Internet of Things, Internet of Everything and Internet of People are concepts suggesting that objects, devices, and people will be increasingly interconnected through digital infrastructure that will generate a growing gathering of data. Parallel to this development is the celebration of the smart city and sharing city as urban policy visions that by relying heavily on new technologies bear the promise of efficient and thriving cities. Law and policy scholarship have either focused on questions related to privacy, discrimination, security, or (...) issues related to the production and use of big data, digital public services. Little or no attention has been paid to the disruptive impact of technological development on urban governance and city inhabitants’ rights of equal access, participation, management and even ownership, in order to understand whether and how technology can also enhance the protection of human rights and social justice in the city. This Article proposes complementing the technological and digital infrastructure with a legal and governance infrastructure, the Internet of Humans, by construing and injecting in the policy framework of the city the principle of Tech Justice. Building on a literature review and from an analysis of selected case studies, this Article stresses the dichotomy existing between the market-based and the society-based applications of technology, the first likely to increase the digital divide and the challenges to human rights in the city, the latter bearing the promise to promote equal access to technology in the city. The main argument advanced by this Article is that the principle of Tech Justice if embedded as an empirical dimension of smart city and sharing city policies can steer their developments in the direction of a more just and democratic city. (shrink)

This article offers a discussion on the opportunity of collaborative, multi-actor (public, private, science, social, and civic actors) partnerships as experimental policymaking and governance solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation plans geographically localized at the urban, metropolitan, and regional level. It sets out considerations as regards the need to design newly conceived permanent or temporary institutional geographies by building on the analysis of examples of policies implementing this kind of partnerships in Italy (e.g., river contracts; river foundations; neighborhood agreements; pacts (...) of collaboration; city science offices; urban sustainable development and innovation partnerships, etc.). Finally, the article draws attention to the challenges entailed by these partnerships including ethics, accountability, and climate justice concerns. (shrink)

We argue that dualities offer new possibilities for relating fundamentality, levels, and emergence. Namely, dualities often relate two theories whose hierarchies of levels are inverted relative to each other, and so allow for new fundamentality relations, as well as for epistemic emergence. We find that the direction of emergence typically found in these cases is opposite to the direction of emergence followed in the standard accounts. Namely, the standard emergence direction is that of decreasing fundamentality: there is emergence of less (...) fundamental, high-level entities, out of more fundamental, low-level entities. But in cases of duality, a more fundamental entity can emerge out of a less fundamental one. This possibility can be traced back to the existence of different classical limits in quantum field theories and string theories. (shrink)

La movilidad internacional ha demostrado contribuir muy favorablemente al desarrollo personal, académico y profesional del alumnado universitario. Conseguir que la mayor parte de los estudiantes tengan acceso a este tipo de experiencias debe de ser un objetivo prioritario para favorecer su formación integral. En el caso de las movilidades de corta duración, hacer una planificación específica a través de fórmulas de turismo creativo que permitan el máximo aprovechamiento de los intercambios interculturales puede determinar el éxito de la experiencia. La evaluación (...) del modelo propuesto sugiere la importancia de integrar este tipo de actividades a la hora de diseñar políticas eficientes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A modal logic interpretation of Dempster-Shafer theory is developed in the framework of multivalued models of modal logic, i.e. models in which in any possible world an arbitrary number (possibly zero) of atomic propositions can be true. Several approaches to conditioning in multivalued models of modal logic are presented.

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches (...) that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists. (shrink)

The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana’s idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana’s initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” (...) sense-making with “higher-order” sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-making. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest that Duffley’s sign-based semantics rests on two main claims: a methodological one and an ontological one. The methodological one is the analysis of corpora and the ontological one is the postulate of mental content. By adopting a linguistic enactivist perspective with a Wittgensteinian twist, we endorse Duffley’s methodological claim and suggest that a sign-based semantics doesn’t have to rely on mental content if it takes into account the conception of meaningful material engagement in cognitive archeology (...) and its development into sign-using as an enactive capacity. (shrink)

Objeto: la crisis de la COVID-19 ha causado un cambio profundo en el estilo de vida de la ciudadanía. Las olas previas han demostrado que en régimen de confinamiento se pueden desarrollar problemas de salud mental y hay efectos sobre la actividad física y cambios en los hábitos dietéticos. Tema y metodología: se envió a los trabajadores del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) un cuestionario en línea sobre sus costumbres relacionadas con la salud durante el confinamiento en España. Resultados: (...) en general se observó una mejora en los patrones dietéticos, excepto por la ingesta de aperitivos y de productos de panadería y bollería. La actividad física quedó sustancialmente reducida, especialmente en los hombres, al contrario que los cambios psicológicos, que fueron mayores en las mujeres, manifestados principalmente como ansiedad y desorden del sueño. Además, las conductas de ingesta alimentaria como escape emocional se detectaron principalmente en las mujeres, aunque la ingesta relacionada con el aburrimiento se observó en ambos géneros. Conclusión: los patrones dietéticos de los trabajadores del CSIC siguieron en general las recomendaciones para el confinamiento de la COVID-19, aunque la mitad de los participantes disminuyeron la práctica de actividad física. Con respecto a los cambios psicológicos, las conductas de ingesta alimentaria como escape emocional aparecieron asociadas a la ansiedad, especialmente en las mujeres, y al aburrimiento en ambos géneros. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to analyze the current situation of epistemology, and those critics, such as those presented by Rorty and Taylor, that indicate the necessity of overcoming. It is intended to show that the foundational project and ideas of exact representation, elementary experience and incorrigibility, which from modernity conditioned epistemology, are untenable. However, a new form of philosophical reflection that considers the plot knowledge / language / action, can be thought. This new perspective implicates to attend to (...) the multiples games of language in which knowledge can be taken configurating the epistemological field from other interrogations. (shrink)

Este trabajo se ocupa de la crítica de Platón a oradores, poetas y sofistas. Su propósito es mostrar que independientemente de las características que singularizan una batalla de vasto alcance librada por el filósofo en tres frentes distintos, la noción de imitación (mimesis) proporciona un hilo conductor que permite vincular esos diferentes enfrentamientos y arrojar luz sobre la reacción de Platón ante quienes identifica, peyorativamente, como imitadores. La práctica adulatoria del orador en Gorgias, no menos que el quehacer del poeta (...) puesto en tela de juicio en República y el del sofista en el diálogo homónimo tendrían, en efecto, una naturaleza mimética. Esto no impide reconocer, junto a los puntos de continuidad, diferencias significativas en los tratamientos de la mimesis que ofrecen los tres diálogos aquí considerados. (shrink)

Prompted by our commentators, we take this response as an opportunity to clarify the premises, attitudes, and methods of our enactive approach to human languaging. We high-light the need to recognize that any investigation, particularly one into language, is always a concretely situated and self-grounding activity; our attitude as researchers is one of knowing as engagement with our subject matter. Our task, formulating the missing categories that can bridge embodied cognitive science with language research, requires avoiding premature abstractions and clarifying (...) the multiple circularities at play. Our chosen method is dialectical, which has prompted several interesting observations that we respond to, particularly with respect to what this method means for enactive epistemology and ontology. We also clarify the important question of how best to conceive of the variety of social skills we progressively identify with our method and are at play in human languaging. Are these skills socially constituted or just socially learned? The difference, again, leads to a clarification that acts, skills, actors, and interactions are to be conceived as co-emerging categories. We illustrate some of these points with a discussion of an example of aspects of the model at play in a study of gift giving in China.Keywords: Enactive epistemology, Enactive ontology, Dialectics, languaging, Shared know-how. (shrink)

The work deals with the problem of realism, as one of the focuses in which semantic, ontological and epistemic issues merge together. The analysis starts from Putnam's internal realism, pointing out its difficulties and the movement towards pragmatic or natural realism. This movement implies the reviewing of the epistemic notion of truth and of the instances of justification, and consequently, of the relations established between perceptive activity and linguistic practices.El trabajo se aboca al problema del realismo, como uno de los (...) focos en los que convergen cuestiones semánticas, ontológicas y epistémicas. El análisis parte del realismo interno de Putnam, señalando sus dificultades y el tránsito al realismo pragmático o natural. Este tránsito implica la revisión de la noción epistémica de verdad y de las instancias de justificación, y consiguientemente de las relaciones que se establecen entre la actividad perceptiva y las prácticas lingüísticas. (shrink)

Research Ethics Committees have the responsibility to protect the participants involved in researches and to guarantee the ethical behavior of researchers. In some institutions, such committees also review scientific projects of non-pharmaceutical areas, Public Health and Health Economics. Within this framework, the article analyzes what it means to be part of a Research Ethics Committee in a hospital or university based on personal experience as a community representative. By means of the convenience sampling technique, implemented in four Colombian cities that (...) have GCP-certified committees by INVIMA –National Institute for the Control of Medications and Food–, and by means of content analysis, based on fixed and emergent categories; the experience, perception, participation, representation, and ethical aspects are described as well as the learning process and personal contributions. Findings prove that representatives interviewed have been benefited by learning clinic and epidemiological aspects without necessarily being “experts in the community”. However, they seem not to recognize clearly the population they represent, which might lead these communities to being affected by certain particular studies. The article suggests to work on the minimal common elements that a community representative should possess to appropriately protect participants. (shrink)

This article examines the different avenues to protect animals globally under (a zoological perspective on) international law. A first approach is to use existing organizations, which are limited in scope but through which it is easier to find common ground. The second approach is to use a global existing and overarching organization. The Organization for Animal Health has the advantage of having quasi-universal membership and of issuing science-based and objective reports. However, its powers are currently quite weak. This article suggests (...) that the best avenue would be a third approach: the establishment of a new international organization, preferably under the U.N. umbrella. (shrink)

In his notes for the course entitled “The Problem of Passivity: Sleep, the Unconscious, Memory,” Merleau-Ponty describe the notion of “negative hallucination” as “a perception, but not recognized for what it is.” This essay analyses this figure as it is taken up by Merleau-Ponty in direct dialogue with Freud’s work. To begin, through the double category of the “negative” and the “perceived,” Merleau-Ponty broaches the question of the “place” of dreams by adopting an eccentric position that sheds light on an (...) unexplored pathway of Freudian theory. Moreover, a crucial point can be found in the idea of a negative margin, that appears to implicitly configure a redefinition of the hallucinatory in the direction of chiasm. To highlight this aspect, I review in a preliminary manner some passages of Phenomenology of Perception in which the question of the “place” of negative hallucination emerges in particularly dramatic terms. (shrink)

Violence suffered by children is a violation of human rights and a global health problem. Children with disabilities are especially vulnerable to violence in the school environment, which has a negative impact on their well-being and health. Students with disabilities educated in special schools have, in addition, more reduced experiences of interaction that may reduce both their opportunities for learning and for building protective social networks of support. This study analyses the transference of evidence-based actions to prevent violence in schools (...) – the dialogic model of prevention and resolution of conflicts (DMPRC) – in the context of a special school, and its impact on the reduction of violence, the creation of egalitarian relationships, and the prevention of bullying. A case study with a communicative approach was conducted including in-depth interviews and communicative focus groups with the diverse participants to analyze the process of transformation carried out in the school and the main actions that give students a voice in the management and creation of egalitarian non-violent relationships. The results show that the inclusion of the students’ voices in the resolution and prevention of conflicts reduces violence, empowers special education students, strengthens friendship relationships, caring behavior, and active positioning among the community. The positive impact of the transference of the DMPRC to special schools contributes to students’ well-being and healthy development by offering safe and protective educational spaces and quality emotional education, also contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals related to the elimination of all forms of violence in childhood. (shrink)

Contrary to an understanding of the struggle against gender violence as placing men and women in opposition to one another, victims have always been supported by both women and men. To prevent violence is important to know not only which message should be transmitted but also how the dialogue should unfold, and the characteristics of the people engaging in that dialogue. Because of the existing association between attraction and violence in our society, the unity of the language of ethics and (...) the language of desire in such dialogue has become a key element in the struggle against gender violence. This study identifies the strong presence of communicative acts that unify these languages in the women and men who are successful in this struggle. The opposition to violence that they defend guide their own desires, which are transmitted through their communicative acts to the people around them. (shrink)

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from (...) social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study aims to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the activities of a Bioethics Unit (BU) 5 years since its implementation (2016–2020). The BU is a research unit providing empirical research on ethical issues related to clinical practice, clinical ethics consultation, and ethical education for health care professionals (HPS).MethodsWe performed an explanatory, sequential, mixed-method, observational study, using the subsequent qualitative data to explain the initial quantitative findings. Quantitative data were collected from an internal database and analyzed by descriptive analysis. Qualitative evaluation (...) was performed by semi-structured interviews with 18 HPs who were differently involved in the BU’s activities and analyzed by framework analysis.ResultsQuantitative results showed an extensive increment of the number of BU research projects over the years and the number of work collaborations with other units and wards. Qualitative findings revealed four main themes, concerning: 1. the reasons for contacting the BU and the type of collaboration; 2. the role of the bioethicist; 3. the impact of BU activities on HPs, in terms of developing deeper and more mature thinking; 4. the need to extend ethics support to other settings. Overall, our results showed that performing both empirical bioethics research and more traditional clinical ethics activities at the same unit would produce an impetus to increase collaboration and spread an 'ethical culture' among local HPs.ConclusionsOur findings contribute to a growing body of literature on the models of clinical ethics support services and the role of empirical research in bioethics internationally. They also prepare the ground for the implementation of a multidisciplinary Clinical Ethics Committee (CEC) that aims to support the BU’s ethics consultation service within the local context. (shrink)

A través de algunos largometrajes de animación de Hayao Miyazaki es posible reconocer las principales manifestaciones del sintoísmo. La veneración a los antepasados asociada al culto al emperador, el culto a la naturaleza manifestado en los irui-kon o matrimonios con seres sobrenaturales además de otros aspectos como la purificación, el más allá, los vuelos y el sacerdocio sintoísta son analizados en estas películas japonesas.

This paper discusses the issue of overriding the right of individual consent to participation in cluster randomised trials (CRTs). We focus on CRTs testing the efficacy of non-pharmaceutical interventions. As an example, we consider school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Norway, a CRT was promoted as necessary for providing the best evidence to inform pandemic management policy. However, the proposal was rejected by the Norwegian Research Ethics Committee since it would violate the requirement for individual informed consent. This sparked (...) debate about whether ethics stand in the way of evidence-based health policy, since the Norwegian Research Ethics law’s strict requirements for individual consent make it practically impossible to carry out CRTs of public health interventions. We argue that, in the case of the school closure trial, the suggested CRT would not have eliminated an epistemic gap and thus would not have justified the violation of consent rights. First, we focus on the methodological challenges to estimating quantifiable effects of school closures in the specific case of an airborne infectious disease. Second, in line with Evidential Pluralism, we highlight the value of alternative lines of evidence for informing school closure policy in a pandemic. In general, we propose that a trial requiring the waiver of participants’ consent rights must be highly likely to eliminate an epistemic gap. We elaborate on the practical aspects of this criterion and discuss the potential advantages of adding it to the Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomized Trials. (shrink)

The health alert caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown have caused significant changes in people’s lives. Therefore, it has been essential to study the quality of life, especially in vulnerable populations, including children and adolescents. In this work, the psychological well-being, distribution of tasks and routines, as well as the physical activity done by children and adolescents from two samples: community and high abilities, have been analyzed. The methodology used was Mixed Method Research, through a survey conducted online (...) through social networks. The informants were the parents of the children and adolescents, 209 in the community sample and 116 in the high ability sample. The instrument used was a questionnaire implemented through Google Forms, with open and closed questions, including the Kidscreen-27 scale to measure well-being. The assessment of the adequacy of the physical activity levels was analyzed through ALCESTE. The results showed the absence of differences between students from community samples and those with high capacities in well-being and physical activity. Parents residing in Spain observed less play time in the high ability sample, and more time spent on homework, whether or not they have a diagnosis of high ability. It is concluded that these results question the misconceptions held about high ability students in terms of poorer personal adjustment and better interest in physical activities. (shrink)

A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. -/- Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. (...) Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy. (shrink)

Purpose: To explore the characteristics of the use of laughs and jokes during doctor-couple assisted reproductive technology visits.Methods: 75 videotaped doctor-couple ART visits were analyzed and transcribed in order to: quantify laugh and jokes, describing the contribution of doctors and couples and identifying the timing of appearance; explore the topic of laughs and jokes with qualitative thematic analysis.Results: On average, each visit contained 17.1 utterances of laughs and jokes. Patients contributed for 64.7% of utterances recorded. Doctor and women introduced the (...) majority of laughs and jokes. Visits with female physicians had significantly more laughs and jokes than visits with male doctors; no differences were found considering physicians’ age and years of experience, cause of infertility, and prognosis. Laughs and jokes were mainly recorded during history taking and information giving. Four core themes were identified, regarding the topic of laughs and jokes: health status, infertility treatment, organizational aspects, and doctor-patient interaction.Conclusion: Laughs and jokes are common in doctor-couple ART visits and are frequently used during the dialogue, covering a wide range of topics. Results seem to show that laughs and jokes are related to doctor’s personal characteristics, while are not associated with infertility aspects. Given the complexity of this communicative category, further studies are needed to explore the functions and the effects of laugh and jokes. (shrink)

This essay argues that according to feminist existential phenomenology, feminist pragmatism, and feminist genealogy, our embodied condition is an important starting place for ethical living due to the inevitable role that habits play in our conduct. In bodies, the phenomenon of habit uniquely holds together the ambiguities of freedom and determinism, transcendence and immanence, and stability and plasticity. Seeing habit formation as a matter of self-growth and social justice gives fresh opportunity for thinking of “assuming ambiguity” as a lifelong endeavor (...) made up of many small projects and practices of situated resistance to stagnation. Transcendence, understood as ameliorative transformation, is found in cultivating habits of learning from our bodily living. I articulate this argument via a reading of Simone de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age, John Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct, and Ladelle McWhorter's Bodies and Pleasures. I discuss two domains wherein the ethical significance of habit formation appears: cognitive psychological research on neural plasticity, and certain projects of self-cultivation that risk turning into overdetermining “cult of the self ” practices that close off possibilities for personal and collective transformation. (shrink)