim that concepts are so heterogeneous that they have no explanatory role. Against this, pluralism argues that there is multiplicity of different concepts for any given category, while hybridism argues that a concept is constituted by a rich common representation. This article aims to advance the understanding of the hybrid view of concepts. First, we examine the main arguments against hybrid concepts and conclude that, (...) even if not successful, they challenge hybridism to find a robust criterion for concept individuation and to show an explanatory advantage for hybrid concepts. Then we propose such a criterion of individuation, which we will call ‘functional stable coactivation’. Finally, we examine the prospects of hybridism to understand what is involved in recent approaches to categorization and meaning extraction. 1 The Heterogeneity of Conceptual Representations2 Two Challenges for Hybrid Concepts: Individuation and Explanation2.1 The coordination criterion2.2 Concepts as constituents of thoughts3 Individuating Hybrids: Functional Stable Coactivation4 The Explanatory Power of Hybrid Concepts4.1 Categorization4.2 Meaning extraction4.2.1 Linguistic comprehension and rich lexical entries4.2.2 Polysemy and hybrid concepts5 Conclusion. (shrink)

This paper presents a blueprint for an ecological cognitive architecture. Ecological psychology, I contend, must be complemented with a story about the role of the CNS in perception, action, and cognition. To arrive at such a story while staying true to the tenets of ecological psychology, it will be necessary to flesh out the central metaphor according to which the animal perceives its environment by ‘resonating’ to information in energy patterns: what is needed is a theory of resonance. I offer (...) here the two main elements of such a theory: a framework and a methodology. (shrink)

In this paper we address the question of what determines the content of our conscious episodes of thinking, considering recent claims that phenomenal character individuates thought contents. We present one prominent way for defenders of phenomenal intentionality to develop that view and then examine ‘sensory inner speech views’, which provide an alternative way of accounting for thought-content determinacy. We argue that such views fare well with inner speech thinking but have problems accounting for unsymbolized thinking. Within this dialectic, we present (...) an account of the nature of unsymbolized thinking that accords with and can be seen as a continuation of the activity of inner speech, while offering a way of explaining thought-content determinacy in terms of linguistic structures and representations. (shrink)

Considering the most recent advances in artificial intelligence and biomechanics, a hypothetical future of physicalism is explored. It is concluded that a rational and sensible extrapolation of present and expected future advances in those two areas will have vast consequences in the physicalist view. In particular, it is also argued that consciousness cannot be defined in a simple general manner, but only understood through the observable and behavioural actions of humans or sufficiently advanced robots, which may be, at some future (...) time, indistinct. This last result is established by applying what we call Plato’s trap, and our main conclusion is a defence of physicalism. It is argued that human beings are robots which soon will be indistinguishable from suitable advanced man-made robots, which will in turn render many philosophical questions and objections to physicalism irrelevant and, in fact, quite similar in sense and importance to some philosophical medieval questions about God, the soul and immortality. (shrink)

One big challenge faced by cognitive science is the development of a unified theory that integrates disparate scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena. In this paper, I offer a unified framework that provides a way to integrate neural and behavioral scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena—typically addressed by neuroscience and experimental psychology, respectively. The framework is based on the concept of resonance originated in ecological psychology and aims to be the foundation for a unified theory for radical embodiment; that is, (...) a unified theory for that dissident part of cognitive science that shares a methodological commitment to dynamic systems theory and remains skeptical about the adequacy of mechanism and representationalism as the guiding ideas in the field. In the course of my presentation, I analyze different issues regarding the requirements and constraints unification poses to radical embodiment. (shrink)

According to a model defended by some authors, dispositional concepts can be legitimately used in causal explanations, although such a use is not necessary. I argue, however, that there is a kind of use of dispositions in explanations that does not fall within this model: we will miss some explanations if we forsake dispositional concepts and explanations.

Using the method of Descriptive Experience Sampling, some subjects report experiences of thinking that do not involve words or any other symbols [Hurlburt, R. T., and C. L. Heavey. 2006. Exploring Inner Experience. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; Hurlburt, R. T., and S. A. Akhter. 2008. “Unsymbolized Thinking.” Consciousness and Cognition 17 : 1364–1374]. Even though the possibility of this unsymbolized thinking has consequences for the debate on the phenomenological status of cognitive states, the phenomenon is still insufficiently examined. This paper analyzes (...) the main properties of unsymbolized thinking and advances an explanation of its origin. According to our analysis, unsymbolized thoughts appear as propositional states, that is, they are experienced as compositional conceptual phenomena, with semantic and syntactic features analogous to those of the contents of utterances. Based on this characterization, we hypothesize that UT is continuous with the activity of inner speech, in particular, it i... (shrink)

In this paper we discuss a phenomenon we call perspectival plurality, which has gone largely unnoticed in the current debate between relativism and contextualism about predicates of personal taste. According to perspectival plurality, the truth value of a sentence containing more than one PPT may depend on more than one perspective. Prima facie, the phenomenon engenders a problem for relativism and can be shaped into an argument in favor of contextualism. We explore the consequences of perspectival plurality in depth and (...) assess several possible responses on behalf of advocates of relativism. (shrink)

Desde el retorno de la democracia en Chile, la alianza política que alcanzó el gobierno consolidó sus posiciones de poder e influencia sin conocer por 20 años alternancia o grandes cambios en sus formas de gestión. Aunque el control del gobierno cambió a una coalición diferente en 2010, la agrupación previa continúa existiendo y posee una significativa representación en el parlamento. ¿Qué expresa tal estabilidad? El argumento principal en este artículo es que un origen social similar de los parlamentarios unido (...) a una interacción social frecuente reduce el dramatismo de las diferencias ideológicas haciendo así más probable las transformaciones políticas o el cambio del grupo en el poder. El análisis considera datos sociodemográficos de los parlamentarios, así como datos de redes sociales de una muestra 37 parlamentarios en ejercicio y 20 que lo hicieron entre 1990 y 2004. El origen social de los parlamentarios corresponde en forma creciente a un medio social similar, caracterizado por escolarización en establecimientos privados y universidades, alcanzando un status socioeconómico relativamente alto. El mapa de sus redes sociales muestra que el clivaje ideológico entre dictadura y democracia alcanzó también las relaciones sociales, estableciendo gran distancia social entre los políticos que hoy dominan la escena. El mapa permite apreciar también un nuevo campo político socialmente más diverso, en el cual tienen relevancia políticos más jóvenes, líderes regionales y la universidad como espacio de encuentro entre políticos e intelectuales. (shrink)

La figura de Walter Benjamin ha venido adquiriendo en los últimos años una inesperada actualidad. Su contribución al pensamiento de nuestro siglo aparece hoy como una intervención singular e irrepetible, producto de una encrucijada cultural patentemente determinada por la conciencia de crisis generalizada por la modernidad. En este contexto, la presente investigación trata de ofrecer una aproximación informativa y ajustada al conjunto de la obra de Benjamin, en una lectura efectuada desde el punto de vista de la Estética. En consecuencia, (...) el libro recorre puntualmente la sinuosa trayectoria de Benjamin desde sus tempranos escritos juveniles, pasando por su maduración crítica en sus trabajos en torno al universo romántico y el barroco, hasta su conversión al materialismo histórico y su explosiva dispersión en la obra de los Pasajes. (shrink)

O projeto emancipatório moderno estabelece uma concepção otimista de desenvolvimento científico e social. Os filósofos Immanuel Kant e Karl Marx, de modo distinto, levam ao ápice tal projeto emancipatório, o primeiro, ancorado numa concepção de sujeito transcendental capaz de estabelecer verdade e validade universal, o segundo, ancorado na categoria de trabalho desenvolvida em sua doutrina do materialismo histórico. A partir do século XIX, filósofos como Nietzsche, Heidegger e Adorno/Horkheimer põem sob suspeita tal projeto ao demonstrar seus fundamentos não metafísicos. Tais (...) críticas expurgam as pretensões totalitárias do projeto emancipatório moderno, e nos remetem à sua revisão. O filósofo alemão Jurgen Habermas, considerando as críticas elaboradas pelos filósofos da suspeita, vai buscar reconstruir o projeto emancipatório moderno a partir de bases pós-metafísicas. A raiz de tal reconstrução está em Trabalho e Interação. Notas sobre a filosofia do espírito de Hegel em Jena, na qual Habermas promove o confronto da filosofia hegeliana com o pensamento de Kant e Marx, possibilitando a revisão destes. Nessa revisão Habermas desenvolve os conceitos de trabalho e interação, que ao mesmo tempo fundamentam sua crítica à tecnocracia e lançam os pilares para a posterior elaboração da Teoria da Ação Comunicativa. (shrink)

According to an increasing number of authors, the best, if not the only, argument in favour of physicalism is the so-called 'overdetermination argument'. This argument, if sound, establishes that all the entities that enter into causal interactions with the physical world are physical. One key premise in the overdetermination argument is the principle of the causal closure of the physical world, said to be supported by contemporary physics. In this paper, I examine various ways in which physics may support the (...) principle, either as a methodological guide or as depending on some other laws and principles of physics. (shrink)

Teaching mathematics and improving mathematics competence are pending subjects within our educational system. The PEIM (Programa Evolutivo Instruccional para Matemáticas), a constructivist intervention program for the improvement of mathematical performance, affects the different agents involved in math learning, guaranteeing a significant improvement in students’ performance. The program is based on the following pillars: (a) students become the main agents of their learning by constructing their own knowledge; (b) the teacher must be the guide to facilitate and guarantee such a construction (...) by being a great connoisseur of the fundamental aspects of the development of the child’s mathematical thinking; (c) the mathematical contents must be sequenced in terms of the complexity and significance for the student as well as contextualized at all times; and (d) the classroom must have a constructivist climate highlighting cooperative work among students. The implementation of PEIM along with the empirical evaluation conducted in several centers in Madrid and Zaragoza (Spain) confirm how students improve their mathematical competence. Both first- and second-grade students in elementary education were far more effective in solving problems, highlighting the use of more advanced strategies in their resolution and a lower incidence of conceptual errors. Moreover, it was possible to verify how the students proving greater difficulty, experienced an evolution in learning similarly to those who did not present it. The program provides customized education to allow the teacher to know at all times how he should be more influential on the students’ learning through mathematical profiles. Both teaching practice and teachers were observed, being that of the experimental group more prone to analyzing processes and allowing the construction of knowledge by students, due to their psycho-developmental training. As a result, we found several improvements through the implementation of the program that may serve, for upcoming years, as a basis for the necessary changes in the teaching of mathematics. (shrink)

This text goes as a reflection on the uses of the concept of mimesis as the core of Adorno’s thought. It starts with the proposals of the Dialectic of the Enlightenment, and then refers them to the way in which they reappear in the Aesthetic Theory, distinguishing the role of mimesis in he process of the production of the work and in that of its reception, both in art as in mass culture. Finally, it points to the possibility of enriching (...) the concept by connecting it with Benjamin. Adorno, mimesis, reception, culture industry, Benjamin. Resumen El texto se presenta como una reflexión en torno a los usos del concepto de mímesis como núcleo del pensamiento de Adorno. Se parte de los planteamientos de la Dialéctica de la Ilustración, para luego remitirlos a la manera en que reaparecen en la Teoría estética, distinguiendo el papel de la mímesis en el proceso de la producción de la obra y en el de su recepción, tanto en el arte como en la cultura de masas. Finalmente, se apunta a la posibilidad de enriquecer el concepto conectándolo con Benjamin. (shrink)

In this article, an epistemological and ontological view of Statistical Mechanics is presented. The author believes that this is a clear-cut example that can prove to be useful as a resource material for teachers, and also, a clear pedagogical material for science students when taking courses of Philosophy of Science. Statistical Mechanics is a regular course on most science and engineering programs, we believe that this fact facilitate the understanding of the philosophical discussion here presented.

Charles Travis has been forcefully arguing that meaning does not determine truth-conditions for more than two decades now. To this end, he has devised ingenious examples whereby different utterances of the same prima facie non-ambiguous and non-indexical expression type have different truth-conditions depending on the occasion on which they are delivered. However, Travis does not argue that meaning varies with circumstances; only that truth-conditions do. He assumes that meaning is a stable feature of both words and sentences. After surveying some (...) of the explanations that semanticists and pragmaticians have produced in order to account for Travis cases, I propose a view which differs substantially from all of them. I argue that the variability in the truth-conditions that an utterance type can have is due to meaning facts alone. To support my argument, I suggest that we think about the meanings of words (in particular, the meanings of nouns) as rich conceptual structures; so rich that the way in which a property concept applies to an object concept is not determined. (shrink)

Recently, many philosophers and psychologists have claimed that the explanation that grounds both passivity phenomena in the cognitive domain and passivity phenomena that occur with respect to overt actions is, along broad lines, the same. Furthermore, they claim that the best account we have of such phenomena in both scenarios is the “comparator” account. However, there are reasons to doubt whether the comparator model can be exported from the realm of overt actions to the cognitive domain in general. There is (...) a lingering worry concerning such explanations of thought insertion: the "What is compared to what?" problem. Here I examine two ways to tackle this problem. First: thought insertion consists of the misattribution of strings of inner speech which are not attenuated (thought insertion is thus another name for auditory verbal hallucinations). Second: thought insertion is misattributed inner speech which exhibits the same phenomenological characteristics as normal inner speech. After explaining the types of problem that each of these potential solutions faces, I conclude with a set of open questions that the comparator theorist has to tackle. (shrink)

Medium-sized language communities face competition between local and global languages such as Spanish, Russian, French and, above all, English. The various regions of Spain where Catalan is spoken, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania show how their medium-sized languages (a term used to distinguish them as much from minority codes as from more widely-spoken codes) coexist alongside or struggle with their big brothers in multilingual families. This comparative analysis offers unique insight into language contact in present-day Europe.

In this article some intriguing aspects of electromagnetic theory and its relation to mathematics and reality are discussed, in particular those related to the suppositions needed to obtain the wave equations from Maxwell equations and from there Helmholtz equation. The following questions are discussed. How is that equations obtained with so many irreal or fictitious assumptions may provide a description that is in a high degree verifiable? Must everything that is possible to deduce from a theoretical mathematical model occur in (...) the world? Does everything that takes place in the world have a mathematical description? (shrink)

Se presenta el argumento de W. T. Stace sobre el realismo señalando no que éste sea falso sino solamente que no hay absolutamente ninguna razón para considerar que sea verdadero y por tanto no tenemos por qué creerlo. Esto se aplica a la discusión de la pregunta: ¿Cómo sabemos que los átomos existen? Haciendo referencia a algunas de las respuestas científicas más importantes conocidas que son en orden cronológico: i) La ley de las proporciones definidas o Ley de Proust, ii) (...) la teoría cinética de los gases, iii) el movimiento Browniano y, iv) imágenes de microscopio de efecto túnel. (shrink)

A partir de un enfoque internalista para los estados mentales, se propone que los términos metafísicos son el resultado de estados mentales que, a su vez, son propiedades emergentes de sistemas dinámicos caóticos con atractores coexistentes en el cerebro. Se sugiere que esto proporciona una explicación física para los conceptos metafísicos. Esto se hace a partir de la propuesta de que todos los sistemas dinámicos con atractores coexistentes caóticos, como el cerebro, presentan propiedades emergentes. Obtenemos así una explicación no reductiva (...) de los estados mentales y su alta sensibilidad al ruido y a las condiciones iniciales. (shrink)

One of the most important characteristics of modern science is its replicability and objectivity. This means that a scientific result is taken as such only when it has been reproduced by other scientists. Indeed, the replicability of a scientific result in an objective and independent way by members of a scientific community is the cornerstone of science. Experimental laser physics is an example of “normal” science, where it is no doubt that the phenomenon could be replicated; however, the replication process (...) may not be straightforward since it requires a good understanding of the physics behind it, as well as good technical skills. In this article, two laboratory cases of experiments on laser physics are presented: the first one deals with a Nitrogen N2 laser with a Polloni excitation circuit, and the second one deals with a transversally excited TEA carbon dioxide laser. For the nitrogen laser, it will be shown that reproducibility failed, and therefore, the reported experiment cannot be taken as a valid contribution to the advancement and understanding of nitrogen laser physics and technology. On the other hand, for the case of the TEA carbon dioxide laser, several comments are presented on the development of this finally successful experiment. Both cases show the importance of being technically up-dated in order to reproduce or improve the results reported by other researchers. Finally, a discussion about: What can we learn about the research practice from these two cases? It is presented, as well as the conclusions about the case studies; we hope they may be useful to philosophers of science and young scientists alike. (shrink)