Jair Bolsonaro, the current President of Brazil, has made himself into one of the most influent advocates of COVID-19 denial. His health policy and his political doctrine are partly based on an implicit moral claim, which is neglected by contemporary political theory. Bolsonarism’s rhetoric raises a moral claim to freedom without responsibility, which relieves its followers from the burdens that emerge from liberal accounts of liberty or from basic goods accepted in a political community. In opposition to liberal or communitarian (...) accounts, Bolsonarism endorses a Hobbesian concept of freedom that describes it as the absence of ‘impediments to motion’. Nonetheless, it differs from Hobbes because it treats this liberty as endowed with moral value and non-negotiable through a social contract. (shrink)

Critics of functionalism about the mind often rely on the intuition that collectivities cannot be conscious in motivating their positions. In this paper, we consider the merits of appealing to the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity. We demonstrate that collective mentality is not an affront to commonsense, and we report evidence that demonstrates that the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity is, to some extent, culturally specific rather (...) than universally held. This being the case, we argue that mere appeal to the intuitive implausibility of collective consciousness does not offer any genuine insight into the nature of mentality in general, nor the nature of consciousness in particular. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an empirically-driven approach to the relationship between conceptual and non-conceptual representations. I begin by clarifying Wilfrid Sellars's distinction between a non-conceptual capacity to picture significant aspects of our world, and a capacity to stabilize semantic content in the form of conceptual representations that signify those aspects of the world that are relevant to our shared practices. I argue that this distinction helps to clarify the reason why cognition must be understood as embodied and situated. Drawing (...) on recent models of attention and valuation, I then argue that the human brain constructs a dynamic model of the world that it has encountered, encoding higher-level regularities in the form of linguistically structured representations. And I conclude by arguing that this approach to cognition provides a set of critical resources for understanding the situated nature of social cognition. (shrink)

It would be a mistake to deny commonsense intuitions a role in developing a theory of consciousness. However, philosophers have traditionally failed to probe commonsense in a way that allows these commonsense intuitions to make a robust contribution to a theory of consciousness. In this paper, I report the results of two experiments on purportedly phenomenal states and I argue that many disputes over the philosophical notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ are misguided—they fail to capture the interesting connection between commonsense ascriptions (...) of pain and emotion. With this data in hand, I argue that our capacity to distinguish between ‘mere things’ and ‘subjects of moral concern’ rests, to a significant extent, on the sorts of mental states that we take a system to have. (shrink)

Recent behavioral experiments, along with imaging experiments and neuropsychological studies appear to support the hypothesis that emotions play a causal or constitutive role in moral judgment. Those who resist this hypothesis tend to suggest that affective mechanisms are better suited to play a modulatory role in moral cognition. But I argue that claims about the role of emotion in moral cognition frame the debate in ways that divert attention away from other plausible hypotheses. I suggest that the available data may (...) be more plausibly explained by appeal to predictive and evaluative mechanisms, which are neither wholly affective nor straightforwardly cognitive. By recognizing this fact, we can begin to see why questions about the role of emotion in moral psychology are likely to be empirically misguided. (shrink)

Some people succeed in adopting feminist ideals in spite of the prevalence of asymmetric power relations. However, those who adopt such ideals face a number of psychological difficulties in inhibiting stereotype-based judgments. I argue that a Spinozan theory of belief fixation offers a more complete understanding of the mechanisms that underwrite our intuitive stereotype-based judgments. I also argue that a Spinozan theory of belief fixation offers resources for avoiding stereotype-based judgments where they are antecedently recognized to be pernicious and insidious. (...) Key Words: Spinozan theory of mind • stereotypes • feminism • dual-process theory. (shrink)

It is received wisdom in philosophy and the cognitive sciences that individuals can be in emotional states but groups cannot. But why should we accept this view? In this paper, I argue that there is substantial philosophical and empirical support for the existence of collective emotions. Thus, while there is good reason to be skeptical about many ascriptions of collective emotion, I argue that some groups exhibit the computational complexity and informational integration required for being in genuinely emotional states.

Given the importance of scientific research in shaping our perception of the world, and our senses of what policies will and won’t succeed in altering that world, it is of great practical, political, and moral importance that we carry out scientific research with integrity. The phenomenon of scientific fraud stands in the way of that, as scientists may knowingly enter claims they take to be false into the scientific literature, often knowingly doing so in defiance of norms they profess allegiance (...) to. In this chapter we take a look at some of the causes of scientific fraud, and how it might be manifested in large-scale research teams and situations of anonymous authorship. We find that such cases make trouble for what might seem like intuitive answers to the question “who should be held responsible for this fraud?”, and we argue that in such cases it would be better to hold the entire community responsible for seeing to it that there is less fraud. (shrink)

Many people believe that the research-based pharmaceutical industry has a ‘special’ moral obligation to provide lifesaving medications to the needy, either free-of-charge or at a reduced rate relative to the cost of manufacture. In this essay, I argue that we can explain the ubiquitous notion of a special moral obligation as an expression of emotionally charged intuitions involving sacred or protected values and an aversive response to betrayal in an asymmetric trust relationship. I then review the most common arguments used (...) to justify the claim that the pharmaceutical industry has a special moral obligation and show why these justifications fail. Taken together, these conclusions call into question the conventional ideologies that have traditionally animated the debate on whether the pharmaceutical industry has special duties of beneficence and distributive justice with respect to the impoverished in dire need of their products. (shrink)

Collectivities (states, club, unions, teams, etc.) are often fruitfully spoken of as though they possessed representational capacities. Despite this fact, many philosophers reject the possibility that collectivities might be thought of as genuinely representational. This paper addresses the most promising objection to the possibility of collective representation, the claim that there is no explanatory value to positing collective representations above and beyond the representational states of the individuals that compose a particular collectivity. I claim that this argument either proves too (...) much, also giving us reason to abandon person-level representations, or it proves too little, demonstrating precisely the sort of continuity between individual and collective representations that would warrant the positing of genuine collective representations. I conclude with a brief sketch of two promising cases of collective representation that lend credence to my claim that individual representations and collective representations are analogous in a way that warrants the study of collective mentality from within the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

In analyzing oppressive systems like racism, social theorists have articulated accounts of the dynamic interaction and mutual dependence between psychological components, such as individuals’ patterns of thought and action, and social components, such as formal institutions and informal interactions. We argue for the further inclusion of physical components, such as material artifacts and spatial environments. Drawing on socially situated and ecologically embedded approaches in the cognitive sciences, we argue that physical components of racism are not only shaped by, but also (...) shape psychological and social components of racism. Indeed, while our initial focus is on racism and racist things, we contend that our framework is also applicable to other oppressive systems, including sexism, classism, and ableism. This is because racist things are part of a broader class of oppressive things, which are material artifacts and spatial environments that are in congruence with an oppressive system. (shrink)

Proponer la existencia de filosofía en América Latina se convierte para muchos en un problema. Más dificultades se generarán ahora al proponer la existencia de una estética latinoamericana, teniendo como representante a un pensador colombiano: Nicolás Gómez Dávila. En medio de la obra de este pensador logramos entresacar una serie de códigos estéticos que, si bien están heredados de las concepciones europeas de la estética, podrían darnos atisbos de una mirada distinta otorgada por la observación de objetos y hechos generados (...) por el mestizaje sucedido en medio de tierras fértiles, agrestes y exuberantes como las de nuestra geografía. Realizar esta presentación implica repasar un legado existente, pero olvidado, por lo que actualizar una experiencia filosófica rica que, aunque presente, no se ha manifestado en nuestro medio de manera suficiente. Como objetivos principales de este ejercicio investigativo están: argumentar a favor del ejercicio filosófico realizado en Latinoamérica;proponer el ejercicio aforístico de Gómez Dávila como una aportación colombiana en torno a la estética filosófica; y repasar algunos tópicos estéticos que queremos entresacar en la obra de este autor para realizar un ejercicio hermenéutico de los mismos. Con este trabajo se espera alcanzar no solamente ecos en nuestro medio sino en las distintas latitudes donde ya el autor es reconocido, pero ahora desde la estética. La metodología empleada en esta investigación es realizada desde un ejercicio hermenéutico, en la perspectiva gadameriana. Esperamos proponer, como resultado principal, argumentos que corroboren las aportaciones de Gómez Dávila a la estética desde una perspectiva latinoamericana. Finalmente, concluimos que la estética de Gómez Dávila es de estilo clásicocon vínculos metafísicos, asociada a un canon griego y con una clara perspectiva cristiana, pero que ha sido elaborada por una mente perteneciente a un contexto latinoamericano, del cual no debemos extraer de ningún modo.AbstractTo suggest the existence of philosophy in Latin America becomes a problem for many. Even more difficulties are generated by proposing the existence of a Latin American Aesthetics, having as its representative a Colombian thinker: Nicolás Gómez Dávila. In the midst of this thinker’s work, we were able to identify a series of aesthetic codes which, although inherited from the European concepts of aesthetics, could give us glimpses of a different perspective given by the observation of objects and events generated by the miscegenation that took place in the midst of lush, rugged and fertile lands as those of our geography. To attempt his presentation involves reviewing an existing but forgotten legacy, and updating a rich philosophical experience that, although present, does not manifest in our environment sufficiently. The objectives of this research are: arguing for the philosophy made in Latin America; propose the aphoristic exercise of Gómez Dávila as a Colombian contribution to the field of aesthetics; and review some aesthetic issues that we want to conclude in the work of this author to conduct a hermeneutic exercise thereof. With this paper I expect to reach not only echoes in our philosophical community but in also in other latitudes where Gomez-Davila is already recognized, but now fromthe point of view of aesthetics. The methodology used in this research entailed a hermeneutic exercise, in the perspective of Gadamer. We propose some arguments supporting the contributions of Gómez-Dávila aesthetics from a Latin American perspective. Finally, we conclude that the aesthetics of Gómez-Dávila is of a classic style with metaphysical links, associated with a Greek canon and with a clear Christian perspective, but that it has been developed by a mind that belongs to a Latin American context, from which we cannot intend to separate it in any way. (shrink)

https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar/article/view/v21-eggers.

Developmental psychologists have long argued that the capacity to distinguish moral and conventional transgressions develops across cultures and emerges early in life. Children reliably treat moral transgressions as more wrong, more punishable, independent of structures of authority, and universally applicable. However, previous studies have not yet examined the role of these features in mature moral cognition. Using a battery of adult-appropriate cases (including vehicular and sexual assault, reckless behavior, and violations of etiquette and social contracts) we demonstrate that these features (...) also distinguish moral from conventional transgressions in mature moral cognition. Each hypothesized moral transgressions was treated as strongly and clearly immoral. However, our data suggest that although the majority of hypothesized conventional transgressions also form an obvious cluster, social conventions seem to lie along a continuum that stretches from mere matters of personal preference (e.g., getting tattoos or wearing black shoes with a brown belt) to transgressions that are treated as matters for legitimate social sanction (e.g., violating traffic laws or not paying your taxes). We use these findings to discuss issues of universality, domain-specificity, and the importance of using a well-studied set of moral scenarios to examine clinical populations and the underlying neural architecture of moral cognition. (shrink)

Altruistic self-sacrifice is rare, supererogatory, and not to be expected of any rational agent; but, the possibility of giving up one's life for the common good has played an important role in moral theorizing. For example, Judith Jarvis Thomson (2008) has argued in a recent paper that intuitions about altruistic self-sacrifice suggest that something has gone wrong in philosophical debates over the trolley problem. We begin by showing that her arguments face a series of significant philosophical objections; however, our project (...) is as much constructive as critical. Building on Thomson's philosophical argument, we report the results of a study that was designed to examine commonsense intuitions about altruistic self-sacrifice. We find that a surprisingly high proportion of people judge that they should give up their lives to save a small number of unknown strangers. We also find that the willingness to engage in such altruistic self-sacrifice is predicted by a person's religious commitments. Finally, we show that folk-moral judgments are sensitive to agent-relative reasons in a way that diverges in important ways from Thomson's proposed intuitions about the trolley problem. With this in mind, we close with a discussion of the relative merits of folk intuitions and philosophical intuitions in constructing a viable moral theory. (shrink)

Means-based harms are frequently seen as forbidden, even when they lead to a greater good. But, are there mitigating factors? Results from five experiments show that judgments about means-based harms are modulated by: 1) Pareto considerations (was the harmed person made worse off?), 2) the directness of physical contact, and 3) the source of the threat (e.g. mechanical, human, or natural). Pareto harms are more permissible than non-Pareto harms, Pareto harms requiring direct physical contact are less permissible than those that (...) do not, and harming someone who faces a mechanical threat is less permissible than harming someone who faces a non-mechanical threat. These results provide insight into the rich representational structure underlying folk-moral computations, including both the independent and interacting roles of the inevitability, directness and source of harm. (shrink)

Thought experimental methods play a central role in empirical moral psychology. Against the increasingly common interpretation of recent experimental data, I argue that such methods cannot demonstrate that moral intuitions are produced by reflexive computations that are implicit, fast, and largely automatic. I demonstrate, in contrast, that evaluating thought experiments occurs at a near-glacial pace relative to the speed at which reflexive information processing occurs in a human brain. So, these methods allow for more reflective and deliberative processing than has (...) commonly been assumed. However, these methods may still provide insight into some human strategies for navigating unfamiliar moral dilemmas. (shrink)

We welcome Mikhalevich & Powell’s (2020) (M&P) call for a more “‘inclusive”’ animal ethics, but we think their proposed shift toward a moral framework that privileges false positives over false negatives will require radically revising the paradigm assumption in animal research: that there is a clear line to be drawn between sentient beings that are part of our moral community and nonsentient beings that are not.

Dysfunctions of the neural circuits that implement social behavior are necessary but not a sufficient condition to develop schizophrenia. We propose that schizophrenia represents a disease of general connectivity that impairs not only the “social brain” networks, but also different neural circuits related with higher cognitive and perceptual functions. We discuss possible mechanisms and evolutionary considerations.

We commend Arbib for his original proposal that a mirror neuron system may have participated in language origins. However, in our view he proposes a complex evolutionary scenario that could be more parsimonious. We see no necessity to propose a hand-based signing stage as ancestral to vocal communication. The prefrontal system involved in human speech may have its precursors in the monkey's inferior frontal cortical domain, which is responsive to vocalizations and is related to laryngeal control.

This chapter examines the recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy that has targeted the commonsense understanding of group minds. It begins by setting up the conceptual and empirical terrain on which claims about the group mind in commonsense psychology have been constructed. The chapter explains an analysis of the cross‐cultural data, which suggest a greater willingness to ascribe collective mentality in East Asian cultures. It addresses that the different strands of data together support the claim that commonsense psychology is (...) committed to a form of methodological holism, which allows for properties of individuals that critically depend on group membership. The chapter concludes by suggesting that this does not cut against philosophical and scientific attempts to defend the existence of collective intentions and group minds; it merely suggests that such projects must move beyond commonsense strategies for predicting and explaining individual behavior. (shrink)

There are many ways to advance our understanding of the human mind by studying different kinds of sociality. Our aim in this introduction is to situate claims about extended cognition within a broader framework of research on human sociality. We briefly discuss the existing landscape, focusing on ways of defending socially extended cognition. We then draw on resources from the recent literature on the socially extended mind, as well as the literature on collective intentionality, to provide a framework for thinking (...) about the social dimension of individual minds. We then turn to a brief overview of the individualistic approaches advanced by Ludwig and Spaulding in this volume. And we close with a discussion of the transformative role of the social mind in individual life presented by Kern and Moll, as well as the distributed approach to interacting systems defended by Goldstone and Theiner. (shrink)

This paper discusses a crisis of accountability that arises when scientific collaborations are massively epistemically distributed. We argue that social models of epistemic collaboration, which are social analogs to what Patrick Suppes called a “model of the experiment,” must play a role in creating accountability in these contexts. We also argue that these social models must accommodate the fact that the various agents in a collaborative project often have ineliminable, messy, and conflicting interests and values; any story about accountability in (...) a massively distributed collaboration must therefore involve models of such interests and values and their methodological and epistemic effects. (shrink)

Este artículo busca poner de manifiesto el pensamiento de María Zambrano en relación con la educación, para ello apelaremos a algunos de sus manuscritos: El Aula, La vida de las aulas, el espejo de las aulas y entre el ver y el escuchar, dado que los elementos allí tratados respecto al aula, la atención y los sentidos, actualmente cobran total vigencia, máxime si se considera que los avances tecnológicos proponen hoy al respecto una nueva re-significación, asunto que a su vez (...) conlleva nuevos desafíos para la comunidad académica, no obstante el llamado de la filósofa es que el docente, independientemente de los recursos que medien el proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje, procure mantener el sentido de humanidad que debe sustentar la acción educativa, en tiempos donde la deshumanización coloniza más terreno. (shrink)

La presente investigación con diseño metodológico experimental, de tipo cualitativa con un aprendizaje basado en método de observación a 15 estudiantes en cada grupo, como propuesta didáctica extracurricular, realizada dentro de la asignatura de Química General del tronco común en Ingeniería, implantada en tres semestres consecutivos 2018-1, 2018-2 y 2019-1, en el Laboratorio de Química, de la Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Campus Guadalupe Victoria del Valle de Mexicali, en Baja California, México. La materia de Química General, es de carácter (...) obligatorio y está ubicado en el segundo semestre del tronco común de las ciencias de la ingeniería. (shrink)

The thought of Nicolás Gómez Dávila is a great absent in the academic atmosphere of our Nation. This article’s intention is to present its principal assumptions, to measure its argumentative richness that could back up a true philosophical thought in our land. To revise his personal opinions in regards to different issues, such as his critique of democracy, modern rationality, Christianity, among others, might help us as an excuse to read a scholar that, though did not leave an immense production, (...) wrote a most interesting series of annotations and texts, that could appeal to every person interested in knowledge. Through his writings, there can be observed the critical view of a man that was raised in tradition: Philosopher, Christian, polyglot, a self-confessed reactionary. However, there is too a tinge of innovation, that turns his reading into something passionate. Thus, Gómez Dávila challenges his reader to know more, from the exquisiteness of his language he tempts the reader to discover even more... from his annotation he suggests the novelty, based in the tradition of thought of which he is extremely familiar with. (shrink)

Dynamic Consent is both a model and a specific web-based tool that enables clear, granular communication and recording of participant consent choices over time. The DC model enables individuals to know and to decide how personal research information is being used and provides a way in which to exercise legal rights provided in privacy and data protection law. The DC tool is flexible and responsive, enabling legal and ethical requirements in research data sharing to be met and for online health (...) information to be maintained. DC has been used in rare diseases and genomics, to enable people to control and express their preferences regarding their own data. However, DC has never been explored in relationship to historical collections of bioscientific and genetic heritage or to contexts involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.In response to the growing interest by First Peoples throughout Australia in genetic and genomic research, and the increasing number of invitations from researchers to participate in community health and wellbeing projects, this article examines the legal and ethical attributes and challenges of DC in these contexts. It also explores opportunities for including First Peoples' cultural perspectives, governance, and leadership as a method for defining DC on cultural terms that engage best practice research and data analysis as well as respect for meaningful and longitudinal individual and family participation. (shrink)

This book develops a novel approach to distributed cognition and collective intentionality. It is argued that collective mentality should be only be posited where specialized subroutines are integrated in a way that yields skillful, goal-directed behavior that is sensitive to concerns that are relevant to a group as such.

The sensible and conflicting scenario of the pandemic postulated many challenges to societies around the world in 2020. Part of this problem refers to how the differences between politics and science are not comprehended in their particularities. The recognition of limits and power of science and politics can not only contribute to reaching the actions and strategies facing novel coronavirus but also optimized many domains of society.

Die exponierten Vertreter des deutsch-jüdischen Denkens tragen Spannun-gen aus, die für die Moderne kenn-zeichnend sind. Die Erfahrung des Lebens innerhalb vielfältiger, oft miteinander konfligie-render Sinnzusammenhänge, wird in diesem Denken zum Ausdruck ge-bracht. Die Forschung Paul Mendes-Flohrs widmet sich der Philosophie, der Literatur und der Kulturgeschichte des deutschen Judentums unter die-sem Aspekt. In diesem Sammelband sind Beiträge enthalten, die das deutsch-jüdische Denken und damit verwandte Themen als Prisma der Moderne betrachten.

Research on moral psychology has frequently appealed to three, apparently consistent patterns: Males are more likely to engage in transgressions involving harm than females; educated people are likely to be more thorough in their moral deliberations because they have better resources for rationally navigating and evaluating complex information; political affiliations and religious ideologies are an important source of our moral principles. Here, we provide a test of how four factors ‐ gender, education, politics and religion ‐ affect intuitive moral judgments (...) in unfamiliar situations. Using a large-scale sample of participants who voluntarily logged on to the internet-based Moral Sense Test, we analyzed responses to 145 unique moral and conventional scenarios that varied widely in content. Although each demographic or cultural factor sometimes yielded a statistically significant difference in the predicted direction, these differences were consistently associated with extremely small effect sizes. We conclude that gender, education, politics and religion are likely to be relatively insignificant for moral judgments of unfamiliar scenarios. We discuss these results in light of current debates concerning the mechanisms underlying our moral judgments and, especially, the idea that we share a universal moral sense that constrains the range of cross-cultural variation. (shrink)

O autor estuda a noção de liberdade como milagre privado, segundo Leibniz. O homem é capaz de milagres, isto é, ser-se humano é ser-se capaz de liberdade. A vontade livre está sempre inclinada e essa inclinação é justamente a marca da sua indiferença. Nenhuma lei vincula o humano, e por isso é capaz de ser excepcional e de se soltar das amarras que o escravizam às coisas exteriores. A mente humana é capaz de produzir o imprevisível (excepto para Deus). O (...) humano é, por princípio, capaz de se assenhorear de si e de se determinar ao que de melhor lhe é possível, ainda que na maioria das vezes se deixe afundar no mar das paixões. (shrink)

Understanding cultural evolution is one of the most challenging and indispensable scientific tasks for the survival of humankind on our planet. This task demands, besides an adoption of theories and models from biological evolution, theories for culture-specific processes as well. Language evolution and language acquisition offer interesting objects of study in this respect. (Published Online November 9 2006).

As neuroscience methods begin to dominate emotion research it is critical for researchers to remember that peripheral embodiments are critical to understanding emotional experience and emotion—behavior links. Much of modern emotion research assumes reliable mind—body connections that suggest that changes in emotional states influence bodily responses and, vice versa, that somatovisceral information shapes emotional experiences. However, there may be important qualifications to the link between the mind and the (peripheral) body. For example, the ability to sense internal and external bodily (...) states declines in older age as does activation of physiological systems, all of which may contribute to an impairment in emotional experiences and how emotions influence behavior. I describe this phenomenon as maturational dualism and suggest implications of this for emotion in older adults. (shrink)

Para el historiador mexicano Edmundo O’Gorman la reflexión filosófica se constituyó en un arma o en un instrumento, cuya eficacia y necesidad surgieron de la lectura de diversas interpretaciones de los procesos históricos y de las meditaciones acerca de su naturaleza y su sentido. En su juventud O’Gorman se entusiasmó por el historicismo, pero posteriormente prefirió no adscribirse a una corriente o escuela específica sino a una tradición. Para O’Gorman, Vico forma parte del linaje de los historiadores a quienes no (...) interesa la historia comprobada sino la historia comprendida, no la constatación rigurosa de los hechos, sino su articulación en la dinámica global del pensamiento. Por eso ambos tienen coincidencias en sus reflexiones sobre la naturaleza del conocimiento histórico, la función de la imaginación, los métodos para entender la diversidad cultural y, sobre todo, el problema de aprehender una “universalidad racional” que no se limite al orden técnico–instrumental.PALABRAS CLAVE: Vico, Edmundo O’Gorman, historicismo, historia, pensamiento hispánico.According to the Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman, philosophical reflection was constituted as an arm, or as an instrument, which’s efficacy and necessity emerged from different interpretations of historical processes, and from meditations as to its nature and meaning. In his youth, O’Gorman was enthusiastic about historicism, but later we preferred not to be ascribed to any specific trend or school, but to a tradition. O’Gorman considers Vico as one of those historians who are not interested in history as something to be checked, but as something to be understood; not in the rigorous confirmation of facts, but in its articulation in the global dynamics of thought. Therefore, there are coincidences in their reflections on the nature of historical knowledge, the function of imagination, the methods to understand cultural diversity and, mainly, theproblem of getting an ‘universal rationality’ which would not be limited to the technical or instrumental order.KEYWORDS: Vico, Edmundo O’Gorman, historicism, history, Hispanic thought. (shrink)