BackgroundThe literature shows the negative psychological impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak on frontline healthcare workers. However, few are known about the mental health of physicians and nurses working in general hospitals during the outbreak, caring for patients with COVID-19 or not.ObjectivesThis survey assessed differences in mental health in physicians and nurses working in COVID-19 or non-COVID-19 medical care units.DesignA cross-sectional mixed-mode survey was used to assess burnout, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and stress.SettingA total of 1,244 physicians and nurses from (...) five general hospitals in Belgium, working in COVID-19 care units, non-COVID-19 care units, or both were informed of the study.ParticipantsSix hundred forty-seven healthcare workers participated in the survey.MeasurementsValidated instruments were used to assess the outcomes: the PFI, the ISI, and the DASS-21.ResultsResults showed high prevalence of burnout, insomnia, depression, and anxiety among participants. After adjusting for confounders, multivariate analysis of variance showed no differences between CCU, NCCU, and CCU + NCCU workers. Univariate general linear models showed higher level of burnout, insomnia, and anxiety among nurses in comparison to physicians. Being a nurse, young, isolated, with an increased workload were risk factors for worse mental health outcomes.LimitationsThe mental health of the tested sample, before the outbreak, is unknown. Moreover, this cross-sectional design provides no information on the evolution of the mental health outcomes over time.ConclusionDirectly caring for patients with COVID-19 is not associated with worse mental health outcomes among healthcare workers in general hospitals. High prevalence of burnout, insomnia, depression, and anxiety among physicians and nurses requires special attention, and specific interventions need to be implemented.Protocol RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT04344145. (shrink)

When developing computational models to analyze the tradeoffs between climate risk management strategies (i.e., mitigation, adaptation, or geoengineering), scientists make explicit and implicit decisions that are influenced by their beliefs, values and preferences. Model descriptions typically include only the explicit decisions and are silent on value judgments that may explain these decisions. Eliciting scientists’ mental models, a systematic approach to determining how they think about climate risk management, can help to gain a clearer understanding of their modeling decisions. In order (...) to identify and represent the role of values, beliefs and preferences on decisions, we used an augmented mental models research approach, namely values-informed mental models (ViMM). We conducted and qualitatively analyzed interviews with eleven climate risk management scientists. Our results suggest that these scientists use a similar decision framework to each other to think about modeling climate risk management tradeoffs, including eight specific decisions ranging from defining the model objectives to evaluating the model’s results. The influence of values on these decisions varied between our scientists and between the specific decisions. For instance, scientists invoked ethical values (e.g., concerns about human welfare) when defining objectives, but epistemic values (e.g., concerns about model consistency) were more influential when evaluating model results. ViMM can (i) enable insights that can inform the design of new computational models and (ii) make value judgments explicit and more inclusive of relevant values. This transparency can help model users to better discern the relevance of model results to their own decision framing and concerns. (shrink)

This article discusses the function, development and maintenance of meaning and the importance of meaning-making from different perspectives, as it is based on a collaboration between professionals from health science and psychology. The aim is to discuss how meaning-making processes can be employed in the health context to enhance individuals’ well-being. Starting point is a description of the common basis of the understanding of meaning-making. Afterwards brief examples from the different professional areas will show how meaning-making can improve health care (...) practice. We will focus on the processual nature of meaning-making, its existential layers, as well as the ways in which meaning-making is at play in everyday activities and limit situations, such as illness or suicidality. (shrink)

BackgroundThe experiences of UK ethnic minority healthcare workers are crucial to ameliorating the disproportionate COVID-19 infection rate and outcomes in the UKEM community. We conducted a qualitative study on UKEM healthcare workers’ perspectives on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UKEM community.MethodsParticipants were 15 UKEM healthcare workers. Data were collected using individual and joint interviews, and a focus group, and analyzed using thematic analysis.ResultsWe generated three themes: heterogeneity, mistrust, and mitigating. Therein, participants distinguished CVH in the UKEM community in educational attainment (...) and ethnicity. They pointed to the role of mistrust in CVH in the UKEM community. They opined that the mistrust underlying CVH in the UKEM community is rooted in history and religion, conspiracy theories, the speedy development and novelty of the vaccines, post-vaccination complications/side effects, false positive test results, and social media and social support/influence. Participants recommended that interventions targeted at mitigating CVH in the UKEM community need to, in a non-judgmental way, tackle dis/misinformation and provide education, and incorporate UKEM healthcare worker endorsement. They also suggested such interventions be community-oriented, enhance the convenience of vaccination centers and the possibility of vaccine choice, and appreciate that overcoming CVH and accepting vaccination is a gradual process involving personal assessment of risks and benefits.ConclusionCVH in the UKEM community is a multifaceted phenomenon requiring multicomponent interventions. (shrink)

Resumen: En el siguiente análisis intentamos, por una parte, contextualizar la loa El divino Narciso de sor Juana Inés de Cruz dentro de los paradigmas estéticos y culturales de su época. Y por otra, reactualizar la lectura crítica de ella desde la perspectiva de una retórica o poética subalterna, entendiendo esto último como la deconstrucción literaria y su posterior reorganización de las significaciones que justificaron el colonialismo. Lo anterior tiene por finalidad dar cuenta cómo, mediante la manipulación precisa de los (...) códigos hegemónicos, se logra invertir los contenidos simbólicos de una de las representaciones más tempranas y persistentes del continente americano: la figura América-mujer, imagen que naturalizó y justificó su alteridad.: In the following analysis, we tried first to contextualize La loa El Divino Narciso from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz within esthetical and cultural paradigms of her time. Then, we tried to update her critical reading from the perspective of a subordinate rhetoric or poetics. We understand it as the literary deconstruction and subsequent reorganization of the meanings that justified colonialism. This approach has the purpose of accounting for the way in which accurate manipulation of hegemonic codes makes it possible to reverse the symbolic contents of one of the earliest and most persistent representations of the American continent: the America-woman figure. This image naturalized and justified its otherness. (shrink)

An important lesson that philosophy can learn from the Turing Test and computer science more generally concerns the careful use of the method of Levels of Abstraction (LoA). In this paper, the method is first briefly summarised. The constituents of the method are “observables”, collected together and moderated by predicates restraining their “behaviour”. The resulting collection of sets of observables is called a “gradient of abstractions” and it formalises the minimum consistency conditions that the chosen abstractions must satisfy. Two useful (...) kinds of gradient of abstraction – disjoint and nested – are identified. It is then argued that in any discrete (as distinct from analogue) domain of discourse, a complex phenomenon may be explicated in terms of simple approximations organised together in a gradient of abstractions. Thus, the method replaces, for discrete disciplines, the differential and integral calculus, which form the basis for understanding the complex analogue phenomena of science and engineering. The result formalises an approach that is rather common in computer science but has hitherto found little application in philosophy. So the philosophical value of the method is demonstrated by showing how making the LoA of discourse explicit can be fruitful for phenomenological and conceptual analysis. To this end, the method is applied to the Turing Test, the concept of agenthood, the definition of emergence, the notion of artificial life, quantum observation and decidable observation. It is hoped that this treatment will promote the use of the method in certain areas of the humanities and especially in philosophy. (shrink)

Artificial agents (AAs), particularly but not only those in Cyberspace, extend the class of entities that can be involved in moral situations. For they can be conceived of as moral patients (as entities that can be acted upon for good or evil) and also as moral agents (as entities that can perform actions, again for good or evil). In this paper, we clarify the concept of agent and go on to separate the concerns of morality and responsibility of agents (most (...) interestingly for us, of AAs). We conclude that there is substantial and important scope, particularly in Computer Ethics, for the concept of moral agent not necessarily exhibiting free will, mental states or responsibility. This complements the more traditional approach, common at least since Montaigne and Descartes, which considers whether or not (artificial) agents have mental states, feelings, emotions and so on. By focussing directly on mind-less morality we are able to avoid that question and also many of the concerns of Artificial Intelligence. A vital component in our approach is the Method of Abstraction for analysing the level of abstraction (LoA) at which an agent is considered to act. The LoA is determined by the way in which one chooses to describe, analyse and discuss a system and its context. The Method of Abstraction is explained in terms of an interface or set of features or observables at a given LoA. Agenthood, and in particular moral agenthood, depends on a LoA. Our guidelines for agenthood are: interactivity (response to stimulus by change of state), autonomy (ability to change state without stimulus) and adaptability (ability to change the transition rules by which state is changed) at a given LoA. Morality may be thought of as a threshold defined on the observables in the interface determining the LoA under consideration. An agent is morally good if its actions all respect that threshold; and it is morally evil if some action violates it. That view is particularly informative when the agent constitutes a software or digital system, and the observables are numerical. Finally we review the consequences for Computer Ethics of our approach. In conclusion, this approach facilitates the discussion of the morality of agents not only in Cyberspace but also in the biosphere, where animals can be considered moral agents without their having to display free will, emotions or mental states, and in social contexts, where systems like organizations can play the role of moral agents. The primary cost of this facility is the extension of the class of agents and moral agents to embrace AAs. (shrink)

Online service providers —such as AOL, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter—significantly shape the informational environment and influence users’ experiences and interactions within it. There is a general agreement on the centrality of OSPs in information societies, but little consensus about what principles should shape their moral responsibilities and practices. In this article, we analyse the main contributions to the debate on the moral responsibilities of OSPs. By endorsing the method of the levels of abstract, we first analyse the moral responsibilities (...) of OSPs in the web. These concern the management of online information, which includes information filtering, Internet censorship, the circulation of harmful content, and the implementation and fostering of human rights. We then consider the moral responsibilities ascribed to OSPs on the web and focus on the existing legal regulation of access to users’ data. The overall analysis provides an overview of the current state of the debate and highlights two main results. First, topics related to OSPs’ public role—especially their gatekeeping function, their corporate social responsibilities, and their role in implementing and fostering human rights—have acquired increasing relevance in the specialised literature. Second, there is a lack of an ethical framework that can define OSPs’ responsibilities, and provide the fundamental sharable principles necessary to guide OSPs’ conduct within the multicultural and international context in which they operate. This article contributes to the ethical framework necessary to deal with and by endorsing a LoA enabling the definition of the responsibilities of OSPs with respect to the well-being of the infosphere and of the entities inhabiting it. (shrink)

I describe the emergence of Floridi’s philosophy of information (PI) and information ethics (IE) against the larger backdrop of Information and Computer Ethics (ICE). Among their many strengths, PI and IE offer promising metaphysical and ethical frameworks for a global ICE that holds together globally shared norms with the irreducible differences that define local cultural and ethical traditions. I then review the major defenses and critiques of PI and IE offered by contributors to this special issue, and highlight Floridi’s responses (...) to especially two central problems – the charge of relativism and the meaning of ‹entropy’ in IE. These responses, conjoined with several elaborations of PI and IE offered here by diverse contributors, including important connections with the naturalistic philosophies of Spinoza and other major Western and Eastern figures, thus issue in an expanded and more refined version of PI and IE – one still facing important questions as well as possibilities for further development. (shrink)

ion is arguably one of the most important methods in modern science in analysing and understanding complex phenomena. In his book The Philosophy of Information, Floridi (The philosophy of information. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) presents the method of levels of abstraction as the main method of the Philosophy of Information. His discussion of abstraction as a method seems inspired by the formal methods and frameworks of computer science, in which abstraction is operationalised extensively in programming languages and design methodologies. (...) Is it really clear what we should understand by levels of abstraction? How should they be specified? We will argue that levels of abstraction should be augmented with annotations, in order to express semantic information for them and reconcile the method of level of abstraction (LoA’s) with other approaches. We discuss the extended method when applied e.g. to the analysis of abstract machines. This will lead to an example in which the number of LoA’s is unbounded. (shrink)

Some computational phenomena rely essentially on pragmatic considerations, and seem to undermine the independence of the specification from the implementation. These include software development, deviant uses, esoteric languages and recent data-driven applications. To account for them, the interaction between pragmatics, epistemology and ontology in computational artefacts seems essential, indicating the need to recover the role of the language metaphor. We propose a User Levels (ULs) structure as a pragmatic complement to the Levels of Abstraction (LoAs)-based structure defining the ontology (...) and epistemology of computational artefacts. ULs identify a flexible hierarchy in which users bear their own semantic and normative requirements, possibly competing with the logical specification. We formulate a notion of computational act intended in its pragmatic sense, alongside pragmatic versions of implementation and correctness. (shrink)

In this chapter I identify three problems affecting the plausibility of group privacy and argue in favour of their resolution. The first problem concerns the nature of the groups in question. I shall argue that groups are neither discovered nor invented, but designed by the level of abstraction (LoA) at which a specific analysis of a social system is developed. Their design is therefore justified insofar as the purpose, guiding the choice of the LoA, is justified. This should remove the (...) objection that groups cannot have a right to privacy because groups are mere artefacts (there are no groups, only individuals) or that, even if there are groups, it is too difficult to deal with them. The second problem concerns the possibility of attributing rights to groups. I shall argue that the same logic of attribution of a right to individuals may be used to attribute a right to a group, provided one modifies the LoA and now treats the whole group itself as an individual. This should remove the objection that, even if groups exist and are manageable, they cannot be treated as holders of rights. The third problem concerns the possibility of attributing a right to privacy to groups. I shall argue that sometimes it is the group and only the group, not its members, that is correctly identified as the correct holder of a right to privacy. This should remove the objection that privacy, as a group right, is a right held not by a group as a group but rather by the group’s members severally. The solutions of the three problems supports the thesis that an interpretation of privacy in terms of a protection of the information that constitutes an individual—both in terms of a single person and in terms of a group—is better suited than other interpretations to make sense of group privacy. (shrink)

Healthcare systems and health professionals are facing a litany of stressors that have been compounded by the pandemic, and consequently, this has further perpetuated suboptimal mental health and burnout in nursing. The purpose of this paper is to report select findings from a larger, national study exploring gendered experiences of mental health, leave of absence (LOA), and return to work from the perspectives of nurses and key stakeholders. Given the breadth of the data, this paper will focus exclusively on the (...) qualitative results from 53 frontline Canadian nurses who were purposively recruited for their workplace insight. This paper focuses on the substantive theme of “Breaking Point,” in which nurses articulated a multiplicity of stress points at the individual, organizational, and societal levels that amplified burnout and accelerated mental health LOA from the workplace. These findings exemplify the complexities that underlie nurses' mental health and burnout and highlight the urgent need for multipronged individual, organizational, and structural interventions. Robust and timely interventions are needed to restore the health of the nursing profession and sustain its future. (shrink)

Quillagua es un pequeño oasis junto al río Loa. La etnohistoria registra la convivencia de poblaciones indígenas de distinta tradición cultural. Picas tenían derechos territoriales hacia abajo de un poste de madera pintado y cepillado, mientras Atacamas hacia arriba. Estas categorías no eran geográficas sino indicaciones de una organización social dual. Aquí, indagamos en las expresiones materiales y visuales de esta tensa ocupación intercultural. Ponemos atención al registro arqueológico posterior al 900 d. C., época en que los actores desarrollaron numerosos (...) ejercicios político-sociales, mediante la construcción de un paisaje visual. (shrink)

From the advent of general purpose, Turing-complete machines, the relation between operators, programmers and users with computers can be observed as interconnected informational organisms (inforgs), henceforth analysed with the method of levels of abstraction (LoAs), risen within the philosophy of information (PI). In this paper, the epistemological levellism proposed by L. Floridi in the PI to deal with LoAs will be formalised in constructive terms using category theory, so that information itself is treated as structure-preserving functions instead of (...) Cartesian products. The milestones in the history of modern computing are then analysed through constructive levellism to show how the growth of system complexity lead to more and more information hiding. (shrink)

Sobre dialéctica recoge las principales aportaciones –inéditas en su mayor parte– de Manuel Sacristán Luzón (1925-1985) en torno a esta debatida noción, entre las que se incluye el importante prólogo que escribió en 1964 para su traducción castellana del Anti-Dühring, prólogo que Javier Muguerza ha caracterizado como “el texto filosófico más significativo de Sacristán –el que más me impactó cuando lo leí y prolongó más duraderamente dicho impacto” y del que Gregorio Morán escribió que “otro tanto ocurrió con su soberbio (...) prólogo al Anti-Dühring…; fue un texto capital en la formación marxista de una generación”. Como señaló Sacristán, y tal como reflejan los distintos textos que configuran este volumen, la dialéctica es una visión global del mundo, no un método, y una hipótesis de estas características no se aplica: se realiza, se concreta, y para ello hay que trabajar de verdad y verazmente. Miguel Candel Sanmartín, Manuel Monleón Pradas y Félix Ovejero Lucas son los autores del prólogo, nota final y epílogo del volumen. Antoni Domènech ha traducido para esta edición la “Loa a la dialéctica” de Brecht. Manuel Sacristán Luzón (Madrid, 1925-Barcelona, 1985) estudió Derecho y Filosofía y Letras en la Universidad de Barcelona y cursó estudios de lógica y epistemología en el Instituto de Lógica Matemática e Investigación de Fundamentos de la Universidad de Münster (Westfalia, Alemania) entre 1954 y 1956. Sacristán se doctoró en Filosofía en 1959 con una tesis sobre Las ideas gnoseológicas de Heidegger y en 1964, dos años después de que le fuera negada la cátedra de lógica de la Universidad de Valencia, publicó Introducción a la lógica y al análisis formal, uno de los textos que más contribuyeron a la presencia y consolidación de la lógica formal en la cultura científica y filosófica española. Profesor de “Fundamentos de Filosofía” y de “Metodología de las ciencias sociales” en la Universidad de Barcelona, impartió durante el curso 1982-1983 dos seminarios de postgrado en la UNAM de México. Miembro del comité central del PCE y del PSUC, entre 1965 y 1970 formó parte del comité ejecutivo del PSUC. En su faceta de filósofo marxista, destaca la sensatez y originalidad con que siempre trató el complejo, y en ocasiones oscuro, tema de la dialéctica y su concepción del marxismo como una tradición de política revolucionaria. De uno de los escritos aquí recogidos, Félix Ovejero Lucas señaló en 1985: “Apenas veinte páginas tenía la introducción de Manuel Sacristán a la edición castellana del Anti-Dühring, de Engels; veinte páginas que enseñaron a varias generaciones de marxistas mucho más acerca de lo que significaba ser marxista que la marabunta editorial de unos años más tarde”. (shrink)

In this article, I outline the three main philosophical lessons that we may learn from Turing’s work, and how they lead to a new philosophy of information. After a brief introduction, I discuss his work on the method of levels of abstraction (LoA), and his insistence that questions could be meaningfully asked only by specifying the correct LoA. I then look at his second lesson, about the sort of philosophical questions that seem to be most pressing today. Finally, I focus (...) on the third lesson, concerning the new philosophical anthropology that owes so much to Turing’s work. I then show how the lessons are learned by the philosophy of information. In the conclusion, I draw a general synthesis of the points made, in view of the development of the philosophy of information itself as a continuation of Turing’s work. (shrink)

In the near future, vehicles will gradually gain more autonomous functionalities. Drivers’ activity will be less about driving than about monitoring intelligent systems to which driving action will be delegated. Road safety, therefore, remains dependent on the human factor and we should identify the limits beyond which driver’s functional state (DFS) may no longer be able to ensure safety. Depending on the level of automation, estimating the DFS may have different targets, e.g. assessing driver’s situation awareness in lower levels of (...) automation and his ability to respond to emerging hazard or assessing driver’s ability to monitor the vehicle performing operational tasks in higher levels of automation. Unfitted DFS (e.g., drowsiness) may impact the driver ability respond to taking over abilities. This paper reviews the most appropriate psychophysiological indices in naturalistic driving while considering the DFS through exogenous sensors, providing the more efficient trade-off between reliability and intrusiveness. The DFS also originates from kinematic data of the vehicle, thus providing information that indirectly relates to drivers behaviour. The whole data should be synchronously processed, providing a diagnosis on the DFS, and bringing it to the attention of the decision maker in real time. Next, making the information available can be permanent or intermittent (or even undelivered), and may also depend on the automation level. Such interface can include recommendations for decision support or simply give neutral instruction. Mapping of relevant psychophysiological and behavioural indicators for DFS will enable practitioners and researchers provide reliable estimates, fitted to the level of automation. (shrink)

Los cuatro filósofos que aquí se discuten parecen mostrar cuatro caminos de búsqueda que si no siempre conducen a un Dios vivo, por lo menos son un intento por alcanzarlo o una nostalgia de loa alcanzable y, por lo mismo, presente. ¿Es necesario que la ciencia se oponga a la religión? Teilhard de Chardin, en una experiencia cristiana nunca puesta en duda, trata de reunir y unificar ciencia y conciencia o, si se requiere, en términos tan viejos como vigentes, razón (...) (ciencia) y fe (la cristiana). ¿Existe la posibilidad de conocer a los "celestes", e incluso a Dios? A la pregunta contestará dubitativamente pero no sin esperanza Martín Heidegger. ¿Es importante la vida religiosa para quien, acongojadamente, descree? Lo es para alguien que, como Wittgenstein, ha perdido la fe y, sin embargo, anda en busca de lo indecible, de lo "místico". ¿Tienen todavía vigencia tratar de reunir la Grecia clásica y el universo cristiano, por vías místicas? La respuesta será afirmativa en esta obrera de la gracia y el amor que fue Simone Weil. (shrink)

Floridi’s infosphere consisting of informational reality is estimated and delineated by introducing the new notion of Typ-Ken, an undifferentiated amalgam of type and token that can be expressed as either type or token dependent on contingent ontological commitment. First, we elaborate Floridi’s system, level of abstraction (LoA), model, and structure scheme, which is proposed to reconcile ontic with epistemic structural reality, and obtain the duality of type and token inherited in the relationship between LoA and model. While we focus on (...) the ontological commitment that can negotiate and emphasize the discrepancy between type and token, we show that most research focusing on different hierarchical layers (type and token) has converged onto the flattened perspective of type and token to clarify the role of ontological commitment. We propose the idea of Typ-Ken to avoid this flattening. In addition, we elaborate Taddeo and Floridi’s criticism of approaches to the symbol grounding problem and show that their criticism based on the zero semantical commitment condition is specific to the agents affected by the flattening. We then take bird flocks as a metaphor for the living infosphere as if it had one mind. The knowledge recently yielded by image analysis indicates that it is difficult for previous flock models based on agents equipped with the flattening of local (token) and global (type) to show the special feature of a flock of the scale-free proportion (SFP). We show here that agents based on the Typ-Ken can reveal the SFP, which is the essential characteristic of the living infosphere. In other words, Typ-Ken is an expression for informational reality (LoA and model with ontological commitment) that can reveal seamless local and global interactions in the functioning of a flock or infosphere. (shrink)

The role of individual factors in behavioral neuroscience is an important, but still neglected, area of research. For example, the Elevated Plus-Maze Test has been one of the most used paradigms to gauge unconditioned aversively motivated behavior in rodents. However, despite a great number of experiments with this test there have been only few efforts to assess systematic individual variations in the elevated plus-maze and related neurobiological functions. The present review aims to give, first, a general overview and introduction about (...) the test, and second, an animal model of anxiety based on natural variance of plus-maze behavior within a given unselected population of rats. Finally, critical aspects of such approaches in animal research are discussed, and suggestions are given as to where to go from here. (shrink)

Through a historical and documentary analysis, I investigate the possible perceptions and influences that Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz could have had by her exposure to the incipient cultural and social movements at the time of the viceroyalty in New Spain. Throughout her work, she refers to Spain and New Spain. From the first, she collects the literary tradition and transforms it, dedicates poems to the representatives of the monarchy and recognizes her own Spanish heritage; from the second, she (...) collects the Nahua language, Mexican Spanish and the echo of other languages. This agglutination is the result of an integral and conciliatory vision. The work of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is a mirror of a modernity underpinned by a proposal of equity, of joint traditions articulated in the prodigy of the word and creative freedom. (shrink)

The article contains the replies to the collection of contributions discussing my research on the philosophy of information.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Computer Science as the Master of Its Domain The Concept of Law in Computer Science Computer Science Laws as Invariants The Interplay of Freedom and Constraint Conclusion References.