The 27th February, 2010 an 8.8 Mw earthquake upset Chile. A year after, the writer Juan Villoro published 8.8: El miedo en el espejo, a story by means of a catharsis telling his own experience throughout the earthquake. Villoro’s aim is to demonstrate that people’s psychological guaranties have fallen down together with the buildings’ walls. The Mexican writer describes his staying at the Hotel San Francisco in Santiago de Chile, which held out against the earthquake shocks but entrapped several Latin-American (...) writers as well as Villoro. All the writers were guests at the Congreso Iberoamericano de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil. Villoro book’s purpose is to reflect upon how fear impacts the human beings. (shrink)

Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms – “strong” and “weak” reciprocity – that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning (...) the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free-riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a “narrow” and a “wide” reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in “real-world” situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation “in the wild.” In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing. (shrink)

BackgroundIn Parkinson's disease, the side of motor symptoms onset may influence disease progression, with a faster motor symptom progression in patients with left side lateralization. Moreover, worse neuropsychological outcomes after subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation have been described in patients with predominantly left-sided motor symptoms. The objective of this study was to evaluate if the body side of motor symptoms onset may predict motor outcome of bilateral STN-DBS.MethodsThis retrospective study included all consecutive PD patients treated with bilateral STN-DBS at Grenoble (...) University Hospital from 1993 to 2015. Demographic, clinical and neuroimaging data were collected before and 1 year after surgery. The predictive factors of motor outcome at one-year follow-up, measured by the percentage change in the MDS-UPDRS-III score, were evaluated through univariate and multivariate linear regression analysis.ResultsA total of 233 patients were included with one-year follow-up after surgery [143 males ; 121 right body onset; 112 left body onset; mean age at surgery, 55.31 ± 8.44 years; mean disease duration, 11.61 ± 3.87]. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that the left side of motor symptoms onset did not predict motor outcome.ConclusionsIn this retrospective study, the body side of motor symptoms onset did not significantly influence the one-year motor outcome in a large cohort of PD patients treated with bilateral STN-DBS. (shrink)

Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms – “strong” and “weak” reciprocity – that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning (...) the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free-riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a “narrow” and a “wide” reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in “real-world” situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation “in the wild.” In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing. (shrink)

In this paper, we first define the vector product in Minkowski space $\mathbb{R}_{4}^{7}$, which is identified with the space of spatial split-octonions. Next, we derive the $G_{2}-$ frame formulae for a seven dimensional Minkowski curve by using the spatial split-octonions and the vector product. We show that Frenet–Serret formulas are satisfied for a spatial split octonionic curve. We obtain the congruence of two spatial split octonionic curves and give relationship between the $G_{2}-$ frame and Frenet–Serret frame. Furthermore, we present the (...) Frenet–Serret frame with split octonions in $\mathbb{R}_{4}^{8}$. Finally, we give illustrative examples with Matlab codes. (shrink)

According to Chomsky, creativity is a critical property of human language, particularly the aspect of ?the creative use of language? concerning the appropriateness to a situation. How language can be creative but appropriate to a situation is an unsolvable mystery from the Chomskyan point of view. We propose that language appropriateness can be explained by considering the role of the human capacity for Mental Time Travel at its foundation, together with social and ecological intelligences within a triadic language-grounding system. Our (...) proposal is based on the change of perspective from the analysis of individual sentences to the flux of speech in which the temporal dimension of language is much more relevant. (shrink)

Objective correlates—behavioral, functional, and neural—provide essential tools for the scientific study of consciousness. But reliance on these correlates should not lead to the ‘fallacy of misplaced objectivity’: the assumption that only objective properties should and can be accounted for objectively through science. Instead, what needs to be explained scientifically is what experience is intrinsically— its subjective properties—not just what we can do with it extrinsically. And it must be explained; otherwise the way experience feels would turn out to be magical (...) rather than physical. We argue that it is possible to account for subjective properties objectively once we move beyond cognitive functions and realize what experience is and how it is structured. Drawing on integrated information theory, we show how an objective science of the subjective can account, in strictly physical terms, for both the essential properties of every experience and the specific properties that make particular experiences feel the way they do. (shrink)

Understanding Institutions proposes a new unified theory of social institutions that combines the best insights of philosophers and social scientists who have written on this topic. Francesco Guala presents a theory that combines the features of three influential views of institutions: as equilibria of strategic games, as regulative rules, and as constitutive rules. -/- Guala explains key institutions like money, private property, and marriage, and develops a much-needed unification of equilibrium- and rules-based approaches. Although he uses game theory concepts, (...) the theory is presented in a simple, clear style that is accessible to a wide audience of scholars working in different fields. Outlining and discussing various implications of the unified theory, Guala addresses venerable issues such as reflexivity, realism, Verstehen, and fallibilism in the social sciences. He also critically analyses the theory of “looping effects” and “interactive kinds” defended by Ian Hacking, and asks whether it is possible to draw a demarcation between social and natural science using the criteria of causal and ontological dependence. Focusing on current debates about the definition of marriage, Guala shows how these abstract philosophical issues have important practical and political consequences. -/- Moving beyond specific cases to general models and principles, Understanding Institutions offers new perspectives on what institutions are, how they work, and what they can do for us. (shrink)

La contemporaneidad es facticidad sin sentido, un “espacio de crisis” donde al “ocultamiento de Dios” (teología) le corresponde “la imposibilidad del Absoluto” (filosofía), y a ambos les son correlativas la imposición de un “universo infinito e inestable” (ciencia) y la consecuente pérdida de significancia (semiótica) que implican el vacío y las ausencias. Esa contemporaneidad es asimismo preludio que inaugura la emergencia hegemónica de la efectividad (tecnología), al costo de una debacle espiritual que tiene consecuencias trágicas para la vida y la (...) convivencia humanas. El agotamiento de las dimensiones imaginarias o no de ese universo, determinadas por las repeticiones inexorables de su geografía máxima y mínima, o la imposibilidad de progresar “más allá de la inmanencia” que reitera los recorridos reales y virtuales por la materia, proyecta nefastos efectos desexistenciarios sobre una humanidad que se hunde en la facticidad sin sentido y pervierte cualquier posibilidad de conocimiento, valor y virtud. La emergencia de novedosas modalidades de subjetividad, que atentan contra la existencia colectiva de comunidades, culturas y modos de vida, tienen directa relación con originales formas de reproducción del capital (economía) y modos traumáticos para realizar el prometeico sueño de producción de poder privado (política). También influye de manera decisiva la vigencia de un sistema de poder tecnocrático que sustituye “lo real” por virtualidades e impone una “convivencia” determinada por flujos digitales efímeros e inconsistentes. Esta obra demuestra que tales cuestiones económicas o políticas, científicas o técnicas, lejos de ser contradictorias con un tratamiento teológico o filosófico de la realidad, dependen de la previa respuesta de éste a los problemas elementales que la ciencia y la tecnología deben tener por resueltos antes de aplicar sus progresos por más elocuentes que estos pudieran parecer. Y tal demostración, en el presente texto, no gira en el vacío sino que perdura fundamentada en un recorrido ejemplificador a través de las diversas culturas “occidentales” que han predominado, primero en la misión de “ordenar a la Humanidad” en el tiempo y el espacio, para luego desatar la tragedia que signa un porvenir de convulsiones y pérdidas. Un “mundo” llega a su fin y las formas y elementos que lo sostenían se degradan fungiendo una transición hacia nuevas dimensiones de un “futuro” donde el hombre será un mendigo de lo inexorable. Sólo la conciencia plena del colapso y las causas que lo generan puede abrir una herida en ese futuro a favor del ser humano, evitando la pérdida de su condición de persona y de las virtudes propias que pueden salvarlo. (shrink)

Pragmatic vindicatory genealogies provide both a cause and a rationale and can thus affect the space of reasons. But how far is the space of reasons affected by this kind of genealogical argument? What normative and evaluative implications do these arguments have? In this paper, I unpack this issue into three different sub-questions and explain what kinds of reasons they provide, for whom are these reasons, and for what. In relation to this final sub-question I argue, most importantly, that these (...) arguments are ambiguous about what they give us reasons for, meaning that they can be interpreted both as justifications for recognizing the normative standing of certain norms, values, and practices - and thus for living by them - and as excuses for those that do so. I illustrate this point by reference to the genealogical vindication of honour cultures, showing how the vindicatory argument can illuminate such case as one of excusing moral ignorance. Drawing on legal theory and moral philosophy, I show that different evaluative and normative implications hang on the result of the interpretation as either justification or excuse, and show that this ambiguity is a virtue rather than a limitation. (shrink)

Manufacturing and industry practices are undergoing an unprecedented revolution as a consequence of the convergence of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, virtual and augmented reality, among others. This fourth industrial revolution is similarly changing the practices and capabilities of operators in their industrial environments. This paper introduces and explores the notion of the Operator 4.0 as well as how this novel way of conceptualizing the human operator necessarily implicates human values in the technologies that constitute it. (...) The design approach known as value sensitive design (VSD) is used to explore how these Operator 4.0 technologies can be designed for human values. Expert elicitation surveys were used to determine the values of industry stakeholders and examples of how the VSD methodology can be adopted by engineers in order to design for these values is illustrated. The results provide preliminary adoption strategies that industrial teams can take to Operator 4.0 technology for human values. (shrink)

This paper examines language practices in two services offered in the main Catholic Church in the town of Sangmelima in the South region of Cameroon. The research is motivated by the need to find out what languages are used in this church and what the terms “French service” and “Bulu service” imply in the multilingual city of Sangmelima. The informants were the priests, catechists, choir leaders, and some parishioners of this church. Three main instruments were used to collect data in (...) these two church services, i.e., interview, questionnaire and participant observation. The frame adopted for the analysis was Kouega’s structural-functional approach (2008). The findings revealed that the services in this church include 28 parts. In the French service, the languages used to realise these parts were found to be French, Bulu (Sangmelima), Ewondo (Yaounde), Fang (south of Cameroon and north of Equatorial Guinea), Fe’efe’e (Bafang), Ghomala’ (Bafoussam), and Medumba (Bangangte). In the Bulu service, on the other hand, the languages used were: Bulu (Sangmelima), Ewondo (Yaounde), and French. These languages were chosen for a variety of reasons. First, a language like Bulu was chosen because it is understood by the parishioners as it is the main language of the locality. Second, French is the official language of the territory; third, some languages like Fe’efe’e, Ghomala, and Medumba were chosen on the basis of the involvement of the speakers of these ethnic languages in the activities of the church. Fourth, the availability of printed religious materials in a language was an important factor. (shrink)

In this paper, we take a meta-theoretical stance and aim to compare and assess two conceptual frameworks that endeavor to explain phenomenal experience. In particular, we compare Feinberg & Mallatt’s Neurobiological Naturalism (NN) and Tononi’s and colleagues' Integrated Information Theory (IIT), given that the former pointed out some similarities between the two theories (Feinberg & Mallatt 2016c-d). To probe their similarity, we first give a general introduction to both frameworks. Next, we expound a ground plan for carrying out our analysis. (...) We move on to articulate a philosophical profile of NN and IIT, addressing their ontological commitments and epistemological foundations. Finally, we compare the two point-by-point, also discussing how they stand on the issue of artificial consciousness. (shrink)

The experimental approach in economics is a driving force behind some of the most exciting developments in the field. The 'experimental revolution' was based on a series of bold philosophical premises which have remained until now mostly unexplored. This book provides the first comprehensive analysis and critical discussion of the methodology of experimental economics, written by a philosopher of science with expertise in the field. It outlines the fundamental principles of experimental inference in order to investigate their power, scope and (...) limitations. The author demonstrates that experimental economists have a lot to gain by discussing openly the philosophical principles that guide their work, and that philosophers of science have a lot to learn from their ingenious techniques devised by experimenters in order to tackle difficult scientific problems. (shrink)

In the last couple of years, two important books concerning moral progress arrived in the press, namely Philp Kitcher’s Moral Progress and Victor Kumar’s and Richmond Campbell’s A Better Ape. In this critical notice, I review both books and problematize the way in which they respectively try to tie together moral progress and the theory of evolution.

C’è prima la persona o prima la società? Per non cadere in una risposta dualistica, bisogna risalire alle radici antropologiche della vita sociale, che stanno alla base delle diverse forme che essa storicamente può assumere. Questo saggio esamina il rapporto tra le tendenze socializzanti innate e le virtù relazionali, alla luce di un’antropologia integrale, nella quale la persona umana è considerata nella sua globalità somatico-psichico-spirituale. Vengono qui esaminati il tessuto di legami in cui è inserita la nostra esistenza e la (...) responsabilità che compete a ognuno nei confronti del cosiddetto capitale sociale. (shrink)

Can we say we live in a post-digital condition? It depends. This paper sets out to distinguish between the current mass digital culture and an authentic post-digital culture. If we mean “post-digital” as the full internalization and awareness of the result of the so-called digital revolution, then it is necessary a philosophical work to discuss related problems, identify the causes and propose solutions. An authentic philosophy of digital will, however, have to start from a clarification of the terms and basic (...) objects of its investigation. Here media theory is inserted as an analytical tool: the purpose of this essay is to outline a road map for a good media theory that interfaces with questions of definition of digital, also in light of the notions of space, time, and matter. As will be seen, the description given here for a “good media theory” does, in fact, coincide with an already existing – and inserted in the contemporary debate – school. In conclusion we will try to delineate the field of philosophical inquiry opened by the clarification brought by the previous analysis, and to suggest a general framework within which philosophy will have to move in order to finally reach the authentic post-digital condition. (shrink)

This article investigates the effects of perceived supervisor support on ethical and unethical employee behavior using a multi-method approach. Specifically, we test the mediating mechanism and a boundary condition that moderate the relationship between support and ethical employee behaviors. We find that supervisor-based self-esteem fully mediates the relationship between supervisor support and ethical employee behavior and that employee task satisfaction intensifies the relationship between supervisor support and supervisor-based self-esteem.

"This book discusses Lucretius' refutation of Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and other, unnamed thinkers in De Rerum Natura 1, 635-920. Chapter 1 argues that in DRN I 635-920 Lucretius was following an Epicurean source, which in turn depended on Theophrastean doxography. Chapter 2 shows that books 14 and 15 of Epicurus' On Nature were not Lucretius' source-text. Chapter 3 discusses how lines 635-920 fit in the structure of book 1 and whether Lucretius' source is more likely to have been Epicurus himself (...) or a neo-Epicurean. Chapter 4 focuses on Lucretius' own additions to the material he derived from his sources and on his poetical and rhetorical contributions, which were extensive. Lucretius shows an understanding of philosophical points by adapting his poetical devices to the philosophical arguments. Chapter 4 also argues that Lucretius anticipates philosophical points in what have often been regarded as the 'purple passages' of his poem - e.g. the invocation of Venus in the proem, and the description of Sicily and Aetna - so that he could take them up later on in his narrative and provide an adequate explanation of reality."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

In current political analysis, as well as in discourse, the term populism has become an ‘umbrella term’, embracing a large number of concepts and phenomena. One risk underlying this conceptual stretching is that the term falls into the trap of ‘all-nothing’ and becomes so elastic that populism is used to improperly describe a wide and unrelated variety of phenomena. Some political phenomena might share some characteristics with populist movements but are nevertheless characterised by ideological elements and political projects that are (...) very much in line with the traditional left/right split, as in the case of the new radical right. This article proposes a distinction between the conformational populism typical of some populist parties and the contagious populism typical of the radical right. We argue that in the latter, populism becomes another tool in the arsenal of parties with clearly established identities. Using a comparative approach, we evaluate the programmes, ideological foundations, conception of the people and positions of the 5 Star Movement, The League and the Rassemblement National to illustrate this distinction. (shrink)