Abductive problems and their solutions are presented by means of justification logic. We introduce additional meta-constructions in order to generate and compare different solutions to the same abductive problem. Our approach has three advantages: (i) it makes structurally explicit the solution to an abductive problem (as it has a syntactic nature); (ii) it gives a precise meaning to the notion of evidence; (iii) it provides clear definitions and procedures for the comparison of solutions that can be adapted to different needs.

Automatic control of physiological variables is one of the most active areas in biomedical engineering. This paper is centered in the prediction of the analgesic variables evolution in patients undergoing surgery. The proposal is based on the use of hybrid intelligent modelling methods. The study considers the Analgesia Nociception Index to assess the pain in the patient and remifentanil as intravenous analgesic. The model proposed is able to make a one-step-ahead prediction of the remifentanil dose corresponding to the current state (...) of the patient. The input information is the previous remifentanil dose, the ANI variable and the electromyogram signal. Modelling techniques used are Artificial Neural Networks and Support Vector machines for Regression combined with clustering methods. Both training and validation were done with a real dataset from different patients. Results obtained show the potential of this methodology to calculate the drug dose corresponding to a given analgesic state of the patient. (shrink)

In this position paper, we have used Alan Cooper’s persona technique to illustrate the utility of audio- and video-based AAL technologies. Therefore, two primary examples of potential audio- and video-based AAL users, Anna and Irakli, serve as reference points for describing salient ethical, legal and social challenges related to use of AAL. These challenges are presented on three levels: individual, societal, and regulatory. For each challenge, a set of policy recommendations is suggested.

Background: The prevalence of anxiety and depression in young students is associated with biosocial factors and scholastic stress. However, few studies have evaluated emotional-affective symptoms that are related to the immune system and antioxidant parameters in young individuals without diagnoses of affective disorders.Aim: This study aims to assess the relationship between emotional-affective symptoms and glutathione concentrations and CD4 and CD8 lymphocyte counts in college students.Methods: College students completed standardized psychometric instruments, including the Perceived Stress Scale, Hamilton Anxiety Scale, Beck Depression (...) Inventory, Familiar Social and Friends Support Scale, and Rosenberg Scale. Blood samples were biochemically analyzed. Analyses of variance were conducted between four groups according to symptom severity.Results: A considerable prevalence of stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms was observed and negatively correlated with self-esteem and socio-familiar support. Perceived stress was sexually dimorphic. Although biochemical parameters were within reference ranges, glutathione, CD4, and CD8 tended to be lower in participants with anxiety and depression symptoms, which may be of predictive value.Conclusion: The relationship between antioxidant/immune parameters and socio-affective scores is latent in undiagnosed college students who might develop affective disorders. The findings suggest that during the initial development of affective disorders, stress management strategies should be implemented to help college students cope with the academic load and monitor negative changes in their physiological state. (shrink)

Como casi todos los conceptos fi losófi cos, el de «validez normativa» tiene altos grados de ambigüedad y de vaguedad. En este trabajo me encargo de analizar la postura de distintos autores que han tratado de dar respuesta a la pregunta ¿qué significa que una norma sea «válida»? Para ello, tomo como hilo conductor la obra de Ernesto Garzón Valdés. Esto se debe a que los trabajos de Ernesto Garzón dedicados a este tema, le ofrecen al lector un análisis crítico (...) y comprensivo de algunas de las posturas teóricas más relevantes sobre el concepto de validez normativa. Asimismo, trabajar a través de su obra tiene un doble benefi cio: por un lado, no sólo nos permite conocer a fondo la postura teórica de autores que pertenecen a distintas corrientes del pensamiento, como Hans Kelsen, H.L.A. Hart, Francisco Suárez o von Wright por ejemplo, sino que, por el otro, nos permite conocer la postura del mismo Garzón y sus críticas a los diferentes modelos conceptuales. (shrink)

El derecho natural spinozista es el concepto central que articula este estudio. Y en relación con el derecho natural trataremos de explicar otros conceptos fundamentales de la filosofía de Spinoza: el común decreto, las supremas potestades y la salvación del pueblo o concordia. Los elementos a analizar son, pues, la materia, la forma, los agentes y los fines. El autor de este artículo parte de un presupuesto simple: el derecho natural representa el aspecto material del pensamiento de Spinoza. Ahora bien, (...) así como el derecho natural nos debe dar razón de la materialidad en la filosofía de Spinoza, lo que él llama el común decreto nos puede ayudar a describir el aspecto formal. Por otro lado, lo que Spinoza denomina las supremas potestades nos pueden servir para descubrir el plano de los agentes. Y, por último, la salvación del pueblo puede ser la referencia oportuna a la hora de ordenar el plano de los fines en la filosofía de Spinoza. (shrink)

El presente trabajo trata de ensayar la utilidad metateórica de una distinción filosófica acuñada por ciertos pensadores españoles —la distinción entre “dintorno”, “entorno” y “contorno”— a la hora de reordenar críticamente las diferentes posiciones teóricas en torno al problema de la determinación de los límites del Derecho (el problema de la autonomía o la demarcación de la categoría jurídica) y particularmente para clarificar los términos y las implicaciones del debate entre concepciones positivistas y post-positivistas.

Este trabajo aborda la realidad actual de los medios de comunicación de masas y cómo los mitos del liberalismo a propósito de la libertad de expresión han sido sistemáti-camente destruidos. La tesis liberal de la separación entre lo público y lo privado ha desaparecido porque todas las empresas de comunicación están subordinadas al Estado. La confianza en el libre mercado ha producido la mayor concentración de empresas mediáticas. El "cuarto poder" no contribuye a la limitación del poder del Estado. La (...) lucha por la verdad ha sido sustituida por la manipulación de la opinión pública y por la mentira a favor del gobierno. (shrink)

POSADA KUBISSA, Luisa, Sexo y Esencia. De esencialismos encubiertos y esencialismos heredados: desde un feminismo nominalista, ed. Horas y Horas, col. Cuadernos Inacabados, Madrid, 1998, pp. 147.

En la actualidad, aún se desconoce el verdadero alcance de la vasta cultura de Lope de Vega, pues, aunque se sabe que fue un gran lector, que legó más de 1500 libros, sus títulos se han perdido a lo largo de la historia. No obstante, en sus obras trasciende una serie de textos que contribuyeron a su formación. En el presente trabajo se analiza La Arcadia, considerada la novela pastoril más erudita del Siglo de Oro, desde la perspectiva de (...) los agentes terapéuticos. En esta obra se mencionan remedios de procedencia herbal, de procedencia mineral y también de procedencia animal. Los resultados confirman que Lope de Vega pudo utilizar una serie de textos científicos en sus citas sobre la materia terapéutica. Entre ellos cabe destacar a Andrés Laguna y su Dioscórides y Plinio el Viejo, cuya Historia Natural pudo haber consultado como fuente primaria, a través de alguna traducción comentada, como la de Gerónimo de Huerta o a través de alguna otra obra basada en ella, como el opúsculo de Constantino Castriota, pues, en este último caso, se encuentran párrafos muy similares y, en algunos casos, casi literales. Nowadays, the true extent of the vast culture of Lope de Vega is still largely unknown. Although it is known that he was a great reader, who bequeathed more than 1500 books, his titles have been lost throughout history. However, a series of texts that contributed to his education become known in his works. In the present paper, La Arcadia, considered the most erudite pastoral romance of Spanish Golden Age, is analyzed from the therapeutic perspective. Remedies of herbal origin, of mineral origin and also of animal origin are mentioned in this novel. The results achieved confirm that Lope de Vega was able to use a series of scientific texts in his quotations on the therapeutic subject. Among them, it is worth mentioning Andres Laguna, and Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History could have been consulted as a primary source, through some commented translation, such as that of Geronimo de Huerta, or through some other work based on it, like Constantino Castriota's opuscule. In the latter case, there are very similar and, in some cases, almost literal paragraphs. (shrink)

There are numerous studies that, from different perspectives, have dealt with the debate held in the Spanish Empire during the 16th century on the slavery of the American Indians, starring –among others– by Francisco de Vitoria and his disciples from the School of Salamanca, and also –outside the academic sphere– by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. The purpose of this work is to study whether this debate made its mark in Spanish society. For this, (...) it is analyzed three theatrical pieces from the Golden Age signed by playwrights of the stature of Tirso de Molina, Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de Barca, who –given their enormous popularity– had the capacity to reach the wide audience that congregated in the corrals of comedies. Were these three writers influenced by the controversy over the Indians carried out, among other authors, by Vitoria, Las Casas and Sepúlveda? Did they fully grasp in their works the subtle debate that Vitoria, Las Casas and Sepúlveda maintained when they interpreted Aristotelian arguments on slavery and the consequences that derived from them in terms of the possibility of enslaving or not the Indians? (shrink)

How can science be brought to connect with experience? This book addresses two of the most challenging problems facing contemporary neurobiology and cognitive science. Firstly, understanding how we unconsciously execute habitual actions as a result of neurological and cognitive processes that are not formal actions of conscious judgment but part of a habitual nexus of systematic self-organization. Secondly, attempting to create an ethics adequate to our present awareness that there is no such thing as a transcendental self, a stable subject (...) or soul. The author combines researches in cognitive science and phenomenology with two representatives of what he calls the 'wisdom traditions': Confucianism and Buddhist epistemology. (shrink)

El éxodo de más de 5,6 millones de venezolanos representa un fenómeno migratorio con múltiples facetas, cada una merecedora de atento análisis y profundización. Ante la dimensión del movimiento de millones de seres humanos, se corre el riesgo de subestimar tragedias que ocurren dentro del drama migratorio. Una de ellas, es el exilio de científicos y académicos. Bajo esta perspectiva, la investigación tiene como objetivo general mostrar la banalización frente al riesgo de pérdida de talento y avance científico de países (...) en vías de desarrollo. Tomamos como objeto de estudio el caso de la Diáspora Científica Venezolana. Se abordan de forma multidisciplinar tres ejes temáticos: 1) Causas y consecuencias de la Ciencia en Riesgo, 2) Instrumentalización de la Ciencia en Riesgo y 3) Efectividad de programas dirigidos a científicos en riesgo. El primer eje temático, está fundamentado en analizar las causas y consecuencias de la Diáspora científica venezolana, centrándonos en los estudios realizados, desde el ámbito sociológico, de Iván de la Vega, Francisco Kerdel-Vegas y Tomás Páez. El segundo eje establece, desde el marco filosófico habermasiano-marcusiano, la conveniente preservación del statu quo de la Ciencia en riesgo, a través de instrumentalización y unidimensionalidad del quehacer científico en países en vías de desarrollo por parte de programas internacionales financiados por organismos privados y gubernamentales. El tercer y último enfoque tiene como punto de partida la situación actual de la diáspora científica y la exposición de soluciones eficaces que rompan la inercia presente, enmarcando las ideas dentro de la actual crisis de la posmodernidad. Palabras Claves: diáspora venezolana, instrumentalización, ciencia, riesgo. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the complexity in ironic echoic mention from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics. It builds on the scenario-based approach to irony where ironic meaning is treat...

This paper considers, firstly, to what extent the administration of oxytocin can augment the capacity of empathy in human beings; and secondly, whether or not such practice ought to be allowed. In relation to the latter, the author develops an argument in favour of this intervention by virtue of its consistency with the belief that, if a therapeutic treatment is to be considered acceptable, it is essential that it maximizes the well-being of those affected and that it does not compromise (...) the autonomy of the patient. Having rejected several objections related to the nature of this intervention, the author finally questions its morality on the basis of a concern with its universalizability. (shrink)

This article analyzes whether state repression in post—civil war situations can be explained by dynamics associated with previous civil wars. It claims that in post—civil war situations the state can more easily resort to indiscriminate repression against social groups, relying on information related to the civil war. Two civil war dynamics are tested: preemptive indiscriminate violence to eliminate opposition by the defeated population and retaliation for crimes committed during the war. Using data from the first decade of the Francoist regime (...) in Spain, the author found that civil war dynamics, and not actual dissent, explain most of the country’s postwar violence. (shrink)

This article tries to elucidate the Deleuzian project of the reversal of Platonism in relation to that of Nietzsche. To this aim, I have made a predominantly historiographic sketch of the question in both authors. In the case of Nietzsche, I inquired about both the relationship that the reversal of Platonism presents in his philosophy with the problem of nihilism and the evolution that the topic undergoes throughout his vast intellectual production, until it reaches its final formulation. With regard to (...) Deleuze, I offer a broad overview of his work aimed at tracing the subject, from his interpretation of the Nietzschean formulation, as opposed to that of Heidegger, to the meticulous way in which it fits into his own philosophy as a shift of the essence in favour of the event as a source of singularities. (shrink)

What would it mean for an emotion to successfully “recognize” something about an object toward which it is directed? Although the notion of "emotional recognition" is central to Rick Furtak’s _Knowing Emotions_, the text does not provide an account of this concept that enables us to assess the extent to which a given emotional response is recognitive. This article draws from the text to articulate a novel account of emotional recognition. According to this account, emotional recognition can be assessed not (...) only in terms of the “accuracy” of an emotional construal in a strictly epistemological sense, but also in terms of the quasi-ethical ideal of responding emotionally to what we encounter in ways that are “specific,” “deep," and “balanced.". (shrink)

En este trabajo me propongo comparar el patrón argumentativo de los sofistas del siglo V a. C. tal como son retratados en la obra de Platón con el de los erísticos del _Eutidemo_. Defenderé que ninguno de estos sofistas es presentado por Platón como experto en dialéctica refutativa, actividad discursiva que caracteriza a la erística. Por el contrario, el retrato platónico de Pródico, Hipias, Gorgias y Protágoras los muestra como incapaces, desinteresados u hostiles a la argumentación de tipo dialéctica.

Resumen En este trabajo se aborda el estudio de un corpus de textos narrativos constituido por dos obras de ficción y una de no ficción, correspondientes a tres autores nacidos en el decenio comprendido entre los años 1959 y 1968: un argentino, un español y un estadounidense traducido al español. Se considera a estos autores como informantes cualificados, como antropólogos que describen la cultura de una comunidad y como narradores privilegiados que reproducen expertamente las voces de sus personajes. Para estudiar (...) las actividades de imagen nos basamos principalmente en las teorías de Goffman, Brown y Levinson, Haverkate y Bravo, así como de otros autores que han utilizado textos literarios para el estudio de este tipo de fenómenos. También tenemos en cuenta las propuestas de Mey para analizar las voces de los personajes creados en las obras literarias de ficción. (shrink)

Despite the public availability of legal documents, there is a need for finding specific information contained in them, such as paragraphs, clauses, items and so on. With such support, users could find more specific information than only finding whole legal documents. Some research efforts have been made in this area, but there is still a lot to be done to have legal information available more easily to be found. Thus, due to the large number of published legal documents and the (...) high degree of connectivity, simple access to the document is not enough. It is necessary to recover the related legal framework for a specific need. In other words, the retrieval of the set of legal documents and their parts related to a specific subject is necessary. Therefore, in this work, we present a proposal of a RDF-based graph to represent and search parts of legal documents, as the output of a set of terms that represents the pursued legal information. Such a proposal is well-grounded on an ontological view, which makes possible to describe the general structure of a legal system and the structure of legal documents, providing this way the grounds for the implementation of the proposed RDF graph in terms of the meaning of their parts and relationships. We posed several queries to retrieve parts of legal documents related to sets of words and the results were significant. (shrink)

Stephen Jay Gould’s monumental The Structure of Evolutionary Theory ‘‘attempts to expand and alter the premises of Darwinism, in order to build an enlarged and distinctive evolutionary theory . . . while remaining within the tradition, and under the logic, of Darwinian argument.’’ The three branches or ‘‘fundamental principles of Darwinian logic’’ are, according to Gould: agency (natural selection acting on individual organisms), efficacy (producing new species adapted to their environments), and scope (accumulation of changes that through geological time yield (...) the living world’s panoply of diversity and morphological complexity). Gould’s efforts to contribute something important to each of these three fundamental components of Darwinian Theory are far from successful. (shrink)

O populismo contemporâneo tem suscitado profícuos debates entre os teóricos políticos, tais como Ernesto Laclau, com a sua teoria do discurso atrelada à psicanálise, defendendo a ideia de que o populismo representa a lógica da política; e Nadia Urbinati, que compreende o populismo como a desfiguração da democracia. O desdobramento deste embate de ideias levará à análise de uma figura importante para o populismo: o líder populista. Se para Laclau a noção de _significante vazio_ expressa o sujeito coletivo na figura (...) do líder, resultado da lógica da equivalência e da diferença entre as diversas demandas sociais, para Urbinati o líder populista utiliza o regime democrático para atingir fins antidemocráticos, aviltando a parte da população que dele diverge. Pretende-se neste artigo analisar ambas as concepções e, a partir do confronto destas perspectivas sobre o populismo, apresentar uma hipótese de base psicanalítica sobre o que conduz os indivíduos a apoiarem uma representação política autoritária. (shrink)