My hypothesis is that the cognitive challenge posed by death might have had a co-evolutionary role in the development of linguistic faculties. First, I claim that mirror neurons, which enable us to understand others’ actions and emotions, not only activate when we directly observe someone, but can also be triggered by language: words make us feel bodily sensations. Second, I argue that the death of another individual cannot be understood by virtue of the mirror neuron mechanism, since the dead provide (...) no neural pattern for mirroring: this cognitive task requires symbolic thought, which in turn involves emotions. Third, I describe the symbolic leap of the human species as a cognitive detachment from the here and now, allowing displaced reference: through symbols the human mind can refer to what is absent, possible, or even impossible (like the presence of a dead person). Such a detachment has had a huge adaptive impact: adopting a coevolutionary standpoint can help explain why language is as effective as environmental inputs in order to stimulate our bodily experience. In the end I suggest a further coevolutionary reversal : if language is necessary to understand the death of the other, it might also be true that the peculiar cognitive problem posed by the death of the other (the corpse is present, but the other is absent) has contributed to the crucial transition from an indexical sign system to the symbolic level, i.e., the cognitive detachment . Death and language, as Heidegger claimed, have an essential relation for humans, both from an evolutionary and a phenomenological perspective: they have shaped the symbolic consciousness that make us conceive of them. (shrink)

Nuestro frenesí de comunicación e información hace que las cosas des- aparezcan y devengan en no-cosas, también llamadas informaciones (Han, 2021: 10). El marco ontológico presente es resultado de un desplazamiento que va del ocaso de las cosas al consumo rápido y frenético de no-cosas. En este entorno intangible el ser humano ya no maneja ninguna cosa. Las no cosas son aquellas cosas puramente intangibles, que no pueden aprehenderse con las manos. Lo único que le queda de las manos al (...) ser humano que habita este entorno son las yemas de los dedos con las que presiona las teclas para jugar con símbolos (Flusser, 2002: 107). ¿Qué efectos contrae este nuevo paradigma vital en el campo de la educación? ¿Qué significa educar en y trabajar con no-cosas? (shrink)

Plural Logic is an extension of First-Order Logic which has, as well as singular terms and quantifiers, their plural counterparts. Analogously, Higher-Level Plural Logic is an extension of Plural Logic which has, as well as plural terms and quantifiers, higher-level plural ones. Roughly speaking, higher-level plurals stand to plurals like plurals stand to singulars; they are pluralised plurals. Allegedly, Higher-Level Plural Logic enjoys the expressive power of a simple type theory while committing us to nothing more than the austere ontology (...) of First-Order Logic. Were this true, Higher-Level Plural Logic would be a useful tool, with various applications in philosophy and linguistics. However, while the notions of plural reference and quantification enjoy widespread acceptance today, their higher-level counterparts have been received with a lot of scepticism. In this paper, I argue for the legitimacy of Higher-Level Plural Logic by providing evidence to the effect that natural languages contain higher-level plural expressions and showing that it is likely that they do so in an indispensable manner. Since the arguments I put forward are of the same sort advocates of Plural Logic have employed to defend their position, I conclude that the commonly held view that Plural Logic is legitimate, but not so its higher-level plural extensions is untenable. (shrink)

Manuel Herrera Gómez es Profesor Titular de Sociología de la Universidad de Granada (1998). Sus publicaciones más recientes son Las políticas sociales en las sociedades complejas (2003), Sociedades complejas (2004), Metateoría de las Ciencias Sociales (2005), La cultura de la sociedad en Talcott Parsons (2005) y Teorías y métodos de planificación social (2005). También ha coordinado las obras Administración Pública y Estado de Bienestar (2004) y Teorías sociológicas de la acción (2005). En las últimas décadas se ha desarrollado un (...) intenso debate que contrapone a los defensores de un modelo liberal de sociedad y a los que apuestan por un modelo comunitario. Bajo el manto liberal se engloban todas aquellas teorías políticas cuyo objetivo es buscar procedimientos, universalmente compartidos, de agregación de los intereses individuales. Por su parte, en el bando comunitarista, nos encontramos aquellos planteamientos -cuyo denominador común es una crítica a toda visión puramente procedimentalista de la filosofía pública-, que consideran que sólo se posee una comunidad política cuando se recurre a un patrimonio común de contenidos, valores y tradiciones, en el que todos los miembros de la comunidad se sienten radicados. En esta obra se presenta un análisis detallado de los protagonistas y de las etapas de este debate, proponiendo como conclusión un modelo de sociedad que pretende dar respuesta tanto a las instancias radicadas en el modelo procedimental como a las presentes en el modelo comunitario. (shrink)

Background:Decision-making and assessment in emergency situations are complex and result many times in ethical conflicts between different healthcare professionals.Aim:To analyse and describe situations that can generate ethical conflict among nurses working in emergency situations.Methods:Qualitative analysis. A total of 16 emergency nurses took part in interviews and a focus group.Ethical considerations:Organisational approval by the University Hospital, and informed consent and confidentiality were ensured before conducting the research.Result/conclusion:Two categories emerged: one in ‘ethical issues’ and one in ‘emotions and feelings in caring’. The (...) four ethical subcategories are presented: Autonomy, the first sub category: first, the nurse’s ability to practise care on an emergency ward and, second, to support the patient and/or relatives in terms of care and medical treatment. The conflicts arise when the nurse ends up in the middle between the patient and the physician responsible for the diagnosis and treatment from a nature scientific perspective. Reification of injured body: patient was often reified and fragmented, becoming just a leg or arm. Different factors contributed in this perspective. Pain: pain relief was often inadequate but more effectively treated in the emergency medical services than at the emergency department. The nurses highlighted the phenomenon of suffering because they felt that pain was only an object, forgetting the patients’ care need, like separating mind from body. Death: the nurses felt that the emergency services are only prepared to save lives and not to take care of the needs of patients with ‘end-of-life’ care. Another issue was the lack of ethical guidelines during a cardiac arrest. Resuscitation often continues without asking about the patient’s ‘previous wishes’ in terms of resuscitation or not. In these situations, the nurses describe an ethical conflict with the physician in performing their role as the patient’s advocate. The nurses express feelings of distress, suffering, anger and helplessness. (shrink)

The aim of this research is to develop and validate a measurement scale for consumer’s perceptions of corporate social responsibility using the three-dimensional social, environmental and economic conceptual approach as a theoretical basis. Based on the stages of measurement scale creation and validation suggested by DeVellis and supported by Churchill Jr.’s :64–73, 1979) suggestions, five different empirical studies are developed expressly and applied to consumers of tourist services. This research involves 1147 real tourists from 24 countries in two different cultural (...) and geographical contexts. A three-dimensional 18-item scale is proposed for measuring consumer perceptions of corporate social, environmental and economic responsibilities. This paper presents the complete development of the scale, as well as the implications and limitations of the main findings and the managerial implications. (shrink)

Une théorie qui veut établir les principes d'une science du droit, mais dont les fondements épistémologiques remontent aux premières années du XXe siècle, peut-elle garder sa validité de nos jours ?

The introduction of and the commitment to evidence-based nursing in all care settings have led to a rapid increase of intervention and outcome-based research programs. Yet, the topics of nursing research are not only affected by interventions and outcomes but also affected by the concept of caring derived from humanistic philosophy. Considering this twofold orientation of nursing science, nuanced ethical regulations for nursing research programs are called for. In addition to the different research approaches, further arguments for ethical regulations are (...) as follows: first, the different degrees of contextualization and the variety of participation models regarding the target groups; second, the capacities and opportunities of participants; and third, the caring relationship between nurses and research subjects. To capture these special features of nursing science, four approaches to fill the gaps in existing ethical regulations for nursing research are proposed: (a) process orientation, (b) community orientation, (c) context orientation, and (d) relation orientation. (shrink)

RESUMENLa segunda etapa del pensamiento filosófico de Ayer es conocida como «fenomenalismo analítico» y se caracteriza por su afirmación: lo que conoce el sujeto no son más datos sensoriales. Esto conlleva la necesidad de de crear lo que se conoce como el lenguaje de «los datos sensoriales», que debería ser previo al lenguaje ordinario y al que podría traducirse el primero mediante la provisión de una serie de reglas con este objeto. Los problemas y las críticas, conectados con la caracterización (...) de que sea un «dato sensorial» surgieron muy pronto y tales problemas provocaron que el propio Ayer fuese obligado a redefinir su posición filosófica.PALABRAS CLAVE:DATO SENSORIAL, FENOMENALISMO ANALÍTICO, ENTIDAD CUASIFÍSICA, ENTIDAD LINGÜÍSTICAABSTRACTThe second phase of Ayer’s philosophical thought is known as «analytical phenomenalism» and is characterized by his assertion: what the subject knows is not but sense data. This involved the need of creating what is known as the language of «sense data», which should be prior to the ordinary language, and into which the last one could be translated, by means of providing a series of rules on this purpose. Problems and criticism, linked to the characterization of what a «sense datum» could be, arose very soon, and such problems and criticism forced Ayer to redefine his philosophical position.KEY WORDS.SENSE DATUM, ANALYTICAL PHENOMENALISM, QUASI-PHYSICAL ENTITY, LINGUISTIC ENTITY. (shrink)

Cuando hablamos de iconos nos referimos a representaciones que producen un cierto impacto en nosotros aunque no sean perfectas; del icono se esperan armonía, belleza, simplicidad. Cuando el icono no es una imagen sino una persona humana, se convierte en referente: observamos aspectos de su personalidad con los que nos identificamos aunque nos coincidan exactamente con los nuestros. A lo largo de la historia de la ciencia, las mujeres han sido iconos referenciales fundamentalmente por dos cosas, su calidad humana y (...) su excelencia científica. (shrink)

Cada vez más, la medida de los estándares educativos está arrojando luz a las Reformas emprendidas en los distintos países. En el caso español, y concretamente en lo relativo a la enseñanza de las Ciencias, el paso a dar está en la transferencia de los aprendizajes hacia situaciones de vida.

Este escrito pretende examinar el papel de la estética en el pensamiento de Schiller y Schelling en 1795 para rastrear el modo en que el pensamiento estético comienza a constituirse como un camino desde el que afrontar la problemática de la libertad planteada por la modernidad y, en especial, por la filosofía práctica de Kant. En el primer apartado se tratará de aclarar el sentido en el que la reflexión estética de ambos autores en 1795 no se puede disociar de (...) la problemática servida por la filosofía kantiana. En primer lugar intentaré mostrar las razones por las que las premisas mismas del sistema crítico hacen necesaria la Crítica del Juicio, cuya primera parte, como es sabido, constituye precisamente una ¿crítica del juicio estético¿ y, desde aquí, defenderé que la obra se hace cargo de cierta ambivalencia inherente al kantismo y que, precisamente por ello, expresa del modo más perspicuo el problema que plantea el concepto kantiano, formal, de libertad. Con ello se insiste evidentemente en la relevancia de esta obra para la primera recepción de Kant en general, esto es, para el primer Idealismo postkantiano en tanto que preocupado por elevarse a la verdad del espíritu kantiano, pero, sobre todo, se comenzarán a iluminar las razones por las que la orientación estética del pensamiento, orientación que en 1795 exploran tanto Schiller como Schelling, podrá considerarse un camino privilegiado de cara tanto a la ¿recuperación¿ de la consistencia del kantismo como a la elaboración de un concepto satisfactorio de libertad. Es decir, se intentará fundamentar así, aun cuando sólo sea indirectamente, que la conexión de la ética, de la filosofía práctica, con la estética resulta prometedora aun desde una óptica estrictamente kantiana. Pero el núcleo de este trabajo se desarrollará en los apartados segundo y tercero donde, partiendo de este suelo común compartido por Schiller y Schelling, se examinarán las diferencias entre los modos en que la reflexión estética de cada uno responde a la problemática planteada por el kantismo. En relación a esto último será fundamental determinar si sus respuestas, en tanto que soluciones, realmente se mantienen fieles a la complejidad que nace de la ambivalencia del espíritu kantiano o si, antes bien, pagan el precio de optar por uno sólo de los hilos que tejen el sistema crítico. (shrink)

Taking the Critique of Judgement for an answer to the problem raised by the kantian dualisms, I offer a reading of this work according to which in the part devoted to the teleological judgement Kant practices a Hegelian way of resolution, whereas, in the “critique of the aesthetic judgement”, he thinks the relation between the opposites of such dualisms in a new way that opens up the possibility of a dialectical thought rid of the absolutness of the Hegelian reason.

What is the difference between the discriminations made by a home appliance able to distinguish salt from sugar, and my sensations of salty and sweet? It is never taken into consideration that, in contrast to the appliance, I can have offline sensations, i.e., phenomenal experiences in the absence of direct environmental stimuli, mainly evoked by words occurring into thought, conversation, reading, etc. If we put this detachment stimuli/sensations in relation with the correlative detachment signs/referents inaugurated by the cognitive revolution of (...) symbolic language , we might rethink the role played by language in our phenomenal experience as a whole. Qualia can be defined as forms of relationship between organisms and environment, given that human environment is extended to the linguistic dimension, and that the latter has ignited a coevolutionary process with human cognition. The very same properties we attribute to qualia, even when conceiving of them as pre-linguistic phenomenal traits, rely on the cognitive resources that language has made available. The substantialist notion of qualia, I argue, is formed by an online sensation on which the focus shifts from the perceived object to the sensory quality by virtue of linguistic modes of thinking, which are systematically neglected. (shrink)

During the last decades the special literature has paid relatively much attention to the problematic of speech acts. However, in Slovakia it still remains underdeve-loped. Therefore the author decided to examine it from the points of view of its establishment, gradual development and interactional communication. The paper offers a survey of all philosophical-linguistic views on this problematic. Further, it gives a more detailed analysis of the theory of the founders of the speech acts theory , comparing their main ideas with (...) those of other philosophers and linguists. (shrink)

L’enfant placé a souvent vécu des traumatismes qui ont impacté sa capacité à réguler ses émotions dans les relations interpersonnelles. Afin d’aider les assistants familiaux et les parents à mieux s’ajuster à l’enfant ont été instaurés des temps d’observation dans les conditions naturelles des interactions adulte-enfant qui ont été enregistrés en vidéo. Le vidéo-feedback a ensuite été utilisé avec chacun des adultes. L’exemple de Matthias montre comment ce dispositif a permis aux parents d’identifier les conséquences de leur comportement sur leur (...) enfant. L’exercice a été plus difficile pour l’assistante familiale davantage centrée sur ses besoins. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es ofrecer, al hilo de un análisis del texto de la Fenomenologíadel Espíritu que comenta la Antígona de Sófocles, una interpretación del concepto hegeliano de acciónque pone en cuestión la tesis, defendida habitualmente, según la cual Hegel habría pretendido que elconflicto trágico resulta superado por la acción moderna.Ese texto revela que la acción, que comparece ahí como principio absoluto, posee sin embargo unaestructura quebrada y paradójica: necesariamente presupone y niega una instancia en sí, inmediata ysustantiva (...) que, finalmente, oculta la negatividad de la muerte. En la medida en que esa vinculación ala sustancia se demuestra así consustancial a la acción, el trabajo concluye, frente a otras lecturas, que,aun cuando la historia del espíritu haya dejado atrás la “sustancia ética” antigua, la acción nopuede liberarse para Hegel del carácter trágico. Por último, defiende el sentido en el que precisamenteesta condición trágica la determina a la vez como destructiva y productiva, capaz de abrir la historia. (shrink)

1. Two Approaches to the EarthIn several postwar texts, the earth increasingly receives attention from Carl Schmitt.1 In The Nomos of the Earth, the most important of these texts, he refers to Friedrich Hölderlin, a much earlier, very different author, who also considers the subject of the earth. Even though the positions of both are, ultimately, quite similar, they maintain significant terminological differences. Schmitt and Hölderlin both employ the word “nomos,” but in very different ways. Hölderlin regards “nomos” as “law” (...) in the sense of “positive” norm or “Gesez.”2 This use of “nomos” as “Gesez” differs from a second notion of law as the meaning operating at the basis of what Hölderlin calls the “sphere.” The sphere is a meaningful whole in which man originally exists. Law is here the very relations of the sphere as a meaningful whole. Hölderlin calls it the law in a “negative” sense.3 This second notion of law by Hölderlin (negative law or law as the meaning at the basis of the sphere) coincides precisely with the Schmittian idea of “nomos” as an “order of meaning [Sinnreich],”4 what he also calls the law in an “ontonomous and existential” sense.5 The first use of law as “nomos” or “Gesez” by Hölderlin coincides with Schmitt’s use of “Gesetz”: of law as “positive” law. (shrink)

Social representations can be conveyed through language, which expresses a construction of the reality. Assuming the complex task of analyzing the results of a qualitative study, this article exposes from a structuralist approach, a proposal to analyze and construct social representations from the central core theory. Thus validate in methodological terms, a way to graphically express results for a holistic analysis and interpretation of these central and peripheral notions. The proposal is elaborated for application in studies with primary sources such (...) as interviews and their treatment through a content analysis. (shrink)

In the fiftieth disputation of his Disputationes metaphysicae (1597), Francisco Suárez distinguishes three notions of time. Suárez offers an account of the ways in which the predicate ‘when’ can be taken and presents a more general perspective based on the principle of duration, rather than the Aristotelian definition of time. His view differs from Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ account because Suárez emphasizes that time cannot be reduced to the number of the movement of the last sphere in the Aristotelian model of (...) the cosmos. The intrinsic duration of a thing is its true time; this duration can be taken in an absolute or a relative sense. In an absolute sense, intrinsic time is an internal property of a thing that cannot be really distinguished from existence itself and cannot be compared with other durations. In a relative sense, we can imagine this intrinsic duration as filling up a certain interval within an infinitely extended imaginary succession. This imaginary succession is an ens rationis. The third concept of time is the Aristotelian notion: this is just an extrinsic time, a measurement of one movement by means of a comparison with another movement, especially the motion of the last sphere. Finally, in order to show the value of Suárez’s insights, I compare them with some contemporary issues in the analytic philosophy of time. (shrink)

Los estudios de géneros discursivos han prestado poca atención a las tesis o seminarios producidos para la obtención del grado de licenciatura. En este artículo se describe, desde el enfoque del genre analysis (Swales, 1990), la organización retórica del marco referencial de un conjunto de 30 tesis de pregrado elaboradas por estudiantes de la carrera de Trabajo Social de la UCSC. Se identifican cuatro movidas retóricas: teórico, conceptual, empírico y normativo. Se observa que cada una tiene propósitos diferentes sobre cuestiones (...) teóricas, prácticas y legales relacionadas con el problema social que aborda cada tesis. Se advierte la presencia de algunos pasos retóricos recursivo y, al mismo tiempo, un fuerte compromiso de la investigación con la resolución de un problema social real. Studies of discourse genre have paid little attention to graduation theses produced by undergraduate students. This article describes, from a genre analysis approach (Swales, 1990), the rhetorical organization of the reference framework of a set of 30 undergraduate theses prepared by social work students at the UCSC. The study identifies four rhetorical moves: theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and normative. It is observed that each move has different purposes on theoretical, practical, and legal issues related to the social problem addressed by each thesis. The presence of recursive rhetorical steps is apparent, along with a strong commitment to solving real social problems through research. (shrink)