Child mortality (the mortality of children less than five years old) declined considerably in the developing world in the 1990s, but infant mortality declined less. The reductions in neonatal mortality were not impressive and, as a consequence, there is an increasing percentage of infant deaths in the neonatal period. Any further reduction in child mortality, therefore, requires an understanding of the determinants of neonatal mortality. 209,628 birth and 2581 neonatal death records for the 1998 birth cohort from the city of (...) São Paulo, Brazil, were probabilistically matched. Data were from SINASC and SIM, Information Systems on Live Births and Deaths of Brazil. Logistic regression was used to find the association between neonatal mortality and the following risk factors: birth weight, gestational age, Apgar scores at 1 and 5 minutes, delivery mode, plurality, sex, maternal education, maternal age, number of prior losses, prenatal care, race, parity and community development. Infants of older mothers were less likely to die in the neonatal period. Caesarean delivery was not found to be associated with neonatal mortality. Low birth weight, pre-term birth and low Apgar scores were associated with neonatal death. Having a mother who lives in the highest developed community decreased the odds of neonatal death, suggesting that factors not measured in this study are behind such association. This result may also indicate that other factors over and above biological and more proximate factors could affect neonatal death. (shrink)

Se realizan algunas conceptualizaciones que constituyen premisas de la Universidad del siglo XXI, como es el desarrollo endógeno, como una mirada de la institución de educación superior para lograr la transformación y desarrollo local sustentable. La realidad impone, que el proceso formativo, no sea solo hacia dentro sino que los actores internos y externos confluyan en los propósitos de progreso económico y social y la Universidad se convierta en el líder que guía dicho desarrollo. Some conceptualizations that constitute premises of (...) the University of the XXI Century, like the endogenous development as a look of the high education institution to achieve the transformation and local sustainable development, were made. The reality imposes that the formative process is not only projected to the inside but that the internal and external actors concur in the intention of getting a social and economic progress and that the university becomes the leader that guides this development. (shrink)

This article presented the concept of the sinister in the aesthetic work of the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, who used his painting for a historical expressionism to capture the resistance and the Spanish impetus for independence from the French regime under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte. The analysis is based on a bibliographic and pictographic review on ductility of two categories: Goya and the representation of the sinister and the symbolic of painting in Iberian romanticism. It is intended to (...) demonstrate that, beyond a style, there exists in Goya art the hermeneutical supratextuality retained in the aesthetics of the sinister over the eternity of the canvas. From this reflection, it could be revealed that the aesthetic of the sinister mediated by the sublime becomes an expression that causes fascination, curiosity and at the same time rejection. Hence, when speaking of the sinister, we refer to that which is veiled and which needs to cast off its shadow, in order to be able to see itself clearly. In Goya, the tragic is connected: the faces full of drama reveal the disturbing reality of their surroundings and his work leaves encoded images of emotions, history and horror sealed in the murals of his room. It is at that moment that the sublime fulfills the fundamental role of being the bridge that allows access to knowledge in the face of the questions that are part of existence, since in the philosophical amazement it is sought to reveal the doubtful, hidden and disturbing that is part of our humanity. (shrink)

There is a widespread assumption in Construction Grammar that the meanings of verbs correlate with or even determine their complementation forms and patterns. There is much less research on noun complementation, however, although this category is even more interesting for a number of reasons such as the potential for valency reduction, nominal topicalization constructions, and additional complementation options, e.g.of-PPs and existential constructions.In this paper we focus on the class of nouns reporting commissive illocutionary acts, and address the question of whether (...) there is a correlation between the meaning of these nouns and their preferred complementation patterns, and between their semantic similarity and their similarity in the distribution of complementation patterns.We report the results of a study of a set of 17 commissive nouns chosen from a wider collection of illocutionary nouns. Two types of analysis were carried out in order to compare the semantic and grammatical characteristics of these nouns. The semantic analysis was based on insights from speech act theory and the philosophy of language. We developed a framework for a systematic comparative description of the nouns in our word field. The results were tallied with a corpus-based grammatical analysis. Two hundred tokens of each noun type were randomly sampled from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Using these data, the 17 nouns were subjected to an analysis of the relative frequencies of their complementation patterns.Results indicate a general match between noun meanings and complementation patterns. More specifically, however, they indicate that the closeness of this match depends on the prototypicality of nouns as members of the class of commissives.The study, then, contributes to our understanding of the relation between lexis and syntax. At the same time, it confirms the need for a close semantic analysis to account for the great extent to which item-specific information, i.e. properties of individual nouns, have to be taken into consideration at the expense of large-scale generalizations. (shrink)

Coevolution between two antagonistic species has been widely studied theoretically for both ecologically- and genetically-driven Red Queen dynamics. A typical outcome of these systems is an oscillatory behavior causing an endless series of one species adaptation and others counter-adaptation. More recently, a mathematical model combining a three-species food chain system with an adaptive dynamics approach revealed genetically driven chaotic Red Queen coevolution. In the present article, we analyze this mathematical model mainly focusing on the impact of species rates of evolution (...) (mutation rates) in the dynamics. Firstly, we analytically proof the boundedness of the trajectories of the chaotic attractor. The complexity of the coupling between the dynamical variables is quantified using observability indices. By using symbolic dynamics theory, we quantify the complexity of genetically driven Red Queen chaos computing the topological entropy of existing one-dimensional iterated maps using Markov partitions. Co-dimensional two bifurcation diagrams are also built from the period ordering of the orbits of the maps. Then, we study the predictability of the Red Queen chaos, found in narrow regions of mutation rates. To extend the previous analyses, we also computed the likeliness of finding chaos in a given region of the parameter space varying other model parameters simultaneously. Such analyses allowed us to compute a mean predictability measure for the system in the explored region of the parameter space. We found that genetically driven Red Queen chaos, although being restricted to small regions of the analyzed parameter space, might be highly unpredictable. (shrink)

Meeting 5G high bandwidth rates, ultra-low latencies, and high reliabilities requires of network infrastructures that automatically increase/decrease the resources based on their customers’ demand. An autonomous and dynamic management of a 5G network infrastructure represents a challenge, as any solution must account for the radio access network, data plane traffic, wavelength allocation, network slicing, and network functions’ orchestration. Furthermore, federation among administrative domains (ADs) must be considered in the network management. Given the increased dynamicity of 5G networks, artificial intelligence/machine learning (...) (AI/ML) solutions are strong candidates able to learn, and take quick provisioning decisions upon fast changes in network conditions. Therefore, this chapter presents an analysis of the state-of-the-art solutions for 5G networks’ management, where AI/ML solutions are discussed and compared with traditional methods. Additionally, the chapter provides a technology overview of both standards, and existing solutions regarding the 5G network management, and directions toward the integration of AI/ML in 5G networks. (shrink)

In this study I focus on the importance of the concept of the apocryphal to understand the work of Antonio Machado in its entirety. The concept of the apocryphal implies a critical position before tradition: the negation-forgetting of the real past, the affirmation reinvention of a possible past. The apocryphal comes to solve, according to Machado, the great crises that modern poetry faced: the loss of the ties that bound humankind and the universe, the relationship between high culture (...) and mass culture, the relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic in the work of art. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente artículo indaga en las representaciones de estudiantes de doctorado en educación respecto de aquellos aspectos que hacen que una investigación sea ética. La muestra estuvo compuesta por 24 estudiantes de doctorado de diversos programas chilenos (60% mujeres), entre 30 y 52 años. El diseño implicó la realización de seis grupos focales y las interacciones se registraron en audio y video. El análisis del corpus se realizó bajo un enfoque cualitativo basado en la Teoría Fundamentada de perspectiva constructivista. (...) Los resultados muestran la coexistencia de dos representaciones diferentes sobre lo ético en la investigación educacional. Cada una de estas representaciones refleja una comprensión y una forma de concebir la realidad en cuanto al rol que tiene la ética en la investigación. Se discuten las implicancias de estos tipos de representaciones para la acción investigativa, así como para el diseño de programas formativos de doctorado en Chile. Abstract: This article investigates the representations of doctoral students in education regarding those aspects that configure the ethical aspect of scientific research. In this study, participated 24 doctoral students from different Chilean programs (60% women) between 30 and 52 years of age. The design involved six focus groups, and the interactions were recorded in audio and video. The corpus analysis was carried out under a qualitative approach based on Grounded Theory with a constructivist perspective. The results show the coexistence of two different representations of ethics in educational research. Each of these representations reflects an understanding and a way of conceiving reality regarding the role of ethics in research. The implications of these types of representations for research activities, as well as for the design of doctoral training programs in Chile, are discussed. (shrink)

A pesquisa Os enigmas de infância e experiências em uma escola pública da cidade de Maceió/AL: o que revelam? é uma pesquisa de Mestrado, do Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação (PPGE) da Universidade Federal de Alagoas/UFAL, realizada entre 2014 e 2016. O objetivo desta, foi problematizar infância e experiências no cotidiano de uma escola pública no município de Maceió/AL de outra maneira. Para isso, usou a concepção de filosofia presente no filósofo Friedrich Nietzsche, a concepção de infância em Walter Omar (...) Kohan, de tempo em Heráclito, e de experiência nos teóricos Giorgio Agamben e Jorge Larrosa. O trabalho aqui apresentado pretende compartilhar algumas reflexões presentes na pesquisa de Mestrado mediante uma breve exposição do campus da pesquisa e dos teóricos que nos ajudaram com os enigmas infância e experiência. (shrink)

Este texto es un estudio profundo sobre lo poético en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges, rastreado no solo en sus poemas sino en su narrativa: ensayo y cuento. Lo que permite sostener que la cualidad principal de su escritura se encarna en la figura del poeta. El eje central del estudio se refiere a la particularidad de su adjetivación en la cual puede reconocerse el vínculo entre literatura y filosofía puesto que en la escritura de Borges el adjetivo (...) no es un mero adorno sino una manera de vincular pensamiento y poesía y hacer posible que en la lectura de sus textos el lector experimente el efecto que las ideas tienen sobre la vida. (shrink)

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the figure of the adolescent (Jugendlicher) was introduced into public discourse in the German-speaking world. The adolescent soon became an epistemic object for the still loosely defined field of psychology. Actors in the slowly differentiating scientific field of youth psychology were primarily interested in the normal development of adolescent subjects and sought out new materials and methods to research the inner life of young people. In order to access this inner life, (...) they turned to the interpretation of diaries and other self-descriptions. This article takes up the questions of how diaries were used in the scientific context of psychology, and how diary writing was psychologically interpreted and theorized. The theoretical and methodological contexts of psychological knowledge production grouped around the subject of the diary will be examined in keeping with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of historical epistemology. This analysis is carried out by using the example of three central actors who were in conversation with each other during the 1920s and 1930s: the developmental psychologist Charlotte Bühler (1893–1974), the psychologist and founder of personalistic psychology William Stern (1871–1938), and the youth activist Siegfried Bernfeld (1892–1953), who was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis. (shrink)

ResumoAs práticas culturais fundem, a todo o momento, diferentes relações entre sistemas culturais (EVEN-ZOHAR, 1990) que antes eram separados. Tais manifestações híbridas reconfiguram e desterritorializam processos simbólicos. Nesse sentido, o presente artigo realiza uma análise comparatista das relações intertextuais presentes na configuração artística do álbum Esú, do rapper brasileiro Baco Exu do Blues, em especial na faixa “Capitães de Areia” em relação ao romance quase homônimo de Jorge Amado, às referências à mitologia dos Erês, e à série fotográfica Laróyè, (...) de Mario Cravo Neto. Para analisar as implicações dessas inter-relações na configuração cultural e identitária da obra, buscamos aporte teórico-crítico no campo dos Estudos Culturais pela perspectiva de conceitos que tentam dar conta desses processos, acerca do Hibridismo, em Néstor García Canclini, e das reflexões sobre sincretismo religioso em Sérgio Ferretti.Palavras-chave: Capitães da Areia; Hibridismo; sincretismo religioso; práticas culturais. AbstractCultural practices merge, at all times, different relationships with cultural systems (EVENN-ZOHAR, 1991) that were previously separated. Such hybrid manifestations reconfigure and deterritorialize symbolic processes. In this sense, this article performs a comparative analysis of the intertextual relations present in the artistic configuration of the album Esú, by rapper Baco Exu do Blues, especially the track “Capitães de Areia” and references to the mythology of the Erês, to the novel by Jorge Amado and Laróyè photographic series by Mario Cravo Neto. To analyze the implications of these interrelations in the cultural and identity configuration of the work, we seek theoretical-critical support in the field of Cultural Studies from the perspective of concepts that try to account for these processes, about Hybridism in Néstor García Canclini and reflections on religious syncretism in Sérgio Ferreti.Keywords: Capitães da Areia; Hybridity; religious syncretism; cultural practices. (shrink)

Aus dem Inhalt: Die Wissenschaftslehre als System der unvollendeten Vollendung (Sven Juergensen). - Fichtes Wechselwirkung und der implizite Hoerer der Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo (Guenther Zoeller). - Die Begrenzung: vom Anstoss zur Aufforderung (Jacinto Rivera de Rosales). - Die Idee des Leibes im Jenaer System (Virginia Lopez-Dominguez). - Fichtes politische und Rechtsphilosophie in der Deutung Richard Schottkys (Carla de Pascale). - Gibt es bei Fichte eine transzendentale Anthropologie? (Jose L. Villacanas).

Resumo: Machado de Assis, um dos mais famosos escritores brasileiros, oferece um retrato de Bento de Espinosa em um soneto de 1880. Em seus versos, o poeta combina, do início ao fim, a imagem do pensador como operário e como filósofo. Apesar de certa imprecisão nos traços estampados no retrato, o artigo pretende mostrar que o soneto pode, tanto quanto o poema “Spinoza”, de Jorge Luis Borges, operar como um primeiro convite ao estudo do espinosismo. Embora não haja (...) qualquer intenção de realizar uma exegese propriamente literária do poema, busca-se desvendar as singularidades da imagem machadiana de Espinosa, confrontando-a aos escritos do filósofo e aos dados disponíveis a respeito de sua vida.: Machado de Assis, one of the most well-known Brazilian writers, offers a portrait of Baruch Spinoza in a sonnet of 1880. In its verses, the poet combines the image of the thinker as a craftsman and as a philosopher. This article intends to show that despite the inaccuracy in the sonnet’s portrayal of certain aspects of its subject, it can nevertheless, just like the poem “Spinoza” written by Jorge Luis Borges, act as a first call to the study of Spinozism. Without intending to perform a proper literary exegesis of the poem, the article seeks to unveil the singularities of Machado’s image of Spinoza, confronting it with the philosopher’s works and biography. (shrink)

When a circular coin is rotated in depth, is there any sense in which it comes to resemble an ellipse? While this question is at the center of a rich and divided philosophical tradition (with some scholars answering affirmatively and some negatively), Morales et al. (2020, 2021) took an empirical approach, reporting 10 experiments whose results favor such perspectival similarity. Recently, Burge and Burge (2022) offered a vigorous critique of this work, objecting to its approach and conclusions on both philosophical (...) and empirical grounds. Here, we answer these objections on both fronts. We show that Burge and Burge’s critique rests on misunderstandings of Morales et al.’s claims; of the relation between the data and conclusions; and of the philosophical context in which the work appears. Specifically, Burge and Burge attribute to us a much stronger (and stranger) view than we hold, involving the introduction of “a new entity” located “in some intermediate position(s) between the distal shape and the retinal image.” We do not hold this view. Indeed, once properly understood, most of Burge and Burge’s objections favor Morales et al.’s claims rather than oppose them. Finally, we discuss several questions that remain unanswered, and reflect on a productive path forward on these issues of foundational scientific and philosophical interest. (shrink)

Metaethical constructivism is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, they are not fixed by normative facts that are independent of what rational agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. The appeal of this view lies in the promise to explain how normative truths are objective and independent of our actual judgments, while also binding and authoritative for us. -/- Constructivism comes in several varieties, some of which claim a place within metaethics while others claim (...) no place within it at all. In fact, constructivism is sometimes defended as a normative theory about the justification of moral principles. Normative constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in a hypothetical or idealized process of rational deliberation. -/- Metaethical constructivist theories aim to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. They bear a problematic relation to traditional classifications of metaethical theories. In particular, there are disagreements about how to situate constructivism in the realism/antirealism debate. These disagreements are rooted in further differences about the definition of metaethics, the relation between normative and metaethical claims, and the purported methods pertinent and specific to metaethical inquiry. The question of how to classify metaethical constructivism will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories have been designed to answer. Section 1 explains the origin and motivation of constructivism. Sections 2–4 examine the main varieties of metaethical constructivism. Section 5 illustrates related constructivist views, some of which are not proposed as metaethical accounts of all normative truths, but only of moral truths. Sections 6 and 7 review several debates about the problems, promise and prospects of metaethical constructivism. (shrink)

Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength. In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain-general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been (...) largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain-specific phenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in the phenomenology of different types of conscious experiences. (shrink)

RESUMO Em nosso artigo, faremos uma breve exposição sobre o capítulo XXIV dos Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, de Nāgārjuna, e buscaremos oferecer uma defesa de nossa própria interpretação de sua filosofia, comparando-a com as interpretações semântica e pedagógica propostas, respectivamente, por Garfield e Siderits, por um lado, e Ferraro, por outro. Na nossa exposição, discutiremos a relação entre vazio, cooriginação dependente e verdade, apontando a íntima ligação entre esses termos no interior da filosofia de Nāgārjuna e buscando indicar em que sentido as quatro (...) nobres verdades do budismo, de acordo com o filósofo, só podem ser verdadeiras se elas forem vazias. A partir dessa análise, esperamos poder estabelecer uma relação entre verdade convencional e verdade suprema, tal como abordada nesse capítulo, segundo a qual tanto a verdade convencional quanto a suprema são vazias, sendo que a diferença entre ambas consistiria em que a primeira diz respeito à existência convencional das coisas, enquanto a segunda diz respeito à ausência de essência delas. Nesse sentido, tratar-se-á de analisar como seria possível, para Nāgārjuna, uma compreensão acerca da verdade que nos parece tão contraintuitiva, a saber, a de que a verdade só é possível se for relativa. Esperamos, assim, fazer uma pequena contribuição para a discussão de alguns dos conceitos mais relevantes do pensamento desse importante filósofo budista, sobretudo no que diz respeito à relação da verdade suprema com o vazio. ABSTRACT In our article, we shall make a brief exposition of the chapter XXIV of Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, and we shall attempt to offer a defense of our own interpretation of his philosophy, comparing it to the semantic and pedagogic interpretations proposed, respectively, by Garfield and Siderits, on the one hand, and Ferraro, on the other. In our exposition, we shall discuss the relationship between emptiness, dependent co-origination and truth, pointing to the intimate connection between those terms within Nāgārjuna's philosophy and attempting to indicate in what sense the four noble truths of Buddhism, according to the philosopher, can only be true if they are empty. Through this analysis, we hope to be able to establish a relation between conventional truth and ultimate truth according to which both conventional and ultimate truth are empty, distinguishing themselves only insofar as the first one concerns the conventional existence of things, while the second one concerns the absence of essence of the very same things. With this in mind, we shall analyze how could it be possible, for Nāgārjuna, to have a comprehension on truth that seems to be so counter-intuitive, to wit, that truth is only possible if it's relative. We hope thus to make a small contribution to the discussion of some of the most important concepts of this important Buddhist philosopher, especially with regard to the relation between ultimate truth and emptiness. (shrink)

Although meritorious, Naïve Realism faces theoretical issues stemming from the lack of clarity in the concepts forming its propositions and the relevant (but not usually acknowledged) diversity of its theses. In this paper, my goal is to provide a groundwork that mitigates these theoretical complications. One such distinction concerns its subject matter, in particular, whether it deals with the nature of perceptual episodes or their phenomenology. My first goal is to acknowledge such distinctions by delimiting the former option, which I (...) refer to as “Ontological Naïve Realism”. To accomplish this, I proposed a distinctively minimal version of this position. However, a thorough characterization of the acquaintance relation was necessary for its postulation, which revealed a diversity of the corresponding relations/predicates. This informed the postulation of the minimal thesis and thus the definition of Ontological Naïve Realism. Based on this definition, I also proposed a novel classification and taxonomy of the relevant forms of Ontological Naïve Realism, based on the width of the attribution of naïve-realistic features and whether or not they identify perceptions/illusions to acquaintance instantiations. (shrink)

Constructivism in ethics is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, for example, truths about what we ought to do, they are in some sense determined by an idealized process of rational deliberation, choice, or agreement. As a “first-order moral account”--an account of which moral principles are correct-- constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept or follow are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in a hypothetical (...) or idealized process of rational deliberation. As a “metaethical account” – an account of whether there are any normative truths and, if so, what they are like – constructivism holds that there are normative truths. These truths are not fixed by facts that are independent of the practical standpoint, however characterized; rather, they are constituted by what agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. In working to provide a more precise definition of constructivism in metaethics, the focus of this entry, one faces two main difficulties. The first difficulty is that constructivism comes in several varieties, each of which claims a different niche within metaethics, and some claim no space at all. The second difficulty concerns where to place constructivism on the metaethical map in relation to realism and anti-realism. These are terms of art, and it is highly contested which views count as realist and which as antirealist. These two difficulties will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories are designed to answer. Section §1 defines the scope of constructivism in ethics, in contrast to constructivism in political theory. Sections §§2-5 illustrate the main varieties of metaethical constructivism, which are designed to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. Section §6 presents the main varieties of constructivist accounts of the justification of moral judgments of right and wrong. Section §7 discusses the metaethical status of constructivism, and its distinctive import. (shrink)

O objetivo deste trabalho é investigar a natureza ontológica e epistemológica do conceito de informação, focalizando inicialmente a Filosofia e Ética da Informação (EI), propostas por Floridi (1999; 2002; 2004; 2011; 2016), cujo fundamento teórico servirá de suporte para reflexões acerca da inteligência artificial generativa (IAGen), mais especificamente, o ChatGPT. O conceito de informação será abordado a partir de três vertentes na perspectiva filosófico-interdisciplinar: (1) realismo informacional, (2) ecologia informacional e (3) semântica informacional, segundo Gonzalez, Nascimento & Haselager (2004). A (...) partir dessa abordagem, direcionamos nosso estudo para propostas de Floridi (2004), indicando os seus possíveis problemas. Procuraremos entender a Filosofia da Informação, a partir da perspectiva da Ética da Informação (EI), analisando como a EI pode contribuir para reflexões acerca do uso de IA generativa. Problematizamos a EI a fim de construir uma ponte com a Ética Intercultural da Informação (EII) proposta por Capurro (2010). (shrink)

Las afirmaciones verdaderas reciben su justificación de creencias que tienen al conocimiento como base, por lo que para su formulación y comprensión se necesita asumir una posición fundacionalista. En este artículo se propone un fundacionalismo confiabilista, inspirado en Goldman, aunque con cambios importantes respecto a su teoría. A diferencia de Goldman, considero que no todas las creencias tienen que ser verdaderas, ni toda justificación de las creencias requiere de la verdad. Adicionalmente, las creencias verdaderas, expresadas mediante oraciones asertóricas, estarían fundadas (...) en creencias aún más básicas, cuya justificación proviene del uso del lenguaje. (shrink)

It is largely agreed that if constructivism contributes anything to meta-ethics it is by proposing that we understand ethical objectivity “in terms of a suitably constructed point of view that all can accept” (Rawls 1980/1999: 307). Constructivists defend this “practical” conception of objectivity in contrast to the realist or “ontological” conception of objectivity, understood as an accurate representation of an independent metaphysical order. Because of their objectivist but not realist commitments, Kantian constructivists place their theory “somewhere in the space between (...) realist and relativist accounts of ethics” (O’Neill 1988: 1). Furthermore, they argue that their practical conception of objectivity succeeds in making sense of certain features of morality, such as its categorical authority and its relation to rational agency, which escape rival theories (Korsgaard 1996b, Korsgaard 2003b). To this extent, constructivism claims a privileged place in meta-ethics. The legitimacy of this claim is widely challenged. Precisely because of its practical conception of objectivity, many – including some constructivists — regard constructivism as a first-order normative theory, rather than as a meta-ethical position, hence not on a par with realism. Some critics object that constructivism fails to offer a distinct meta-ethics because it is structurally incomplete and thus must be combined with a fully-fledged meta-ethics (Hussain and Shah 2006); others argue that it tacitly relies on realism (Timmons 2003; Shafer-Landau 2003; Larmore 2008). Thus far, the debate about the prospects of constructivism as a meta-ethical theory has been driven by the conviction that the case for or against constructivism depends on its ontological commitments. In this chapter, I propose a change in perspective. My aim is to defend constructivism as an objectivist account of practical knowledge. Its defining feature is the claim that practical knowledge is knowledge by principles. Its task is to establish a constitutive relation between knowledge of oneself as a practical subject and knowledge about what one ought to do. By focusing on the issue of practical knowledge I hope to show that the difficulty in situating Kantian constructivism firmly on the meta-ethical map, along with other meta-ethical theories, reflects ambiguities and oscillations about the practical significance of ethics. Even though the term is ambiguous, I retain the qualification “Kantian” for the constructivist theory I outline, and for two reasons. First, while the theory I outline differs from current agnostic or anti-realist variants, it is closer to its origins, since Kant treats practical reason as a cognitive capacity and takes moral judgments to be objective moral cognitions, which importantly differ from other sorts of rational cognitions because they bind us in the first person. Practical cognitions are common knowledge because they are such that all subjects endowed with rationality can arrive at them by reasoning and find them authoritative. Thus understood, Kantian constructivism carves a distinct logical space in the meta-ethical debate that other sorts of constructivism fail to identify. This is the second reason for keeping the qualification “Kantian”. On this formulation, constructivism is antagonistic to non-cognitivist theories denying that moral judgments have cognitive contents, because they deny that there is something to be known; but it is also a rival to cognitivist theories denying that knowledge can be practical in itself. How constructivism differs over the realist theories of practical reason is the least understood aspect of this debate. This essay aims to make the case that practical reason is both discursive and emotional. In contrast to foundational and anti-realist accounts of practical reasoning, it attempts to show that the moral feeling of respect plays a cognitive but non-evidential role in the account of the cognitive and practical powers of reason. The argument proceeds as follows. In section 1, I consider some prominent constructivist arguments against the model of applied knowledge and show that they are driven by non-cognitivist assumptions about the practicality of ethics and the legitimacy of epistemological claims. In section 2, I argue that these arguments do not succeed in disposing of the idea of practical knowledge as incoherent, because they trade on an ambiguity regarding the proper object of practical knowledge. To solve this ambiguity, I turn to Anscombe’s contrast between “practical” and “speculative” knowledge as models for understanding action. I thus suggest that Anscombe’s account of practical knowledge as knowledge of oneself as an agent is an important resource for Kantian constructivism. This finding prompts us to reset the current dispute about the ontological and epistemological commitments of Kantian constructivism, as illustrated in section 3. While constructivism does not postulate any moral ontology prior to reasoning, it attributes to reasoning the cognitive powers to establish a distinctive relation between the agent and her action. The task of sections 4-7 is to account for the distinctive features of Kantian constructivism understood as an objectivist account of practical knowledge. In section 4, I argue that in order for reasoning to accomplish its normative tasks, it should be conceived as a self-legislating activity. I respond to some objections to the idea of self-legislation as the form of rational willing by offering a dialogical view of practical reason. In section 5, I propose a non-standard interpretation of Kant’s argument of “the fact of reason” to show that the constructivist account of self-legislation does not build on realism about value, as its detractors claim. The “basis of construction” is the subjective experience of respect for the self-legislative capacity itself. This moral feeling conveys our awareness of rational agency and shows our responsiveness to the demands of practical reason. It is an emotional mode of practical knowledge of oneself as an agent (in the sense specified in section 2), but not as a mode of moral discernment. In section 6, I show how practical knowledge of oneself as an agent relates to practical knowledge about what one ought to do. I thus account for the relation between respect as emotional moral consciousness and respect as a deliberative constraint. Finally, in section 7, I reply to the objection of subjectivism. I explain how the complex sort of objectivity that Kantian constructivism affords is at the same time more ambitious and more modest than is generally assumed. (shrink)

Es una tesis admitida y común la que sostiene que Descartes introdujo la forma moderna del método y del quehacer filosófico, caracterizados ambos por su desconexión del terreno de la espiritualidad, del cuidado de sí, de la ascesis y de toda una forma de vida. Se considera que Foucault compartía esa tesis, lo que en su momento criticaría Pierre Hadot. En el presente trabajo tratamos de mostrar que la forma en que Descartes elaboró su método y su propuesta no se (...) ajusta a aquella tesis recibida. En él se mantiene la relación antigua entre filosofía y espiritualidad, método y paideía. Una vez mostrado esto, apuntamos finalmente cómo en él, sin embargo, se abrió la vía para que se diera la ruptura que él no practicó. (shrink)

Ethical constructivism holds that truths about the relation between rationality, morality, and agency are best understood as constructed by correct reasoning, rather than discovered or invented. Unlike other metaphors used in metaethics, construction brings to light the generative and dynamic dimension of practical reason. On the resultant picture, practical reasoning is not only productive but also self-transforming, and socially empowering. The main task of this volume is to illustrate how constructivism has substantially modified and expanded the agenda of metaethics by (...) refocusing on rational agency and its constitutive principles. In particular, this volume identifies, compares and discusses the prospects and failures of the main strands of constructivism regarding the powers of reason in responding to the challenges of contingency. While Kantian, Humean, Aristotelian, and Hegelian theories sharply differ in their constructivist strategies, they provide compelling accounts of the rational articulation required for an inclusive and unified ethical community. (shrink)

El artículo busca mostrar que existe un grupo de filósofos y una filósofa en Chile que recepcionaron, tradujeron y explicaron la fenomenología de una manera más bien histórico-filológica que sistemático-problemática. Esta situación se explica, por varias razones, porque efectivamente estaban accediendo a un pensar que no tenía una larga tradición; que esas reflexiones fueron planteadas en textos originalmente en idioma alemán, lo que exigía múltiples esfuerzos de traducción; pero que también se debe a un modo de hacer filosofía en Chile, (...) más bien centrado en un canon filosófico, que en el desarrollo del pensamiento propio y original. (shrink)

This article examines Aristotle's views concerning the possibility of friendship between human beings and nonhuman animals. The suggestion that he denies this possibility is rejected. I reassess the textual evidence adduced by scholars in support of this reading, while adding new material for discussion. Central to the traditional reading is the assumption that animals, in Aristotle's view, cannot be friends in virtue of their cognitive limitations. I argue that Aristotle's account of animal cognition is perfectly consistent with the possibility of (...) friendship between human beings and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Rescue workers have a stressful and risky occupation where being engaged is crucial to face physical and emotional risks in order to help other persons. This study aims to estimate work engagement levels of rescue workers (namely comparing nurses, firefighters, and police officers) and to assess the validity evidence related to the internal structure of the Portuguese versions of the UWES-17 and UWES-9, namely, dimensionality, measurement invariance between occupational groups, and reliability of the scores. To evaluate the dimensionality, we compared (...) the fit of the three-factor model with the fit of a second-order model. A Portuguese version of the instrument was applied to a convenience sample of 3,887 rescue workers (50% nurses, 39% firefighters, and 11% police officers). Work engagement levels were moderate to high, with firefighters being the highest and nurses being the lowest engaged. Psychometric properties were evaluated in the three-factor original structure revealing acceptable fit to the data in the UWES-17, although the UWES-9 had better psychometric properties. Given the observed statistically significant correlations between the three original factors, we proposed a 2nd hierarchal structure that we named work engagement. The UWES-9 first-order model obtained full uniqueness measurement invariance, and the second-order model obtained partial (metric) second-order invariance. (shrink)

En este trabajo se hace un recorrido histórico del teatro venezolano y el origen de la tragedia; en primer lugar, se intenta establecer la relación entre filosofía y tragedia en Aristóteles y Steiner. Se estudia, también, brevemente a uno de los autores más representativos del teatro contemporáneo marabino, el dramaturgo Henry Semprún, a fin de determinar si en él o en sus obras se cumple la tesis de George Steiner: la inexistencia de la tragedia en el teatro contemporáneo. El análisis (...) de la obra Perpetum permite concluir que sí existen elementos trágicos en el teatro marabino contemporáneo. (shrink)

Are there such things as moral truths? How do we know what we should do? And does it matter? Constructivism states that moral truths are neither invented nor discovered, but rather are constructed by rational agents in order to solve practical problems. While constructivism has become the focus of many philosophical debates in normative ethics, meta-ethics and action theory, its importance is still to be fully appreciated. These new essays written by leading scholars define and assess this new approach in (...) ethics, addressing such questions as the nature of constructivism, how constructivism improves our understanding of moral obligations, how it accounts for the development of normative practices, whether moral truths change over time, and many other topics. The volume will be valuable for advanced students and scholars of ethics and all who are interested in questions about the foundation of morality. (shrink)

I argue for the view that the scientific model which Plato consistently had in mind when sharpening his main ethical theory was medicine. Moreover, I ascribe to Plato a “medical model of ethics”. A careful examination of this model reveals how Plato appropriates several medical concepts and ideas by employing two central methodological devices in his thought: dialectical transposition and analogical characterisation. In discussing them, I identify different kinds of medical references in the dialogues –not all medical references in Plato (...) have the same methodological status– and draw greater attention to the most recurrent medical analogies in them. More generally, the paper is also meant to provide a case study of the complex relationship between medicine and philosophy in Antiquity by examining in a new light the various ways in which the former served as an epistemological and ethical model for the latter. (shrink)

This paper provides a new interpretation of Plato’s account of justice as psychic health in Republic IV. It argues that what has traditionally been considered to be one single analogy is actually a more complex line of reasoning that contains various medical analogies. These medical analogies are not only different in number but also in kind. I discuss each of them separately, while providing a response to various objections.